Microsoft Using Linux To Optimize Skype Traffic 396
An anonymous reader writes "A security researcher believes that Microsoft has overhauled Skype, with thousands of Linux boxes serving as the 'supernodes' that route calls between users of the voice-over-IP service. Kostya Kortchinsky of Immunity Security 'discovered the Linux supernodes using a Skype probing technique he and colleague Fabrice Desclaux first demonstrated in 2006,' according to Ars Technica. The drastic infrastructure change doesn't affect the peer-to-peer nature of the calls between Skype users."
Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Insightful)
To gloat over the irony of Microsoft using cheap UNIX boxes for P2P infrastructure. Even in 2012, Microsoft is still the bogeyman here.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Like the AC said, even in 2012 MS is still the bogeyman.
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Ballmer made the comment and he is the current CEO of Microsoft. He never recanted what he said and MS has been on a continuous campaign of attacking Linux ever since. Furthermore, "Overly Critical Guy" made the bogeyman comment, not an AC. Hmm...
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Like the AC said, even in 2012 MS is still the bogeyman.
I think Apple owns that honor now.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Words uttered in 2001. Words which more than anything exhibit Ballmer's (mis)understanding of how GPL and other open source licenses work
Words uttered in 2007:
Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/ [cnn.com]
Words uttered in 2009:
Microsoft has brought a lawsuit against car navigation system manufacturer TomTom. The products in question incorporate Linux, and at least one of the seven patents involved concerns a Linux kernel implementation rather than TomTom's own software. Is this Microsoft's first direct salvo against Linux?
Is this a serious suit, or an effort to stir up fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux at a critical time, when government and industry is taking up Open Source in a big way?
http://www.datamation.com/osrc/article.php/3807801/Bruce-Perens-Analyzing-Microsofts-Linux-Lawsuit.htm [datamation.com]
Microsoft are just getting media sly. They haven't really changed otherwise.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Interesting)
They aren't irrelevant, but they don't have the influence they once did. XBox hasn't made them much money, but it's probably their most respected consumer product. Microsoft is really just an Office + Windows company selling to corporations these days. They are interesting in the same way that Oracle or Cisco are interesting.
They have a huge pile of cash, so you can never count them out, but I would say their bullying is over (except for patent trolling) because they have lost their best talent. They are trying to compete with a B-level team.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I find Win7 to be good enough that I am ok with shelling out the 165 USD it cost here in Norway.
Each to their own and all that though. I use ubuntu on my file/media/web server and find that to be the best solution for me there.
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Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Flight is a total joke for the sim crowd. Only someone quite inexperienced when it comes to simulators would think Flight was anything other than lame (eg. any of X-Plane, or DCS:A-10C, or DCS:Ka-50, or the recently released DCS:World, or even Microsoft Flight Sim X are all generally held to be better simulators than Flight - by those in the know).
Visual Studio is the best IDE, if you only develop for Windows (most people do more than Windows, eg the web, iOS etc) if you have never used anything better (and there are better IDEs out there, depending on your needs). Again, this smacks of someone who actually hasn't got much experience with other IDEs.
nb. Nokia is no longer the World's largest phone manufacturer. Recently Samsung overtook them in shipped more units, and furthermore, Apple is the leader in terms of market direction (they lead, others follow). Microsoft is loosing money badly in the mobile space - if it wasn't for their established monopolies they would have exited mobile long ago, but they are desparate to be relevant. Now Microsoft are a generation behind, trying to get into mobiles when Apple has already captured the mindshare of that market and is now moving to the tablet space (where Microsoft is a non-contender at the moment).
XBox360 is winner? they do have higher total sales than PS3, but given their huge lead time it turns out that PS3 has had the better rate of growth in terms of sales (and a better experience, in terms of reliability and game choice).
So, it is good that Microsoft makes you happy. It doesn't make its shareholders happy, and it is rapidly losing relevance compared with its position even five years ago. But by all means, please try and see the good in their products (even though anyone else who has used their competitors products will never go back to the poor-quality Microsoft equivalents).
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:4, Informative)
having the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia by the balls?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Microsoft + Nokia, taking the world by storm! Windows Phones everywhere! HAHAHAHAHA! They're gonna expand that 0.41 percent [thenextweb.com] market share into something important real soon now!
Anyway, that's all I -- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Nobody talked about relevance. The word used was bogeyman.
MS is pretty irrelevant these days outside of the enterprise desktop arena.
What was that?
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Although it should be logical to people, some seem to treat it as "fanboiism", when in fact, it celebrates one OS over the other.
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Nah, I think it speaks to the scalability, maturity, and flexibility of Linux vs MS.
ehh... seeing that MS can freely change their source, I think it represents the inflexibility of management.
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The GPL isn't any more viral than the default copyright law that applies to proprietary products.
All the GPL does is piggy back on "derived work".
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All the GPL does is piggy back on "derived work".
I think you're confusing apples with oranges. GPL is protection from people profiting from others' work to make a product in tended to be free for use --just like like copyright/patents may be for-profit works. Derived work, though, is a fact of progression. Rarely will you see a paradigm-changing piece of work that hasn't had an influence from some other part of a whole.
"Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal" -Picasso*
* yeah, I know he may not be the person that actually uttered those words. htt [about.com]
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, you either failed to read or failed to comprehend the article. In this case, Microsoft has deployed 10,000 Linux servers essentially to replace a larger number of Windows machines (the supernodes that ran on individual desktops). This is a new deployment of a new type of server (a dedicated supernode).
So this is not case of Microsoft just delaying a switchover from Linux to Windows, it represents Microsoft choosing to use Linux for a new task.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Informative)
Correct.
In the early days of Skype, any machine with a direct connection to the internet could find itself being a supernode (which really handled setting up connections for firewalled machines, not all of the traffic for those machines).
Later Skype decided to create farms of supernodes for this and stop using end-user machines for this purpose. (Mostly because it was getting harder and harder to find non-firewalled machines). They haven't used individual desktops for supernodes for a long time.
So other than the scale of the deployment, the fact that Microsoft deliberately chose to avoid windows for this purpose is significant.
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I very much doubt that those farms of dedicated supernodes that Skype has introduced way back then just run the desktop Skype client - much more likely is that they have made a dedicated server for that task, with only the code that's necessary for it, and anything unused ripped out. If their server infrastructure was already all Linux, it also makes sense that the dedicated server was also Linux-only.
Sure, it can probably be ported to Windows now, but why bother fscking around with something that already w
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Define cheap? Did Microsoft save money by not buying Windows licenses from themselves? Price was not obviously the reason for this decision.
Idiot.
Re:Eh? This is how Skype works? (Score:5, Funny)
Price was not obviously the reason for this decision.
Total Cost of Ownership.
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To gloat over the irony of Microsoft using cheap UNIX boxes for P2P infrastructure
There's no reason to gloat - I mean, if Microsoft is so full of themselves, if that Ballmer guy is still insisting that "Linux is a cancer", then fine, let Microsoft use boxen running their own OS to power Skype.
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Because they switched from client supernodes to dedicated supernodes. Those of us interested in p2p architectures are interested. Go back to drooling on yourself.
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The article claims that regular users can no longer be promoted to supernodes. I would call that a switch.
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The article claims that regular users can no longer be promoted to supernodes. I would call that a switch.
Regular users haven't been promoted to supernodes for a long time. You needed an inward route thru your firewall (or a direct connection) for this to work. The sale to Microsoft left a bad enough taste in many people's mouth that they just dropped their inward routes and thereby eliminated any possibility of them being a supernode.
But even prior to the sale, (under Ebay) skype had started paring back client side supernodes, because of security concerns. I don't actually think they were using end-user mach
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Problem is, its getting hard to find machines with inward routes. If you are using a supernode, (because you are firewalled) you can't BE one.
Supernodes [disruptivetelephony.com] handle connections for firewalled machines, to assist in firewall piercing and advertising.
End-to-end principle (Score:5, Insightful)
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learn to SBC...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_border_controller [wikipedia.org]
IPv6 will not solve the SBC issue since homeland needs to listen in
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Obviously, you didn't RTFA, but that's the norm these days. The traffic doesn't go through the supernodes, all call traffic is p2p. The supernodes are directory servers so that clients can locate other clients.
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Re:End-to-end principle (Score:4, Insightful)
The firewall will (or at least should) be there - NAT or no NAT. In case of Skype, the application has to work by undergoing something called NAT traversal, which pretty much destroys the 'security' aspect of NAT. Skype & other internet telephony need to wok on peer to peer configurations, and that means not having any address translations in b/w. If anything, Skype is one of the last places where one should have NAT.
The single entry point is easy - one can have a computer or wireless router/access point acting as a DHCP6 server, and assigning addresses from there. If certain devices are not to be able to access the external internet, don't assign them public addresses. If you want to connect something to the internet but not have its IP used for future security breaches, use dynamic public addresses. If OTOH you want your garage door to have an IP so that you can open it remotely if your spouse is stuck outside while you're @ work, give it a static public IP.
Why So Serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never understood why people get all shocked when someone uses a competitor's product when theirs can do the job too. Well, Linux is a better platform for embedded applications, single-purpose servers, etc. It is much more efficient because there's no GUI to drive and only the bare minimum needs to be loaded in memory. Even the kernel can be stripped down to only essential modules, and it can be tweaked for realtime applications.
Windows servers aren't designed for that. They're designed to be low maintenance multi-purpose servers which are easily configurable. Most businesses who setup windows servers aren't using them in areas where high performance is needed. They are for satellite offices, small workgroups, etc., where the server has a variety of roles. The only high performance servers I routinely see windows deployed on routinely are domain controllers and mail servers (specifically Exchange servers).
It's a sound business move.
Re:Why So Serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood why people get all shocked when someone uses a competitor's product when theirs can do the job too. Well, Linux is a better platform for embedded applications, single-purpose servers, etc. It is much more efficient because there's no GUI to drive and only the bare minimum needs to be loaded in memory. Even the kernel can be stripped down to only essential modules, and it can be tweaked for realtime applications.
Windows servers aren't designed for that.
Eat your own dog food.
If Windows Server isn't secure enough or powerful enough to do the job, maybe Microsoft should revisit their design choices.
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If Windows Server isn't secure enough or powerful enough to do the job, maybe Microsoft should revisit their design choices.
So if you're a bicycle manufacturer, you should give up and start designing cars? Microsoft's design choices have been about making a server that's easy to configure, does not require specific knowledge of the OS' inner-workings, and is intended as a "one size fits all" solution. It's like comparing a semitruck to a freight train -- yes, they both often haul the same materials but they are hardly interchangeable.
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With Powershell its different and you can't even setup Exchange 2012 without good knowledge in it on purpose. In NT 4 land Windows Server was first introduced as a server even an idiot can setup. ActiveDirectory and infrastructure is difficult to setup for a large organization.
Specific examples do not compromise general design principles.
Thousands of design choices needed to be made in order to make Windows. While some of them may have been suboptimal or even contrary to the goals, overall, the product achieves its aims. I can provide many examples where Linux' performance is lower than competing products, where it doesn't work well as a server, or where comparable solutions are better at embedding and realtime performance... but again, overall, it achieves the goals of having a
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Eat your own dog food.
Step back a minute. Just because Microsoft owns Skype does NOT mean that they think it's a great business idea to come in and tell them HOW they should accomplish something. Did it ever occur to you that they might have said, "We want Skype to be more reliable, so here's some money, dear Skype division. Now get it done."?
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HoTMaiL was launched in 1996, running Solaris and FreeBSD.
Microsoft acquired HoTMaiL in 1997.
They migrated to Windows 2000 in June and July of 2000. (citation) [microsoft.com]
HoTMaiL was rebranded to Hotmail, and then a few various MS names.
I know some of you kids haven't been on the Internet quite so long, but I remember when it happened, and many outages during the migration.
Just because a company buys another company, even if it's
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If Windows Server isn't secure enough or powerful enough to do the job, maybe Microsoft should revisit their design choices.
They are. Server 2012 won't be RTM until early fall at the earliest, and they apparently needed something now.
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Or Microsoft isn't forcing Skype to do things their way and is letting the Skype team do what they've been doing well up to this point. I imagine this change has been years in the making. No reason to force them to change paths due to politics.
Good on Microsoft.
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For example there are times when Apache is better than nginx and times when nginx is better than Apache
This is something that Microsoft understands but seems like basement jerker FOSS fanatics cannot.
My irony meter just went off the chart.
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Re:Why So Serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never understood why people get all shocked when someone uses a competitor's product
Maybe in this case people get shocked not because it's just a competing product but one that was deemed a "cancer" by MS itself? It's one thing to use a competitor product, it's another to use something you denounce as immoral.
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Maybe Microsoft has learned something over time. When Microsoft first bought hotmail, all the front end servers were running on FreeBSD, and the backend servers were running Solaris. The first thing they tried to do was convert everything to Win2K to show the world it could be done. Didn't start out so great and they learned that somethings were best left alone (even though they eventually pushed them all through to show that it could be done**). Now they have another chance with another high-value web p
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I agree happen to agree after supporting and configuring and administering the same two platforms, but Baldy McSuitysuit has heard of Microsoft and hasn't heard of Debian because Debian doesn't actually spend money on commericals.
Of course this explains 96% of the problems in the corporate world. You also can't expect every Microsoft employee to be dumb... good ideas have to get through once in a while, even with a rotten corporate culture.
Is Skype really better? (Score:2)
My calling card is only 4 cents per minute. I've been curious about skype but never saw any reason to switch?
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Calling cards are what people used before unlimited calls on cellphones became popular in the 2000s. MY cell costs 18 cents/minute so I use the 4cent/minute card instead.
Must be.. (Score:2)
No surprise (Score:2)
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Well.. not be a smartass, but everyone has the right to use it. That's the point.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
This is such tripe. These patches are to get it working well on their hypervisor. It's not like they were improving scheduling performance, patching security holes, or implementing drivers. They want Linux to work better running under Windows.
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What shortsightedness. Everyone working on Linux ultimately does it to scratch their own itch, but Linux keeps getting better because of their contributions nonetheless. Linux working better under Windows will cause some people to use who wouldn't have, that's good for Linux since it will give it exposure.
Hear it from Linus himself:
Linus states that this is how all open source code gets written, developers scratching an itch. The fact that this comes from Microsoft shouldn’t make any difference at all, saying:
“I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all “scratch our own itches”. It’s why I started Linux, it’s why I started git, and it’s why I am still involved. It’s the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree.
So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That’s the point of open source – the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the ‘your’ in question happens to be.
Does anybody complain when hardware companies write drivers for the hardware they produce? No. That would be crazy. Does anybody complain when IBM funds all the POWER development, and works on enterprise features because they sell into the enterprise? No. That would be insane.
So the people who complain about Microsoft writing drivers for their own virtualization model should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are being so hypocritical.”
When did they not have a right? (Score:2)
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enough to appear as one of the 20 biggest contributors
quantity != quality
they may have actually made linux worse/more buggy and created more work for the regular kernel contributors to integrate and debug
they've used endusers as beta testers for years, and now they're using linux kernel developers as debuggers
embrace... (Score:2)
Probably . . . (Score:5, Funny)
They likely couldn't afford the cost of the server licenses.
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Well you can rent Windows servers from Rackspace...
Also I hear myspace runs (ran? is it dead yet?) on Windows.
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you can rent Windows servers from Rackspace
that doesn't mean they have a data center full of them
That's nice and all... (Score:5, Interesting)
Good to hear that Skype will be a bit less fly-by-night and will have better call performance. But for two years now, the interface has been getting progressively worse and Skype credits have been exchanging for fewer and fewer minutes. The current version has no compact buddy list, requires a subscription for multiparty video, has giant ads on a useless "home" screen, and wants me to issue facebook updates of some shit. I have never uninstalled anything so fast in my life.
Balance the traffic all you want, Microsoft. Skype is a sinking ship if you don't make it lighter, prettier, and cheaper.
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requires a subscription for multiparty video
Google Hangouts. Generally provide equal or higher video resolution and audio quality and is free.
Seriously folks, Skype sucks. It has sucked for a long time. There are better solutions available. And if you care, the last time I compared prices, Google's offerings were cheaper on all but one country I checked. Not trying to be a Google cheerleadering, but seriously, you can easily do better than skype.
Hell, my brother is deployed overseas in a country I'm not supposed to name. We tried Google Hangouts for
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I use Skype messaging all the time, rarely use it to make calls, and I've noticed performance is getting terrible these days too.
Messages frequently don't arrive until the next time the recipient logs on.
Guess it's time to move on... I haven't tried Google hangouts for this yet, so that might be worth a go
This is shocking... (Score:3)
... to anyone who doesn't remember Microsoft's acquisition of BSD-based Hotmail.
They're not going to migrate to completely in-house systems overnight.
Because it's Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this interesting / amusing ? .NET, Office Open document format, Sync framework for examples)
Technically using Linux or some other unix as a supernode is fine, probably a better solution than Windows server - but this is Microsoft, the dominant operating system provider; very much the competitor to Linux. they *could* use a competitor's solution but traditionally Microsoft reinvents the wheel rather than do this (see Silverlight, XPS,
Choosing Linux rather than their own OS product for this task seems like bad PR especailly after publicly criticising Linux as an insecure, slow, potentially IP-violating OS platform.
You may recall they were "caught" using FreeBSD for hotmail after acquiring that service - and eventually migrated it to Windows.
I'm guessing there will soon be a "WinMin" or Windows server core based platform that hosts this instead of Linux.
Development of Skype on Linux abandoned? (Score:5, Informative)
And it's therefore ironic that the development of Skype on Linux has been abandoned, it's been stuck at version 2.2 Beta for over a year now.
What's the alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Recently Acquired Skype Division:
Please abandon your entire Linux infrastructure, like, right after you read this. I know the market is hypercompetitive, but we really need you to spend 2 years rebuilding everything from scratch on Windows Server, because if word got out that one of our divisions is using Linux, the slashdot community will go ape shit. In the meanwhile, you'll still be accountable to shareholders for revenue, so figure out how to make money after your service goes down for 2 years. Maybe you can sell chocolate bars or have a bake sale or something.
Yours,
Steve Ballmer
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It's a surprise for me because I would have expected MS to use a Windows Server box, especially given their philosophy of their employees using own product for real-world test.
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The thing is that Linux (and before that Unix) has always been a part of their infastructure. When Ballmer was being an ass, throwing chairs, and having diarrhea of the mouth with the cancer and "viral" comments, the people doing the real work on the inside had linux boxes on their network helping them get their day to day work done.
In other words, Ballmer is an idiot and Microsoft does have some good and practicle people working for them. An idiot CEO, that's not at all odd either.
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the people doing the real work on the inside had linux boxes on their network helping them get their day to day work done.
In 2001? Citation please.
IOW, I think you're talking out of your arse.
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It just shows that Microsoft doesn't take the hard approach of FOSS fanatics but uses what suits the purpose best.
Well that is not really asking much out of them:
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> that I not attempt to ... use the included artwork to produce offensive documents,
As much as I hate wikipedia I'm going to have to call [Citation] on this one part ...
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It just shows that Microsoft doesn't take the hard approach of FOSS fanatics but uses what suits the purpose best.
Most open source projects run on windows. Linux usually comes first, but 90% of the time there is a windows port. What % of Microsoft apps run on something other then windows? It looks to me that the "FOSS fanatics" are very good about allowing people to pick what suits them the best while Microsoft isn't.
Re:MS and Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Hell, they have an open source project hosting at CodePlex [codeplex.com].
At least try to get your facts straight instead of the pure hate. But I saw what happened when Microsoft guys reached out and asked for comments about their open source offering on Slashdot. You can still read it too, Microsoft Wants Your Feedback On Its New Python IDE [slashdot.org].
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Which is why I called for MY OWN post to be modded down. It was a factually inacurate shot. A post below enlightened me.
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They only even acknowledge the existence of linux when they are still at the "embrace" stage, in markets where ms is already dominant they never even acknowledge that linux exists at all...
ODBC driver for mssql - ms do not dominate the database market, oracle are still huge, mysql and db2 are well known too
hyper-v drivers - ms are nothing in the virtualization market, having been very late to the party and already released and subsequently dropped a previous virtualization product (ms virtual server)
frontpa
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Microsoft was in the top 10 corporate contributors to the kernel in 2011. And I am not a shill, check my posts dawg.
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i think gp probably knows because of all the gay porn he's obsessed with
X [] O (Score:2)
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Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? Why should the average person care?
Oddly enough, they shouldn't care because hell has frozen over and Microsoft is using Linux.
They should care because Microsoft is taking steps to centralise what was a peer-to-peer telephony system. By adding supernodes that they control, they are positioning Skype to transition to a system where everybody's data goes through Microsoft servers rather than direct person to person.
They're happy to have us discussing Linux because the privacy implications are what they don't want us talking about.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Where's the mod point when I really need them?
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For me at least, the problem isn't that so much is becoming public but that so many little things that shouldn't matter can get you in trouble when they're made public. Smoking some weed, getting drunk, whatever goofy shit you get up to, it shouldn't matter if it's made public, because it shouldn't be anyone's concern but your own what you do with your own body in your own time.
Obviously, if you're getting twisted at work or whatever that's an issue, but victimless fun shouldn't have legal or professional c
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