NT Stuff

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, at 9:22am, kurth at usaexpress.net wrote:
> A freaking checkbox labeled "Allow the computer to turn off this device to
> save power".
> 
> Is there a reason that MS feels that this is an "Option"?  Does the power
> that that card uses really make THAT big a difference?

  On laptops, the power used by a PCMCIA Ethernet NIC can actually be quite
significant.  Not so on a server, of course.

  One of Microsoft's fundamental failings is that they consistently fail to
consider the consequences of a given feature.  This is a classic example.  
The power management people live in a world laptops and batteries.  They
figured if the computer needed the NIC, it would wake back up when the
software triggered the action.  They never considered the fact that an idle
*server* needs to respond to external inputs from the *network*.

  You see this failure over and over again in their history.  With MSIE and
ActiveX (it would be nice if the browser could just automatically download
any software it needs (until the user visits a malicious web page)).  With
Outlook (it would be nice if emails could be interactive (until someone
sends you a malicious email)).  With Microsoft Office scripting (it would be
nice if documents could be interactive (ditto)).  Heck, earlier versions of
Windows NT ran the screen saver with system privileges, because they never
thought about what would happen if the screen saved did something bad.

  This is what happens when a company sets out for world domination.  They
end up blinding themselves to the outside world as well.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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