Would you trust your data to an operating systems that
can be hacked over 100 different ways?
That's what some schools need to know before they migrate
to Windows NT servers.
Windows NT is nowhere near as robust an operating system,
nor nearly as secure, as Microsoft would have us believe.
For instance, there are 104 documented ways to break into a
supposedly secure Windows NT system.
Even free versions of UNIX, such as BSD and Linux are
more secure, as is the Macintosh operating system.
Yet some schools see Windows NT as a secure solution.
Further Reading
Microsoft
admits NT has serious security flaws, TechWeb, 8/26.
"Microsoft has acknowledged a serious security flaw in NT
when used with Service Pack 4 - probably the most
commonly deployed version of its operating system."
Microsoft
to hackers: Crack this!, ZDNet, 8/4. More ironic than
Bill Gates' blue screen of death demo, the Win2K server
crashed before hackers could even attempt to crack
it.
Coming
soon: Back Orifice 2000, Wired News, 6/30. "This will
demonstrate that Microsoft's operating systems are
completely insecure and a bad choice for consumers and
businesses who demand privacy."
Firm
exposes WinNT security hole, ZDNet, 6/16. "Nearly
every Windows NT-based Web server on the Internet is
vulnerable to a newly discovered security hole...."
Every
OS has its niche, osOpinion. "Mac OS X is the most
promising of the bunch." "The Mac OS is the most mature
consumer OS."
Springtime
is here, and so are all the bugs, Internet Week, 5/3.
"Considering that lack of stability is one of NT's most
notorious problems as a serious enterprise server
platform, you'd think Redmond would be putting more
effort into changing that perception."
U.S.
Navy does Windows, Applelinks, 4/29. "Using Windows
NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a
warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our
favor."
Microsoft's
muddled OS test, ABC News, 4/28. "So what did the
Mindcraft test achieve? It gave Microsoft strong numbers
to point to &emdash; but at the cost of a
public-relations embarrassment."
NT
beats Linux...maybe, ZDNet, 4/15. A study
commissioned by Microsoft found that, "Highly tuned NT
beats a barely tuned, if that, Linux. But, there's more
to it...."
They
missed the point of OS X Server!, OS Opinion. "When
combined with the new G3 Server model, it is
the fastest Apache [web]
server under $5,000, beating NT4 and Linux on an
Intel 450 PII by a significant margin."
Ten
Hut!, Tales from the Mac Side, 3/19. "What OS X
should do best is what NT has been trying desperately to
do all along &endash;- bring network administration down
to end-user simplicity levels."
How
big is Windows 2000?, Windows Magazine. "...I can't
help thinking that a system that requires over 350MB for
the system disk files is bound to be more
complicated--and less reliable--than one requiring 173MB.
And I don't know too many people who were satisfied with
NT 4.0's reliability."
Serious
NT bug emerges, c|net. "A flaw in Microsoft's
Windows NT operating system allows an ordinary network
user, and possibly anyone with Internet access, to
impersonate a system administrator."
Microsoft
Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX by John Kirch (26
June 1998). "Why Windows NT Server 4.0 continues to exist
in the enterprise would be a topic appropriate for an
investigative report in the field of psychology or
marketing, not an article on information technology.
Technically, Windows NT Server 4.0 is no match for any
UNIX operating system, not even the non-commercial BSDs
or Linux."
Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work
for all. Computers are like that. Please report errors to
Dan Knight
.
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