From: petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly)
Subject: Re: Origins of IBM / Microsoft rift
Date: 11 Aug 92 06:55:18 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

>
>Telnet is only *ONE* particular protocol which allows two machines on
>the network to interact with each other... and it's not even tied that
>closely to UNIX, per se (there is, for example, a telnet "daemon"
>available for PC's running DOS -- not Windows 3.x though, because even
>if you run it in a DOS box, Windows completely loses and disappears
>completely from memory -- but that's another issue). Right now I am
>reading news on my HP-UX workstation via an X Windows network connection
>to an emacs-lisp client running on a DEC VAXstation connected to a news
>server on a DEC DECstation, using files in my home directory on a DEC
>VAX-3600 AFS file server to track what articles I have read, using a
>NFS-mounted directory on an IBM-RT for temporary storage space. All of
>these conceptually relate to client/server but have nothing to do with
>telnet. The user interface is being determined by my local machine, and
>I am only stealing CPU cycles and disk space from other machines, most
>of which I couldn't log in at even if I wanted to.

Ahah....He has it....
This is exactly the type of stuff that NT was designed to do!!!

You have file sharing through the LANMAN stuff.
The shell is client server oriented, you have RPC, etc.
This allows you to run the UI on another machine for reasonable apps.

You don't have to "LOG ON" to the machines distributed across the network,
you just have to gain access to the servers runings on those machines giving
you the resources you want, be they mail, disk space, cpu time, whatever.

>
>At one of my part-time jobs, I work with a DOS client for TechInfo (a
>client/server campus-wide information system) and a DOS client for
>TechMail (a client/server POP e-mail program). Since DOS doesn't support
>telnet, does that mean that DOS is client/server based?  No, of course
>not. NT certainly makes it possible to write applications and modules
>which extend system functionality using client/server concepts, but so
>do many operating systems -- including OS/2 and DOS.

I never said that telnet implies that something isn't client server based.
In fact, since telnet uses a deamon, it itself is client server based.
It's like saying C++ is an object oriented language.  It is designed to
use OO paradigms well, but that by no means says you can't use C to
do object oriented programming.  And just because you can use C, this does
not mean you shouldn't use C++.  NT was designed with client-server 
in mind, and therefore will make it easier to design those kinds of
services.

>
> > Where did I say that NT was the first system to use Client/Server
> > tech.  [...] I was only trying to explain that NT approaches the
> > problem from a direction that UNIX usually doesn't.  I didn't say
> > that nobody else does.
>
>[Elsewhere, you said also with regards to NT client/server...]
>
> > [...] You're giving the standard lame response to anyone announcing that
> > their product has a feature "Nyaaa, I can name a billion products that
> > have had that feature dating back to the 3rd century BC".
>
>I don't know if you ever stated anywhere that NT really was the first to
>use client/server technologies or that nobody else does. I doubt that,
>because you know better. I think what Stacy is objecting to and what I
>find annoying as well is that Microsoft's advertisements and press
>releases and media coverage often portray (even if *ONLY* by implication)
>NT technologies as new whiz-bang stuff that aren't available anywhere
>else. I think NT has some solid technical stuff in it, but the hype....

One of the features of NT is that it has this whiz-bang stuff all in one
place.  Why go to UNIX for this, and X for this, and Mac for this, etc when
you can have it in one integrated platform.  Integration of modules from
different vendors is hard, if not impossable.

Okay, yeah, I know some vendors ship all this stuff together, but can I go
to one of these vendors and grab a package that does not run on Their 
hardware?

>
> > Okay, yeah, I'll agree.  How many NT servers are there outside people
> > with NT.  NONE.  How many OS/2 servers are there outside people with OS/2
> > NONE.  So what was your point.
>
>Really? I think there are a number of corporate developers who have
>created client/server applications specific to their company business on
>OS/2 1.x (and presumably 2.0) who would be quite surprised to hear that.
>Elsewhere you cite LAN Manager as an example of resource sharing between
>machines... seeing that is OS/2 based, Microsoft itself sells a product
>which runs on OS/2 and provides client/server functionality.

How can someone be running an os2 server without os2?  Read my post again,
son, I was being cynical.


petesk@microsoft.com
My opinions...


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy