Baldylocks-Ubuntu wrote:

> Tell me, the first time you did it - how long did it take you to install a
> Windows server OS, then install and configure Apache, mySQL and PHP then
> update it all and make secure? I suspect significantly longer than 1 hour.

It's a trick question! There is *no* *way* to make /any/ version of Windows
at all "secure".

The company I work for has offices near to the Cambridge MS offices. Our
heavy use of FOSS software is quite well known, so we received a visit from
an MS salesman recently. He spent half an hour extolling the virtues of
MS' new server products, and explained that our TCO would be "considerably
cheaper" than with SuSe products.

We decided to play with him a bit - it wasn't really fair: think of a cat
playing with a mouse. We asked to see their latest products in action, and
asked if we could run some "basic security tests". He thought he might
have a sale, so readily agreed...

Suffice to say, MS' "security" was shown to be sadly lacking, and their
server farm seems to have caught a /particularly/ nasty cold! We had the
salesman in tears when he saw how trivially easy it was to first get an
unauthorised user account on their servers, and then escalate privilege
to "administrator"...

You can be certain that MS won't be making any sales to /our/ company!

C.