Practical Technology

Thanks to the European Union’s courts, Microsoft was forced to open up its APIs and protocols for its MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) and WSPP (Workgroup Server Protocol Program). According to Keith Hageman, an MSDN moderator, “The MCPP package content details Windows Clients to Windows Server protocols for all features. The WSPP package content details [...]

[Read more →]

If you didn’t know what was really behind Microsoft’s open standards and source promises, it might sound like Microsoft was making real changes. You’ve got to give Microsoft credit for gall. They take a crunching defeat at the hands of the European Union court system for trying to conceal information and now that the court [...]

[Read more →]

On Dec. 20, the Samba Group and the Software Freedom Law Center announced a deal with Microsoft that places all of Microsoft’s network protocols needed for programs to work with Windows Server into the hands of the newly formed Protocol Freedom Information Foundation. The PFIF is a U.S.-based nonprofit corporation. It will make Microsoft’s server [...]

[Read more →]

For years, if you wanted an inexpensive, but Windows-compatible file and print server, you turned to Samba running on Linux. Now, with the first alpha release of Samba 4, this open-source project is moving closer to becoming a complete Windows 2003/Longhorn replacement. Since Samba 3 arrived in 2003, Windows network administrators have been able to [...]

[Read more →]

I was tinkering with my Vista system the other day, when I found it wouldn’t connect with a pair of NAS (Network Attached Storage) drives. I was not a happy camper. The drives, a pair of Seagate 400GB USB2.0 External Hard Drives, were connected to my Fast Ethernet network by a Linksys NSLU2, aka Slug, [...]

[Read more →]