Windows Server 2008 Has Gone Gold

Today, February 4, 2008, Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing. Although it was initially planned for RTM by the end of 2007, the release of the final bits was postponed to early 2008, with the Redmond company failing to offer additional details. Well, the wait for Windows Server 2008 Gold is finally over. Microsoft has RTM the second product out of the lineup set up for the Heroes Happen Here launch on February 27, 2008 in Los Angeles. Visual Studio 2008 has already RTMed, and SQL Server 2008 is not scheduled for RTM until the third quarter of 2008. Windows Server 2008 is the successor of Windows Server 2008, and the server operating system with which Microsoft will stop producing 32-bit platforms is aimed at the server side.

"I’m in the room where it all happens; in building 26, better known as the ship
room. Ten minutes ago Windows Server 2008 officially RTM’d," stated a member of the Windows Server Division. "We’ve all been working towards this day for the past 3 years and over 5,000 people have contributed to this release. In the final days leading up to RTM, the tone in the war room meetings was calm, almost too calm because there were minimal bugs to resolve and final testing went very smoothly. We focused on testing of the code changes made in Nov/Dec to make sure nothing regressed. Hundreds of system component teams across the Windows division and Microsoft performed their escrow test passes and signed off. The last important step was to ensure our deployment customers, OEMs, and Microsoft IT were satisfied and had no major issues."

According to Microsoft, there have been in excess of two million beta versions of Windows Server 2008 in testing around the world, during the development process. And the fact of the matter is that the latest server operating system had technically been finalized ever since Microsoft made available Release Candidate 1. The Redmond company revealed that it had automated many of the tasks synonymous with server operating system maintenance, from management tasks to security efforts. Windows Server 2008 also brings to the table an efficiency boost, as well as increased availability. On top of this, the server platform delivers virtualization solutions aligning Windows Server 2008 with the general market tendencies.

"We’ve been working with partners around the world who are creating solutions that take advantage of the new platform’s feature set," said Bob Visse, senior director, Windows Server Marketing Group at Microsoft. "There’s been tremendous support for the operating system and a lot of excitement around the opportunity it represents for the industry."

The Father of Linux Says Microsoft Is Bluffing

At the end of 2006, Microsoft entered a new partnership with one of the most prominent members of the open source community by inking what it referred to as a landmark Windows-Linux interoperability agreement with Linux distributor Novell. And yet, as both Microsoft and Novell indicated strong commitment to bridging the proprietary and open source platform, both companies came under a barrage of fire for the intellectual property assurance aspect of their deal. Essentially, the agreement permitted Microsoft to sell 70,000 one-year subscription for maintenance and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server coupons to customers, while at the same time offering intellectual property rights to its own technology.

The move was designed to protect companies around the world that would acquire
the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server coupons protection from a potential lawsuit from Microsoft for patent infringement. At that time, the Redmond company welcomed additional members of the open source community to its Windows-Linux interoperability and intellectual property assurance wagon, and while some jumped aboard, others, including Red Hat, failed to succumb to Microsoft's pressure. And at its peek, Microsoft General Counsel, Brad Smith, and Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing, Horacio Gutierrez, accused open source and free software of infringing on no less than 235 Microsoft patents. The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, has recently revealed in an interview with The Linux Foundation that he thought Microsoft was bluffing.

"So, I think that Microsoft really sees patents as a marketing thing and I think that for two reasons: a) it is what they seem to have used in the past. So far I don’t think Microsoft has ever sued anybody over patents. They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don’t think they’ve – not that I’ve gone through any huge amount of law cases, but I don’t think they’ve generally used patents as a weapon. But they’re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace and patents is just one thing where they say, 'Hey, isn’t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.' Another reason why I don’t think Microsoft really seriously would go after patents is when you’re a convicted monopolist in the marketplace you really should not be suing your competitors over patents. I think that most Microsoft lawyers would say, 'You know, let’s not do that; that sounds insane.' They’re perfectly happy to use patents in the détente and cold war sense," Torvalds said.

The Best Antivirus in 2008

A new year... A new beginning... And the inevitable security solution smackdown. In this context, AV-Test has thrown together in the same arena no less than 24 antivirus products from the heavyweights of the security market. The security solutions were tested against in excess of 1 million malware samples from the last six months. According to Av-Test's Andreas Marx, the test involved only the top of the line, "'best' available Security Suite edition" from each vendor, last updated on January 7, 2008, and running on Windows XP SP2. And yes Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare 2.0 was tested, but no, it's not the best antivirus of 2008. Well, of the beginning of 2008, anyway...

"First, we checked the signature-based on-demand detection of all products against more than 1 Mio. samples we've found spreading or which were distributed during
the last six months (this means, we have not used any 'historic' samples.) We included all malware categories in the test: Trojan Horses, backdoors, bots, worm and viruses. Instead of just presenting the results, we have ranked the product this time, from 'very good' (++) if the scanner detected more than 98% of the samples to 'poor' (--) when less than 85% of the malware was detected," Marx revealed.

In terms of signature-based on-demand detection, Windows Live OneCare 2.0 held its own. Microsoft's security solution ended up detecting a total of 992,880 out of all the malware samples thrown against it, and accounting for a "Signature Detection" rate of 96.9%. This is nothing short of an excellent score for Windows Live OneCare, an antivirus that at the beginning of 2007 managed to occupy positions only towards the bottom of the security solution pack in early 2007. In the latest AV-Test "Signature Detection" test OneCare 2.0 came on top of F-Prot (986,961 – 96.3%), Panda (979,409 – 95.6%), McAfee (959,919 – 93.7%) and Nod32 (953,936 – 93.1%).

However, OneCare 2.0 was bested by the likes of AVK 2008 (1,022,418 – 99.8%); AntiVir (1,020,627 – 99.6%); Avast! (1,018,204 – 99.4%); Trend Micro (1,009,662 – 98.6%); Symantec (1,006,849 – 98.3%); AVG (1,005,006 – 98.1%); BitDefender (1,003,902 – 98.0%); Kaspersky (1,003,470 – 98.0%);
Sophos (1,001,655 – 97.8%) and F-Secure (999,806 – 97.6%). The complete results of the "Signature Detection" test from AV-Test can be accessed here, courtesy of Sunbelt Software.

"Secondly, we checked the number of false positives of the products have generated during a scan of 65,000 known clean files. Only products with no false positives received a 'very good' (++) rating. In case of the proactive detection category, we have not only focussed on signature- and heuristic-based proactive detection only (based on a retrospective test approach with a one week old scanner). Instead of this, we also checked the quality of the included behavior based guard (e.g. Deepguard in case of F-Secure and TruPrevent in case of Panda). We used 3,500 samples for the retrospective test as well as 20 active samples for the test of the 'Dynamic Detection' (and blocking) of malware," Marx added.

Windows Live OneCare 2.0 is among the few security solutions that have scored a ++ in the test for False Positives. This means that OneCare 2.0 has generated no false positives, a task also completed by the security solutions from Symantec, Nod32, and Fortinet. However, OneCare 2.0 was ranked as having only a poor proactive detection, and a very poor response time to new malware being issued (more than 8 hours). But at the same time, out of all the malicious code it had to go through, OneCare 2,0 only missed two rootkits. The Anti-virus comparison test of current anti-malware products, Q1/2008 can be accessed here.

"Furthermore, we checked how long AV companies usually need to react in case of new, widespread malware (read: outbreaks), based on 55 different samples from the entire year 2007. 'Very good' (++) AV product developers should be able to react within less than two hours. Another interesting test was the detection of active rootkit samples. While it's trivial for a scanner to detect inactive rootkits using a signature, it can be really tricky to detect this nasty malware when they are active and hidden. We checked the scanner's detection against 12 active rootkits," Marx said.