Windows Server products history

SUPPLEMENTARY PART

TEXT 1

Assignment: Read the text, give the main idea and make the plan of it.

 

WINDOWS SERVER PRODUCTS HISTORY

The public caught the first glimpse of a new type of Microsoft Windows® operating system in August 1991, when Windows Advanced Server for LAN Manager was demonstrated at a developers conference. By the time it launched two years later, the product had been renamed Microsoft Windows NT® and marked the first appearance of the Windows Server operating system. It quickly became known for its support of high-performance servers, advanced workstations, and client/server computing.

Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 was designed as a dedicated server operating system for client/server environments

1993: Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1

Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 was launched in

July 1993 as a dedicated server for a client/server

environment. It provided the power, scalability,

enhanced fault tolerance, and standards-based 

interoperability required for enterprise computing.

Microsoft promoted Windows NT Advanced Server as

an application server for Novell NetWare, Banyan

VINES, and Microsoft networks, capable of providing a

platform for sophisticated business solutions such as financial, accounting, and vertical applications. As an application server, Windows NT Advanced Server was also a powerful platform for database servers such as Microsoft SQL Server™, communications servers such as Microsoft SNA Server, and mail servers such as Microsoft Mail.

For network management, Windows NT Advanced Server provided customers with centralized security and server management, along with graphical tools to manage multiple systems as well as a single logon for enterprise users. In addition, it could run all the applications created for desktop Windows versions.

 

 

Windows NT Server 3.5

The next release of Windows NT Server was built on the stability of version 3.1, but with greatly enhanced processing speed and improved connectivity to other systems, particularly in Novell NetWare and UNIX environments.

Enhancements included new administration tools, improved client software configuration, an auto-reboot and dump facility, better tools for NetWare, and better remote access capabilities.

Windows NT Server 3.51

This incremental release of Windows NT Server in June 1995, included a tool to help customers manage Client Access Licenses (CALs) for a suite of server products called the Microsoft BackOffice® family. This release also featured a utility that enabled over-the-network installation of Windows 95.

Windows NT Server 4.0

With this upgrade, Windows NT Server gained the popular look and feel of Windows 95 and added many advanced features for business and technical users. Enhancements included:

§ Higher network throughput.

§ Faster file and print services.

§ Robust application support.

§ Standards-based communications features.

§ An integrated Web server, Internet Information Server (IIS) 2.0.

§ Support for the Microsoft FrontPage® Web editing and management tool.

§ A toolset for developing and managing intranets.

Subsequent service packs and option packs offered additional features, including public-key and certificate authority functionality, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, and component object model (COM) support.

Windows 2000 Server Family

In February 2000, Bill Gates unveiled the Windows 2000 client and server family. The client side was represented by Windows 2000 Professional, which went on to become Windows XP Professional. To support businesses of all sizes, three server versions were offered:

§ Windows 2000 Server provided a multipurpose network operating system for departmental file, print, Web, and entry-level application servers.

§ Windows 2000 Advanced Server was designed to support business-critical Web and line-of-business application on a reliable, manageable operating system.

§ Windows 2000 Datacenter Server delivered the highest levels of operating system scalability and availability for the most demanding server applications.

For IT professionals, the Windows 2000 Server family introduced new, centralized, policy-based management with Microsoft IntelliMirror® management technologies and the Microsoft Active Directory® directory service. In addition, a high-performance Web server featuring Active Server Pages (ASP) was included, as well as COM+ component services, transaction and message queuing support, and end-to-end XML support.

 

2003: Windows Server 2003

Launched in April 2003, the Windows Server™ 2003 family works as a highly productive infrastructure that helps organizations "do more with less".

 The first server operating system to feature built-in Microsoft.NET functionality, Windows Server 2003 delivers significantly greater dependability, security, and scalability compared to earlier versions. Four versions are tailored to the varying needs of organizations:

§ Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, provides a solution for departmental and standard workloads and supports file and printer sharing, helps secure Internet connectivity, centralizes deployment of desktop applications, and enhances collaboration among employees, partners, and customers.

§ Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, is the platform for mission-critical server workloads. By delivering high reliability, scalability, and performance, it offers a superior value to businesses of all sizes.

§ Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, is designed to support the highest levels of scalability and reliability. Windows 2003, Datacenter Edition, is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions through original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

§ Windows Server 2003, Web Edition, a new offering, is a single-purpose operating system for dedicated Web serving and hosting. It provides a platform for rapidly developing and deploying Web services and applications.

Bit Operating Systems

A new generation of scalable 64-bit server applications demanded a new platform with additional scalability and reliability. Originally launched as Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, Microsoft now features 64-bit versions of the Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, operating systems.

Designed specifically for 64-bit Intel Itanium hardware, these server operating systems break the 4-gigabyte (GB), 64-GB memory limit and support memory-intensive applications, such as those for data warehousing, business intelligence, and Web hosting.

TEXT 2

Assignment: Read the text and give a summery of it.

Windows Media Player

Included with Windows operating systems for several years, Windows Media® Player allows users to play music CDs, DVD movies, and digitally stored songs on their computers.

Windows Movie Maker

When Windows Me arrived in 2000—specifically designed for home computer users—it featured the first Microsoft version of a consumer video-editing product, Windows Movie Maker. An easy-to-use video editor, Movie Maker is used to capture, organize, and edits video clips, and then export them for PC or Web playback.

Movie Maker 2, released in 2003, adds new movie-making transitions, jazzy titles, and fun special effects. Based on the Microsoft DirectShow® and Windows Media technologies, Movie Maker was originally included only with Windows Me. Today Movie Maker 2 is available for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional.

Windows Messenger

With the release of Windows XP in 2001 came Windows Messenger, bringing instant messaging to users across the Internet. With Windows Messenger, users communicate with one another in real time with text messages. Although real-time communication such as video conferencing has been available as a technology for some time, Windows Messenger was the first communication tool that provided an integrated, easy-to-use way of participating in text chat, voice and video communication, and data collaboration.

The latest edition, Windows Messenger 4.7, improves instant messaging capabilities with new task-based menus, cool emoticons, and easier ways to organize and group contacts.

 

 

TEXT 3

OTHER WINDOWS PRODUCTS

       Today, the reliable and familiar Microsoft Windows® platform  extends beyond the office desktop, helping make "any time, any place" computing a reality. Embedded technology is the means by which computing power is placed in more places than ever, from handheld devices to automobiles.

Many of the rapidly evolving embedded products rely on special versions of the Windows operating system. Now software developers and hardware manufacturers can use Windows technology to build intelligent, 32-bit Windows–based devices that connect people to information in innovative ways.

Windows CE.NET

Microsoft Windows CE.NET, the successor to Windows CE 3.0, combines a real-time, embedded operating system with the powerful tools for rapidly creating the next generation of smart, connected, and small-footprint devices. With a complete operating system feature set and comprehensive development tools, Windows CE.NET contains the features developers need to build, debug, and deploy customized Windows CE.NET–based devices.

Built on its own code base from the ground up, this operating system debuted in September 1996. Windows CE originally ran on the Handheld PC but now is used in devices of different shapes, sizes, and degrees of ruggedness, such as mobile handhelds, industrial controllers, gateways, and advanced consumer electronics.

Windows CE.NET has been optimized for the next generation of smart, connected devices requiring reliable networking, real-time operations, and rich multimedia and Web browsing. With support for multiple CPU architectures, its scalable, open foundation has become a popular choice for hardware manufacturers in building a wide variety of embedded products.

 

Windows XP Embedded

Windows XP Embedded is an operating system and development platform that delivers the power of Windows in componentized form for the rapid development of reliable, advanced embedded devices.

Based on the same code base as Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Embedded offers more than 10,000 individual feature components from which embedded developers can choose to achieve optimum functionality in a reduced footprint. Developers receive the added advantage of a familiar programming model along with the latest multimedia, Web browsing, power management, and device support.

 

TEXT 4

THE FIRST HACKERS

 

 The first "hackers" were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who belonged to the TMRC (Tech Model Railroad Club). Some of the members really built model trains. But many were more interested in the wires and circuits underneath the track platform. Spending hours at TMRC creating better circuitry was called "a mere hack." Those members who were interested in creating innovative, stylistic, and technically clever circuits called themselves (with pride) hackers.

During the spring of 1959, a new course was offered at MIT, a freshman programming class. Soon the hackers of the railroad club were spending days, hours, and nights hacking away at their computer, an IBM 704. Instead of creating a better circuit, their hack became creating faster, more efficient program — with the least number of lines of code. Eventually they formed a group and cre­ated the first set of hacker's rules, called the Hacker's Ethic.

Steven Levy, in his book Hackers, presented the rules:

· Rule 1: Access to computers – and anything, which might teach you, something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total.

· Rule 2: All information should be free.

· Rule 3: Mistrust authority – promote decentralization.

· Rule 4: Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, race, or position.

· Rule 5: You can create art and beauty on a computer.

· Rule 6: Computers can change your life for the better.

These rules made programming at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory a challenging, all encompassing endeavor. Just for the exhilaration of programming, students in the AI Lab would write a new program to perform even the smallest tasks. The program would be made available to others who would try to perform the same task with fewer instructions. The act of making the computer work more elegantly was, to a bonafide hacker, awe-inspiring.

Hackers were given free reign on the computer by two AI Lab professors, "Uncle" John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, who realized that hacking created new insights. Over the years, the AI Lab created many innovations: LIFE, a game about survival; LISP, a new kind of programming language; the first computer chess game; The CAVE, the first computer adventure; and SPACEWAR, the first video game.

 

HACKERS OF TODAY

 

Hackers, having started as toy railroad circuitry designers in the late fifties, are completely new people now. Once turned to computers, they became gods and devils. Nowadays holders and users of the World Wide Web hide their PCs under passwords when the keyword "hacker" is heard. When and how did this change take place? Why are we so frightened of Hacker The Mighty and The Elusive?

One of the legends says that hackers have changed under the influence of "crackers" — the people who loved to talk on the phone at somebody else 's expense. Those people hooked up to any number and enjoyed the pleasure of telephone conversation, leaving the most fun — bills —for the victim. Another legend tells us that modern hackers were born when a new computer game concept was invented. Rules were very simple: two computer programs were fighting for the reign on the computer. Memory, disk-space and CPU time were the battlefield. The results of that game are two in number and are well known: hackers and computer viruses. One more story tells that the "new " hackers came to existence when two MIT students that attended the AI Lab found an error in a network program. They let people, responsible for the network, know but with no result. The offended wrote a code that completely paralyzed the network and only after that the error was fixed. By the way, those students founded The Motorola Company later.

Today, when the Internet has entered everyone's house there's no shield between a hacker and your PC. You can password yourself up, but then either hackers will crack your PC anyway or nobody will enter your site, because passwords kill accessibility. If your PC is easy to access no one can guarantee what 'II happen to your computer - hackers, you know them.

Monsters? Chimeras? Not at all! Every hacker is a human being and has soft spots: good food, pretty girls or boys (it happens both ways), classical music, hot chocolate at the fireplace, apple pie on Sunday. Hacker is first of all a connoisseur, a professional with no computer secret out of his experience. And what is the application for skills depends on him. God, and Holy Spirit.

 

TEXT 5

VIRUSES AND VACCINES

The terms viruses and vaccines have entered the jargon of the computer industry to describe some of the bad things that can happen to computer systems and programs. Unpleasant occurrences like the March 6, 1991, attack of the Michelangelo virus will be with us for years to come. In fact, from now on you need to check your IBM or IBM-compatible personal computer for the presence of Michelangelo before March 6 every year — or risk losing all the data on your hard disk when you turn on your machine that day. And Macintosh users need to do the same for another intruder, the Jerusalem virus, before each Friday the 13th, or risk a similar fate for their data.

A virus, as its name suggests, is contagious. It is a set of illicit instructions that infects other programs and may spread rapidly. The Michelangelo virus went worldwide within a year. Some types of viruses include the worm, a program that spreads by replicating itself; the bomb, a program intended to sabotage a computer by triggering damage based on certain conditions — usually at a later date; and the Trojan horse, a program that covertly places illegal, destructive instructions in the middle of an otherwise legitimate program. A virus may be dealt with by means of a vaccine, or antivirus, program, a computer program that stops the spread of and often eradicates the virus.

Transmitting a Virus. Consider this typical example.                     A programmer secretly inserts a few unauthorized instructions in a personal computer operating system program. The illicit instructions lie dormant until three events occur together: 1. the disk with the infected operating system is in use; 2. a disk in another drive contains another copy of the operating system and some data files; and 3. a command, such as COPY or DIR, from the infected operating system references a data file. Under these circumstances, the virus instructions are now inserted into the other operating system. Thus the virus has spread to another disk, and the process can be repeated again and again. In fact, each newly infected disk becomes a virus carrier.

Damage from Viruses. We have explained how the virus is transmitted; now we come to the interesting part — the consequences. In this example, the virus instructions add 1 to a counter each time the virus is copied to another disk. When the counter reaches 4, the virus erases all data files. But this is not the end of the destruction, of course; three other disks have also been infected. Although viruses can be destructive, some are quite benign; one simply displays a peace message on the screen on a given date. Others may merely be a nuisance, like the Ping-Pong virus that bounces a "Ping-Pong ball" around your screen while you are working. But a few could result in disaster for your disk, as in the case of Michelangelo.

Prevention. A word about prevention is in order. Although there are programs called vaccines that can prevent virus activity, protecting your computer from viruses depends more on common sense than on building a "fortress" around the machine. Although there have been occasions where commercial software was released with a virus, these situations are rare. Viruses tend to show up most often on free software acquired from friends. Even commercial bulletin board systems, once considered the most likely suspects in transferring viruses, have cleaned up their act and now assure their users of virus-free environments. But not all bulletin board systems are run professionally. So you should always test diskettes you share with others by putting their write-protection tabs in place. If an attempt is made to write to such a protected diskette, a warning message appears on the screen. It is not easy to protect hard disks, so many people use antivirus programs. Before any diskette can be used with a computer system, the antivirus program scans the diskette for infection. The drawback is that once you buy this type of software, you must continuously pay the price for upgrades as new viruses are discovered.

 

TEXT 6

Assignment: Read the text and write an essay “The Perspectives of the Virtual Reality Development”.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO CREATE PERFECT VIRTUAL REALITY?

Human beings have always been seeking for a better place to live, better food to eat, better people to meet. The wise have concluded that there 's no perfection itself. Human 's brain identifies reality by its imperfection. And thus, the attempts to create ideal world turned to creating the world alike reality — virtual reality.

On the first stage, when technology wasn 't so developed, virtual reality models just presented the essence of the current processes. But along with the development of technology and science a real world model is quite similar to our life. It's still something alike, a copy but not perfect. Copying itself isn 't an example to follow, but this way we may explore the universe more carefully. So what are the problems of creating perfect virtual reality — cyberspace where you can 't say whether it's cyberspace or no!?

One of the difficulties is that it doesn 't look like reality. We can't present the needed number of colors, the full palette our eye can catch. We can 't introduce shades that really look like shades because the rendering algorithms we have are huge and approximate. And it's still not possible to show such a movie in real time.

If we'd like just to imitate the movements of molecules, which are easy to be programmed, and this way to model the reality, again, we have a great wall to be stepped over. Our knowledge of micro world is poor and even though Einstein himself worked at the Uniform Field Theory, it is still uncompleted. On the other hand, the molecules are so many that programming a single cell, let alone even an insect, is the work of life for hundreds of programmers. Nobody can imagine the difficulty of virtualization of a human being. To model the universe we should create another one.

There are tasks to be solved before we can create 99% acceptable virtual reality: e.g. the speed of processing, fractal algorithms for rendering, quark mechanics and so on. But has anybody thought of connecting a computer to human's brain and clipping the images you and your ancestors have seen to present for someone else, or maybe using the calculating and data processing capabilities of the cortex? By the way, the process of seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling the world is just a bunch of electric signals entering the brain. May be, the answer is here, and the distance is not the unaccomplished technical achievements, but ideas, strategic decisions, some crazy projects like the Head Of Professor Dowel. Will there be the final step to create perfect virtual reality? Let's see.

 

 

TEXT 7

Assignment: Read the text, give the main idea and the summary of it.

 

SURFING THE NET

 

What is more impressive than the pyramids, more beautiful than Michelangelo's David and more important to mankind than the wondrous inventions of the Industrial Revolution? To the converted, there can be only one answer: the Internet that undisciplined radical electronic communications network that is shaping our universe. Multimedia, the electronic publishing revolution, is entering every area of our lives — college, work and home. This new digital technology combines texts, video, sound and graphics to produce interactive language learning, football, music, movies, cookery and anything else you might be interested in.

The industrial age has matured into the information age; wherein the means to access, manipulate, and use information has become crucial to success and power. The electronic superhighway provides an entry to libraries, research institutions, databases, art galleries, census bureaus, etc. For those of us interested in intercultural communications Cyberspace is a universal community, with instant access not only to information anywhere, but also to friends old and new around the globe.

The Internet is an amorphous global network of thousands of linked computers that pass information back and forth. While the Internet has no government, no owners, no time, no place, no country, it definitely has a culture, which frequently approaches anarchy; and it has a language, which is more or less English. People who interact in an Internet environment know how addresses are formed, how to use e-mail, ftp, Usenet News, Telnet, and other software tools.

Like all new worlds, Cyberspace has its own lingo, for example:

e-bahn, i-way, online, freenet, web page, freeware, browser, gopher, archie, gateway. There are words to describe people who roam the

net: netters, e-surfers, internet surfers, netizens, spiders, geeks... The Internet has its own prerogatives: for example, the dismissive term lurker for the person who hangs around the net, reading what is there but not contributing anything. The term flaming refers to the public humiliation of another netter as punishment for a real or imagined transgression against net culture.

Large-scale use of computer-to-computer transfer of information was implemented by the US military in the late 60s and early 70s — part of the superpower competition of the cold war and the arms race. The US military created an electronic network (Arpa­net) to use computers for handling the transfer of large amounts of sensitive data over long distances at incredible speed. Computer-to-computer virtual connections, using satellites and fiber optics, have distinct advantages over telephone or radio communications in the event of a nuclear attack. Mathematicians and scientists (and their universities) have been linked and electronically exchanging information over the Internet since the mid-70s.

Now the Internet has become commercialized with private and public companies offering access to it. (CompuServe — is the best-known international commercial electronic access provider). The Internet is being expanded and improved so that every home, every school, every institution can be linked to share data, information, music, video and other resources. If you have a computer or a computer terminal, some kind of connection (probably, modem and telephone line) to the Internet, and some kind of Internet service provider, you can participate in electronic communication and become a citizen of the global village.

Information technology is a good vehicle for the argument. Some scientists remind us that voluminous information does not necessarily lead to sound thinking. There are many genuine dangers that computers bring to modem society: efficient invasion of privacy, overreliance on polling in politics, even abdication of control over military decision-making. Data glut obscures basic questions of jus­tice and purpose and may even hinder rather than enhance our productivity. Edutainment software and computer games degrade the literacy of children. On the other hand, only a few use PCs on network to share information and ideas. In most cases IT is used to speed routine tasks, to automate manual processes rather than to change work patterns and business practices. Most managers use their PCs to edit documents — not a good use of their time when they could be dreaming up creative applications. It is time to evaluate anew the role of science and technology in the affairs of the human species.

So, if you are riding on the information highway, you should take steps to cope with information overload. The gift of boundless information is causing a new kind of stress known alternately as technostress, information overload or Information Fatigue Syndrome. Some experts say that we don't get anywhere near the data it takes to overload our neurons. According to some estimates, our mind is capable of processing and analyzing many gigabytes of data per second — a lot more data than any of today's supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel overloaded by the quantity of information because we are getting it unfiltered. We should filter out the junk and turn data into shapes that make sense to us. Stress in moderation is good: it drives us to achieve, stimulates our creativity and is the force behind social and technological breakthroughs. Stress is revealing how humans are in some ways more primitive than the technology they have created. Meditation, muscular relaxation, aerobics, jogging, yoga can be effective stress relievers, but no technique is universal: experiment and find the one that best works for you.

The cornerstone of an economy are land, labor, capital and entrepreneurial spirit. That traditional definition is now being challenged. Today you find a fifth key economic element: information dominant. As we evolve from an industrial to an information society, our jobs are changing from physical to mental labor. Just as people moved physically from farms to factories in the Industrial age, so today people are shifting muscle power to brain power in a new, computer-based, globally linked by the Internet society.

 

SUPPLEMENTARY PART

TEXT 1

Assignment: Read the text, give the main idea and make the plan of it.

 

WINDOWS SERVER PRODUCTS HISTORY

The public caught the first glimpse of a new type of Microsoft Windows® operating system in August 1991, when Windows Advanced Server for LAN Manager was demonstrated at a developers conference. By the time it launched two years later, the product had been renamed Microsoft Windows NT® and marked the first appearance of the Windows Server operating system. It quickly became known for its support of high-performance servers, advanced workstations, and client/server computing.

Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 was designed as a dedicated server operating system for client/server environments

1993: Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1

Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 was launched in

July 1993 as a dedicated server for a client/server

environment. It provided the power, scalability,

enhanced fault tolerance, and standards-based 

interoperability required for enterprise computing.

Microsoft promoted Windows NT Advanced Server as

an application server for Novell NetWare, Banyan

VINES, and Microsoft networks, capable of providing a

platform for sophisticated business solutions such as financial, accounting, and vertical applications. As an application server, Windows NT Advanced Server was also a powerful platform for database servers such as Microsoft SQL Server™, communications servers such as Microsoft SNA Server, and mail servers such as Microsoft Mail.

For network management, Windows NT Advanced Server provided customers with centralized security and server management, along with graphical tools to manage multiple systems as well as a single logon for enterprise users. In addition, it could run all the applications created for desktop Windows versions.

 

 

Windows NT Server 3.5

The next release of Windows NT Server was built on the stability of version 3.1, but with greatly enhanced processing speed and improved connectivity to other systems, particularly in Novell NetWare and UNIX environments.

Enhancements included new administration tools, improved client software configuration, an auto-reboot and dump facility, better tools for NetWare, and better remote access capabilities.

Windows NT Server 3.51

This incremental release of Windows NT Server in June 1995, included a tool to help customers manage Client Access Licenses (CALs) for a suite of server products called the Microsoft BackOffice® family. This release also featured a utility that enabled over-the-network installation of Windows 95.

Windows NT Server 4.0

With this upgrade, Windows NT Server gained the popular look and feel of Windows 95 and added many advanced features for business and technical users. Enhancements included:

§ Higher network throughput.

§ Faster file and print services.

§ Robust application support.

§ Standards-based communications features.

§ An integrated Web server, Internet Information Server (IIS) 2.0.

§ Support for the Microsoft FrontPage® Web editing and management tool.

§ A toolset for developing and managing intranets.

Subsequent service packs and option packs offered additional features, including public-key and certificate authority functionality, smart card support, improved symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) scalability, clustering capabilities, and component object model (COM) support.