A question about NT Domains

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Paul Leach wrote:

> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: William Stuart [mailto:william at hae.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 1998 12:28 PM
> > To: Multiple recipients of list
> > Subject: Re: A question about NT Domains
> > 
> > 
> > REMEMBER:  Microsoft operates on the philosophy of one person, one
> > computer, using and accessing all Microsoft software.  Very little
> > has been done by Microsoft to accommodate multiple users 
> > using the same
> > computer; just as very little has been done to interconnect 
> > NT with any
> > other system (thus SAMBA).
> 
> I don't understand this comment at all.
> 
> Both NT and Win95 support serial reuse (many users, just one at a time)
> pretty well (in my obviously biased opinion -- is that IMOBO?). All the

um... not quite.  firstly.

microsoft products, in my experience (internet destroyer 4, net meeting
2.1, outlook express) are very good at sorting out their act by storing
user preferences in the correct place in the registry, such that a profile
actually _is_ a profile.

[except that they quite often force the installation location to be a
local drive, or worse don't ask you.  worse, they ignore the changes made
to c:\program files install dir in the registry, but that's a general
hanging offence made by quite a few installation programs].

non-microsoft products, in my experience (ECSmail, netscape communicator
3 & 4, CUseeme, Internet Phone5) are total time wasters in this respect.
the writers of the software assume that only one person is going to use
the computer, therefore they can do what the xxxx they like WRONG.

it _is_ possible, but a nuisance, to set up netscape 4 to save its
prefs.js file to \\samba_server\homes\netscape but it would be better to
have _all_ that info in the USER.DAT or NTuser.DAT user profile / registry
section. 

is this a failure for microsoft to communicate the user preferences
capability to developers?

secondly.

the registry settings in USER.DAT or NTuser.DAT overwrite the previous
user's settings, leaving any settings _not_ in the current user's profile
as-is.  what _should_ happen is that the old user's settings should be
totally wiped out prior to putting the new settings in.

it is therefore possible for one user to screw up subsequent user's
settings.

> people sharing a Win95 machine have to totally trust one another, and all
> the people sharing the NT machine have to trust the admin (but what's new),
> and the NT machine needs to run NTFS and have some physical security if the
> people sharing the machine are really untrustworthy.

ah, i have another point i could mention on this... i'm *really* tempted,
but i'm going to leave it.  another list, another time, eh paul?

:-)

> With NT5/Hydra, NT will support multiple simultaneous users via WinTerms.

excellent!  you thinking of tackling multiple domains on the same box,
too?

luke