On 13/09/2011 08:30 AM, Warp wrote:

>    I like how to you everything in Windows is "trivial". Like using soft or
> hard links (which, btw, I have still no idea how to do, regardless of your
> assurances that it's very easy).

End users aren't supposed to use this technology. It's used "under the 
hood" by various Windows features. Remember, the desktop Windows OS is 
designed to be operated by morons.

(For example, most of our salesman have a Windows laptop. And trust me, 
they are idiots of the highest calibre.)

>    If this so "trivial", why haven't I ever heard of this "RDP"?

Because Microsoft refers to it by half a dozen different names.

Terminal Services.
Remote Desktop.
Remote Assistance.

RDP stands for Remote Desktop Protocol, and is the actual wire protocol 
underlying all of the above /product features/.

Terminal Services is where you have an expensive server-class version of 
Windows, you install all your complicated applications on that, and then 
end users use their Windows-based desktop PC to log into the server and 
run the applications on that. In other words, each desktop PC becomes 
essentially a dumb terminal for connecting to the server where the 
applications actually run.

Remote Desktop is where you log in to a remote desktop system in the 
same way you'd log in to it remotely. Except... it's remote. To anybody 
looking at the desktop locally, it just looks like the system is locked. 
Because it's a /desktop/ system, only one user can be logged in to it at 
once, remotely or locally.

Remote Assistance is where a computer wizard logs in to your PC 
remotely, but you still have control and you can see what they're doing. 
And there's a system for sending "help requests" or sending "help 
offers". And so forth.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think Windows Live Meeting might be using this 
as well. (It lets several people text or voice chat in realtime, and 
allows a "presenter" to share either a live video feed, or a live image 
of their desktop.)

What all these systems have in common is that one computer is displaying 
the video output of another. Like a remote X session. Except that it 
also connects the sound card, network drives, printers [but that never 
****ing works properly], clipboard, and probably a few other things as well.

This is literally how when I have a day off work, I can sit at my home 
PC and reboot servers, install software updates, and all kinds of other 
stuff, from my house. (Obviously, there's a VPN involved as well. 
Otherwise all this traffic would be unencrypted...)

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