Slashdot Mirror

I've only read one book by Larry Niven, and he was cowriter on it with Jerry Pournelle. "Lucifer's Hammer" if I recall right. Now, I loved Jerry Pournelle's writing, especially his "Chaos Manor" articles for the print version of "Byte" magazine. I don't recall which one it is but several weeks ago I read where he was going to start writing it for another print magazine. When I find out I'll subscribe to it, if for no other reason than he's writing his column.

That was the last time I remember Bipolar transistors being hyped as the next revolution in CPU technology. Back then Exponential Technology http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/CIC/announce/1996/x7 04-533.htmlwas developing a PowerPC processor that was claimed would be able to run at the unheard of speed of 533MHz. The Mac fans of the time were drooling over the prospects for Pentium crushing performance.(About 200-300Mhz at the time)
BYTE magazine article from the time http://www.byte.com/art/9611/sec6/art14.htm

Back a few years, IBM sold a laptop where you could detach the back cover of the lid, exposing the screen so that it could be placed on an overhead projector. I worked with Ted Selker who invented it, so I had a homemade prototype version. When I presented at conferences and everyone else struggled with F7 and video formats, I just whipped the back off my Thinkpad and put it on top of the overhead projector. I don't think anyone listened to my talk because they were all craning their necks to see what I had done with the display. All of the questions afterward were about where to buy such a nifty device rather than anything about my talk!

The removable back was also useful for working outdoors. You could put a white reflective surface behind the screen and backlight with sunlight, making it usable no matter how bright it was.

Not only did they run the song into the ground, they cut the lyrics "You make a grown man cry" from the song.

Ironically, the most popular of the several Z80 cards for the Apple II was Microsoft's Softcard, their first hardware product.

The last time I checked lying, cheating, and stealing were evil.

You are morally bankrupt if you think this is a 'low' threshold.

The test you should use with Microshaft is ask yourself the following question: "Would I be willing to admit to my parents/spouse/friends that I as a person did what Microsoft did?" If the answer is no - then it is clearly wrong - even if it is technically 'legal'.

If nothing Microsoft has done bothers you - then please share your name with the rest of us so we can avoid you because you will obviously be the person who doesn't return the power tools you borrow, steals money from my kid's piggy bank, and thinks it's okay to enter my home uninvited and help yourself to the food in my pantry.

Of course, they don't give a date in the article or anything firm at all, so perhaps it is a bit of a pipe dream.

In a 1996 Byte magazine article about holographic storage, an IBM researcher was quoted as saying "small desktop units [...] might be ready by about the year 2003."

I remember mentioning this to a friend of mine at the time, and he claimed that he remembered a BYTE article about holographic storage from about 1985 in which the researchers (possibly also at IBM) claimed that production versions were five years away.

You'll also note that the linked BYTE article above mentions that the idea had been floating around for 30 years as of 1996.

In short, holographic storage is right up there with those flying cars they promised us...

Why is it everyone assumes throwing lots of information at a computer will suddenly make it think? The problem is not getting information to the computer, it's teaching the computer what to do with it. I think it would be a lot easier to implement the basics of intelligence with a limited amount of information. You know, it's a lot easier to ask a computer to "do something that's never been done before" and understand what's going on when you restrict its activities to a single topic. Or maybe I've been reading too much Hofstadter

MSN was originally released at the same time as Windows 95. The original version was universally panned as it was built upon proprietary Windows technologies using either SMB or something very similar to it (from a look and feel perspective, you were browsing file folders), I don't think it was even TCP/IP based, the original version certainly didn't give you access to the Internet. This changed fairly rapidly (Microsoft announced Internet access at the Spring 1995 COMDEX)

Ultimately AOL bought Netscape to bolster a failing ally in their war with Microsoft and MSN. That's about the size of it, and whatever they intended didn't really work out.

http://www.byte.com/art/9608/img/086bita2.htm

As you can see, PPro improved FPU performance quite a bit but integer wasn't improved that much.

2.1 vs 2.8 for integer. Of course the PPro could be used in dual CPU arrangements, but only with NT.

Interesting to see how far ahead and better the PowerPC processor was at that point.

You can get a VGA screen that is only 0.2 inches. It is about 2000 dpi.

But, it's always a price/resolution tradeoff; I suspect this lets them use cheaper production techniques to produce these smaller displays (which, as volumes ramp up, are now being squeezed on price).

Now that HP will stop making Itanium servers...

Re-read the original post, please. HP is discontinuing Itanium workstations, not servers.

For all its flaws, Itanium does have more headroom to grow than the x86-64 architecture. The whole reason HP and Intel got into bed over Itanium and its EPIC architecture was because it's getting harder and harder to wring more performance out of a chip by adding parallel instruction pipelines. In order to crank clockspeeds higher, those pipelines have to get longer and longer (witness Prescott's 31-stage pipeline). The more pipelines you have and the longer they are, the worse is the penalty for branch misprediction.

It's this problem that led HP and Intel to VLIW, where the parallelism is explicitly compiled into the code, reducing or eliminating the need for a lot of transistors that currently break code down into parallel-izable chunks and try to predict branches.

Unless somebody invents a new way of architecting chips that will eliminate or substantially reduce the branch misprediction penalty without substantially breaking x86 compatibility, Itanium (or something like it) will eventually reign supreme.

no hole in IE can cause the privledge escilation you describe.

Yes, there are quite a few artists who do homage to the
beloved SID. Ignoring people who remake SID tunes on other
instruments such as Mahoney mahoney.c64.org or the
Press Play on Tape pressplayontape.com
(go to both websites now, if you want to hear GOOD music, also get
the PPOT Boy Band Music Video), there are also arists that are
signed with big labels that create their music with SID.

One of the more recent artists is Bastian who uses SID for the
base, often lead, and sound effects. Not the frindge of the music
spectrum when comparing to Aphex Twin, but still, quite fresh and
unique (highly recommended song 'you got my love')
arist website: bastianmusic.nl)

There are rumors wether many of the euro techno bands dont use
SID chips to enhance their music. Orbital is one of the most
known of bands that I heard about.

Afterall, SID chip has been voted into top 20 chips produced for
computers, alongside such marvels as z80, sparc, and intel cpus.
(link www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art9.htm)

--
/apz, SID chip was developed in 1981 and is still produced

Pournelle says:"They've made it: a Linux for Aunt Minnie."

If you look in the last couple of frames as the things fly toward the screen. You can see Alan Smithee's phone #, how about somebody calls him and asks him what's up. It is also the number in this article about opendoc, but that was in 1996 so maybe it got reassigned.

ALAN SMITHEE
408-796-1010

-> Fritz

Well, there are two binary formats in Mac OS X: Mach-O (from NeXTSTEP) and CFM (Carbon). Mac OS 9, released in '99, ended support for 68K processors. The only way 68K code is handled now is emulation in the Classic Environment. According to this article CFM was designed specifically for PPC, so I would doubt that there is anything specific to 68K registers in CFM binaries. There was a CFM-68K backport to allow compatibility with 68K Macs, but that is also long-gone.

You might find some more useful info in this article as well.

Don't worry.
The are lot's of places you can work

Microsoft has spent over a decade essentially supporting only ONE processor architecture, x86

In the decade before that they also supported 68k based Macs and used pcode (and compiled to it) for a lot of the Office code.

Windows NT was available for 5 platforms: PowerPC, Intel 860, Intel x86, MIPS and Alpha. (NT was originally developed on the Intel 860 before moving to x86).

A decade ago Microsoft was definitely a multi-hardware platform company. They even participated in the ACE initiative, which would have made a RISC chip the "standard" processor. Intel finally responded with performance improvements making all that RISC stuff moot.

I did find this excellent page on the history of Win32 and compiler/toolkit releases.

i know more people running desktop linux than desktop mac. And I even own an ibook (but run linux on it).

mac is all very nice, but i just cannot do some real work on it. I hate the interface. For most other people, the hardware is just to obscure and expensive.

What you claim he said:

"All he said was that Microsoft provided a platform for Windows."

What he said:

"Before the arrival of DirectX, developers had to program their software titles to take advantage of features found in individual hardware components."

He didn't just say that Microsoft provided a platform for Windows, he said that before Microsoft provided their platform, developers had to write directly to the graphics drivers. This is untrue: although some programmers did write directly to hardware-specific interfaces like 3dfx's glide, they didn't have to. The availability of OpenGL for Windows predates DirectX, and the availability of OpenGL in general (remember, he said "developers", not "Windows developers") predates DirectX by years.

For a quick reference, check out this Byte article, which discusses both the already existing OpenGL, "available on Unix, Windows NT and 95, and the Mac", and the soon-to-be-released Direct3D, "scheduled to ship in the second quarter".

Cairo. Originally expected in 1995 or 96. NEVER SHIPPED. Longhorn, if it ever ships with all the features claimed, will be "Cairo", onlyabout 20 years late. Amazingly, Microsoft on a bi-annual basis re-announces Cairo with a new name, pushes the date back and users fall for it every time.

Why PCs Crash, and Mainframes Don't

Object Assembler

Object Assembler is a set of macros for the Motorola 68000 assembly language that provides easy access to the MacApp class library and to class-definition facilities. It is built on top of the macro assembly language provided by the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop assembler. Object Assembler was developed by Apple expressly for the Macintosh and it will be officially shipped late in 1986. The Object Assembler macros let you define new classes, define method bodies, instantiate objects, easily reference instance variables by name, and invoke methods, incl uding inherited ones.

"But what about BSD?" I asked. Sontag responded that there "could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement," adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement.
"So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)."
SCO Owns Your Computer by Trevor Marshall

Steve Ciarcia of Circuit Cellar fame once said "Soldering iron is my favorite computer language."

Well, it's mine too. For those who don't know who Steve is, there was this magazine on the newstands that was really cool to read and it was called "Byte". Steve ranked up there with the Woz for hardware crafting.

I remember back in the day when you would go to the store and it was the only computer magazine there.

If you like crafting hardware, you can have a lot of fun by finding a library (most likely university) that has the back issues shelved somewhere.

Yes, I'm older than most of you here.

Mike's book is available online, actually: http://www.byte.com/abrash/

Sure, if all you had were 68k binaries-- on integer, the PPC601 emulator was half as fast as a comparably clocked 68030. But native applications were quite fast.

A Macintosh (7.8MHz 68000) rates about 0.40 Dhrystone MIPS. A PowerMac 7100 (66 MHz PPC601) gets about 129 MIPS. A 33 MHz 68040, perhaps 23. source

Of course. dhrystone mips are pretty much obsolete as a benchmark.

As was mentioned by another poster, MS is a marketing marvel, but this myth about it's founders being technnical geniuses has just got to go. It scares the kids...

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

September 1, 2003 Eweek 'Longhorn' Rollout Slips

Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

"We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work," said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates' statement.

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

September 1, 2003 Eweek 'Longhorn' Rollout Slips

Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

"We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work," said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates' statement.

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

September 1, 2003 Eweek 'Longhorn' Rollout Slips

Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

"We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work," said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates' statement.

Clascal and Object Pascal are actually two different languages. Clascal was a language for the Apple Lisa. Apple then scrapped Clascal, invited Wirth to Cupertino and produced Object Pascal for the Mac.

Actually the description is a reference to BYTE Magazine, so in actual fact the article is relatively voluminous.

Anyhow, even if they *did* mean 8 binary digits, if they printed them with a HUGE font size, then the article could be quite large indeed.

Ahh my first loves, that PDP 11 that was on the other end of the 9600 baud dedicated circuit when I was 10. Then came our first home computer, chicklet keyboards, basic and I got it at Radio Shack - wow - what a stunner, color graphics and everything. Yes my 6809E powered Color computer

It all went downhill from there - in the room with me now are 3 alpha powered multias. Including the First box I ever ran Linux on. Now I'm surrounded by obsolete sparq boxes, some old X86s and somewhere around here is a
dragon 32 I've been thinking of playing with for X10 stuff. Eventually I'll have to get a pdp 11, just so I can say I've come full circle.

AngryPeopleRule

In This interview SCO's VP of OSes said:

We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)

He also refuses to say that anyone other than Sun is "clean", not even MS.

It looks like they are going after everyone, even MS, even embedded OSes.

Only if Microsoft stops paying them licensing fees. They've been claiming ownership of every operating system since June.

I will note that there are several errors in this article. Moshe writes" Under the hood, Panther introduced other important features like an update to FreeBSD 4.8 (OS X is based on FreeBSD, but the previous release used FreeBSD 3.2) ". Which is wrong on both counts. Panther (10.3) is synced with FreeBSD 5.0 and Jaguar (10.2) is synced with FreeBSD 4.4 (PDF). Aside from minor typos "Upon reboot, staring MS Word for the first time takes 6 seconds" (BYTE editors please make note).

The one problem I had with this article was the description of the noise generated by the dual-CPU G5. Moshe wrote "The noise the dual G5 makes is comparable to a hair dryer, and it can be heard from any room of my house". I had a 1.8 GHz G5 delivered to my office by our university's Apple representative for a few days to evaluate the machine. One of the features I was amazed by was how quiet the G5 was. In order to hear the G5 operate in my office, I had to turn off the following: SGI O2, the dual-CPU PIII 1GHz SGI 320, the G4 PowerMac + all the monitors including the 21" Intergraph behemoth monitor. The central air-conditioning into my office was still louder than my G5! Then I had to move my ear closer to the G5 casing to hear the fans operate with all other equipment turned off (only one of our professor's G4 Cube is quieter than the G5 loaner I got from Apple). Later that week I wrote to my Apple rep. "Those multiple fans are deathly quiet".

Here are some other dual-CPU G5 reviews on the G5:

Mac Addict review "GOOD NEWS: Fastest Mac ever. Exceptionally quiet. Easy, no-tools-required maintenance"

Twincities.com review "Indeed, removing one of G5's slab-like anodized-aluminum sides revealed nine fans that pump air along a network of inner wind tunnels. Switching on the Power Mac, I expected it to make a terrible racket despite Apple's assurances to the contrary. But, sure enough, the machine proved amazingly quiet for "the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer.""

So, when Moshe describes his dual-CPU G5 to be loud as a hairdryer I'm a little skeptical. Giving Moshe the benefit of the doubt of having a faster ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, he might have received a G5 with defective thermal sensors or something. Has anyone out there experienced their dual-CPU G5 with a ATI 9800 sound like a hairdryer???

Sorry for the bad links.
Here is the Scientific American article.
Here again is the Byte Magazine article.

Here are some excerpts from the first article that talk about how to develop the algorithm:

We also began to consider ways of tuning the evaluation function's 120 or so parameters, specified in software. Traditionally, programmers had hand-tuned the weights that programs assigned to material--pawns and pieces-- and to positional considerations. We believe ours is the only major program to tune its own weights automatically.

We acquired 900 sample master games and arbitrarily defined the optimum weights as those that produce the best match between the moves the machine judges to be best and those that the masters actually played. The software part of the evaluation function was completely rewritten by Campbell and Nowatzyk to reflect this strategy. Instead of just assigning a final numerical value to each position, the evaluation function--in its tuning mode--returns an equation containing a string of linear terms. In other words, it produces a vector.

Two tuning mechanisms were used. The first, which is called hill climbing, simply sets a given evaluation parameter at an arbitrary value and then performs, say, a five- or six-ply search on every position in the game data base to find the moves that the machine would play. It then adjusts the parameter and recalculates. If the number of matches between the computer's choices and the grandmaster's choice should increase, then the parameter is adjusted again in the same direction. The process continues until all the parameters have reached their highest level of performance. It would take years to optimize all the parameters by this method, however, and so we used it only in a few diffcult cases.

The second tuning mechanism, proposed and implemented by Nowatzyk, was much quicker. It evolved from the simple notion of finding the best fit between the function of the machine's evaluation of positions and their presumed true values. The best fit provides the lowest average squared value of the error between the model and the true value. True values can be approximated, for these purposes, by the results returned from deep searches (if a known concept is being fine-tuned) or by comparing machine decisions with those of first-rate human players.

Here's another LongHorn article.

hehehe

Er.. but the Opteron came out BEFORE the G5.

Um... If you're gonna define desktop computers as any computer that can fit on a desktop, then you can't deny that IBM introduced the Power4 years ago and had desktop machines based on it, clearly beating AMD to the punch (BTW, the G5 is just a modified Power4). Apple/IBM/Moto also introduced the 64-bit PPC 620 back in 1995, clearly beating AMD again. Then there's the DEC Alpha in the early 90's, again beating AMD. The list goes on and on. Clearly, AMD is the late-comer, not Apple. Please, do your research beforehand!

...not mentioning the fact that Opteron beat the G5 to market by over 4 months...

*sigh* If we are going to get into a pissing match as to whose 64-bit CPU was introduced first, then it still goes to Apple/IBM/Moto. Anyone remember the PPC 620 which was released in 1995? Also, if AMD introduced their Opteron 4 months ago, why did they have to introduce their "desktop" CPU only a month ago (remember, Apple's claim was the first 64-bit "desktop")? And why can't I buy one at Dell? Geeze, get real. This article is merely for the benefit of their readers to make them feel good about being behind the curve with respect to innovation.

SCO: BSD didn't win. We settled out of court. And we have reason to believe that they violated the settlement agreement (editor's note - Go back and check out the interview in BYTE for the exact quote.) We'll examine that issue when we are done with the current caseload.

This interview with Chris Sontag in Byte Magazine, most likely.

"But what about BSD?" I asked. Sontag responded that there "could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement," adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement.

"So you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property)."

SCO basically believes they own every OS ever written and that ever will be written.

You seem to have forgotten the ugly step-child, the NV1 - the first chipset produced by nVidia. I had it in the form of the Diamond Edge 3D 3400 XL.

It was the strangest video card that I've seen to date. It had 2 ports for Sega Saturn controllers, and an onboard sound card for wavetable MIDI. The 3D rendering was proprietary and it only supported a few games like Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter. Only years later did they come out with drivers that actually did DirectX, and then it was sort of a DirectX wrapper and hardly worked at all. That card, was BUTT UGLY!

If you want to see an example of it's wonderful graphics, BYTE still has a report up.

I suspect that versions of Virtual PC that ran on 604 based Macs will run fine on a G5...just slower than the current Virtual PC release on slower hardware!

Actually, AFAIK all previous PPC CPUs were bi-endian, including the 604 family.

Last time I ran Bochs on OS X (1.5 years ago?) it was unbelievably slow and had no networking.

If SCO can invalidate the BSD settlement, then SCO can potentially claim ownership of much of the BSD-derived code in the kernel. Now that would present problems!

The only counter argument to this is that SCO has already "blessed" much of the BSD-derived code by stating that the 2.2 kernel series are clean.

I can't wait for SCO to accuse *BSD of infringing SCO's IP

Din't they already hint at it? See the comment: ""But what about BSD?" I asked. Sontag responded that there "could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement," adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement."

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

1995 Signs to Cairo

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

1996 Unearthing Cairo

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

September 1, 2003 Eweek 'Longhorn' Rollout Slips

Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

"We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work," said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates' statement.

The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995, will be built around the concepts of objects and component software. It will have a native OFS (Object File System) and distributed system support.

1995 Signs to Cairo

Cairo, Microsoft's object-oriented successor to Windows NT, will begin beta testing in early 1996 for release in 1997. Although Microsoft is not revealing the full details of Cairo yet, there are enough clues within current Microsoft OSes to yield a good idea of how it might work.

1996 Unearthing Cairo

At the first NT developers conference in 1992, Bill Gates announced that Cairo would arrive in three years and would incorporate object-oriented technologies, especially an object file system. Since then, we've seen Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, and most recently NT 4.0. None is object oriented, none has an object file system, none is Cairo. It seems that Cairo is Microsoft's sly way of promising the world. "Will we see Plug and Play in NT?" "Oh yes, of course, in Cairo." "Will NT ever produce world peace and cheap antigravity?" "You bet -- in Cairo."

September 1, 2003 Eweek 'Longhorn' Rollout Slips

Microsoft Corp. has once again shifted the schedule for the release of "Longhorn," the company's next major version of Windows, leaving some users up in the air about an upgrade path.

Microsoft executives from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on down have long described Longhorn as the Redmond, Wash., company's most revolutionary operating system to date. The product was originally expected to ship next year. Then in May of this year, officials pushed back the release date to 2005. But now executives are declining to say when they expect the software to ship.

"We do not yet know the time frame for Longhorn, but it will involve a lot of innovative and exciting work," said Gates at a company financial analyst meeting this summer. Since then, other Microsoft officials have neither retracted nor clarified Gates' statement.