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Yeah, that could only have been done by an utter design genius.

Why the dripping sarcasm? This is true. Good industrial design has always been about stripping a thing down to its essentials and making it as simple and focussed to its task as possible. And that does take an utter design genius.

Before the iPad, tablet design was like this and this and this.

The hallmark of good design is that after we see it, it seems "obvious", and design illiterates think there's absolutely nothing special about it. But they can't explain why nobody thought of it before then.

Interesting, I hadn't seen this before.

I've read more than once that the XboxOS was based on Win 2000. I'm sure I can find some examples -

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/The-scoop-on-the-Xbox-360s-embedded-OS/
"The original Xbox ran an OS that had its roots in Windows 2000. Granted, by the time you strip out everything that is not needed in a console like the Xbox and replace some of the parts with stuff specific to that device (like the file system), and add a few pieces, it hardly resembles anything remotely like Windows 2000 at all. But you could say that's where its original roots lie, even if 95 percent of it has been cut or heavily altered."

http://www.xbox365.com/stories/xdkcomplete.shtml
"The kernel is based on Microsoft® Windows® 2000."

Granted, neither of those sources are remotely "official", but this one is interesting -
http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/progress.htm
"The Xbox uses a stripped down and partially modified Windows 2000 Kernel."

That's from a developer of cxbx, an Xbox emulator. Surely he of all people would have figured if the kernel was completely different? Then again, who knows how relevant that is to emulation itself. With people like that making the same claim, it's no wonder the misconception is so common.

Actually, Microsoft has specifically said that the 360 does not use Windows, merely a Win32-like API.

Read and be educated, and stop spreading this bullshit. I've found the same information STRAIGHT from the horse's mouth, so to speak, but this citation was what came up quickly. I don't care enough to find the highest-quality citation. Just go ahead and try to prove me wrong. Either way, what you're saying is stupidity of the highest order. They use a Win32 API, but they aren't using Windows? Right, because Microsoft would write a new OS that supports Win32. They've tried that, and failed.

Microsoft themselves claim the Xbox OS is a custom OS built from the ground up that uses a subset of Windows API's

Microsoft says a lot of things, and many of them are lies. Maybe you should do a little more research next time. You need to look for links that refute your argument, not just ones that support it. That's called due diligence.

I didn't realize Windows could operate on a PowerPC-based system (X360)? I thought Microsoft abandoned that cpu sometime around windows 4.x (96).

They abandoned it for desktop systems (was it PREP or CHRP that they supported? I forget) but they didn't throw anything away internally. Different sources inside Microsoft have variously stated that each Xbox runs or does not run a Windows variant, but it's pretty obvious that both run Windows if you take a look at their software and by the fact that you can write one game codebase to run on both platforms and the APIs you're using are all hosted on Windows. The "scoop" per windowsfordevices is that Xbox 360's OS was derived from Xbox's OS, and Xbox's OS was derived from Windows 2000. But clearly it's still Windows NT.

However, I would be shocked if there were not substantial code-sharing going on with newer versions of NT, because at this point the game console is nothing more or less than a general-purpose computer with lots of hardware designed for graphics and running as few processes at once as possible. It would be foolish at best to not be working towards an entirely common codebase, and since Windows is now officially coming to ARM it's clear that portability is still a top concern in Windows-land. As we have seen with other operating systems, portability introduces significant problems but also pays substantial benefits. Linux's combination of portability and popularity make it essentially the only choice for someone who wants an operating system for "all" purposes (save the tiniest of embedded systems) today and obviously that means Google.

Google's goal is to deliver their content to everyone. If they make it easy to receive their content this will happen because they understand what makes the web great: great content. They connect you with great content and show you some ads and pick up some cash, ding! That's why Android is a winning proposition for them even if they never make a cent on it directly, even if the app store only ever pays for itself. The more eyeballs they get, and the more click tracking they do, the better the whole thing works. Microsoft can see the validity of this approach and has witnessed that the ARM revolution is coming whether they're a part of it or not. Intel had their chance with XScale but they were simply incapable of being competitive in that market one way or another. It could have been a lack of will for which they will pay dearly if they can not get x86 to where ARM is. I do not take it as a foregone conclusion that it cannot be done; I suspect that intel is incapable of doing it in OoO and will go with more cores instead.

Uh, but we're talking about Microsoft here, so here goes: Microsoft has been maintaining the portability of Windows, it is a key feature of the architecture. And Xbox 360's OS is the iOS of Windows 2000, except perhaps moreso. Let us not forget that Xbox stands for DirectX-box. It is a fairly precise hardware instantiation of Microsoft's gaming APIs to which developers may target games and sell them to people who won't pay $300 for a video card.

Probably the smartest thing Microsoft could do that would fit in with their general modus operandi is to introduce a Direct3D-light (ala OpenGL ES) and a lightweight GUI toolkit that ran atop it, for use in portable devices. The obvious operating system to run it on is an Xbox 360-like, stripped Windows. It appears that whatever it looks like, it will run atop ARM and x86 alike.

The internal OS is WinCE, so the interface is either serial or USB.

The internal OS of what? The Kinect? Unlikely. Check the iFixit teardown. The device is pretty basic in terms of processing capabilities, relying on the Xbox to do most of the heavy lifting. Or are you referring to the Xbox? If so, you're still wrong. The Xbox 360 OS is not Windows CE. About the closest you can come to comparing it to another existing OS is by looking at its lineage. The Xbox 360 OS was derived from the original Xbox OS, which in turn was derived from Windows 2000. The extent that the Xbox 360 OS resembles Windows 2000 is almost certainly miniscule at this point, as it runs on an architecture that is not supported by the Windows codebase and does not need most of the core functionality of a Windows OS (shell, explorer, etc). There are probably some bits and pieces of Windows 2000 kernel code still lurking around somewhere, but aside from exposing DirectX and some minimal win32 functionality that's really about it.

This reminds me of those atrocious oscilloscopes that run Windows.

Or one of the many software projects that have inexplicable dependencies or balloon way past their original purpose. (Emacs, I'm looking at you!)

Keep it simple. Or as Einstein more precisely put it, as simple as possible but no simpler.

They even made a logo for it. http://www.windowsfordevices.com/images/stories/microsoft_instaload_logo.jpg

Neat but not buzzword or logo worthy.

If Nokia wanted Maemo to be an ongoing, living OSS project, they'd let other manufacturers make hardware to run it. In fact, they'd actively ENCOURAGE other manufacturers. With more platforms, there would be more impetus for developers to produce Maemo apps.

I have yet to see a low-power consumption "general purpose PC" using an OMAP3 or 4 processor. Seems to me that would be a great machine for commercial thin-client or embedded/kiosk uses, or netbooks, or other handhelds. AFAICS, there is no such hardware on the market--just the Nokia 700/800 series. (The few OMAP3 small computers I've seen have been like the Glacier E2000--they stick you with miserable old Windows CE, take it or leave it. Or you get Android. Or you get a Palm Pre, and you're stuck with whatever that thing runs, and a devel community that only cares about porting old Palm OS apps to that new OS.....That's your choice. Want to install a more general-purpose OS? Sorry.)

This is likely to be a great little machine, and I'm probably going to buy one. Say what you will about the older Nokia tablets, they are valid handheld computers, the web browser is better than any on other handhelds, and their screens make the iPhone's display look pathetic. However, it would be nice to see Maemo enjoy a more diverse future, than running on a single Nokia handheld.

Windows Mobile 6.1 (based on Windows CE 5.2) runs OK on my Sony Ericsson X1. I think on Snapdragon or similar it WinMo would be very snappy indeed. There's even a version of Windows CE, 6.0, that doesn't use the ARM's fast context switch extension and thus allows a 2GB per process address space rather than 32MB.

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT9457847627.html

Still I don't really see people running Office on it, but for Windows Mobile type application, e.g. the excellent Pleco Chinese to English dictionary it works very well indeed. It's sort of an odd concept to implement Win32 (which is really an API designed for big iron servers) on an phone but at least it allows easy ports of Windows applications. Though the user interface needs to be simplified drastically to run on a small screen (many devices are still 320x200) and installing stupid task bar applets is out of the question. Still in terms of libraries it's quite compatible with desktop Windows - you can install .Net, ATL or MFC for example.

McD's announced about three years back they were moving their point-of-sale platform to Windows .

This alone would have killed off SCOX as the Golden Arches were their single biggest customer.

Other than this, there's a few auto-service point-of-sale packages on SCO UNIX (ex. the Goodyear/Gemini franchisees), though I gather these are migrating as quickly as possible.

SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!

Sources inside Microsoft said again and again that both Xboxes in fact did run ports of Windows. You can find numerous supporting sources (who outside Microsoft would know better than people writing an Xbox emulator?) for this claim. Sorry, but I simply do not believe your reference.

It is even less likely that Microsoft wrote the operating system for the 360 from scratch. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, odds are it evolved from a duck - though it is not certain, it is the way to bet. Windows 2000 ran on the PowerPC until SP3 and was designed for portability - at least, it was redesigned for portability when they ported from the N-Ten to the x86. This is why they were able to port it to both DEC Alpha and IBM PowerPC in such a relatively short time. The Alpha port was the more commercially successful of the two since the Alpha was the more capable processor, and you could pay just as much for a PPC machine that would run NT with zero benefit, but the PPC port was probably the more capable of the two in another way - since it ran on standards-based PowerPC systems, it would run on a broader range of hardware including systems from IBM and Motorola.

PowerPC support alone is not sufficient reason for my prejudice, however; that lies in Windows NT's multiprocessor support. Anyone who has followed operating system history to any significant degree knows that multiprocessing has always been one of the most complex features to support. SMP has certainly been one of the most contentious issues in *BSD-land for just this reason. The idea that Microsoft just tossed off a new operating system with multiprocessor support which provides the Win32 APIs and is stable enough for a games console is not an impossible one, but it does seem highly unlikely to be true given Microsoft's track record, which is poor to say the least.

In summary, though Windows NT tends to have a lower penalty for thread creation than Unix and thus has some inherent advantages when it comes to multiprocessing and therefore even indicates that some people who work for or who have worked for Microsoft have some idea of what they are doing, I would not expect Microsoft to be capable of writing any operating system capable of providing a sizable portion of the Win32 (even though it is much less capable than Windows 2000, either operating system is a significant piece of software) from scratch at this point. If they were capable of doing this, they would certainly already have done so in order to replace Windows NT, which is long past the "showing its age" phase. Vista in particular is a mishmash of just about every computing model Microsoft has ever used. By far, the most logical explanation is that the Xbox operating system is based on Windows 2000, and so is the Xbox 360 operating system, but Microsoft's gaming business model is dependent on convincing people that they are not being sold a PC, and so they must deny any similarity unto their graves.

Put another way, YHBT by Microsoft.

The screenshot they have posted of their custom shell http://www.windowsfordevices.com/files/misc/quarta_midshell.jpg looks exactly like the default shell that comes with Windows CE! Smells like vaporware.

Personally I think you complicated the analogy a bit too much. A drewling lay person is more likely to say, "huh?"

The ironic thing about car analogies is....a number of cars have the MS/Windows tax too!

"Well usually you don't run ATI DirectX drivers, video capture card drivers and about all possible media codecs on embedded system... ...as is case with Axon. And AFAIK Axon has no rom, only standard flash bios and XPe running from hard disk"

Then why does it say here that Windows XP Embedded powers Olympics and what technical reasons are there for not running ATI DirectX drivers on embedded systems. Are there references in the litrature, to avoiding drivers on embedded systems? And what's the difference between XPe running on a harddrive and 'real' embedded XP not running on a hardrive .. :)

They were Axon mediaservers running WinXP Embedded: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS4787005167.html

Some of the video projectors (70 of about 160 if I recall correctly) connected to those mediaservers were equipped with HES Orbital Head ( http://www.highend.com/products/digital_lighting/orbitalhead.asp ), which can explain the odd positioning of BSOD.

That sounds like marketing fluff "we built it from the ground up with less layers of abstraction for gaming".

The kernel comes from Windows 2000.

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS3988467635.html

Since that kernel sits on the HAL I'd bet that is still there, especially as they probably had plans to move from x86 early on. You could compile the HAL into the kernel image though, and make the DirectX a very thin layer over the graphics driver.

But a games console could obviously lose most of the code in a desktop OS.

Lightwight secure OSs are pretty handy for industrial applications like robotics etc, but Linux is making huge inroads there too mainly because of reduced footprint (== lower cost) and better network management.

Yeah, because there haven't been 386, 486, and other systems on a chip and Via doesn't have a 1-watt processor anywhere to be found. This is not the first 1-chip chipset for all of the x86 line. That's bullshit. An SoC is even more integrated than just having the chipset as one chip. Somebody never read the old Computer Shopper before it slimmed down. SoC solutions for x86-compatible systems have been around more than a decade. The summary is bad, because TFA does not say this is a first for the x86 line.

You're right that even low-powered x86 chips like the C7 and the Geode line are generally no match for ARM and XScale. MIPS I'm not as familiar with for power usage purposes. It'd be nice if that question was answered, but I'm afraid it'd be summarized incorrectly too.

2005 article on anx86 SoC
another 2005 article about a different x86 SoC
2004 product page for an already obsolete x86 SoC
Linux Devices list of x86 SoC solutions, some dated to 2000
2000 Register article about the year since Cyrix released an x86 SoC
Chipslist page showing availability of AMD processor with 80188 features plus DMA, watchdog timer, serial ports, and I/O pins in 1995
article on the National Semiconductor Geode (the owners of that line before AMD bought it) thin client system-on-chip

And the best proof of all: an archive of a 1996 story on the AMD Elan,which featured a 386, ISA bus, serial UART, memory controller, power management, and PLL hardware ON ONE CHIP

Intel produced a "mobile internet device", MID, earlier in the year... and it of course came with a 1.8 inch hard-drive with Mobile Windows. (http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS2312330067.html

The problems with this was that you have to boot windows from a hard-drive, put it in suspend, watch your battery life dissipate, then scrap it for uselessness.

So Intel adds a smaller SSD memory for Linux and provides "instant on" features.

While this is not revolutionary, it does indicate where things are going. Everyone is already used to "instant on" mobile phones. The iPhone has the capabilities of an entire operating system, and the latest iPod is basically the iPhone without the phone.

What is GREAT about this is that Intel recognizes the "consumer demand" and isn't holding to the Wintel architecure of the past. While a MID by itself will never be marketable, it paves the way for Intel (and other manufacturers) to more quickly respond to market demands.

Sooner or later, devices will interact better such that you can simply set your [mobile device] next to ANY keyboard, display, printer, fax and use the applications and data at hand without complicated configuration.

Is that anything like the Microsoft SPOT Watch?

The share of the market which belongs to Windows Mobile is actually quite small, particularly compared to Symbian's industry dominating share upwards of 70%. It turns out that most people (well, all people with a margin of error of only 5.6%) don't seem to be obsessed with obscure Windows Mobile "business" features that are hard to set up and expensive to maintain (Exchange Server integration), on phones that don't work all that well. Here are some interesting articles on the market share of cell phone platforms.

Apple iPhone to exceed Windows Mobile by 2008?
Smartphone
Symbian tops Smartphone OSes, but challenges loom
Linux trounces Windows Mobile in Smartphone shipments
Smartphone market share


Your discussion of killer apps on phones seems ingenuous. Random access to voicemail, real web browsing, and an easy to use Google maps function all three appear to be of great interest to non-geek folk interested in the iPhone. Several business people who are heavy cell phone users have told me, without prompting, that the random access voicemail feature alone will spur them to buy an iPhone. Salespeople are really jazzed about all three features, including the Google Maps. They have maps and web browsing on their smart phones today, but they are not happy with the non-ease of use of current devices. And they get lots and lots of voicemail, and they've known for years that they wanted random access to it. Exhange Server integration, well, it never comes up in the discussion until a geek ask about it. Nobody (a number of people approaching zero with a margin of error of 5.6%) cares about Exchange Server integration with their phone.

Your use of the term "fanboy" is technically incorrect. The parent post relies almost entirely on hypotheticals to elucidate a point regarding possible reasoning behind Apple's Safari for Windows move. Furthermore, calling the parent a "fanboy" is an ad hominem logical fallacy. Please endeavor to raise the level of discussion here, and avoid cheap shots. If you don't have a point to make, read and think more before you post. If you do have a poitn to make, don't undermine your credibility by including ad hominem attacks with your argument. Although there are those here who reward such childish behavior with mod points, there are people here who mod down for inappropriate use of the term "fanboy".

That's just a DSP though. Still, fairly capable x86 compatible systems on chip (or at least in a single package have been around for a while. Here's Intel's latest

The first time I heard about this was after Bill Gates (and the intel ceo) blasted the OLPC project. After a quick google, here is an article from a year ago about the subject:
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS2619367620 .html

Negroponte's publicly challenged the criticisms, reminding Gates and Intel that this is NOT a consumer machine. "We're going to help them make a Win CE version, so geez, why criticize me?"

Second, in response to complaints about the price, they have said for a long time that the $100 price point is the eventual goal, not the initial cost. From http://www.olpcnews.com/prototypes/olpc/olpc_xo_10 0_dollar_laptop.html

"The project's operators say the price should fall to $100 apiece next year, when they hope to produce 50 million of the so-called "XO" machines, before dipping below $100 by 2010 when they aim to reach 150 million of the world's poorest children.

"We're pledging to always drive the price down," Walter Bender, the group's president of software and content, told Reuters. "Rather than continuing to add features to keep the price inflated, we're keeping the feature set stable and driving the price down.""

I want to know why this is being reported as news now and on a linux site of all places, this thing appeared on the web, OSNews if not Slashdot, months ago, and we didn't care then either.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15636

Ah, the wonders of linuxdevices/windowsfordevices/gimmepageviewsdontc areabouttheplatform

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9902727147.html
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS5549165530 .html

Windows CE Licensing, you would probably want 'core' ($15) as it comes with Word and the other goodies ...

They have already tried WinCE. Recall the device from AMD also targeted at countries of 3rd world. And they - M$ and AMD - have miserably failed.

Shortly: nobody needs another closed, limited to single vendor platform.

$3 for Core, $15 for Professional

Chances are for several million units, like any other vendor deals would be made. If not distributed for free (see earlier posts)

The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB and Windows 2000 approaching less than 200 MB (excluding paging file) with much smaller memory requirements! These sizes are obtained simply by running XPLite/2000Lite on a fresh install of windows. Enterprising developers should easily be able to strip out additional log files, INF files and unused drivers to reduce the footprint by another 50MB or so. If your goal is to run a dedicated task in as little storage as possible - then look no further than XPlite.

ATM reprogrammed as media player
ATMs catch Welchia

From TFA: The opening up of Windows CE's kernel source code is likely to make Windows CE more attractive as an alternative to Linux in many embedded applications and devices that require substantial customization of the OS, or where source code availability has been mandated by the development team. Additionally, Microsoft touts the terms of its BSD-like shared source license as being preferred by many device and equipment manufacturers that don't want to be compelled to make their OS customizations public and available to their competitors.

On the other hand, following a long to an older article, I read: In terms of impact to Microsoft's Windows CE Shared Source and Shared Platforms initiatives, Windows Embedded product manager Nic Sagez told WindowsForDevices.com that these programs are not migrating to the new licenses any time soon. However, Sagez did not rule out the possibility of a longer term change, based on customer feedback and market requirements.

Back to TFA: For the first time, Microsoft is making 100 percent of the source code of the Windows CE kernel available as part of the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system package, to everyone who gets the OS package.... but nowhere does it explain just which of the many licenses described in the earlier article is actually being used. It seems disingenuous to "touts the terms of its BSD-like shared source license" if the license it's using isn't BSD-like... and, clearly, it's not:

Developers and companies are permitted to use the evaluation version to begin their projects, and need not pay anything to Microsoft until the time limit expires, after which a non-evaluation version is available for $995 -- or when they begin to ship product that requires run-time royalties, Microsoft says.

Run-time royalties? BSD-like license? Please!

Background information

Understanding Microsoft's new, simplified Shared Source licenses -- Oct. 19, 2005 -- a description of the newly released shared source licenses, including sections on the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL), Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL), Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL), Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL), and Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL).

>A voting machine that is as secure as an ATM is probably good enough.

That's not what we're getting, as the research and disclosures have made painfully clear.

In any case, Diebold has had some trouble with ATMs, including the ATM reprogrammed as a jukebox and the ATMs infected by a virus.

Voting machines are a harder and more safety-critical application than ATMs. Voting machines have to preseve anonymity. Imagine how that would complicate banking. Then, the worst case failure of an ATM is that some money changes hands inappropriately and laywers earn lots of money sorting it out. The worst case failure of a voting system is an election lost to fraud, meaning the victors are the crooks. The damage is potentially incalculable: think of the nations ruined by having the wrong leaders.

>Diebold is well known for banking systems, including ATMs

Diebold ATM turned into jukebox

Diebold ATM infected with Welchia

Linux is also having trouble on the embedded front as well. Companies are switching to Windows CE for their next generation devices. An example of this is here: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS9790345771 .html but there are several stories like that floating around. I am suspecting this kind of stuff is growing pains

Where have you been? Windows Mobile is still around. Microsoft never cancelled it...

Here's a market share study by Gartner for worldwide shipments. Note that it counts windows smartphones only and not PDA phones. (Smartphones do not have the touch screen; instead, they have a numeric keypad like a normal phone.)

Microsoft's recent earings call indicates that their market share is increasing -- the article quotes a 90% increase. These statistics don't seem to include Linux based phones.

There's been more selection from Symbian phones in the past, but right now there's more Windows Mobile devices available in the USA. Symbian has also been in the market longer.

This article states that Microsoft has a 17% market share and some analyst expects their market share to grow.

Note that almost all Linux phones are shipped in Asia -- I have never seen a Linux phone for sale in the United States, but plenty of Windows phones and a few Symbian ones. The number of Symbian devices available retail from cellular providers seems to be declining here.

I personally use a Symbian phone.

You may make the source code for your Project available under the license of your choice. However, we encourage you to make the source code available under a license that offers users very broad use rights, with few restrictions, and so would enable a larger community to come together for learning, collaboration, and reuse based on your Project. For an example, see the Microsoft Permissive License.

rules

However, we encourage you to make the source code available under a license that offers users very broad use rights, with few restrictions, and so would enable a larger community to come together for learning, collaboration, and reuse based on your Project. For an example, see the Microsoft Permissive License.

I don't remember seeing Sega's entry for the next-gen. What's that?

Xbox 360. The Dreamcast, Xbox, and Xbox 360 have similar controllers, and all use stripped-down versions of the Microsoft Windows OS. (Dreamcast games could use Sega's KatanaOS or Microsoft's Windows CE, Xbox games use a customized Windows 2000 nicknamed Windows XB, and Xbox 360 games use a new version of Windows XB.)

"Wii" just falls flat.

Check your spam box for a solution to that. Wanna buy some Wiiagra?

You can already program these toys with the free editions of the Visual Studio software.
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS4127455334 .html

Why, oh why didn't we get to have toys like these in out childhood. :-(

...that see's an odd likeness between the logo of this device and another logo we've seen recently from another evil company?

If this is just a random fluke, I'd sure say it's a funny one considering the product type. If it's not a fluke, it's time to break out a new batch of tinfoil hats.

MTW

Unfortunately there's a lot of misunderstanding around this. IANAL, but I am a Windows CE developer at Microsoft.

The majority of the Windows CE source code is available (2.5+ million lines). It's free and there are no restrictions. Code includes:

  Explorer Shell

  HTTP Web Server

  SOAP and uPNP Protocol Implementations

  UPnP AV toolkit

  Infrared Data Association protocol

  Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol V6 Lite (DHCPV6)

  Wireless Network Drivers, including Bluetooth

  Kernel code

  File System

  Storage Code

  C run-time (CRT)

  Binary Rom Image file system

  Windows Sockets Interface (WinSock)

  Point to Point Protocol (PPP)

You just click a checkbox when installing the developer tools (which have a 4-month free trial).

The "NDA" is basically this (taken from our website): "In exchange for obtaining access to one of Microsoft's most valuable assets, Microsoft requests that customers respect our intellectual property and treat that intellectual property confidentially."

I.E., you don't publish the code - but anyone who wants to can download the source from us after accepting the EULA. The converse is that any changes YOU make to the code are yours. You needn't share them with anyone, including Microsoft (unlike the GPL but similar to BSD).

Here's an overview of the shared source license.

Here's more detail at www.microsoft.com, including a link to the full license

NOTE: there is also the "Premium" shared source license. This gets you even more code, but is only available to larger OEMs (I believe you have to ship 5,000 devices in the previous year to qualify).

People are talking around here like the source code to Windows is the Holy Grail of computing.

It isn't.

If you look here:
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT275020 5240.html

Microsoft is fully willing to disclose source code when it is important to them. Seems to me that holding Windows Source code in escrow isn't that hard.

Moreover, I'll bet Microsoft maintains programmer logs in its CVS...er... Visual Sourcesafe library so they know who coded everything.

Has Diebold even asked MS?

Lets not confuse the issue; Windows isn't the issue -- What Diebold puts on their kiosks is the issue. Period.

Maybe a usable Linux desktop? A hacked XBOX - yeah that ought to have about 100 users.

Why does it matter? Bear in mind, Microsoft has big plans for the home -- plans that include media center PCs, family entertainment centers, TV set-top boxes, portable media players, mobile phones, and, of course, gaming devices. Considering that the Xbox 360 represents a powerful new computing platform that will be finding its way into tens of millions of homes, it seems likely that Microsoft will attempt to leverage the device to extend its reach throughout the home, offering a wide range of capabilities and services.
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS3988467635 .html

Most people believe the os for the 360 is a derivative of Windows 2000, much like the OS for the original XBOX. See this article for info on that.

It's really not a stretch to believe that a variant of the NT architecture runs the 360 when you think about it. It even uses a variant of the DirectX api's found in windows. Why would Microsoft engineer a completely new operating environment when they have a good foundation to start with (NT kernel), especially one that already has a proven track record of being solid in a gaming device (the original xbox)?

For all of you thinking AMD may play the good guy in this DRM nightmare, let me remind you that they, along with Intel, are a promoter of the Trusted Computing Group - link [windowsfordevices.com]

Is Slashdot nothing but a Rah Rah site for Linux then? They could have just as easily used QNX, Windows CE or even Embedded XP.

Yes, CE has very good real-time response.

Read, if you dare:
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT676103 9286.html

And QNX kicks RTLinux ass in almost every respect for this type of work. In short, the people that chose to use RTLinux were probbly just idiots that didn't know any better :(

The author misses the point a bit. MicroSoft is getting into the embedded devices, as much as they can. Just check out this. MicroSoft can and is responding to the threat of cheap appliance hardware, by making sure their stuff winds up on those boxes. I'm horrified that so many phones/PDAs are running windows.

Microsoft made the jump from the 8-bit processors (don't even remember their numbers) to 64-bit processors. If they can move into embedded/Risc stuff, we're stuck with them for the next few decades.

That being said, the big threat to MicroSoft is from stuff like this and this -- these are threats that attack microsoft's franchise, but the only way they can compete is to play by the rules of the other guys: start giving away cheap computers that run Windows (and "just work" -- yeah, right, Billy! Hahahaha!), or start giving away web services that undercut their income-generating software. They have very low odds in these contests, considering that it does not fit with their "play to their strength" strategy to date (obligatory Borg reference).