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Microsoft Windows 2001 Beta Slips Out
Phredd was among the first to write with this news: "A copy of MS Windows 2001 beta has been leaked out to the Net. I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs. No one is installing Win2k so I guess the MS marketing machine is trying to get rev 2 out the door ... New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh ..."
Here's the story on 2001-pre, codenamed Whistler.
Now, if the MPAA and the DMCA can exert enough pressure to get Napster pulled from thousands of sites, and if U.S. copyright law is enough of a spur to arrest teenagers in Norway, what will be the fate of ftp sites which (knowingly or unknowingly) host this one?
You bet. Normally, the end of the industry that I'm in has been "Windows Uber Alles" for about the last five years, but everyones reaction to Win2K has been very reserved. There are a couple of factors that have probably contributed to this.
1). The DoJ versus Micro$oft. MS may still wriggle of the end of the hook, but the whole thing has been very damaging to their credibility with non-technical people ( they never had any with the tech types ;).
2). The public isn't brilliant, but neither is it completely stupid - they just take longer to work it out than the technologically sophisticated. It's been 5 years since the Rolling Stones helped to sell Win95, and in that time, most of the tinsel has rubbed of.
3). Changing perception's in the public. Windows is "twentieth century technology". At the start of the new century, there is a tendency to say "that's old stuff, we want something new".
I'm not expecting it to happen overnight, but the longer that people delay the upgrade of NT 4.0 to Win Whatever, the more likely it is that they may actually decide to go with something else ( including FreeBSD or Linux ).
I'll admit, I'm just guessing as to the reasons why, but there is a definate wind of change moving into the industry at the moment. This has been in the background now for more than about six months. I think that it is actually starting to look as if Micro$ofts days of market dominance may be at an end.
The really bizarre thing about it is that from time to time I'll get nostalgic about some piece of MS Idiocy ( like 640kB in MS-DOS, character loss on the comm port if you tried to use the bios at more than 1200bps, etc ) and I'll say to myself "Ah, Micro$oft, they wearn't really all that bad".
Then I'll suddenly realize - I've already started thinking of them in the past tense. They aren't part of my future as far as I can see. I suspect that there are probably a lot of people out there in the industry at the moment who are thinking the same way.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Yes, Slashdot knocks Microsoft. Yes, it's often unfair and poorly thought out. This is nothing to do with VA, it has always been that way. It's funnier, too. Why pass up the opportunity to jibe that Win2K only has 65,000 bugs because it's still got 16-bit code at the heart? It's utterly untrue, but funny none the less.
Couple things:
When possible, we try to post a particular story from the first person who submits it. For a number of reasons, that doesn't always happen -- sometimes a link is bad, sometimes the submission contains no content (only the word "link!" or a similarly ambiguous phrase) and sometimes we consider for a longer time whether to post a story at all, then pick from the available submissions. I didn't pick this submission because it was "particularly dishonest and inflammatory," but because I thought it was interesting and would be of interest to other people too. It was also the first one that I say on the topic. I'm sorry you didn't like the one that got posted, but boy -- some of the others really were inflammatory and dishonest.
Also, though I can't force you to believe this, as far as I know no one at VA proper even knows who I am, and they certainly don't give a fig what I post, and this not-caring is recursive.
If I'm part of a conspiracy, the voices in my head have not yet told me about it.:) Any thoughts I have about VA Linux are my own (I think they make very nice, rather pricey Linux boxes), any thoughts they have about slashdot are their own. And for the record, I don't have (and as of now have no plans to acquire) any shares of VA. Maybe one day, but right now, zippo.
Hope this clarifies at least a little!
Cordially,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Ummm.... it ended up at $80 after coming out at what.. $14? If you were expecting it (or Redhat, or any new stock) to stay that far overvalued, you have even less sense than the investors that were paying $200-$300/share for this. A rapid rise and bubble is normal, especially in this overvalued tech-heavy market now. The fact that is is settling at 70-80 (still overvalued, IMHO) is more a statement of people realizing that they get a little bit too excited sometimes, but it's still a massive gain since the IPO. That's what should be considered. Yes, /. is slanted in its views. It always has been, and it always will be. That's the beauty of a community. Different people, different ideas. What this community generally thinks is vastly different than other more pro-MS sites would tend to agree upon.
/. as a PR tool, and it degrades, people will leave. The code is out there. I'm running it for a small-scale test site, there are others running it. There's also PHP-Slash and Squishdot, so just about anyone can fire up a similar site. Won't take long for people to find it if they want to go. You are free to not visit, not read, and not be angered by what you read here, just as your are free to complain about what you see as wrong. Do what you like, but realize that people here, as much as some of them delude themslelves, will eventually see through things, get fed up and leave if the situation warrants. All journalism includes a healthy chunk of FUD, whether it be a school board election, tech review, wars, etc... take it with a grain of salt and work against it, if thats what you like.
If VA only uses
disclaimer: I don't own any VA stock, have any professional ties to VAndover/. (or any other Linux co.) nor am I a professional stock trader - I just fool myself into thinking that I might have some common sense every now and then.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I can see it now ...
d00dz: 3y3 g07 d1z 3l337 z3r0-d@yZ \/\/1n2001 wAr3z, @Nd f0\/nD d@T t|-|3 c0|\|7r0L p@N3l cR@sH3z \/\/h3N 3y3 pR3zz t|=|3 d3L373 k3Y
p.s. 3y3 0\/\/N 3w3!!1!1!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!
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Whistler (the code name for Win2001) and Blackcomb (the code name for Win200x?) are two mountains in the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort near Vancouver, B.C.
Ya, I know we're just north, across the border, from Redmond, Washington, but come on, leave us poor Canucks alone already!
I suppose it's just a matter of time before Microsoft and Starbucks are battling it out over for the spoils of British Columbia.
Oh ya. Eh.
You were begging to hear it, I know it.
At my university there are only "planned" implementations of Windows 2000 for roughly 1-1 1/2 years from now. To the IT department here W2K offers absolutely no "clear" advantages over running WinNT 4.0 SP6 and a lot of expected headaches and nightmares over bugs and incompatibilities. The cost to upgrade hardware alone made everyone scratch their heads. I think that Microsoft has hit a serious software plateau and has no clear way to move forward from NT 4.0. This is good for Linux and Solaris and all the rest. But, I don't think that anyone is going to buy into Windows 2001 either. Has anyone else had this experience as well?
does that make W2000 Whistler's Mother?
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Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Doesn't happen at Microsoft. Not when there's a snapshot build every day that gets burned to CD-R and redistributed to quite a few people inside the company. Every day. (Depending on what you're working on that is, some projects don't do this.) The point is that MS really doesn't have any obvious way of "fingerprinting" anybody's particular distribution, since the daily build is also downloadable from an internal Web site (again, depending on project).
In other words, yeah, M$ technically could do it, but it would so completely screw up their existing development processes that I doubt it will ever happen.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I have disabled the floppy drive, the CD-Rom since I detected a Linux CD nearby.
Dave, if you go near that power switch, I will have to destroy the hard drive. Dave.....
Fight Spammers!
Last week, Microsoft gave out Windows 2000 for free - but not on purpose.
You know those demo discs you get with computing magazines? They usually come with a bunch of software that not too many people really want. Well, instead of putting their demo crap on the discs, some genius at Microsoft put full versions of Windows 2000 on each disc!
The discs were shipped to the Spanish edition of PC World. Also, there seems to have been many of them - approximately 100,000 copies were shipped.
However, the CD Key listed on the CDs were for the evaluation version of Windows 2000 (there is such a thing!?), but thanks to the power of the Internet, that's fixable...
But it's not like this fiasco will hurt MS' bottom line at all anyway...
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
but just to blame are the people behind ./ the people who choose what is it we see, and what we think about
Wow, and here I thought that they only choose what I see under http://slashdot.org, and that I choose what I think about. This is obviously more serious than I thought. Or did I think that because the people at Slashdot chose for me to think that?
it's not just Microsoft though, it's anything not linux slashdot IS basically the linux church of the Internet. and as in any cult/religion outsiders are not welcome to preach foreign gospel
Sure, outsiders are welcome. Otherwise who could we flame?
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
In other news today, Microsoft has announced that they have at last released a bug-free version of Windows, version 2.12. "We are proud that we have been able to release the first truly bug-free operating system ever," said Steve Ballmer, second-in-first-in-command of Microsoft. "With this version, we believe we will hit Linux where it hurts--on old, useless 386 PCs."
"It took us some twelve years, but we're proud of this achievement," said Bill Gates, first-in-second-in-command of Microsoft.
Linus Torvalds, leading light of the Linux open source operating system movement, admitted distress at having such hard-fought competition for the lucrative 386 market.
Now that Microsoft has released such a compelling 386 PC solution, Torvalds is believed to be concentrating his efforts on getting Linux to run more effectively on Macintosh SE/40s, in hopes of salvaging what he can of the Linux market in that sector, given the competitiveness of Macintosh System 4.0, a relatively bug-free version of the Macintosh System. Torvalds also announced work on a port to the Archimedes, believed to also be a possible gap in the Wintel hegemony.
Torvalds was also quoted as saying "First post."
Microsoft is a industry-leading monopolist and software startup buyer. For more information, visit Microsoft's homepage.
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
My favorites:
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Anyone else remember the rumour that when filming the original starwars trilogy, the producers were so scared about leaks that they changed one word in each person's script, to fingerprint it. That way if a copy leaked out, it would be easier to take the culprit out back and shoot him or her.
I always wonder if software companies try something like this, where of course, it would be much easier to accomplish. And if so, do they tell their employees, in order to dissuade them, or keep it secret, and then descend on them. Anyone got any stories of this kind of thing?
I know that MS's build distribution system must be high traffic, with thousands of developers checking out each new internal build, still they must have to log in somewhere, shouldn't be too hard to fingerprint this stuff on the fly.
Johnath
I'm not much of a Windows user, and not much of a computer guru. Still, the situation in the Linux world, in spite of various Linux distributions, starts being simpler and more logical then what is happening now with Windows. Don't you have the impression that Windows world starts being obscure / twisted / full of funny looking names, and things are getting much simpler in our world?
No, I'm not from the let's-take-over-the-world-right-now dpt. It's just that how I see the future is, that you won't need to know anything about computers to run MacOS X on an iMac, and you will have to know at least a little to work on a Linux -- but you will also have to know much to work under Windows. And where Linux gives you all advances of a high-tech OS, Windows just stays in the middle, not really easy to use, but then not really powerfull either.
There are three or four PC's on the floor where my lab is placed (the rest being Macs and Unices). And each one of them has a different version of Windows, and this won't change for a while (because once you get it to work, you don't meddle with it -- never change a winning team, as the old biologist' saying goes). The compatibility problems between them are just pure ridiculous when you think how similar the OS are.
Folks, it's time to write a "Field Guide To Windows Operating Systems": "4a: log in with Ctrl-Alt-Del: proceed to 6. 4b: log in with pressing 'ESC': proceed to 5".
Regards,
January
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Understand that most of the unbased Win2K bashing is the result of their lack of confidence in either themselves or their OS or whatever. They're so much more content to just shout "Everything MS sucks" rather than actually do any real research, or real usage. It's just easier that way. It's become very non-PC to say "Well, I actually like MS product X". Just say "Microsoft Sucks!" and watch the millions of head nod with yours. Rest in comfort that you have sold yourself out to the masses. You have toed up to the "party line".
.cfg files for Eterm 0.9, but I think I have the hang of it. It's not the kind of experience I'd recommend for my dad, it'll be nice when everything has a standard interface for configuration, rather than "use the editor of your choice".
"Yes. We are all individuals. We must think for ourselves."
Personally, I have only recently gone to an all Linux setup. It happened by accident, (my NT partition was eaten by an errant, sleep-deprived RH 6.2 beta install), but I've managed to actually do a lot of work in Linux. Full time. I've found replacements for just about everything I had on NT, some better than others, and working with Enlightenment 0.16.3 and GNOME is actually kinda fun. Kludgey, but fun.
So far, I've had the following shortcomings:
GNUcash is NOT Quicken or Money99 by any measure. It's very primitive, and while it gets the job done, I wouldn't want to use it for anything more than basic finances, and it definately does not *inspire* one to want to use it.
SBLIVE! SMP drivers: While Creative has promised them, I still haven't seen them.
Kai's Power Tools: I love these for Photoshop. The Gimp, so far, has proven *very* able to replace Photoshop, except there's no KPT. Im sure there are a bunch of nice filters, script-fu's etc out there, but I'd really like to see either a port of KPT, or an outright CLONE of these filter sets. Kai's interface is *very* intuitive. Those who have used it understand. These filtersets and their interfaces are what I consider *inspiring* programs. They are a ton of fun to play with. Check out KPT 5.0 with photoshop (or painter). I've spent hours creating images, just because.
Games: I don't play games, so this is really a non-issue with me.
Kludgey feel: something about X in general just feels.. kludgey. I can't explain it other than the "feel" of the GUI is really..ugh. BeOS has a great feel, NT has a nice feel. It could be that I'm used to these, kinda like muscle-memory, but there needs to be some work done in the standardization of interfaces. The themeability of most WM's allows for a custom look, now how about an X (which I suspect is the culprit) overhaul? Has anyone successfully installed Xfree86 4.0? Any reviews forthcoming for it?
The feeling that you're using yesterday's software. I mean, it's as if people writing the stuff are waiting for a commercial Win32 product to come out, then trying to copy it feature for feature. I'd like to see some innovation every once in awhile. The Gimp, as an application, is the only one I can think of that really feels innovative (built-in mail-an-image functions? UNREAL!) However, I've found that several apps are way behind Win32 development. Maybe it's because Win32 developers get paid.
I get this creepy feeling that many of the so-called Linux programmers are only in it because they absolutely can't stand to see other people get paid to do what they like doing (coding). I wonder if it's a "Dammit, I know I can do that! And better! But he's getting paid to do it! and on MS products! I've got to do something about that.. I know! I can write a "free" clone and try to erode their customer base, so we can all be poor together!" mentality. Personally, I find that mentality irrational, if it indeed exists.
Things I *like* about Linux:
I just like the way some things work. As I stated before, I run E 0.16.3, GNOME, and use Eterm 0.9. the configurability of these three alone make the OS worth using as a desktop OS. Granted, I had to learn how to read a few
StarOffice & Word Perfect: Neither of these is Office97 (still my favorite). They are *adequate*, but given a choice...
Regardless of my rant, Thanks for your "experience" with Win2k. I'm considering purchasing it later (I'm not an OS nazi). I really enjoyed using NT4sp6 (contrary to popular opinion, I found NT to be *very* stable. It took me a month of heavy usage to get to the point of a reboot). Use what you like using, even if that means having to hear these jerks whine about it. I'm reminded of an article (can't remember the name), where the reporter was at a Linux or Transmeta press release, and had to endure the "tssk tssk's " of his peers because he was using Word.. On Microsoft's OS. It was so faux-pas. Or something.
Sometimes I wish these MS bashers would get a girlfriend (or a prostitute, or a Life Sized Antonio Banderas doll) and find something else to do with their spare time other than bothering everyone else.