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?

Comments

On a related note...

[Shaheen]

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...

Re:Slantdot

[orcrist]

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

Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop

[Black Parrot]

> They sold 1 million copies in the FIRST MONTH. That is a flop?!!??

• Is that "sold" or "sold"? Most industries count the number of copies shipped from the factory to the major distributors as the number "sold", which is of course one of many ways the music industry manipulates the public perception of what's hot (i.e., by overshipping and announcing that the cheese went gold or platinum the first week, and hoping that the resulting hype eventually sucks the cheese out of the distributors' warehouses).
  
• In addition to the above, Microsoft still has hegmony in the OEM market, so that almost every PC made gets some version of Windows "sold" with it. Those on the high end are now getting W2K instead of NT4, but this hardly means the public is panting for W2K. Indeed, this is only the Coercive Compatibility Upgrade Paradigm (CCUP) hard at work.
  
• A million isn't much to brag about anyway. Download.com shows that there were 4,000 downloads of Red Hat 6.1 in the past week. Considering that a) Linux is a minority market, b) Red Hat has to share that market with half a dozen other major players (and some unknown version of minor players), c) download.com isn't the only place offering RH6.1 for download (indeed, isn't even the obvious place to look, for those in the know), d) consumers/businesses do not need to download more than a single copy of RH6.1, no matter how many copies they intended to install, and e) the 4,000 a week is after 42 weeks "on the chart", when the new has long worn off. (Unfortunately, I don't see any stats for the first month.)
  

In that light, a million copies isn't very impressive at all. And even then, knowing Microsoft's "tendency" to mislead (in between the outright lies), the figure probably contains the 750,000 beta testers' copies in the count.

Color me unimpressed. If all it did was fix the problems with NT4 it would have done much, much better than that.

I'll bet there were more Linux installs last month than there were W2K installs. Probably more installs of Red Hat 6.1 alone.

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Microsoft announces bug-free Windows 2.12

[Ethelred Unraed]

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.

BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List

[Cy Guy]

Here's the list.

My favorites:

11. Here is a situation to avoid, according to Microsoft. When upgrading from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000, you may not want to create logical drives within extended partitions on basic disks. A drive geometry translation error in the Logical Disk Manager may trigger this error message: 'Parameter is incorrect.' There is no workaround.

28. Microsoft says that some PC card network adapters may not be able to handle heavy network traffic on a Windows 2000 network, and may either lose their connection or hang. These cards include: 3Com Megahertz 10/100 (3C575); Xircom Credit Card Ethernet IIps (PS-CE2-10); Earlier versions of the Xircom CE2, although later versions are OK. {I find this one the most interesting as it might mean mean that there is a problem with the way Win2k formats ethernet packets.}

30. According to Microsoft, Windows 2000 Professional may hang after you install Microsoft IntelliPoint 2.2. Microsoft says that pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE will not help. To resolve this problem, Microsoft says you have to reinstall Windows 2000 Professional.

I wonder what happens to the... leaker...

[Johnath]

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

Wondering about Microsoft strategy...

[jw3]

It used to be simple: first, Windows 3.1 and DOS. Nothing else. Then, Windows 9x for Mr. Smith and Windows NT for the corporate. By the end of this year, there will be a fullhand of different Windows versions out there, and no Mr. Smith (like me) knows really what are the differences, which versions are stable, which aren't, what to install, what not, which programs runs stable under which version, which doesn't. These problems are already here with different OSR-s and national versions (which tend to be much less stable then the original US versions: e.g., if you want to install Windows NT PL or Windows 98 PL - just don't do it).

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

Whistler?

[locutus074]

I wonder if it's code-named Whistler because a whistling noise is made as the windblows past all the holes in the code... :)

--

Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody!

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

"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 .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".
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.