Microsoft's Vision For Future Operating Systems

Bender writes: "The Systems and Networking group at Microsoft Research has a fascinating article that details what sorts of things they believe may be important in Operating Systems of the 21st century."

Comments

one thing missing

[Script0r]

They left out the most important thing in an operating system... no microsoft code.

Could This Be Condensed Into...

[corky6921]

"The Network Is The Computer"?

/.'s MS icon has never seemed more appropriate...

[ncc74656]

From the bullet list of the researchers' goals:

Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.

no ms bashing

[progbuc]

the most important thing will be that the OS isn't allowed to be used to bash micrsoft or any of its products.

Distributed Blue Screen of Death?

[akypoon]

Sorry, I can't keep that off my mind.

Goals

[smnolde]

Seamless distribution - Give it away with new bank accounts

Worldwide scalability - Every town has a garbage dump and it gets bigger everytime you dump on it

Fault-tolerance - We've tolerated enough faults

Self-tuning - Everyone needs an MTU of 1500 on dialup

Self-configuration - Icons for every desktop

Security [sic] - we'll try it just once

Resource controls - we've reduced the number of easter eggs in this one

They really do want us all!!!

[EvilStein]

The article actually says that one of the goals is "Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."

Translated: "Microsoft will take over every machine you put your filthy little hands on. Nyah!"

And it gets worse... "The administrator inserts a Millennium installation DVD disk into one of the machines and the system propagates across the network. After evaluating the network topology and hardware resources, Millennium might suggest that one of the more powerful machines (a "server") be moved to a different network location for best performance."

Translated: "Windows Millenium will infest your entire network whether you like it or not. Then, it will hunt out the Linux machines and demand that it be installed on those as well."

Now if those aren't goals of a company that plans on taking over the universe, I don't know what are....

define irony

[StandardDeviant]

Anyone taken a close look at that address, in light of recent behavior by MS?

Microsoft [Unit]

One Microsoft Way

Redmond WA

("My way or the highway"-reminiscent)

It won't happen

[WildBeast]

Self configuring computers, self tuning, etc.? I won't allow that to happen. Me and Belinda (my sweet computer) have a very close relationship and won't let anything get between us, especially an OS. Together we enjoyed the good times and lived through the bad times. We're united and communication is an important part of our relationship.

This new generation of OS's have no idea what love means, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Duh.

[thejake316]

Let me guess. Microsoft OS running Microsoft software, that interacts with the Microsoft Network, and gets you news from MSNBC, and is wireless, so they can monitor everything you're doing (anonymously, of course, oh of course, yes, indeedy). Oooh, that was tricky.

The next generation of application....

[ajs]

• Seamless distribution. The system should determine where computations execute or data resides, moving them dynamically as necessary.

  **FLASH**
  Redmond, WA -- Today a new computer clone (see "When Did We Stop Calling Them Virii") was released today by the hacker group, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". As is now typical of clones, it spreads by convincing millions of desktops around the world that it should be moved onto their processors for milliseconds at a time....

• Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system, although at any one time it may be partitioned into many pieces.

  ...researcher at M.I.T. says that it's nearly impossible to stop "She Bop", due in part to the fact that it's not technically "spreading", so much as it's simply "running"...

• Fault-tolerance. The system should transparently handle failures or removal of machines, network links, and other resources without loss of data or functionality.

  ...even the most drastic measures have been discarded as impractical. Said one security expert, "if you took down all of the computers in the world but one, it would remain on that one last computer, until the rest were back up."...

• Self-tuning. The system should be able to reason about its computations and resources, allocating, replicating, and moving computations and data to optimize its own performance, resource usage, and fault-tolerance.

  ...The effects of this clone seem to be somewhat benign. For the most part, it just convinces the systems that it runs on that they should run all of the normal programs on Department of Energy systems instead...

• Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.

  ...One negative impact, however is that the last vestiges of the "open source" operating system networks in foreign countries (they are illegal, here in the U.S.) are being starved for network bandwidth because of what authorities are calling "quality of service feedback noise" which is apparently convincing all major "backbone" carriers (Sprint, AOL/AT&T and McDonalds/Worldcom) that they need to set asside more and more resources for upcoming games of MMHearts (Microsoft's hit game from last year, which combines massively multiplayer games with the most used program of all time)....

• Security. Although a single system image is presented, data and computations may be in many different trust domains, with different rights and capabilities available to different security principals.

  ...In response to this latest event, the Justice department has said that they may petition the NSA for a copy of the Microsoft U.S. Trust Key, which would give the department ultimate control over all deployed operating systems. When asked if this was a temporary measure, Dr. Reno, III responded, "I can't see why we could need to use the key again, but it would probably be prudent of us to keep it for now...

• Resource controls. Both providers and consumers may explicitly manage the use of resources belonging to different trust domains. For instance, while some people might be content to allow their data and computations to use any resources available anywhere, some companies might choose, for instance, not to store or compute their year-end financial statement on their competitor?s machines.
  What!? You thought I could come up with a witty way to make fun of that statement?! I'm not a magician!

Yep, this'll be fun. Where do I buy the popcorn?

Re:/.'s MS icon has never seemed more appropriate.

[fitsnips]

Now that's what I would call a monopoly!

While I realize they never say one OS, I am sure
that is what they mean. Could this be used in
court?

JUDGE: How would you justify that M$ soul reason
for operation is to drive your business
out of operation.

plaintiff: Well there website says: "there should
be only one system." and I am pretty sure they do not mean mine.

JUDGE: And what is your goal?

plaintiff: To drive M$ out of business

JUDGE: So its ok for you but not for them?

plaintiff: Yea, but I have no chance in hell.

M$: What makes the PLANTIF so sure we can?

BALIF: Your honor your shipment of MS WORLD
DOMINATION boxs have been delivered.

Re:Microsoft to Remove Twin Towers

[QuaZar666]

No they just want to make sure New York is correct. Seeing there is no WTC there is no need to put the WTC is the game. I guess they could but it would not be 100% correct.

Qua

anti borg/M$ tactics

[Niksie3]

Funny... I think we can use anti borg tactics against this thing. Think TNG: data hacked into the collective and started handing out orders. think Voyager, endgame, janeway poisened herself and let herself be assimilated. Why not do that??? and finally, this simple app deployed @ multiple places will destroy a lot of shit. main(){ fork(); }