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More on Longhorn
An anonymous reader writes "Everything I have read concering MS's future plans: Palladium, Client/Server tie in, Office 11 breaking backward compatability, 3 year licensing plans, product activation - all leave me with a foreboding sense of the potential synergy for furthering Microsoft's goals of complete domination. Now this article tells about Longhorn's new filesystem being based on the the future Yukon server. And surprise it will only work with new hardware, which they want to be Palladium enabled. And all pitched to you under the rubric of Security & Efficency.
For years MS has been accused of only wanting
people to run MS Software. Now according to the article, 'Microsoft doesn't think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.' One program to rule them all, one program to bind them, indeed."
Help me Obee Ohess, you're my only hope!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
a couple of weeks ago we had a .NET launch event at the school i go to. several questions were asked about longhorn. the MS rep said that longhorn was seriously lagging behind and also hinted at that longhorn could be skipped totally and they would leap to blackcomb. or if longhorn was to be shipped it may not be until 2005 or 2006
so there may be more problems than we know of
a wise man once said "two wrongs dont make a right, but three rights do make a left" and that wise man was gallagher
Yeah its a bad idea as far as design goes... one big chunky program to do it all. But I wonder if MS are wanting to lump it all together into one single program/product, so that customers will think they are buying something new. It would be a bastard if it crashed aye.. dragging down all your other work with it. And imagine the service packs and patches that will follow after its release... they would be huge. It has be good for hardware manafacutrers though :)
I think Microsoft will fork itself to death.
The general rule that I see nowdays
is that people still use Microsoft
for its backwards compatability
not its new features.
Yes, I did find that quote to be rather interesting. However, I thought the lines right before it were more profound.
"...the new design is required to harness the increased security features of Longhorn, which Enderle said are embodied in Microsoft's "Palladium"-branded trustworthy-computing initiative.
It would seem that Microsoft cannot write a secure OS, so they are forced to rely on hardware.
"Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware," he said.
The way he puts it, you'd almost think it was a good thing.
to be quite honest, I think anything is better than MS software. Even the stuff they come up with.
But MS has compatibility and politics and a mamoth investor appetite to feed.
Innovation will come from MS when they feel threatened. while they can beat Sun by just watching them sink, MS will just sit on their Win licenses for revenue. That is basically what happened this year, and boom 50% increase. No tech innovation involved. Once they need to make the move, they can do it. They have too many brains in jars on call.
Slashdot stands behind virtually nothing. The company is on the verge of going under, so they've pulled out the stops. On top of the incessant MS ads for a supposedly anti-MS site, they also don't write their pages with the new security header that they proclaim is the best thing since sliced bread, and they also are owned by a company that makes it's living from selling proprietary software, and very aggressively enforcing their IP (see the 10K for LNUX... too tired to get the link again).
I had to read this twice to realise that Enderle means that in a negative way. Dear god. The individual words make sense, but we're clearly not speaking the same language.
This just confirms that Microsoft's vision for future PC's really is nothing more than super-X-boxen, running only Microsoft apps. Or, app singular. And if there's a single app handling everything, it has to handle everything, so is there room for any third party software?
Further, given that the X-box is Microsoft branded right now, I wonder when Dell et al will start to wonder if Microsoft will be happy with trusting third parties to build their new toy. After all, it's all about trust, right? At what point will Microsoft decide - and start telling Joe Public - that a "Microsoft PC" is more trustworthy than an identical box built by Dell?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ideally, Longhorn will "fundamentally integrate" audio, video and images in a "visually stunning" manner, much like the Mac's OS X
Microsoft should pay Apple a huge chunk of change for all the human interface studies they've just copied over the years.
Trolling is a art,
I first noticed this back in 1985, when I bought my first Mac. On my Unix systems, the mindset is "I'm using programs to manipulate data". E.g., to change a file, I run vi (vim nowadays), and tell the program what changes I want made to the file, and the program makes the changes.
On a Mac, it feels (or, rather, it used to...Apple has moved away from this) like I'm directly making the changes. I wasn't telling MacWrite to change my file--I was changing my file, using MacWrite as my tool.
I think it felt this way because of the interface consistency among most programs. MacWrite might provide more editing options than, say, a paint program's text tool, but they were consistent. This made the programs feel like they were just part of the computer, rather than the focus of the computer like they are in Unix and Windows. The WYSIWYG aspect also certainly helped a lot.
I think that this is what Microsoft is talking about when they say one program to do everything. I doubt they mean one giant monolithic uberprogram to do everything--they've spent years moving everything in site to be collections of components, and I don't think they'll abandon that approach.
A common 14 year old AOL script kiddie who faithfully opens his pr0n.jpg.vb email attachments while using various "security tools" found on various "security related" sites (read: Trojans. Lots of Trojans.) can turn even an OpenBSD box into an insecurity-ridden deathtrap.
The difference is that I can give my 14-year old script kiddie son a non-root account on my BSD box, and be quite certain that he does not mess with my OS installation. He can only damage his own account, which I can restore. Try that with W*nd*ws!
)9TSS
Microsoft discontinues W2k and XP: new PCs will come installed only with the new OS
In that case
CDs only work with new OS
They are doing this sort of thing already, so nothing changes with the next version of Windows. If that business model works, they will gain market share, if it doesn't, they will rapidly find another model.
no competition
Microsoft's record on killing competition is actually rather patchy. They have cleaned up in the desktop OS and office productivity markets. They don't own the server market, they don't dominate embedded appliances, they are struggling to make the XBox work: all these ventures are losing money, which they can only afford to lose because of their market share in the first two areas.
If corporate customers start boycotting the new OS, Microsoft will back down very quickly, monopoly or no monopoly. The main reason we are still waiting for XP server is that there is resistance to the licencing model: this new system could provoke a much bigger backlash.
Virtually serving coffee
remember the old slogan from StarOffice, "Do Everything in One Place" ?
Sounds a bit like that.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Moderators please note this is not a flame, but a literary reference to Wayne's World.
Yeow!! There goes another one. They're kinda cute, really. Once you get used to the Borg implants.
This is too early in the morning for diplomacy, I haven't had my coffee.
*
OK, OK, it *could* happen. MS has published good software in the past, which in time it felt compelled to modify and expand until it looked like a prisoner of war about to rupture from beriberi. In fairness but that should be attribute to Corporate Command, not the very bright programmers they have working there. (My college roommate was assimilated in 1989 and was very happy there. Getting rich tends to make people happy.)
I have to disagree vociferously about Outlook -- it's a ticking time bomb that has already gone off several times, yet is still installed on 3/4 of the hard drives out there. A clear example of bloat leading to unreliability, specifically irresistible evil hacker bait. Yes, I know they're finally closing the barn door, but that's not the point.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of management." Unk. (seen on a Depressories calendar {recommended -- new! Demotivators})
yeah, sometimes i think about giving up, just stop to argue.
no more "where is my privacy?" no more "do my actions get monitored?".
such things just make me weak, sometimes I really think that I will just lay back, accept microsofts way and be what they call a good user.
They may monitor my actions, I don't care, I got nothing to hide.
They may DRM the shit out of my PC, I don't care, I have the money to get my music legally.
In return I get an all in one solutions. I don't have to care about, just use it. And if I stick to M$ rules, the usability is going to be great. Just think about the smartphone/tabletPC/workstation connectivity. May this is a revolution in computing.
But somehow thinking like that feels like selling your sould to the devil. So what, Dr. Faust had a nice life too...
So, what do you think is getting a nice user life by giving up your freedom an option?
The AtheOS File System created by Kurt Skauen for use with AtheOS is 64bit too. He simply bought a good book or two, and put it together all by himself (along with the OS that uses it). If one guy can do this by himself, why is it so "extraordinarily difficult" for Microsoft to do?
I have a programme on my laptop called Microsoft works, which seems to be a simplified version of what MS is planning. It has the most obnoxious, unintuitive interface that I have ever seen, cannot open MS' own Office files and has an Office 97 kind of toolbar floating across everything else that is so absolutely unuseful that I just wonder how or who managed to design something like that and get it past QA, if there is something like that in the MS sprawl.
Personally I'm not that worried about this whole Palladium thing from MS. Windows XP has chiefly been successful because of MS' hammerlock on OEMs and because it has offered true improvements in stability over previous versions ofthe OS. I use XP every day and administer a number of XP machines and it truly has improved in stability. The flipside of the XP story is that I had to think twice before migrating there because the EULA is such a piece of capitaistic, fascist greed and fear. MS shoots itself in the foot with it's attempts to control your daily life, and in this they are truly a bunch of fucked up bastards.
I think that MS' recent financial statements showing that they are totally useless and in fact worse than many dotbombs in every single division apart from Windows and Office, offer a good insight into the true source of motivation behind MS's efforts to enforce control over hardware and users: They realise full well that no one really likes them (OEM's trying to free themselves, large companies pissed off enough to migrate to Linux) and their response is to try to tighten the screws even more. Longhorn and Palladium might very well bring improved performance and stability, but like all MS products in recent years, these improvements are mainly a sugar coating to the bitter pill of MS Palladium.
It will not work. My company does not have the money to play MS games and I will migrate everything to Linux and Novell (we already use both) beofre we go with bullshit like this. Larger companies are even more conservative than we are.
The joke is that MS could gain so many new customers and much more trust (there are people who trust them?) if they spent more efforts on simply improving their products instead of trying to fuck with everybody.
Privately I use MacOSX to develop with because the core OS is open source and the Dev tools are free and I'm fucked if I'm going to pay MS $1000 here in Switzerland for Visual Studio.
Then *we* can still run something else. But I fear that DRMized hardware will kill the alternative market as only an 'authorized' OS will run. And it wont be practical for anyone but the biggest to get authorized.
If we reach that point and cant get around it somehow, I know myself will be finished with computers. Almost am now with how the industry has become.
20 years ago, no one would have dreamed of what would become of it all, and the level it would reach... Makes one almost ashamed to be in the business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everybody out there is missing the big picture; Bill Gates' goal. What Bill Gates wants is to force everyone to change the rules; he wants to be the Wilt Chamberlain of the business world. To Wilt Chamberlain the proof of his own superiority was that he forced basketball to change its rules - he was so overwhelming that he left a permanent mark on the game.
Bill Gates wants to force everyone to change the rules to deal with him and his company. Being the richest man who ever lived is not enough - like Montgomery Burns he'd "give it all up for just a little more". The little more that he wants is to be so oppressive and intrusive a part of people's lives that they are forced to change the law forever to control what he has done. He has already proven that existing monopoly laws are insufficient to keep him from doing as he pleases.
He wants to be able to answer a tech call and say: "This is Bill Gates speaking; bark like a dog - or I'll cut off your computing forever. Bark... That's a good boy." 'Trusted computing' is the last gear in the machine to allow him to do that. With trusted computing he will be able to shut down anyone at anytime; after all what power has trusted computing got except to break the machine and thus force the user to do exactly what the operating system designers want them to do? If that includes wearing a Microsoft dog collar that ties them to a particular computer - so be it.
Personally, I enjoy venting. You know that you can make it so Microsoft articles don't show up on the front page, right? With that in mind, let those of us who spend our days fixing Microsofts bugs vent.
It's been a long time.
How does this initiative compare to Apple's ill-fated OpenDoc? Is microsoft trying to go the "Document-Centric" way?
In two years from now? well,imagine that in 2000, (when win2k came out), we had RH6.2 (no openoffice, no mozilla, no mplayer, kde1, gnome1,2.2 kernel, ext2 etc..) It's shocking, i know...
Linux development is exponential i am afraid. there is no hope for microsoft to compete there...
Oh, wait there is one hope. IF they give the source now that the user base of windows is actually bigger (though propably not of the same level), maybe, MAYBE they can compete.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Hold on, there's a bit of injudicious editing in the parent. The article wasn't implying that large volume addressing was an extraordinarily difficult task, it was saying that a fast filesystem with a large address space and relational database properties was difficult. (The example given mentioned being able to swiftly locate a document by content.)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
You are correct, sir.
All iexplore.exe does, for example, is call mshtml.dll in creative ways. All excel.exe does is call the Excel COM objects in creative ways, and so on and so forth.
The fundamental difference between scripting on UNIX and scripting on Win32 is that on UNIX, you're manipulating text files and calling programs with CL arguments. On Win32, you're invoking objects, setting properties, then calling methods.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
If Longhorn is going to be tightly tied to the hardware, what are the implications for putting Linux and Windows on the same machine? Hell, will Longhorn even ALLOW Linux to be on the same machine?
shockingly, skynet is up and may already be self aware: http://www.skynet.com/
Windows is not modular
Sure. So if modularity is what matters most to me, I don't buy Windows. But you don't have to spend a cent, you just have to take responsibility for your decisions. If you want the alleged benefits of Windows, you get the alleged problems of Windows. You can have both or neither. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
You cannot fix a problem yourself.
At the risk of blowing any geeky aura that I might somehow have acquired, I don't fix my Linux problems either, I wait for the next upgrade, and, usually, buy a boxed version that costs me money. We have fixed some minor quirks with the perl management scripts and Apache on our RaQ, but I'm not about to start recompiling my kernel with my own bug fixes. Which relegates me to the bottom 99.99% of computer users, though I guess having the possibility to do so is a unique selling point for the other 0.01%
Everthing works with 2.2
So why did anyone upgrade, if the new one does the same thing as the old one? I'm sure I'm missing something basic here, but I thought adding useful features, improving performance etc was a good thing, even if the resulting code won't always run on an abacus. In a similar vein, it's nice that you can still get i386 rpms, but if I can get better performance out of my kit with i686 rpms, I'm going to do so.
OK, it's not quite the same thing, since the i386 ones will still do the same job. Although have you tried Star Office on a 486 with 20Mb of RAM? It runs, but the one time I tried it for a client, it took - literally - over an hour to open a blank document. I don't think this proves that Star Office is a bad program (although some other evidence points in that direction), it just shows that it is designed for more recent hardware.
If what you're saying is that the upgrade path with Linux involves more smaller steps, I'd probably agree (although if you count service packs, MS produces several upgrades a year).
Virtually serving coffee
Say what you will, but at least Microsoft has some direction, and a goal they are working towards, even if it is total information domination, they're working towards something. Something like this would be great in the linux community, get everyone together, sit down, figure out where to take linux and oss, figure out how to take it there, and go.
Even if Sun did everything years before Microsoft, Sun didn't have a complete plan, whereas Microsoft did/does, which is why people keep investing in Microsoft, and their stock keeps rising (except recently, but that's been taken care of by the DOJ decision).
Microsoft recently demonstrated how flawed reliance on signed software can be. They had a bug in an Active X control, and they released a fix for it, but since both the flawed and fixed versions were signed and trusted by Microsoft, a malicious site could push the bad version back onto somebody's computer.
Code signing establishes identity of the signer, but it does not guarantee anything beyond that. It says, "we really think this was made by Microsoft, so if you trust them, you can trust this." Palladium may extend this trust into the hardware, but it's still reliant on the assumption that whoever signed the code is doing their homework.
There are four levels of security for software in my mind:
1) Code that is from an unverified source that I cannot look at
2) Code that is from a verified source that I can look at
3) Code from an unverified source that I can look at
4) Code from a verified source that I can look at
Ultimately any code falling into category 3 or 4 can be made secure presuming that I am knolwedgeable about security and the software I'm dealing with. Category four provides the same assurances as category two, but additionally I can further insure my security by looking myself.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
If the OS is tied to the hardware will sys admins still be able to build images and duplicate them across hundreds of machines, will each have to be a separate build, or will the only solution be a MS branded version of Ghost?
Being this thing won't be out for a while now, I bet it won't even be out in 2004. First off, Microsoft IS powerful, but if everyone decided no we aren't going to support your silly hardware requirements, then Microsoft will have no choice but to drop it. Also, how many times have we hard of pie in the sky things that are suposed to be in the next version and they still aren't in it. Windows 95 was supposed to do things that XP has not even done yet. Now one thing I wish we would get is some hardware based encryption. Mainframes have had a optional encryption processor for a while and it's only job is encryption. Anytime you need something encrypted, you ship it off to the encryption processor. Being hardware based, it would be tons faster.
Gorkman
Did anyone else think of the 'unsinkable' Titanic when they read this? Being from the analyst or not, the arrogance in this statement alone about the command of our current technology is as scary as the statements made for the Titanic!
Two: "Microsoft doesn't think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all."
We have this already... it's called a WEB BROWSER! From what I can determine from this statement, they are seeking to make a common shell that has 'plugins' to run different files. Just like there's a flash plugin, a Quicktime plugin, etc in browsers today. Couple this with XML and basically all they would need to do is make a base parser application that accepted a specific XSLT to deal with a specific file-type. If it does boil down to a paradigm such as this, 'software as a service' via the net would be cheap and easy bandwidth wise (all they'd have to do is download/manage an XSLT or the property MS version of one). They already have this paradigm in Office (think of an embedded spreadsheet in a word doc), so I suppose that it's nature to make this the next logical step.
Both of these statements involve putting all a user's eggs in one basket. If everything was a plugin into a master parser app, imagine having that app with a vulnerability, crashing, etc! To a certain extent I say let Microsoft do this, let Microsoft auto-download and install the latest updates, let Microsoft manage Office over the net. Why? Because the first time they have a failure (like all the problems with Hotmail/Passport a year or so back) and it brings EVERYONE down with them, they'll be in a world of hurt from their own loyal customers. The first time a hot-patch corrupts the functionality of an in house app in a Fortune 500/1000, the first time a single virus takes down all MS apps (Office, Exchange...), the first time this happens and keeps even a few big companies from using their Microsoft systems for even a few hours they're sunk. How could they not be responsible legally? And even if they weren't, imagine having to fight 1000s of 'frivolous' lawsuits in 100s of jurisdictions in 10s of countries!
Just like the LotR relation mentioned above... with one ring, everyone has one foe. And when everyone has one foe, it's easier to band together and fight said foe no matter what their strength is. So in short, go ahead Microsoft... let them take just enough rope to hang themselves!
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
That is incorrect.
RMS wrote the first emacs as an extension to TECO. Gosling wrote the first C-based emacs, but Gosling is also a conniving rat (like Tatu Ylonen) who promised RMS he could use his Emacs code, then changed his mind and threatened legal action. More recently, he has fraudulently claimed credit for inventing Emacs.
More history here.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Try redhat 8. With previous incarnations of linux, I felt pretty much the same way. But with nautilus, ximian, and bluecurve, it'll easily pass the mom test. I think you're confusing intuitiveness with familiarity. It's not any harder to use the applications in a modern distribution of linux. In fact, in many cases, it's much easier -- my first RH8 configuration took about 2 hours to be completely ready to use and it was the first time I'd even touched linux in about 18 months whereas it took me about 6 hours to get XP to that point due to both numerous downloads/reboots and the design of the control panel, which is particularly poor in the network settings. With RH8, everything I needed to set was in the installation script and presented as a dialog before the first time I even booted the OS. With XP, I was searching for hours to find the correct dialogues to enter the info to get it online and able to share and receive files.
Tobacco harms you - you - far more than you see. It raises health care costs (and takes all that income going to health care out of the rest of the economy.) If you have a loved one addicted to tobacco, it's far more destructive than a loved one who uses Microsoft. If your co-workers smoke, then you get second-hand smoke. (If "quit your job" is an option for smokers, then it's also an option for people working at MS shops.)
Actually, the healthcare costs are minor compared to the taxation on cigarettes. Smokers have already paid for their healthcare many times over with the additional tax on cigarettes.
Add to that the fact that most smokers will never need long term geriatric care because they'll die young, and the net health care costs for smokers actually end up being lower.
Not that this is a good thing, mind you...
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The argument from authority in another form, again. It's entirely feasible that Microsoft can hire the best in the industry and make them ineffectual by inserting them into a rigid corporate structure. Anyone who's worked in a large corporation will nod in familiarity. Does Microsoft? I don't know, but your argument doesn't justify your conclusion.
Not so long ago the standard repost to any Microsoft post was the time a system stayed up before the blue screen of death.
Then the proper conclusion, contrary to yours, is that the Slashdot population is generally acting in a reasonable manner. When Windows self-destructed regularly, they took it to task. The it stopped, they stopped. What do you find unreasonable about this, that they ever criticized Windows stability at all?
Linux security isn't competetive with Windows!? Cue Rod Serling.
RMS did write a closed source (holding my heart) version of emacs for an os called ITS back in 1976. This is the reason why emacs has its own set of commands which are different then unix. They are ITS based commands that have been ported. He later rewrote Emacs and called it gnuEmacs in 1984 when he left MIT to find "fsf".
Gosling has not touched Vi in over 15 years and considers it obsolete and awkward to use in todays world of ide's. I however use VIM and like the short commands.
http://saveie6.com/