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."

Comments

And there will be one Master Ring

[cyber_rigger]

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.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[marauder404]

Actually, I think that the number one reason people (average consumers) stay with Microsoft is not for it's backwards compatability, but rather backwards familiarity, which is a subtle difference. They sort of go hand-in-hand. People like the way they do things and don't like to change. They've become familiar with the Windows concepts, as old as they are. They've come to understand a C: drive, a Start menu, a registry, Windows Install/Uninstall, and all the other associated terminology. Confusion comes in when you replace those things with a /usr directory, a different icon, an /etc directory full of text files, and RPMs. They're just as easy for power users, but there's HUGE user backlash when such fundamental interfaces are changed. Application backwards compatability is a necessary, but not complete, requirement for most users. An open-source word processor might be able to open and save MS Word documents, but if they need to use different icons, keyboard shortcuts, menus, and dialogs to do the same things as MS Word, they won't use it.

Re:Scary quote

[Ibag]

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.

Choice quote

[Rogerborg]

• "Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware," [Enderle] said.

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?

Re:Choice quote

[Spoing]

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?

They're doing the work now make that a possibility. For example, Microsoft is selling network equipment now. It's very cheap stuff, but it's another cog making the "Microsoft PC" a reality. As I mentioned before, Microsoft is very motivated to do something like this -- they've already gobbled up almost all there is to eat;

1. Microsoft's revenue from existing sources is tapped. While they make a substantial amount of money, they aren't increasing (all things considered).

2. The recient spike was due to the licencing change that boiled down to "pay us more now, or pay us a lot more later". Even monopolies can push thier customers so far.

   So, where to go? Buy other unrelated companies? Check. Branch out into new markets (MSNBC, Xbox)? Check. Take new markets from established companies (AOL)? Check.

   All I see that's left is to increase investments in unrelated companies and markets, or to take more of what they know -- PCs.

   For PCs, it might take 5 years to get all the pieces together. Microsoft has the time, they have the money comming in, they don't have to do actual production, though they do have to keep an eye out for some companies to buy.

   The obvious choice -- and obviously we should beware of people who use words like 'obvious' :) -- is for them to save money and wait to see what companies have the critical patents or hardware that will be important in 5 years. When it's safe, buy those companies, integrate thier product lines, promote "PC 2006" (that use those patents), and then go from there. Sell the MS PC line like Apple and Sun do, but also licence others to be resellers like they do with Pocket PC/WinCE.

   If I see this as a posibility, companies that have traditionally been partners with Microsoft must see this too. Sony has already been burnt (Xbox), and just about every other large company -- from Sun through IBM-HP-Compaq-Gateway-Dell to even Intel just don't like an all-dominate Microsoft calling the shots and setting thier margins.

   To save money, Microsoft only has to not issue dividends to stock holders (check), and if needed, roll that money into some other venture so that profits vanish. In 5~ years they can dump the hold over companies and use the cash to buy the critical companies.

   Research and patents -- buying or making -- can be done anytime. This includes slowly inforcing the patents they have, piece by piece.

   This is all speculation and guessing about the future. Before you take it seriously, go to a used book store or library and flip through books that talked about what the future would be like -- lots of grins.

Re:Choice quote

[Rogerborg]

Well, quite. What - exactly - are the benefits of Palladium to various users?

• Gary Gamer: Zilch. Gary wants performance, not security. He very likely also wants to be able to run hacked games (pirated or benign no-cd hacks).
• Harry Homebody: Less potential for picking up nasties. But Microsoft could fix that right now by taking Outlook Express out of promiscuous mode.
• Karl Cubicle: Same as Harry Homebody. There's no direct benefit for Karl.
• Iris IT: Sure, she can lock systems down properly and stop Karl from installing his toys, but she can do that right now if she knows her stuff. Likewise for the virii protection, same as Harry and Karl.
• Colin CEO: Score! There's one big benefit for Colin; he can send out documents that self destruct and cover his tracks. Ask Enron and Worldcom about the benefits of that.

Synopsis: there's only one type of user that will benefit from Palladium. Fortunately, that's the type that owns and controls everything, including IT budgets and politicians. Oh goody.

Re:Scary quote

[pesc]

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!

Microsoft Works?

[theolein]

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.

A failure to understand

[Veteran]

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.

Shades of OpenDoc?

[Nikopol]

How does this initiative compare to Apple's ill-fated OpenDoc? Is microsoft trying to go the "Document-Centric" way?

Re:MS is already doing this, its called COM

[SuiteSisterMary]

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.

code signing != panacea

[sterno]

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.