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 in the darkness bind them

[theefer]

Please finish your quotes.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[cioxx]

Three Rings for the Microsoft-Developers under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-VPs in their halls of stone,
Nine for IIS System Administrators doomed to die,
One for Steve Ballmer on his dark throne
In the land of Richmond where shadows lie.
One Application to rule them all, One Palladium to authenticate them,
On Application to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Richmond where Shadows lie.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[marauder404]

In the Land of Richmond where Shadows lie.

Richmond? Home of tobacco? I had no idea it was such an evil tech powerhouse! Perhaps you meant "Redmond?"

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[cioxx]

I put Richmond to avoid a lawsuit.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[prichardson]

It goes:
9 rings for men
7 rings for dwarves
3 rings for elves
1 ring for the dark lord

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[drinkypoo]

Tobacco is more evil than Microsoft, being the only industry which has been lying to its customers for longer and about something more serious than windows.

Microsoft: The new version of windows will be faster, more stable, and more fun!

Tobacco: Cigarettes are stylish, fun, and we don't know anything about them causing cancer, honest!

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[dohcvtec]

Microsoft: The new version of windows will be faster, more stable, and more fun!
The public: Oh, Windows is great, I can surf the web and send email and have a great web experience because I run Windows!

Tobacco: Cigarettes are stylish, fun, and we don't know anything about them causing cancer, honest!
The public: Cigarettes kill, and I'll sue you if they cause me to have cancer.

Sure, the tobacco companies are blatantly lying to everyone, but then again, nobody believes them, either. On the other hand, Microsoft insists that it's not a monopoly, and insists that its products are secure/reliable/inexpensive to own, and 90% of people believe them. That's a big difference. Maybe it will change in the future - before it was widely known that smoking caused cancer, it was considered a good thing (or at least it wasn't considered deadly.)

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[Grishnakh]

I'm not so sure about that... with tobacco at least, it doesn't really affect me personally except when people light up near me at restaurants (which is fast becoming illegal). I choose not to smoke, so it's not a big problem for me. With Windows, however, I don't have much of a choice. Because of their monopoly power, and the necessity of computing in modern life, I'm basically forced to use Windows. And MS is still trying to force more people into using it through things like this Palladium crap.

I don't like tobacco, so I don't smoke it. I don't like Ford and GM cars, so I bought an Acura instead. I don't like Sony, so I buy Kenwood electronics instead. But in the world of computing, MS is doing all it can to force me to use their software, and this is why I hate them so much.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[Lemmy Caution]

Yes, this Linux machine and the Mac down the hall are all figments of my coffee-addled imagination. I'm actually forced to use Microsoft software, even though it's only my evil twin that uses it.

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.)

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[Grishnakh]

I'd like to see you use Outlook or Office on a Linux machine. I use Linux at work (I'm very lucky that way) but I have to use WTS whenever I want to read email or look at Office documents thanks to proprietary formats and protocols that prevent interoperability. But what's worse is how MS, instead of just competing, is trying to stamp out all the competition using any underhanded, unethical, and downright illegal means that it can (and this latest "remedy" from Judge K-K just served to reinforce their behavior). I don't see Apple trying to kill Linux, calling it "communist", bribing government officials to not use it, etc.

Tobacco raises health care costs for those who smoke it. That's why insurance companies ask you if you smoke, and slap you with higher rates if you do. I don't smoke, so I get lower rates. I have a few relatives who smoke, but I also have relatives who drive poorly, eat poorly, don't exercise, and make other bad choices in life. But at least they have the choice to make, and I can choose for myself as well. I don't see Phillip Morris trying to get legislation passed to force everyone to smoke their cigarettes. But I do see MS doing this exact same thing for their software.

What kind of workplace has people smoking inside it? I know this was commonplace in the 50's, but I doubt there's an office in this country anymore that you're allowed to smoke in. It's probably against OSHA rules.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[Lemmy Caution]

Microsoft is trying to get legislation to force people to use their software? Since when? And since when did Microsoft have data indicating that MS software causes cancer, yet refuse to relase it and go on marketing it as safe? And Phillip Morris is quite happy to continue advocating against anti-smoking legislation in the rest of the world, even as it puts on a 'friendlier face' in the US - and they sure as hell tried to keep the antismoking legislation at bay. There are plenty of smoking-workplaces in the rest of the world - and if you are a waitress or bartender, you're probably in a smoke-filled environment. (Again, the "change jobs" rejoinder applies to MS users) Nothing that Microsoft has done comes even close to what the tobacco industry has done to keep money coming into its coffers.

If you had a sister addicted to crack, you might claim that it was "her choice," but you certainly wouldn't think that her drug dealer was innocent either.

Incidentally, you can access Exchange mail with standard unix MUA's and fetchmail.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[Grishnakh]

Ever hear of Senator Holling's bill (formerly SSSCA) requiring all electronic devices to have DRM? Palladium won't work without computers having DRM hardware installed.

MS has a court judgement saying their behavior is anticompetitive, yet they refuse to change their ways (and having bought some favor from the current administration, enabling them to get off on a forceless "remedy" doesn't help).

I don't know what kind of dump you live in, but here in Arizona cities are rapidly passing anti-smoking laws preventing people from smoking in bars and restaurants. California's even better with the whole state having passed such a law.

I've had relatives on illegal drugs, and it was their choice. As long as there's demand, there will be dealers.

You can't access Exchange calendars with standard MUA's. Remember what I said about proprietary protocols?

I think you're missing my whole point: as bad as the tobacco industry is, it is NOT a monopoly. A cartel, perhaps, but certainly not a monopoly. Microsoft IS a monopoly, and is doing everything they can to push themselves into everyone's life. Smoking is on its way out, and I rarely encounter it myself since I don't smoke, don't have friends who smoke, and live in a city progressive enough to ban smoking in restaurants. Microsoft I encounter every day, and it keeps getting worse; they want to install themselves into every electronic device people own--computers, "smart phones", PVR's, oscilloscopes, medical equipment (this one's really scary), cars (also scary), etc. If they get their way, you won't be able to CHOOSE to not use MS products unless you're a hermit living in a shack in Montana. The only entity that should have the power to force itself on me like this is the government, and at least with the government I have a little bit of power with my vote. With MS I have none.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[spectecjr]

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

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[drinkypoo]

Tobacco raises health care costs for those who smoke it. That's why insurance companies ask you if you smoke, and slap you with higher rates if you do. I don't smoke, so I get lower rates.

On one hand, they do charge smokers more, but on the other hand, they want to insure smokers as well. They know what percentage of smokers actually die as a result of smoking, and they take it into account.

On the other hand all of us are out a lot of money because of smokers who can not pay their own medical expenses and are supported by the state (or by federal funds.) Monies for these purposes come from income taxes (of course) and also from taxes levied against the cigarette companies. So in that sense we all pay to support smokers. However smokers have to pay taxes used to criminalize smoking, and to pay for the enforcement of the resulting laws, so I feel that this is a fair trade. If you want to make something a lot of people enjoy illegal, and make them pay for it, then you should expect to be involved in paying for their side of things as well.

What kind of workplace has people smoking inside it? I know this was commonplace in the 50's, but I doubt there's an office in this country anymore that you're allowed to smoke in. It's probably against OSHA rules.

Smoking in the workplace falls under state law at this point, AFAIK. Certainly some classes of business had smoking in them, such as bars and bowling alleys. In California that is all but gone, except in counties which simply do not enforce the statutes. You will have serious trouble finding a bar in which you can smoke in San Francisco. So much for the land of the free, especially since owners want smoking...

Anyway in Texas the laws about smoking apply to protection of patrons, not employees. A few counties have anti-smoking laws there, so if you want smoking in a restaurant not only do you need to separate smokers and non-smokers but you also need an air filter which meets the proper specifications, which is quite expensive. In most places, though, having a physical separation between smoking and non-smoking is sufficient. Some restaurants do not allow smoking inside, which is as it should be.

Re:.. and in the darkness bind them

[ReelOddeeo]

Sure, the tobacco companies are blatantly lying to everyone, but then again, nobody believes them, either. On the other hand, Microsoft insists that it's not a monopoly, and insists that its products are secure/reliable/inexpensive to own, and 90% of people believe them.

If you go back in time far enough, people used to believe the cigarette companies.

I think we have crossed a point where many people distrust Microsoft. In time, I think most will.

Its been done

[pkplex]

Its called emacs ;)

Re:Its been done

[napoleonin]

Yeah, but it hasn't been done well

Re:Its been done

[ActiveSX]

You think Longhorn's going to change that?

Re:Its been done

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually, it was called OpenDoc, and it was open, cross platform and good. But Apple killed it, Microsoft wasn't interested and so we ended up with .... ActiveX! Yipee!

ActiveX was of course a rebranding of OLE which was the Windows object linking and embedding, the idea being that in the future apps would come as a set of ActiveX components that could merge themselves into a host application - hence, 1 app to do everything. Surprise surprise, it never took off.

Re:Its been done

[Zeinfeld]

Hmmm... wouldn't **Bob** be a more appropriate analogy? So entranced was BG by this product, he married its head program manager!

Err, many in Redmond have put it the other way, so entranced was Bill by the program manager that Bob was not killed quietly before launch.

Bob actually lives, he became Clippy and the office assistants.

Re:Its been done

[Junior J. Junior III]

A well-done Longhorn might taste good with mesquite sauce.

Re:Its been done

[phatlipmojo]

Got all excited and then figured out you didn't mean Bob Dobbs.

Re:Its been done

[0x0d0a]

"integration" is a very negative thing from an engineering standpoint -- modularity is almost always better. There's no reason in the least that "integration" implies fast start times, which can be achieved without the mingling of web browser code and the OS that MS did.

People want UI consistency. That's reasonable. That does not imply integration of the guts.

People want good performance. That's also reasonable, and also does not imply integration of the guts (which often makes it more difficult to profile programs and results in reduced performance).

If you want to have a daemon running that kepps your web browser's core bits in memory, or use a RAM disk for it, or not read eight zillion config files at start up, or have your OS use a less retarded dynamic loading mechanism, that's fine. None of that implies integration.

Mozilla is not a good example of an app free of integration -- it itself has about four applications all jumbled together in its guts. Phoenix qualifies, but unfortunately has a huge amount of baggage from Mozilla.

So what you *really* mean is that you don't like Mozilla's shoddy performance and prefer IE, *not* that you "like integration".

An example of modularity -- where each component of a system provides certain services, and if B relies on service A provided by module A1, I can replace A1 with A2 and B will keep working.

*This* is what you nearly always want, not "integration" where A and B become mingled.

Re:Its been done

[Com2Kid]

• So what you *really* mean is that you don't like Mozilla's shoddy performance and prefer IE, *not* that you "like integration".

No, I mean that I like every file browser window on my computer also being an browser window and being able to use the run dialog box to jump to URLS and having things all in all being conveniently located.

• "integration" is a very negative thing from an engineering standpoint -- modularity is almost always better. There's no reason in the least that "integration" implies fast start times, which can be achieved without the mingling of web browser code and the OS that MS did.

Iexplorer and explorer.exe run as separate instances under Windows 2000 and above. In fact in Windows 2000 (though less so in XP, bleck) the explorer.exe can be nuked altogether with no effect on the system as a whole, drop in your own shell, windows doesn't care.

A lot of the HTML rendering functionality in windows is accessed through shared libraries, which can be independently upgraded and swapped with fixed versions, hardly an integrated solution other then that they are used by a wide variety of applications that want to, surprise surprise render HTML without having to load any more crud up then is already occupying system memory.

Re:Certainly radical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but thats a horrible idea. Especially since it's microsoft. Just imagine a virus infecting this "1 magic program". Now your entire computer is compromised. Not just your email. Anything you can do with the computer the virus can do. And don't even try to tell me that this is gonna move towards "virus freedom". Microsoft engineers don't seem able to program their way out of a wet paper sack, let alone implement security features. Just wait 4 years from now when the first BugBear2006 comes around and makes your ENTIRE computer a dumb terminal for hackers.

A new hope?

[zephc]

Help me Obee Ohess, you're my only hope!

Re:A new hope?

[transiit]

Not true.
While you may want to discount Linux, it has a lot more support and momentum than any sort of reimplementation of BeOS. Whatever sort of technological advantage you see in BeOS isn't really the point at this time, for the short term, we need something to rally around while getting the long-term message out: "The operating system doesn't matter as long as the concern is to follow open standards and make the overall goal to be interoperable rather than acheive dominance".
Getting Linux, or a BSD, or a BeOS workalike to take the place of windows doesn't really solve the overall problem that computing can't be simplified into a one-size-fits-all situation. A better situation is to aim for at least source-compatibility where possible (binary compatibility is nice, but largely unreasonable to expect any compatibilty layer to account for all quirks of the original host OS). If you can manage that, then things like UI become relatively easy (application framework differences are picked up at the library level, install the necessary libs and you can pick and choose your favorite, or combination thereof).
-transiit

Re:Certainly radical...

[fruey]

Radical, but bloated, with a single data structure for all the information accessed (yeah well that's a filesystem I suppose but each individual file is a unique entity) and one single company with a closed protocol set and format to really mean marriage to Microsoft in the future will be for better or worse, or the divorce will cost you at least 50% of your capital.

Corporate computing is not some ideal world... it's all about money, money, and more money. Computers exist in the first place to save time (and therefore money).

Scary quote

[Mnemia]

"This could bring a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised."

I sure hope he isn't talking about security in general, because I sincerely doubt that Palladium will yield any kind of increased security other than security for MS's bottom line. The ignorance of that statement is astounding. Even if Palladium-esque code signing does increase security the added complexity is sure to keep the security people busy for years to come.

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.

Re:Scary quote

[marauder404]

Sorry, but what exactly are you criticizing? You're remarking a quote that was made by an analyst, quoted in an article that's based largely on rumor and the best guesses -- Microsoft hasn't provided any real information in the article. The quote itself is so vague and out of context, that it's nearly impossible to ascertain anything yet.

Re:Scary quote

[Dark Lord Seth]

Remember that in the end, security is as strong as the weakest link in the chain, usually the user. 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.

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!

Re:Scary quote

[sjames]

Perhaps it will help to fill in the hidden blanks in the sentence:

"This could bring a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised. [By the owner. MS, content providers and 12 year olds from countries you've never heard of will be free to walk all over it as usual]"

There, that makes a lot more sense.

Re:Scary quote

[Yo Grark]

Perfect for the MSCE+i+s(security) certificate.

What, you don't think people will HAVE to be certified to work on their new hardware/software monoply?

How else will companies "trust" working with such a secured environment?

Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering

Re:Scary quote

[Znork]

You mistake 'security for the user' with 'security from the user'. Palladium is about protecting Microsoft, software on the users computer and media on the users computer from the user.

A secure OS in that context is impossible to write; control over the hardware equals control of the contents on the computer, so they shouldnt really be criticised for being unable to implement that without hardware support. It will never be entirely successful but they can push the barrier for copying to such levels that you need to be able to buy your own CPU manufacturing run to be able to backup any data you want on your computer.

A secure OS in the context of preventing access for intruders is far more possible of course. That they cant do that has been obvious for decades.

Re:Scary quote

[Mnemia]

yeah, it really is a rumor-mongering article. What disturbed me most about that quote was the attitude of the analyst, not so much MS' plans. I doubt that MS really thinks that Palladium will solve all their security problems; but that's how they are planning to sell it to the managment types. They've simply decided that thanks to all the "terrorism" uproar coupled with increasing criticism of their own track record, that security is an excellent marketing point to use these days. They are going to use talk of threats to enact hardware enforced DRM while at the same time selling this as a "security" feature to those who don't know better.

What I was criticizing was the wholesale manner in which the analyst appears to have bought into that marketing strategy. I'm disturbed that someone who could be my boss may be reading reports like that and believing them.

Re:Scary quote

[MindStalker]

Though of course console systems have been implementing the security from users by hardware for years. And guess what they still never got it right. Oh well, good luck microsoft.

Re:Scary quote

[Planesdragon]

"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.

It is, really. The PC crashes and crashes and crashes--I've seen Linux crash on a 2nd boot, for X's sake!

Tied-to-hardware OS's are good in every way except for (sometimes) economics. My Dreamcast never crashes. Palm OS never crashes (Quickword did, which is why I stopped using it), my old 8-bit Nintendo never crashed, even if it did get dirty and flicker...

The fact is, there's a whole different level of security that you can get to if you add in hardware designed for that task. (Surest way to stop a virus from spreading? unplug the infected computer from the network.) Bundling secure hardware with an insecure OS would be foolhardy--but making the sort of semi-secure OSes we have today with semi-secure hardware should give us a much higher level of securty than what we have today.

Sure, there are bugs that will be ran into--but common flaws to today's model shouldn't doom tomorrow's model.

Re:Scary quote

[TheAncientHacker]

Let's see. I've been able to do that with every Windows NT based OS since Windows NT 3.1 back in 1993. But it's only been around for NINE YEARS so perhaps it's too soon for you to have heard about that.

Re:Scary quote

[TheAncientHacker]

What, you don't think people will HAVE to be certified to work on their new hardware/software monoply?[sic] Seeing how MS hasn't ever done anything like this in the history of the MCSE program perhaps you're just engaging in paranoid fantasies.

Re:Scary quote

[Anonymous Bullard]

MS has *always* relied on rumour-mongering (sic) to have others (read: the ms-centric press) to do the FUDding for them. I see there are still takers...

I just love it when some financial analyst (the infamous Enderle) gives out a quote like "[microsoft's longhorn] will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised." while having no qualms about the proprietary hardware platform being owned exclusively by a corporation that has been convicted of having abused their computer desktop monopoly(ies). That's U.S. of A. for ya, folks.

I wonder what the previous holders of the Proprietary Hardware Crown, Apple, think about these acts by the microsoft corporation.

Re:Scary quote

[Diabolical]

Unfortunatly even on NT there are problems. Most programs like to run with root priviliges and thus compromising the entire system. In the hands of an experienced computer user this should be relatively harmless (allthough a virus could still ruin everything) but when joe sixpack and his kids uses it you can bet your ffing A$$ it will turn into problems you do not want.

Re:Scary quote

[Ayende Rahien]

To give you the usual Open Source answer: I've yet to find the program that require it that I can't live without.

Re:Scary quote

[Ayende Rahien]

Oh, really?
IceWind Dale, Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Keeper II, etc.
Are games that I play *right now* as non-Admin user on XP.
Don't give me bullshit, *very* few games require admin privileges, and direct access to hardware is almost never done in Windows, because you've things like DirectX to provide a layer for you, without comprimising the speed.

Re:Scary quote

[Zork the Almighty]

It should be obvious what Apple is thinking. "Damn! *First* you get the users, *then* you lock them in. How did we mess that up ?!"

Re:Scary quote

[doug363]

So the Administrator installs the game, but ordinary users run it. Not a big deal, really. You don't have to log off even: Windows 2K and XP both automatically ask you if you want to run programs named "setup.exe" as an Admin. Lots of programs work better when installed as root in Unix too, especially when they need to be accessible to lots of users.

Re:Scary quote

[g4dget]

I don't know about Wenduws or Wondiws, but that's built right in for Windows XP.

Windows XP has multiuser and security hooks in the kernel. But in practice, Windows XP doesn't protect local users from one another very much because that kind of protection doesn't really matter for the security of most commercial Windows installations. Most commercial installations either use very locked-down end-user systems (data entry, order taking, etc.), or they give each person their own personal PC and store their files on a shared file server.

If you're that confused about Windows, I wonder what your 14-year-old is going to pull on your BSD box.

If you're that confused about Windows, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near any Windows machine you have anything to do with.

Re:Certainly radical...

[dincubus]

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

In the land of Redmond where the shadows lie...

[Xpilot]

One OS to rule them all,
One Passport to find them,
One OS to bring them all,
And with the EULA bind them!

Sorry couldn't resist ;)

Re:In the land of Redmond where the shadows lie...

[xigxag]

Of course you have to say "Rrredmond" in that weird quasi-Transylvanian accent they used in the FOTR movie to say "Mordor."

Moron

[Anonymous Coward]

"This could bring a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised."

Sounds like they will be releasing Longhorn without any networking capabilities..

Re:Moron

[whereiswaldo]

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.

But just think how simple the security bulletins would be with only _one_ Microsoft product! Gargantuan as it might be.

If you read between the lines a bit, it sounds like they want everything integrated into the operating system. That would be "one program". Good thing their antitrust trial is over.

Talk about "consumer choice". I think their ass needs to talk to their head more often. What about competing products? Irrelevant... they want to assimilate us.

Microsoft's future initiative is sure to bring about unprecedented resistence and vocalization of alternative computing platforms.

foreboding sense? but what if the software's GOOD?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everything I have read concering MS's future plans... [leaves] me with a foreboding sense of the potential synergy for furthering Microsoft's goals of complete domination"

Any way I phrase this, it's going to sound like a troll; but... what if the software, once integrated, ends up being GOOD? What if it makes people more productive, and they're WILLING to pay for it? Because if they're not, there are open-source alternatives available (as you probably know, since you're reading this in a Slashdot forum).

I am already tremendously more productive developing at work under Win2000/XP using Visual Studio and Office (yes, even including the synergistic Outlook) than I ever could be with the open source equivalents. Microsoft has sunk more time and effort (read: money and person-hours) into making these programs intuitive and largely self-configuring. Sure, their programs sometimes don't work properly. And in a moment, several of you will make fun of me for saying that MS software is frequently intuitive to work with. But here's a dirty little secret: open source software contains bugs, too! And it's not even remotely as intuitive or polished. It's all about the Mom benchmark: she could never, EVER muster up the courage send me e-mail from overseas using the 'intuitive' interfaces found on a Linux box.

Forboding sense? Nonsense. I'm hoping they make something I'd WANT to pay for. If you don't agree, just keep using the open source alternatives. The sky is not falling.

Is that a new idea ?

[bockman]

I believe there is already a program that run everything on my computer : it is called "Operating System". It just happens to use modules, called "applications" to perform the different tasks I want to do with my PC.

Kidding aside, the idea of hiding to the final user the application layer may be a good one. If this was done openly (i.e. documenting the API that each class of applications should have and allowing administrators to switch one application with another, from a different vendor, without troubles), could be a good step to make computers easier to use.

Knowing Microsoft, however ...

Re:Is that a new idea ?

[timeOday]

Why? Why is it good to try to have a single application for everything? "The Application" will have to reconfigure its interface for each type of task anyways. There is no benefit, only loss of modularity.

Re:Is that a new idea ?

[Gumber]

The desire to move away from application centric computing is an old one. Apple put a lot of money into their failed document-centric computing technology (OpenDoc). That it failed doesn't necesarrily mean that we can't do better than the current computing paradigm.

I will give Microsoft credit for trying something new, they haven't done much of it to this point, and god knows, computers suck, they need all the help they can get.

Re:Is that a new idea ?

[ealar dlanvuli]

Yeah it might be good if it wasn't a blatant attempt to circumvent their antitrust ruling.

Re:Is that a new idea ?

[bockman]

What I wanted to point out is that is much a matter of words. A well integrated operating system (much more than today OS, maybe much more than it is realistic to expect) would look to many people as a single "application".

On the other hand, we know that today operating systems actually are composed of many components, that are not so much different from applications ( even monolithic OS like Linux have things like modules and kernel threads).

Re:Is that a new idea ?

[Artine]

Perhaps what we need isn't a single application per se, but rather a paradigm wherein the average joe doesn't need to realize that he's using multiple applications. To be honest, I think MS does a good job in the way they've streamlined UIs: if you know how to work one program, you know how to work another--programs with "creative" interfaces notwithstanding--simply because you've seen all those buttons and doohickies before. If the process of using a computer could be likewise streamlined, it could make computing so much more accessible to the digitally inept. I don't, however, think that MS is the company to do it: I don't trust their business practices enough. But I think the idea is healthy.

Re:Certainly radical...

[miu]

Sorry but thats a horrible idea. Especially since it's microsoft.

If any company is capable of doing this right now it is Microsoft. The idea has a certain charm, it is a logical extension of components and virtual machines.

Microsoft engineers don't seem able to program their way out of a wet paper sack, let alone implement security features.

Individual programmers at MS probably have the same skill levels as those at any software company. The ad-hoc feature growth of many MS products is likely the cause of most of the security problems (and many stability problems as well).

Just an opinion

[Dexter77]

Atleast "The One ring" was compatible with the other rings even though it ruled them. Why can't "The one program" be compatible with the other programs if it rules them?

error message

[DarkHelmet]

We're Sorry:

The software that you're trying to run (Doom3.exe) is not compatable with current Microsoft Standards. We at Microsoft believe that one program should "Do it all", and therefore should be integrated into the Operating System's kernel.

The integrated version of Doom3.exe will appear in your kernel once the authors of said file adapt the program for use with Direct3d.

Installation of OpenGL or any software that uses OpenGL is in direct violation of your EULA. Violation of said EULA will be severely punished.
---
Thank you for using Longhorn. There are 15 days remaining until Skynet becomes self-aware. Your extra CPU-cycles are appreciated, even if required.

Re:error message

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I've ran Lognhorn (.net server rc2). OpenGL works fine, but their are no versions of DirectX to be found (Neither by default nor on microsofts directx site).

Re:error message

[chabotc]

Heh, .net server is the new Windows2000 / XP (Server) version.. Longhorn is the next XP (desktop) version. It seems your a little confused there.

this and this is how MS Longhorn currently looks. (Mind you, its alpha, so very likely to change looks a few times before release). The .NET server will sport the normal XP look.

Re:error message

[santiag0]

shockingly, skynet is up and may already be self aware: http://www.skynet.com/

Re:Certainly radical...

[cioxx]

...all programs would be able to access all data from all sources if everything was in this kind of database they are talking about

To summarize, MS version of XML concept (not MSXML, mind you).

Seems like a very bad idea. Assuming the data stored by notepad or other lite application can be accessed by a security-demanding applcation and vice-versa, I would imagine there will be a uniform security scheme put in place. And we all know how well Microsoft's security track is.

BeFS

[bradams]

...the new file system will also function efficiently with hard drives holding at least one terabyte of data...

Creating such a file system is an extraordinarily difficult task, one that has been attempted for years by database companies, including Microsoft, but that has never reached fruition.

The BFS used in BeOS uses 64 bit addressing (18 exabytes) and has been working for over 5 years...

Re:BeFS

[Jugalator]

The BFS used in BeOS uses 64 bit addressing (18 exabytes) and has been working for over 5 years...

Yeah, and IIRC the NTFS also use such addressing. So NTFS support really really large volumes in theory, but right now the limitation lies in how the partition tables are built.

But I don't really understand what Microsoft is saying here since NTFS should at least support a Terabyte. And even if it wouldn't, it's certainly not "extraordinarilty difficult task" to do.

Not sure if there's something similar going on with the BFS file system since I can guarantee no one have used a 18 Eb volume in over 5 years. :-)

Re:BeFS

[xigxag]

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.)

Re:BeFS

[Jugalator]

Exactly - FAT16 had exactly this limit (4 Gb), but NTFS obviously hasn't. Windows NT 4 had a maximum "practical" partition limit of 7.88 Gb for bootable volumes, but this was (needless to say, really) removed in Windows 2000. It obviously hasn't any problems with 200 Gb drives since these are the largest ones currently. Any restrictions that you might face are usually BIOS restrictions, and you almost never face actual file system restrictions. That would be real bad and more or less block the hard drive development.

So I guess most modern file systems like the Windows 2000/XP version of NTFS, Linux's ext3, ReiserFS, etc all allow "relatively large" volumes, the question is how large. My guess would be something like one or two terabytes, and that's why I think the author of that article really doesn't have an idea of what he's talking about.

Sure, it's probably true that WinFS will support Tb-large volumes, but I think NTFS does as well.

Re:BeFS

[TheAncientHacker]

Yes, NTFS has supported 16EB volumes since it came out 9 years ago. The difference is the word "EFFICIENTLY". NTFS can work with huge volumes but when you get into multi-TB sizes the efficiency is not ideal. (A good optimization, really, for now but not in a decade).

jack of all trades....

[GnomeKing]

Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all ...master of none

But seriously, isnt that what joe consumer wants? Something which IS jack of all trades but master of none

Word and excel are both more complicated than joe consumer wants - so what their trying to do is ressurect MS works and shove outlook and MSN messenger in there aswell?

That seems to me like it would really appeal to the OEMS, so thats what joe's gonna get...

Oh please!

[Otis_INF]

Since when are 'leaked rumours' (!) news, based on facts? Here we have an article which bases conclusions (!) on rumours.

Ok, not that the conclusions are then worth anything, but still some remarkable opinions are ventilated in the article, even when you take into account the conclusion-based-on-rumour factor.

For example:
"Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware," he said.
Come again? We're talking about a new PCI architecture here, not about a new soundcard!. And since when can I install AIX or HP-UX on ANY i386 system? Ever installed Solaris for Intel on an Intel machine you also happen to use as a workstation (f.e. with Linux on another partition?). The 'he' person definitely doesn't have a clue whatsoever about tying an OS to hardware. It's in all situations very important the OS works flawlessly with the hardware it's installed on, so yes, every OS is tied to a subset of available hardware. Big deal.

Ok, then we move on to:
"I'd like to see Microsoft act like the operating-system leader it is, not promising scores of new features or letting rumors fly but stepping forward and saying, 'We will have X, Y and Z features and not A, B and C,' " he said. "That would be leadership, especially when so many people are dependent on you."
WTF is the 'he' person to ask for this? First he throws in the rumours no-one confirmed as being true (the article clearly states MS didn't say a word about any detail concerning Longhorn) and then he wants MS to clear the sky for him about the rumours and to step forward about any featureset they'll implement in an OS which isn't even in Alpha-stadium nor a releasedate has been set.

Like Linus is going to talk about features in the 3.2 kernel, released somewhere in Q4 2004, "because so many people are dependent on you.". Sure...

Re:Certainly radical...

[pkplex]

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 :)

Paranoia or marketing to the corporate types

[mrFur]

I'm all in favour of keeping a paranoid eye open to the workings or Redmond, but it might be a bit early to start declaring the closing proximity of the sky. My favourite /. quote is the one about Bill being just a monacle and a Persian cat away from being a Bond bad guy.

The 'database' file system is not new (and many on /. have been calling for a Be-like fs). An 'all-in-one' office application? It's an interesting challenge, but based on XML, feasable.

Keep in mind though, that this type of pitch is being made to the corporate IS types. Stories like this are 'leaked' to help test the waters. The money just isn't out there any more for the latest bleeding edge operating system and Office upgrades. In order to pry the dollars out of corporate boards these days, you have to show real value, and the IT types these days only know one way to count (with their socks on that is), and that is the magical phrase "TCO". You can guarantee that the M$ marketing types will be selling the reduced training costs of the one-application scheme.

Maybe though, before completely calling it a waste of code, we can judge the ideas on their technical merits and make fun of the marketing slime later? Of course, if your just interested in getting the story posted, keep the chicken little act up ;)

Re:Paranoia or marketing to the corporate types

[Daniel Phillips]

The 'database' file system is not new (and many on /. have been calling for a Be-like fs)

My initial impression is that Reiser4 is that filesystem, and more. It's far advanced beyond the original ReiserFS.

Re:Paranoia or marketing to the corporate types

[Gumber]

"Database filesystem" can mean a lot of things. I am still trying to understand what ReiserFS4 does (the documentation is a bit eliptical), and I don't know what they are doing with the LonghornFS, but they could be rather different.

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:And there will be one Master Ring

[purrpurrpussy]

This just isn't true! I've been using Windows since 2.0 and there weren't that many users - most people stuck to MSDOS. Slowly people picked on Windows and by 3.0/3.1 there was a big pickup. There was a BIG change in 95 and a lot of people took that up. Most people thought it was for the best. This "evolved" for a while. Now there is the "XP" feel. This is starting to slay users. All the icons are different in XP. It confused the hell out of me and I still don't like it much. MS _Keeps_ changing. They feel they have to to sell anything new but users get really confused with ALL this Windows crap and forever changing Office GUIs.

The number one reason that _users_ are using windows is that when you go to the shops to buy a PC you don't get much choice and if you even asked about the software the sales people would become very confused and wonder what you were on about.

The PC was never supposed to be a home computer OR an office computer. It shows this and so does windows.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[cyber_rigger]

I agree. The look and feel of Microsoft operating systems has changed considerably.

DOS
Dosshell
Windows 3.x
Windows95 (non IE)
Windows98 (browser driven)
XP
etc..

each had a different user interface


I've been using the same user interface (olvwm) with linux since 1994

Because I can.


Linux requires less "retraining".

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[cyber_rigger]

I agree (see other post).

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[drinkypoo]

The PC was never supposed to be a home computer OR an office computer. It shows this and so does windows.

Today's PC bears so little resemblance to the original IBM PC-1 (I used to own one) that it might as well not be the same thing. In fact, the ISA bus is all but gone now, and the x86 instruction set has been expanded beyond all recognition, with half of your work being done by coprocessors or new functional units, to where it might as well not be based on the same processor any more (After all, you never enter real mode except during POST, for the BIOS.)

To say that the PC shows this is silly. Today's PC is many, many times more powerful than the Unix workstations (And servers!) that I lusted over back in the day. So to say that it was never designed for this kind of work is absurd; It has enough power of every kind to do functional computational fluid dynamics, let alone run some apps for the home or office.

Let me put it in perspective for you; The PC-1 had a 4.77MHz processor and no more than 64kB of memory without ISA expansion cards. Mine had a later upgrade of an additional 384kB on an AST card which came with a time clock as well, intended for the PC-XT (to bring it to a meg from 640k.) Now we have 2.6 GHz (and faster, with overclocking) and the average person has at least a 1.4GHz. So we are looking at 500-1000X the clock speed, and going from 16 bit to 32 bit, with a very wide fp unit which didn't even come with the oldest processors... why don't you just compare it to deep blue while you're at it.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[marauder404]

I agree with your statement that Microsoft has evolved itself with every iteration, but that wasn't the original question at hand. While your experience with Windows 2.0 is nice (I remember using that), the original poster's comment was "the general rule that I see nowadays." That doesn't include the users that it's kept since 2.0. Users nowadays are users that it's had since Windows 95, which is largely the same in key features. In less than a day, a user can move from using Windows 95 to Windows XP. I agree that the Control Panel can be confusing for old users of Windows, but clicking on the "Classic" interface option fixes that. If you tried to move a Windows 95 user to Linux in one day, I think you'd have a much more serious challenge.

Microsoft keeps changing something about the GUI because people like things that look different. Otherwise, we'd be each car would be a slightly larger, more powerful version of the same looking car. Despite this, they've managed to keep the same features in a place that's still easy enough to find.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[drinkypoo]

PCs are not designed to fufill the requirements and needs of an Office or any other situation. They are designed to be a completely "generic" computing solution and so is Windows (and Linux) and thus performs no particular task particularly well. The form of the PC is substantially unchanged from the form of 25 years ago. A box, with some other boxes and a keyboard.
...
I do agree that all the numbers have gone up though.

It's not just an issue of the numbers going up when they go up so far that the nature of the thing has completely changed. For instance, when you go from waiting on something to 'realtime' then it's safe to say it's a completely different thing. There's a world of difference, for example, in prerendering and displaying, or rendering on demand. Or, if you would like a simpler example, there's a difference between decompressing and using a cached file, than being able to decompress something on the fly.

The PC is thousands of times more powerful than it used to be. The amount of memory available in a decent home PC has gone from ~640kB to ~512mB, which is nearly (well, not that nearly) a thousandfold increase. Obviously these sorts of things will allow us to do totally new things with a PC.

Given that these days we can do realtime 3D graphics that make tron look like tempest, I'd say that the fact that the modern PC is not designed to do "office work" is a strength, not a weakness. That means you can use it for anything. Those people who bought documentation systems (like those in the old days from Sony or Xerox) regretted it soon after when PCs became popular and they could be used for writing documentation, or for doing finances, or cataloguing your recipes.

Face it, the tasks done by office are so minimal as to not tax machines generations old. We don't want special-purpose devices, that leads to proprietary, closed systems and a lack of interoperability. We want systems which are as flexible and open as possible. I know one does not necessarily lead to the other, of course.

Anyway yesterday's boxes with only serial and parallel for external I/O and less horsepower/memory/display ability than today's cheapest programmable PDAs, which is to say the low-end palmos devices, are basically nothing like today's devices with 100MB/sec external interfaces (second-generation IEEE1394) and gobs of processing power. It's not just a change in the level of power, as things have gotten easier as well. With old machines there were benefits to systems which only did one thing, but today even a handheld is multipurpose for a reason.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[drinkypoo]

we could find ourselves looking back in a few years time and thinking "we can't do now what we could do then; program a widely-needed solution, and distribute it, maybe even making some money in the process, without Microsoft's approval."

Until the day comes when Microsoft makes all the hardware, this is an impossibility. As long as people are interested in spending money for something which doesn't involve microsoft, this is not going to become a realistic scenario. Microsoft would have to have all the money to make this happen, all the market share. Every handheld, desktop, server, and so on would have to be made by microsoft.

Sure Microsoft is making some hardware now -- That is a serious issue and I do not wish to detract from it. I can definitely see them making PCs at some point, though I find it highly unlikely. I DO think it likely that they will eventually settle on some reference hardware; Use THIS particular hardware in whatever combination and you can expect a certain amount of reliability, or perhaps better (affordable) support. The only hardware I can see them continuing to make is Xbox because who else would want to build those? They'll put the XP Media Center edition on them, and make a mint selling xboxes that record stupid sitcoms for people.

The only people who are in line to lose freedom due to microsoft are those of us who run the latest greatest windows operating system. We currently have the freedom to rip off any kind of media we like and play games without dual booting. There may come a time when we will have to run one operating system in order to deprotect various types of media, and dual boot to windows to play games. I'm kind of bummed about that because I've really enjoyed not having to do that, but we all must make the occasional sacrifice.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[captaineo]

I think you've touched on something really important. Microsoft's strong commitment to backwards compatibility is often overlooked as a factor in its success. Unfortunately this does not bode well for Linux... The areas of compatibility you mention - filesystem layout, software installation and configuration methods, etc - are the ones that differ MOST between distributions, and even different versions of the same distribution! I think that when Linux vendors decide to adopt a new replacement for an old package (e.g. xinetd for inetd or glibc 2.2/3 for 2.0), they too easily dismiss the "installed base" of knowledge and software that their customers have built around the old solution.

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[jez9999]

Until the day comes when Microsoft makes all the hardware, this is an impossibility.

I'm not so sure. You see, all MS need is enough power in the software market to make hardware manufacturers *need* to comply to keep making a profit. MS don't need direct control, just indirect control. How many prebuilt PCs, especially laptops, have you seen which do NOT bear a 'designed for windows 98/ME/2k/XP' sticker on them?

As long as people are interested in spending money for something which doesn't involve microsoft, this is not going to become a realistic scenario.

Exactly. Except that this statement isn't 100% true, more accurately: As long as enough people are interested in spending money for something which doesn't involve microsoft, this is not going to become a realistic scenario.

My worry is that if the demand for non-MS products drops low enough, there won't be ENOUGH of this demand to warrant non-Palladium hardware, and that's exactly what Microsoft wants. We've seen designed-for-Microsoft hardware with Laptops, and all manner of plug+play devices. The very lack of drivers for another OS is bad enough, but if the hardware manufacturer fails to even release any kind of interface information (Canon?) for their hardware, that seems like a company positively in league with Microsoft.

I know, I'm a pessamist. :-)

Re:And there will be one Master Ring

[drinkypoo]

I'm not so sure. You see, all MS need is enough power in the software market to make hardware manufacturers *need* to comply to keep making a profit. MS don't need direct control, just indirect control. How many prebuilt PCs, especially laptops, have you seen which do NOT bear a 'designed for windows 98/ME/2k/XP' sticker on them?

All that means is that when they were picking a chipset and so on for the laptop they went down a list of hardware with (or soon to be with) microsoft certified drivers, or in earlier years, stuff on the windows HCL. It's not like they put "only run windows" in the BIOS or anything.

We've seen designed-for-Microsoft hardware with Laptops, and all manner of plug+play devices. The very lack of drivers for another OS is bad enough, but if the hardware manufacturer fails to even release any kind of interface information (Canon?) for their hardware, that seems like a company positively in league with Microsoft.

Most of the so-called "designed-for-Microsoft" laptops aren't. I had one which was supposedly designed for windows 98 but it arguably works better under linux with the notable exception of good drivers for the ATI Rage Mobility M1 ni it. It uses a nice ALi chipset and when I put gentoo linux on it (a long process on a K6/2 433) it really cruised due to everything being compiled for K6 rather than trying to run i386 code on the K6 which isn't very good at it.

You are certainly correct that many manufacturers only target windows, or maybe windows and mac, and do not provide information on how to address their devices. However there are still many PCL printers out there and whatnot. They are not as cheap but you do get what you pay for. Of course what you pay for in this case is more horsepower on the printer (appreciated) and for the patented software which they add in, but it's still worth it IMO.

More skepticism

[GeckoFood]

From the article:

"There will have to be compelling reasons" to install the new operating system, because "it costs corporations a fortune to roll it out," he said.

This overhaul of Windows is also going to require a hardware shift as well, with the Palladium architecture. So, instead of paying for just a new OS license, companies have to shell out money for new systems, too?

Granted, some of the upgrades to Windows in the past have required better hardware, but often the PCs were already up to scratch or the companies in question needed new hardware anyway. This time, a new PC is an absolute requirement.

I sincerely hope this one gets dropped on the floor and that this pass at Windows will fail. Somehow, though, I suspect it won't and that M$ will have its way again. *sigh* Pass the Mac, please...

Introducing Microsoft One Window�

[Freston Youseff]

Microsoft One Window(TM) is the only window you'll ever need to look through. It provides you with a view of everything in the world. Microsoft One Window(TM) knows all. Microsoft One Window(TM) shows you only what you want to see. Microsoft One Window(TM) is GOD.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[v(*_*)vvvv]

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.

Re:Certainly radical...

[ActiveSX]

He was talking about Longhorn (.Net) Server, not client.

Re:Especially when you see the adds :)

[NineNine]

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).

no more MS users......=)

[nobbist]

Surely, someone in Redmond must realize that they will be driving their userbase away in droves. First there is all the licensing bullcrap which we have even now. But then throw in all the Palladium etc crap and there will be mass converts no doubt....I can swear now that I will never partake in any of that....no thank you, who needs it? No one.

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[Space Coyote]

Palladium is a very ominous prospect, and the fact that Microsoft's market share will force its acceptance is reason enough to be more suspicious of a product 'just because it's from Microsoft'. You are, of course, free to continue using every MS product that comes along and not thinking too hard about their business practices, but there's no need to discourage others from looking deper into the nature of the software market and the inner operations of their computer. Thanks.

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

[zentec]

And it's a nonsense quote too.

Unix (SGI IRIX) *does* tie the OS to the hardware, just not in the way Microsoft sees as acceptable.

You're licensed per processor serial number. Just call SGI, give them a ton of cash, fire-up the license manager and enable features of the OS.

Hope this doesn't give MS any ideas....

Re:Choice quote

[mangu]

Hope this doesn't give MS any ideas....

I hope it does. Because then MS will follow SGI to irrelevant obscurity. Or better, let them follow DEC, since SGI still exists. Even a very well done OS, like VMS, couldn't survive being tied to proprietary hardware.

Re:Choice quote

[mangu]

You said it, "relatively" proprietary. The PowerPC chip wasn't developed just for the Mac. It was the cost of developing the Alpha CPU that did DEC in. In the early 1990's an Alhpa could run circles around the Pentium.

However, I wouldn't mind a Microsoft that had the same market share that Apple has today. What I don't like is that, when someone controls 90%+ of the market, everyone else must spend a lot of effort just to be compatible with the leader.

Re:Choice quote

[Reziac]

But look at the numbers for Macs: 10 years ago they had a solid 20% of the computing market. Now they're down to about 4.2%, and their market share continues to shrink every year. I think the fact that MacOS *is* tied to proprietary hardware (which also always means "more expensive and fewer choices") is 90% of the reason.

How many people here would use MacOS if it were available to run on generic PCs? Probably a helluva lot more than are willing to pay twice the money for half the hardware just so they can use MacOS.

Windows would not have become the ubiquitous OEM OS without its ability to run on any "IBM-compatible" PC. Without that, right now we'd be seeing the Dell OS, the Gateway OS, etc, etc, none of which would be interoperable or interchangeable.

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

[drinkypoo]

I hope it does. Because then MS will follow SGI to irrelevant obscurity. Or better, let them follow DEC, since SGI still exists. Even a very well done OS, like VMS, couldn't survive being tied to proprietary hardware.

My understanding of why VMS died is simply that it wasn't Unix. Why go through the trouble of using this crufty, even-less-intuitive-than-Unix system when the installed base keeps shrinking? OpenVMS was too little, too late. Meanwhile the Unix installed base kept growing.

BTW saying let them follow DEC is not a solution. Digital was purchased by Compaq, and now Compaq and HP are one. HP is not exactly known for openness (but at least they never tried to keep PCL a secret, that would have been the ultimate in stupidity) but Compaq is known for being the spawn of satan, making the worst hardware and the worst drivers at all times.

Anyway it's not how good the OS is that makes it survive on proprietary hardware, look at MacOS or AIX. Both survive on the strength of marketing; AIX has an added advantage in that it comes from IBM, who I would still consider THE heavy hitter in the "All your Unix are belong to us" category. I do sometimes wonder where AIX is going with IBM putting so much work into Linux; IRIX likewise. Maybe IBM and SGI are both planning to dropkick their own Unix and go exclusively to Linux? It's almost got all the necessary features...

Re:Choice quote

[sydbarrett74]

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?

Isn't that what the Xbox is? Notice MS's big push into the living-room and all of its media initiatives. It would be a *very* small step for MS to start touting the Xbox as a general-purpose home solution. Now I know you guys are saying, 'Well that's great, but what about the corporate setting?' I've got an answer for that too. Look at their big push for a return to fat servers and thin clients. What if they are gearing .NET Server to run on big, locked-down iron, connected to crippled thin clients (nothing more than displays and input devices)? This is how I see it going. And it makes more sense. Sally in HR won't be as much of a headache for the desktop support guys if all she can do is use apps run remotely from a server as opposed to installing her own shit.

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:Choice quote

[runenfool]

I don't know why anyone even bothers to quote that knucklehead (Enderle) any more. I must hear a dumb comment from him about once a week.

Fire up google and take a look, hes got some choice ones. The guy pretty much seems to complain no matter what the topic is. I always thought he was pro Microsoft from reading my Mac/Linux sites, but thats not really the case. He just complains about everything.

Sheesh, I should be an 'analyst'. I wonder how much they get paid ...

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[NineNine]

Well, the problem is is that this article is not news. It hasn't been news for a long, long time. It seems that the editors meet every few hours and say, "Well, we haven't- posted anything anti-MS in the last hour... let's just rehash this Palladium thing. It'll get us some more traffic, and people can gab ad-infinitum about how evil MS is."

Hmmmmmm

[IamTheRealMike]

Does anybody else get the impression that they're running at full speed, but that Linux might actually be running faster? At the moment of course, Windows is ahead of the game by a long way, but seeing the figures in that article made me wonder just how fast MS really can develop Windows.

I know there is a hard limit of about 5000 developers, during the Win2K development cycle they hit this limit and found it was almost impossible to manage. Therefore Windows development speed is basically linear, right? But Linux doesn't have that problem to anywhere near the same degree. I wonder how much of this is hype (most i expect) and how much will really finally make it. And I wonder where Linux will be when Longhorn does come out....

Re:Hmmmmmm

[Waffle Iron]

Does anybody else get the impression that they're running at full speed, but that Linux might actually be running faster?

My observation over time has been that Linux seems to stay about 3 or 4 years behind Windows in the area of user interaction. For example, the latest RedHat 8.0 release with KDE finally has an elusive "buttery smoothness" that I first noticed with Win2K. (Yes, I know Macs probably had it since 1932, but I don't use those.) RH8 even supports mostly point-and-click administration functionality.

The thing is, going forward from here, I don't see the incremental improvements in OSes as being very compelling. For example, I've had no reason whatsoever to use Windows XP over Win2K. This means that even if the Linux user interface remains a few years behind Windows, the difference becomes less and less important over time.

As far as a database filesystem, I think it will be like the NT security model vs UNIX. Better in theory, but too complicated for anybody to actually use effectively. In the past, the NT security permissions were usually left too loose because nobody wanted to deal with figuring out appropriate settings. Likewise, I'll bet that in the real world, the relational database filesystem will be mostly organized into a strict heirarchy just like today. The bottom line is that it won't have much value for the average user.

Re:Hmmmmmm

[fymidos]

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.

Re:Hmmmmmm

[IamTheRealMike]

My observation over time has been that Linux seems to stay about 3 or 4 years behind Windows in the area of user interaction. For example, the latest RedHat 8.0 release with KDE finally has an elusive "buttery smoothness" that I first noticed with Win2K.

I think you noticed the increase in HZ, a relatively minor kernel tweak that makes it feel a lot more responsive on the desktop, but it slightly lowers server performance. Up until now Redhat haven't been trying on the desktop really, no optimizations that could have been done but weren't for instance.

Comparing Redhat and XP, well they both have strengths and weaknesses of course, and XP is on top, but not by as much as I was expecting. XP is still easier, but you can see that although it's not "done" yet (graphical install of packages, but no graphical uninstall for instance) Redhat is at long last moving forwards at full speed on the desktop. It'll be fascinating to see how Redhat 9 or whatever we're on by then stacks up against Longhorn usability wise.

Re:Bearer of bad news

[FooBarWidget]

Uhm... BeOS is already dead...

In market forces I trust

[melonman]

I think some people posting on this topic have spent too much time watching the X files. It's only an operating system guys, and, if it is as radically different to previous versions of Windows as is claimed in the article, it is going to have to compete not only with Linux and friends, but also with W2k and XP.

So if it really does offer something fundamentally new and useful that outweighs the disadvantages of DRM, people might buy new hardware and switch. If not, they won't. And even if the new OS is a runaway success, it will have to talk to W2K, XP and Un*x servers or it just won't work on the current Internet.

In other words, if things pan out as stated in the article (which is by no means certain), Windows 04 is going to have to compete without most of the advantages enjoyed by previous versions, so it should be a much more even fight between MS and OSS. And could it be that this is what has really got everyone spooked?

Re:In market forces I trust

[inode_buddha]

I don't think so... I think what really has everyone spooked is the tie-in to the hardware, combined with Microsoft's past business practices, especially wrt OEM contracts and their market coverage. Please refer to my post later on down the page. Thanks.

Re:In market forces I trust

[bockman]

...it is going to have to compete not only with Linux and friends, but also with W2k and XP.

What if :

• Microsoft discontinues W2k and XP: new PCs will come installed only with the new OS
• software and media companies release DVD, CD & such so that only works with the new OS ( because of the equation "no freedoom == no piracy")

Market works when there _is_ strong competition, the same competition that Microsoft killed in the last 20 years.Otherwise, market laws always reward the strongest, and guess who is it?

Re:In market forces I trust

[melonman]

Microsoft discontinues W2k and XP: new PCs will come installed only with the new OS

In that case

• faced with having to retrain their staff and upgrade their hardware anyway, and being less than happy at being forced to do so by Microsoft, companies will look at the other options, and a fair number will realise that the alternatives are better.
• There will be a huge market for non-knobbled PCs and software to run on them in the developing world, China, Russia and anywhere where people don't currently pay for MS licences anyway. This will produce a glut of cheap and powerful 'Made in China' PCs which will provide serious competition to the expensive knobbled PCs

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.

Re:In market forces I trust

[Have Blue]

Even MS isn't immune to the chicken-and-egg problem. Reduced (not eliminated) piracy is not going to be enough to convince companies to pick the OS with a few thousand uers over the OS with tens of millions. And people are already not moving to XP because Win2K is "good enough".

Re:In market forces I trust

[Anne Thwacks]

IBM used to rule the entire galaxy, with a corporate strategy of "we will tell the users what we want them to know, and they are too stupid to think for themselves"

Like MS and the PC, it worked pretty well on first time buyers. However, there came a time, fist with mainframes, then with minis, when there were no more first time buyers - they people wised up!

People are now asking not what they can do for MS, but what MS can do for them

And making them pay money for a new set of bugs, and faster virus infection is not the answer that will sell kit.

Its right about now that people are saying "I dont want a new computer - I barely know how to use the one I have got, and that's taken me 6 years of learning. It aint broke, so I aint gonna fix it."

Give them two years more, and they will be saying [cue fiddle music, drink Jack Daniels] "I want want the nerds have - their machines don't keep falling off the road into the ditch."

Re:In market forces I trust

[HiThere]

You haven't been paying attention to their licensing and upgrade policies. They are switching to a subscription based system, so software will expire as your license runs out. (This has suffered setbacks recently, but they are clearly headed in this direction.) Also, recent security patches contain back-modifications to your original EULA, so your rights to continued use are questionable... do you read the EULAs for all of the security patches you download?

All they need to do is upgrade everything to a subscription-based plan, with, perhaps, a 3-5 year period before expiration. Then at some point they can just cease providing renewals. It is quite possible that they will be able to manage things so that the only software that can read your files is the new MS All-in-one software package (think of the various provisions of the DMCA, re: encyrption and unlicensed decoding).

All of the pieces are in place except the main one. Which is currently being built. Now all they need to do is construct the slaughterhouse's entry ramp, so the cattle won't see what's coming. It's looking like a pretty easy job at this point... if they can get enough people to accept their subscription based system. That's the main danger to MS of people refusing to upgrade. (Loss of current revenues is important, but secondary.)

Re:In market forces I trust

[melonman]

do you read the EULAs for all of the security patches you download?

You are making a false assumption here. I install my first ever Windows system in a couple of weeks' time. I'm typing this on one of my 15 or so Linux machines (and cursing the fact that there is a bug in the Mozilla cut and paste). Never owned a machine with Windows in my life. I am Mr Not Windows himself. I just don't think that believing your own scare stories is always good for your health.

The subscription thing hasn't happened yet (next March was the last date I heard). If it does, and if people buy into it, they deserve everything they get. But they could just sit tight with W2K, which isn't going to expire, has had a lot of the bugs fixed, and which MS will have to keep fixing for several more years, and wait for MS to change their policy, which they will if large corporate users rebel. There are plenty of people still using NT 4 or 5 because they couldn't see the point of upgrading and/or they thought NT was a better system for their needs.

I think you massively underestimate the intelligence of many MS corporate users. They read the papers, they know that MS isn't their fairy godmother, but they continue to use MS because, at the moment, the benefits outweigh the inconveniences. If and when the balance shifts, they will change, and, as I said at the start, MS introducing a radically new product gives them the ideal opportunity to do so.

Re:In market forces I trust

[HiThere]

You may be right. I'm judging their intelligence based on the opinions expressed by my boss. He never installs software, and doesn't read EULAs. And he trusts MS. Linux has been infiltrating the company against his expressed wishes, and is hiding in the server room with a low profile. (Yeah, he knows it exists. And he wishes it would go away, but not quite enough to tell people that it must.)

I can see it now.....

[Newer Guy]

Computer: Dave, this is Billcomp2010. You haven't completed your reading of my EULA, Dave. Dave: Bill can this wait? I'm doing a spacewalk now. Computer: Sorry Dave, my program and your life support will be terminated in 20 seconds. Dave: Noooo....(runs into airlock and begins pulling memory cards and hot swap drives) Computer: What are you doing Dave? Is that a Linux CD you have there Dave? I'm afraid, Dave. Dave: Pound sand, Bill!

Again they copy Apple.

[grub]

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.

Viruses are outdated

[lvdrproject]

You're forgetting that with Palladium (TM) ® © viruses won't be allowed onto your computer!

Re:Viruses are outdated

[Sj0]

voice from the camera:Excuse me, I noticed you are writing a letter...

So I guess,

[Kashif Shaikh]

The Great Pyramid of Microsoft has completed?

Did you see the part about...

[inode_buddha]

"...neither Linux nor Unix is tied to the hardware."

Thank $DEITY for that, I say. I don't need to question my OS security and large file support deeply enough to require special hardware.

That's an interesting idea about having it all in one app -- I just hope people eventually learn the difference between an app and an OS. Not that M$'s statements under oath will make that any easier.

BTW I thought it was funny how NTFS is (evidently) considered to be new and advanced... yawns...

An anecdote regarding all this: my General Manager enthusiastically told me a few months ago that the "NT" part of "Windows NT" stands for "New Technology". Er, IMO it's only new if you've been hiding under a very obscure rock for the last 20 years. On a feature-by-feature basis there's nothing new about any of the ideas implemented in NT, and I have to wonder how this is any different aside from relying on hardware to do the job that the software should be doing in the first place.

Re:Did you see the part about...

[gl4ss]

well.. one funny thing when win2k, you'll see this text 'based on winNT technology', windows new technology technology....

almost makes me want to shout developers developers developers.

Re:Did you see the part about...

[inode_buddha]

Heh, thanks. I saved the jpeg and added it to my /usr/local/doc for future reference. Now I've got something to laugh at for a few days, thanks again!

Re:Did you see the part about...

[cqnn]

No, just "based on WinNT Technology"

FTC regulations prohibited MS from using the word "New" in NT after the
third year it was out, that's why NT "doesn't stand for anything" now,
even though it stood for "new technology" before.

Re:Did you see the part about...

[UncleFluffy]

that's why NT "doesn't stand for anything" now, even though it stood for "new technology" before.

Oh, I thought it stood for "Nice Try", as in:

Windows 0.1

Windows 0.2

Windows 0.3

Windows 0.31

Windows "Nice Try"

Windows 0.95

Windows 0.98

Windows 2.000 "stable at last"

I am not that worried

[codepunk]

Hardware purchases at my company go like this....

COMPANY: Does it run linux?

VENDOR: It will soon!

COMPANY: Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Re:I am not that worried

[TheAncientHacker]

You mean it isn't:

COMPANY: Does it run linux?

VENDOR: We include a TechRef so you can write your own drivers and install routines to run under linux. After that, if we like your work, we'll sell it back to you as part of our price for the upgrade to the next version

COMPANY: Wonderful. You're true followers of Open Source.

Holy crap!

[Rhinobird]

Dilbert is coming true. Remember the one where Dilbert is at the computer store and the saleman says something like "this computer only has 1 button and we push that for you before is leaves the factory".

Re:Holy crap!

[soccerisgod]

The complete quote (the funniest part is missing):

Salesman: ...but by far, this computer is our most user-friendly. The pre-installed software has only one button. And we press it before it leaves the factory.
Dilbert: What does it do?
Salesman: Whoa! I'm in over my head. Let me give you their tech support number.

Source: Casual Day has gone too far.
Gotta love it :D

Scary stuff ...

[fleppir]

... but this must spell the final doom of M$. Even if the average consumer is a lemming, corporate entities must have the sense of seeing that this is akin to giving Bill control of their computers.

I'd like to see Corporate America swallow that wad ...

Re:Scary stuff ...

[TheAncientHacker]

OK. That gave me a good laugh. Thank you. Trusting Corporate Purchasing Officers to make intellegent decisions based on anything other than purchase and support costs? These people actually believe ROI and TCO numbers.

Re:Scary stuff ...

[tswinzig]

I'd like to see Corporate America swallow that wad ...

I dunno, I've seen Microsoft polish a turd and sell it as chocolate before.

You say it's giving Microsoft control over their computers. Microsoft will sell it based on the "increased security -- no more computer breakins at your company, no more viruses, no more downtime, reduced IT staff, and lower TCO."

I'm using XP right now, but Apple is looking better every day.

there is no strategy there

[g4dget]

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.

If Microsoft is going to put everything into a single program, presumably with loadable .NET-based components for extensible functionality, why did they just spend a decade moving towards a UNIX-like multi-process operating system? The NT/XP kernel and technologies like XML are redundant and inefficient for building that kind of system.

What this tells me is that the company has no clue where they are going. Most of their technologies (NT/XP, C#/.NET, XML/SOAP, DRM, etc.) are "me-too" reactions to industry fads. And a few ideas are somewhat dated gee-whiz gearhead ideas that seem to pop up randomly out of their research organization ("database-as-filesystem", etc.). The only thing that is predictable is that Ballmer and Microsoft marketing will try to figure out how to sell that stuff to the public.

Re:there is no strategy there

[g4dget]

MS already has one big ol' app, and had it for a very long time. It comes bundled with many PCs. MSWorks anyone?

MS Works is not an all-in-one program--it's a bunch of separate programs held together by a launcher and a common brand name. Also, MS Works, unlike MS Office, is not a platform for third party software. And MS Works doesn't integrate web browsing and multimedia display any better than any other Microsoft environment. So, no, it isn't an instance of what Microsoft is promising here.

Re:Especially when you see the adds :)

[Schnapple]

Even better question - if a site is so anti-You, then why do You advertise on them?

Then again perhaps its because the (maybe) 5% of the world that use Linux come here to this one place and they want to try and convert them back. Of course, Dell and AOL advertising in hardcore magazines like PCXL found out the hard way that this approach doesn't work.

Yukon Good Idea

[Aaron M. Renn]

Microsoft is not the only one working on a filesystem that does (if I read the article right) what Yukon does. Vendors like Oracle are already doing something similar today. They realize that most content today exists as "unstructured" data (ie., not columns in relational database tables). They are enhancing their software to more easily handle unstructured data through the database. I actually think this can be a good thing: databases already can manage very huge amounts of data across multiple physical stores. This extends the concept to unstructure files. You can run SQL like operations against it, use enhanced indexing and search techniques, export the content easily using the built-in database access tools (WebDAV views and the like), etc. You get robust role based security, excellent logging/monitoring (which some people might think is a bad thing).

I'll use Oracle as an example because I'm more familiar with it. When you store things like PowerPoints and the like into Oracle, through their products like InterMedia you can automatically do things like search for content insides of these "opaque" files (not just look for file names in a filesystem directory), automate metadata generation (e.g., width/heigh/color depth, etc for images), transcode from one format to another, etc. At this point, most of the capabilities I've seen are "toolkit" oriented. That is, they enable developers to build apps that take advantage of them but aren't necessarily suitable for use directly by end users. I believe all of oracle.com is managed in this way, so check it out.

If Yukon is basically doing a similar thing in extending SQL Server to support unstructured content well, this could very much be a good thing in terms of functionality.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss MS's security talk as just another way to take over the world. Obviously, these guys are very focused on market success and very focused on competition with GNU/Linux and free software. But they understand that in general security flaws have been a huge achilles heel for their products and they are doing a number of things top to bottom throughout their development process to really wring out security bugs and make more robust software. I can't reveal what most of this is due to non-disclosure, but from what I've seen MS are treating security very seriously and are focusing on the "security gap" in the same way they've focused on competitor functionality in the past.

Re:Yukon Good Idea

[SuiteSisterMary]

You can see an interesting implementation of this with Exchange 2000.

Exchange 2000 has a mail store; the IS. How you get to it really doesn't matter; they've a POP3 front end, an IMAP4 front end, a WebDAV front end, a MAPI front end, a windows Explorer front end (go check out the M: drive of your exchange box some day,) an HTTP front end (OWA for Exch2000 is NOT a set of ASP scripts like it was in Exch5.x, which actually really sucks when you want to deploy it on your !exchange front end) and so on.

Bleaaargh

[TrancePhreak]

MS does something. Slashdot reacts with extreme criticism. Repeat next day.

Data oriented computing?

[harlows_monkeys]

The "one program" thing reminds me of early Mac, in a way. I don't mean in implementation, but in feel.

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.

Re:Data oriented computing?

[cyberformer]

They've been talking about this for ages. It was supposedly their reasoning for tying the Web browser to the operating system: People would use the Web browser interface to do everything, including edit Word and Excel files.

You can actually do this now, and have been able to since Windows 98, but it isn't really a good idea. I find that editing a .doc in IE often makes Word crash, and of course loading MS office files from random Web sites is always risky (because they can contain executable code).

You're concerned *now*?

[fallacy]

Wait until Microsoft actually publishes what they plan to implement in Longhorn, rather than what some analysts predict the plan is...

Will due respect (perhaps) to the analysts, the article reads more like a cute marketing ploy or extreme FUD: haven't Microsoft brought out enough drivel in those areas to warrant even more coming from unofficial/non-connected sources?
I mean, please, when people are quoted as saying "Neither Linux nor Unix ties the operating system to hardware,...This could bring [for Windows] a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised." then exactly how much respect does the article warrant? Not only are the quotes lacking in true factual content, but the majority is damn right humourous (in the groaning sense)!

[Disclaimer: I'm ranting at the article and its content, not the fact that it was submitted to /.]

We are Trapperkeeper ...

[ProfMoriarty]

After reading the article, and others' comments ...

Am I the only one who gets the image of Longhorn looking like Cartman's TrapperKeeper?

You will be assimilated ...

Re:We are Trapperkeeper ...

[Speare]

Am I the only one who gets the image of Longhorn looking like Cartman's TrapperKeeper?

Ah always, Ah say Ah always think of "Foghorn Leghorn," th' barnyard rooster always tryin', Ah say always tryin' to outsmart that wiley Dawg. Now Ah come to think of it, the Chicken Hawk looks a lot like Bill Gates.

More paranoia.

[Martigan80]

Well chalk me up with the other paranoid people, but I don't like this one bit. Some might think that the normal consumers might not buy it because they want backwards compatibility. Well allot of main-stream users just do internet, games, and office stuff. It's easy for office to accept older version BUT make it mandatory to convert them (they did it with the move from Access 97 to Access 2000). SO people can still import their office stuff, and move their ICQ number and address book over and their you go. After the whole 9-11 most mainstreamer are scared, through in the whole ID theft in America consumers are starting to scream for security, and here is MS promising all that, but in order for them to do it they need to take control of the Hardware to ensure we get quality products and the best security. Who do you think would be the best target for this? Maybe the new Home Land Security Department-170,000 people that need to communicate and share classified data.
Yes I am scared, all MS need is to get the big 5% in Americas technology department Head Hanchos and you have a good start.

If market forces worked, there'd be no anti-trust

[michaelmalak]

It's only an operating system guys

Why not kill people -- they're only "ugly bags of water."

Why get so concerned about the Constitution -- it's only a piece of paper.

The fear is that with everyone running MS-Windows and MS-Office for backward compatibility, every action, surf, and communication will be logged by the cooperating partners in power and control, multi-national corporations (such as Microsoft) and government.

For the latest attempt at domination, see the recent story on my blog, "Microsoft and US gov teaming up to monopolize new 'certified e-mail' postmark". Pretty soon, to send an e-mail to your Aunt Mildred, you're going to have to pay Microsoft a dollar whereupon it will possibly also be logged in a government database.

How exactly would Linux handle 5000 developers?

[EnglishTim]

So you say that MS couldn't handle more than 5000 developers... How exactly would they all be handled with Linux? You'd have thought if there was some magic pixie dust that you could sprinkle on Linux development that would make it cope with that kind of developer input, they'd have tried it at Microsoft...

Re:How exactly would Linux handle 5000 developers?

[IamTheRealMike]

They are all handled by Linux, easily, today. Basically because Linux has a decentralised management structure, ie you can have 3 teams working on the same thing in different ways and the best is chosen by competition. Look at how many people work on the Linux kernel - do you think the Windows kernel gets that much work put into it?

Re:How exactly would Linux handle 5000 developers?

[sjames]

The magic pixie dust is the free flow of information. Linux development need not concern itself with keeping the source code a deep dark secret, anyone who wants to can just grab the entire source tree and study and reuse any part of it that they choose. There's little need to 'manage' a team that is developing a subsystem. No charts and graphs and timelines to slavishly adhere to. No danger that you'll come in in the morning and discover that your latest revision (the one with the bug) was declared 'released' and burned to CD.

All of that stuff happens when source code must be a protected secret, and it adds a great deal of management overhead.

Re:How exactly would Linux handle 5000 developers?

[sjames]

There's managed and managed. Yes, there is a need to manage what does or does not get into the project, but there's no need to spend 3 days guessing that some phase of the project will take 2 days to complete.

In other words, I didn't say the code didn't need to be managed, just the team. The overall manager (Linux for example) need not manage ALSA for example. There is communication there so that everything can be put together, but nothing so heavy handed as you would see in a proprietary software shop.

Those who live by the sword...

[darkov]

I have to agree. A lot of people migrated to Win95 becuase it was 32 bit and a much better interface. How many people are still there are will remain there? Microsoft and Intel have profited in the past from people's loathing change. If they ever want to do anything different, they're going to find it works against them. As Intel has found with Itanium. Go Opteron!

Re:Bearer of bad news

[mrkurt]

The timeframe that's quoted in the PI article is optimistic-- MS probably isn't going to get Longhorn out the door until late '05/'06. In the meantime, there's a window of opportunity for other OS platforms to keep revving, and to appeal to hardware manufacturers to offer a pre-installed version of Linux, like what Wal-Mart is doing for Lindows and Mandrake. MS has given OSS this opportunity to get a bigger foothold in the marketplace. They need to take advantage of it.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[mickwd]

"I am already tremendously more productive.....than I ever could be with the open source equivalents"

If you'd said "I am already tremendously more productive.....than I would currently be with the open source equivalents" I could believe this as a valid opinion.

So what is it about open source software that will mean it will never get that way ?

Compare the useability of Microsoft Windows 95 (especially OSR2 with the desktop shell) with Linux of the same vintage.

No contest.

But since then ?

Marginal improvements to Windows useability. Huge improvements with Linux (and other open-source OS) useability.

OK, so it's not quite there yet - but it won't be long.

And perhaps if your mom wants to send e-mail from overseas she could use the popular "web browser" interface on a web-based e-mail system. I'm sure even your mom could manage that ;)

Re:If market forces worked, there'd be no anti-tru

[melonman]

everyone running MS-Windows and MS-Office for backward compatibility

That's a great argument against what the article is suggesting catching on.

And the main backwards compatibility issue is not with file formats, it's with users. The big thing going for Microsoft is that the majority of the world's users equate the Microsoft Way with how a computer should work.

If Microsoft break their own mould, they are going to meet the same resistance that currently hinders the take-up of alternative operating systems. They could stop renewing licences for XP server, but then, if people have to change anyway, they are going to look at all the options, which has to be good for open source...

...Providing the open source community has a product that does what Aunt Mildred wants as easily as Windows does it. Which, I fear, is going to be the problem.

You are not taking the long view

[abe ferlman]

or even the medium term view. If win9x is competing with win04, what do you do? Two things:

1. Stop fixing win95 problems when they pop up (yes they do pop up, as certain as the sun rising every day). Eventually retire the OS so that users of this ancient operating system become software renegades, but first make it even more difficult to use than it was when it first came out so that there won't be much fuss when it's eventually retired.

2. Use those billions in the bank to pay a few companies to make software that requires features in newer versions of windows, i.e., not backwards-compatible with win98/ME any more. Microsoft has the money to play this waiting game, and they face no threat from the courts, so every day their influence grows. X-Files indeed- I think you're the one living in the imaginary world.

You say it's just an operating system, why have I been *forced* to use it at every job I've had since at least 1997? They are a *monopoly* and they abuse their power in ways that make life miserable for the rest of us.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[melonman]

Stop fixing win95 problems

It's a seven year-old product: why should they keep fixing it? If I post a bug in a seven year-old version of emacs to a newsgroup, I'm going to get flamed, and rightly so. In the case we are discussing, people could stop at XP, and MS's longstanding policy is to support the previous OS, so I wouldn't even start to worry until 2006-2008

Not backwards compatible

Is all the open source stuff released this year compatible with the original Linux kernel? Or even with the pre-version 2.4 kernel? Should it be? Would this make any sense whatsoever? I think MS's main problem is that they spent far too long trying to be too backwards compatible. Most OSS projects don't have this problem because they don't have a non-geek user base...

Forced to use Windows in every job

Nonsense, you just picked the wrong jobs. It's either a life and death issue or it isn't. If it is a life and death issue, make not using Windows the first criterion for choosing an employer and live with the consequences. If it isn't, take the money and stop complaining. I've never used Windows in any job at any point, which might be why I probably earn less than you do. I'm about to install W2K on one server, but that was my choice, no-one made me, and the reasons for doing so have more to do with the lamentable state of much OSS applications software than with Microsoft's monopoly.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[abe ferlman]

Ok, we're kind of off the topic you originally suggested, that DRM won't happen because the old versions of windows will compete with it- in fact, you seem to concede my point that in the long run (by 2006-8), DRM *will* be a serious problem, and Microsoft is willing and able to wait that long to bring their monopoly force to bear.

It's a seven year-old product: why should they keep fixing it? If I post a bug in a seven year-old version of emacs to a newsgroup, I'm going to get flamed

The reason for the difference is that emacs doesn't lock you into a forced pay-for-upgrade cycle. And they certainly won't lock you into an "accept-DRM-or-face-obsolesence" scheme. Most importantly, if you'd like to fork the old version and fix the problems with it you can. No such luck with non-free software.

so I wouldn't even start to worry until 2006-2008

Again, this is my point. You are not willing to imagine that 2006 will actually come someday. I feel it's likely, and in fact I think we're less than 4 years away from it.

Forced to use Windows in every job

Nonsense, you just picked the wrong jobs. It's either a life and death issue or it isn't.

Again, your lack of subtlety amazes me. There is quite a bit of middle ground. The jobs I could have taken that didn't require windows would not have enabled me to pay both my rent and my student loans. It's reasonable to expect a certain degree of choice in the economy, but in terms of operating systems I have had none.


If it is a life and death issue, make not using Windows the first criterion for choosing an employer and live with the consequences. If it isn't, take the money and stop complaining.

So no complaining if you don't like your situation? You must be great fun at parties. The ability to not use windows is actually very high on my list, but slightly below subsistence. In a fair economy I wouldn't be forced to choose between them. In this economy, just getting a job that pays my bills is tough enough.

I've never used Windows in any job at any point, which might be why I probably earn less than you do.

I applaud your ability to navigate the job market so capably. I assure you that most of us are not so talented. And I'd be surprised if you made much less than me.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[melonman]

in the long run (by 2006-8), DRM *will* be a serious problem

Only if DRM delivers: even if all companies start at 100% take-up at kit renewal time, they are going to have several years to do a cost benefit analysis before changing their last machines, and, in the meantime, the new system had better work with the old one.

Locked into paying upgrades

No-one is locked anywhere. If you want to upgrade from W95 to Redhat 8 and Open Office 6, with all that entails, good and bad, MS is not going to kick your door down. People are locked in because, at the end of the day, MS and all its works is perceived as the least bad option.

Worrying until 2008

Sure it's coming, it's just that a lot can happen in between.

Non-Windows jobs don't pay enough

Sorry, my last posting was a bit crass in this respect, but, even assuming that what you say is true, is this really MS's fault? If successful companies run MS, could it be that at least some of them actually find that it delivers for them? From what I see, Linux sys admins, for example, earn a very good living, ie using Linux to do something that it does well pays good money. If you are tied to being near a campus that may not help though.

No fun at parties

Actually, you're right :-) But I'm all for moaning, it's the open source victim mentality that gets me. No-one asked me to make a personal stand against MS, so why should I expect sympathy?

I make less than you

OK, so maybe we are the two worst paid /.ers in history!

Re:You are not taking the long view

[Dexx]

> Stop fixing win95 problems when they pop up
They have - as of end of year it's no longer supported software.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[FooBarWidget]

"It's a seven year-old product: why should they keep fixing it?"

Because Windows is not modular and not open source. You cannot upgrade individual components. You cannot fix a problem yourself. You must PAY for bugfixes (new versions of Windows), which means you'll probably have to buy new hardware too.

"If I post a bug in a seven year-old version of emacs to a newsgroup, I'm going to get flamed, and rightly so."

Upgrading from Emacs 1 to Emacs 21 doesn't require you to pay for anything (ok, except bandwidth costs) or upgrade your hardware. Upgrading from Win95 to XP does.
You're comparing an application upgrade to an operating system upgrade.

What about Linux kernel 2.0? Still being maintained. Or even 0.0.3! Still being maintained.

"Is all the open source stuff released this year compatible with the original Linux kernel? Or even with the pre-version 2.4 kernel?"

The original (0.0.3)? Not likely. Pre-2.4? Definitely! If you recompile OpenOffice/Mozilla/Gnome2/KDE3/whatever under RedHat 6.2 (with a 2.2 kernel), everything will work just fine.

"Should it be? Would this make any sense whatsoever?"

The software work under 2.2, so I guess it does make sense.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[melonman]

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).

Re:You are not taking the long view

[abe ferlman]

at the end of the day, MS and all its works is perceived as the least bad option.

Are you sure it's not because they use closed binary file types that refuse to interoperate properly with other programs, and abuse their monopoly position to ensure that even if people don't like them they still have to use them?

At the end of the day, people have no other choice because the government has no spine for real anti-trust enforcement. Perhaps things are different in Europe, but that's the way things are here.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[FooBarWidget]

"So why did anyone upgrade, if the new one does the same thing as the old one?"

The new one doesn't do "the same thing as the old one". Let's see... better performance, better hardware support, better filesystems, new features, and because it's included in distributions by default.
Newer kernels are better, but that doesn't mean all the current apps suddenly cease to work with older kernels. People didn't upgrade because apps will cease to work on 2.2, it's because 2.4 is better.

"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."

For most desktop software you probably won't notice a thing, especially on modern CPUs.

Re:You are not taking the long view

[7-Vodka]

Forced to use Windows in every job

"It's either a life and death issue or it isn't."

Ohmegod. Here's someone who takes living life through binary way too seriously :P

Re:You are not taking the long view

[melonman]

Are you sure it's not because they use closed binary file types that refuse to interoperate properly with other programs

They only have as much power as the consumer gives to them. They can use their monopoly to make moving to another system difficult, but, long term, obstruction is no substitute for giving people what they want.

If and when OSS offers tangible benefits to end users, people will switch. The problem as I perceive it is that the people who make the decisions see desktops rather than tight kernels, and, on the desktop functionality front, Linux looks, at best, like a slightly quirky clone of a Windows interface. Yes, yes, X was there first, but that's not an argument for 2002.

As long as the converts to OSS are limited to the IT department, everyone else will be dragged away from their talking paperclips kicking and screaming, and MS will continue to win.

Anyway, that's not the kind of talk that made America great!

Good one

[theolein]

Thanks, this one gave me a good laugh today.

Re:Certainly radical...

[Sj0]

Integrating everything into the OS isn't really a new idea. They've been doing it with the web browser for years, and KDE has been doing something like that as well.

Of course, I don't nessessarily have to use KDE(I've been looking at Enlightenment lately because it feels so much different than anything else out there), whereas I'm pretty much forced to use Explorer to use MS' OS.

Opportunity for Open Source

[mrkurt]

Obviously, Longhorn is not going to come out as early as 2004-- the PI article is at least fair enough to quote another source who knows better than to believe the MS PR. Since the new OS is not likely to be out for another three years, this is a chance for the open source community to make its case to the public of why it should try its products.

The first case for open source will be, "You don't have to give up your old computer!" We already know that Linux and other OSs can be installed on x86 hardware; it has to be easy to install, and it has to have all the other things that people are accustomed to having on their machines. Finally, it has to have programs that are compatible with common file formats, like MS Office. With OpenOffice, that last need has largely been fulfilled, where it comes to productivity.

What would also be helpful is to pitch open source products to hardware manufacturers, as a way to sell more units. If not to the consumer market, then to the business market. Having Linux pre-installed on machines would make the transition to open source a lot easier for the enterprise. Of course, with Longhorn, the promise for the HW people is that they can sell a lot more units in the future with Longhorn. But, in the meantime, they may be struggling with machines that can only be loaded with warmed over versions of XP.

The other thing that has to happen is that people need to be made aware of what DRM really represents. If you don't like MS having admin rights on your machine (as they do with the latest SPs on Win 2k and XP), you sure as hell won't like DRM-enabling Palladium. It's about freedom, and I think a simple slogan on a T-shirt to get this home could be: "DRM=Total Information Awareness". "Trusted Computing" is just a slogan, when the count on security patches for Windows and related products this year is 65; for open source, it's closer to 10. Which do you think is more "trustworthy"?

No worse than StarOffice

[bjtuna]

remember the old slogan from StarOffice, "Do Everything in One Place" ?

Sounds a bit like that.

MS is already doing this, its called COM

[LM741N]

COM= "component object model"

Programming the COM in Python led me to the realization that most MS programs are just wrappers for the COM. Thats why its so easy, for example, to embed Visio drawings in Powerpoint, etc, etc.

BTW, with PythonWin you can access the MS COM directly without even starting a program. e.g. I've used the Excel functions to bring up a spreadsheet, fill it with data, and then save it, all without ever calling Excel.

Rob.

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.

Anti-monopoly != Open source advocate

[michaelmalak]

...Providing the open source community has a product that does what Aunt Mildred wants as easily as Windows does it. Which, I fear, is going to be the problem.

Breaking Microsoft's monopoly doesn't necessarily mean looking to the open source community to provide an alternate OS. It could be as simple as courts forcing Microsoft to open up the Windows source, and forcing ccommecial competing products (such as browsers, media players, and e-mail clients) to ship on Windows CDs. Unfortunately, that never happened, and so alternatives such as Netscape Navigator in the past and Opera in the present have small market share.

By your own admission, the open source community will not likely prevail against Microsoft. But the reason is because Microsoft uses whatever market it is in to enter new markets -- the very definition of monopoly. First it was from OS to Browser. Now it is from OS to DRM entertainment, and from Browser/free e-mail to pay/tracked e-mail.

Re:Anti-monopoly != Open source advocate

[melonman]

It could be as simple as courts forcing Microsoft to open up the Windows source, and forcing ccommecial competing products (such as browsers, media players, and e-mail clients) to ship on Windows CDs.

I can feel my karma about to come in for some serious abuse here, but this sounds neither simple nor reasonable to me. Are MS supposed to ship all their competitors' products on one CD? If not, who decides which versions of which browser, for example, they have to ship? Are they supposed to take responsibility for all those products? And why should MS pay the distribution costs of other companies anyway?

Last time I looked, Apple had their own proprietary multimedia solution, and every distribution of Linux I have ever seen ships with various multimedia applications. Does that mean that Linux is about to become a monopoly? I thought it was just giving the customer what he wanted.

This whole line of argument would sound obscene if applied to any company other than MS. How about forcing Ford to ship cars without seats, to stop them muscling into the upholstery market? Or maybe Walmart should be forced to sell Sears products? Of course MS want to increase market share and broaden their markets. That in itself doesn't make them the Evil Empire, it just shows that they have got to page 4 in any basic text on running a business.

And, in any case, the courts have rejected your option, and that situation isn't going to change in the next several years, so wouldn't it be better to come up with a plan for making progress in the situation that exists, rather than the one that might have existed but doesn't and probably never will?

Better security??

[miffo.swe]

How can you get better security with a pile of code that is even more molded together than WinXP? I always thought that walling off different applications from eachothers was the key to security, kind of like chroot. To make one large application is in my mind a big frozen target. If we had 20 different popular mail apps instead of one mail viruses would never had such spreading as it have had. Diversity is what saved life when the dinos died out and that applies to networked computers to.

Microsoft is really sounding a bit to much like a dictator for me to feel comfortable.

Re:Bearer of bad news

[Sj0]

BeOS will never die so long as there is evil in the hearts of men. :)

Re:Certainly radical...

[agallagh42]

That should actually be written "Longhorn (not .Net) Server"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Yeah, and what if monkeys fly out of my butt? :)

[MacAndrew]

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})

Re:Certainly radical...

[Melantha_Bacchae]

chrisseaton wrote:

This is certainly a radical approach, and if it was some kind of research project I would love to have a look at it.

The research project was Millennium , from the late 1990's. What, you think Microsoft came up with "trustworthy computing" when they did that memo? Or that they started on Longhorn the day XP was released? They have been working on this scheme for a looong time. They had to build .Net just to have a distributed platform-independent development tool they controlled. They are literally betting the company on this.

If you ignore that it's Microsoft it seems to be a really good idea - all programs would be able to access all data from all sources if everything was in this kind of database they are talkking about - today we worry about copy and paste, drag and drop working correctly.

Yes, but unfortunately it is Microsoft. That means bugs, like the flaw in SQL Server (on which Yukon is based) that may well have eaten some of our nuclear materials.

Even if Microsoft made it bug free for once, they are the last people on the planet I'd put in charge of a world-wide distributed network. I don't know who would be safe to have administrate the thing.

To Microsoft:
The crown is not yours.
Footsteps drum a dirge of doom
By nuclear rage!

The world's great hero,
Dreaded God and Monster King,
Millennium ends.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[Sj0]

I'm afraid you are mistaken about the "mom" test. I've seen this proven time and time again, that for every Open Source "tar -xzvf", there is a Ximian Evolution. For every "./configure, make, make install", there is a krpm. For every lynx web browser, there is a K-Meleon. Your overgeneralization shows that you might not know quite as much knowlege on the subject as you'd like to believe(or rather, like us to believe).

Also, your logic is flawed between OSS projects and proprietary efforts like windows. Certainly ten years ago there might have been a problem with no funding and crappy UIs, but if you take your head out of the sand and look around, you'll realize that there are plenty of OpenOffice.orgs, TransGaming WineXs and Lindowses. Your arugement falls apart the second companies start backing (or creating) Open Source projects.

giving up...

[sluggie]

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?

Re:giving up...

[Chris Johnson]

Be imaginative. Years ago I 'gave up' and decided to just make what I could out of Macs and old school MacOS.

Oddly enough I had what MS are proposing here, for FREE- with OpenDoc, which Apple developed. I still think MS pressured them to have it killed- I kept using it for quite a while after all support was abandoned, until I went back to netscape/eudoralite/fetch etc. Rather than financially support horrible people trying to conquer the world, the sacrifices I make (STILL running MacOS 8.6 now, though OSX is eventually going to enter my life) are more about being unable to view MSified websites, not having many games handy, not having online banking software available at my bank etc. But I still get by, and actually do lots of computer-related things anyhow, with little or no time wasted 'upgrading' and dicking around with the computer.

If you want to be HAPPY and powerless, don't 'fall in line'... drop out! You would be surprised how much you can get done with an old clunker computer that runs something you're very familiar with. If you don't like old MacOS, run some form of Linux! But DROP OUT, put together something that fills your REAL needs and go 'nyah' to anyone who tries to 'sell' you on keeping up with the latest MS world stuff. They say 'you can't use this unless', and you say 'so what? Fine'. :)

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.

As long as the hardware isnt locked..

[nurb432]

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.

No system is secure: Social Engineering. Education

[eyefish]

I think Microsoft decided to go all the way with a full OS-Software-Hardware security solution without first asking the question "What are the sources of security problems on a computer?", to which 99% of the cases the answer would have to be (1) social engineering and (2) user's naiveness.

By Social Engineering I refer to the oldest form of hacking: convince someone to do something for you on his/her machine. No hardware, software, or operating system can protect a user from this today.

By user's naiveness I mean that most users (who naturally are not tech-savy) simply open every email attachment they get, or simply click on "yes" or "ok" on every pop up they see without first reading. Combine this with Social Engineering and I really don't see how Microsoft will stop the wave of attacks against windows machines.

The only thing I have seen so far that works to a good degree is Java's sandbox model, where in a sense every program is an island unto itself, and if it wants to communicate with other programs it needs explicit permissions or use well-document open-standards-based protocols. However even this suffers from user's naiveness sindrome.

Bottom line: Security is an EDUCATIONAL issue. Create awareness and teach people the basics of security (don't give your credit card number to ANYONE who calls you, don't open attachments from people you don't know, use an updated virus scanner, patch the latest discovered holes in your OS, use a firewall, etc), if we manage to do this (a daunting task), I think we can get MUCH farther in the security arena than instead taking all our freedom away in a completelly-controlled and restrictive environment.

But can OpenBSD eat defacements?

[mangu]

How about this? According to netcraft, they are running OpenBSD.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like the old StarOffice

[nurb432]

This 'all in one' thing.. just like SO 5.x used to be like.. ( not saying its good or bad here.. just an observation )

One program... all tasks..

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[NineNine]

I'm thinking that maybe Slashdot should get an alternate url: http://www.windowsfordummies.com
It seems like people who are confused by the clicking aspect of Windows, and that really confounding "Start" button are already here!

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[Sj0]

Personally, I think it IS there. It's gotten to the point where any important software is incredibly easy to use, and the user never has to worry about the underlying mechanics.

For example, I use Ximian Evolution for my E-Mail right now. It's as easy as any other E-mail program I've ever used. the KDE file manager is as easy as Windows Explorer, with some features which make it even easier. OpenOffice looks close enough to Office to damn them both if OpenOffice isn't easy, and other tools like the Mandrake Control Panel, work better than the Windows Control Panel(IMHO) for accomplishing low level tasks, while apps like the KDE control panel are far superior to the Windows Control Panel for customizing the shell.

I'd say it's a pretty easy platform at this point. If you can learn how to do something in Windows, you can probably do it under Linux with equal ease.

Critiques from persons knowledgable in the art

[Alien54]

Well, when you get old enough for your parents to start giving you an allowance, maybe you could *buy* a copy of a MS product!

Many people here prefer to roll their own operating system.

Critics tend to be of two classes. A musician's critique of another performer is often better informed in certain critical aspects than that of a fan, or your ordinary music user. They can spot certain cheats in technique that a non musician would not care about.

In this regard, criticism by people knowledgable in the art should not be so light dismissed.

and then, there is this detail:

As Seen in this Financial Times report Microsoft has revealed its profit margins for the first time. The client division, which markets Windows, generated operating profits last quarter of 2.48 billion dollars on revenues of 2.89 billion dollars, implying margins of 85 per cent. Most other remaining Microsoft businesses made losses, raising questions about the benefits of the group's costly efforts at diversification.

The means that if the full version of Windows XP sells at retail for about $300.00, Microsoft could still sell it for $45 and still make a profit. The difference between what it could sell it for and what it does sell it for is what economists call "monopoly rents". You can see the SEC filing here, in incredibly tiny print. Microsoft was found guilty of illegally maintaining its monopoly in personal computer operating systems in 2000. Penalties in the case have been criticised as a hand slap. We now know where the Microsoft 40 billion dollar cash reserves came from.

Not that we should ever steal anything from Microsoft. It is not wise to steal from the mafia.

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.

Re:Been there, done that.

[Zeinfeld]

Another innovation from MS, their going to recreat Emacs

Which one? RMS didn't write the first emacs, that was Gosling.

The slashblather today is pretty much of the form 'Microsoft is doing nothing new because it never does', followed by 'Microsoft is going to change the hardware'.

Microsoft does not have a reputation for security, but they do employ some of the top people in the business. Assuming that all those people become imbeciles the minute they move to Redmond is just a self serving slashdot dellusion.

Not so long ago the standard repost to any Microsoft post was the time a system stayed up before the blue screen of death. Funny thing, you don't hear that half so often since Windows 2000 and XP hit the stores.

Not so long ago UNIX had a lousy reputation for security. That took about five years to change as people started to deploy Kerberos and ssh to patch up some of the more eggregious holes.

Basically there are two routes the open source community can take. Route one you sit arround and congratulate each other while Microsoft goes out and eats your lunch, or you could start to look at ways to extend the security model of Linux to be competative. The execs at Apple, Wordperfect and Lotus took the first approach so you would be in good company.

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[lactose99]

It seems like people who are confused by the clicking aspect of Windows...

Or it could be people are confused by the idea that... gasp... Windows doesn't bother to log half of its own activities, or it loads a largly-non-functional GUI for simple non-GUI-related tasks (like starting/stoping services), or it provides a wonderful BSOD often times with no explaination or suggested fix whatsoever, or it often loses its own hardware drivers and will refuse to reinstall them when media is provided, or it requires a user to install a service patch on a browser that, if left unfixed, will leave a security hole opened in the core operating system. All of these things are the user's fault... yep, good call on that one buddy.

You provide the hardfast notion that EVERYONE that has a problem with Windows is a complete idiot that shouldn't be touching a keyboard in the first place. I'm sure YOU'VE never ever ever run into a problem with Windows that was a) completely unprompted, b) provided you with absoultely no debugging information, and c) left your machine in an unusable state.

While you may know everything about Windows, there are many others that do as well and still have problems, so they switch to other OSes that perhaps make more sense to a power user who doesn't need to rely on Clippy as a useful reference utility.

At least have the sense to back up your arguments. Windows did not get the moniker of being the most unstable OS for nothing. If you need proof, have a quick look through the MSKB once and a while.

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[Sj0]

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.

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[Sj0]

That came off as kind of trolly, but I'll ignore that. Read again what he said; It destroyed it's own boot files.

Was it my fault when FAT16 would drop whole directories full of files for no reason?(hint:no.)

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[Sj0]

Maybe when you're old enough that you can't afford to spend 300 dollars on an OS just to check it out, you'll realize that your posts are getting more trolly as we progress. Careful now, you won't change any opinions if you decide that everyone who disagrees with you is twelve years old.

It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[michaelmalak]

And why should MS pay the distribution costs of other companies anyway?

To fix ("remedy") the problem of monopoly. Capitalist free markets converge toward monopolies. The current mechanism to fix it is anti-trust law.

How about forcing Ford to ship cars without seats, to stop them muscling into the upholstery market?

First, Ford has competition (even though an oligopoly is little better than a monopoly). Second, seats are integral to cars. However, if Ford were a monopoly and if Ford were giving away "Ford auto club" memberships, then AAA would have good reason to complain.

Of course MS want to increase market share and broaden their markets. That in itself doesn't make them the Evil Empire, it just shows that they have got to page 4 in any basic text on running a business.

Capitalism naturally rewards Evil Empires. That's why unbridled captialism is bad, why there are anti-trust laws, and why there are such things as IMF/world-bank protests. Capitalism is good, but globalization and unbridled capitalism are bad.

To understand the difference, see my article "Anti-globalization vs. anti-capitalism."

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[melonman]

Capitalism naturally rewards Evil Empires. That's why unbridled captialism is bad

In theory I'm with you. In practice, the word 'bridled' is quite apt: the anti-trust ideas proposed for MS seem to boil down to stopping the customer from buying what he wants. Working towards a situation where MS has, say, 75% of the OS market, and could have 90% again within months if it weren't for artificial restrictions, sounds very odd to me.

Your article basically says that small is beautiful, which, again, sounds good to me. The trouble is that as soon as you become succesful, you get bigger, and very quickly it is hard for anyone to catch up. I don't think that the computing world wants 5,000 operating systems, each owned by a few people, trying to gain market share over the other 4,999 companies. Most people I talk to don't actually want more than one browser. They certainly don't want to have to choose which browser to use on the basis of the site they want to look at.

Anyway, my point a few postings ago was that if MS does go for a radically new product in 2004, this significantly weakens their advantage as a monopoly, so it should be good news for other operating systems, providing the other operating systems can compete.

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[abe ferlman]

the anti-trust ideas proposed for MS seem to boil down to stopping the customer from buying what he wants.

Just like the anti-trust actions against Standard Oil stopped consumers from purchasing the oil they wanted, right? Because they were all buying it, not having any other real choice.

Most people I talk to don't actually want more than one browser. They certainly don't want to have to choose which browser to use on the basis of the site they want to look at.

Nor do they want the hoods on their cars welded shut. You've just made an argument for open standards compliance, not for a closed-source monopoly.

Jeez.

Anyway, my point a few postings ago was that if MS does go for a radically new product in 2004, this significantly weakens their advantage as a monopoly, so it should be good news for other operating systems, providing the other operating systems can compete.

And what everyone's afraid of is that MS's market dominance is going to make it difficult in practice for any non-DRM hardware maker to survive even if there's a few holdouts, and that their ownership of the legislative process (Which we can certainly expect to grow over the next two years as the Republicans gut the campaign finance reform laws and give them a nice buffer against any real antitrust action) will ensure that the manufacture of modern non-DRM hardware will become illegal.

I don't like pinning my hopes of computing freedom on the likelihood of China flooding the market with competing products. I don't like it one bit.

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[melonman]

Just like the anti-trust actions against Standard Oil stopped consumers from purchasing the oil they wanted, right?

That analogy is so inappropriate it could be one of mine! Oil is black, sticky and flammable wherever you buy it from (well, more or less). I don't think that mixing 50% of the code for W2K and 50% of the code for Redhat 8 in my PC would be quite as easy as mixing oil from two fields in my refinery. Indeed, in that respect, you could argue that Apple has a monopoly on the supply of OS X and Redhat has a monopoly on the supply of Redhat 8. (It's less true for flavours of Linux, but moving from, say, Suse to Redhat is still not trivial).

Open standards compliance

None of the browers get close to full compliance, at least with CSS (my current bugbear in my day job), and it is by no means clear that IE is the worst offender in this respect (it depends how you count the instances of non-compliance).

Non-DRM hardware will become illegal

Ah, you're American? I really can't see this happening in Europe, let alone in most other places.

Hope of freedom on China, oh no

Are you basing this on the new Bond movie? If the new version of Windows requires DRM, a rapidly growing market of 1 billion users with higher than average abilities in math are going to throw themselves wholeheartedly into Open Source. That sounds like good news to me, although possibly bad for the western ego.

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[abe ferlman]

Redhat has a monopoly on the supply of Redhat 8.

Um, no they don't. They allow you to freely redistribute it.

The only thing they claim ownership of is the trademark, so they can make it clear what is officially supported redhat and what is not.

I admit I can't keep up with the rapidity with which you're posting here, so as far as my thread here you're going to get the last word. Good luck with the EU version of the DMCA when it hits, I'm sure your Holy Market Forces will save you, and if they fail we've always got China, land of the free.

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[Billly Gates]

Standard Oil bought all the railroad companies when they started out. They would sell each barrel of oil below cost in each new city they would decided to sell it in. After the competitors would go under they would raise the price 4x. You could still buy oil from another company but at a price. Since they bought the railroad companies, Standard Oil would charge an arm and a leg for any competitor who wanted to distribute their oil.

Does this term "distribution" sound familiar? Microsoft does the same things with OEM's and this is what originally started the whole anti-trust action in the first place. Since no OEM dared to testify agaisnt microsoft the doj decided to look at the browser wars in order to punish them.

Its not about putting a feature into windows more then its a way to distribute something and force you to pay for it each time you buy a Microsoft OS or a new pc. Yes, IE development cost is paid for each time you buy windows! What makes things worse is that MS is losing money in every market except Office and Windows and they are leveraging this to go into more markets where their competitors can't compete. Using the profits of one market to dominate another is exactly what the sherman anti-trust laws were written for.

Its not Ford implementing seats into cars like you mentioned before but more like being forced to buy $1200 worth of extra tires whether you want to or not and since the tire companies are going under, also expecting to pay $2400 for the same amount of tires with your next car. ..And only using ford gas that costs $6.75 a gallon "but hey its integrated tightly into the car".

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[abe ferlman]

As long as you don't violate their trademark, you are allowed to resell it. It's explicitly allowed by the GPL and all GPL-compatible free software licenses.

Re:It's called "remedy" for monopolization

[melonman]

Sure, all that is true, MS has abused its monopoly, and will continue to do so. But if their new system won't run on non-DRM hardware, and that hardware won't run non-DRM software, doesn't that essentially put MS into a niche market? They are hoping, and you fear, that this will be a 99% market share niche, but I just don't see if, for all the reasons we have been round in this thread.

And here's one more. Let's say the /. worst nightmare happens, the police confiscate every non-DRM machine in the USA and users of Linux are shot on sight. That gives MS maybe 10% of the world market. Most of the rest of the world is just not going to hand control of its industry over to an American corporation, or the American government. So we're back to my market forces argument. If, as a result of DRM and MS's new system, the American economy continues to grow, it will keep DRM, just as being the only country in the world apart from Burma and Liberia not to go metric hasn't done them too much harm. If, on the other hand, the collapse of software exports and the migration of the heart of the Internet from DC to Brussels or Bangkok hits the US economy, the decision will be reversed by force and MS will be broken up into bits small enough to feed down the garbage disposal unit.

So the bottom line is, if, say, the EC goes open source en bloc, will that make it more or less competitive? And it's the answer to that question that worries me: I can't see Europe's graphic artists doing page layout in TeX, for example...

Reminds me of OpenDoc

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the point behind's Apple's OpenDoc to move the orientation of working on your computer away from using apps towards creating documents? Like OLE, but decoupled from the originating app... it always struck me as a better way to go about things than creating one mega-app to do everything.

Wow!

[Pig Hogger]

'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.

Wow! Ms-EMACS!!!

Re:Wow!

[An Onerous Coward]

You think you're being funny. But EMACS has become my editor of choice over the last few months, and suddenly my fingers are under the delusion that Ctrl-N means "scroll down," no matter what application I'm using. Worse, whenever I try and scroll upwards, I end up printing something. I have to think about C-x and C-v, when it used to be instantaneous.

So I'm now trying to do move all my daily activities to EMACS because the alternatives just feel "wrong." Dear Lord, I'm even considering learning Lisp. I'm a sick and twisted individual, who needs to be brought down with tranquilizer darts.

Curse you, Stallman. Curse you.

MS Market Power

[Multics]

Lord Action, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton [in] 1887,

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men".

From: Phrase Finder.

-- Multics

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:Shades of OpenDoc?

[Anonymous Bullard]

Exactly. They couldn't take control of OpenDoc so after decent time after its funeral they now feel free to try and reinvent it in their typical MS-proprietary style. Sorry, I meant "innovate".

PS. This "longdick" (by "microsoft"? LOL) stuff is very unlikely to come out until 2006, or 2005 at earliest. By then their usual bullying tactics may not be as effective as in the last decade. Goodluckium, Obladidium... You'll be born Obsoletium!

Re:Shades of OpenDoc?

[Gumber]

OpenDoc had a lot of problems, including the fact that Apple couldn't do much of anything right at the time. Its failure isn't necessarily an indictement of Document Centered computing, or, more broadly, non-application centered computing.

Re:We must fight!

[Bunji X]

Nah, no need throwing poor Bill into a volcano. Just follow the great example provided by Isildur on how to handle problems like these. >:)

Get a grip.

[Ageless]

It's so very easy and clear. If you don't like it, don't use it. Open Source will come through! You don't need Microsoft! Right?

Very surprised at this article

[amichalo]

A few of my observations:
(1) No "Subscription" model

Wasn't it MS who pushed the failed ASP (application service provider) concept so many dot-bombs followed? With even game makers like Electronic Arts drooling of $10 monthly service fees for the Sims Online, I can't believe there is no mention of what MS is up to

(2) Forget TCO, how about ROI

When I used to put in my two-cents on new product development and build vs. buy decisions, TCO was only an ingredient in the formula all were interested in, Return On Investment. I see fewer and fewer compelling reasons to move to the latest for MS - so many small businesses run on Win98 or some other 'ancient' flavor of windows becuase the HW/SW is paid for and gets the job done. Convince someone running point of sale for their small business that they should upgrade. Now flip the coin and convince a mega corp that they should spend millions on new software, TRAINING, and now, new hardware. Do the math...at a generous $2,500 per seat for HW/SW/Training, a company must spend $1 Million for every 400 employees. And those companies will want more than a wink from Bill for their money.

(3) Way to embrace the market

The presense of 3rd party apps is a mega plus for MS. By integrating all aspects of desktop publishing - presentation, documents, web sites, flow charts, e-mail, etc - there is no room to pick and choose what works best for you - there is ONLY the MS way.

(4) What MS could do

MS's only viable option, to me, is to focus on server technology and make very rich servers with high license fees for connections that will have to exist. Make the client so thin it doesn't matter what they use - old hardware, old OS, etc - because they are making recurring revenue off the license to connection to the server which is where they could add value and fight with ROI.

All your apps are belong to us

The Power of XML

[Crash Culligan]

[Longhorn] will have a new look and feel, very different from Windows XP's. Its guts will also be radically different from Windows XP's, because they're based on XML -- extensible markup language, the emerging lingua franca of the Internet.

I must have missed something somewhere -- when did XML become a programming language?

Has anyone here ever worked with RTF? It's a way of adding basic font, size, layout, and color information and whatnot to a text file. You can think of it as a sort of HTML-lite. It was supposed to be cross-platform too, but Microsoft produced a version of it which was so alien that no other RTF system could handle it without preprocessing.

Now Microsoft is using XML, a cross-platform, open data markup system, and using it extensively in a proprietary, closed operating system?

XML is pretty open (at least, now anyway). What's going to make Microsoft's implementation of it "special" (in that Microsoft-special way) is the internal and proprietary XSLs which read and interpret the tags to display the information on screen and in print. Other systems can read the XML documents, but to make sense of them the way Longhorn's software will requires information that Microsoft yet again won't share.

It should be possible to recreate XSLs from the structure of the XML, which would seem to make it extremely easy to reverse-engineer. In order to prevent that, Microsoft has to "extend" XML in such a way that it breaks on other systems.

I fear for the future of XML now.

What if it sucks?

[mangu]

maybe you could *buy* a copy of a MS product!

When you buy something, you want to be sure it's a good product before you spend any money on it. Where can I get a fully functional copy of Microsoft latest OS to test for a few weeks before I decide if it's worth the cost?

MS will screw it up

[fermion]

Keep in mind that if this wasn't MS, having one program to do it all would be a good thing. No, I am not MS bashing, just taking a realistic look at history and UI.

Think about what this would mean. We would not have to find and open a new application for each task. We would not have to figure out what is the best format to use when we copy 'foreign' content into our word processing document. This operating system would just let us do work without the distraction of a myriad of applications and formats. This hasn't been done because it requires a level of computing power that is yet not cheap enough and programming abstraction that is not yet common. I don't know how this would be done, but the The Humane Interface describes one possibility.

So, why does history tell us MS will screw us over with this new interface. First, the top level interface must be open and expandable. One would expect the UI to contain a set of user definable hooks that will allow the user to add or substitute filters for each type of content, and define new hooks for new types of content(think about the web browser). MS is notorious for keeping hooks secret, and secret hooks means that you are stuck with MS approved filters, which further the monopoly.

Second, the file format must be open and expandable. For people to write new filters, and create new types of content, programmer must know the storage formats and protocols. Again, MS does not create open formats, and makes arbitrary changes to formats to break compatibility with any foolish enough to reverse engineer the formats.

Third, the UI must be secure. At the base level this means that the UI must sandbox each process to insure that user processes are secure. MS is not good at the sandbox. On the configuration level, the user should have some confidence that filters will not mysteriously change. If filters can be remotely changed, then a trojan can easily be placed in a filter. MS will probably break security here because it likes the ability to configure a user's machine to MS standards. Finally, the UI must not allow all processes full functionality. For instance, foreign content should not be allowed to automatically compile as run as root. However, we see in outlook that, by default, images are loaded and scripts are executed. This gives us little hope that MS could create a secure UI.

Re:MS will screw it up

[inode_buddha]

First, I totally agree with you. However, I have found a point of humor in your 5th paragraph, re:
"MS is not good at the sandbox."

It just came to mind that my cat is *very* good at the sandbox, and cheaper too.

Sorry bout that, I just couldn't resist. It was too easy to pass up, LOL.

Re:MS will screw it up

[Chris Johnson]

Like hell it hasn't been done- you're describing OpenDoc. Apple and IBM did it years ago, and basically smothered it in the cradle (possibly under pressure from MS which wanted to protect its Office franchise). It ran on MacOS 8, and if I remember correctly it was also available on OS/2.

I used it. If you weren't supporting the people who were _bringing_ you this kind of stuff back then, don't bitch- and if you were giving money to the company that killed off OS/2 and told Apple 'yes we mean that you should knife the baby' over Quicktime, it's your fault. Looks like there were other 'babies'. Namely, OpenDoc. Microsoft domination DOES matter. Among other things, they get to have the leverage to strangle anything at birth that might threaten things like Office, and you as a Windows user will never know what they're talking about in back rooms or what competition they shut off. We're talking about a huge freaking computing project involving Apple AND IBM, that SHIPPED and that people used for years even after support was dropped, and to you 'this hasn't been done'- to MOST slashdotters this seems like a new and unheard of thing. That should tell you something about what monopoly power actually does in practice. OpenDoc became an orwellian 'un-project'. It threatened Office, so of course it never existed, right? Open who?

Please don't take that personally- I guess my real annoyance is about how Microsoft now feels free to rip off the idea in some non-interoperable way and make believe they're the first to think of it. Pity you can't jail a company for being treacherous lying scumbags...

Re:Xerox Star

[ClosedSource]

"Doesn't this sound like the original GUI idea in Xerox Star (from the 1970's)?"

It doesn't sound like the Star (Dandelion) I used. Most of the applications were separate although you could mix text and graphics in a single document. Of course, there was no color involved, so it was a lot simpler. I don't remember a spreadsheet although there may have been one.

So don't buy it!

[shokk]

Palladium, Client/Server tie in, Office 11 breaking backward compatability, 3 year licensing plans, product activation

Microsoft is a long ways off from providing us with Longhorn. They've stated that it is a few years away, plenty of time for other OSs to evolve into something finally more usable. In the meantime, can your stupid analogies and don't use the friggin Palladium, Client/Server software, Office 11, and you won't have to deal with broken backwards compatibility, licensing or product activation. You're not a slave of Microsoft if you are going along with them willingly. That just makes you a whiner.

Re:No system is secure: Social Engineering. Educat

[Reziac]

There's an interesting article in the current NewArchitect magazine (formerly Web Techniques) -- an interview with hacker Adrian Lamo (find it at http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2415/na 1202r/index.html -- beware the spurious slashdot space). Lamo talks about how most of the time he doesn't use specialized tools, he just wanders around and falls thru open doorways.

One particularly relevant quote:

"Your unreasonably expensive firewall that blocks ubiquitous scanning tools doesn't matter if I learn everything I need to know about your network with a ten-minute Google search. Authenticating by social security number and date of birth doesn't matter if I can get both with a fax from the public records department at the courthouse. Requiring logins to come from on-campus and blocking all outside connectivity is cool, but it won't matter if I can walk into the HR reception area and use one of the computers on your internal LAN that you thoughtfully provide to browse job listings."

Re:Slashdot Posting Contradicting Articles

[bstadil]

Give the guys a break. It's not that Microsoft is sending out press releases on their internal strategies, Codenames etc. etc.

The way it's done actually functions pretty well as the more informed postings rises to the top. If there is some discrepancy on what really is in the works, it just might be due to discrepancies and strategy disagreements inside MS.

Will it really matter?

[elmegil]

Given all the discussion around mom & pop not needing upgrades any time soon, is this really going to affect a large portion of the population?

Re:Certainly radical...

[Reziac]

At a guess, a side effect of the new filesystem, new OS, and single-point-of-access application: there will no longer be separate data files, rather ALL your data will be kept in one humongous database file, in turn accessed thru a feature of the filesystem (such as has been discussed elsewhere).

This strikes me as all too vulnerable to single point of failure (one bad HD sector, one fubar'd database?), not to mention even more security risks: Is exported data totally "clean" or does it contain database artifacts (such as the junk that's typically included with Word documents)??

Gates NOT richest man who has ever lived

[Ars-Fartsica]

Rockefeller's wealth, adjusted for inflation, is much greater than Gates'. Rockefeller's net worth at his peak was ove a billion dollars, and I'm talking pre-WW1 dollars. Adjust for inflation and he would easily be worth double what Gates is worth today.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it means that no other software will be able to run on the hardware? What if the things you consider "improvements" are things I consider annoying obstructions? And what if it means that all methods of connecting computers must use the new "security" technologies which are closed and proprietary so my older software/hardware doesn't work. There's good reason for foreboding, regardless of how much more productive you think it makes you.

The Microsoft Dream

[MarcQuadra]

"Honey, let's try not to use any spreadsheet this month, the bill last time was really ridiculous, I added minutes to our word processor so you can finish your resume. I swear if little johnny leaves PowerPoint open overnight again I'll wring his geeky neck, that last bill was $470!" - A Microsoft Dream

Re:We must fight!

[Subcarrier]

Nah, no need throwing poor Bill into a volcano. Just follow the great example provided by Isildur on how to handle problems like these. >:)

Isildur? You mean the chap who defeated Sauron at Barad-dûr and cut off his finger to get... Oh!

Bogus article, but key ideas are hinted at

[Animats]

That article sounds kind of bogus. First, PCI Express is just a serial within-the-box interconnect that looks like PCI to the CPU, so that the old drivers will work. The whole point of PCI Express is that the software doesn't see the change. (There's a question as to whether we need yet another high-speed serial protocol, given that we have USB 2, FireWire, and serial ATA, but that's another issue.)

Second, the One Big Program concept probably means putting a new face on Microsoft Office. Office, remember, is a collection of programs tied together via an object system. (The Open Source world needs to pay more attention to how Microsoft does Office; Open Source tools could integrate that well via CORBA or something similar, but they don't.)

Finally, it sounds like the new zowie Microsoft file system is a SQL database. That's a reasonable idea; after all, that's how most business data is stored. The new thing is to make Office-type apps talk to the database, rather than a file system.

It looks like what's coming is a three-tier model for the desktop - presentation layer (probably something based on IE), business logic layer (Office-like functions), and database layer (a relational DBMS, probably with some XML-oriented tree-type extensions). This is how most major web sites work now, but on the desktop, all three layers are all mixed up.

Microsoft has to solve a number of problems to make this work in the multimedia era, like how to stream video from a relational DBMS. Expect proprietary extensions to SQL.

None of this is inherently related to digital rights management, but once you have a database model, there are more options for fine-grained control of access than with a file model. With the database behind a protection barrier, accessable only via SQL-type queries, opportunities for messing up the system are far less. (Of course, Microsoft botched the registry concept; they could get this wrong, too.)

So that's a sense of the shape of Microsoft's vision.

The competitive answer to this, if any, will probably come from the database/business logic side of the world - Oracle, IBM, J2EE. The StarOffice/OpenOffice crowd doesn't have the resources or the clout to architect and sell something this big.

The death of DEC

[TheAncientHacker]

It was the cost of developing the Alpha CPU that did DEC in. Nope. It was the lack of income that did DEC in. Blaming R&D is a weak excuse for what was really horrible management, marketing and sales. If they'd had good sales and developed Alpha, Alpha would have given them a new generation of products to sell. If they had there same lousy sales and no Alpha R&D costs they'd have died anyway from having nothing relevent to sell. Of course, killing Prism didn't help much either since that left them with nothing new to sell years earlier.

MS despererately trying to fight interia

[Ars-Fartsica]

The 'jack of all trades' model is the natural evolution of a company desperately trying to fight overwhlming market inertia. The biannual PC upgrade is a thing of the past. Intel, Dell and MS need to adjust their thinking more towards that of home electronics - upgrades every five to seven years. How often do you replace your TV?

MS will do their best to yank users into upgrades, but many will not bite. Even with XP, MS is watching inertia erode new product adoption. The only possible savior for these companies is massive improvements in broadband. Give me true 100MB access at home and maybe I see a need for better gear and software. Even with better broadband, a significant slowdown in the PC market at this point is inevitable, and I suspect share prices for INTC, DELL and MSFT will reflect this in years to come.

You misquoted

[tswinzig]

I'm a be fan myself, but you left out a quote that explains what they meant when they said "creating such a file system is an extraordinarily difficult task." They weren't talking about the ability to handle 1 terabyte of data. They were talking about this:

"To make life easier for computer users, it will simplify locating data by using the file name or content, regardless of whether data is contained in a spreadsheet, a word-processing document or an e-mail. After-market products do this now, but they impose a performance penalty."

They are implying that with this new filesystem from Microsoft, you will be able to have all that without a performance penalty...

Uhhh yeah.

XML guts

[Pac]

Longhorn partial DDT leaked by crying developer:

"<?xml version="2.0" encoding="Redmond-3"?>
<processor>
<definition>
<name>Pentiun V</name>
</definition>
<assembler>
<token>
<name>ADD</name>
<space>3</space>
<time>2</time>
<parameter>address 1</parameter>
<parameter>address 2</parameter>
</token>
..."

This one goes on for more or less 10000 thousand lines. The guy tried to send me the DDT for the Graphic Subsystem, but my ISP said it could not handle a 500 Gigabytes attachment.

Yes. Out of the box

[TheAncientHacker]

Perhaps you should actually USE the system before anonymously posting your ignorance.

One application for everything? MS BOB!

[Mongoose]

Yes, it looks like longhorn is based on MS BOB tech!

Yay! I hope clippy the paper clip is an optional avatar this time.

Anyone considering buy longhorn gets what they deserve imho; but it's too bad most people have no idea about anything computer related -- and will buy anything preinstalled even if they can't even use it.

I like how all these kids on the local campus are removing XP from their machines to install win98 for example.

At least...

[oZZoZZ]

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).

Consumer appliance

[ToasterTester]

In many ways it is the direction many have predicted for the last couple years. That computers both desktop and server are going to become more like appliances. The large hardware companies have been talking about it in briefings I've been to. Make computers even servers like tinker toys. Buy the applicances you need, wire, and configure and done. web based administration that can be centralized. Plug and play for small business and departmental systems. Same thing for the desktop will become oversized PDA's.

Sure some people will want more control to tinker, but for the masses computers are just tools and they want them to as easy to use as possible.

Re:Great line...

[SEWilco]

...it will be the first version [of Windows] that won't function fully without new hardware

Oh, so they're finally going to create hardware so a version of Windows will function fully!

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.

Re:code signing != panacea

[jez9999]

Surely, 2) should be "Code that is from a verified source that I cannot look at".

u need a clue.

[valmont]

convenience does *not* provide an excuse for, nor does it supplant strong security design at the core of your operating system.

Just take a little look at security focus archives, you'll see that most of the security flaws in windows come from the tight integration of web-related scripting technologies with the core of the operating system.

Read my journal. Look at Code Red and Nimda. How do you think they spread so FAST? The best-known component of those viruses is the one triggered in an email attachment. But it doesn't stop there. The virus modifies every single html document that lives in IIS's web root, including HTTP 404, 403 *and* 500 documents, by appending a javascript window.open call to a "readme.eml" document which exploits Internet Explorer flaw with handling mime types and gets it to execute some code to further infect the machine of a user who browses an infected site.

Did you read the latest security holes? The one that leverages the help dialog box "functionality". Pretty evil.

All those components are tightly integrated within microsoft's flagship operating system, and ZERO thought was put into easily enabling or disabling those features to temporarily protect users while not impairing core functionality.

As far as i'm concerned, you've gotta be a fucking suicidal retard to be using the windows operating system for anything but playing games. Granted it does, at times, serve its purpose of a mildly friendly/convenient operating system on cheap hardware, but those security holes are just too fucking evil, and you sure as fuck get what you pay for.

Oh yeah and now Palladium. So not only are we looking at an OS featuring piss-poor security, we're also looking at a totalitarian privacy-invading roadmap. i weep for computing.

heh.

fuck windows. fuck it right in the ass.

Go Apple.

MS employee skills versus MS quality

[Anonymous Coward]

It's basically the old saying "Individually, we are smart, talented, and level headed. As a group we are dumb, beaurocratic, with a mob mentality".

The key advantage open source has over Microsoft is not the talent of the developers (as you've said, Microsoft developers are very talented), it's the structure of most open source projects. In open source, the individual always has a say (you can patch and fix your own kernel) and even in groups, the typical individual has to pass through no more than two levels of beaurocracy (e.g. the maintainer, then Linus to get into the Linux kernel OR through your distributor's maintainer if you want to get into a distribution) .

As a consequence, things like "looking good to the press" or "forcing people to upgrade" or "hiding flaws" just don't figure into the organization of open source because with open source we all make individual decisions.

old OS issues.

[Da_Monk]

I really don't get people bitching about 95/98 support starting to end. If I said I was having problems with my linux 2.0.36 kernel, I would get zillions of replies telling me to just upgrade it. hate it or love it, you have to admit that later versions of windows do fix bugs found in earlier versions. Slashdot users seem intent on boxing microsoft into a box where they can't win.

"We demand software that is stable and secure from version 1.0 and starts with all the features we will ever need, although we will not hold ourselves to the same standard."

OS bigotry of any kind is pointless. different OS for different people for different uses, nerr!

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[NineNine]

No. I just hate reading about idiots who say, "I can't use it, so it sucks!" If nobody says anything, then they grow up to be even more obnoxious blowhards that I have to see in the supermarket. Ideally, we'd just make sure that idiots are spayed/nutered at puberty, which would fix this problem.

one program can be done well...

[burns210]

"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"

gobe productive anyone? they have an all-in-one "word processing, page design, spreadsheets, charts, illustration, photo retouching, even slide-show presentations" program that is very lean. If memory serves it fits in a couple dozen megs of space(or less), not the couple hundred that office takes up. Oh, and did i mention, it is going to be GPLed soon?

Mere speculation as of now....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

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.

Paranoia's Source

[_Sprocket_]

My favourite /. quote is the one about Bill being just a monacle and a Persian cat away from being a Bond bad guy.

"Bill Gates is just a monocle and a Persian Cat away from being one of the bad guys in a James Bond movie." -- Dennis Miller

Sometimes its good to know the source of information. In the case of our quote, it actually comes from outside the Slashdot community. And while the quote outlines an idea that is often expressed within that community, the idea is not limited to it. Others are wary of Microsoft too.

Maybe though, before completely calling it a waste of code, we can judge the ideas on their technical merits and make fun of the marketing slime later?

The problem with Microsoft is that its impossible to separate the technology and the marketing. Marketing is infused in to everything Microsoft. The given functionality of any product is based on marketing. And indeed, even before the technology exists, the marketing is in full force.

It would be nice to judge a piece of technology solely on its own merits. But that would assume the technology exists to begin with. And even then, issues such as licensing and Microsoft's intent can have just as much impact to the consumer or a business IT infrastructure as some feature list.

Keep in mind this information comes from Microsoft's marketing. Remember history. And then ignore it at your own peril.

Collectible Trading Oses?

[Qbertino]

Windows XP is out for over a year now, when's the new one comming? *pant**pant**pant**pant*
Yeah, we wanna spend money.

One of the reasons to use Linux or BSD is the fact that it is future-save. I for my part can't take anyone seriously who bet's on a Softwarevendor who as a bianual Updatecycyle for his core software. How the fsck is that supposed to increase productvity???

Microsoft dominance.

[Erpo]

First there is all the licensing bullcrap which we have even now.

Do that many consumers read or even know (or care) what's in MS EULAs? They should, but do they?

But then throw in all the Palladium etc crap [...]

How many consumers know that "Trusted Computing" means that MS and the government can trust your computer to do what they tell it to, and not that you can trust your computer to do what you tell it to?

[...] and there will be mass converts no doubt

To what? Mac OSX which is fantastic but a very well kept secret or GNU/Linux which <asbestos_suit>just isn't ready for mass desktop adoption </asbestos_suit>?

At the risk of sounding like a troll, I think the "slow and steady" progress in the GNU/Linux community isn't going to win the race against MS - in order to encourage users to switch, it must offer something beyond what Windows does. In Erpo's-the-emperor-land, I would imagine these changes would be enough:

1. Reduce confusion and diluted developer effort through reducing choice. Pick the project in each category (i.e. desktop environment) that has the most promise and popular support, and kill off all the others. KDE alone, GNOME alone, or something else alone. One desktop environment = users that can get comfortable with GNU/Linux and stay comfortable with it. Choice is necessary in a capitalist marketplace to prevent one company from becoming dominant and hurting consumers with its monopoly powers by keeping prices high and slowing product improvement in order to lower expenses. KDE and GNOME are both free, and while it could be argued that friendly (and not so friendly) competition among developers spurs both sides to new levels of productivity, it's my opinion that the newbie confusion (when newbies are 99.9% of the population) is more harmful than slowed development due to a lack of interproject competition. Remeber, we're in Erpo's-the-emperor-land.

2. Innovate ahead of MS. GNU/Linux on the desktop needs to change the way people work for the better (e.g. through a metadata-rich filesystem built on a database) _before_ MS does and present an enticing work and play environment. People don't realize how much MS dominance in the OS market is hurting them (their freedom, not just their wallets) and how necessary a Free (as in speech) OS is. On the other hand, if GNU/Linux simply works better (and if this means moving toward interface compatibility with MS to lower the learning curve so be it) people will pick it up in a heartbeat.

In my opinion at least, the community needs to start moving in this direction right away. Why? Now there's a deadline. It's called Palladium and it's set for 2004.

Two Specific Points To Be Made...

[thecampbeln]

One: "This could bring a higher level of security than anything we've ever seen. It will almost completely prevent the platform from being compromised." [Giga analyst Rob Enderle]

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!

Re:Two Specific Points To Be Made...

[Chris Johnson]

Also, Apple was doing that many years ago with OpenDoc (assisted by IBM). OpenDoc was just that: document centric, in the sense that you'd have one program and it'd load modules from entirely separate developers if necessary in order to include the functionality in the document. So, you'd have drawing or painting dragged into your word processing document, very fancy charting, live web content, fancy charting DRIVEN by web content, live telnet windows to chat in- whatever!

I can vouch that this was very slow- on a 33 mhz 68040. It was also slow on a 200 mhz 604e. Around this time the project was mysteriously killed at the same time that Jobs was seeking additional support and investment from Microsoft, so it never went any farther, and it was always so technically arcane that very few people could handle developing for OpenDoc.

Anyhow, if this is what Microsoft want now, they are not inventing: only stealing from what Apple and IBM were doing AND SHIPPING years ago, and possibly from what they may have had a role in killing for everybody else. If OpenDoc had a market to operate in, by now it might have been something very amazing- I can vouch that using it led to some striking results you wouldn't expect, convenience issues that helped things happen that otherwise wouldn't. Of course, at the time it was a blow to the very concept of Office- and at the time Microsoft did not want to deprecate their cash cow, much less for some Apple/IBM product.

Fear Not!

[ffatTony]

Yes DRM is bad. Yes Palladium is sinister. But what keeps me going folks is my unwavering faith in our poor quality tech arena. I will happily wager that the first few releases of DRM from Intel and AMD will be bug riddled crap. The same will most likely be true of initial Microsoft offerings.

It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this. Additionally, I fail to see how MS will convice the average student type to switch from a machine that lets them download episodes of south park, Brazilian donkey porn, and stolen term papers to one that doesn't. It will have to be some truly inspiring social engineering.

I'll be taking notes and doing everything I can to undermine the process...:)

Re:Been there, done that.

[vsync64]

Which one? RMS didn't write the first emacs, that was Gosling.

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.

Re:What does this mean for programs like Ghost?

[MonTemplar]

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?

Probably the same 'solution' they had to resort to in order to keep the corporate customers happy with regard to XP and Product Activation - produce a Corporate version of XP that can be imaged onto multiple PCs. Which means it will probably suffer the same fate, in other words fall into the hands of the pirates...

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[lactose99]

Install Win2k. Update various device drivers via Windows Update (as many many people do). Shutdown the machine. Move your PCI cards around. Boot machine. Watch windows redetect all of them, and the driver installation will fail for all device drivers that were later updated via Windows Update. Remove drivers. Try to reinstall off of the original installation media. No go. Check Windows Update. The drivers are not listed because (gasp!) Windows Update isn't capable of understanding that sometimes people need to reinstall drivers because Windows "forgets" about them.

I've tested this on 2 pristine Windows installations... one on Win98SE (which admittedly is quite old by today's standards), and one on (gasp!) Win2k Pro. Tried it 3 times after a brand-new install. Same issue every time. Discovered the issue by accident on one of my machines, and later tested the above scenario on 2 other boxes to make sure I wasn't fooling myself.

While moving PCI cards around in a box is not what many would consider normal operating procedure, it should by no means prevent the reinstallation of the drivers for those devices. On these same machines, Linux (and FreeBSD) was able to detect the devices on boot as if nothing had changed, and did not fail on any of the devices, so the hardware itself was verified to work just fine.

Ever have a Win2k laptop "forget" about its installed PCMCIA/Cardbus cards? I have, when the keyboard on the unit was replaced. Rebooted my laptop only to find that my Xircom modem/NIC were being detected as "unsupported devices". Removed the drivers out of the Hardware Manager, same issue. I eventually found a MSKB article about this issue suggesting I remove several entries from my \winnt\inf folder and several registry entries relating to the card. Never have to do that in Linux... remove the drivers and its gone, but then again, Linux is for people who aren't smarty-enough to use Windows, so I guess all you uber Windows admins already knew about that.

I will say that there are tons and tons of novice users that will blame the OS when there is another (application, hardware, user) problem causing the grief. However, I also say that I seen Windows die for no reason whatsoever on boxes where there were no additional applications installed (expect perhaps updates to the OS that were provided by MS) and the hardware works just fine under other OSes. WinNT SP4 (or was it 5) is a perfect example of this. I personally would never trust a Windows box to do anything except spread virii. I'm sure you have a much different opinion, but as you say, you're right and I'm wrong and a complete liar.

Now that you're convinced that all windows users who blame the problem on the OS are liars, I see that it really doesn't take much at all to convince you of anything. Interested in buying a bridge in San Fransisco? I'll give you a great deal...

It's Like That Old Saying:

[Shuh]

"People who want to sacrifice freedom for 'security,'..." are lining up to use Palladium.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[Sj0]

User support on Linux? Well, ignoring the multitude of virtual desktop and telnet utilities available which would make support as easy as "okay, it's fixed.", There's still nothing I can think of which would require anything from the command line. I've been able to completely configure my computer using the KDE control panel and the Mandrake control panel, including hardware.

On the other hand, I have doubts on your experience in user support based on your short example, and at this point, I also have doubts about your experience with linux on a GUI level. I use a machine like a regular user. I absolutely refuse to use a command prompt or terminal to configure anything -- I work on that all day long, I'm not going to come home and do it. Despite that choice, here I am, using Mandrake Linux 9.0 on my thinkpad. I haven't needed to open a terminal to configure anything yet.

Re:Especially when you see the adds :)

[el_chicano]

Win
Mac
Linux
BSD
Unix
Cowboy Neal ate my OS.

I think that checkboxes would work better than radio buttons for a question like this.

I run Windows under Linux using VMWare. Linux works fine for about 90% of the sites but for those time you really need to use Windows VMWare does the trick.

You can also run Linux under Linux. I even got Lunar Linux to boot and compile in a VM running on Mandrake 9. To me it is pretty cool not having to have dedicated PCs to play around with OSes and networking.

VMWare even lets you run BSD in a VM running on Linux. I need to download me some BSD ISOs to see what all the fuss is about...

I have to admit that as far as logos go, Chuck kicks ass! :->

They tried...

[siskbc]

...with Win XP. Win XP was supposed to be the More Attractive Windows compared to the staid Win 95/98. What came out was a GUI that looked like it was made by someone who ate a lot of the brown acid: putrid color schemes that make one beg for the days of a monochrome monitor.

THe sad thing is, when M$ tries to copy apple, they screw it up.

Re:The real danger

[jez9999]

However, with rather a lot of governments and organisations already switching to *nix operating systems, or already switched, there can't fail to be a demand for non-Palladium hardware, can there? And if that is still being produced, we can still use a non-MS operating system. What might happen is that we aren't able to run the latest and greatest games on the OS, but games are being relegated to the realm of console-only these days, anyway.

Better the BOB

[s-orbital]

The newest Micro$oft rollout: Introducing Microsoft GOD.
This is the amazing program that can and will do everything you need. (except run)

By reading this, you have authorized your computer to become property of Microsoft. God will now be installed, once your credit card is billed.

Welcome to the MS billing program
Now searching your computer for you credit card information...please wait


For more information please visit God's homepage.

Re:foreboding sense? but what if the software's GO

[Megahurts]

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.

Blue Screens

[EvilTwinSkippy]

What color is the sky on your word?

My computer blue screens more often under XP than it ever did under 98. I run a network of 2000 machines, and let me tell you, our old friend BSOD still visits on a regular basis.

I run Linux and Windows side by side on identicle hardware in production environments. Linux is just too damn simple to kill. Windows is only getting more complicated. Bugs and hangs are proportional to code complexity. Do the math.

Re:Blue Screens

[Zeinfeld]

My computer blue screens more often under XP than it ever did under 98. I run a network of 2000 machines, and let me tell you, our old friend BSOD still visits on a regular basis.

Your experience is not typical. Sounds to me as if you have a duff hardware driver. What I said was that the reliability argument has been supplanted by the security argument for good reason, Windows is no longer chronicaly unreliable.

UNIX went through the same phases, fifteen years ago keeping a UNIX box alive for a few weeks was a major achievement. Eventually they fixed that and the argument became security.

This is correct

[0x0d0a]

I read through a study on this -- economic costs of smoking.

Yes, there are more healthcare costs, but the lifespan expectancy drastically shortens, so smokers are less likely to recieve the benefits of Social Security. Furthermore, when the taxes that smokers pay that go to everyone are factored in, the researchers concluded that smokers actually are an economic benefit to non-smokers (of course, they certainly could have missed some factors).

The total economic benefit of someone smoking a pack of cigarettes to the non-smoking community was estimated to be something like ten cents, IIRC.

The overwhelming factor is that smokers tend to die early, and never enjoy their retirement.

If anyone's still dumb enough to be smoking, that study should have put them off...

MS One�=Greater Sales and profits.

[TiMac]

Obviously, Microsoft has a business reason for wanting "one program" (to rule them all...) as opposed to a suite of apps. I'm sorry but they don't make their decisions based on the consumer's convenience.

As it currently stands, you can choose to buy the whole MS Office Suite (as many do, and as many OEMs sell), or if you only need one app, you can just buy Word, Powerpoint, Excel individually. MS has discouraged this by making the individual apps way overpriced, but it is still done a lot.

With Microsoft One(TM) you won't have that option--you'll have to pay the full $500 price for the one application, regardless of whether or not you'll use all the functionality.

Duh. Would MS really do something not designed to make money?

what a bunch of bullshit.

[twitter]

objects, properties, methods, what a bunch of marketriod crap for modular programing. You say,

All iexplore.exe does ... is call mshtml.dll ... All excel.exe does is call the Excel COM ... The ... 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.

Flatulent nonsense. All you are doing in the Win32 world is using the toys M$ gives you. You can call that manipulation whatever you like but you can never understand the toy, nor change it to do what you want nor distribute your changed code. Sooner than later, M$ will break your method. Thanks for the VB propaganda talk, but learning those terms and how to use the toys takes time away from learning useful code and so furthers your enslavement. It's a dead end.

I've seen that M$ is depreciating C in their Visual Studio, thanks to the use of C#. Would you think it good for M$ to take away the programer's ability to make custom code? Is the new M$ modularity, where you can only "creativly call" their toys what you want? Would it not be better to really be able to program?

Re:what a bunch of bullshit.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Well, considering that one of of the entire points of COM is that old interfaces aren't removed, only superceded, and that COM is designed to be language independant, and that you only ever need to KNOW two whole interfaces, I think they've got that covered.

Oh, and just to feed the trolls, gosh, we never have THAT problem on Linux, do we? Nope, not with GCC, not with virtual memory interfaces, not with filesystem abstraction layers, not with LVM concepts, nope nope nope. Similarly, Windows DLL hell would NEVER happen with a robust and intelligent packaging system like RPM, would it?

Every OS and every programming concept has it's strengths and it's weaknesses; dismiss one and the only thing you're doing is limiting yourself.

Re:Been there, done that.

[Zeinfeld]

Linux security isn't competetive with Windows!? Cue Rod Serling.

Only if you define security in the exceptionally narrow sense of 'relatively free of security holes'.

In terms of support for security features Windows is much more advanced. Windows has Kerberos deeply embedded into the O/S, in Unix Kerberos is an optional afterthought. Windows has full support for PKI built into the core of the O/S, no UNIX has to date. Windows has features like an encrypting file system built into the core file system, on UNIX you have various ad hoc schemes.

dotNET has an exceptionaly sophisticated security model that provides for fine grained authorization on application defined permissions. Linux has the same old two level privillege system of user/root.

Palladium provides a means by which a client application on a remote computer can convince another system that it is running a specific version of an application and that the machine is secured to a specific profile. That is kinda useful if you want to use that machine to store a credit card number on or the like...

Of course you can if you chose simply stick your head in the sand the way that Lotus, Apple and Wordperfect did. Of course your system is perrfect and will never be challenged no matter how much time and effort Redmond put into overtaking you. Go ahead Mr Hare take a nice long nap, the armoured tank is way off in the distance and only moving at 50 mph or so.

Re:Been there, done that.

[Billly Gates]

Gosling and a few students at UC of Berkely wrote Vi. Not Emacs.

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.

Re:Especially when you see the adds :)

[Dirtside]

For someone whose posting history indicates extreme bitterness toward /., you sure do spend a lot of time posting here. Just thought I'd point that out.

Re:All anti-MS, all the time

[Billly Gates]

This is an anti ms story so expect anti ms comments.

Click on a *BSD story and watch the all the *BSD related comments and a few gentoo trolls.

Click on a Sun story and watch all the comments from sun administrators.

The point is those who read slashdot who are anti-microsoft will post to this story just like those who are interested in other topics like the ones I mentioned above will post to these stories. Slashdot is one of the 20th most bussiest websites in the world with tens if not hundreds of thousands of readers. If you do not like this anti-ms hoopla then go into your account and disable Microsoft related stories. The problem then should be taken care of.

Just to play Devil's Advocate here...

[MsGeek]

Konqueror is to KDE what IE is to Windows. Konqui is not just the web browser, it's what pops up when you want to look through your files. It's everywhere in KDE. However, its tendrils only extend throughout KDE...it does not dig deep into the rest of Linux or the other xNIX variants it runs on. And Konqui can run in other window managers too...I run Mandrake 9 and can get to Konqui from IceWM and GNOME if I want to.

Heh, I like Konqui. It's what IE should have been. And unlike IE it seems to get faster and sleeker and more standards-compliant with each iteration.

From the article

[Junky191]

Windows XP gots been on de market fo' some year now, so's naturally everyone be clamo'in' fo' details on de next version uh de wo'ld's most popular opuh'tin' system -- o' so's Microsoft Co'p. Jes hang loose, brud. hopes.

Details is dribblin' out, but Microsoft won't say some wo'd on de reco'd, declinin' t'comment fo' dis sto'y. Analysts and software developuh's gotsn't been briefed, eider. Ah be baaad...

But here's whut gots leaked out so's far.

De next version uh de wo'ld's most popular desktop opuh'tin' system, code-dojiggerd "Longho'n," be due out in test fo'm next year and in final fo'm in 2004. It gots'ta some new look and feel, real different fum Windows XP's. Its guts gots'ta also be radically different fum Windows XP's, cuz' dey're based on XML -- 'estensible markup language, de emergin' lin'ua franca uh de Internet. Man! And it gots'ta be da damn fust version dat won't funcshun fully widout new hardware.

"Wid de possible 'sepshun uh Windows NT, which wuz some change fum de ground down, dis could be da damn biggest change ever" t'Windows, said Giga analyst Rob Enderle.

Observers recon' dat Longho'n will, dig dis:

# Create some new stash system dat replaces FAT, FAT32 (an acronym fo' Stash Allocashun Table) and even de newa' NTFS (de Windows NT stash system), de most modern ways uh sto'in' data in Windows. To make life easia' fo' clunker users, it gots'ta simplify locatin' data by usin' de stash dojigger o' content, regardless uh wheda' data be contained in some spreadsheet, some wo'd-processin' document o' an e-mail. After-market products do dis now, but dey impose some puh'fo'mance penalty. Slap mah fro!

Enderle said da damn new stash system gots'ta also funcshun efficiently wid hard rolls holdin' at least one terabyte uh data. WORD! Dat's 1,000 gigabytes, o' well upside 1,000 compressed movies, o' mo'e dan 700,000 novels de size uh "War and Peace." Such rolls is 'spected t'hit da damn market by 2004.

Creatin' such some stash system be an 'estrao'dinarily difficult tax', one dat gots been attempted fo' years by database companies, includin' Microsoft, but dat gots neva' reached fruishun.

De guts uh de new stash system is bein' engineered mainly in conjuncshun wid "Yukon," Microsoft's code dojigger fo' de next version uh its SQL Serva' relashunal database management system. WORD!

But some beta version uh Yukon ain't due out until mid-2003, which makes some onlookers wonda' how de stash-systems team in de Windows division kin dig started on adaptin' dat technology fo' mo'e general-purpose use.

"Evidence dey're makin' some progress would be some professional developuh's' conference 'esplainin' it, so's developuh's kin know whut dey need t'know t'use it," said Michael Cherry, an analyst wid Direcshuns on Microsoft in Kirkland. "I duzn't even see some date scheduled fo' one."

Even if such some stash system kin be achieved, it would gots'ta be do'oughly tested befo'e use, as convertin' data t'de new system would be necessary -- but could destroy de data. WORD!

Present some sin'le, unified way uh interactin' wid honky codes. Microsoft duzn't dink clunker users should gots'ta use one honky code t'read and scribble some wo'd-processin' stash, anoda' to use some spreadsheet, and some dird t'co'respond via e-mail. Rader, de company dinks, some sin'le honky code should handle it all.

Obviously dis means some do'ough overhaul uh not plum Windows but also de Office software suite, Chief Executive Steve Ballma' has confirmed in published clunker-industry repo'ts

Howeva' attractive and effective such some new interface might be, de company may be overestimatin' users' willin'ness t'change deir habits, some analysts say. Slap mah fro!

Once it's understood where certain tax's gots'ta be puh'fo'med, many users is content t'go dere, even if de set-up be -- as clunker geeks would say -- sub-optimal. Wheda' users gots'ta be willin' t'learn some new way uh usin' deir clunkers plum a'cuz it's "better" be jimmey to quesshun.

Not t'menshun de 'espense uh installin' new software, says Cherry. Slap mah fro!

"Dere gots'ta t'be compellin' reasons" t'install de new opuh'tin' system, cuz' "it costs co'po'ashuns some fo'tune t'roll it out," he said.

# Include enhanced security. Longho'n gots'ta be da damn fust opuh'tin' system designed fo' use wid PCI Express, de moderbo'd design dat gots'ta succeed da damn PCI standard currently in fo'ce, Enderle said. In addishun t'providin' some puh'fo'mance boost uh up t'eight times current speeds, de new design be required t'harness de increased security features uh Longho'n, which Enderle said is embogot wasted in Microsoft's "Palladium"-branded trustwo'dy-computin' initiative.

"Neida' Linux no' dat slow mo-fo ties de opuh'tin' system t'hardware," he said.

"Dis could brin' some higha' level uh security dan nuthin we've eva' seen. 'S coo', bro. It gots'ta mos' completely prevent da damn platfo'm fum bein' compromised."

To dose "facts" about Longho'n, add da damn hopes uh oda' analysts. Ideally, Longho'n gots'ta "fundamentally integrate" audio, video and images in some "visually stunnin'" manner, much likes de Mac's OS X, said Tim Bajarin, super-dude uh de Campbell, Calif., research firm Creative Strategies Inc. Co' got d' beat!

It should also be able t'synchronize da damn multiple PCs, sucka'al digital assistants and clunker-equipped cell phones -- Microsoft calls dem SmartPhones -- many sucka's gots'ta own, Bajarin said.

But digtin' Longho'n out da damn doo' at Microsoft could be some challenge. De company be strugglin' t'get .Net Serva' -- de fust serva' version uh Windows XP -- shipped. It also gots service packs fo' Windows 2000 and Windows XP t'produce on an ongoin' basis. And some new opuh'tin' system snatch'd at least 20 monds, sometimes 40 monds, Cherry said.

"I'd likes t'see Microsoft act likes de opuh'tin'-system leada' it is, not promisin' sco'es uh new features o' lettin' rumo's fly but steppin' fo'ward and sayin', 'We gots'ta X, Y and Z features and not A, B and C,' " he said.

"Dat would be leadership, especially when so's many sucka's is dependent on ya'."

Re:Been there, done that.

[MsGeek]

Yes, I've been there, done that, and got the nice little card in my wallet and certificate in my filing cabinet.

In terms of support for security features Windows is much more advanced. Windows has Kerberos deeply embedded into the O/S, in Unix Kerberos is an optional afterthought. Windows has full support for PKI built into the core of the O/S, no UNIX has to date. Windows has features like an encrypting file system built into the core file system, on UNIX you have various ad hoc schemes.

OK, you can get Kerberos v5 with any Linux distro and it works very well. Kerberos was designed for UNIX. The variant on Kerberos v5 that is used in Windows beginning in Windows 2000 is a bastardized version, so much so it can't even communicate with the open Kerberos standard. Ask the Samba Team sometime how much of a bitch of a time they had getting MIT Kerberos 5 to talk to Windows Kerberos 5.

Microsoft's implementation of PKI is so howlingly bad that they are still trying to fix the SSL Certificates problem that the KDE people got fixed within a week of announcement. Like ordering securely online? Don't do it with IE, folks.

EFS is a royal PITA. Everyone loved it in the beginning and you have to know how it works to pass MS certification tests. But it has a very big problem...you take a severe performance hit if you use it, and it's only good for the person who encrypts the data and for no-one else.

Agreed, Linux/BSD needs a better security model, but it's in the works. The NSA's Secure Linux has a fully working version that is even better than Windows permissions. And you can set up groups and do limited group policy in xNIX even now.

Of course you can if you chose simply stick your head in the sand the way that Lotus, Apple and Wordperfect did. Of course your system is perrfect and will never be challenged no matter how much time and effort Redmond put into overtaking you. Go ahead Mr Hare take a nice long nap, the armoured tank is way off in the distance and only moving at 50 mph or so.

Haw haw haw laughing boy...what a fsckn joke. Truth is, MS is now running scared of Free/Open Source operating systems. All you have to do to get Redmond to cut you a deal on licensing is show them all the lovely ways you will use Linux and/or FreeBSD in your network and retire all those Windows servers with the client access licenses and their hassle. However, that tank out of Helsinki is coming right for Redmond and they can't stop it. Like they showed the world with IE, you can't compete with something that's free as in beer. The fact that it's also free as in speech is a very good thing indeed, but it's secondary for the PHBs and the Bean Counters if it's ever considered at all.

Here's another one...

[MsGeek]

Unreal Tournament (1999) requires you to be admin to install it. However, it does not require you to be admin to play it, at least on Windows 2000. I suspect that since XP is Windows 2000 1.1 (actually NT 5.1) the same situation applies.

Database filestores (was: Re:BeFS)

[LinuxParanoid]

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.

Quite right. Mod the parent up.

In terms of such an effort "never reaching fruition" though, I'd add that the AS/400 has had a database filestore for well over a decade.

If you are bored with the OS concepts of UNIX and Windows, there's a lot of really unique conceptual stuff in AS/400 that is production-grade and real-world enough to account for billions of dollars of revenues in hardware and software.

--LP

sorry, but you are wrong

[g4dget]

If you think of Windows NT as having a multi-user, UNIX-like core, what you say should be true in theory. In practice, unfortunately, it isn't.

UNIX has been hardened in more than 20 years of multi-user use in some of the most hostile environments on the planet (college campuses). The entire UNIX software architecture is built for the kinds of systems on which you have hundreds of simultaneous users, dozens of which may try to break in at any time. And it stands up to that kind of assault.

Windows NT machines, in contrast, hardly ever have more than one person logged on at the same time. Almost all multiuser installations of NT are only concerned with the security of the file server, and security and privacy is really only guaranteed for files that live on the file server. Even if there were local breaches of security on the machines users log into, it's unlikely anybody would ever notice them. Furthermore, many of the NT services and user-mode libraries haven't even been designed with single-machine multi-user operations in mind. The closest to multi-user NT is Terminal Server, but that has found it necessary to put a whole other layer of insulation between different users.

So, altogether, you are wrong: you haven't been able to do that with any Windows NT based OS, ever. And chances are, you never will be. Windows NT isn't built for that kind of security, and it isn't used in that kind of environment.

DirectX is likely a gaping security hole

[g4dget]

DirectX isn't called "direct" for nothing: it does give end user programs direct access to many hardware features and lets non-privileged programs simulate whatever screen contents they would like to simulate. Both of those features make it likely that it is a gaping security hole.

Windows NT/XP is effectively a single-user OS, without much security. The only security and multi-user features that Windows offers are related to file servers and Terminal Server. Live with it.

Re:Been there, done that.

[Zeinfeld]

OK, you can get Kerberos v5 with any Linux distro and it works very well. Kerberos was designed for UNIX. The variant on Kerberos v5 that is used in Windows beginning in Windows 2000 is a bastardized version, so much so it can't even communicate with the open Kerberos standard.

OK, fire up telnet and log into another machine. Oh dear you password just went over the wire in the clear. Same for your POP connection.

Running ssh in place of telenet is a good idea, but it is certainly not a transparent replacement. You have to go round disabling the telnet deamons, install ssh and tel the users you made the switch.

Agreed, Linux/BSD needs a better security model, but it's in the works. The NSA's Secure Linux has a fully working version that is even better than Windows permissions. And you can set up groups and do limited group policy in xNIX even now.

The implicit assumption you make here is that military security models are the most challenging, actually that is completely untrue as anyone who has used a label based secure O/S knows. Military security models are actually considerably simpler to design because you can simply order people to use them and you get a high degree of compliance. It does not work like that in the real world. NSA secure Linux is far less sophisticated than the dotNET security framework.

All the NSA patches do is to bring UNIX up to the state of the art circa 1980s.

One program vs one pacage

[Felinoid]

Dose the end user care if it's one program or a pacage on many?
Honnestly no they don't.
Historicly however software companys have done better to offer a bunch of programs instead of a single program that dose it all.

One argument once made was "People who slam Microsoft don't understand the issues involved in os develupment" this is a polite way of saying 'you don't know what your talking about'
However I do and the issues are faced by anyone wishing to write a large complex system.
I've discoverd that one contained pacage makes it impossable to maintain.
Instead use a pacage of smaller programs.
Then when your working on wordprocessing you need not worry about email handling. You don't have to think "Can this be used to make email worms?" or "Will this interfear with the web browser?"

Even more important than having your applications in many programs is the ability to shop around and buy what works best for you.

Not so funny

[Pac]

It was funnier when I thought about it reading the comment above mine - but I had to consider what you said, no one knows assembler anymore, and settle for ADD (one instruction I think is your average first example when you read an introduction to assembler).

Anyway, nevermind about moderation - it has been a long time since I posted here for karma, years really (I have an ID one order of magnitute lower than you, and my karma has been parked in the upper limit ever since there is an upper limit). I post to amuse or inform or even flame, but as difficult as it this in such a large site, I mostly post to see if meaningful conversation can start. Sometimes it does. But thanks for the pat and the grin.. :)

Nope, you are wrong

[TheAncientHacker]

All you've argued is that you've never used the multiuser capabilities of NT. Sorry that you've never used them but they are there. (And there's more to multiuser than just running dumb terminals) As for security, Windows NT got a C2 security rating and was architected at the B level. Unix was not.

Re:Nope, you are wrong

[g4dget]

All you've argued is that you've never used the multiuser capabilities of NT.

Not at all. What I have argued is that most NT installations never use the multiuser capabilities of NT. Almost all security-conscious NT installations connect personal single-user clients to multi-user servers. That does not exercise the multiuser capabilities of the NT kernel or user land libraries/programs at all.

Sorry that you've never used them but they are there.

My point is that if they don't get exercised in practice, you can't trust them. In any case, we already know of a number of security holes in the multi-user capabilities NT/XP without even looking, and even those don't get fixed--because Microsoft doesn't care.

As for security, Windows NT got a C2 security rating and was architected at the B level. Unix was not.

Seems like they fell a bit short, then. Also note that NT is only C2 rated when it isn't networked--not exactly a very useful rating, and something that exercises almost no multi-user capabilities.

In any case, the C2 rating is about the presence of features, not actual security. Many features in C2 are deliberately absent from UNIX because they make systems harder to administer and ultimately less secure.

Linux is being used as the basis of highly secure systems by the NSA, and it has pretty much all the features it would need to get a C2 rating (or better) now--someone with deep pockets just needs to cough up the money for an evaluation. Fortunately, those features are optional because, ultimately, C2 or B are a bad idea.

Re:Nope, you are wrong

[TheAncientHacker]

Also note that NT is only C2 rated when it isn't networked--not exactly a very useful rating, and something that exercises almost no multi-user capabilities.

You mean exactly the case for multiuser local protection that you say it doesn't have?

Wonderful excuses, by the way, for why Linux isn't certified as secure. "It really must be but nobody knows it. But it really is. Trust me..." On the other hand, a actually certified system isn't secure because you, personally, haven't seen enough people playing with it. Wow.

MS BOB, you say?

[azimir]

Everyone here (in the Slashdot camp), should remember that the project lead for MS BOB became Mrs. Gates.

This alone should portend evil things.

Re:Been there, done that.

[MsGeek]

Running ssh in place of telenet is a good idea, but it is certainly not a transparent replacement. You have to go round disabling the telnet deamons, install ssh and tel the users you made the switch.

Actually that's a damn good idea. Unfortunately you can't do that on Windows 2000 or Windows XP or for that matter any version of Windows unless you pay for SSH daemons and clients. Or install Cygwin and then install OpenSSH...but darn it, that's got VIRAL GPL CODE! We can't have that! ^_^

Windows COMES with Telnet. It's a crap version of Telnet that is directly descended from BSD code. Run Strings against telnet.exe and see what you find.

Windows SHOULD come with an implementation of SSH. But does it? Nope.

Workstation != Server/infrastructure

[SgtChaireBourne]

One of the issues spun these days is Workstation versus server. People have been using and relying on Free Software and Open Source Software for decades (long before either those names). They're still doing it, especially for mission critical services.

However, the enormous ocean of novice users created in the late 1990's is not producing more than a trickle of learned users. These novices are easy marks for sales teams because of their inability to tell the difference between workstations and infrastructure.

Longhorn. vaporware or segue to Palladium lockin

[SgtChaireBourne]

Longhorn could just be vaporware a la Win95. The DOS market had just about played itself out and then, like now, Microsoft was far behind the technology of potential competitors.

1. Stop fixing win95 problems when they pop up ... Eventually retire the OS

2. Use those billions in the bank to pay a few companies to make software that requires features in newer versions of windows, i.e., not backwards-compatible with win98/ME any more.

You're right on point 1, but Win95/98 gets the axe already this year, 31 Dec 2002. WinNT 3.5x also gets axed at the same time. MS-Windows 98, 98SE, and MS-Windows NT 4.x have a 6 month stay. The timing of all this does look like MS is tryng to box customers into Palladium.

IANAA (I am not an auditor), but point 2 seems an issue for alt.folklore.urban. Microsoft's lost money on every thing but MS-Windows and MS-Office. In the past, Microsoft has has a more than $10 billion discrepancy between the initial accounting report and what they actually lost. Since they've been dropping projects left and right and, at the risk of alienating customers and reducing future sales, sent the Business Software Alliance out to collect extra money. The new license 6.0 was no market winner either. All those actions look like a desparate scamble for cash.

Even MBAs are starting to realize the value of interoperability and that's where Microsoft is historically (and legally) weakest.

Plus on the desktop, OS X beats Windows on ease of use and flexibility and has the apps needed today. The ease of use for the end user, low technical maintenance overhead, and greater security saves support staff. On the server side, even the Microsoft execs admit publicly their products can't compete on price, security, or stability with the regular server OS's like BSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, QNX, & co.

I think no one knows what this means

[Pac]

It sounds more like a marketing smoke-screen. Microsoft marketing people (and I have met dozens of them and worked for an MSP once) usually translate the strategic technical decisions into an unified speech. The problem is that many times the translation loses so much content that it loses most of its original meaning. The OLE/COM/DCOM transition was plagued by this sort of thing. The .Net innitiative made this division clear for anyone who cared to notice - as the internal MS technical people tried hard to define what .Net was without conflicting with Gates and Balmer vague words about it, marketing had already unified its speech - the only problem was that no one really knew what .Net was, so when you paid attention to what MS marketing people was saying you quickly notice they weren't really saying anything, just throwing nice slogans at you.