Microsoft Drops .NET Name For Next Windows Server

Full of Holes... by akiy · 2003-01-10 09:49 · Score: 5, Funny

A net, by defition, is full of holes...

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Confusion? by _ph1ux_ · 2003-01-10 09:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

I agree with the bit about confusion....

I was very confused (and still am) to exactly what .NET is - and palladium for that matter. I asked here on slashdot what they were and the major differnces between the two.

Someone posted a link to an MS page that supposedly explained what they were - but it still was very vague and didnt help much.

So - anyone out there clear on what .NET is and maybe palladium for that matter who would care to expound on the merits of this wonderful technology?

Re:Confusion? by larien · 2003-01-10 09:56 · Score: 5, Informative

.NET is their buzzword compliant strategy including SOAP, XML, Web services and their latest plan to crush competitors. Somewhere in there is the ditched Hailstorm/Passport plan for world domination.
Palladium is the DRM, sorry, secure platform where the idea is that a Palladium enabled OS will only run signed apps, presumably adding security by not running any viruses, worms and any haxxor tools. Of course, this means any open source will not work in a Palladium OS because of the difficulty of getting an open source app signed.
That's my understanding of the two, but I'm not 100% sure; it's been difficult trying to work out exactly what .NET really means...
Re:Confusion? by arkhan_jg · 2003-01-10 10:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

.NET has already been answered fairly well.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html is a good faq (in english, not geek ;)
A sample ----
2. What does TCPA / Palladium do, in ordinary English?
It provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the applications, and where these applications can communicate securely with the vendor. The obvious application is digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely. It will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buying it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: Palladium could be the answer to his prayer.
There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.
There is a downside too. There will be remote censorship: the mechanisms designed to delete pirated music under remote control may be used to delete documents that a court (or a software company) has decided are offensive - this could be anything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders. Software companies can also make it harder for you to switch to their competitors' products; for example, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor.

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Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Re:Confusion? by Arethan · 2003-01-10 10:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Everyone is complaining that Palladium will kill open source on Win32. I can't help but agree, but there is another angle to this as well. What happens to the small programming shops? I can think of plenty of times when one of my previously employing companies wrote small (sometimes throwaway) apps for clients. Sometimes it was for data massaging, sometimes it was a quick front end to something normally complicated.

The cold fact is that I can't see small businesses providing custom software solutions for clients surviving if Palladium is released. The cost to have throw away apps signed (not to mention the time delay involved) will utterly destroy them.

Unless of course the application signing is much simpler than that. Simply trusting a company as a whole, rather than a particular application. Trusting an entire company will allow small businesses to sign their own code. Of course, that also means that the DRM is pointless because a single hacked network will result in signed viruses.

If MS goes ahead with Palladium, I'll be keeping my eye out for the first virus to fool the OS into rejecting every app, regardless of signature. Perfect DOS attack. Can't do anything but reinstall from the installation media, if your DRM bios will let you that is...
Re:Confusion? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-10 10:31 · Score: 5, Funny

Is this all true? I was under the impression that .NET was a different four things:

1. Developers

2. Developers

3. Developers

4. Developers

At least, that's what that Ballmer guy said.
Re:Confusion? by Proc6 · 2003-01-10 10:37 · Score: 5, Informative

I write C#.NET stuff almost every day. All .NET is is a framework. A collection of programming objects that let you build apps by fitting them together, and writing the glue, rather than re-inventing the wheel everytime. If you know what the Java classes are, or MFC, .NET is very similar. .NET objects can be accessed by writing command line apps, windows GUI apps, and ASP web-apps. It makes it very nice to be able to know the same language for all 3, at least to me. I liked Perl for CGI, but couldnt use it to make a GUI app very easily. VB was queer, but worked for GUI apps, but not very strong for complicated apps. .NET framework includes a bunch of objects for dealing with everything from I/O to Databases to XML and Webservices.

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Re:Confusion? by archen · 2003-01-10 10:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

Those were my thoughts as well until I realized that microsoft is going to have major problems for one reason: scripting. Are they just going to say "No Scripting" on windows? I really don't see any practical way to ever "trust" a script of any sort. So I would imagine Microsoft will be putting "untrusted" applications in some sort of sandbox (and probably a disadvantage as some sort of penalty).

Small time apps will always be there no matter what MS wants. What Microsoft will eventually find is that their lack of open / free development tools is going to be a continual drag on windows development. I couldn't even begin to name all the development tools / languages you can use on Linux. On windows there is only a handfull and most if it is controlled by MS and is far from cheap. All this "trusted computing" stuff is just going to make Linux development more appealing.
Re:Confusion? by esarjeant · 2003-01-10 11:28 · Score: 5, Informative

TBPH, I think Microsoft is attempting to conquor the elusive remote object invocation problem.

At first, it seemed like some version of RPC might solve this problem. And then a little bit later, developers were promised that CORBA was the future. Somewhere in there OSF/DCE made a lot of promises. And then Microsoft threw COM out there, and tried to spruce up some security issues with COM+...

Eventually EJB took hold, and now we have yet another way to remotely invoke objects via SOAP.

While things are looking up, I think most developers are fairly frustrated at this point. After grappling with IDL's and disparate RPC mechanisms, IUnknown and VisualBasic... I think unless there is a conserted effort by the industry to address remote object invocations (including a robust security model) then all of these attempts will continue to flounder.

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Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Re:Confusion? by shyster · 2003-01-10 13:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mod the parent up. He's the first one with half a clue on what .NET is, rather than what MS is positioning on what .NET can do.
Don't forget, however, that the .NET Framework also means that (theoretically, at least...and in reality for the most part) you can write in C#.NET, VB.NET, etc. and still have access to the same objects...so you can keep the language you're most familiar with.
Also, .NET allows multiple versions of shared libraries, ending "DLL Hell" (which really hasn't been a problem for around 5 years, but whatever). It's also allows for granular and inheritable permissions on program's actions (Program X is allowed to access the network, therefore Component Y called by Program X is allowed to access the network)...though it requires a good development team that knows what they're doing and does it properly (so it probably won't work out too well).
SOAP, XML, and Web Services are really just applications and languages of .NET...and a vision of MS's future program services (where your program can call on another program located on your server, or halfway around the world, to process data and return it...sort of like a global #include)...but it's not really living up to the hype yet.
If you're not a developer or system admin, .NET means very little to you. If you're a developer, you probably should look into it, unless you're into Java. System Admins can probably wait a year or so before playing with Windows 2003 Server and some actual .NET applications.
Re:Confusion? by tftp · 2003-01-10 15:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

foremen could fire up their PocketPC handhelds and see what their teams were working on that day.
I worked with architects and construction people, this should be close to shipbuilding. I *guarantee* that no foreman would even *think* of getting any usable info from a Palm Pilot. A foreman has heaps of A0 drawings (if you don't know what A0 size is, check it out), and most of those drawings are already in his head.
A foreman does not *need* a computer. It is too slow, and has too low a resolution. Each drawing has tens of thousands pixels across, and we used all of those pixels - a building is long, and each room and each wall have their dimensions, and these dimensions must be readable.
Also, a foreman does not need to check his Palm Pilot to know what his team is doing. That is because he is right there, with his team, running from one work site to another, checking the work and giving instructions all the time. That's what his job is about - not "checking his Palm Pilot".
Frequently a foreman needs to talk to an engineer who oversees the construction. Then he reaches for his walkie-talkie, or walks to the office, usually with drawings in hand. Then he sits with the architect, who then draws sketches for him to explain this corner, or that insulation layer. A computer here is mostly useless, since pen and drafting paper are much faster. Pen is also easier to use, especially if a foreman does not have a university education.
Computers are widely used as drafting tools, and they do this job reasonably well. But computer manipulation of drawings is not something that even an architect is good with. Most architects prefer pen and paper, and they all draw very well. Maintenance of the drawings is something that only draftsmen do.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-10 10:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What is .NET? by r · 2003-01-10 10:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

i've been able to find at least three distinct meanings of the .NET tag:

in the web development circles, it's used for next-generation tools and services for writing web applications. for example, ASP.NET, SOAP RPC, and various other web- and XML-based services
in the web customer services domain, it was going to be a secure roaming account scheme, a.k.a. the Passport .NET
most interestingly, in the windows application development domain, .NET is also used to describe the .NET Framework, a new set of libraries that's meant to slowly replace the standard Win32/64 libraries (see articles at ars technica for really detailed info). the framework is basically a cleaned-up, garbage-collected, language-agnostic version of Win32. it's great. but hardly anyone thinks about it when they hear .NET-this or .NET-that. :)

in any case, the semantic shift of the label .NET has surely caused MS much grief. it's about time they cleaned it up.

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My other car is a cons.

Not just because it was on every product. by fireboy1919 · 2003-01-10 10:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Rule #1 when creating technical terms is
"Don't reuse a term that is already in use in a similar domain."

This is pretty much exactly what Microsoft did. Putting a "." before a three letter word has become synonymous with meaning the webpage that displays the product. It is likely that some managers heard of visual studio .net and immediately checked "visualstudio.net" to find out what the name of the latest version of visual studio was.

Plus, "net" is short for internet. That's nuts. We live in a world where a great many people don't know the difference between a webbrowser and an operating system. There's no way these people would be able to distinguish an internet api called "internet" from the internet.

Its probably because they weren't really getting their corporate message across to consumers. I hear that the new API that they're building into all of their products is to be called "Owns You!"

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Re:This is hardly news... by DaytonCIM · 2003-01-10 10:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Good point. Going one step farther... I believe that Microsoft never got behind .NET. Sure, there was a mild push last year, but then *poof* no more push.

They had really pretty sections in most book stores for the VAST number of .NET books, but really there was never a "Microsoft type" marketing push. Maybe because there wasn't a "product" to push? .NET RIP 2003

Much misunderstanding about .NET by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-01-10 10:35 · Score: 5, Informative

I've seen a number of posts trying to clarify what .NET is, and they're missing the point. .NET isn't just about web services and so on, which in itself is a good reason to change the name. .NET is a major attempt to shed legacy Windows problems and modernize both Windows itself and Windows application development. If you read the .NET and C# documents, you'll see this. For example, if you want to write a GUI application for Windows today, you have to use one of (a) raw Win32 API, (b) MFC, (c) a cross-platform toolkit like WxWindows, or (d) a tool like Delphi or Visual Basic. By a large margin, the last of these is the cleanest and least stressful--if you're only concerned about Windows that is (of course you can get Delphi for Linux in the guise of Kylix). But .NET is bringing the GUI building features of Delphi and Visual Basic to the OS, so there's support for this from the ground up. Ditto for technologies like DirectX 9. No more do you have to deal with arcane C++ interfaces to COM, you can use a pretty little C# component.

In short, Microsoft is deprecating most of the Win32 API, making .NET the preferred method for developing Windows applications. If don't like C#, that's okay. Microsoft has been getting indepdendent language developers to port their own languages to .NET, including lesser used languages like Smalltalk, APL, and Mercury.

As much as I hate to say it, .NET could be a huge win. No more struggling with Petzold books, just use the much simpler .NET components. No need to hang onto awful legacy frameworks like MFC, which even Microsoft employees hate. No more having to choose between C++ and much slower scripting languages like Python for application development, just use C#.

Re:This is hardly news... by HiredMan · 2003-01-10 10:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

when they changed Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000 - hoping to ditch all the bad news

Actually I think this was also the first real push made by M$ to go to leased software.

Naming your Word Processor or Office Suite after the year makes no sense at all unless you plan to release a new one every year like they do cars. They get rid of the Y.X naming - which actually provides information to the consumer if you use it correctly - and start getting people used to naming like "Word 2000".
That way it seems more natural when you pay for Word 2003 and then pay again for Word 2004 then next...
Cause it better you know... the numbers bigger...

=tkk

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Bill Gates - Creationist?!?

haha by autopr0n · 2003-01-10 10:57 · Score: 5, Funny

From the slashdot blurb:

Analysts are being quoted as saying that slapping .NET on so many Microsoft products has confused people as to what .NET actually means.

The entirety of your comment:

They are changing the name because people are getting confused about what .NET really is. It was a bad idea for Microsoft to try to add ".NET" to every single product they sell.

And you got modded +3 Insightful! Not +5 yet, but just wait. All you did was change the wording around, and not even that much!

what happened to the days would at least try to add tons of superfluous fluff around their restatements of the article when trying to karma whore.

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autopr0n is like, down and stuff.

heh by autopr0n · 2003-01-10 11:01 · Score: 5, Funny

What's funny is that Java's networking API is called java.net. You know, like Java.io, java.util, java.awt.image, etc.

I've coded in java for years, and done lots of networking stuff in it, using java.net. But even then, during the height of the .net marketing push I was looking through the API for the first time in a while and saw "java.net" and it immediately made me think of .net, and made me wonder why there was .net support in J2SE. Then I came to my senses :P

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autopr0n is like, down and stuff.

Re:This is hardly news... by AKnightCowboy · 2003-01-10 11:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually, I think it's more like what they did when they changed Windows NT 5.0 to Windows 2000 - hoping to ditch all the bad news (mainly delays in getting to a working product) associated with the former name.

Hey, I have an idea. Now, this is going to sound kind of crazy and I know I'm a little ahead of my time, but what if we were to simplify the name and give it a meaningful version number? We could call the next released version Windows 7.0. Microsoft Windows 7.0. It could be a HUGE media frenzy! "No XP, no 2000, no .NET.. just 7.0. The added benefit is that when a new upgrade comes out we can name it Windows 7.1 and people can tell that it is a NEWER and more advanced version!"

Re:This is hardly news... by Schnapple · 2003-01-10 12:59 · Score: 5, Informative

but really there was never a "Microsoft type" marketing push. Maybe because there wasn't a "product" to push?

Well there was the .NET framework, the free C# and VB.NET compilers, and Visual Studio .NET - four products. All but one free. And of course there were the ECMA ratified C# and CLI standards. .NET is "something" and if you still don't get that Windows .NET Server was not all ther was to .NET you clearly haven't been reading some of these highly moderated comments.

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Schnapple

Re:This is hardly news... by plover · 2003-01-10 19:01 · Score: 5, Informative

and you just missed a golden opportunity to enlighten us all...

Fine, then I'll do it.

.NET the "language" is an intermediate language bytecode called IL (Intermediate Language). You can produce it from any .NET compiler. The bytecode that is "JITted" (Just In Time compiled) at runtime as needed. The runtime environment is a process called the CLR (Common Language Runtime.)

.NET the framework also contains the system class, which exposes all of the available platform functionality. Those of you who use the Win32 API, Platform SDK, DDK, etc., know just how big this class is. It's fairly well organized.

The biggest advantage to the platform for develpers is absolute type declarations with full knowledge at the object interface: if you write an object method in VB.NET that takes two Integers, a String, and an array of Dates and returns an Integer value, then you can directly refer to that method in your C# routine. There is no conversion needed between types, not even between languages, which has historically been a problem with Microsoft code ever since OLE.

.NET also fully supports exporting and importing these objects via SOAP.

Visual Studio .NET is a development IDE for all the Microsoft .NET languages: VB.NET, C#, and others. It's similar to Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0, but all the separate components are better integrated. All languages compile together to produce a single "package", which you then ship to your customers. There are no "installations" as the package is self contained. And it still includes a native C++ compiler which can still emit code for any Windows platform (except for .NET...)

Microsoft says the combination of the above puts all languages on an equal footing: developers can code in whatever language suits them. (Since it's interpreted bytecodes, I think it makes all languages equally second class, but that's just me.) So with .NET language is not a barrier to function calls. You want to call method "Foo" on an object called "Bar"? You just do it in your working language, however that language invokes methods on objects. You don't know when you're writing it what language it will be called from. You don't worry when you're calling it what language it was written in.

That's the developers' carrot in a nutshell. And so here's the developers' stick: Everything is shipped as bytecodes in that package, and the supplied decompiler already spits out source code that's only missing some of the documentation. I asked the guy during the .NET product introduction "How is intellectual property protected if anyone can just decompile the code?" The answer started out evasive, but boiled down to: We [Microsoft] will be serving up our meat-and-potatoes functionality via the web, so our code is hidden behind our firewall. Come, join us. You do not know the power of the dark side. (OK, so maybe the guy didn't say that last line, or at least not out loud.)

On the whole, I was semi-impressed at the product introduction. Having strong type safety is really a good thing to me, because I do spend time fighting code that has been carelessly cast, and I also spend time converting from VARIANT arrays of UI1 to STD::strings. Automated garbage collection and automagic reference counting is also really nice. But interpreted languages haven't been exciting to me since GW-BASIC. (Sorry, you Java weenies, but I'm too old to think wasting cycles interpreting bytecodes in front of a user at run time is ever a good thing.) And C# is not C++, nor is it Java. I don't like that IL will only do its own random-time garbage collection and can not support destructors, not even virtual destructors. There are times when I want to garbage collect at a specific point in time (examples such as cleaning up scarce resources like database connections or sockets come easily to mind.)

But I really, really don't like that .NET is ultimately just a facade to hide the movement of software to the subscription model under Palladium. Want to print that Word document? Did you tithe Microsoft this month? Nope? Too bad. Are you still offline? Too bad, you can't run PowerPoint.NET until you're back online and we can check the status of your subscription (or at least check the status of your Visa card authorization.) .NET will make Palladium viable, since the CLR is a trusted software container (read: sandbox.)

So, on the whole, .NET has too many really huge negatives to get me going. It even caused me to ditch my MSDN subscription because it had become "Nothing but .NET" Literally.

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John

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Microsoft Drops .NET Name For Next Windows Server

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