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Longhorn in 2006
worm eater writes "Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft officials are now aiming for a 2006 release date for Longhorn, the follow up to Windows XP. Microsoft has been hyping aspects of this OS to its partners since 2001. I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line."
Why should Microsoft be capable of implementing secure DRM when normal security has thus far eluded them?
Everything old is new again. Remember a few years back, when OS/2 was still considered a semi-legitimate contender, Apple's market share was greater than a single digit, and most IT hands were pretty unconvinced that migrating from Netware to NT was worth the time, money or aggravation? Against what should have been an overwhelming competitive landscape, and armed only with what was in retrospect a dismal product (NT4), MS managed to convince IT managers everywhere that they were the Future of Computing as We Know It. Why? Well, there was this thing called "Cairo", and it was gonna ship Real Soon Now, and it was going to be an all-object-oriented thingamabob that would shine your shoes and make your teeth whiter. The industry bought it, hook line and sinker, and after NT4 had trounced OS/2 and Netware soundly, Cairo evaporated into the same neverland that Apple's Copland project did.
Flash forward to now: Apple is regaining a bit of strength on the desktop, Linux is seriously eating into their server revenue, and while Windows Server 2003 is itself a solid (if unexciting) product, the greater gestalt of the Windows Infrastructure is looking more and more like a bug-ridden, unmaintainable mess. But wait, we've got this really cool technology just around the corner, it's called Longhorn and it'll get your whites whiter, you're gonna love it!
The more things change...
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Actually, I think the opposite is the problem. It seems that DRM restrictions are aimed at protecting other people's content, while so far MS has done a poor job of protecting my content.
I stuff that I create (documents, code, music, whatever) is very open to theft on my Windows machine due to MS's poor security. Yet, they are spending tons on DRM for other people's content.
Since their main customer is the mass-market, why don't they spend more time protecting the mass market and less protecting the professional artists with DRM? There are more of us than them.
(BTW, before you get the wrong idea, I am a supporter of IP and its protection, however, I am an even bigger supporter of the monopoly supplier's responsibility to its customers. If they were not a monopoly I, frankly, would not care, and would let the market decide. Them being a court-verified monopoly places certain resonsibilities on them)
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
As one of the largest failings of Windows XP was that it didn't antialias EVERYTHING, Longhorn will be finishing what XP couldn't.
To keep up with new hardware, Longhorn will continue to competively use 96% of system resources through such bonus features as antialiasing the clock, folders, the XP search dog, and many more. For very fast computers, Longhorn is dabbling with a groundbreaking antialiasing loop, which, if there is nothing left to antialias, will loop in the background reantialiasing bitmaps that are already smooth.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Please write an entirely new OS!!!
We don't need compatibility any longer. We're used to upgrading everything every 30 days anyway. We can dual boot the way Apple users continue to do between OSX and MacOS9.
Write the OS so that only the OS runs at ring 0. Write the OS so that it fixes the problems associated with the message queue. Write the OS so that user level restrictions are STRICTLY enforced so that even if there is a bug found, the damage it can cause is severely limited. (Meaning that an SQL bug doesn't result in email viruses being distributed across the internet.)
Please forget about tremendous levels of programability!! We don't need a word processor that knows how to format my hard drive or copy files into my system directory!! We just want it to process words. So far, the only people who really know how to use these "features" are the freaking virus authors!!!
It's not like you have to do a lot of thinking about it. Apple saw the light and went with an advanced yet tested kernel. It has ALL of the appropriate features built-in with a license compatible with their purposes. Write your own *NIX core if you want to.
Want to shut down Linux users? Write your next OS on a BSD kernel, make the old Windows apps work the way people want them to (it can be done... it's BEING done) and sell it to people. They will buy it because there are people out there who still trust you for some reason. Once you out out something with a *NIX kernel, you will see an amazing amount of curiosity and popularity.
And did I mention that trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security? If I hadn't, then I will say it now. Trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security!!!!