Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Clips Longhorn
Gr8Apes writes "Microsoft is clipping Longhorn to get the already-delayed follow-up to Windows XP out the door by 2006. MS has decided to remove some of the most ambitious features. Blackcomb is the version to follow Longhorn, and is expected at the end of the decade. The full new file system feature has been moved to Blackcomb. Other notable parts of the story, in MS's efforts to get its DRM into play, a new version, Windows XP Premium will start shipping with new PCs, which will include a new version of the infamous Windows Media Player. This version will have the ability to shop at on-line stores like the one MS plans to launch later this year. It's their move to 'outflank Apple'."
And that is "Windows Secure".
A platform that will let you browse, email, and generally enjoy the Internet without risk of viruses, trojans, worms or spam.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I wonder if the patches will install without rebooting...
In what way? They mention online stores, and Apple is a microscopic blip on the radar. Are they trying to outflank them and charge $129 TWICE a year for updates instead of once? Or are they shooting for sub 3% market share?
In case you hadn't noticed, there ain't no flank. The war is over, and Apple's not even struggling to move their market share, and it's not moving. G5 sales are disaapointing, but the iPod is red hot. Oh yeah, MS's portable mini-tablet/video/music player is an "iPod clone/killer attempt."
Apple is not the yardstick by which companies like Microsoft measure themselves. Not even close.
The new thinking now says that the new Office will run on all versions of Windows, whereas it was previously going to be available only on the new XP system... This is a massive statement. It means that the 'new licencing' is so unpopular that it's forcing MS to drop its upgrade/lock-in strategy for Office. Amazing.
I think the growing popularity of Linux in the server market, and over the next 2 years or so in the desktop market too, is a big part of that decision...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Actually, this might be a smart move by MS - not that they would realise why, but nonetheless.
There are so many 'features' of their Longwait that literally scare the you know what out of people. Features that have been around spooking before.
Now MS are hard put and have to remove (or delay) these features - and ironically, and sadly, this might actually help their acceptance.
[...]which will include a new version of the infamous Windows Media Player. This version will have the ability to shop at on-line stores like the one MS plans to launch later this year. The EU-Administration will not be very happy with this. Actually this just shows that MS doesnt give shit about the antitrust-suits. It seems like the fine from the EU wasnt nearly severe enough.
Guess they gotta keep innovating the old fashioned Microsoft way.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I think it's good that they're scoping out features. This will allow the developers to concentrate on making the existing codebase actually work, rather than squandering resources to cram in a feature that works like ass and is rife with security holes.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
So, can anybody point out which features would be really worth an upgrade, because I can't see any. I don't care about Eyecandy, also there should be something else than eyecandy...
Software capable of shopping at online stores, eh? Is this kind of like your phone company giving you a speed dial to the retailers they have some vested interest in? It's product tying, and it's illegal. It's just a pity that the current administration in the U.S. really doesn't care what M$ does anymore. Here's to some anti-trust mongers taking over next February.
The changes also affect Microsoft's plan to make the next version of its Office software work only on Longhorn. The new plans call for that Office package to work on previous versions of Windows as well.
The realist in me says that this was because the new Office made extensive use of WinFS and that making it backwards compatible would just contrubite to (more) code bloat. The cynic in me says that they wanted to use some spiffy new feature in Office MMX as a lever to force users to upgrade their OS. Still, it does a heart good to think about the heads rolling at M$ over the leaking of these e-mails.
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
Paul Thurrott's supersite for Windows has this information about what Longhorn is all about from May 2003. I highly recommend that readers check out what MSDN has to say about it.
It is a document and content management system with synchronization capabilities built right into the desktop. And it is going to hit yet another software segment right in the pocketbook: document management and storage.
With the advances in disk drive capacity and network speed, imagine being able to sync your company's entire set of PDF files/engineering drawings/(pr0n? ;-) ) to a laptop for use on site.
Have you Meta Moderated t
Gimme a break. While I don't doubt that MS thinks that killing FS compatibility with other OS's is perfectly fine, I think the idea that the sole purpose of moving to a relational FS is to kill such compatibility is a little tinfoil hat-ish.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
I've heard all these "ooh, media player tied to online stores=product tying=illegal." or "ooh, this shows MS doesnt care about antitrust lawsuits."
/. bias at work again.
Doesnt itunes come with every computer purchased with MacOSX? And doesnt itunes, by default, have ITMS (iTunes music store) capability?
So how is MS now including WMP any different than apple always including Itunes+ITMS? It seems like its just the
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Eh, you're right... I was getting into the spirit of slashdot I suppose. You know, it kind of rubs off on you...
"...which will include a new version of the infamous Windows Media Player."
Shouldn't biased opinions and criticism only be present in readers comments ?
____
nico
Nico-Live
No, the Registry has an access-control/authorization subsystem very similar to the file system.
2. If so, does this strike anyone else as a really bad idea from the view of modularity, scalability, and security?
It would be a bad idea, if it was the case (which it is not).
3. Will Longhorn keep the Windows Registry?
Absolutely. There are way too many third-party applications that leverage the registry to eliminate it. If MS were to eliminate the registry, they would have the same outcry that took place when they locked down the file system. See, prior to Windows 2000, users and applications could write anywhere in the file system. Lots of (badly-written) application would sprinkle their configuration files all over the place. This was clearly a problem with ISVs, so MS took action and enforced that (by default) users could only write into their user profile directory. Well, everyone complained that MS "broke" all their apps... but the real culprit was all these poorly-written apps that were dumping user configuration information into files like C:\WINDOWS\config.ini
I don't see a compelling reason for the existance of this "upgrade" other than to feed the M$ coffers and lock in a steady revenue stream for them. The main features seem to be:
Actually maybe there is one new, useful feature. Or did Microsoft stop trying to catch up to the 15-20 year old idea of having multiple shared-library/DLL versions on the same system?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As far as I can tell there are no new features in SP2, just fixes for stuff that already there (and a few new things that need to be there to fix the old things), so it isn't a new OS. Most of the things in SP2 should have been in the original release (maybe with a few in SP1, nobody's perfect after all).
By the time microsoft has appealled to the courts in europe it will be time for blackcomb!
James
How many times does it have to be said!
Apple does not have a monopoly status!
Microsoft has a monopoly status!
When you have a monopoly the rules change! You cannot use your monopoly status to "sell"/push your other products!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Don't say 'can't catch win32 virii' because one day, Linux will have a similar problem. And do you know what it will be from? Root exploits and people not updating thier software. While Linux inherantly is a bit more secure than windows, and the dammage caused would probably be less severe, saying Linux is completely immune is just stupid. Right now, its just completely unaffected.
This is vapourware in action, people. They promised all these features, businesses all over the world held off on switching to other platforms because "Windows will have these cool features soon", and now the next version still won't have the features.
Remember when Microsoft said that Windows 95 would be ultra-stable because it was 32-bit and had memory protection? Actually, come to think of it, wasn't the last three versions of Windows supposed to have something similar to WinFS?
The vitriol is due to the fact that Microsoft did their level best to bend every customer they could find over a barrel to sign them up for a maintenance plan that was going to cost said customers more money than buying Windows and Office over the counter if the upgrade cycle lasts more than 3 years. And, when this was pointed out to Microsoft, they promised (hand on heart!) that there'd be some sort of ROI for this maintenance plan.
The technology may be amazing. It may be able to make demons fly out of my nose. But they conned a LOT of CIO/CTO folks into paying them for delivering nothing while they spent 5 years building the thing.
How they did this without keeping a straight face is beyond me.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Microsoft's filesystem work sounded like it was going to finally be the first really good thing to come out of the company in decades. I know, I know, some other OSes have actually already been there, and there was no reason to believe Microsoft would get the idea "right" anyway, and that it wasn't just a strategy to block interoperability.
Those things don't matter, though. Longhorn's filesystem was going to popularize filesystem innovation, which means the Linux dudes would have to copy them in order to keep from feeling inadequate. Then desktop UIs would start to appear that take advantage of new filesystem capabilities. The upshot was that there was a hope, that I might finally get a computer that is fundamentally better than what was around in the 1980s.
Now the revolution has been postponed. Oh well.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is seriously screwed up. If this isn't a blatant anti-trust violation, I don't know what is. Didn't the EU just assess a 1/2 billion dollar fine over this very behavior?
It is, and as you've noted, it's a glaringly obvious one at that. Aside from this, we see an article above where the text mentions "increased competition" to OpenGL from D3D. Another abuse of monopoly power. The OGL implementations I've seen so far way out-perform D3D. The problem is that D3D ships with 90+ per cent of the new desktop machines out there, so it can still be a piece of trash and still dominate the market.
Perhaps some folks just don't get it. Requiring Microsoft to sell Media Player separately isn't the same as preventing them from offering the feature to the public. The DOJ can take action without actually hurting Microsoft's shareholders. Hey, if Media Player could actually stand on its own legs against the competition, MS would actually stand to make more by selling it as a separate component.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Bzzzt, wrong.
h tml)
If you simply open a mail right now - a maliciously created one - you can have code run as your user. (http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-099A.
No AV signature.
No patch available.
No need to click on an attachment.
Firewalls don't block it.
No need to download it with p2p.
Windows is NOT secure - the design choices they made remove the seperation between data and functional code, removes the seperation between priveldged user and non-priv, and as a result, its just a matter of WHEN the vulnerabilities are found.
You listed ways to mitigate the insecurity - doesnt change the fact that it IS insecure.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
"The changes also affect Microsoft's plan to make the next version of its Office software work only on Longhorn. The new plans call for that Office package to work on previous versions of Windows as well.
Windows leaders are meeting through the middle of April to make the hard decisions about which specific features to cut from the operating system."
Only Microsoft would call that a feature.
Throwing software engineers at the problem is not the solution. Longhorn is delayed because of ambitous plans, true, but that does not mean there are a lack of software engineers and an unwillingness to hire them. Projects of this scale have to be managed, divided and conquered, and most importantly planned. The Windows organization within Microsoft is large enough. You can't just throw more "jobs" at the problem. And, Microsoft is constantly hiring and has unfilled positions throughout the company they are trying to fill. You make it sound like they are outsourcing everything and hiring no one and that's why Longhorn is getting some features cut.
Some people work in industries where music and videos ARE the business, and they ARE the data. And those businesses need DRM in order to make their business viable in the digital age.
Anyone with good sound cards and a second computer can use it to record what they play back on their first, which after a single analog step gives them a digital copy with better quality than most of the (128kbps) MP3s on the net. There is no technological way to prevent this: if it can be heard or seen, it can be recorded digitally, and once one person records it in an unencrypted digital format it's just as easy to spread around as if it had never been in an encumbered format at all.
If your business model really requires impenetrable DRM to be viable, you probably ought to find a new one before spending too much money on snake oil.
I do not see a good reason to upgrade my XP box to longhorn. To me it looks about as important upgrase as from 98 to ME would have been. I never ran ME we went to 2000 in my office.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Says the Linux guy running KDE with a taskbar, Start menu, sidepanel, similar print dialog, integrated net browser/file browser, etc.
:P
Innovating the old-fashioned Linux way--ripping things off then criticizing the company that came up with the ideas.
So, at least they'll get their answer to anti-virus protection workaround in place soon. That should start a whole new slew of lawsuits from the security companies going this year. I have the feeling that Symantec and McAfee will go after MS after they release this Springboard thing. At the very least we'll see Zone Labs going after them, I would expect, seeing as how Springboard is a virtual duplication of their software.
More AntiTrust suits around the corner.
for every product in EVERY software company. First PMs get together and throw a bunch of requirements at developers. Developers do some preliminary investigations and proof-of-concept work and estimate how long it will take them to write the damn things. Management multiplies this by 2 and that's how long it will take to test them. Then all of this is put into one big-ass schedule which usually in its first cut takes three times longer than it should. Then PMs and developers look at the schedule and remove non-critical pieces from it until the product becomes shippable in a reasonable timeframe. After all said and done this schedule will blow up 2 or 3 times in process and some more non-critical features will be cut, too. Heck, even some critical features may suffer.
The most important feature of every product is its shipping. You can have a perfect OS with all the features everyone wants, but if you haven't shipped it nobody gives a crap (and money either). You can cut back in two ways - on quality (which simply doesn't work for big projects because problems start stepping on each other's toes) and on features (which is what I believe is happening).
I have to elaborate on this...
One episode of South Park had the town trying to free a serial baby murderer. The judge asked "tell me one positive thing about killing babies." One of the kids answered "well, its easy."
Well yeah it probably is, physically, pretty easy. Babies are typically much smaller, weaker and more fragile than most adults. But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to go around killing babies. In fact almost no one does. Why not? Because its wrong. True its illegal, but even if it weren't people still wouldn't do it because its pretty cut-and-dry WRONG.
Likewise everyone has the capability to easily "steal" (as they like to say) music, whether or not there is DRM. Every DRM mechanism devised so far has been so trivially defeated that the industry looks foolish for trying. Yet the music industry thrives. Millions of people trade music on file sharing networks, but even no-talent hacks like Britney Spears and William Hung still sell massive quantities of CDs.
Its absurd. Go after the real "pirates" (whoever they are) using the existing and more than sufficient legal means. Price your products competitively so people can afford to buy them from you. But be realistic about it. Not everyone can afford to buy every CD at $15-a-pop. Friends share things. They always have, and they always will. Music and movies bring people together.
Build that into your business model and embrace it. Treat your customers right and your business will be viable way beyond the digital age.
blog