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Gates Explains Longhorn Delay, Diet
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has set late 2006 as the deadline for shipping Longhorn, but to make that date, it had to delay the full implementation of WinFS, an ambitious file system geared at letting users search through all of their files at once. In this interview with Bill Gates, he provides a summary of why Microsoft decided to drop WinFS, saying: "WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things." Meanwhile, MS Watch has published Longhorn head-honcho Jim Allchin's memo on why some Longhorn features had to be axed."
Press releases like these are free ads for Microsoft. Does anybody here not think that Microsoft knew this was going to get released:
We will not cut corners on product excellence. Our powerful vision is intact; our shipment plan changes will let customers get access to parts of the vision faster.
Why don't they just admit that the market is forcing them to release parts of Longhorn (like Monad) earilier than expected! Leaks of betas and press releases like these are easy ways to keep the Microsoft buzz elevated.
If they didn't release a product until 2008, the market (mostly linux) would have time to catch-up.
So, in his (apocryphous) diary, he mentioned being the inventor of product pre-announcement, now he's just invented the post-pre-announcement. :)
Way to go, Bill
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Wasn't this the whole idea behind meta-tags for files? I thought thats why we had such tags in windows media too?
Or is this the same tags that winFS will use to search with?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Maybe Bill considered them nobodies...
WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things.
Translation:
We thought it was a good idea but no-one else has done an implementation that we can copy off, so we can't really figure out how to do it.
Can anyone explain exactly what will be in Longhorn, now that the new filesystem and graphics system is not going to be in it ?
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
updatedb and slocate, yeah that's it, just like that
So that's bye bye new file system
bye bye new GUI
bye bye new API
wtf is left ?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/27/microsoft
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
One is (that) we have a date-driven release. Things that make that date get in.
Previously Microsoft were skirting around the 2006-7 point without being clear about when Longhorn would ship; it looked like they were going to try to finish features X and Y before release. So now they've moved on to a date-driven release, we can pretty much guarantee 2006 for Longhorn (client edition) and they're going to drop anything they have to, to make that date.
Bill said that the OEMs are okay with the delay, so why the pressure? Looks like Linux is hurrying Microsoft up!
I must admit I'm getting more and more of the deja vu feeling, reading Microsoft's statements on Longhorn. I've seen it before, when Apple representatives struggled to explain the delay with shipping their ultimately sophisticated version of MacOS, codenamed Copland. They understood all too well that the classic MacOS is a bloated unstable construction based on a single-user single-machine Macintosh System, that was not designed with networking and multitasking in mind. They managed somehow to hack this system to have a sort-of poor man's multitasking and also some rudimentary networking capabilities, but they knew it's not gonna last in the Internet Age. They needed a new system and they needed it ASAP. Yet after millions of bucks and years of coding, Copland turned out to be just nothing but very expensive vaporware, and Apple's last chance to survive was to purchase NeXT, with their Unix experience, and thus MacOS X was born.
There are many similarities with Windows and Longhorn - Microsoft also tried for a very long time to hack and upgrade their old OS, also designed for single user with no networking. And yet they were strangled by their own limitations they needed to keep for sake of backwards compatibility. Can they solve it on their own or will they just, say, buy Sun for their OS experience?
Shame. You work out how to do the hyperlinks (this isn't phpBB, you know) then forget to tick the anonymous button... Not having a good day, are we?
I really don't see what difference it makes as long as longhorn is released in the next 4yrs. No matter how many computer-savvy people decide not to use it, it will still be THE os.
It will still be first preference on home computers and companies will still make plenty of software for it. I find it very hard to believe that microsoft suffers any real threat from linux. Yes I can see the benefits of linux, and the downsides of windows, but the fect alone that its the OS for the people is enough to keep it's standing, and Bill will never be able to squash linux completely so like I said, what does it matter!?
It already does. I've had a sidebar on my desktop for the last 5 years, thanks to gnome.
Oh, wait, do that mean that MS are now copying Linux...?
T.
I'm guessing this means that they'll be using some implementation of NTFS with longhorn. Could be good news to all those dual-boot people out there that like to be able to access their Windows files from Linux.
Just as they're making some progress with mounting NTFS filesystems under linux, MS changes the FS. Something which surely would cause problems in Linux.
Looks liks we'll be able to keep dual boots with Longhorn after all.
I guess Linux coders copy MS features for the benefit of those who wish to migrate - not to enhance the power and usability of the OS itself. Secondly, these changes would take a few days in Linux (KDE or GNome); not years as with Microsoft.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Introducing Microsoft Longhorn Millenium edition!
Preorder now and recieve a copy of Duke Nukem Forever!
If people are waiting til 2006 anyways, Gates would have been smarter to delay Longhorn until WinFS could be totally implemented. If they need more money coming in on the conveyor belt, then they could have just released Windows XP OSR2 - essentially a service pack/ upgraded version people would have to pay for. I seriously doubt I will be paying for a cippled version of Longhorn - especially if its best parts are going to be made available for XP.
Looks like maybe MS should have spent a little more time getting WinFS working instead of tweaking the UI to make it "oh so pretty." Unfortunately, I think MS realizes that a slick (albeit graphics intensive) UI will likely sell more copies to the ignorant masses than an innovation like WinFS.
Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things.
Someone please call Oracle and tell Larry that Bill says that IFS (The Oracle Internet File System) doesn't exist.
What is iFS?
iFS can manage all content -- which is scattered across PC desktops, document management systems, and websites -- in a single repository, he said. It supports the storage and management of more than 150 different file types, including documents created using XML.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Didn't BeOS have something similar?
Also, won't OSX actually have something like this even before Longhorn ships (without WinFS).
Aren't there a lot of pretty advanced projects to do the same for Linux, for example beagle for gnome and the new kde search feature planned for the next release? (Granted, these won't be implemented at the fs level, but who cares as long as they work)
Isn't reiserfs4 actually providing some of this functionality (and much more) and has allready been released?
Doesn't MS have about 60 billion Dollars in the bank and still can't get its act together?
Didn't MS talk about something similar already years ago and wanted to ship it with what is now known as Win2000?
Maybe he should have a look at iTunes and GMail.
For me, a kind of "iTunes for files", including smart queries, would be fairly enough. And it doesn't require a brand new file system and its instability risks...
jkrise (535370) wrote: /s/a
/s/a" is "find /".
> DIR C:
>
> in Linux:
>
> find / -name $string -print
Hate to be a nitpicker, but the equivalent to "DIR C:
It's not about finding files by filename, but about finding files by content.
Does that mean that MS are now copying Linux...?
I hope not because then I'd have to start worrying about whether my device will be compatible with my computer.
Obviously you are trolling but this is a common belief...
However, Monad is obviously a way that Microsoft is trying to catch-up with the powerful scripting ability of *nix shells.
Of couse, some linux installs with have sidebars and other copies of new longhorn features. Longhorn will likely gain some new linux-like features between now and then as well... It's just the features race.
In competitive software markets one product will always try to match the bells and whistles of similiar products. For example, IE gained pop-up blocking.
Talent borrows, genius steals.
AC
Search meta info.
You already did once
Don't be silly. What they're looking at is something like GNOME Storage where you can type in some search terms and semantically find the files.
Something like 1960s music or e-mails to Bruce, I'd guess. WinFS ties up all your documents, media, mails etc. into one database for indexing and searching, and beats the hell out of DIR C: /s/a.
Does anyone else hope that this new way of searching is actually an improvement this time? I hate the new search interface in Windows XP. For awhile I actually changed it back to the search interface from Windows 2000 (reg hack) but then finally decided that I better get used to the new one, since they would likely take away my reg hack down the road anyway.
Let's hope for an actual improvement this time around.
imagine that... treating everything as files...
;-)
how inovative...
I can't think of so many words strung together in such a meaningless way.
What, didn't you get your Buzzword Bingo card on your way in? You'll never win with an attitude like that!
They understood all too well that the classic MacOS ... was not designed with networking and multitasking in mind.
We had our Mac Plus systems networked, along with a LaserWriter, in 1988 via AppleTalk.
SteveM
So, what we have been shown in the next release of OSX Tiger that lets you search your documents, email and file system isn't anything like this. We have seen it in action and the set release date is 2005.
Come on Bill....Steve can pull this off and he doesn't have 50 billion in the bank.
Evolution or ID?
> Any guesses?
Yes, actually. That you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Come on, do you really believe that the windows development team would give that much weight and media time to a system that implemented find / -name $string -print?! And even then, that they couldn't hammer it out in a day? Please.
What they are looking to do is to integrate the filesystem into a database system, where files are organized not by directory, but by use/type/relationship. Even I have a hard time wrapping my head around what this will look like once it's carried out. What will it gain us in user experience? My gut says 'a lot' given the sheer amount of development time these people have put into the project.
I certainly feel anger, fury and loathing when simpletons critique what they don't understand.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Smells like vaporware to me....
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
winFS doens't seem very usefull in my eyes. it's just a layer on top of ntfs. in the end (windows 2012) you'll see they rewrite it to be a true filesystem. reiser4 seems to do this the right way. having a nice filesystem that you can extend all the time using plugins. I think microsoft wastes a lot of time by doing this in 2 steps. I also understood that winFS is "My Documents" only (or something like that) and cannot be used on the entire harddisk (atleast not in longhorn).
I think free/open source software won't completely eliminate proprietary software because the latter business model has advantage in research forces. Anyway it is not necessary to make all software free. The prevailance of a free operating system is the key.
Why not stick to the simple file extensions concept - in vogue since the DOS days?
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
One problem with Konghorn is that they want to put security onto the Windows architecture. However this can be an endless source of problems. The Windows architecture is not secure beforehand. And integrating a security layer is doomed to be complicated and half-backery. They had already to change their security scheme because it turned out to be too slow (on a 3 GHz Pentium mind you).
The cleanest way would be to scrap the Windows architecture and rebuild the OS from bottom. But their popularity will bite their back and asses: this would breake approx 3.5 million applications and even simple stuff like Virtual Basic.
It's quite a shame as Gates could use a free, non-viral operating like OpenBSD as the basis for a new Windows version. This can be done as Apple has shown and the superior security and performance features of OpenBSD would make the WinOpenBSD the best system in teh world.
However, this would have the negative side effect they we would never see Linux on the desktop as OpenBSD is much better in the security and performance aspects and with the fool-safe user interface of Windows XP added it would really be a killer. And the user interface should be even more improved in the next version of Windows as MS is very hot in reseach there.
I thought I was the only one who remembered BeFS had this feature already. I mentioned it to a couple of (admittedly not-quite-as-geeky-as-me) buddies and they just stared at me.
so it was removed for meeting the 2006 deadline which is
around 2 years approx from now.The next thing you know Bill would decide to drop
avalon, and some of his fancy keywords.So by 2006 Bill would have come up with the
biggest vaporware ever.
Kill Bill
fifteen jugglers, five believers
What they are looking to do is to integrate the filesystem into a database system, where files are organized not by directory, but by use/type/relationship. Even I have a hard time wrapping my head around what this will look like once it's carried out.
;-)
I just hope to god it doesn't end up like the Nautilus "Spacial browser" - maybe the worst idea of all time
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things.
*cough*
Microsoft still can't come up with shit until Apple has done it better, first. Sad.
Always ask 'why?'
AFAIK it's all about efficiency - we are talking about indexed searches. It's ok to grep 1MB, but even searching by filename on my whole HDD at home takes a minute maybe. As amount of stored data grows - we don't want the search times to grow linearly, we want indexed searches. Well - this said, the whole WinFS idea kinda sucked. It was intended to be applied only to "Documents and settings" and frankly - I guess I don't have anything of interest there. Why a simple (ok, _relatively_ simple) FS plugin, or rather a set of plugins for different file types, wouldn't suffice, I don't know. (May Reiser beat MS here?)
If MS did nothing innovative before 2006, it (Microsoft) will have to do the catch-up.
He said "the market", you're talking of "the product". Those two are unfortunately nowhere as closely related as one might wish...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nobody except the people who brought you BeOS and Hans reiser has done a filesystem like WinFS :-)
WinFS is a blatant ripoff of the BeOS filesystem.
microsoft.public.windows.developer.winfx.announcem ents
fifteen jugglers, five believers
What Microsoft REALLY needs is a next-gen OS. The current codebase isn't going to hack it. The delays on Longhorn are an absolute giveaway. If Longhorn had come out in 2004, it would already have been out of date. 2006? Don't make me laugh.
Unix-like systems are going to win out in the end. That is why Mac's OS X looks like a smarter move every day.
Microsoft has so much cash and so much clout that it will take a long time to die, but it is doomed to do so unless at some point it ditches backwards compatibility and the current codebase and does something new.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Will someone mod the parent down, he certainly shouldn't be insightful since he has no idea what he is talking about
Maybe you should find out a bit more about WinFS before you form an opinion of it. Or maybe this is just a very good troll. Who really knows?
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
Does anyone else think WinFS is a Bad Thing? A filesystem is a low-level, simple, reliable method of storing files on a disk and a database is a method of catologuing and searching through files. If you combine them, it will get hideously complicated. Which means it will probably be buggy and slow. It's almost as bad as putting windowing in a kernel...
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
Well MS could publish the WinFS specifications so that we can get the OSS partition managers ready....
That Micro$oft will be making Windows XP OSR2, followed by Windows XP ME?
Get a free ipod.
Download a copy of BeOS, and give its Queries a play.
BeOS FS v1 did use a real DB, but was axed in latter versions, as it was too slow & bulky.
A LOT if applications use it, even more if they use attributes (all ready in NTFS) (see BeMail).
As soon as someone uses the word "rich" in a marketing description for a product or technology, it's doomed to fail to live up to expectations.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Apple's upcoming Mac OS X Tiger is slated to include similar technology. Apple calls it "Spotlight", and more information is available here. Of course, it's still vaporware until they actually SHIP it , but Apple is scheduled to ship Tiger during the first half of 2005 -- at least a year ahead of Longhorn.
A computer without Windows is like a cake without mustard.
you mean like spotlight?
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
so if someone wants to find that movie with boobies on his drive.... he types 'find me movie with boobies' and the filesystem will find it for me?
.. ehm... doesn't it need keywords of some sort in the mediafile? It doesn't view my pron collection while i'm away does it?
cool
but
you need some sort of metatags , id3 tags for every file... basically you build a database of descriptions yourself.
If you use GoggleFs you won't have any problems searching for files and it's contents ...
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
Is it just me or is it so obvious that they are going to ship WinFS separatelly for additionnal ???
The Register interviewed Dominic and Benoit Schillings a couple of years ago and is a very good read.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
iFS can manage all content -- which is scattered across PC desktops, document management systems, and websites -- in a single repository, he said. It supports the storage and management of more than 150 different file types, including documents created using XML.
My 90mm floppy disk with its FAT-12 filesystem can hold documents created using XML!
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
I thought of the film first...
Wouldn't that be a scorched shorterhorn then? ;-)
No, not the type of content, the ACTUAL content. Like searching for "pictures of houses" and the system going away and generating a list of all the jpeg images that are tagged with the "house" keyword.
Other useful examples might be "films starring Tom Hanks" or "music by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers"...
okay, okay, so they are incompetent enought to be incapable to copy MacOs HFS w/ it's relations model and quickly hack something similar to IFS?
:D
Plueeze, ok, Microsoft employs some of the brightest minds in the world, but something here is totally wrong. Or maybe marketing departament simply is incapable to explain required functionality to programmers
I went to their Longhorn event in london earlier in the year and they were really pushing Avalon and WinFS, the whole event covered virtually nothing else, these were the big things that were going to make Longhorn great.
Now their gone. All we're left with is MS first attempt at an operating system from the ground up (nothing before hasn't been based on somebody elses work). Now they could get lukcy (like they did with SQL Server 7, 6.5 and before were basically Sybase) or they could do what they've done with every other thing they've invented, bomb.
MS is only ever successful when building on top of somebody else's work, or simply copying somebody else's ideas.
My feeling is that come 2006 we'll either get a horribly mangled OS (Windows ME, but worse) or nothing at all. Hopefully the vendors won't stand for it, but many did with ME.
It doesn't view my pron collection while i'm away does it?
Didn't you ever wonder why "FindFast.exe" kept hogging your computer in spurts?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"...Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
This could easily induce children to commit copyright infringement. Bad Microsoft! Bad! Bad!
Microsoft's failure to deliver their WinFS that does all this stuff they claim sounds like a call should go out to OSS developers to delevop this thing in GPL before MS does. . .Beat them at their own game once and see what the world thinks.
** heller
This is a very good news. Now we don't need to worry about installing Longhorn in order to play with WinFS and Indigo. When the time comes, just download it from MS site and install it on your WinXP SP2. This is a very good news we are getting from Bill Gates. The same move they did before releasing WinXP SP2, by offering RC1 and letting developers and vendors test their applications. This means They care.
Now Bill Gates it saying OK If you can't understand what I'm talking about, I release it as a down-leveled package (just like .NET Framework stuff) and you can play with it on your WinXP.
It's exactly like a Monarch who wanted to 'reform' his country but the speed of his 'reformation' was so high that eventually his people would not understand it and they took up a revolt against their king. The King was expelled from the land and died in exile. 30 years later, the people will feel the same 'reforms' as their King did 30 years bfore .... It's too late ofcourse and The King is dead....
You're an idiot. You don't get it. On WinFS, when you search for something, *all of the results* are returned instantly. There is no delay. The filesystem is a database. When I say there is no delay, you need to think about *what that means* -- No delay.
The GNU find command is slow.
"Rapid Development" by Microsoft Press. There's this chapter on Classic Mistakes. To mention a few:
- unrealistic expectations
- wishful thinking
- placing politics over substance
- overly optimistic schedules
- inadequate design
- feature creep
Maybe this company should take some time to read their own publications.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
"Isn't reiserfs4 actually providing some of this functionality (and much more) and has allready been released?"
:)
Yes, it has.
I was just thinking that it would be cheaper, easier, and faster for Microsoft to just license Reiserfs v4. Just the atomic file writes/updates would be worth the effort! And the filesystem supports plugins.
Some people in the Linux community don't think Reiserfs v4 is stable... but I'm willing to bet by 2006 the issue will be settled.
reiserfs4 is now stable and merged with the mm-patch.
for more information on reiserfs4 go to http://www.namesys.com/
download, build and enjoy.
r.
my fuckign *windows 2000* has a sidebar.
it's hardly a new innovation(expect they of course make it too big so that people notice it..)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The problem with meta-tags is that they have to get populated somehow. Only the anal fill in meta-data, everyone else either blows it off or takes the defaults.
The real breakthrough happens when the system can decode and parse the file accurately to provide "automagic" meta-data. Otherwise meta-tags are a nice academic exercise that is either ignored or misused in practice.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
- http://www.sunrizen.com/ It basically does what was taken out of Longhorn- turns the filesystem into a database, and uses that for fast searching. It doesn't have the SQL and real-time queries that BeOS does, but it's hella fast and really cool. I've used it for bug-hunting code, since it searches for text inside documents hella fast. It's much better than MS's shipped in search utility.
click me
Now Longhorn isn't going to be shipped until late 2006. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'll hit that date (just in time for Xmas!). OK, so that means that they will have been working on this thing for a MINIMUM of 5 years. If there was any release overlap, and I am sure there would have to be, it is probably more like 6 years. WTF have they been doing in Redmond!? You can't tell me that everyone there has been working on XP service packs.
Now I am not discounting the complexity of software and what it takes to release something of this magnitude. But we are talking about the largest and richest software company on the planet! Surely if anyone could do this, it would be..... Hmm. Perhaps what seems to be an advantage is actually a disadvantage in this case. If you look at their OS timeline (I used this one ), it seems that it was usually around 3 years between major instances of their OS lines. Now, that has doubled for some reason? Maybe they had to start over from scratch and are putting some security into this one. (the good kind, not the DRM kind)
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It's good for me that they are delaying, at least they won't be changing the "corporate standard" again where I work. I really don't care for XP and wish I had 2000 back...
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
To richly find what no man has found before.
Okay, so the idea is brillant. There's been quite a few brillant ideas in the past of Microsoft. And I mean really brillant and great. But so far Microsoft managed to screw up implementing ALL of them. Just think of Samba, what a great thing. But find a neighbour computer in Microsoft Network. About 70% success rate. Thanks. What about getting internet URLs interchangable with file paths? Wow! But the support for that feature at best, lacks in many places. Maybe ability to upgrade transparently from Internet without any user interaction required? Okay, cool, but it takes AGES and computer is insecure in the meantime, plus the upgrades often break the system.
I guess the great idea of database of files will turn into another dull "clippy-style" annoying misfeature that pisses users off because of some stupid flaws that shouldn\t be there but are there and are unremovable. Microsoft screwed up too many times in the past to let me believe they will get that right this time.
Sorry.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
"We are, as you heard, taking one of the major pillars of Longhorn and changing how we deliver that."
And now it all comes together! MS == Krikkit, and Hactar, in the form of Bill Gates, has come to reclaim the Wooden Pillar.
Anyone got a towel?
-JT
Why don't you check those out to see how much it will do for the interface. What will MS "invent" next?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Because file extensions suck, that's why. All the rest of the meta-data abouta file (creation time, owner, author, etc) is in attributes, which should the type be encoded in the name?
.dat file was the film itself. Now, .dat is associated with Notepad on that PC - had I just double-clicked it, it would've opened in Notepad. So I had to right click, choose "Open with...", and select media player.
.dat files with media player, as the vast majority aren't films. If the file type was determined by the contents of the file (or some meta-data other than the name), then I could've just double-clicked and relied on my OS to work out what to do with the file. Sure, it's not difficult to choose something to open it with, but then I'm technically-minded. My parents (and some of my friends) would've been unable to play the disc.
Practical example: I have a couple of VCDs. My daughter wanted to watch one, on the PC (as my gf was watching TV). It didn't auto-play, and no application was associated with VCDs, so I had to try to work out how to play it. In the end, I realised that the ~700MB
I can't associate all
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Switching to a new release of an OS is frequently painful and expensive. Microsoft may realize that when users are faced with this transition they are more likely than usual to be considering other options such as an OS jump to Linux or a complete platform jump to the Mac and OS X. A free or reduced cost upgrade for the installed base would soften the blow a bit, and potentially could further tie users to MS by getting them tangled even more deeply in proprietary MS technology.
Commercial vs. open source ethics aside, Microsoft aren't going to allocate their entire workforce to this one. It's quite a heavy task; GNOME Storage has been in development for a few years and is still heavily in beta. It probably only handles a small subset of file types.
;) ) and feedback cycles involved with releasing such an important part of Microsoft's 'most important' operating system to date.
Whereas Microsoft's task is far greater. They're not delivering a CVS demo, it's a cornerstone of the OS (or rather, was) which means coming up with means to generate metadata, deciding what metadata to store, indexing it and returning it in a manner that's fast and accurate, for every single common format out there.
Microsoft have a fair number of software products and generating metadata is quite difficult (since the user isn't going to supply it himself - how many times have you filled in all the Microsoft Word 'Properties' for your documents?). So it could easily take years.
And don't forget the QA, testing, bugfixing (maybe they'll skip that part
Fsck, just ran out of mod points when I was moderating the parent. Hopefully someone else finds this amusing, too.
Windows is close to 50 million lines of code with several enormous subsystems, including .NET and the whole GUI presentation system. To integrate those systems with WinFS involves touching almost everything, with combinatorial complexity. Even with $5 billion/year to spend on developers, it was just too much to get it done and get it stable. It's probably the biggest software integration project ever attempted, by far.
To disagree with one earlier post, I think MS has a pretty good idea of what they were trying to do with WinFS. It was simply too much to do.
Besides, WinFS is superfluous, since Google (and its nascent competitors) will evolve into a global implementation of the same idea. That's vastly more efficient. Hey Linux guys: make a Reiser4 plugin that accepts search-like verbs and automatically searches the Web!
I was going to post a draggable link, but it seems that slashdot filter does not allow javascript hrefs, so it will have to be done manually.
Create a bookmark with this location.Next time you are offended by the it color scheme, just click.
Pretty much untested, and has no failsafes (as in it will ruin other sites), for that open source look and feel.
In the next version I plan to add ability to remove any slashdot section as I think the apple theme is a bit overdone as well....
badness 10000
Is LongHorn delayed bcos MS couldn't implement this simple stuff?
Don't be ridiculous. Windows (since 2000 at least) has had an equivalent to Linux's (s)locate tool. Clearly that's not what this is about, as it already exists!
I can't think of a word to describe this feeling of anger, fury and loathing combined.
Why are you so angry? Are you losing money (or anything at all!) because of the delay? Seriously, if Longwait being delayed and scaled back in scope makes you that angry, you need to sort your priorities out.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
> However, Monad is obviously a way that Microsoft is trying to catch-up with the powerful scripting ability of *nix shells.
I think MS just thought it would be funny to release something that would "have to be" called "Gonad" if it was copied and release in open source! (Hmmm, or maybe Gnunad?!)
I was thinking Cop Rock...
Then we have other groups, like WinFS, where we're way out in front, and there's nobody to compare ourselves to. Making sure that they see how we're committed to the vision and how we're going to support it and the way we use it with our other products -- that's important. I think we're doing a pretty good job of that. I'm talking with the WinFS group next week, and I'll hear what their questions are and make sure that there isn't any doubt about our excitement and commitment. I don't know about others, but I think he is full of it. the concept of a database file system with metaData is not new. If anything, they are being retarded by not looking at prior art to shorten their development time and deliver a higher quality file system. For all those people who say company X doesn't suffer from "not invented here" syndrome, I think MS is exactly in that mind set these days with WinFS.
But these file association problems would still be there using WinFS attributes instead of file extensions.
.dat for their newly invented format, you could imagine them writing just 'Data' as the format in WinFS.
e.g. If someone is lazy enough to use
For me, the whole problem is that the majority of users are lazy (and with good reason). WinFS comes with the assumption that users are going to bother writing wordy descriptions of their data.
That being said, I would always be interested in interfaces that make that job easier for users, improving our 20+ year old designed filesystems.
maybe more like:
find / -type f | xargs strings | grep -il $string
just in case there's a bunch of binary stuff there, that'd mess up your terminal...
--AP
Not to mention the time it will take the user to enter and maintain the metadata.
I feel so sig.
"implement the things that FOSS world can't do" eh? Then you go and talk about filesystems and vector graphics, both of which, at present time, FOSS absolutely trumps MS at. Linux has ext2/3, ReiserFS, Reiser4(which was just released, and has the potential to do everything WinFS will do), Storage(another datastore similar to WinFS). KDE and GNOME are both moving to SVG, and are moving along quite nicely. The X.org X server is implementing loads of new graphics features, and since forking from XFree, they're actually getting done. Also, most of E17's base libraries are mostly done, and implement a lot of features MS is in the process of "inventing."
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
That's probably why their release schedule always gets pushed out by a few years. The interns are only available in the summer. Anyway, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, that might be worth pointing out to any purchasing managers you might know. I'm sure the first release of Longhorn will be as half-assed and unstable as Windows 95 will and it'll take a couple years worth of patches to make it work correctly. You could start a migration to Linux now and by the time Longhorn rolls around the X.org guys will probably have the entire GUI running on OpenGL.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Take a look at OS/2 with its meta data for files. While sorting, searching, et al would be an addition, I pretty much never had an issue with a file made by program 'X' trying to be opened by program 'Y' because of the common extension. Actually, extensions were irrelevant, something I still miss in today's MS software. MS really does need to completely drop the 8.3 notation (and if you think they already did, please view your local file types in the explorer Folder Options, they're pretty much still stuck on the .3 part)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"The highest quality OS we have ever shipped" Like that statement makes me feel any better about Windows...
heh, i had my kicker sidebar years ago, but then i realized that, pretty as it was, it was a waste of space...
i hope for all the MS users sake that you can turn it off...
...these aren't my real teeth.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Nobody, Mr. Gates? Apple announced this was going to be a key part of OS X Tiger. It is scheduled to be released this coming year, and they have already implemented it in the preview versions of Tiger that they have made available to developers. By all reports it is working just fine, today, right now.
So please, lay off the "nobody" stuff, mmmk?
My favourite quote, by far:
"Well, basically, Apple isn't releasing Mac OS X 10.4 until 2005, so we've got to wait a little while longer before we can finish Longhorn."
Oh, wait, I guess they left that out of the article.
100% USDA-approved flamebait or your money back!
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Is that site available only in French, or are they making lousy assumptions based on my IP address (I live in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium)?
"... we couldn't figure out how to do it in time."
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
...what the grandparent poster was trying to say. At least, I took something different out of it than you apparently did.
It's not so much that FOSS can't implement these ideas. It's that they can't, or at least won't, do so in a way that's pervasive for the whole OS. FOSS can, for example, design a new filesystem or display model, but it can't make all of the apps written for Linux support those things. It especially can't make the apps support it in a consistent and comprehensible way.
Microsoft is capable of saying: This is the way we are going to do things now, and if you are going to make software to run on our OS, that's the way it's going to be. If the Office suite, for example, deals with the new filesystem in a certain way, that becomes the Right Way. Instant industry standard. Any software vendor who deviates from that method is going to be looked at as doing it the wrong way.
FOSS can't compell that kind of compliance. Developers are free to support or not support the work of other developers depending on how much time they want to put in or if they think it's a good idea. If there's a difference in vision, a fork can occur.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying the FOSS way of doing things is bad, and I don't think the grandparent poster was either. It's just different. It absolutely has its strengths, but it also has its weaknesses too. Microsoft is, perhaps wisely, choosing to try to push the strengths their model has.
Are they going to ship a Linux distro?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Major security advances that build on Windows XP SP2, such as new technologies to make clients more resilient to attack, viruses and malware"/ 0,1995,164 0602,00.asp
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2
Installed sp2 tried to download firefox and iE blocked it hmm
Why the hell do we always get all this MSFT news when all we do is make fun of it. I swear, I hear more about MSFT on here than F/OSS.
I've said it for years: "M$ has developed the greatest beta test in history, they con everyone into paying them to be beta testers".
M$ has NEVER sold anything that was not a bug filled beta.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
and democracy fails.
The whole of civilization is built on discipline and the enforcement of uniform ideals. In most cases, we call this "culture".
The failure of the open source model is just one more failure for democracy. It is proof that when large numbers of people think they can all decide the Right Way, as you say, they fail. Whether its law, architecture, urban planning, environmental standards, ethics, morals, or even music... they fail, and fail miserably.
Now that would be somewhat innovative because such a system would be protected against buffer overflows and would provide nice, all-managed
however, MS has not detailed how much of upcoming castrated Longhorn will be in managed code.Any thoughts?
would be cool if Ximian can pull all-managed desktop (based on Mono) before MS did.
"WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
He must have not seen the new "Spotlight" file searching feature that will be coming on MacOSX Tiger. The Tiger demo at Java One was already showing this.
We found out that certain parts of Longhorn were waayyy too secure so it would be impossible for the dumb dumbs ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h regular folk to use.
So we decided to axe these parts while pretending that MS CashCow 6.0 ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Longhorn Windows has become as fortified as possible. Yeah that's right.... fortified as possible.
STOP LOOKING AT US!!!
Good programmers drink beer to relieve job stress.
Great programmers drink hard liquor and work best hungover.
Lately, I keep running into, Gee the Open Source world used to be cool and interesting. They used to talk tech, but no more. Now it is about gossip! However, "if you look at my other hand" Microsoft has this really cool stuff in their blogs and the likes...
I really wonder if there is not some stealth blogging going on...
Now to address your issues...
1) I read MSDN blogs and it is essentially the same material posted by ten different people. It is quite amazing how "monolithic" independent blogs can be. Scoblizer seems to be the only "oddball"
2) Slashdot has always been about both gossip and tech news.
3) More people use Open Source, hence more news will be about CEO's who give press releases about Open Source.
gih begadobew
dix cur fif lovixama
pel baxeyamu
That Micro$oft will be making Windows XP OSR2, followed by Windows XP ME?
;)
To say that it'll be 996 years to the next release after Windows XP OSR2, is kinda mean. Longhorn isn't THAT delayed
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Really, it would only take days to write a new file system in Linux? Or maybe you meant that it would take only days to integrate it into the OS? I think some /.'ers are speculating an awful lot about what part of the process is causing the delay.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
What I want to know is why posts that criticise commercial software are classed as Interesting or Insightful and those that criticise open-source software are classed as Flamebait.
I mean I really do wonder why the statement "Does that mean that MS are now copying Linux...?" is not considered flamebait. Where in the moderation rules does it say that criticising commercial software is to be encouraged but criticising open-source software is to be stamped out?
I do wonder what's wrong with the parent though. I mean it really is a right royal pain in the ass whenever you try to connect a device to Linux machine. Will it work or won't it work? Can I get the drivers? Or has Linux improved in this regard?
What is so great about Longhorn?
Seriously.
The only thing useful about it is WinFS, which sounds nice but even that is just a nice-to-have feature most people can and will do without.
"Avalon" is a buzzword just like Apple's "graphics-engine" (whoa, it's an engine, whoa!) with no real use. (At least no Apple user could explain the real-world advantages to me so far, also the Winlots failed to explain what *exactly* makes Avalon so great)
Actually, I think the sooner MS releases Longhorn the better it is for Linux. The incompatibilities, the headaches, the problems that come with each Windows-release (sometimes even with a servicepack) will push Linux. When support contracts run out and Microsoft stops supporting older versions of Windows, that will push Linux. When Microsoft stops to support MS-Office for older versions of Windows that will push OpenOffice.
So please Microsoft, ship it quick.
Well, it would be actually useful if instead it generated a list of all the images (irrespective of the format), which are actually pictures of houses (whatever keyword they are or are not tagged with). Not that I expect that any time soon (be it from Microsoft, as OSS, or in Google)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Windows 2000? Fucking OS/2 had a sidebar.
And on a more serious note... uh... see above. Tiger has all of this. It works. TODAY. Will be ready for the world next year, not in 200x.
The way I work in the physical world is the way I work on my system. I keep everything in organized stacks, in specific locations. "Emails to Bob" are kept, for instance, in MyName/Emails/Bob. Not hard at all.
...let's say you send Bob and some friends email about a gathering you'd like to do. Where do you put that? In 20 different email folders, or one "events/gathering" directory? Or both?
There are times when I'd like to take my tree structure (which represents a common use) and create a different set. Particularly if you have stuff like "Gathering suggestion", version control is a bitch. What do I do with meta-tags? I group them and tag them (as I would do anyway, only before I'd copy) and now I have a single instance.
Kinda like a virtual folder. Quite useful, for those times when you'd like to do it, and the only alternative would be to redo your tree structure (which would fail in other cases). That being said, it is more of a "annoying when I would need it" not a "killer feature". It's hardly going to revolutionize my computer use...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
One reason I use linux is because I don't HAVE to have these features. If Linux gains some "features" like sidebars and whatnot, I can choose to not install them, or find an implementation that I like. Most likely with Windows, they will be ON by default and the means by which to turn them off will be buries so far in some sort of crayon bright eye-candied "configuration" that I would never, ever find it.
Or maybe it's because when you get in a fight you immediately run away with your tail between your legs.
Microsoft ships real operating systems.
I really take issue with Jim's memo - the feature list MS is trying to fulfill, the list they say is what their customers want, still does not include a decent, 21st-century web browser! I mean, come on. This is rediculous. They have to bundle a decent browser.
What constitutes a decent browser? One that has built-in vector graphics rendering would be nice (no plug-in). One that has complete and really good CSS1 support. One that does not render really broken pages would be nice, too. One that is not easy to 0wn. One that has good popup controls. Tabbed browsing would be good, too.
I dug up a copy of the original source here.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
1. Microsoft announces a new search feature with a layer on top of NTFS called WinFS and will be using MS-SQL Server lite to query the data. Huge bloated solution using technology originally embedded into Office 2003. (Office 2003 installs a mini MS-SQL Service, used with Mail Merge, etc). (I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Microsoft may have announced this ambitious plan after seeing the news about Apple hiring the BeFS developers or they did it first and Apple responded, either way file searching has been itching for a major upgrade industry wide.)
2. Apple hires the BeFS developers and within a year integrates the BeFS metatag system into HFS+. It's extremely fast and it works great. Apple calls it Spotlight and it's available to developers right now in Beta form within the Tiger OS 10.4 beta release. Tiger's been updated a few times already. Expect in first or second quarter of 2005 for gold release. The system works across all file types and can handle indexing the contents of files. There is an API for more advanced metatag insertion and application specific search features and interface. I've seen this system in action and it is truly remarkable. Less then a second to retrieve all sorts of data. Email, AddressBook, keyword search in documents, URL's, Bookmarks, etc., etc., etc. It's so good, why even bother organizing one's data anymore?
- Microsoft forgot a primary engineering philosophy. "Keep It Simple Stupid" - KISS! They simply failed in their initial design of WinFS with MS-SQL Server. They need to scrap it and start over. The primary problems being it's too big and bloated and the potential for bugs is enormous. It's too difficult to build queries. They started with the work done on Office 2003 instead of being more innovative and starting over with a better design.
When XP changed it's search abilities I had endless calls from developers who could no longer search the contents of source code files or SQL files like they could with NT's Find command. Apparently, one had to write a plugin to the MS Search engine to add support for various file types. There were work arounds but they required re-indexing all of the files and it took hours and hours to finally start working. Also it was unpredictable in the way it began a re-index. A new file was not immediately available via search. If Longhorn really does not ship with WinFS then it is deeply disappointing. Well back to giving my developers a grep GUI...
The Apple Spotlight system instantly and on the fly indexes the metadata. It does so very quickly. The results are instantly available. You can save the query and add it to your sidebar so it's available from the main file manager (Finder). Click the smart folder (saved query) and it's always up-to-date with the latest data results. The Smart Folders idea was from iTunes, it's a way to represent a query.
Here's to looking forward to OS X Tiger and future Linux systems using similar metatags! And watching Microsoft fumble the ball and have a thirty yard penalty! Gee, by 2010 MS may actually have a viable search system. Perhaps Google will beat them to it by releasing a Windows file search feature. The Google toolbar and SearchBar are awesome all Google needs to do is add filesytem metatag layer and do the same thing as Apple Spotlight. Heck, I would pay for that solution!
All they worry about is whether Microsoft software works. And since they have the source code, arranging that shouldn't be too difficult.
I'm sure you remember the old saying "It isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Say you're a lawyer and you file your cases something like:
c:\year\case\client\outcome
Now you want to search these according to:
c:\client\year\case\outcome
This is not currently possible with directories without a huge PITA and this is one area where winFS can shine.
---
I'm hoping this new version of windows will be the next big thing since Windows ME. Now there was an operating system worth installing(over and over again). as the features that are being removed aren't really that important anyway I'm all for keeping the name longhorn instead of renaming it shorthorn to compensate for its short cumings!
A nice file system structure only gives you one heirarchy.
Any other way of storing things is inadequate.
-- ac at work
...on Linux. IIRC, the whole point of WinFS is not so much the "find anything anywhere" stuff but that a version of SQL Server was going to be a part of the file system, so that, if I read it right, your receipes can be indexed and catagorized in the context of a rdms instead of folders and such on a "real" filesystem. At the end of the day, NTFS is still doing the actual heavy lifting of saying what block on what platter belongs to what file.
I admit to thinking this was kind of a cool idea...a big information store instead of a bazillion files. The actual implementation, I would think, wouldn't actually be that hard...again, you're not dealing with files per se, but with data.
The *nightmare* is probably in how you're supposed to interact with it. When your whole world is made up of the file/folder/cabinet metaphor, trying to define what an "information store" is, and how a user is going to interact with it in some seamless fashion, must be mind boggling complex because the only way it will work is if you have the relationships correctly set up. Photography cataloging programs do it by giving the user dozens of fields for him or her to fill in, and only on those fields that there is data is it useful to search on.
Back to Linux...I think that implementing this, presumably using a Reiser4 plugin + some RDMS, and then have the correct way to interact with it, would show Microsoft up to no end. "Information at your fingertips" is more likely to get the attention of a PHB than "10,000 node cluster" and anything to show how the Linux community delivered when MS couldn't, is obviously a Good Thing.
>>Nobody has ever brought together the world of >>documents, media and structured information in >>giving you one simple set of verbs that lets >>you richly find, move around and replicate >>those things."
Anyone remember BeOS and its file system... seems like this was done, uh I don't know 10 yrs ago. As usual, it isn't innovation unless Microsoft makes a commercially viable product out of someone elses hard work.
Yeah, exactly like Spotlight.
When Jobs last demoed it in June, it successfully searched the metadata of everything from QuickTime movies to PDF's.
This will give you a much better idea of how it works.
The site really doesn't do it justice. It can do what you're describing... though doing a search for "films starring Tom Hanks" would make more sense if it were just "Tom Hanks" and then it would show you everything with "Tom Hanks" in it, organized into file-type or other categories.
They're actually pretty good, but I can't think of any Windows software that actually adheres to them. Including Windows.
DRM to be perfected.
'05 Dodge Caravan: same old stuff slightly improved but not super-noticable to the driver, engine, wheels, doors BUT also has something new: Sto and Go Seating, you can fold the 2nd and 3rd row seats into the floor. Seems trivial but this is actually new and a pretty good feature, cost a couple years and a lot of dough to make happen.
... no new user level features ??? What?
Windows '06: same old stuff somewhat improved perhaps, file system, graphical interface, developer API, security features BUT
Ok, Windows is now officially Feature Complete.
Apparently there is nothing new to be done with the product. All that's left is making improved versions of existing features and even some of those are dropped...
Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things.
find, mv, cp. buhbye.
Microsoft makes a commercially viable product...
exactly.
When was the last time you used a Linux distro, and which one and version was it? Hardware support in Linux has been very good for several years.
Yes, there is a lot of hardware that isn't supported
but you can almost always find equivalent hardware that is.
More and more, hardware manufacturers are directly supporting Linux or are providing enough info for others to do it well.
While Slashdot does have a big Linux bias, many criticisms of Linux are posted either by those who don't know what it is NOW capable of or are longtime Wintel zealots who've been posting the same diatribes against Linux for years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Way to go MS! Soon every Joe Sixpack in town will have a chance to purchase some 'o that there Developer Excitement?
All right! Innovation at it's best, fun for the whole family!
But on re-reading this phrase, I see a key word I had overlooked... it's "richly". Gates is telling the absolute truth; let me paraphrase: "Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you
The highest quality OS we have ever shipped
- it finally doesn't crash every day
New information management tools to improve productivity, including fast desktop search and new, intuitive ways to organize files
- you can rapidly print them out and file them on your shelves
Major security advances that build on Windows XP SP2, such as new technologies to make clients more resilient to attack, viruses and malware
- it automatically disconnects from the internet every ten minutes to "prevent" others gaining access to your box
Flexible and powerful tools to reduce deployment costs for enterprise customers, including technologies for image creation, editing and installation; and much simpler upgrades for consumers
- comes with a free throw-away camera and photo album
Significant improvements in reliability, including a robust diagnostic infrastructure to detect, analyze and fix problems quickly, and new backup tools to keep data safe
- runs on linux, but as its proprietary code, sshhhh, no one will know
A platform that creates Developer excitement with the availability of rich APIs [application programming interfaces]
- they're finally including Java without all the MS mods
BeFS was the FS for BeOS. When introduced in ~1997, it was really extraordinary, with 64-bit addressing allowing file sizes many orders of magnitude larger than competitors (also much larger than physically possible), plus extensive support for metadata. BeOS implemented a great MIME-type system to identify file types using BeFS' metadata support, so the file type was cleanly split away from the file name, unlike the DOS/Windows hack of using the file name extension as a file type identifier. Furthermore, certain BeOS apps used BeFS metadata to allow extremely powerful query operations, including "live queries" that were updated every millisecond or so. BeFS was not really a database FS, but it did incorporate some cool indexing features that allowed database-level performance for certain filesystem operations. The earliest versions of BeOS really did use a true database as the filesystem. This idea was discarded due to excessive performance overhead, and BeFS was created as a compromise.
I have not used ReiserFS 4, but it sounds a lot more ambitious than BeFS. At any rate, the Linux BeFS driver is really a compatibility option that does not provide the same features as using BeFS natively under BeOS. fwiw, I would really love to see someone implement BeOS-like queries for Linux using one of the new metadata-enabled FSes.
...Windows NT...to say it was designed as a single user system...is just false
I can only presume you've never actually experienced NT's (or XP's) alleged "multi-user features" for yourself. A login box does NOT make for a real multi-user system, just as time-sharing does not make for real multi-tasking.
Damn shills...
Best,
Mal the Elder
I guess this means that we'll see Windows XP2 (Longhorn) SE (Search Edition) With WinFS to instantly find all your data around 2007 or 2008.
I really, and I'm not trolling, expect that MS saw what Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's Spotlight technology was capable of and realised that WinFS was not going to make the huge dent that they first thought it would. I assume that they scrapped the original SQL based technology and started from scratch using Spotlight's abilities as a guide.
That said, I can see the wisdom of getting Longhorn out the door with Avalon. Home users, gamers and newbies are bought and sold on eye candy and Avalon promises to bring loads of that and it is probably extremely important for MS to compete there finally with OSX (which has been around for 3 years now).
Or Apple's spotlight which, for example, *parses words in PDFs*. Steve demoed this at the WWDC. While looking for things re: Yosemite or Tahoe or whatever, it found a PDF map of CA or NV with the being-searched-for region in it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
WinFS isn't really a file system; it's a way of better organizing data on top of NTFS. From what I've read, BeOS ( which I really miss) had a similar.
concept for it's own filesystem.
There is a GNOME project called Storage that's implementing something similar to WinFS for Linux
( http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/ ). It's currently in early alpha stage.
MacOS X already has a similar search technology called Spotlight ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html)
Also, the newly released Reiser4 filesystem ( www.namesys.com ) should make implementing this on Linux much easier.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I probably shouldn't respond to a troll, but I'll bite on this one.
We have a sidebar that has significant more functionality than what MS intends to have two years from now. And our sidebar isn't vaporware: Dashboard
Lonhorn is going to have multiple desktops, tell MS not to copy Linux.
.Net is Java reincarnated, tell MS to give it back to Sun.
BeOS had BeFS in 1996, its everything that WinFS was going to be and then some, tell MS to not use WinFS.
While we are at it, The new windows versions are a bit like VMS, make sure you tell MS to scrap it all and start from scratch. Oh and this time also make sure you tell them not to include any BSD code again. I'll stop now, I wouldn't want to embarass you anymore.
Regards,
Steve
I challenge anyone on this entire freaking site to explain what is meant by the phrase "richly find" at the USER level.
We've all read it, many went 'huh' and kept reading, many thought 'well I'll just pretend I understand', some mumbled something like 'database' or 'metatag' or 'find' or 'search' under their breath, some even made a joke or two but I'll bet no one can put into plain english what the heck that is actually supposed to mean at the interface to a USER.
"That's simply not true."
Maybe, maybe not. But you have not provided any support that it is NOT accurate.
Yet there you have posted TWO references where it WAS accurate.
So far, the weight of evidence is against Microsoft.
"The latter incompatibility was somewhat justified in the fact that Windows needed to tweak the internals of DOS, but the way Windows reported it was extremely deceptive."
Then why was it encrypted and hidden?
"They go to great lengths to keep badly-written applications running."
So you claim, yet there are lots of examples that disprove your claim.
"I know that MS has made deliberate decisions in the past to make the OS incompatible with software that competed with another MS product, but that's unusual."
So, Microsoft has been guilty of this, yet without any evidence to support it, I'm supposed to believe that Microsoft has changed?
Does your dictionary have a definition for "Gullible"?
So in early 2005 consumers will have a meta data file system, and since Mac OS 10.2 they've had 3d accelerated GUIs... Now if WinFS did get released in longhorn (which it won't be, according to MS.) We'd still be waiting until late 2006, for these features.
I wouldn't place too much emphasis on MS's ability to timeline a product to market. After all windows 95 was meant to have the 3D accelerated GUI, and NT 4 was supposed to have WinFS.
At this rate it'll be 2010 before WinFS sees sunlight.
"music by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers"
I have no problems finding that. It always goes to the trash as soon as it hits my computer.
to upgrade all of my software, drivers, computer etc. so it works with longhorn. Should only cost about $2000.
Last Linux was a Red Hat 7 point something a couple of years ago. It found pretty much everything on my laptop apart from the Winmodem (no surprise there then). I had some trouble with XFree but the latest and greatest sorted that out.
One of the great things about Windows XP (and to a lesser extend 2000) is that you can almost always plug a device in and it works straight away. I have found this really useful with friends' digital cameras. It's the same with portable media players - you just plug the thing in and it's another new drive. Also, I just bought a v cheap 7-in-1 memory card reader, plugged it into a USB port and hey presto, a whole host of new drives appeared. Remember also that these devices will have been released long after XP. So I guess there must be a standard somewhere that Microsoft and the hardware vendors are complying to.
I believe that even the latest Linux distros will not be able to match XP in the way it allows hot plug and play of such devices. I'd quite happily be told otherwise though!
I've got nothing against Linux. I imagine that the Linux developers are concentrating on gaining an even stronger foothold in the server market before getting cute on the desktop. This makes a lot of sense but people need to realise that it's horses for courses. I would avoid Windows as a server platform but I wouldn't want to use anything else on the desktop - at the moment. I think that's called the freedom of choice!
I mean I really do wonder why the statement "Does that mean that MS are now copying Linux...?" is not considered flamebait.
Actually, it was meant as a tongue-in-cheek comment based on what the previous poster was saying - not for flaimbait or trollish behaviout (it was marked 70% troll, 30% underrated), but more as a humourous statement in the context.
read: sarcasm.
I'll ensure next time to include <sarcasm> tags around such posts in future.
T.
Not the best OS ever. The best OS MS has ever shipped. Since they are not adding anything new it shouldn't be possible for them to make it worse. Oh okay so ME was worse then what came before but surely MS can not screw up twice eh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Lotus Notes has been available since 1989, but of course that is IBM.
Microsoft is all about agile development these days, what's with the lengthy release cycles? Do they not drink the kool-aid they have been pushing to .NET developers? I know XP and Agile development are not Microsoft ideas originally, but I thought they had adopted it fully.
TallGreen CMS hosting
When they say "better searching" all I hear is "retrain Grandma" -- if that's even necessary, because they will likely support the legacy way of doing it.
When they say "better security" all I hear is "our previous OS was awful" -- and besides, they will need to patch the older OS.
When they say "better interface" I hear "confusing visuals" and showing Grandma where to click all over again.(Now we'll be able to start a program by clicking on either the start menu, the quick launch, the systems tray OR the new FastBar-Zip-Wham-Clicker!!)
WinFS, whenever and however it is released, seems to be completely untranslatable into average-user speak. Although like everything else I'm sure the MS marketing machine will be able to turn it into bland hype that has consumers vaguely worried about not buying the upgrade.
When I hear the word 'Security,' I reach for my shotgun. Robyn Hitchcock
Well, I don't have any portable media players or memory card readers but I do have a couple of IDE to USB portable drives where you can swap in ( or out) hard drives or CD-RW.r d_Reade rs
These have all worked flawlessly with Linux - my largest drive once had 9 different partitions with 6
different filesystems and all were accessible.
You might get more info here:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/USB_Ca
I suggest that you download the Knoppix LiveCD to test for peripheral support under Linux. I don't doubt that you'll be pleasantly surprised as to the hardware that'll work without problems.
http://www.knoppix.org/
Best of Luck!!
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Gnome Storage is everything WinFS wants to be when it grows up. It's a real RDBMS storage system with complete metadata support, natural language support (with references), network transparency, etc.
It's still in the development stage, but it seems to be moving forward quite nicely.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
SPATIAL
And almost all real world analogies on the computer desktop break down because the computer is a different medium with different strengths and weaknesses than a physical interface.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic...
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"Our scheduling and predictability on this project has been better than it was on OS 360. So software has not gotten more complex."
Bill seems to be forgetting that OS/360 was one of the first attempts at anything like a modern OS and whole books have been written about the mistakes that were made in its development. Fred Brooks "the Mythical Man-Month" is largely a result of the lessons learned in its development. What's he saying here? Is he implying Microsoft hasn't learned anything about developing complex software since 1960? As cynical as I sometimes am about the company, I don't believe that... they have put together systems successfully that are far more complex than OS/360.
Remember, OS/360 had to run on hardware that was less powerful than anything any Microsoft operating system all the way back to MS-DOS 1.0 has had to deal with. Features like being able to run a variable number of jobs were restricted to the top-of-the-line models, and most early installations ran it purely in a static batch mode with a fixed number of concurrent jobs.
This is a great soundbite, but it doesn't begin to address the question. The best answer to a question like "Has software just gotten more complicated to write?" is "Yes." I don't know if Microsoft accepts this or not, I have no idea, but if Bill Gates answers a question like that with a red herring like "We're doing better than IBM did on OS/360" I fear they're still in denial. So perhaps the best answer to the next part, "What, if anything, does Microsoft need to do as a company to reflect that reality?", is "therapy".
In fact it is being back ported to XP and server 2003. This is a good think as it means apps written for LH will look and work the same on XP. Here a channel9 interview where Allchin talks more about this:
MSN
Competing with Google for Web searching
MSNBC
Their upcoming iTunes-type store and iPod-wannabe
MS media center
XBox
Trial attempts at subscriber model software
Discontinuation of Explorer
Lackluster updates to XP
Attempst to discontinue older, widely used OSs like NT
Pushing their media players and format into other arenas (CDs, film, etc.)
Now, contrast to Apple, a much smaller company with fewer resources, fewer customers, and look what they've managed to pull off in the last 3-4 years. There is no reasonable excuse for MS dragging their feet with Windows beyond a genuine lack of interest in going much further with the product. I know it sounds crazy, but what other reason could there be? At least, that's what it looks like to me. I think they desperately want to succeed in some other area besides software, want to move away from their core products. In pursuing that, they've let the software end of their business lag badly.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
*groan* you reveal your ignorance more and more regarding FOSS.
The projects I mentioned are not just "a project in existenance[sic]". They are mainstream projects that are driving Linux on the desktop.
NTFS - a decent filesystem with features that most FOSS Filesystems don't have
Pray tell, what features are those? Journaling? Done. Stability? Done. ACLs? Done. Meta-data? Done.
Now, the vast majority of Linux boxes are running ext2
Maybe, but how many new boxes get installed with ext2? I haven't seen a single Linux box in the past 2 years running ext2. I'm sure most older machines are still on ext2, but ext2 is on the way out. Unless you count Ext3 as ext2, but that's hardly fair. Ext3 is very stable, fast, and supports ACLs (yeah, you are indeed wrong about most FOSS filesystems not supporting ACLs).
essentially a lame-old filesystem maintained for the sake compatiability.
It's lame is it? That's why until Win2k, it was more stable (and much faster to boot) at crash recovery than NTFS, MS's highly touted FS?
How long until X.org faces the same red-tape laden decline as X.org? I am not saying it will die, but progress will slow, then stop, and then the software will be in "patch" only mode just XFree86 is now.
What a ridiculous troll! Why is that bound to happen? Look at all the OSS projects that are highly active, and have been for years and years. GNOME and KDE are more active than ever, and so is the Linux kernel. Reality does not support your claims! Demand drives the progress of major OSS projects. There are companies that depend on it. If necessary, they put money behind projects to get them moving again.
Hope you reconsider your opinion, and hope you can try to refrain from personal attacks.
I hope you will do a bit more research about developments in the FOSS world before running your mouth(errr... fingers).
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Check out the w3c's semantic web languages. Boring and technical, but web-friendly. Autoconverters for extracting semantics from well-formed XML available.
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
Go ahead and flame the W3, but at least the basics of the web are free. Wait for MS to get on the ball and they'll own semantic search...
File extensions do not suck. I like to know that my .mp3 is not going to .exe. It's easy enough to drag a file over the icon for Windows Media Player or Winamp. Btw, if you havent already turned off "hide extensions for known file types" (in tool/folder options/view) I suggest you do it now. Then you can just rename the file extension to .mpg and let Media Player figure it out.
bit trollent
what you said is totally unrelated to reality.
A: its stupid to rely on extensions, because just the same as "Business Proposal.doc" could really be "6th Grade paper.doc" so just like the filename, the extension can be wrong too.
B: why not have the system just FIGURE IT OUT, for itself. makes sense to me.
C: you cant rename files on a VCD.
its stupid to have a system that relies on an arbitrary three letters at the end of a name.
the system should be able to look at the actual file and see what it is.
Why not create a WinFS system on linux, creating a new FS based on MySQL/PostgreSQL + another FS (ext3fs,...) underlying it?
Could be ready before WinFS, I bet.
Each application that supports WinFS will act as an API to access their own application's files and deliver the requested content. It will work something like how piping in Linux works, but using XML to define the data as well.
It might be possible to build rich applications out of existing applications. MS are trying to build something comparable to "OSS doesn't reinvent the wheel"
The search portion of WinFS will just work by going through the XML data. You will be able to narrow your searches for specific content, search various content for different things.
Searching by specifying a resized cropped bitmap and finding the original picture is an example, or finding pieces of the picture in other pictures. Searching by specifying audio clips is another possibility. Of course all the other meta data in files already present will also be searchable. (Search for music: by artist, title, length, etc).
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Wow...that's a whopper, even for Bill.
For the record, this type of technology is called content management (not to be confused with 'web content management')...and it ain't new, nor is BeFS a particularly unique example.
A number of vendors have robust CM repositories that are far more capable than WinFS 1.0 would have been...including replication, etc:
And as far as using SQL as the programmatic interface to such a system, that approach has its disadvantages - most vendors have developed content-oriented interfaces, and see JSR 170 for the beginnings of a true open standard for such an interface.
WinFS was the *beginning* of a content management strategy for Microsoft, but it certainly didn't address high-volume imaging or report distribution requirements, or many of the other characteristics of CM systems that the market expects.
When did IE get popup blocking? (Or is this something that you expect to see happen in 2006?)
longhorn == dead ? "Coffin. Nailed shut." : "Slaughter the beast";
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html
Doesn't this look similar to what Gates is saying?
This is about the technology:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlighttech.ht ml
There are dozens of very complete SVG icon sets available NOW for KDE and GNOME.
At the rate FOSS moves, very long time.
I wasn't using ANY GTK1 apps two or three MONTHS after GNOME2 was released, which was a MAJOR switch. I think you should pay more attention to OSS so you can be more informed.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
what you said is totally unrelated to reality.
.mp3 to be .exe so to speak. This is important. I like to be able to doubleclick on certain filetypes with no fear of the consequences.
.mp3 was really a .doc with a malitious macro? Doubleclick on "supercool.mp3" and youll be spamming your entire outlook contact list with "supercool.mp3"... You would look pretty stupid.
grow up.
B: why not have the system just FIGURE IT OUT, for itself. makes sense to me.
Because Windows is already unsecure enough as it is. There was an mp3 virus a article a couple months ago that only worked on macs because Windows does not allow any
its stupid to have a system that relies on an arbitrary three letters at the end of a name.
What if a
bit trollent
Well done, good sir!
*flings underpants at the stage*
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That being said, I would always be interested in interfaces that make that job easier for users, improving our 20+ year old designed filesystems.
That's simple. Use magic. No, seriously. The "file" command in Unix is a great utility-- it tries to classify the document based on the document itself. A good GUI would be able to automagically identify the filetype of a file, and launch the appropriate application, based on the type of file.
Extensions are the stupidest things in the world. It's a holdover from DOS that just really, really blows.
But then, my blood pressure rises when I see "*.htm" instead of "*.html", so there's some sort of dualism going on.
Stupid *.htm.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Since Apple has all this done already in the upcoming Tiger...
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Has anyone seen the new specs for Tiger? The spotlight search seems to do all that Gates mentioned, and it is almost (already?) here.
Well, you can use the magic file to determine file type. The Nueros MP3 player can identify songs based on a 30-second clip, using an on-line service. There are systems that can automatically identify a person in a photograph, though these are not yet generally available to the public, nor are they 100% accurate. (But, they would be more accurate for organizing photographs, as people tend to take pictures of a small subset of the population.)
Cameras often encode date and time.
Then, there are remembrance agents like Dashboard that can help, as well.
There are already a lot of relationships embedded in our email and other documents. There's no reason these relationships can't be automatically extracted and formalized by the filesystem for rapid access.
In general, there is a *lot* of metadata that *can* be automatically populated. A lot of it is only of general use. However, that is still a step in the right direction.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The biggest problem with this is its sheer complexity. The current filesystem setup is very simple, very easy to understand. It's pretty much idiot proof. This is a beautiful thing, because the more simple a thing is, the more stable and reliable it is.
Turn this around and try to imagine replacing that simplicity with a relational database. I say, sure, it's possible, but why would you want to do it? It would be FAR easier to add a second tier service that keeps track of user/type/relationship, and leave the current file index alone. I think that would buy you the best of both worlds, allowing you ease of navigation while preserving a simple, functional, lower tier.
I am not at all suprised that they abandoned their attempt to make it work. The problems that COULD crop up are frankly terrifying, and I can't imagine this increasing the stability or reliablity of the Windows platform.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
OK, with WinFuse the file system will blow before the operating system. So what?
Microsoft's command interpreter will be harder to use, and it will do less unless a lot of programmers are willing to recode their applications to expose programming interfaces. By contrast, Linux's shells let me write one small utility that can be run from a command shell, and it can automatically be integrated with other people's small utilities.
Yes.
You're right.
If something like this is done, it should absolutely not be done at the filesystem level, but by something that hooks in directly above (if Linux ever gets the enhanced recursive dnotify() patch added to the mainstream kernel, it could have such functionality). It's ridiculous to try to tie it to a particular filesystem when there's no reason to do so.
The good thing about Linux is that when all this stupid cruft and dumb design overwhelms the filesystem, the 90% of people that promptly realize that "replace the filesystem with a database" is a bad idea can simply use another filesystem. Those on Windows may not have that luxury.
May we never see th
So this is what is MS thinking: implement the things that FOSS world can't do thanks to its red-tape laden world-view.
I don't know what FOSS projects *you've* been working on, but most that I can think of move *much* more quickly than closed source projects. Linux has pretty much become the standard for advancement in the *IX world and has generally surpassed Windows from a kernel-level performance standpoint. P2P software is one of the fastest-moving areas around, and it's largely FOSS. When I want to add a feature, I do a patch and send it to a mailing list. It's pretty easy.
And you're using Microsoft as an example of technical innovation? Come on...there are closed source vendors that come up with new ideas, but I'd like to hear you name five original Microsoft *technical* (not business) ideas. Microsoft hasn't ever been a technical leader -- just a business leader.
May we never see th
Well, actually, Larry Ellison attempted to bring about a new file system that allowed all content to be queried simultaneously using a simple, clear syntax: iFS and SQL. Larry's only problem is he could not get over providing it to the masses for $5/seat. It would probably be perfect to reintroduce now, especially with the 10g "grid" stuff. Get all your department's computers using 10g/iFS, perhaps with a SAN or NAS for the real databases, and use all of your department's computers as your virtual database engine...
So WinFS will be "different", and will just have a clever interface layer that provides enough FAT/NTFS emulation, but results in database queries against the underlying SQL Server database engine.
When Microsoft actually innovates an original idea that no one has ever come up with or already attempted to implement, then maybe I'll be interested.
I have been working on exactly this problem.
/usr/shared/gcc-support/sbin/", I just fold all these into one entry and scan the entire hierarchy below that point), you don't really have to worry about backlogging.
Let me put the basics on the table for you.
It would be a very bad idea to incorporate updatedb into the filesystem. This would make db functionality filesystem dependent, and make filesystems much more complicated. Unnecessary complexity in the filesystem is as bad as unnecessary complexity in the kernel -- you screw up, your data goes away. It also makes it harder to do things like upgrade your indexing system then.
It is pretty much unacceptable to run updatedb in sync with file changes. If you do this, it means that all disk writes take a performance hit. Linux is about fast, fast, fast serving.
The best solution, and the one that I've poked at, is the idea of running updatedb asynchronously with partial database updates triggered by change. This means that when you write to a file, it doesn't *immediately* update the database, but it schedules that file to be updated in the database. Unfortunately, Linux currently lacks important functionality to do this. Currently, you need to open and call the Linux syscall dnotify() on every directory in a filesystem to receive updates when a file changes. This uses massive amounts of file descriptors -- the dnotify() model is simply not designed for monitoring an entire filesystem. Fam and other utilities that sit on dnotify() implement recursive behavior using either polling (inefficient as well) or a massive number of monitored directories. If Linus would merge this patch (which may require additional testing and hacking, not sure), dnotify() could handle filesystem-wide recursive directory monitoring *and* inform as to which file is actually changed -- currently, this always requires polling (extremely expensive when many files are in a directory) because the monitoring application only gets a notification for the directory containing the modified file.
Then, the updatedb daemon can simply log a copy of the fact that the file is changed, and either start updating immediately (but in an asynchronous fashion) or wait until the load drops a bit. If you do things like folding (if I have ten thousand entries starting with
I am curious as to what happens when the signal queue is fully backlogged in Linux -- whether dnotify() events are dropped, or whether the file-changing application simply blocks on its operation.
May we never see th
No, the current version (IE6sp2) has popup blocking.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
"I'm sorry but your LongHorn Word spellcheck license has expired. Do you wish to connect to Microsoft.com and renew your spellchecking for another 50 documents?"
The fud I'm seeing nowadays about this piece of shit that just doesn't exist, took to my head another highly-announced-never-released filesystem, the OOFS that the newsgroups were fillled about, being the next-great-thing after Windows95, that would be included in Windows NT 5 (Cairo?). Maybe we'll see that OOFS anytime soon, in NT 5.3 (I don't know the codename of the next version to de next version of Shorthorn). It's also possible that Microsoft will release it ten years after talking much-and-great about it everywhere (that would imply that WinFS would be released in 2018)
What I want to know is why posts that criticise commercial software are classed as Interesting or Insightful
[sarcasm]This is because most people on Slashdot hate and have avoided open source software, and having their eyes opened is enlightening.[/sarcasm]
I do wonder what's wrong with the parent though. I mean it really is a right royal pain in the ass whenever you try to connect a device to Linux machine. Will it work or won't it work? Can I get the drivers? Or has Linux improved in this regard?
The *only* device I have that isn't supported out-of-box on Fedora is my SmartHome X10 USB transciever. SmartHome doesn't give out any technical specs, and the thing had to be reverse-engineered by the author, and the driver's never been included in the mainstream kernel. Frankly, I suspect that the controller isn't supported out of box on Windows either, though I could be wrong.
May we never see th
Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things
That's the problem with innovation, it's never as easy as the unwashed masses on Slashdot say it is. This "next generation" file system is a case in point, whether you're talking about WinFS, a future version of ReiserFS, or some other proposed "innovation".
In our zeal to dump the hierarchical filesystem, maybe we should sit down and ponder that it might very well be the best possible solution for the problem domain. If all you have in your home directory are ten thousand MP3s, then maybe implementing the filesystem as a relational database and providing a few canned queries may be best for you. But it's probably not for most people. What about the rest of us who have MP3s, Oggs, JPGs, PNGs, word processing documents, spreadsheets, TODO lists, PDFs, and of course plain text files serving a thousand different purposes.
The problem isn't that the nextgen filesystems aren't innovative, it's that they don't have a usable interface to go with them. The current hiearchical system lets me "browse" or "navigate" to the file I want easily. It's certainly not perfect, but it works and it's fast. But the new "innovative" way makes me access files based on their metadata. That's all well and good for files that have that metadata, like MP3s, but if they don't have it then it's up to me to provide it. And that's where it breaks down.
The Google interface sucks, and it's time a lot of your people realized it. Think about it. What if you had to Google for every website you visited. No bookmarks, no favorites, no manually entered URLs, just a search engine. It would suck. Yet the equivalent is what the "innovators" want for your filesystem. Imagine having to query for every file you opened, and worrying about providing the correct metadata for every file you create.
Microsoft got this one right. It's NOT easy coming up with something better than the hierarchical filesystem. I'm sure something will eventually arive, but I am positive it won't be used until an equally innovative interface comes along with it.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If Longhorn will no longer have the four pillars, than what value will it possibly offer?! According to Microsoft XP Pro with SP2 is the best OS in the world. What will change in XP Pro by the time Shorthorn is released?!
It appears that Shorthorn will be yet another version of WinMe. An OS which serves the sole purpose of having something to sell.
"Insanely great" is certainly a better approach than "now or never"!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Is very funny. It picks on both Linux and Microsoft. Think about it more if you can't see that.
I hope not because then I'd have to start worrying about whether my device will be compatible with my computer.
That's just bitter and mean.
See, the point is not who you criticized it's how you do it.
Allchin's "memo" is anything but. Rather, it's just a press release disguised as memo to make it easier for "journalists" to delude themselves into thinking they're publishing real news.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
The Apple Spotlight system instantly and on the fly indexes the metadata. It does so very quickly. The results are instantly available. You can save the query and add it to your sidebar so it's available from the main file manager (Finder). Click the smart folder (saved query) and it's always up-to-date with the latest data results. The Smart Folders idea was from iTunes, it's a way to represent a query.
Actually the Smart Folders idea is a remnant of Copland, Apple's aborted attempt to counter Windows NT with its own industrial-strength OS. Some of the UI innovations of Copland eventually dribbled into Mac OS 8, but saved searches was never one of them. Nice to see Apple going back and rescuing a good idea.
"I'm not saying MS has changed."
If Microsoft hasn't changed AND Microsoft used to do that, then they STILL do that.
But that directly contradicts your previous statement about:
"That's simply not true. MS knows that business customers will resist upgrades that break applications. They go to great lengths to keep badly-written applications running."
"I suspect they would wilfully break competing applications again if they judged it to be in their strategic interests."
It seems that you aren't sure what you believe. You believe they WOULD do that. You know that they HAVE done that.
"I don't think this is likely to happen at all often though - the raised level of scrutiny of MS means it would probably damage their customer and developer relations too much to be worthwhile."
Check out the Netscape trial. It all depends upon what Microsoft considers "worthwhile".
"In general it is in their interests to maintain compatibility in order to retain customers, so that's what they do."
BZZZZZZTTTTTTT!!!!!!!
Look up "monopoly".
"Raymond Chen's blog...."
Sorry, guy. But the search tool couldn't find that in that page. Maybe you weren't reading it correctly?
er, actually, the dashboard/sidebar idea one taken from Nat Friedman.
nat.org/dashboard
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
Maybe I'm taking a shot in the dark, but could this really all be dependent on hardware?
I recall for example, the x64 extensions really help in database work in a very big way. The select queries especially. Perhaps they're just waiting for really good DB performance.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things." -Bill Gates
Oh you mean like Spotlight?
As I type this, your post is at 2 insightful, and the post you responded to is at 0 troll. You might want to ask yourself why that is.
What you call the 'current' version, is in fact the new version of IE the parent was referring to. This thread has long passed its on-topic Longhorn focus.
"Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things."
Neither have you now, Billy!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Mod this troll, mod this flamebait! Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
With how Media player, the search tool (and who knows what else) reporting home (aka to M$) who would want this feature ?
Ok I admit that it's a nice feature. It would probably make local file searches faster, but IF it was in the OS how much traffic would be going back to redmond saying 'Hey this is the meta data of the users HDD'?
To take it s step further (and considering M$'s security record) how long would it be before the RIAA / MPAA are routinely downloading this from users and using it to go after users who have ANY MP3's or video's ?
I mean, how else are they going to get even a basic OS from "scratch" deliverable in 2006, even without a new GUI and filesystem? The FUDster's were claiming it takes years to write an OS, as an argument that Torvaldis couldn't have done it without "help". In fact, it has taken 10+ years for Linux to get where it is, and still has a ways to go before you're grandma can use it. Stands to reason that an OS deliverable in a couple of years is going to need significant "help"...
A new OS written from scratch needs at least two years of betasites beating on it before it's ready for prime time IMHO...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=119836&cid=101 09017
You say:
"That's simply not true."
You are incorrect. It is true. It is factual. There are numerous verified instances of it.
"MS does what's in its business interests."
You seem to believe that this somehow contradicts my previous statements.
WHY Microsoft sabotages other vendor's apps is NOT the question. Microsoft HAS done so.
"Occasionally that means breaking compatibility but usually it means going to great lengths to retain compatibility."
Keep claiming that. But you have not offered any supporting evidence for you claim.
"Try this query."
I went there. This is what I found.
"The various Interlocked functions (InterlockedIncrement, and so on) require that the variable being updated be properly aligned, even on x86, a platform where the CPU silently fixes unaligned memory access invisibly."
It does not support your position.
This conversation is over.
When I want to add a feature, I do a patch and send it to a mailing list. It's pretty easy.
.NET. In the next 18-24 months virtually everything released is going to be .NET based. MS has succedded by getting ISVs to write against an entirely new managed code-base. This is a big time innovation. They didnt invent the idea. They didn't create this big idea. They got to the desktop. They brought it to people. Something Unix vendors have been promising the world, and here comes MS last to the game ready to deliver. FOSS is great at having a big pile of IFDEFS and tons of includes to make things work on multiple flavors of FOSS platforms. Good for them. That's been around though for a long time. Here comes MS delivering binary compatibility via a VM. Wow. And they are poised to do it again, and completely nail Linux in the process.
It's evolutionary. Little patches, little by little. There is not a big momentum of new changes being added.
Let me ask you a question. If you had something was truly revolutionary under your hat. You thought it up, coded some proof of concepts. Bamo. Brand new. Big time stuff, what would you do with it? How long would it take to go from your idea to the average user?
d you're using Microsoft as an example of technical innovation
I have never claimed they invented anything. I am saying they brings things *to the market* way before anyone else. Let me ask you this. What percentage of applications of Open Source applications are running on virtual machine. Sun promised the world this a decade ago. But fast forward. 75% of Windows developers are writing products targeted towards
When Longhorn and its technology hits in the next two years, developers will be drinking the cool-aid full-on. It's the ultimate in lockin: make developing apps so much more effective and efficent that you don't want to switch platforms.
I encourage you to go read up some on MSDN about Avalon, XAML, WinFS, and Indigo. Then read some MS blogs for a few hours. If MS pulls of the technology even 1/2 of what they are thinking of, Linux in terms of developer experience is going to be way, way behind.
It's all about "Developers, developers, developers!"
Reiterating other ACs, the Monad scripting is certainly "next generation" when compared to Unix shell scripts. If MS wanted just to "catch-up" to Unix, they would only need to beefup cmd.exe.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/0 244236&threshold=-1&tid=201&tid=109&tid=21 8
Much better now.
Many years ago, in the days when the Justice Department took its antitrust responsibilities somewhat seriously, I worked for a company that had been deemed a monopolist in court. Two of the things that we did not dare do, because people got sent to jail over it, were:
Ah, if only the DoJ still took their responsibilities seriously: slam-dunk court case.
With all the linux crap that gets posted on this web-site I really can't fathom how it is that you get upset when legitimate news regarding Windows gets posted. I can't help but feel that you're just bitter because deep down inside you know windows is far superior to linux in terms of stability, versatility, and usability, and that just doesn't settle right with your pseudo-socialist/anarchist agenda. I would be much more upset and amused if high-ranking, world-renowned employees of Windows (such as Bill Gates) didn't try to talk-up or sell their product during an interview.
;)
One more thing, "If they didn't release a product until 2008, the market (mostly linux) would have time to catch-up.", is akin to saying, "If (entity A) just stopped (doing whatever it is that makes entity A better than entity B), then (entity B) might have a chance to be as good or better than (entity A)!"... it's kind of a ridiculous, nonsensical statement...
You have to also take into consideration the fact that Bill is probably worth tens of thousands of dollars every hour (or more) to Microsoft, so it's not really a free interview if you consider the cost-benefit. ;-)
Yes, they have.
And this is a FAT/NTFS issue... my 68k Mac from 1992 can find a file faster than a 3.4 GHz P4 with a gig of ram, if it's running Windows. Some filesystems are simply superior to others. The mistake MS made when making NTFS was to not provide it with any sort of indexing, making it impossible to search the directory tree without traversing each node.
HFS/+ has never had this problem. Hit Cmd-F on a System 7.0 box, type a partial filename, and bam... it's there. It's that simple.
That said, WinFS is a really cool idea, since we see hard drives getting bigger than anyone needs them for (read: room for metadata) and systems getting faster and faster (read: easier to parse through metadata). I do, however, wish it was an open implementation. This could be a chance for MS to gain some credibility with the F/OSS world.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
You can't tell simply by looking at him.
OK, maybe he's just a little pudgy, but does he really need to go on a diet?
Let me ask you a question. If you had something was truly revolutionary under your hat. You thought it up, coded some proof of concepts. Bamo. Brand new. Big time stuff, what would you do with it? How long would it take to go from your idea to the average user?
[shrug] I came up with an idea for a simple and peppy substring searching algorithm that's currently used in a popular piece of P2P software. The period of time between when I came up with the idea and when it shipped in SuSE? I dunno, it was whenever the next SuSE release came out.
I have never claimed they invented anything. I am saying they brings things *to the market* way before anyone else.
I don't even think that's the case. I think that they might be the most *popular* vendor of a number of things, but still not the first to market. I'll strengthen my initial claim to cover "first to the consumer". List a couple of major things that Microsoft was the first to get to the consumer.
What percentage of applications of Open Source applications are running on virtual machine. Sun promised the world this a decade ago.
The point of running on a VM is largely that it allows cross-architecture compatibility. This was a huge deal for Sun, because SPARC has been a minority architecture for a long time, and it eliminates a major barrier to use of their platform. However, in an open source world, it doesn't provide nearly as much a benefit, since most software can just be rebuilt -- Red Hat just sets the --target option and rebuilds for IA64, PPC, i386, or whatever. The main remaining benefit is that it lets you conduct some finely-grained sandboxing, and even so a lot of that can be done under Linux through use of chroot and other sandboxing mechanisms. The problem is that a VM means a lot more for closed-source vendors than it does open-source vendors. Software targetting VMs requires more memory and runs slower than native software.
Now, there are certainly FOSS VMs with bytecode that exist: rep, emacs, bochs, plex86, python, ocaml(in bytecode mode), and kaffe, off the top of my head. Some of these have been around for an awfully long time -- emacs is probably the oldest virtual machine still in active use, and has a hell of a lot of software written for it. My mail client for a long time, the confusingly-named vm, was emacs-based.
Here comes MS delivering binary compatibility via a VM. Wow. And they are poised to do it again, and completely nail Linux in the process.
Dan, I *already* have cross-architecture compatibility with native speed and memory use. The only piece of binary software I can think of that I have is the RealPlayer library. Heck, I've co-developed software with a buddy who did his work on a PowerPC laptop. There's no need to resort to an emulation-based system.
When Longhorn and its technology hits in the next two years, developers will be drinking the cool-aid full-on. It's the ultimate in lockin: make developing apps so much more effective and efficent that you don't want to switch platforms.
Dan, in my day-to-day use, I simply write software as I work, as I use perl one-liners and zsh constantly. How can it be as easy and simple as that?
The only area that I've found MS's dev tools to be really nicer than Linux has been in RAD GUI tools for C++-targeting platforms -- and I *haven't used* the big popular Linux RAD GUI Qt Designer, just glade targetting gtk--.
Avalon/XAML
Hell, I just mentioned that I did GUI building with XML on glade on Linux, and have been for some time. It's nice that MS is modernizing their APIs, but Apple's already done so, and glib/gtk/gnome and qt/kde have been around for quite some time now. And I agree that having a modern layout engine with data-based layout descriptions is nice, but Microsoft is the last to the party on each of these.
WinFS
WinFS isn't shipping, and metadata-based storage is nothing particularly new. A num
May we never see th
say that again when your country has been at war for 2,000 years.
Or has been invaded even once.
I think you just identified the reason why you can't rely on file extensions for virus protection. Since some genius decided that a scripting language needed to be inserted into MS Office, a virus can come to you in the form of a Word or Excel document. You won't know this until you scan it. Also, I believe there are some exploits that can come in the form of a corrupt image file, which means you've got to be careful of those too. The only way you can truly have virus protection is to scan all downloads and restrict access permissions. For example, your "downloads directory" should not have executable rights.
Brilliantly insightful, KFG...a short post and you nailed it exactly which is why you've been on my friends list for years. Keep it up!
Anonymous fanboy
I came up with an idea for a simple and peppy substring searching algorithm that's currently used in a popular piece of P2P software. The period of time between when I came up with the idea and when it shipped in SuSE? I dunno, it was whenever the next SuSE release came out.
What an absurdity. You are talking about compact simple functions. What we are talking about are fundamental changes involving perhaps 10-15 million lines of code.
I think that they might be the most *popular* vendor of a number of things, but still not the first to market
No, you are not following me. I am talking about taking things that are mature, and making them accessible to the masses. FOSS hasn't done that widely, except perhaps FireFox, and a few P2P clients. What FOSS software is in daily use by millions of desktop users? Apache serves 60% of the worlds websites, but what about the rest of the computing world? What about desktop users of all stripes - MacOS, Linux, and Windows? Let me give you a clear concise example of what I am talking about. Microsoft clearly did not invent remote displays of a PC. It's been around for a long, long time. X does it. VNC does it as well. pcAnywhere did on DOS even. Unix has had remote shells for decades. But how many PC users had the ability to access their home PC from work? Or vice-versa? Now this is what I am talking about. At the recent PDC conference MS held they reported statistics like this one: 3 million people in the US use remote desktop daily to connect to their home or work PC. I can understand this. My mother does it. My wife does it. I do it. Why? It's easy, and it's robust. It wasn't first, it wasn't last, it isn't the best solution. What it is ubiquitous. This is advantage. As a developer, I can say that the majority of my user base has access to a feature - remote assistance. As a Linux software developer, can you claim that?
Now, onto VM's:
However, in an open source world, it doesn't provide nearly as much a benefit, since most software can just be rebuilt -- Red Hat just sets the --target option and rebuilds for IA64, PPC, i386, or whatever.
I agree. Totally correct. Except that your cross-platform ideas involve the time-consuming and error-prone problems of cross-compiling. I am well aware of the drawbacks and benefits. Sun thought that their idea of a cross-platform binary would change how software was developed and used. They failed. Again, they were not the first, but they were early compared to MS. They have not develivered. There is very little common usuage of Java software except on the server-side (exactly where people have the time and skill to cross-compile). The current batch of software being developed now and released now is based on a VM. That's something Sun has never delivered.
Dan, I *already* have cross-architecture compatibility with native speed and memory use. The only piece of binary software I can think of that I have is the RealPlayer library. Heck, I've co-developed software with a buddy who did his work on a PowerPC laptop. There's no need to resort to an emulation-based system.
There are vast benefits to using compile-once-run-anywhere binaries. Cross-compiling doesn't provide these, and you know it. I too have a system build by hand entirely from source. It doesn't however mean that it's the best solution for every multi-platform scenario. You have to know this, you seem much to knowledgeable to not understand that having multiple-platform binaries make's things confusing for users. The fact is that, despite all the ballyhooing about Linux applications being hardware independent, distributing software is a freaking mess. If you want to save people time and distribute binaries you need to support at least RPM and DEB, plus probably source RPM, provide a big nasty make file (go look at the makefile for XFree86 sometime before you eat lunch!).
Now, there are certainly FOSS VMs with bytecode that exist: rep, emacs, bochs, p
What an absurdity. You are talking about compact simple functions. What we are talking about are fundamental changes involving perhaps 10-15 million lines of code.
/usr/src/linux-2.6.8.1/fs|grep fs$|wc results in 29 filesystems. How many filesystems does a Windows box support? FAT, FAT/w/DOS-naming, NTFS, CIFS? And you're complaining about a lack of people adding new features?
Okay, I call bullshit. At this point, you absolutely have to be either trolling or uninformed.
What on *Earth* are you talking about? What piece of software, what project, is hit by a 15 million LOC impact to add *any* feature, no matter how major? Every single project in Red Hat Linux added together has on the order of 30 million lines of code. Windows NT, the entire distribution, had about 10 million, and Windows 2k under 30 million, IIRC. The Windows kernel doesn't even begin to approach the kind of LOC count you're talking about. Let's look back at your first post:
So this is what is MS thinking: implement the things that FOSS world can't do thanks to its red-tape laden world-view. Implement a filesystem layer that provides nifty functions that while aren't new are new in this scale.
And you're talking about a lousy metadata-using filesystem taking that much? Man, a basic filesystem under Windows takes a lot more code than a basic filesystem under Linux, but Linux's ramdisk filesystem is 183 LOC. I doubt that WinFS breaks 100K LOC, much less 15 million LOC.
As for new filesystems, I suggest that you might want to reconsider Linux doing a poor job of competing with Windows. ls
I think that they might be the most *popular* vendor of a number of things, but still not the first to market
No, you are not following me. I am talking about taking things that are mature, and making them accessible to the masses. FOSS hasn't done that widely, except perhaps FireFox, and a few P2P clients. What FOSS software is in daily use by millions of desktop users?
So basically, your reason for saying that FOSS is "red tape-laden" -- I just want to get this straight -- is because there is a minimal number of FOSS projects that:
*) Run on Windows.
*) Have a large installed base.
Your arguments for existing, installed base doesn't say a thing about maturity or ease of use which you've flipped to. Take, for instance, Rosegarden. Quite usable music composition software. Not used by "millions of desktop users, however."
Because that explains a lot. I was saying that you were talking about a large installed base, and it seems that you *were*. Don't get me wrong. I think that Microsoft is *very* talented when it comes to sales, marketing, and business relationships leveraging a monopoly. That can buy them a lot of desktops. The thing that I take issue with is that you're claiming that FOSS can't get new features out to users, which is patently absurd. Yes, when Microsoft bundles a new feature into the next release of Windows or Office, it will reach a lot of users -- because a lot of people use Windows or Office!
As a Linux software developer, can you claim that?
Nope. Let me bundle my software with Windows, have it installed on a vanilla box, bootstrapping off of an existing monopoly, and we can talk again.
Except that your cross-platform ideas involve the time-consuming and error-prone problems of cross-compiling.
Time consuming? I don't know what the internal Red Hat build procedure is, but I'm sure that it's automated. Gentoo *definitely* is automated -- it's easy for someone to just say "I'm PPC, suck down the latest binary packages built by Gentoo.
As for error-prone -- the kinds of errors that turn up when you move across platforms (generally when someone's using C), like shoving pointers into ints and relying on a certain form of packing, are the kind of problems that would turn up anyway on a single
May we never see th
Because commercial software is created by commercial entities. Their whole purpose is to create a good (and/or service) in exchange for money. If a customer finds the product lacking then they are perfectly justified in criticising it. Critics might also have used the software without purchasing it (i.e at work, on a friends computer, etc), so there isn't always the need for money to change hands.
Contrast this with F/OSS software, where most development is still done on a volunteer basis. This is generally software that is developed by people because they have an interest in it. Thus unfairly criticising F/OSS software is akin to insulting an artist or community volunteer. They've just gone and created something for everyone to use and all some people can do is whine and complain. Constructive criticism generally goes down better, but that usually isn't what I'm seeing in the trolls and flames here on /.