Miguel de Icaza Debates Avalon with an Avalon Designer

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Miguel de Icaza Debates Avalon with an Avalon Designer

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday September 9, 2004 @01:44PM from the in-yo-face dept.

Karma Sucks writes "In an interesting debate with a Microsoft employee, Miguel points out some crucial flaws in Microsoft's Avalon strategy. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is the absolutely horrendous inheritence hierarchy exposed by the Avalon API. Miguel himself is clearly not amused, saying 'We do not want to waste our time with dead-end APIs as we are vastly under-resourced, so we must choose carefully.'"

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first postage! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:46 · Score: -1, Offtopic

here comes timbuktoo!
1. Re:first postage! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:17 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.
  
  Hear me, Miguel? We don't need you! yuo r teh suxx0r!
2. Re:first postage! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:34 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.
  
  Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.Microsoft should follow the lead of the FGOSS community and just ignor that Spanish airhead and GNOME-ruiner.
  Welcome
  lter encountered.
  Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
  ur comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try le Welcome to Slashdot
  
  Please provide feedback below:
  7 Name:
  
  Email:
  
  Comment:
  
  Note the action element of the tag points to form.py/email. We are going to create a file called form.py, like this:
  
  import smtplib
  
  WEBMASTER = "webmaster" # webmaster e-mail
  SMTP_SERVER = "localhost" # your SMTP server
  
  def email(req, name, email, comment):
  
  # make sure the user provided all the parameters
  if not (name and email and comment):
  return "A required parameter is missing, \
  please go back and correct the error"
  
  # create the message text
  msg = """\
  From: %s
  Subject: feedback
  To: %s
  
  I have the following comment:
  
  %s
  
  Thank You,
  
  %s
  
  """ % (email, WEBMASTER, comment, name)
  
  # send it out
  conn = smtplib.SMTP(SMTP_SERVER)
  conn.sendmail(email, [WEBMASTER], msg)
  conn.quit()
  
  # provide feedback to the user
  s = """\
  
  Dear %s,
  
  Thank You for your kind comments, we
  will get back to you shortly.
  
  """ % name
  
  return s
  
  When the user clicks the Submit button, the publisher handler will load the email function in the form module, passing it the form fields as keyword arguments. It will also pass the request object as req.
  
  Note that you do not have to have req as one of the arguments if you do not need it. The publisher handler is smart enough to pass your function only those arguments that it will accept.
  
  The data is sent back to the browser via the return value of the function.
  
  Even though the Publisher handler simplifies mod_python programming a great deal, all the power of mod_python is still available to this program, since it has access to the request object. You can do all the same things you can do with a ``native'' mod_python handler, e.g. set custom headers via req.headers_out, return errors by raising apache.SERVER_ERROR exceptions, write or read directly to and from the client via req.write() and req.read(), etc.
  
  Read Section 6.1 Publisher Handler for more information on the publisher handler.
  
  Previous Page Up One Level Next Page Mod_python Manual Contents Index
  Previous: 3. Tutorial Up: 3. Tutorial Next: 3.2 Quick Overview of Release 3.1.3, documentation updated on February 17, 2004. t aborted.
3. Re:first postage! by eduo · 2004-09-09 23:06 · Score: 0
  
  Actually Miguel is from Mexico, not Spain.
  
  As a spaniard I need to make that clear.
4. Re:first postage! by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 01:58 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I think that just demonstrates that Miguel probably knows something about inheritance....
  As an American I need to make that clear.
  As a Texan, I certainly want Miguel to remember the Alamo!
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
5. Re:first postage! by el_chicano · 2004-09-10 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  As a Texan, I certainly want Miguel to remember the Alamo!
  As a Tejano I just want to remind fucksl4shd0t who won at the Alamo
  
  Hint it wasn't the Texans...
  
  --
  A man who wants nothing is invincible
6. Re:first postage! by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  Tejano? So what exactly does the Mexicans winning at the Alamo have to do with someone descended from the native tribes originally living in Texas, anyway? Do you like the idea that a foreign imperialistic power sought to prevent Texas from achieving independence (and ultimately lost, individual battle victories notwithstanding)?
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
7. Re:first postage! by el_chicano · 2004-09-10 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  Tejano? So what exactly does the Mexicans winning at the Alamo have to do with someone descended from the native tribes originally living in Texas, anyway?
  Nothing! The Tejanos are the descendants of the Spaniards and Mexicans that originally took the land away from the natives. Geez, Texas is 40% Hispano, it would do you some good to learn a little Spanish!
  Do you like the idea that a foreign imperialistic power sought to prevent Texas from achieving independence (and ultimately lost, individual battle victories notwithstanding)?
  No, that is why Tejanos bitch about the Anglos from the United States invading Tejas to this day. Mexico was not the "foreign imperialistic power" the U.S. was. Mexico let the Anglos into Tejas with the proviso that they become Mexican citizens, become Catholic and learn to speak Spanish, none of which they did.
  
  The whole Texas "independence" movement was nothing but a raw land grab. That is why it is great that you Anglo Texans stopped saying that Texas' "independence" was about "freedom". That was a huge lie because the first thing the Anglo Texans did was make Blacks slaves again (they had been freed by Mexico in 1828, over 30 years before the U.S. fought a civil war that accomplished the same thing in the U.S.).
  
  It is obvious that you have never read the real history of Texas preferring instead to believe the myths and legends called Texas history by the Anglos. If you had you would know that after the Alamo the Mexicans spared Anglo women and children, while after San Jacinto the Texans you seem to idolize massacared Mexican women and children. And I don't even want to get into how the Spanish land grant records "mysteriously" burned after the Anglos took over Texas.
  
  What I think is funny is that if Stephen F. Austin and his band of illiterate Anglo rednecks would try the same thing today they would be called "terrorists". Instead they are called "heroes" and "founding fathers" like they did something good and honorable...
  
  In an attempt to get this back on topic, what in the hell does the Alamo have to do with Miguel de Icaza???
  
  --
  A man who wants nothing is invincible
8. Re:first postage! by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing! The Tejanos are the descendants of the Spaniards and Mexicans that originally took the land away from the natives. Geez, Texas is 40% Hispano, it would do you some good to learn a little Spanish!
  Hablo pequito espanol, bendejo.
  Besides that, either you've just answered my question "yes", or you've just answered my question with "No, I'm not descended from the native americans who originally lived in Texas, instead I've chosen a label that contributes to the global problems of racism". If the answer is the first, hats off to you. If the answer is the second, it's not surprising that you have thus far assumed I am both white and ignorant. I know more spanish than many who actually have lineage to spaniards, and I'm not exactly white. You see, I take issue with the usage of many words used to describe ethnic membership. We'd be much better off if we all realized we're part of one race, not one of many races.
  It is obvious that you have never read the real history of Texas preferring instead to believe the myths and legends called Texas history by the Anglos. If you had you would know that after the Alamo the Mexicans spared Anglo women and children, while after San Jacinto the Texans you seem to idolize massacared Mexican women and children. And I don't even want to get into how the Spanish land grant records "mysteriously" burned after the Anglos took over Texas.
  Santa Ana's history speaks for itself, I think. A great general, but a generally bad guy. Now, I'm not saying the tactics of the revolutionists in Texas were the best either. American history is one hypocrisy after another, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we'll figure out that we haven't learned from our history either. Oppression and conquest is the American Way.
  In an attempt to get this back on topic, what in the hell does the Alamo have to do with Miguel de Icaza???
  Heh, it all started as a joke, and would have safely remained a joke had you not popped off indignantly. ;) (It's not too late to save the joke, though, or at least turn it around to me popping off indignantly)
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
move along nothign to see here? by n08ody · 2004-09-09 13:47 · Score: -1, Offtopic

been trying to read more for a few minutes. first time i see that mesg instead of the story.
1. Re:move along nothign to see here? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:38 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  This is so that only subscribers (read: the GNAA) get a chance to make the Fristy Psot. The others will most likely FAIL IT!! OMG!!
first by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:47 · Score: -1, Offtopic

post
Hmmm... by NEOtaku17 · 2004-09-09 13:48 · Score: 5, Funny

The Microsoft employee's take on security:
" I totally agree, this is a huge issue. Phishing attacks, spyware, malware, viruses, and more are out there and probably the largest problem facing computer science today. This isn't a Microsoft, Linux, or Java issue - this is a "good guys" issue. Windows XP SP2 is probably the best response to Miguel's security concerns. The integrated firewall, security center, and dozens of other security related features are really the first line of defense. After the basics are resolved there, I would say that the new enhancements to the security system in Avalon are a great step. Not only is Avalon built from the ground up to be secure, but we are enhancing the security system for better application level security, and simpler more understandable presentation of security decisions to the user (hopefully in most cases this means no decision). As to the specific issue of Phishng that Miguel brings up, that is still mostly a research level issue, which I'd love to see creative solutions to. In Windows today there is the secure desktop, but you must press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get to it first. "

--
Creative Demolition
1. Re:Hmmm... by stratjakt · 2004-09-09 13:54 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  Hmm what? MSFT has been pretty honest about their past designs and it's security flaws as of late.
  
  Slashdotters could pull their heads out of Tux's feathery ass and look around for a minute and see that for themselves.
  
  --
  I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
2. Re:Hmmm... by savagedome · 2004-09-09 13:56 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Slashdotters could pull their heads out of Tux's feathery ass and look around for a minute and see that for themselves
  
  *Pulls head out of Tux's feathery ass*
  
  *looks around*
  
  Nah. Nothing to like here.
  
  *goes back into Tux's feathery ass*
  
  --
  
  Free XBox, PS2
3. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:29 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Sample XP SP2 Firewall rule:
  
  netsh firewall set portopening TCP 445 SUBNET
  
  OR
  
  netsh firewall set portopening TCP 445 ALL
  
  OR
  
  accept the XP SP2 default and live with a machine ye can't remotely admin on yer win2k network.
  
  XP secutiry.
4. Re:Hmmm... by suckmysav · 2004-09-09 14:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  "MSFT has been pretty honest about their past designs and it's security flaws as of late."
  
  If by "honest" you mean they have admitted there is a problem and have offered up some near useless hand-waving gestures (XP-SP2) as a solution then you would be correct.
  
  The real problem they have, a problem that they have been decidedly dishonest about (or pig-ignorant of, take your pick) is that their OS is insecure by design. This is all due to the monolithic design philosophy that their Windows OS is built around. The way they have enginneered it to have every goddamned bell and whistle tied directly into the base OS is just asking for trouble. All you need is a flaw in one of your applications, IE being the classic example, and the entire OS is compromised.
  
  Cosnider this paragraph taken from an article at The Register, which was written by an engineer involved in the creation and deployment of Combat Management Systems for use in Royal Navy Warships. I think we can assume he has some clue about what he is talking about. He said this;
  
  "In April 2002, Bill Gates, acting as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, gave extensive testimony under oath to the US Courts. Gates's testimony included description of the current structure of Microsoft Windows. Snubbing fifty years of progress in computer science, the current structure of Windows abandoned the accepted principles of modular design and reverted instead to the, much deprecated, entangled monolithic approach. Paragraphs 207 to 223 are particularly revealing about Microsoft's chosen approach (paragraph 216 is difficult to believe!).* Anyone with elementary knowledge of computer science can see that Microsoft Windows, as described here by Gates, is inherently insecure by design. If this is a flagship Operating System, then Dijkstra's life was in vain."
  
  For Microsoft to get truly serious (and honest) about security, they will have to totally change their design philosophy, a philosophy that was chosen not based on it's technical mereits, but on its ability to stop the DoJ from breaking Windows up into it's seperate components.
  
  This is the Great Lie that Microsoft is telling the world.
  
  --
  "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
5. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:09 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  Phishing attacks, spyware, malware, viruses, and more are out there and probably the largest problem facing computer science today. This isn't a Microsoft, Linux, or Java issue - this is a "good guys" issue.
  
  Same ol' shit from Microsoft. This isn't a design issue, this isn't an implementation issue; this is a "good guys versus bad guys" issue that is independent of the platform.
  
  Well, bullcrap! Microsoft simply cannot hide the fact that their design is flawed, their implementation is flawed and their entire product is a piece of crap from the basement up! Unless and until they abandon the fundamental flaws in their design and implementation process at Microsoft, I see no hope for the vast majority of computer users!
6. Re:Hmmm... by 808140 · 2004-09-09 15:38 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Interestingly, this criticism of Gates' OS design is reminiscent of one Dr. Andrew S. Tanenbaum's criticism of Linus Torvalds' fledgling kernel, once upon a time.
  
  Criticism, which, frankly, is absolutely on the money. Monolithic operating systems are easy. Writing them that way is the same reason that when you write a program the sloppy way, you write it all in one big file, and when you write it the right way, you seperate the backend from the UI, break the code up into logical segments, put the relevant APIs into their own libraries and link them, etc.
  
  Linux works ok because a) there aren't many binary drivers, yet and b) UNIX like OSs are by design far more modular than VMS-based ones hacked to death with a dull shovel (NT), and so while the kernel may be monolithic, the rest of the system isn't. But ultimately, with computational power where it is right now, the complaint that "microkernels are slower" no longer holds much water for me. Especially when you consider that modern microkernels like L4 really aren't that much slower.
  
  L4-Hurd, baby! Yeah!
7. Re:Hmmm... by jericho4.0 · 2004-09-09 16:01 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I think it's more apples and oranges than that. Windows is much more than a kernel, it's a kernel intergrated with a huge mess of applications (like explorer), APIs (like D3D), and god knows what else. Linux is simply a kernel.
  If MS needs to add a feature _now_, they just stick hooks into right into the kernel to support it. Linux doesn't work that way. Linux might be 'monolithic' in a CS sense, but windows is something else altogether.
  
  --
  "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
8. Re:Hmmm... by alienw · 2004-09-09 16:20 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Excuse me, but a monolithic kernel is nothing remotely similar to Microsoft's abomination. Linux and other UNIX systems are modular operating systems that are built in layers. You have the raw kernel, you have some userspace daemons that are close to the kernel, then come the userspace programs (which are completely separate). If you find a hole in Mozilla, that won't let you hijack the system.
  
  On windows, many of the key userland APIs are directly tied into the lowest levels of the operating system. This is great for Microsoft, who can just tell the FTC that "no, we can't remove Internet Explorer/Media Player/Instant Messenger from Windows". This isn't so great for its users, since a hole in one of those applications often yields control of the system in unpredictable ways.
  
  The microkernel versus monolithic kernel is a pretty old debate. The main problem with microkernels, as far as I understand, is that they are much more difficult to develop. Yes, the complexity is encapsulated, but the message passing stuff can get very hairy. My opinion: if both approaches work well, who cares?
9. Re:Hmmm... by Asprin · 2004-09-09 16:20 · Score: 1
  
  For Microsoft to get truly serious (and honest) about security, they will have to totally change their design philosophy, a philosophy that was chosen not based on it's technical mereits, but on its ability to stop the DoJ from breaking Windows up into it's seperate components.
  
  Not only that, but they will have to UNdo all the "advances" they've made over the last ten years... eleven... twelve... (The clock's running, guys! Whenever you're ready!)
  
  --
  "Lawyers are for sucks."
  - Doug McKenzie
10. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:55 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Plus the NT kernel is NOT a microkernel.
  
  It has microkernel features, but itself IS NOT A MICROKERNEL.
  
  MS said it was a microkernel because microkernels were considured the future and people loved the idea, even though it has had severe technical limitations. But it was never a microkernel.
  
  You have a similar situation with OS X's kernel design. Part of the kernel uses the Mach kernel (already obsolete years ago, btw) but combined it with aspects from the BSD kernel to create a dual natured thing.
  
  NT and Linux are very different, to be sure, but both are monolythic kernels, irregardless of what MS has to say on the subject.
11. Re:Hmmm... by Ayende+Rahien · 2004-09-09 17:00 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  > reverted instead to the, much deprecated, entangled monolithic approach
  
  You mean, like... Linux?
  
  --
  
  --
  Two witches watched two watches.
  Which witch watched which watch?
12. Re:Hmmm... by Xoro · 2004-09-09 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, if monolithic linux included X, gnome, openGL and mozilla.
  
  But it doesn't so, no, not like linux.
  
  --
  Kill, Tux, kill!
13. Re:Hmmm... by DunbarTheInept · 2004-09-09 17:33 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Monolithic kernel != monolithic OS.
  
  --
  Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
14. Re:Hmmm... by DunbarTheInept · 2004-09-09 17:36 · Score: 1
  
  Monolithic kernel != monolithic OS.
  
  IE is built in to windows at deep levels. The GDI is set up such that a crash in the video routines kills the whole kernel.
  
  By contrast, it is possible to run Linux without a single line of browser code anywhere on the system, or without any gui of any kind if you like.
  
  --
  Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
15. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-09 17:39 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The Windows NT kernel (same one in 2000/xp) has nothing to do with "Internet Explorer/Media Player/Instant Messenger". Microsoft whined that they couldn't be removed not because it is technically infeasable but because it is part of an 'indispensible user expierence'.
  
  NT design 101: On the bottom, there is the kernel, then the executive, which includes the object, configuration, process, VM, I/O managers, the security ref monitor (a runtime to create tokens, check ACLs) and the local procedure call provider. After that, device drivers. After that, everything is in user mode with one exception. Then there are the intrinsic subsystems: the session manager (the init process, aka smss), the local security authority (lsass), the security accounts manager (SAM), winlogon, and the service control manager. Then the environment subsystems, namely win32. The entire syscall interface is exported to user mode by the Nt* functions in ntdll.dll. Environment subsystems translate calls from their API into native calls. Win32's environment server is hosted in csrss.exe. With NT4, the meat of win32 was moved into kernel mode (win32k.sys) to reduce context switching overhead; win32 was not then and still isn't integrated into the kernel itself. The kernel doesn't care what environment subsystems are running. After that, you have the shell components; these all run in the security context of the logged on user (subsystem components run as SYSTEM). The shell includes Internet Explorer and the start menu. On top of that (usually) are applications.
  
  Each layer only cares about the one immediately above and below it at most. To the kernel, Internet Explorer is just another user mode program. A hole in IE cannot escilate beyond the user's privledges in the process's security context. Your machine be hosed by a hole in IE if you are running it as Admin (just as a hole in Mozilla if it was running as root), but not if it is running as a normal user. You need to exploit a local vuln in the kernel first, just like any other OS.
  
  Look at the entire syscall interface (the Nt* functions). Tell me which functions are "directly tied into the lowest levels of the operating system".
16. Re:Hmmm... by 10scjed · 2004-09-09 17:42 · Score: 1
  
  but, if we agree that MS' approach yields an insecure design, then can we really say their approach works well? overrunning a web browser should not give me root access unless it was root who was using the browser- and why would someone do that? then again, most windows users are acting with elevated privileges by default anyhow just to get things done.
  
  --
  --10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
17. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-09 17:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  IE is built in to windows at deep levels.
  No it's not. See XPLite to remove all traces of IE.
  The GDI is set up such that a crash in the video routines kills the whole kernel.
  This is because win32 got moved into kernel mode in NT4. Before NT4, GDI ran entirely in user mode; if it crashed, noone in kernel mode even noticed. Win32 is still not, however, integrated with anything in kernel mode. All of kernel mode win32 is in win32k.sys.
  By contrast, it is possible to run Linux without a single line of browser code anywhere on the system, or without any gui of any kind if you like.
  Linux is a kernel only. The Windows NT kernel will happily run with no GUI. Setup (phase 2 in 80x50 text mode) and the recovery console run with the same kernel and the same drivers as IE does, but without any win32. The problem is that Win32 depends on having a GUI and there are almost no applications that can use the kernel's native API without win32.
18. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-09 18:02 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Overrunning a web browser, including Internet Explorer, won't get you root access unless you are running it in a privledged account such as Administrator. IE is just another user mode program.
  
  There are tools available, such as runas, SUD, and psexec that let you run only specific programs (usually those that need admin access for no reason) as admin.
19. Re:Hmmm... by rsidd · 2004-09-09 18:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  If this is a flagship Operating System, then Dijkstra's life was in vain.
  It was, anyway.
  Dijkstra: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
  Microsoft: Visual BASIC.
20. Re:Hmmm... by 808140 · 2004-09-09 19:40 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Wow, and out come the slashbots.
  
  If you actually took the time to reread what I wrote, you would realize (it seems none of my sibling posts have) that I am in fact not comparing Linux to Windows at all.
  
  Instead, what I am doing is making an analogy regarding modular design. It is common sense that a system designed to be stable should minimize the number of components that are so essential that, if they were to crash, would cause the whole system to come down.
  
  In MS Windows, this unfortunately includes the Windows GDI -- for some illuminating reading on some of the core design decisions Microsoft made with NT/XP, check out the ReactOS FAQ and mailing list. In trying to reimplement Windows they've really dug some interesting stuff up (none of it was secret, but now it's all in one place.)
  
  My point is that when someone says, "The reason Windows is fundamentally insecure is because it was designed in a kludgy, non-modular way, where non-essential things like the GDI can crash the whole system," all the Slashdrones immediately understand the insightful nature of the observation. Having the GDI in ring 0 is just braindead.
  
  However, due to their fanatical devotion to Linus -- let me say that I greatly admire the man and consider him one of the best, if not the best, OSS dev out there today -- they take his opinions on the macro/microkernel debate without so much as a critical thought. But as Bob Dylan said, "Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked."
  
  The truth is, the logic that makes "putting the Windows GDI in the kernel" stupid is the same logic that ought to damn macrokernel-based designs. Here's something interesting for you to contemplate: most Windows cashes happen in drivers, not in the GDI. Actually, the Win32 GDI is quite mature and while a) it probably has caused its share of crashes and b) putting it in the kernel was one of the stupidest design decisions ever, most crashes do not happen because of faults in the GDI these days. They've had a lot of time to iron these bugs out.
  
  The problem is, simply put, drivers. These are mostly written by third parties and due to NT's monolithic kernel design, they are running in kernel space. So a crash in a driver means the whole system comes down.
  
  A microkernel sandboxes things like drivers and has them run in something more like user space; as a result, just as process on Linux can't crash the kernel, a driver on L4 can't crash the kernel.
  
  Now, when Linus started developing Linux, he had a number of very good reasons to go with a monolithic design. One: it was easier, from a design perspective, both for developing and hacking. Two: the major microkernel, CMU Mach (and similarly, GNU Mach) were a) very slow, much too slow to be practical on the 386s that were state of the art in 1991 and b) actually not really all that micro-. Not to mention that GNU Mach, at least, didn't solve the driver problem because it actually ran most drivers in kernel space.
  
  Furthermore, at the time, Linus didn't expect Linux to become what it is today; reading his early posts, he fully expected Hurd to be released RSN and he was just providing something for hackers to mess around with until that happened. And it never happened.
  
  Don't think that by pointing out a problem with Linux that I am in any way against it. I run only Linux, and I'm a zealot by any stretch of the imagination. I just worry about its future -- in the old days, Linux was a Free Software only kind of beast, with all its drivers open source because they were reverse engineered by the community. But look at how fast Linux is gaining popularity: how long will it be before it really does begin to compete with MS on the desktop, and IP-happy hardware vendors start releasing binary drivers en masse?
  
  And then we're back to square one: normal users running non-free blackbox kernel modules written by corps that care nothing f
21. Re:Hmmm... by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-09 20:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  With NT4, the meat of win32 was moved into kernel mode (win32k.sys) to reduce context switching overhead; win32 was not then and still isn't integrated into the kernel itself.
  I have to take exception to that. The GUI subsystem most certainly is integrated into the kernel - not only does it run in kernel mode but its location there basically makes objects like menus, windows, images ... even metafiles (!) kernel level objects which can be created in one process and then passed to another and used there. Applications rely on this ability.
  Don't forget crap like the registry running in kernel mode as well.
  I mean, how on earth do you define integrated into the kernel if not by applications expecting it to be there?
22. Re:Hmmm... by Curtman · 2004-09-09 20:59 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  This isn't a Microsoft, Linux, or Java issue - this is a "good guys" issue
  
  Oh crap. Sounds like they're further in cahoots with Dubya than I thought. I bet you the next security updates will conain the word 'evildoer'
23. Re:Hmmm... by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-09 21:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No it's not. See XPLite to remove all traces of IE.
  Yes it is. If you remove "all traces" of IE then presumably you are also removing things like wininet, urlmon, hhhelp and the other million and one components of the OS that are shipped and developed as part of IE and on which applications depend.
  Believe me, you pull IE and all kinds of random stuff breaks. I've spent the last two years working on Wine and one thing it's taught me is that there is no way IE can be disentangled from the OS (unless you could deleting iexplore.exe, which achieves nothing). Too many programs expect it to be there and will break if it's not.
24. Re:Hmmm... by Kingpin · 2004-09-09 22:29 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  What are you doing up Tux's ass? Waiting to get laid!? :-)
  
  --
  Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
  Geocrawler error message.
25. Re:Hmmm... by hedge_death_shootout · 2004-09-09 22:39 · Score: 1
  
  If you remove "all traces" of IE then presumably you are also removing things like wininet [snip]
  
  From a brief search, it looks like 'wininet' is just a library of internet-protocol-related functions. The API is even documented!
  If you regard any library used by IE as being a part of IE then of course that makes it nigh on impossible to 'remove IE' without affecting other programs that use the same library.
  However, I think most sane people would regard that interpretation of what constitutes IE as extreme.
  
  I notice my copy of Firefox has wininet.dll loaded.
  Does that mean firefox is part of IE, or IE is part of Firefox? ;-)
  
  A couple of other wininet clients currently running on my PC:
  Google's gmail notifier app.
  Acrobat reader.
  
  Disclaimer: IANAWininetExpert.
26. Re:Hmmm... by tesmako · 2004-09-09 22:49 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Being in the same memory space as the kernel hardly implies that it is integrated into the kernel. No matter what any application expects of you. If the kernel-space residents actually did calls into the kernels own code then it'd be one thing, but they don't, they use the regular syscalls, they just save the context-switch doing it.
27. Re:Hmmm... by jcr · 2004-09-09 22:53 · Score: 1
  
  The GUI subsystem most certainly is integrated into the kernel - not only does it run in kernel mode but its location there basically makes objects like menus, windows, images ... even metafiles (!) kernel level objects which can be created in one process and then passed to another and used there.
  
  That's really depressing.
  
  On my Mac, I just took a look at my ps listing, and what do you know? WindowServer runs as user "nobody".
  
  -jcr
  
  --
  The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
28. Re:Hmmm... by jeif1k · 2004-09-09 22:55 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Hmm what? MSFT has been pretty honest about their past designs and it's security flaws as of late.
  
  That amounts to saying "yes, it sucks, but we know you don't have a choice but to buy it anyway". That's supposed to make people feel good?
29. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:07 · Score: 0
  
  So they still haven't fixed the problem of needing to press CTRL-ALT-DELETE all the time. They haven't even acknowledged the problem yet, it's just another case of "It's not a bug it's a feature".
30. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:14 · Score: 0
  
  The Perfect Post.
  
  (And Great UID, too)
31. Re:Hmmm... by archeopterix · 2004-09-09 23:32 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  A microkernel sandboxes things like drivers and has them run in something more like user space; as a result, just as process on Linux can't crash the kernel, a driver on L4 can't crash the kernel.
  It has always bugged me - how well does the sandboxing work with devices that use DMA to write their data directly to the memory? Can't a bad driver order a device to overwrite a piece of kernel memory?
32. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:03 · Score: 0
  
  L4-Hurd, baby! Yeah!
  
  Thanks, but I like to have partitions larger than 2GB.
33. Re:Hmmm... by msobkow · 2004-09-10 00:24 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  That depends entirely on whether you buy into the idea that you have to use Microsoft-provided components, or if you've downloaded or purchased a host of third-party products like Mozilla, Opera, Eudora, X-terminal emulation packages, MKS Toolkit to at least get a POSIX scripting environment, cross-platform database access libraries, ICU, Xerces, Apache, etc.
  I've never actually worked with anyone who built their applications entirely with Microsoft technology. Yes, Access and Excel and such are used to prepare desktop level reports via ODBC gateways, but unless you've bought into Microsoft for your entire suite, any of it can be replaced.
  The question is how hard it is to replace, and what the benefits are of the different platform options in your server spaces. The desktop is by definition a hostile environment unless it's been specifically designed otherwise.
  As long as a sales rep's kid can disable the security to install a video game, or just because they're ticked off about their "low" allowance, the desktop/mobile environment is a security risk.
  The problem is that Microsoft seems hell bent on dragging those desktop security issues into the data center, and there is just no need for it. There are plenty of secure gateway protocols they can use to access the datacenter.
  For that matter, isn't it Microsoft that's pushing C# as a cross-platform development standard? If they are truly building their business on that base, why should they care what the underlying kernel is provided it runs the C# runtime?
  I see nothing they are describing which requires binding the kernel, and no benefit to such binding other than platform lock-in and a deliberate breach of established industry security standards and protocols.
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
34. Re:Hmmm... by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-10 00:34 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. That DLL is shipped as a part of IE but obviously as IE is a part of the OS, other programs started using it too. Same for a lot of similar DLLS (mlang, for instance).
  Even the IE main loop is in a documented, API providing DLL (shdocvw). It's not an extreme interpretation at all ... IE and Windows are as one, with functions like DeleteIE3Cache() co-existing side by side with HTTP utility functions used by apps like iTunes.
35. Re:Hmmm... by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  So, looking into Linux's future (which I've been having some of the same wonderings you've been having, apparently), what would it take to a) turn Linux into a microkernel and b) get Linus to accept the design change?
  Presumably (and another poster already said it had been done) you wouldn't turn Linux into a microkernel in one revision, you'd start with one part, create the messaging system (and most of the microkernel stuff), and just have one part operating on its own from the kernel. So maybe 2.8 would have some of it as microkernel, 3.0 would have more, and then maybe at 3.2 Linux would be completely switched to a microkernel. (Also presumably Linux is already so modular in design that it would be possible to do it, one of the key benefits of modular design being that you can make major changes like this and still reuse 90% of your code)
  But the real catch would be getting Linux to accept the changes, I suspect. He's still pretty adamant about Linux being what it is and not changing to a microkernel setup...
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
36. Re:Hmmm... by Mystilleef · 2004-09-10 00:50 · Score: 1
  
  Tux is a penguin, you insensitive clod! Not a chicken.
  
  --
  "My logic is undeniable."
37. Re:Hmmm... by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-10 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  Apple have the advantage that they can just throw hardware at the problem and say "well, just buy our shiny new mac!". When the decision was made to move the windowing code into the NT kernel Microsoft were trying to meet very aggressive minimum system requirements. There's a lot in Windows that is there because they wanted as many computers as possible to be able to run it.
38. Re:Hmmm... by SillyNickName4me · 2004-09-10 01:21 · Score: 1
  
  Very informative. I'd like to point out however that a situation somewhat similar to GDI may exist on Unix platforms (including Linux) as well when you happen to require dri.
39. Re:Hmmm... by peterprior · 2004-09-10 01:26 · Score: 1
  
  I thought penguins had fur, not feathers...
40. Re:Hmmm... by Arker · 2004-09-10 01:36 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Poorly programmed applications do break, yes. However, many programs are not written to specifically rely on IE and run just fine. On my windows box OpenOffice, Mozilla, Pegasus Mail all run just fine, along with a ton of games, and I absolutely refuse to have any piece of IE on my box. The main 'application' so far that I've found to refuse to work without IE was yahoo messenger - so I just grabbed Trillian instead, of course.
  
  --
  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
41. Re:Hmmm... by jdh-22 · 2004-09-10 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  Your right about the huge mess of applications but I disagree that it is because Windows isn't just a kernel. For example, look at OS X. It is built on a kernel, but the slew of applications that Apple makes for it are not always perfect. It definately has less problems than Windows. Which leads me to conclude that the problems are the design of Windows, rather than its intergration of parts, or a little of both.
  
  The way things are going, I see Windows as an operating system that is trying to build a house from the top down, and inside out. While it can be done, many things will be compromised in the process.
  
  --
  Every Super Villan uses Linux.
42. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 02:24 · Score: 0
  
  Posted anon for obvious reasons: anonymous coward$ grep -ir internet\ explorer ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/ ../Shared/w in2k/private/inet/wininet/auth/splugin.cxx: = "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Security"; ../Shared/win2k/private/inet /wininet/auth/sspspm.c:** allows the Internet Explorer to use SSPI providers for authentication. ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wini net/auth/sspspm.c:** The function exported to the Internet Explorer is Ssp_Load() which ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/auth/s spspm.c:** This SPM DLL is called by the Internet Explorer only for its ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/auth/ssp spm.c:** The Internet Explorer only calls this SPM DLL when it needs ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/auth/s spspm.c:** Synopsis: This function is called by the Internet Explorer before ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/autoc onf/jsproxy.cpp: TEXT("Microsoft Internet Explorer"), ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/ common/servinfo.cxx:// // mode if not already. Typically, Internet Explorer uses non-blocking ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet /common/servinfo.cxx: // mode if not already. Typically, Internet Explorer uses non-blocking ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet /dll/autodial.cxx:#define TSZIEPATHW TSZMICROSOFTPATHW L"\\Internet Explorer" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/dl l/cookexp.cxx:#define SZ_COOKIE_EXPORT_HEADER "# Internet Explorer cookie file, exported for Netscape browsers." ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/d ll/dllentry.cxx:#define IE_SECURITY_DIGEST_REG_KEY "Software\\Microsoft\\InternetExplorer\\Security\\ Digest" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/dll/ dllentry.cxx: // Write out to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Security\Digest ../Shared/win2k/private/ inet/wininet/dll/globals.cxx: "Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main", ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/win inet/inc/spluginx.hxx:// HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Security\FOO ../Shared/win2k/private/ine t/wininet/inetui/inetui.rc:CAPTION "Internet Explorer Auto-Proxy Script Download" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/in etui/inetui.rc: LTEXT "Due to network or related problems, InternetExplorer could not download your Auto-Proxy Script. \n\nClick OK to continue with standard proxy settings.", ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/ inetui/inetui.rc: LTEXT "Due to errors, Internet Explorer could not execute your Auto-Proxy Script. \n\nClick OK to continue with standard proxy settings.", ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/ inetui/inetui.rc: LTEXT "If you do not have this CD-ROM but have access to the Internet click on the 'Connect' button. Internet Explorer will attempt to connect to the Internet and downloadthe most current version of this web page.", ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet/inet ui/inetui.rc: IDS_PROXY_MSG "Internet Explorer has automatically configured a proxy server for this connection. Is a proxy server used on this connection?" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet /inetui/inetui.rc: "Internet Explorer was unable to export this certificate" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet /inetui/inetui.rc: "Internet Explorer was unable to import this certificate" ../Shared/win2k/private/inet/wininet /urlcache/flock.cxx:#define REG_READONLYCACHE TEXT("Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Unix\\Read
43. Re:Hmmm... by danila · 2004-09-10 02:24 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You thought wrong. Here is an image of Penguin feather and here is more information about Penguins from Wikipedia.
  
  --
  Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
44. Re:Hmmm... by Nurgled · 2004-09-10 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  Dijkstra was almost certainly referring to "traditional" basic. I suppose you could use Microsoft's BASIC for the Commodore 64 as an example. There are a few control structures (IF and FOR) but essentially it's just high-level assembler: subroutines are call/return pairs (GOSUB/RETURN) and jump instructions (GOTO) are the primary means for creating loops.
  
  Today's Visual Basic has seen several stages of evolution since then, and now has structured functions and subroutines, proper looping constructs and a vaugue attempt at encapsulation. Visual Basic .NET is just as structured as C# or Java.
  
  As someone who started with BASIC and is now happy with everything from Pascal to Perl to C, I thank BASIC (CBM BASIC in particular) for showing me in the early days things which helped me understand how the underlying machine worked, which can't be said for more modern languages which abstract those details away by design. Abstractions are good if you understand what's being abstracted and why, but using an abstraction to avoid learning something is, in my opinion, a mistake, since every abstraction will leak from time to time and you won't be able to work out what happened unless you are able to reason about what's going on inside your pretty black box.
45. Re:Hmmm... by msobkow · 2004-09-10 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  Actually I thought the best approach to microkernel implementations were Numa/RCU at the driver level, some of the various VM system implementations, and the micro-boot code approach of the Alpha processor.
  Essentially what you need is a ring 0 resource manager that can securely execute different operating systems, which may well include monolithic services. Let's take a DNS service for example.
  You want to isolate your services on seperate physical or logical nodes and operating systems. That minimizes your penetration risk such that if there is a hole in the service, only that one VM/node is compromised.
  If you take the Linux, BSD, or any other kernel with appropriate POSIX and ANSI C/C++ APIs, ICU, etc. as a set of build libraries, you could statically build a 100% dedicated image that can boot from a read-only medium. If you further encrypt that medium, or somehow use a disk encryption key on that boot medium, you can guarantee that the system is starting with a known image. I realize the GPL forbids that, but I've always thought restricting the command line options for the linker to be a bit excessive.
  Let the compiler and linker chew for a few hours or days, and you could do the same for pretty much any service node.
  If you further use some form of SSL boot keys provided by some hardware device, you could even set up systems so that you can boot in either a read-only production mode, or use a different boot key to start up in admin mode so you can alter the core system config and software profile.
  Add in some virtual storage, and you can take an alternate deployment approach where the central application management console coordinates those images on different EMC, IBM, Hitachi/HP, or other data clustering solutions. A physically secure set of nodes is used to stage the software rollouts, and then the service images are restarted with the updated build.
  It's in taking responsibility for those components -- the OS and it's fundamental services -- that a vendor provides value to the business IT service community. If you can't start out with a solid foundation, you're dead before you started.
  Regardless of where in the NT layers one wants to point fingers, the fundamental problem is that you can't run Windows without the GUI, and the GUI carries along a security nightmare that hasn't been resolved in roughly a decade. That's not good enough if you want to securely host customer information or security identification facilities.
  It's not even good enough if you want to run something so basic as DNS, LDAP, Kerberos, or other cluster services. You must be able to count on the basic system 100%, not make excuses about video drivers.
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
46. Re:Hmmm... by Abcd1234 · 2004-09-10 03:36 · Score: 2
  
  Right "kernel-space". ie, they're in the same memory space as the kernel, can tromp on the kernel's memory, and can therefore do very bad things for system stability. Whether or not the code actually makes calls into the kernel itself is irrelevant.
47. Re:Hmmm... by Bert64 · 2004-09-10 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  How exactly does pressing ctrl alt delete make it in any way secure? You could easily create a simulation of the windows login screen under linux that let you press ctrl alt delete and behaved as expected while capturing your password
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
48. Re:Hmmm... by Bert64 · 2004-09-10 04:06 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that the windows gui was never designed with security in mind, it was built on singleuser non networked dos where security wasn't a concern atall.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
49. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:20 · Score: 0
  
  Goatse? Is that you?
50. Re:Hmmm... by LifesABeach · 2004-09-10 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  " In Windows today there is the secure desktop, but you must press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get to it first."
  
  i did just that. i just could not get beyond the 6 options available. it makes me think that i've been diagnosed with a 'terminal' illness. i don't know what the illness is called, but i do know a time will shortly come were i'll be clutching my cyber throat then next falling on my cyber face. the enevetable futil disk scrub, and software re-installs will come next.
  
  i wish my boss would let me use linux, jesssh.
51. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-10 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  GDI and Win32 can share handles with other processes because the executive Object Manager allows you to add your own types of objects; anyone can do it. It's like Linux's VFS; would you be suprised if user programs could create files, pipes or sockets which could be shared? The difference is that NT will let you create entirely new types of objects, with new properties. The object manager handles the existance of objects and handles to them: what the objects actually do is up to the provider.
  
  The registry is implemented in the Configuration Manager. It is an executive service, one level up from the kernel. It is this low because the device database is implemented using the registry.
52. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-10 04:52 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Wine deals with the shell and user mode libraries at most. Windows is more than the shell. The shell is hardly a deep level. Yes, Internet Explorer is integrated with the shell. Yes, many third party apps depend on shell libraries. Microsoft promises that those shell libraries will always be available so developers use 'em.
  
  The Windows shell is basically equivalent to Gnome or KDE. If you remove KDE, many KDE applications break; when you remove a library, the things that depend on it break. Internet Explorer is as much integrated into the OS as KDE or Gnome are integrated into a Linux distro. Isn't Konqueror (espescially the shared libs that implement it) integrated into KDE?
53. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:25 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  I suppose libc, Berkeley DB, and GTK/Qt are all part of the Linux kernel, then, because, hey, if I remove them from my system, all sorts of applications break.
  
  Umm, no. Sorry, dude, but your definition of what is part of the kernel doesn't hold water. libc is much more essential to providing an interface to the Linux kernel than IE ever is (the Linux kernel doesn't natively export a complete POSIX interface), but it's not considered part of the kernel. Removing any DLL/shared library is going to cause breakage, regardless of whether it's a library for rendering HTML or opening sockets or whatever, because it's essential functionality for that application.
  
  The technical definition of what people consider to be part of the kernel is what runs in "kernel" mode--that is, has an unrestricted ability to muck around in the operating system internals. To a computer, an OS kernel runs as a single program. The OS kernel then creates a protected environment for user-mode programs to run in. Every time you make a syscall, the computer switches back to that kernel-mode program to continue processing. That's the reason why kernel-level vulnerabilities are so dangerous--because there's essentially nothing to stop them from seriously mucking around with every part of the system.
54. Re:Hmmm... by kurt.griffiths · 2004-09-10 05:26 · Score: 1
  
  I don't care if I get modded as a troll...
  They *are* "truly changing their design philosophy" for Avalon and Longhorn. Of course they couldn't do that with SP2 - it requires much deeper changes than can be put in a service pack. And recompiling the entire system with buffer-overflow checking and rewriting anything that fails static bug/security analysis tools is supposed to be "hand-waving"?
  Of course MSFT will componentize Windows. They like it because it allows them to mix and match pieces to get different versions of Windows for different markets. As far as integrating IE into everything, it makes sense to provide a system-wide component that everyone can use to display web content. If I am not mistaken, KDE and GNOME have similar components. On any operating system, just because something comes as a default, does not mean you have to use it. As far as lock-in and leveraging your OS channel goes, I don't see anyone complaining about ichat, itunes, quick time that come with a Mac, or all the bells and whistles that come with a typical Linux distro.
  Now they are breaking the dependency between WinFX, Avalon, and the OS. Last time I checked, you couldn't get Aqua on anything but OS X.
  Finally, they know their but is on the line for security, and they have slipped LH, Avalon, WinFS, and friends so they could do a FREE major update (that cost them as much or more as an OS X release does for Apple) while learning how they can build security in from the start to Longhorn. For example, security training is mandatory for developers, and threat models analysis are now required for every single piece of the LH system (that includes Avalon and .NET). There are at least three static/dynamic tools (FXCop, PreFix, PreFast) they are constantly improving to enforce guidlines and flag common bugs and security vulnerabilities. Is there anything equivalent to this for Linux distros or the kernel itself? (I am not assuming anything here - I really don't know. What's the story from people like Novell and RedHat?)
55. Re:Hmmm... by jcr · 2004-09-10 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  Apple have the advantage that they can just throw hardware at the problem and say "well, just buy our shiny new mac!". When the decision was made to move the windowing code into the NT kernel Microsoft were trying to meet very aggressive minimum system requirements.
  
  Excuse me? What does the minimum system requirement have to do with botching the architecture?
  
  -jcr
  
  --
  The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
56. Re:Hmmm... by ValentineMSmith · 2004-09-10 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  Greetings.
  {dusting off my OS textbook}
  If I remember correctly, when a DMA write is done, the OS hands a memory block pointer and block size to the device. The device then sends information back to the DMA controller which writes the info to memory and triggers an interrupt when done. I don't believe that it was physically possible for a DMA controller to write outside the block allocated by the OS. So, this can't happen. Or, at the worst, the driver (not the OS) would access violate if it tried.
  
  --
  Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
57. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:02 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, one of the strengths of *nix platforms is how many ways there are to do IPC. Just imagine an operating system without robust IPC support. One of the first multiplayer games in history used files as an IPC mechanism, so even the mere existence of a file system that lets more than one program at a time meddle with a file allows IPC.
  
  Anyway, besides sockets and various other file-like mechanisms, the whole shared memory (whether using System V shared memory, or some fancy mmap() tricks) is a completely different way of doing IPC, and is often used for particularly high performance applications (including X). Not that sockets are really as slow as some people claim (I've measured delays in the very small number of microseconds, and that's probably a couple of order of magnitudes high due to my benchmarking technique), but shared memory doesn't use a streaming paradigm, so it can do things a bit differently (for example, writing a structure out whole at a specific memory address, rather than worrying about marshalling and unmarshalling data to a stream).
  
  Complete agree with you on the monolithic argument, though, to the extent that Linux zealots are complaining about Windows because it's monolithic, but don't see the mote in the eye of the Linux approach of its monolithic kernel. The Windows design has plenty wrong with it, but if you accept the Linux kernel as Good Design(TM), you can't very well turn around and use the monolithic = bad argument, at least without being a raging hypocrite.
  
  Personally, my main complaint with the Linux monolithic kernel design is having to download source code for what seems like 200 MB of drivers for hardware I don't have to recompile my kernel. :) I really wish it were possible to break out the drivers into smaller, more convenient packages. I mean, it's been done for everything else, why not the kernel?
58. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:13 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Oh, it's more than possible for a DMA controller to spew memory into all the wrong places, although the CPU could potentially trigger some sort of access violation (but that depends on the details of the hardware).
  
  Remember, a DMA is a direct memory access. The DMA device is given physical (not virtual) addresses for physical blocks of memory to spew data into over the hardware bus, generally without CPU interaction. If the DMA device wants to behave badly, or if the driver wants to pass it bad addresses, it can merrily ignore the kernel and do whatever it wants. That's simply the nature of hardware. (Of course, you could have some extra hardware to restrict the DMA transfer, but it's not common, as it sorta defeats the purpose of DMA, which is speed.)
  
  Any driver needs to work with hardware, and so necessarily can do things like reformat your hard drive and crash your video card--sandboxing is not a pancaea. Still, a microkernel is an improvement over letting any random driver bug crash your system, or worse, randomly corrupt data, simply because they're buggy, and most hardware can be reset, so a restart is usually feasible.
59. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:18 · Score: 0
  
  Linux will never be a microkernel. Linus has said he doesn't like microkernels (he considers it an engineering issue, divorced from all that pie-in-the-sky academic argument for microkernels), and in any case, would require a complete rewrite from the ground up.
  
  If the kernel has to be rewritten anyway, what would likely happen is that an existing (or new) microkernel would be given a Linux syscall interface. Nothing else would really transfer over, and nothing else would really be necessary. We already have this, and in any case, a POSIX-compatible interface is usually good enough and well-supported on all practical microkernels.
  
  I don't really think there's any point to making Linux a microkernel, given the above considerations. Of course, there's no reason why Linux can't adopt some microkernel-y features (User Mode Linux could be considered a step in this direction), but it'll probably remain essentially monolithic until Linux becomes outdated (perhaps when we've moved to fancy quantum computers or distributed clusters or persistent computing or something).
60. Re:Hmmm... by Wiwi+Jumbo · 2004-09-10 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  I believe the idea is that Ctrl-Alt-Del is hardwired at the lowest possible level, and that other programs can't use that key combo.
  
  If I remember correctly, it's called something like a "secure path" or something.
  
  I have no proof that it does or doesn't work.
  
  --
  Wiwi
  "I trust in my abilities,
  but I want more then they offer"
61. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:51 · Score: 0
  
  Umm, throwing encryption around over all the various operating systems layers doesn't make the system any more secure or better, just slower. When we talk about a robust operating system, we're not talking about whether or not you can crack the password database (although that may be an element of it), but about stability issues like basic memory protection, driver stability, hot swapping, and so forth. Whether or not you encrypt the boot firmware in transit (in transit to where, exactly?) is somewhat besides the point.
62. Re:Hmmm... by msobkow · 2004-09-10 07:14 · Score: 1
  
  Not the boot firmware, but a boot disk that contains the various checksums and security keys needed to identify the system, decrypt drives, identify itself to the network peers that it's expected to service, scan the core services and software components for damage/intrusion, etc.
  The traditional packet firewall/wire protocol layering is fine if you have complete control over your physical data center. But if you're trying to distribute part of that over VPN connections, secure WAN links to business partners, etc. you have to ensure that the packets are from the node they claim to be, that they've not been altered, and potentially encrypted. The encryption itself is an option, depending on what you have in place for physical infrastructure security.
  In essence, think of a B2B distributed world where you have to be able to coordinate servers securely over the internet cloud. Just because top-tier enterprises can afford full physically secure data centers doesn't mean that everyone can do so.
  Why stick with just HTTPS/XML/SOAP and web forms if you could tunnel virtually any protocol? Many of those non-generic protocols make much more efficient use of network bandwidth, CPU, and memory. With hardware accelerated SSL facilities, it doesn't even have to really have any significant effect on your server traffic load.
  That's presuming, of course, that you're using real hardware for a data center, not a bunch of office PC's or workstation class machines with minimal redundancy or failure detection.
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
63. Re:Hmmm... by DunbarTheInept · 2004-09-10 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Your post contained good examples of what I was talking about - cases wehre the OS is monolithic, even though the kernel inside it is not. If you were trying to counter my point, you failed.
  
  --
  Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
64. Re:Hmmm... by Froqen · 2004-09-10 09:31 · Score: 1
  
  The leaked w2k source reveals that wininet takes an unhealthy interest in Internet Explorer. If wininet is simply a library of internet related functions why does it have to do IE specific stuff?
  
  I don't know the real history, but it has played roles for both; functionality meant for IE, and then exposed for public usage. Winhttp was a first attempt to trim wininet into a library with no IE dependancies (but then you lose p3p, cache, etc...)
65. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 10:12 · Score: 0
  
  I would much rather learn how the underlying machine works by writing a compiler.
66. Re:Hmmm... by minektur · 2004-09-10 10:41 · Score: 1
  
  I have no problems with a default install defaulting to more secure and less access - even access from the LAN. I'd personally prefer that almost all services were shut off or blocked by default, to be manually enabled when you knew you needed it.
  
  In general, it is always a balance in deciding default configuration parameters and default-to-no-access is the right decision.
  
  --
  Free Online Dark Fantasy RPG - http://www.blackmud.com
67. Re:Hmmm... by Nurgled · 2004-09-10 11:51 · Score: 1
  
  I did that, too. For the Commodore 64's processor, in fact! It was quite fun, although the result wasn't particularly brilliant. Writing a compiler is certainly an interesting exercise.
68. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 12:01 · Score: 0
  
  He's trying to make the case that the kernel in OSX can be smaller because Mac hardware is more limited. It's a weak argument though, because modular design makes that stuff easier. Look at Linux. /me can't wait till he gets his G5 imac
69. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-10 13:12 · Score: 1
  
  I agree that many parts of Windows are monolithic, including win32 and the shell. I disagree that Internet Explorer is tied any more closely than a shell environment on Linux like Gnome or KDE. I say that the NT kernel runs fine without a broswer or GUI. It's hard to tell what someone means by 'Linux'; just the kernel or an entire distro.
  You're right; an OS is more than a kernel. Modern OSes have many parts. Each part should be evaluated seperately (where feasable).
70. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-10 13:41 · Score: 1
  
  NT has a lot of ways to do IPC too. There is file based communction that uses the IO manager and file system drivers, which include pipes (the named pipe filesystem), disk files, and network sockets. There is shared memory in the form of section objects, which can optionally memory map a file. One process can read the private memory of another process, although that's usually used for debugging. There is the local procedure call (LPC) system which creates a kernel managed and message oriented (message boundries preserved) communictions port. There is the quick LPC method that continues a thread's quantum for a remote function call. Back before NT4, there used to be a lot of LPC traffic.
  
  I'm not complaining, just trying to show the other side.
71. Re:Hmmm... by Forbman · 2004-09-11 01:54 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm... if it were wired at the lowest level, then it probably would not mean you could do something to "send" that keystroke or trap it to do something else. DameWare Remote Control, VNC, etc., all must do this to catch alt-ctl-del to send to the remote window, or send it to the remote window.
72. Re:Hmmm... by arkanes · 2004-09-11 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  You can mimic the key sequence, but you can't intercept and abort it at any level above a keyboard driver. Installing a keyboard driver will do it, however.
  I'm not aware of any version of VNC for windows that sends the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence to the remote machine automatically, although you can send it via a menu option.
73. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-11 14:58 · Score: 0
  
  My point was, why isn't there an option to restrict port access to certain machines within the firewall?. There's basically two options ALL or SUBNET.
  
  seems to prove once again, that microsoft still doesn't get it when it comes to security.
  
  plus, SUBNET option implies granting access to whatever network the machine is currently connected to. So the firewall does nothing to protect laptops AND allow the flexibility of remote management when they're connected to the corporate network. Three options: ALL (open atack vector) SUBNET (open attack vector) default (no access, use sneaker net to admin, read logs, ,fix BHO *&#@ed up internet explorer)
74. Re:Hmmm... by Bert64 · 2004-09-11 19:42 · Score: 1
  
  But the unix version of VNC or rdesktop will let you pass that key sequence straight through...
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
75. Re:Hmmm... by PipsqueakOnAP133 · 2004-09-12 07:30 · Score: 1
  
  A hole in IE cannot escilate beyond the user's privledges in the process's security context. Your machine be hosed by a hole in IE if you are running it as Admin (just as a hole in Mozilla if it was running as root), but not if it is running as a normal user.
  
  Oh yes it can....... along with anything with a combo box.
  
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bullet in /MS03-045.mspx
76. Re:Hmmm... by Foolhardy · 2004-09-12 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  That is not a hole in Internet Explorer. It is a hole in the win32 subsystem. Win32 is a protected subsystem; since those subsystems run as SYSTEM, a hole in them can escilate to root. I never said that win32 vulns couldn't escilate; only that IE vulns couldn't. IE is just another client process to win32.
77. Re:Hmmm... by ahdeoz · 2004-09-12 17:20 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that "old fashioned" security doesn't matter anymore. In order to stop viruses, malware, etc, you need to block ports 80, 110, & 5901/6901. It all comes through email, web, & chat anymore. And alot of it is starting to tunnel using ssh through 80.
78. Re:Hmmm... by hedge_death_shootout · 2004-09-13 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Interesting. So all in all a bit of an evolved unrefactored mess.
  
  Thank goodness for System.Net...
79. Re:Hmmm... by jonbryce · 2004-09-18 10:29 · Score: 1
  
  Well, NT 3.51 required a minimum of 20MB of RAM - very expensive at the time. NT without IE or any of the later service packs required 12MB of RAM. Still a lot, but it did make a difference.
Joe Beda talks the talk.... by regressiontest · 2004-09-09 13:48 · Score: -1, Troll

Joe Beda had said that Avalon is going to be more of an advanced UI/Visualization toolkit, while Dx will continue to contain all the other serious stuff.

Now, it looks like Avalon can do 3d on it's own and maybe more too -- what's the idea behind this anyway?

Are they trying to get a fresh new API or something? It seems unlikely, since I remember Joe and Scobles saying that they will probably be using Dx for serious graphics and game development. The redundancy seems strange.

From the presentation --

Avalon 3-D are not a replacement for Direct3D
You will find Avalon 3-D useful if:
- You want to integrate 3-D seamlessly into an Avalon app that also contains 2-D content, controls, etc.
- Platform features like Remote Desktop and multimon are high priorities for you
- You want to easily add 3-D functionality without quickly without needing to learn how the graphics hardware works

You will find DirectX useful if:
- You want access to all of the features provided by the graphics hardware
- You want to have full control over how your scene is stored and managed in memory
- Plan for interop between Direct3D and Avalon
Render Direct3D in a HWND and host within Avalon

So basically it seems to help ease the creation of bells and whistles, more than anything. Weird.

And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?
1. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by DraconPern · 2004-09-09 13:58 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  DirectX isn't just graphics. It is also networking, realtime input, sound, etc. Have you ever tried creating a GUI with DirectX? It is hard because you don't get the standard controls. What Avalon does is bridge that gap and bring 3D to the GUI controls (eg, outside the client area). Direct3D will only render into the client area.
  
  Btw, there is already a new graphic API, kind of a predecesor of Avalon, it's called GDI+. Notice that it is class based and supports ARGB format (like DirectX), but it can be used without having to do a bunch of DirectX setup calls. I am currently using GDI+ and it is much easier to use than the Win32 GDI functions.
2. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by stratjakt · 2004-09-09 14:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's not so weird. Everyone oohs and aahs when there's a slashdot article about OSS 3D desktops, myself included.
  
  I think desktop apps flipping around in 3D and all the new ways you could work with apps would be cool.
  
  But DirectX isn't right for the task, it's too low level. Too much DX code only works on ATi or nVidia, too many vendor specific extensions and shitty drivers. It's great for tweaking the crap out of Doom 3 so it goes as fast as it can, but it would suck if some pixel shader operation that only works on Geforces blowed up my coding session .
  
  Avalon is higher level, not trying to implement the latest hardware tweaks and gizmos, just base functionality you can count on across the board.
  
  There's no redundancy, the way I see it. Two different tools for two different tasks.
  
  --
  I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
3. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by sebby1234 · 2004-09-09 14:11 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Under the hood, Avalon runs on top of DirectX. And all it's 2D rendering is actually done in 3D. So adding 3D functionality to is is no biggie. The idea is that Avalon is meant for GUI and DirectX for more low level graphics functionality.
  
  The big benifit for at least game developers is that combining GUI with 3D graphics should be less of a pain in the butt.
4. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by hypermike · 2004-09-09 14:31 · Score: 1
  
  Because OpenOffice had to change its name to Openoffice.org due to some name legality issue. So OO becomes OOorg.
  
  --
5. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by ricotest · 2004-09-09 14:43 · Score: 1
  
  Not only that, but Avalon's 3D methods are probably just wrappers for DirectX. Which means less code redundancy, too.
6. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Mitchell+Mebane · 2004-09-09 14:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  DirectX isn't just graphics. It is also networking, realtime input, sound, etc. Have you ever tried creating a GUI with DirectX? It is hard because you don't get the standard controls. What Avalon does is bridge that gap and bring 3D to the GUI controls (eg, outside the client area). Direct3D will only render into the client area.
  
  Qt4 will also fill this gap - any QT widget can be drawn on top of an OpenGL canvas, and it will be OpenGL accelerated.
  
  --
  
  The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
  --Aristotle
7. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 15:07 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  there will be no further talk of qt/kde superiority in this thread. thankyou
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
8. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by wasabii · 2004-09-09 15:09 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  "But DirectX isn't right for the task, it's too low level. Too much DX code only works on ATi or nVidia, too many vendor specific extensions and shitty drivers. It's great for tweaking the crap out of Doom 3 so it goes as fast as it can, but it would suck if some pixel shader operation that only works on Geforces blowed up my coding session."
  
  Perhaps you refer to OpenGL. DirectX is an opaque MS API. There are not extensions. In fact, DirectX has a standard shader language, which are converted to the native shader language of the respective GPU by the DirectX drivers provided with the GPU.
  
  Doom 3 also does not use Direct X. It uses OpenGL. All id games use OpenGL. That's what makes them special. ;0
9. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Mitchell+Mebane · 2004-09-09 15:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Gee whiz... sorry if I came across that way, but in all honesty I was just pointing out that Avalon wasn't/won't be the only thing to do this.
  
  --
  
  The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
  --Aristotle
10. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by westlake · 2004-09-09 15:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Doom 3 also does not use Direct X. It uses OpenGL. All id games use OpenGL. That's what makes them special. ;0
  What makes iD special is game play and the game engine.
  If Carmack moved to DX9 or it's successors, players and developers would move with him.
11. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:35 · Score: 0
  
  (I think he was making a joke. I think, I do not know.)
12. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 15:43 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  That isn't the right one.
  
  http://slashdot.org/~miguel
13. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:42 · Score: 0
  
  Shheeesh Kebab, really!? thanks for pointing that that out dude! Can you spell obvious?
14. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  openOffice is already a registered tradmark, buy a older office suite that never realy caught on.
  
  They didn't realise this when they created the open source open office, and the original makers of open office contacted them on this issue and the compromise is to call the project "Open Office.org". And hence OO.org
15. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  No. Please let me know how to spell obvious.
16. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:18 · Score: 0
  
  p r i c k t w a t c u n t obvious
17. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:55 · Score: 0
  
  all it's 2D rendering
  
  "its".
18. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Billly+Gates · 2004-09-09 18:19 · Score: 1
  
  Wasn't Apple researching this in the 1980's? I wondered what happened? Apple bought a cray just to research this.
  
  I am going to be an apple user and would be jealous if Windows became 3d.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
19. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by IoN_PuLse · 2004-09-09 18:20 · Score: 1
  
  But he hasn't. He still sticks with OpenGL, even after ditching C. (finally, even though the code I saw flashed on the screen in some interview video still looked like the C he's always written)
20. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by dnaumov · 2004-09-09 21:20 · Score: 1
  
  Doom 3 also does not use Direct X. It uses OpenGL. All id games use OpenGL. That's what makes them special. ;0
  Except that on Windows, it does. Not for rendering though, but for processing input. They did the same thing with Quake 3. Why would they include the latest version of DirectX on the Doom 3 CD if that wasn't the case?
21. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:15 · Score: 0
  
  The average person, when they say "DirectX", is referring to Direct3D. You are the first person in this thread to use it in the sense of the whole DirectX system. Therefore, your post is entirely accurate, and also entirely off-topic. Sorry and all that.
22. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 00:52 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  And oh, completely offtopic -- what's the deal with saying, work fine in OOorg -- shouldn't that be works fine with OO? Why the org/.org thingy?
  Trademark. Somebody holds a trademark on OpenOffice(tm) that's not connected to the OpenOffice.org project we all love (theoretically, anyway, that love I mean). So OpenOffice.org had to change their name to avoid getting in trouble over the trademark. Mind you, the OpenOffice(tm) crew (whoever they are, I forget who) are totally disconnected from OO.org, and I think they're not even competitive with them. So it's cool, just respecting someone else's trademark, and they're happy with OpenOffice.org's fix of just appending .org to their name.
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
23. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 00:58 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  You just made my dick hard.
  Just in case you wanted to know...
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
24. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:28 · Score: 0
  
  "its".
  
  "Tits"!
25. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by Junks+Jerzey · 2004-09-10 01:34 · Score: 1
  
  What makes iD special is game play and the game engine. If Carmack moved to DX9 or it's successors, players and developers would move with him.
  
  Truthfully, developers and players have moved. The only games developed in OpenGL any more are those from id, id engine licensees, and some low-end shareware. That's it.
26. Re:Joe Beda talks the talk.... by RichM · 2004-09-10 22:08 · Score: 1
  
  Doom 3 also does not use Direct X. It uses OpenGL. All id games use OpenGL. That's what makes them special. ;0
  Actually it does use DirectX 9, but uses OpenGL for the 3D graphics instead of Direct3D.
resources by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:49 · Score: 0

Vastly under-resourced?! This coming from a Microsoft employee too.
1. Re:resources by RPoet · 2004-09-09 20:37 · Score: 1
  
  Miguel is not a Microsoft employee.
  
  --
  "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
2. Re:resources by baker_tony · 2004-09-09 21:29 · Score: 0
  
  Mono is vastly under-resourced, Microsoft isn't.
  I guess you are new to this computer fad?
3. Re:resources by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:32 · Score: 0
  
  Someone please find him a job with MS. I
  had enough of this asshole.
As far as I understand... by yanestra · 2004-09-09 13:52 · Score: -1, Flamebait

As far as I understand, Mr. Icaza is now working for Microsoft, and he spends his energy on porting Microsoft ideas and projects to the Linux platform(s)... So why he criticizes Microsoft plans in the public?
1. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:55 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Because you don't know what you're talking about.
  
  1) Microsoft isn't porting anything to Linux.
  2) Miguel doesn't work for Microsoft, and never has.
  3) Miguel works for Ximian, a company he founded, and which is now owned by Novell.
2. Re:As far as I understand... by yanestra · 2004-09-09 14:03 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  1) Microsoft isn't porting anything to Linux.
  But they have Mr. Icaza.
  2) Miguel doesn't work for Microsoft, and never has.
  Why then he improves their ideas?
  3) Miguel works for Ximian, a company he founded, and which is now owned by Novell.
  I understand. And Novell has never announced any co-operation with Microsoft. Right or wrong?
3. Re:As far as I understand... by ryanmfw · 2004-09-09 14:10 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  They DON'T HAVE Mr. Icaza. They just don't. No matter how necessary that is for the rest of your post, it simply is not true.
  He doesn't improve their ideas anyway, he debates with M$ employees on their ideas. Also, improving the ideas of the competition is a significant part of said competition. Competitors routinely improve on another company's products to steal their customers.
  Nor has Novell *recently* announced any co-operation with Microsoft, as the two right now are essentially competing in the OS wars.
  
  --
  Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
4. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:16 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  "As far as I understand,"
  You apparently do not understand.
  
  "Mr. Icaza is now working for Microsoft"
  Try Novell in the Ximian devision. That parent company also owns the SuSE Linux distro and tools now btw.
  
  "and he spends his energy on porting Microsoft ideas and projects to the Linux platform"
  
  Ya just like the blackdown project, or OpenOffice.org is doing for Sun's ideas and projects. You wrote the above as if it was a bad thing. Honestly do you want to be locked out of the potential of write one run everywhere apps? Do you feel you speak for all Linux and OSX users?
  
  "So why he criticizes Microsoft plans in the public?"
  
  He calls them like he sees em and even MS workers are at least paying attention to a good critic. If they did more of that, they would have less brain farts along the way. The same goes for others who can't take the heat of an honest review of their work so they just blast back.
5. Re:As far as I understand... by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 14:18 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Because have good ideas sometimes.
6. Re:As far as I understand... by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 14:28 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  miguel once applied for a job at microsoft but didn't get it on account of immigration status or something like that - google for it.
  
  from his past words and actions miguel has a viagra charged hardon for all things redmond
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
7. Re:As far as I understand... by winse · 2004-09-09 15:12 · Score: 1
  
  "Mr. Icaza is now working for Microsoft"
  Try Novell in the Ximian devision. That parent company also owns the SuSE Linux distro and tools now btw.
  
  umm i think the parent said that Miguel DOESN'T work for MS.
  At any rate I see the things that Miguel is trying to do as good things for the community. Commoditizing certain types of applications is the foundation of the gpl culture. Almost all successful gpl apps have been an Nth implementation of a defacto or real standard. beatiful things like mono, wine, or other API implementations are just further attempts to sing the same song. It is not a song we'll have to sing forever though. Already there have been a couple of really new and fresh ideas released as oss. Myabe someone will fill in my thinking with examples for me.
  
  --
  this sig is deprecated
8. Re:As far as I understand... by jdog1016 · 2004-09-09 15:56 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Actually, I believe when MS flew Miguel in for his job interview, he used the opportunity to tell them how flawed their business model was and why open-source is a superior approach. You can read it here . (registration required though) So no, from that article, my feeling is that Icaza does not have a "hardon" for microsoft but actually hates their business model and all that they represent.
9. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:05 · Score: 0
  
  WTF! If you hate them why apply for a job there???? Your logic falls down friend, oh dear me your logic needs medical attention stat!
10. Re:As far as I understand... by miguel · 2004-09-09 16:19 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I do not hate Microsoft, but I think that they will
  eventually open source some interesting pieces of
  software. The pieces are already in movement.
  
  Microsoft is like any other corporation, they have
  to do what is best for their shareholders. They
  have had a pretty good ride but Linux and open
  source have changed the plane, so they will
  likely have to transform in the future in a different
  kind of company.
  
  In either case, working for Microsoft is not the
  end of the world. I just happen to be a lot
  happier working for Novell doing open source
  software and working with many talented developers
  from the Novell background, the SUSE background
  and Ximian. An opportunity in a lifetime to
  reshape this industry.
  
  Miguel.
11. Re:As far as I understand... by dbIII · 2004-09-09 16:33 · Score: 1
  
  "and he spends his energy on porting Microsoft ideas and projects to the Linux platform"
  I'll have to say here that is not necessarily a bad thing, despite the fact that the whole reason I use linux is because it is a unix clone. Some of the ideas are good, some of the ideas are bad, but if the docs suck or don't exist yet the code is still all there to read. The biggest problem with the worst of the Microsoft products is that you don't know how they are going to behave - but with gnome bugs can be found and fixed outside of the gnome group. Strangely enough, before the advent of gnome you could also say that about Qt - the source code was there to download and patches were submitted by people outside of Trolltech.
12. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:32 · Score: 0
  
  Dude if this is offtopic sorry - but you should check out qt, thats a pretty solid toolkit right there
13. Re:As far as I understand... by CondeZer0 · 2004-09-09 20:24 · Score: 1
  
  What do you find interesting in a VMS and Java clones is beyond me, two of the worst technologies ever created in the history of software. Not to mention the most directly at odds with the Unix philosophy.
  
  If you are going to "reshape this industry", you could at least try to do so into a less hideous new shape. (l)Unix has been dead for more than fifteen years[1], but better things have been around for almost as long.
  
  If you like C but are tired of doing memory allocation, why don't you use the language that the creators of C spent twenty years designing[2] to overcome C limitations: Limbo
  
  Rob Pike admitted that the main problems with C (as a high level language) are the lack of proper strings and the lack of garbage collection, with limbo you get that and a bunch of other really wonderful goodies, like the best parallel programming framework using CSP and the most beautiful and simple distributed environment thanks to 9p/Styx.
  
  Not only that, but now Inferno/Limbo and Plan 9 are open source.
  
  Note: Now you can even run most of Plan 9 user space under Linux: Plan 9 on Unix
  
  [1] "Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." -- Rob Pike circa 1991
  [2] Directly or indirectly most languages developed at Bell Labs for the last 30 years have been predecessors of Limbo
  
  Best wishes and I hope that some day you will correct your misguided ways
  
  uriel
  
  --
  "When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
14. Re:As far as I understand... by smallguy78 · 2004-09-09 20:53 · Score: 1
  
  They have had a pretty good ride
  
  Second richest company in the world is a pretty good ride !
  
  --
  Nothing costs nothing
15. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 22:58 · Score: 0
  
  Because he isn't trying to change the industry for the better, he's simply satisfying his ego. Microsofts marketing budget puts the buzzwords into the boardroom and then Miguel enters the picture, the knight in shining armour come to save those poor fortune 500 companies from vendor lock-in. This is not how to reshape an industry, its a copy of previous Microsoft behaviour.
16. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:41 · Score: 0
  
  Honestly do you want to be locked out of the potential of write one run everywhere apps?
  You mean write once compile everywhere? I don't run precompiled executables, just because somebody is targeting a VM doesn't excuse not shipping full source code.
17. Re:As far as I understand... by smittyoneeach · 2004-09-09 23:54 · Score: 1
  
  Miguel seems to have had a germane 'British moment':
  
  Collaboration of Microsoft with competitors tends to be difficult. Maybe there are ways we can improve this.
  
  However, the Southern engineering observation:
  Y'all jusht cain't polish a turd.
  applies.
  
  --
  Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
18. Re:As far as I understand... by FecesFlingingRhesus · 2004-09-10 02:20 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  What do you find interesting in a VMS and Java clones is beyond me, two of the worst technologies ever created in the history of software. Not to mention the most directly at odds with the Unix philosophy.
  
  If you are going to "reshape this industry", you could at least try to do so into a less hideous new shape. (l)Unix has been dead for more than fifteen years[1], but better things have been around for almost as long.
  
  It's funny that everyone keeps heralding how Unix and its variants are a dead end, but more and more operating systems are reinventing the wheels of Unix to provide the security and flexibility that Unix provided 10 years ago.
  
  If you like C but are tired of doing memory allocation, why don't you use the language that the creators of C spent twenty years designing[2] to overcome C limitations: Limbo
  
  It is simply a matter of popularity, you can design a language that does everything, but if it does not win mind share, then you have a very good dead language. I cannot comment on Limbo, as I have never used it, but the progression from C to C# is night and day. C is just old and it feels old, every time you have to touch memory allocations, or make sure everything is cleaned up. As for Java, it has become very bloated and the promise of write once run anywhere has somewhat fallen apart. As for .NET and Mono, we will see but as of now, I have directly copied applications from my development windows machine running the .NET framework, onto our server running MONO and have never had to debug a single application after the move. To me this concept is not one of the worst technologies ever created, it was just Java's implementation of the concept that fell apart.
  
  [1] "Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." -- Rob Pike circa 1991
  
  "Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly." --Henry Spencer
19. Re:As far as I understand... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 14:19 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe if you had some basic knowledge of Unix history you would know that Plan 9 and Inferno are not "reinventions" of Unix, but they are the _evolution_ of the original Unix, developed by the same people, and based in the same principles and philosophy(and in part, code). Not some hacked up aberration that didn't respect the fundamental Unix way of doing things, like BSD(csh(1) ugh?), X(wtf?), GNU(info(1) --godawful-compiler-crap), not to mention proprietary variants and extensions(who can call Aix Unix with a straight face? and Sun obviously never understood Unix either, or they wouldn't have created two of the worst diseases that infest Unix: NFS and shared libs)
  
  If you are going to question Rob's credentials as Unix God, maybe you should first read his paper(co-authored by Brian God Kernighan) called: cat -v considered harmful; that formed the basis for the best Unix book every written: Programming in the Unix environment.
  
  And yea, your quote from Henry is very good, too bad you got it completely wrong, .NOT is a bad reinvention of Unix; Plan 9 _is_ the Unix spirit shining with new light.
  
  Maybe if you had bothered to read the linked papers, you would know why anyone that ever really understood what Unix stands for has considered it dead for more than 15 years. I'm sure Henry, if he weren't too busy working in the space industry, would agree with this.
  
  Clueless fools like you, Miguel, and RMS where what killed Unix.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

We do not want to waste our time with dead-end APIs as we are vastly under-resourced, so we must choose carefully..

Well well well. Isn't it easy to complain about an API when we aren't the ones responsible for creating it? Considering he is the one copying the .NET API, he shouldn't bite the hand that feeds him!
1. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 14:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Actually, I think that's the *point*. He isn't just blindly grabbing and/all APIs Microsoft decides to procure. He is questioning this for a reason.
  
  That said, I hate .NET/Mono *and* Java, so my opinion is moot here.
2. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by stratjakt · 2004-09-09 14:09 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Well explain the point of the "if your APIs are gonna be dum then I'm just not going to copy them so nyah nyah" stuff?
  
  that's like, wacky
  
  --
  I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
3. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:11 · Score: 0
  
  .NET rules. Java is pretty good too.
4. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:12 · Score: 0
  
  java pwns j00
5. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 14:15 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see a point. I don't like .NET. If I did, I would see a point - that point would be that he's porting a language/platform I like to linux. But he's not. I should think that to be obvious?
6. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 14:21 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  And what is wrong with .net/mono?
7. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 14:25 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  That's off topic.
8. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 14:40 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  IOW, you have no idea and are just posting shit.
  
  Noted.
9. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 14:48 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I dont like langs/platform that tell me what I can and cannot do.
  
  I don't like verbosity.
  
  I don't like pseudo-open languages with small legal catches which could open up lawsuits against other implementations down the road.
  
  I don't like stupid zealot followers who think anyone who opposes their Best Language Ever is an idiot.
  
  I don't think it's needed - we have java for huge enterprise application frameworks, python/ruby for fast scalable apps, C/C++ for system programming, CLISP/Haskell/etc. for everything in general. What does .NET do for me, besides tie me to a vendor and reinvent the wheel? Why should I waste my cycles? (if I wanted to hear a JIT-is-faster-than-asm argument, I would have visited a .NET site!) If I need an interpreted language, I'd go use Ruby, or god forbid Java!
  
  Are we done having our trollfest yet?
  
  Idiot. Try posting on topic, or wait for the next ".NET == Ubar! C# 4 T3h Win!" post.
10. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 15:01 · Score: 1
  
  Java has a JIT and can also be compiled (if you code carefully enough) and it has as many or more patents on it as .net does.
11. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 15:07 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Firstly, good luck compiling Java and beating GCC at anything at all.
  
  Reading comprehension, read my original post.
  
  Or I'll paste it here for you:
  
  "That said, I hate .NET/Mono *and* Java, so my opinion is moot here."
  
  Java ~ .NET for now, but Java was already around before .NET. I don't see a need for .NET with Java already here. Disagree? fine. lets disagree.
  
  Either way I can code circles around most of those programmers in perl, or pretty much any other web-capable language (not talking about C++ here).
  
  Right tool for the right job. Problem is, I don't see a job for .NET.
  
  That's my opinion. You can have yours.
12. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 15:16 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Are we done having our trollfest yet?
  
  poor poor melgeroth (726004), the kde trolls don't even get up for another 3 hours.
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
13. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:18 · Score: 0
  
  OK, then try to write a module in C++ and use it in Ruby. Oh yeah..wait.
  
  Oh and try to write a DLL in C++ or a script in Perl with solid system access...oh holy crap.
  
  That's right. You can't.
  
  Write an application with solid system access (by system I mean access to the core of the system) in Java. Can't be done.
  
  You really should learn more about .NET before you start spouting about how much it sucks.
14. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:18 · Score: 0
  
  I think its love ;-)
15. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by DAldredge · 2004-09-09 15:21 · Score: 1
  
  I suggest you look at CPAN before you say that what you call "Solid System Access" in perl isn't possible.
  
  You call also extend ruby using C (not sure about C++ as I am unable to reach the ruby site right now)
16. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by melgeroth · 2004-09-09 15:26 · Score: 0
  
  Systems programming with C++.
  
  Web Programming with Ruby/Perl.
  
  Is it that hard, really? Do you imply that Mono knows more about the "core of the system" of my FreeBSD box than GCC? I hope not, because I never endorsed Java.
  
  Also, why don't you research scripting language bindings to low level programming languages before posting about them? And hey guess what, Ruby isn't well known or supported as of now, but you know little things like C++ bindings can be.. oh holy crap... coded? is that the word? I think so.
17. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:26 · Score: 0
  
  Are you sure?
  
  http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/native1. 1/
  
  Not sure about Ruby but you can bet that its a possibility because its open source.
  
  However I'm not saying .Net is bad - it does make these things simpler. However the guy can have is opinion about .Net - its more valid given that he gives his name you Anonymous shit. :->
  
  I was being ironical Larry...
18. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by MirthScout · 2004-09-10 00:00 · Score: 1
  
  If the hand is feeding you shit, it is OK to bite it and you probably should.
19. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by debian4life · 2004-09-10 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  Absolutely freaking right. I don't really put a lot of stock in what he says. When he comes out with his own original idea, then I might give him some credibility.
20. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 03:38 · Score: 0
  
  You can fairly trivially use a C++ module in Ruby by either using SWIG or writing a small interface file.
  I have no clue what you mean by "solid system access" - but Perl has access to the syscalls directly on *nix, and there are ways to load Perl into the Kernel on Linux (though I think that is a bad idea).
  I can't speak for Java; I haven't looked at how to do native access from Java.
  You really should learn more about the systems you criticize before you start spouting about how impossible things are.
  (Oh, and I like the idea of .NET - but mainly for the security control and having a standard VM come with the OS)
21. Re:Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:47 · Score: 0
  
  Are you serious? No way, dude. I am not going to bite a hand that is full of shit. Why would I want shit in my mouth? I'd just smack the hand owner and put the hand in his own mouth and have him bite it himself!!
Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by cybrthng · 2004-09-09 13:53 · Score: 1

unlike the current pixel based 2d rendering system of today.

Not necessarily 3d as in "3 dimmensional" but on the other hand not necessarily restricted to what we can 2d either :)
1. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by cybrthng · 2004-09-09 13:55 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  with further explanation that means it can use the 3d acceleration of your video card and interface with directx as part of the graphics api to accelerate/render your desktop.
2. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-09 14:05 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  unlike the current pixel based 2d rendering system of today.
  
  Um... say what?
  Ok, to begin with Avalon doesn't support SVG, which is one of the things Miguel was blasting them for.
  
  Secondly.. 2D rendering is not 'pixel based' today.
  It's never been 'pixel based'. Windows has had device-independent 2D rendering since.. well, forever. (Windows Metafiles ring a bell?) So has just about everything else (Mac, Atari) too, (X doesn't, but the Unix platform tended to use PostScript for that stuff).
  
  What is new here is the support of more advanced things like compositing (something you couldn't do device-independently before). OS X already has this of course in Quartz.
3. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:09 · Score: 0
  
  Care to explain WTF that has to do with SVG?
4. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by cybrthng · 2004-09-09 14:13 · Score: 1
  
  uhmm.. SVG is part of the avalon concept done through the XAML interface. Avalon is part of XAML which is part of many microsoft visions for its longhorn and future products
  
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/01/A va lon/default.aspx
  
  As for 2d rendering, it has always been pixel/bitmap fill based and not vector based.
  
  http://wwws.sun.com/software/xml/developers/svg/
5. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-09 14:26 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  SVG is part of the avalon concept done through the XAML interface.
  
  Except that Microsoft does not follow the SVG standard. So it's not SVG, it's just similar.
  
  As for 2d rendering, it has always been pixel/bitmap fill based and not vector based.
  
  Again, you are wrong. Although you seem to believe it, SVG isn't the first vector graphics format in existance. Not by a long shot. (PostScript is from 1984) Nor is Avalon the first device-independent 2D-graphics API.
  
  Providing a ref to the SVG spec doesn't make it true.
  
  Ok? Now, I've contributed fixes to Apache Batik, (an SVG library) and I've also written PostScript generators, and most recently I've contributed stuff to the Java2D library for libgcj. (another 2D library which is not 'pixel based')
  
  I do believe I know something of vector graphics.
6. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:56 · Score: 0
  
  i like your sig
7. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Tumbleweed · 2004-09-09 15:45 · Score: 1
  
  Geez, get with it, man! It's all ball bearings, now!
8. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by meanman · 2004-09-09 15:51 · Score: 1
  
  Except that Microsoft does not follow the SVG standard. So it's not SVG, it's just similar.
  
  If it is so similar, surely it should be trivial to write a quick XSLT script to transform from one to the other?
  
  It can't be that similar, otherwise people wouldn't be complaining as loudly as they are...
9. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:19 · Score: 0
  
  What the fuck does SVG have to do with 3D?
  
  I mean, honestly... SVG? 3D? The two are completely unrelated, aside from the fact that some 3D formats support vectors.
  
  I mean, shit that old arcade game Space War (the one like galaga) was made in like 1979, and it featured vector graphics. Like holy shit. That must mean it's 3D!
  
  Perhaps you mean that Avalon might be able to hardware accelerate application windows in 3D, and reap all the benefits (and pitfalls) of doing so... Which would probably be true. What this has to do with SVG I absolutely fail to see.
10. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:29 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  What the hell are you talking about?
  
  90% of anything the average user does daily is RASTER. Window decorations. Pictures. Buttons, all this shit is raster (meaning that the image displayed is stored pixel for pixel in some way shape or form) The only way vector graphics are used by the average computer user is in the form of fonts. Most fonts are vector fonts. Not all, but most. Maybe this will change. I doubt it will for a while, though.
  
  #2) I wouldn't say that X11 dosen't have vector graphics, if I were you. X11 has a whole fucking slew of primitive objects, from squares to circles, elipses, and all that groovy stuff, by default. Yeah, maybe it dosen't have beziers, or cubics, or whatever. But loosely, it does have limited vector support. And many toolkits make use of it. (Motif, for example)
11. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-09 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  If it is so similar, surely it should be trivial to write a quick XSLT script to transform from one to the other?
  
  Without being versed in the exact particulars of the incompatibility, that seems to be exactly what the MS guy was saying: "I believe that there is a trivial transform that could be applied to transform SVG to WVG;"
  
  It can't be that similar, otherwise people wouldn't be complaining as loudly as they are...
  
  I don't think I need to remind a /. reader of the problems caused by IE:s non-standard HTML rendering?
12. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Billly+Gates · 2004-09-09 18:17 · Score: 1
  
  Question
  
  Since this is slashdot, what is Device-independant 2D rendering and how is it different from pix based?
  
  I assumed everything in graphics programing was pixel based is it not? How are images then drawn on the screen?
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
13. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Foolhardy · 2004-09-09 18:28 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  In order to display onscreen, it has to be translated into pixels. Before it reaches the screen, you can describe shapes in terms of lines, curves, etc in logical coordinates without committing to a specific configuration of pixels. For example, a line one inch long might be 50 pixels long at one resoulution and 100 pixels at a higher one; the line's description says inches and you can't know how many pixels are in an inch until you have a display device in mind. The 1 inch line is device-independent because it will be 1 inch regardless of device. How a 50 pixel line looks depends on the device.
14. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-09 19:10 · Score: 1
  
  90% of anything the average user does daily is RASTER.
  
  I didn't say otherwise.
  
  Most fonts are vector fonts. Not all, but most. Maybe this will change.
  
  About as likely as reverting to punchcards.
  
  I wouldn't say that X11 dosen't have vector graphics
  
  I didn't write that. I write X11 doesn't have device-independent vector graphics. And it certainly doesn't have anything near the capabilities we're talking about here. What do you think Cairo is all about?
15. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-09 19:18 · Score: 1
  
  You're responding to the wrong post, it was the grandfather post who made the weird 'it's SVG so it's 3D' statement..
  
  3D vector graphics is a pretty different area.
  
  However, there is one link.. SVG (and PDF) supports compositing (E.g. semi-tranclucent shapes), and if you're talking about a 2D graphics API which supports everything SVG does, it means that you've got to support compositing.
  
  Most modern graphics cards have the ability to do this in hardware.. so thus, the API backend for on-screen rendering can exploit this for faster rendering.
  
  Apple's Quartz does this via OpenGL, Cairo does so too, and Avalon is going to use DirectX.
16. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:45 · Score: 0
  
  LOL. Good flame. Except, 2D rendering is pixel based, you moron. Look at your monitor. Get a magnifying glass. See those little squares? They're pixels! LOL.
17. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Haeleth · 2004-09-10 00:18 · Score: 1
  
  Again, you are wrong. Although you seem to believe it, SVG isn't the first vector graphics format in existance. Not by a long shot. (PostScript is from 1984) Nor is Avalon the first device-independent 2D-graphics API.
  
  However, you are missing the point. Of course Avalon isn't the first vector graphics library. It is, however, the first mainstream GUI toolkit to be 100% vector-based.
18. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by k98sven · 2004-09-10 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  However, you are missing the point. Of course Avalon isn't the first vector graphics library. It is, however, the first mainstream GUI toolkit to be 100% vector-based.
  
  Which means.. what? "100% vector-based"? What the heck are you talking about?
19. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Doctor+Faustus · 2004-09-10 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  Of course Avalon isn't the first vector graphics library. It is, however, the first mainstream GUI toolkit to be 100% vector-based.
  
  Display PostScript was around ages ago (15 years?). It never became that popular, but I don't think you could call Avalon mainstream, yet, either.
20. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by yerfatma · 2004-09-10 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe these guys need a refresher course.
21. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by oscarmv · 2004-09-10 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  Not to mention Apple's Quartz (The Son of Display Postcript but without paying royalties to Adobe). Which is pretty much alive and doing fine in a few million computers running OS X.
22. Re:Avalon is SVG based so its rendered in 3d by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 21:27 · Score: 0
  
  Avalon is not the first /anything/ yet as it has yet to see a public release.
Windows = Dead End by Datagod · 2004-09-09 13:53 · Score: -1

Why even waste your time at all on a dead end OS such as Windows? Think of the wasted BILLIONS pumped into one of a thousand projects they have on the burners (front and back). Think of the OS that could have been, if they were not bent on ruling every single aspect of the tech world.
MFC by TheRealMindChild · 2004-09-09 13:53 · Score: 1, Insightful

The obviously didnt learn with MFC.

--

"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
1. Re:MFC by MasterDater · 2004-09-09 15:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Wow that is insightful. No data, no facts, not even a characteristic cheesy slashdot anecdote about how, it being from MS, it almost ruined the company he worked for until OSS came to save the day. Man, this is bad for even slashdot..
2. Re:MFC by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:50 · Score: 0
  
  Have you ever worked with the MFCs????
  
  He said more than enough, in fact he could have gotten away with just this:
  
  MFC
  nough said
3. Re:MFC by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 17:11 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Actually, they did the learn. The result was .NET. Look at the class structure. Clean, organized. Documentation is good too (although it's sparse for the compact version of the framework).
  
  I think .NET and Windows 2000 are the only 2 products MS did really really well out of the box. Read up on the framework. It makes the MFC look like a piece of dung (which it essentially is).
4. Re:MFC by Forbman · 2004-09-10 11:41 · Score: 1
  
  No wonder then, along with Anders Hjeilberg [Delphi 1/2 architect], that Delphi 8.Net was a pretty easy port, along with VCL.Net.
  
  I think it is probably evident, then, that Anders is not playing a primary role in the new stuff. Too bad.
Ad Nauseum by Metallic+Matty · 2004-09-09 13:54 · Score: 1, Insightful

New news, same story:

- Icaza insults Microsoft policies.
- Nerds rally behind Icaza, he's just so smart to stand up to Microsoft and point out things we already knew.
- Other, more cynical nerds point out flaws in what Icaza said, possibly contradictions to previous comments or connections with MS.
- Mods find this comment flamebait, mod it down.
- No one cares.

?????

- Profit!

Mod this insightful, you insensitive clod.
1. Re:Ad Nauseum by cybrthng · 2004-09-09 14:01 · Score: 1
  
  And what does your typical rant that is seen on every other slashdot article have to do with the topic of the story?
  
  I think this idea for an API is amazingly innovative. Far less weight than the expensive (in cpu and bandwidth) desktop interfaces/api's we have now for any platform.
  
  Possibly microsoft's answer to competing and blowing away the mozilla XUL or whatever it is called these days
2. Re:Ad Nauseum by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:04 · Score: 0
  
  you were born without a sense of humor, weren't you?
3. Re:Ad Nauseum by cybrthng · 2004-09-09 14:05 · Score: 1
  
  my sense of humor thought that was funny the first 25,000 times over 3 years ago
4. Re:Ad Nauseum by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 15:40 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Possibly microsoft's answer to competing and blowing away the mozilla XUL or whatever it is called these days
  
  all that needs to happen for microsoft to blow away XUL is for fools to believe the hype. remember when NT 3.x was going to destroy UNIX prompting sgi to jump ship. remember how itanic was supposed to take over high-end risc prompting HP to kill their shit-hot cpus (sob).
  
  YOU CAN BUILD GREAT THINGS WITH XUL &/ SVG TODAY THEY ARE READY FOR PRIMETIME RIGHT NOW
  or you could sit there sniffing the sweet vapour
  
  Avalon is propaganda, spin, FUDware it could never see a compiler and still acomplish all the goals in its requirements document - kill the openstandard crossplatform richclient (xul, svg, webstart, eclipse rich client platform (very nice) christ even flash opening up and getting some serious backend features).
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
5. Re:Ad Nauseum by codemachine · 2004-09-09 19:48 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Considering that XAML is basically XUL, and WVG is basically SVG, I think we can safely say this is MS's answer to Mozilla (not that SVG is very integrated into Mozilla yet either, but whaterer).
  
  Too bad they always have to make their own versions of stuff that are 90% similar to the original, but the other 10% of stuff that ties directly into MS products. See J++ and C# for other examples.
  
  If only they knew how to play well with others.
6. Re:Ad Nauseum by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:07 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, Avalon and XAML are MS's answers to the problems they encountered with writing UI in HTML (for example, the Add/Remove Programs applet in Windows 2000); another of its forebears was used in Windows XP (for example, the Add/Remove Programs applet in Windows XP). Not that you'd have a clue about that.
7. Re:Ad Nauseum by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 09:02 · Score: 0
  
  What exactly do you think XUL was intended to be? Same problem, and very similar solutions. Maybe MS didn't ripoff XUL, but the idea is similar.
  
  Why exactly would you want to write Add/Remove programs in HTML anyhow? Wouldn't a native program be more suitable, or do they plan to have administers running it remotely?
8. Re:Ad Nauseum by yanko22 · 2004-09-10 23:46 · Score: 1
  
  At first I totally agreed, but then something reminded me of how XPCOM is Mozilla's version of MS COM. So, what's wrong with basing your design on a standard you're not going to use otherwise for being unsuitable in whatever way to your needs?
  
  --
  The atheist,by merely being in touch with reality,appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors
9. Re:Ad Nauseum by codemachine · 2004-09-14 18:14 · Score: 1
  
  I suppose that is a good point, although Mozilla couldn't have used COM since it wasn't portable, whereas MS could theoretically use XUL, and extend it to include any platform specific stuff. But I supposed on this site they'd get in shit for doing that too.
  
  Instead some MS developers advocate that Mozilla implements the Windows XUL platform specific code using XAML, which might not be all that bad an idea if they are similar enough. The problem is that XUL is already implemented just fine, and it is portable to versions of Windows that won't support XAML.
look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:55 · Score: 0, Interesting

The Open Source way (Miguel's):

http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/ Se p-09.html

Date is included, name of the author, the word "archive", the "html" extensions.. easy to understand at a glance, I have a good ideae what that URL points to. It's not "perfect" (it uses American month names rather than a more generic 2004/09-09.html) but pretty good as far as URLs go.

Now check out the Microsoft dude's URL:

http://www.simplegeek.com/PermaLink.aspx/eb453f8 5- 10e3-48ee-a6f5-cc4b886ce668

What? I have no idea what that points to. Maybe an insightful bit of commentary, or maybe a gaping anus. Who knows. Any subtelty hidden behind a confusing GUID. Extension is "aspx" which is an add for ASP.NET rather than a meaningful extension.

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
1. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 13:58 · Score: 0
  
  Your case sucks.
  As if you couldn't do it the "Open Source way" by having, say:
  
  http://www.opensourcegeek.com/PermaLink.php?ID=e b4 53f85- 10e3-48ee-a6f5-cc4b886ce668
  
  For instance.
2. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:03 · Score: 0
  
  You are painfully retarded. Please punch yourself in the balls posthaste.
3. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:25 · Score: 0
  
  What's sad is that someone modded this up.
4. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:58 · Score: 0
  
  Summary:
  Open Source Way: Leave crap laying around in your home directory.
  Microsoft Way: Use a database
5. Re:look at those URLs... by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 15:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I don't think aspx has anything whatsoever to do with the Avalon team. Is this just an attempt at a really bad troll?
6. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  The gaping anus is going to be at http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Se p-010.html
  
  I think tubgirl was last week.
7. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:22 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  How does the date in the url give you any indication that it is insightful commentary as opposed to a gaping anus?
  
  Both URLs are equally opaque as to their content.
8. Re:look at those URLs... by chrisan · 2004-09-09 16:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Oh, come on... when I wrote BlogX (the blog software I use) I wanted a unique ID for each post. I post more than once a day (Miguel's software doesn't have permalinks per post, only per day) and I didn't want to uniquify the titles... Radio uses monotonically increasing numbers, other software uses UTC datestamps to the millisecond, etc...
  
  --
  ChrisAn http://blog.simplegeek.com
9. Re:look at those URLs... by omicronish · 2004-09-09 16:46 · Score: 1
  
  What about Slashdot URLs? I'm currently at http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0 9/10/0012242&tid=156&tid=201&tid=170&tid=1 when http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?date=tod ay'sdate&mode=comments would suffice. The simplegeek link probably reference some sort of permanent link database; the entries on that site can also be accessed via a simpler format that includes the date: http://www.simplegeek.com/default.aspx?date=2004-0 9-08
  
  And yeah, the author's name is absent in the URL, but it's on his own domain. If Miguel had his own domain, would you expect http://www.domainname.com/miguel?? And what about the php extension? Or .pl for Slashdot articles? Your post is just a moronic flame against something that really doesn't mean much in the first place.
10. Re:look at those URLs... by afd8856 · 2004-09-09 18:01 · Score: 1
  
  That nice URL structure can be just as well generated from a database. See for example URLs generated by Python web apps, such as Zope, an open source application server. And since when a blog has to be generated every time from a database? What about a "static" CMS, where you generate only one the pages, and if you modify them you just overwrite the previous static generated page?
  
  --
  I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
11. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:18 · Score: 0
  
  I think the point in the parent poster was also that the GUID blurt is difficult to remember. Maybe you could add some tinyurl/humanizer to those long URLs, next to the permalink button?
12. Re:look at those URLs... by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 18:18 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  in addition siince novell owns ximian and novell licenced unix copyright to SCO, SCO sold a licence to Microsoft. Microsoft licensed Java from Sun, Microsoft are evil so Sun withdrew the license. Microsoft copied unlicensed java technology into .NET, novell bought ximian, ximian own$ mono, mono is not under GPL / LGPL license or Microsoft shared source license. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit. The defense rests.
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
13. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:24 · Score: 0
  
  Plz make your links clickable
14. Re:look at those URLs... by mod_parent_down · 2004-09-09 20:01 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I saw the modding on this was Interesting, and I'm like Interesting?, This is the funniest damn Chewbacca Defense of Open Source I've ever seen!
15. Re:look at those URLs... by WWWWolf · 2004-09-09 20:46 · Score: 1
  
  The point isn't the permalinking stuff, it's that the URIs are human-readable and logical.
  
  Personally, I'm a big fan of date URI + per-story assigned ID anchor. This is what Blosxom uses: http://somewhere/blosxom.cgi/2004/09/10/#filename. With very little mod_rewrite hackery, it's easy to make URLs look very logical and underlying technology is also hidden: http://somewhere/2004/09/10/#filename
16. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:40 · Score: 0
  
  foo foo foo foo foo foo foo foo
17. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:54 · Score: 0
  
  The W3C recommendation on choosing URLs is to adopt opaque URLs. The point is apparently such URLs never need to be changed, which is somehow the holy grail of fixing the hot linking problem. This is all well and good for a site lik w3.org, which is a repository for standards which aren't supposed to be moving around a lot, but I think it's absolute hooey for most Web users. Maintaining permanent records of snap shots of your family you put up on the Web for a few days, or making sure to leave a 'hi, I moved my images offline' placeholder behind, is simply pointless and not going to happen.
18. Re:look at those URLs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 07:01 · Score: 0
  
  Chronological time stamps are generally considered bad. Logical "time" stamps (basically, monotonically increasing numbers, as you mentioned Radio uses) are superior. I believe date + logical clock reset each day are the best solution, preserving some context while avoiding the problems of chronological stamps. Millisecond UTC, while acceptable in practice, has flaws in theory, which are probably acceptable for blogging software, but which would be unacceptable in many other possible Web applications. All chronological methods also rely (to varying degrees) on a reliable clock mechanism.
PLEASE STOP WITH THE SENSELESS LINKS ALREADY by null+etc. · 2004-09-09 13:55 · Score: -1, Offtopic

This is a call to arm, sent out to all sensible /.ers. PLEASE, DO NOT embed senseless links within your story submission. It goes against the ethics of every data purist out there to have to mouse over words like "interesting" and "debate", carefully examining the status bar URL, to find out WTF that link points to. Enough already.
1. Re:PLEASE STOP WITH THE SENSELESS LINKS ALREADY by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:41 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  This is a call to arm, sent out to all sensible /.ers. PLEASE, DO NOT embed senseless links within your story submission. It goes against the ethics of every data purist out there to have to mouse over words like "interesting" and "debate", carefully examining the status bar URL, to find out WTF that link points to. Enough already.
2. Re:PLEASE STOP WITH THE SENSELESS LINKS ALREADY by aussie_a · 2004-09-09 14:46 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  You mis-spelt arms. You typed "arm" when it should be "arms."
3. Re:PLEASE STOP WITH THE SENSELESS LINKS ALREADY by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  I agree with the parent. "Arms" is mispelled. However, the parent neglected to provide a link to the corrected word.
4. Re:PLEASE STOP WITH THE SENSELESS LINKS ALREADY by jsahol · 2004-09-10 00:07 · Score: 1
  
  http://opera.infoplease.com/search.php3?in=diction ary&query=mis-spelt
5% most interesing nugget of info by bstadil · 2004-09-09 14:03 · Score: 1

What on earth is the 5% other Operating Systems in this link ?
Amiga? or the "dying" BSD?

--
Help fight continental drift.
1. Re:5% most interesing nugget of info by beavis88 · 2004-09-09 14:07 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Windows 3.1
  
  Although I'm joking, it wouldn't really surprise me...
2. Re:5% most interesing nugget of info by PeterPumpkin · 2004-09-09 14:21 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Mostly cellphones and pocket PC's. And then the BSD's, Amigas, HP-UXes, etc.
3. Re:5% most interesing nugget of info by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:25 · Score: 0
  
  Plus Solaris, and all the other unix versions (including BSD, yes). Also Mac may refer only to OS X, with Mac OS 9 etc put in "other". And stuff like PDAs running various weird and wonderful OSes.
4. Re:5% most interesing nugget of info by Frizzle+Fry · 2004-09-09 14:50 · Score: 1
  
  I'd imagine must of it is unix flavors other than linux.
  
  --
  I'd rather be lucky than good.
Architecture Philosophy by FlutterVertigo(gmail · 2004-09-09 14:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've said this before, here and elsewhere: WGHIII[1] has said several times in the past (and was at conferences in the mid '90s when & where he said them): "...people do not want bug fixes - they want new features...". This is frequently borne out by the underlying architecture Microsoft presents in their products. A semi-stable underpinning, capable of supporting certain elements is put into place such that products & features can be built upon that architecture. "Patching Architectural Holes" (Security, Stability, etc.) can be fixed via patches later[2]. Unfortunately, this means users suffer frustration for a semi "feature rich", unstable product, and developers discover situations where they write "three sides around the barn" when the pieces don't fit together as the philosophy would lead one to believe.

There are other companies which spend a lot of time on the architecture - almost to a fault - knowing once it is solid, they can add the users' heavily desired features without worry about the stability beneath it.

All developers know about both scenarios as they either crave and know the the outcome if they are permitted to put the architectural stability in place or they are forced to charge ahead with building on top of wet toilet paper.

[1]William Henry Gates 3rd
[2]Providing a vendor is even willing to do so. And the question begs to be answered: How unstable can an architecture be such that patches can be safely made to it (without risking screwing the pooch) to make an improvement? Remember the "three sides around the barn" development? What happens to developed code if the OS suddenly "works" correctly?

Just remember....
______________________________________
My Trunk Monkey can beat up your Trunk Monkey.
http://www.suburbanautogroup.com/ford/trunkmonkey. html
1. Re:Architecture Philosophy by asr_man · 2004-09-09 16:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There are other companies which spend a lot of time on the architecture - almost to a fault...
  
  As in FSF Gnu Hurd?
  
  In the limit of taking your sweet time getting the architecture right, you risk something else coming along and getting enough of it right to scratch the feature itch before you do; from that point your market irrelevance is proportional to the difference in delivery dates.
  
  No one is in a hurry to get on the wrong track, but assuming your competitors aren't totally stupid there is an equally unpleasant consequence for being the last one out of the station.
2. Re:Architecture Philosophy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:37 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  The problem is, they didn't get it right. Mach is one of the worst microkernels out there. For a good microkernel, see the L4 Fiasco kernel. Linux has already been ported to it:
  http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/LinuxOnL4/
Two observations by jvmatthe · 2004-09-09 14:10 · Score: 5, Interesting
- Microsoft talking design and technologies out in the open with other developers who aren't Microsoft employees? Even talking with Free software advocates? Man, that's good to hear, honestly. If this were system-wide, I bet it'd be good for both sides.
- Reading Miguel mention that many APIs (Avalon, Tk, Swing, GNOME, Xview, Motif) at least gives one the impression that he might actually know what he's talking about. Let me give him the benefit of the doubt. It makes me wonder how many Microsoft employees have that much understanding of non-Microsoft APIs. Probably plenty, but the few I have encountered seem so immersed in Microsoft culture that they appear to have little understanding of what's going on outside of the Microsoft sphere.
Now, I should say that I'm no real programmer, but I've done some. The "real" programming I've done is computational code that runs in the console, with a couple of GUI front ends. So, I'm not going to claim any kind of serious perspective on this.
--
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
1. Re:Two observations by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 15:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  "Microsoft talking design and technologies out in the open with other developers who aren't Microsoft employees?"
  
  Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft's developers do. Check out the MS Research site and the stuff they have released (like that project on Sourceforge).
  
  I've always said there's a big difference between the "large scary corporation" and the employees. The employees are humans like everyone else. It's only the company as a whole that's done anything truly wrong.
2. Re:Two observations by grcumb · 2004-09-09 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  "Reading Miguel mention that many APIs (Avalon, Tk, Swing, GNOME, Xview, Motif) at least gives one the impression that he might actually know what he's talking about. Let me give him the benefit of the doubt."
  
  What a spendid idea!
  
  But why stop there? While we're at it, why don't we look at his development track record, at the innumerable public talks he's given, and, lest we forget, at the applications and development environment he's designed and developed in the past?
  
  "I should say that I'm no real programmer..."
  
  I'll have to agree with your assessment, because if you did know what you're talking about, you'd be a troll.
  
  --
  Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
3. Re:Two observations by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:51 · Score: 0
  
  The employees are humans like everyone else. It's only the company as a whole that's done anything truly wrong.
  That seems a really strange way of looking at it. The company is little more than it's employees. And certainly all decisions, right or wrong, are made by those employees.
  Could you elaborate on what you were saying? Certainly looking at the Bill and Melinda foundation, Bill Gates is one of the least evil and most good people on the planet. I think it is these other microsoft employees making the evil decisions.
4. Re:Two observations by chrisan · 2004-09-09 16:26 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm glad you like that we are listening. As for outside the cathedral thinking, I wish I spent more time on technologies that weren't MSFT based, but I keep pretty busy. I have used Java, Cocca (a little), and KDE (a tiny bit)... I totally agree that broad base of understanding is key to actually creating good software.
  
  --
  ChrisAn http://blog.simplegeek.com
5. Re:Two observations by Wateshay · 2004-09-09 16:43 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I'm glad to know Miguel has at least a passing familiarity with GNOME. Otherwise he'd be much harder to take seriously. [/sarcasm]
  
  --
  
  "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
6. Re:Two observations by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 17:05 · Score: 1
  
  "Could you elaborate on what you were saying?"
  
  Sure. It's the collective culture of multiple people. When the US makes bad policy decisions, do we naturally assume those are the decisions of the American people. Of course not. They're the decisions of a few leaders meant to represent many different viewpoints.
  
  I don't think there's ever been a situation at Microsoft where all of the company's employees agreed entirely with the direction of the company. Corporate decisions are more compromises than anything.
7. Re:Two observations by killjoe · 2004-09-09 18:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  "It's only the company as a whole that's done anything truly wrong."
  
  Huh? How did the company do the wrong things without the humans that work for the company?
  
  Everybody who works for MS has to shoulder the blame/credit for everything MS does. They all help whether directly or indirectly. You don't get a pass just because you are nice guy, your salary is what it is because your company is an asshole and the people who run your company are immoral bastards.
  
  --
  evil is as evil does
8. Re:Two observations by phfpht · 2004-09-10 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  Hmmm?
  
  So is *every* American responsible for President Cheney and his puppets and their personal war^h^h^h^h power grab? (hears resounding yes from international community)
  
  Is every German alive during WWII responsible for Hitler and his war?
  
  Is every Muslim responsible for the Taliban?
  
  Is every French/English/Belgan responsible for atrocities in colonial Africa (during that time, which wasn't so long ago) and the aftermath they're still dealing with now?
  
  Is every Russian (or former memeber of the Soviet Union) responsible for Stalin?
  Their Afghanistan?
  
  Is every Catholic responsible for pedophile priests?
  
  Is every Christian responsible for Jerry Falwell?
  
  Is every Japanese responsible for Pearl Harbor?
  
  Atrocities in occupied China?
  
  Is every Canadian responsible for Celine Dion? (hears resounding yes from international community)
  
  Just be careful in overly broad assiging of blame.If you aren't, then you're probably guilty and should be executed along with the rest of us.
9. Re:Two observations by mcbevin · 2004-09-10 02:31 · Score: 1
  
  Everybody who works for MS has to shoulder the blame/credit for everything MS does. They all help whether directly or indirectly. You don't get a pass just because you are nice guy, your salary is what it is because your company is an asshole and the people who run your company are immoral bastards.
  
  No. Everyone in the company who takes part in making any decisions has to take any blame/credit for those decisions.
  
  However the bottom-of-the-rang programmers are not to 'blame' if someone higher up makes some immoral decision. The programmers are simply doing their job, and most likely what they're doing has nothing to do with any 'evil' going on (one _could_ try and argue that if they were ordered to say write some code to do something immoral that they would share responsibility for this, however even that is not a clear-cut argument, and that is not the case here anyway).
  
  The worker may have chosen the job for salary reasons, just as everyone has a right to consider salary in looking for jobs. This however doesn't make them bear any moral responsibility for receiving this salary, just like some Enron engineer doesn't bear any responsibility for some top Enron manager choosing to rip America off of a few billions.
  
  As another analogy, I also don't consider every American 'guilty' for the fact that they're American, even if all Americans might be to some degree benefiting from some very immoral government policies worldwide (there go my karma points .... but take the CIA overthrowing the government in Guatemala to defend US business interests). Sure, the benefit to the average American is in such cases very tenuous, but so is the benefit of Microsofts 'evil' ways to the average Microsoft employee, so the analogy holds I would say.
10. Re:Two observations by killjoe · 2004-09-10 03:13 · Score: 1
  
  "However the bottom-of-the-rang programmers are not to 'blame' if someone higher up makes some immoral decision."
  
  I disagree. The people in the bottom rung work to earn the company money thereby enabling the decision makers. They must shoulder some of the blame.
  
  "I also don't consider every American 'guilty' for the fact that they're American, even if all Americans might be to some degree benefiting from some very immoral government policies worldwide (there go my karma points .... but take the CIA overthrowing the government in Guatemala to defend US business interests)."
  
  Again I disagree. We are a democracy and thereby have voted in the people who act in our name. We very much are the blame for everything our govt does. BTW we are responsible for our countries actions much more then Iraqis were resposible for Saddam because they were not a democracy.
  
  " Sure, the benefit to the average American is in such cases very tenuous, but so is the benefit of Microsofts 'evil' ways to the average Microsoft employee, so the analogy holds I would say."
  
  I'd say that your salary was ample benefit.
  Again
  
  --
  evil is as evil does
11. Re:Two observations by killjoe · 2004-09-10 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  "So is *every* American responsible for President Cheney and his puppets and their personal war^h^h^h^h power grab? (hears resounding yes from international community)"
  
  Yes because we elected him and he is acting in our name. It looks like we are about to re-elect him too which makes us doubly responsible.
  
  "Is every German alive during WWII responsible for Hitler and his war?"
  
  Yes because he got into power by democratic means.
  
  "Is every Muslim responsible for the Taliban?"
  
  No because the taliban was only in afghanistan and got into power by military means. They were not elected. Oh and the afghans in the north had a protracted war against them and they are muslims too.
  
  "Is every French/English/Belgan responsible for atrocities in colonial Africa (during that time, which wasn't so long ago) and the aftermath they're still dealing with now?"
  
  If the atrocities were committed by their government and they elected those governments then yes.
  
  "Is every Russian (or former memeber of the Soviet Union) responsible for Stalin?"
  
  No because it's not a democracy the people had no say.
  
  "Their Afghanistan?"
  
  Same as above.
  
  "Is every Catholic responsible for pedophile priests?"
  
  Nobody voted for the priests did they?
  
  "Is every Christian responsible for Jerry Falwell?"
  
  Same as the taliban.
  
  "Is every Japanese responsible for Pearl Harbor?"
  
  Kind of. Japan was a monarchy but pretty much all the japanese supported the army. They are not only responsible for perl harbor but also responsible for the atrocities committed by their soldiers in east asia.
  
  "Atrocities in occupied China?"
  
  Still not a democracy.
  
  "Is every Canadian responsible for Celine Dion? (hears resounding yes from international community)"
  
  Did anybody vote for her?
  
  "Just be careful in overly broad assiging of blame.If you aren't, then you're probably guilty and should be executed along with the rest of us."
  
  I am sad to say you are a typical american. You can only see the world in black or white. In your feeble brain there is only 100% blame and 0% blame. Unless you are ssigned 100% of the blame then you must be blameless. The real world does not work like that.
  
  In your overly simplistic view the only person shouldering the blame for dropping the atomic bomb was the shlub who pushed the button. The pilot who flew the plane, the navigator that targetted the city, the general that gave the order, the president who made the decision and the people who voted for that president are all blame free and float happily in heaven while the poor bombodier burns in hell.
  
  --
  evil is as evil does
12. Re:Two observations by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:12 · Score: 0
  
  This is simply incorrect:
  
  as a US citizen, frequently you DIDN'T actively choose to be US (did your mother ask you before you were born whether you intend to be a US citizen? ;-), whereas in the Micro$oft case, it IS a conscious decision to start working for them.
  So yes, a M$ employee may be blamed rather easily for working for such a terribly ill-behaving corporation.
13. Re:Two observations by PSC · 2004-09-10 09:15 · Score: 1
  
  Everybody who works for MS has to shoulder the blame/credit for everything MS does.
  
  Riiiight. Just as some lowly developer is responsible for (or has any influence on) an upper level manager who is bullying vendors and/or competitors with next-to-illegal means.
  
  Or how about some G.I. serving for example in Ramstein who hasn't fired a shot in anger for months. Should he shoulder the blame for a few evil freaks torturing Iraqi army regulars? Hell no.
  
  Insighful my asshole. You cannot blame someone for something (s)he's no influence on.
  
  --
  --- The light at the end of the tunnel is probably a burning truck.
14. Re:Two observations by smallguy78 · 2004-09-10 09:58 · Score: 1
  
  The marketing,sales,legal departments are the ones everyone vents their anger for. I'm sure the 5000 or so developers MS has were/are as keen to have a secure operating system that is bugless, as any open source developer.
  
  --
  Nothing costs nothing
15. Re:Two observations by Forbman · 2004-09-10 10:36 · Score: 1
  
  ...then instead of Avalon, why not piss off Apple and call it Coca, for the effect that Microsoft *DOES* hope it will have?
16. Re:Two observations by killjoe · 2004-09-10 16:08 · Score: 1
  
  "Riiiight. Just as some lowly developer is responsible for (or has any influence on) an upper level manager who is bullying vendors and/or competitors with next-to-illegal means."
  
  The lowly programmer works hard every day earning MS money. MS then takes this money and spend it in evil ways. Don't tell me the lowly programmer didn't help at all.
  
  --
  evil is as evil does
17. Re:Two observations by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-11 17:03 · Score: 0
  
  An intelligent post, I'm shocked.
  
  Thanks for thinking for youself instead of following the crowd.
The openoffice.org thingy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:16 · Score: 0

OpenOffice was renamed OpenOffice.org to avoid a trademarked name conflict iirc.
Changing employer by Lalakis · 2004-09-09 14:21 · Score: 0, Flamebait

> Mr. Icaza is now working for Microsoft, and he
> spends his energy on porting Microsoft ideas and
> projects to the Linux platform(s)... So why he
> criticizes Microsoft plans in the public?

It's obvious, he wants to be in the payroll of Microsoft and stop working for them for free. All these years of hard work should be rewarded!
I hereby announce... by sploo22 · 2004-09-09 14:22 · Score: -1, Offtopic

In the finest tradition of Slashdot...

PWN3D!

--
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by ShatteredDream · 2004-09-09 14:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

A number of my peers like to bitch about how "Swing is hard to learn" and I get called an elitist for laughing at them. Of course, unlike most of them I have tried to learn other toolkits and have come to the conclusion that Swing's design really is the de facto gold standard for how a GUI toolkit should be arranged for practical development. It is fast, extremely logically structured and the documentation is really straight to the point for when you need to look stuff up.

I could never get used to Windows Forms. It still amazes me that the layout manager concept isn't considered a standard part of the UI toolkit design process now. Developers shouldn't have to automatically manage most GUI layouts.

--
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
1. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by sporty · 2004-09-09 14:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Amen! The idea that a widget is an object, that can listen for events, such as being clicked, or scrolled or something, is what OOP is all about. Something can have attributes and do something.
  
  More-so, the "most difficult" layout manager is actually the simpler. GridBag. Even if I assign the constraints and add widgets in haphazard order, so long as i set the x and y right, they go in the right place. It is almost like html in how it works, except html requires ordering of the statements.
  
  So please, tell me.. why is swing difficult? It's overwhelming because people don't do graphical stuff from the getgo, just like tk and what not. The difference is, swing just makes sense. Now it's not to say others DON'T make sense. perl/tk makes a lot of sense too, but the oop in perl is weak, so it's easier to make tpyos and screw things up once in a blue moon... especially sans strict.
  
  --
  -
  ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
2. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Medieval_Gnome · 2004-09-09 14:58 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, I easily could be missing something, but isn't that almost the exact method that GTK2 uses (at least in more OO languages like Python)? I must admit to never programming in swing since java and I don't get along well, but it sounds like swing and GTK share the good points. If any can confirm/deny, I would honestly appreciate it.
  
  --
  :wq
3. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by jenkin+sear · 2004-09-09 15:08 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Swing isn't hard to learn - it just runs like crap, even on fast hardware.
  
  --
  What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
4. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Trelane · 2004-09-09 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  They're certainly similar.
  
  Difference is that Java has different layout managers (GridBag being but one), whereas (so far as I can tell; am just a beginning gtk programmer), there is but one layout manager, but you can lay in components that effectively control the layout (hbox, vbox, etc.) In java, you select the layout manager; you don't put in different components that control layout.
  
  --
  
  --
  Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
5. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:49 · Score: 0
  
  Totally GridBag
6. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:36 · Score: 0
  
  Ever use the Cocoa/NeXT stuff?
  
  As a general programming model, it *still* blows all of this stuff away.
7. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:11 · Score: 0
  
  > More-so, the "most difficult" layout manager is actually the simpler. GridBag. Even if I assign the constraints and add widgets in haphazard order, so long as i set the x and y right, they go in the right place
  
  I never ever expected to read "layout manager" and "widgets [...] in the right place" in the same sentence wihout a negatve somewhere.
  
  Do yourself a favour. Try this: http://developer.apple.com/tools/interfacebuilder/
8. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by master_p · 2004-09-09 20:31 · Score: 1
  
  If people complain about Swing being hard, then what can it be said about Avalon? The Avalon's Button class is number 11 in the class hierarchy...
  
  Swing is probably the most elegant GUI toolkit, along with Qt.
9. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 21:26 · Score: 0
  
  It is almost like html in how it works, except html requires ordering of the statements.
  
  a) HTML is not a layout language.
  b) HTML is not a programming language; it doesn't have statements.
10. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by rikkus-x · 2004-09-09 21:37 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I could never get used to Windows Forms. It still amazes me that the layout manager concept isn't considered a standard part of the UI toolkit design process now.
  
  Er, Windows Forms has layout management.
  
  It's not as powerful as e.g. Qt's but it's easy enough to handle from the form designer and simple enough to understand.
  
  Rik
11. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by sporty · 2004-09-09 22:49 · Score: 1
  
  1. HTML can be used as a layout language, though it should not under new specs. You can put two things next to each other and in relation to each other by putting them in cells.
  
  2. Of course it has statements. (table) starts a table, (/table). If you feel like mincing words, call it markup. It's all the same. A token that denotes some sorta meaning.
  
  --
  -
  ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
12. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:21 · Score: 0
  
  HTML can be used as a layout language
  
  No, it really can't. HTML has no definitive visual rendering.
  
  Of course it has statements.
  
  A statement, in the context of computers, is an instruction. Look it up. HTML has no instructions, it doesn't "do" anything. It's a data format, nothing more. You might as well say that plain text "has statements" because it contains newlines.
13. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by krumms · 2004-09-09 23:26 · Score: 1
  
  Gtk Layout Containers
  
  The ones I frequently find myself using:
  
  GtkTable - which is much like GridBag without the need of the overly verbose GridBagConstraints object.
  GtkHBox
  GtkVBox
  GtkHPaned
14. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by sporty · 2004-09-09 23:50 · Score: 1
  
  Almost the same. Except one is in OOP fashion, which lends it self to ease in widget manglement. Structs and what not are fine, but tend to be harder to weild, in my opinion. :)
  
  Even perl's implementation of oop lends itself to nicer toolkit integration. For c, you have to cast the pointer and start doing funky stuff to imitate it with structs holding functions. :)
  
  --
  -
  ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
15. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:10 · Score: 0
  
  As far as I understand it, the "boxes" are effectively layout managers. You have hbox, vbox (as you noted) and also a fixed position box for Windows-style positioning. You choose your box type and put the widgets in it -- same as a layout manager. I don't think the current gtk version has a many different LMs as Java though.
16. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by GeekBoy · 2004-09-10 01:18 · Score: 1
  
  Too bad swing is slower than snot. (At least it was a couple years ago when I used it last.)
17. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Trelane · 2004-09-10 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  Sure. My point was, though, that in Java, you don't add different components with the layout you want; you select a layout manager. In gtk, you don't select the layout manager, you add in components.
  
  Small difference in some ways, big in others.
  
  --
  
  --
  Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
18. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Nurgled · 2004-09-10 03:03 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  To sum up: in GTk+, a "layout manager" is just a widget with other widgets contained in it, while in Java a layout manager is a special construct separate from widgets which is assigned to any widget which is a generic container.
  
  In practice, I generally prefer GTk's approach, but I see merits in both approaches.
19. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Trelane · 2004-09-10 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  Right. I dunno if I like gtk or java's more; they have their high points and their low points. *shrug*
  
  --
  
  --
  Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
20. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by baldyman · 2004-09-10 06:21 · Score: 1
  
  the more I use swing the more I appreciate its flexibility:
  don't like hourglasses? want a wait control that superposes a transparent laptimer over the whole frame? no problem.
  Don't like the default tooltips? want to roll your own that jump out like little thought bubbles? easily done.
  Want to splice together a tree and a table to create a new hybrid? try
  If you can imagine it, you can implement it; and that, to me, is the appeal of programming.
21. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by geiseri · 2004-09-10 13:12 · Score: 1
  
  ummmm Qt anyone?
  
  Qt has one of the most powerful layout engines, and their GUI designer makes building actually resizable GUIs that support i18n out of the box quite trivial. Once you get past the mantra of "C++ is so hard" its actually very easy.
  
  I actually dont write GUI code any more, I just use the implementation from their autogenerated code. Its quite impressive, you should try it sometime.
22. Re:Ease of use and elegence with GUI toolkits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 02:16 · Score: 0
  
  JTable
  
  Over 150 public and protected attributes and methods and an entire sub-package full of classes. Not one of them lets me colour a row in the table.
  
  That is how I view Swing. It's a large feature rich very well OO oriented GUI toolkit. Clearly designed by several incredibly clever people. However it seems that the people who developed Swing hated each other and seem to have spent their time underming each others modules by introducing barrel loads of quirks. Any particular part of Swing is clear and easy to use, however combing parts of Swing soemtimes brings me out in a rash and casues a headache. Doing anything beyond the default operations (for instance colouring a row in a table either by a button press or automatically by data values) is a descent into a minfield of inter-related abstract classes, interface, factory methods, listeners and the like, none of which actually do what you want/need them too but all of them have to be altered.
  
  And lets just say when I find the person responsible for the design choices behind StyleContext we will have a little chat.
debate? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Since when were 3 commentless blog posts considered a debate?
1. Re:debate? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:27 · Score: 0
  
  Since the Federalist Papers?
Ignoring standards by kidlinux · 2004-09-09 14:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Chris Anderson replied with the following in regard to ignoring standards.

Interestingly enough, we never "ignored" standards. We spent a huge amount of time understanding and evaluating the existing standards. SVG and CSS both were passed on because they weren't adaquate to meet our needs. WinFX is a platform for the next decade or longer - we can't start with a base that doesn't meet our needs.

What a load of shit. That mentality is where the "embrace and extend" came from. It might not meet Microsoft's needs, but CSS and SVG are the bloody standards that people are using! What do they know about the coming decade that we don't?

What Chris said pretty much flies in the face of the entire paragraph that Miguel wrote! Look:

I understand why someone would invent their own version of SVG or their own version of CSS: those standards can be difficult to implement, and growing your own version is a lot simpler than having to adapt an existing model to a new model.

I would have probably done the same if I had been in their position: its easy. But I would think that Microsoft has a higher responsibility towards the developer base that must create tools that interop with third party components: creating a new standard for graphics just because its `easy' is not really a good answer.

Implementing SVG might have problems and limitations, but the advantages outweight these problems: there are plenty of tools today to produce and consume it and it fits better with the rest of the industry. A benefit that Avalon users will not have and will just partition the industry again for a fairly poor reason.

Standards are there for a reason. If Microsoft doesn't like them they can see figure 1. I have a feeling that Microsoft may not dislike the standards themselves, they just don't like the fact that they're not their standards.

--
-kidlinux.
1. Re:Ignoring standards by Tumbleweed · 2004-09-09 15:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  SVG and CSS both were passed on because they weren't adaquate to meet our needs.
  
  Well, if one were to use Microsoft's implementations of SVG & CSS, I totally agree. :)
2. Re:Ignoring standards by Trelane · 2004-09-09 15:45 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  What do they know about the coming decade that we don't?
  
  They know that they have a monpoly and a disinterested userbase and thus they know that they can push anything down our throats that they want and most people won't care.
  
  We (anyone who's not part of Microsoft) have no such knowledge nor power.
  
  --
  
  --
  Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
3. Re:Ignoring standards by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 15:55 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  If you write to their standards you belong to them.
  its write once, run anywhere (maybe (careful now)), subscribe to msdn for life suckers!
  
  "I would think that Microsoft has a higher responsibility towards the developer base"
  
  try shareholders miguel. their developers are just another corporate asset (see sig).
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
4. Re:Ignoring standards by Isomer · 2004-09-09 16:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I remember reading something by some ex-microsoftie. One of the comments he said stuck in my mind. he said that it's not that microsoft doesn't like standards, it's more that if you follow a standard, then you're admitting that you can't do better than the standard. Why use opengl when you could change a whole heap of things to make it "better" and have directx instead?
  
  Which seems to me to miss the point of having standards. The value in standards isn't in whatever the standard specifies, it's the fact that everyone else is implementing the same standard.
5. Re:Ignoring standards by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:44 · Score: 0
  
  We (anyone who's not part of Microsoft) have no such knowledge nor power.
  
  Well, we do know that we're disinterested. :-)
6. Re:Ignoring standards by rd_syringe · 2004-09-09 17:44 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  What a load of shit.
  
  Hmm. Only because "M$" is saying it. If Linus said a particular API or technology wasn't useful for the kernel's needs, you'd be praising his insight.
7. Re:Ignoring standards by spectecjr · 2004-09-09 18:20 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Interestingly enough, we never "ignored" standards. We spent a huge amount of time understanding and evaluating the existing standards. SVG and CSS both were passed on because they weren't adaquate to meet our needs. WinFX is a platform for the next decade or longer - we can't start with a base that doesn't meet our needs.
  
  What a load of shit. That mentality is where the "embrace and extend" came from. It might not meet Microsoft's needs, but CSS and SVG are the bloody standards that people are using! What do they know about the coming decade that we don't?
  
  Would you care to explain to the crowd what you think CSS and SVG are "standards" for?
  
  From what I've seen, they're standards used on web pages.
  
  Avalon is not a HTML-based UI. You don't write web pages for the UI for Longhorn. So which bit of CSS and SVG do you think would be sufficient without modification to be used for generic client-side API use?
  
  HTML, by the way, was never meant to have an IMG tag. By your logic, it still wouldn't have one today. Similarly, we'd only ever use 7-bit ASCII and not Unicode.
  
  --
  Coming soon - pyrogyra
8. Re:Ignoring standards by Brendan+Byrd · 2004-09-09 19:48 · Score: 1
  
  HTML, by the way, was never meant to have an IMG tag. By your logic, it still wouldn't have one today. Similarly, we'd only ever use 7-bit ASCII and not Unicode.
  
  This difference is that the IMG tag was added through the proper channels. Plans were discussed, other tags were added, the standard was refined. Nothing was a rushed fuckjob for the simple fact of looking cool. Security, functionally, and everything else was thought through.
  
  Microsoft can do what everybody else does and get stuff added through the proper channels. If they want to complain about it taking too long, or ideas getting rejecting because the security model is fucking stupid, they can see Figure 1.
  
  --
  Zodiac Survey
9. Re:Ignoring standards by Quixote · 2004-09-09 23:18 · Score: 1
  
  I can imagine this scenario in a courtroom:
  Anderson: Yes, your Honor, I did drive on the wrong side of the road and didn't stop at the red light.
  You see, driving on the right side of the road and stopping at the signal would have delayed me a little, and didn't adequately suit my needs.
  So, can I go free now?
  What.. erm... jail? Huh? Wait! WAIT!! My needs come before the needs of the rest of the society!!!! Waaahhh... ouch... please take it easy with the handcuffs, Mr. Policeman, my wife uses them all the time and they hurt...
10. Re:Ignoring standards by hattig · 2004-09-10 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  CSS is used to describe how HTML elements appear. It can equally be used to describe how GUI elements appear. In fact anything that has elements could use CSS to describe how it looks. Documents, Spreadsheets, Database Browser, Calendar, Email, your IM sessions and contact list, icons, menus ....
  
  SVG is a vector graphics format. It has nothing to do with web pages, most web browsers don't even have support for it built in. In terms of a desktop that might have to scale up to display readably on a 2560x2048 LCD display scalable elements are essential. And SVG works today. Tools exist to create and manipulate it. There are dozens of SVG iconsets for Gnome. I'm sure that a combination of SVG + CSS to render GUI elements would work fine ... It'd be better than current pixmap theming which doesn't scale nicely.
11. Re:Ignoring standards by chrisan · 2004-09-10 00:54 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I tried to expand on my comments in my next post... "First, an old post from Joe Beda about SVG and XAML. Second, dismissing the CSS debate isn't really fair. A critical part of our design is unification. We didn't want one markup model for vector graphics, one for styling, one for 3D, one for data, etc. Another part of the unification was "Markup == OM", that is, we didn't want a separate markup programming model from code. HTML is this way, the markup and the code have a loose relationship. If we ignore the unification debate, I can understand how it seems simple to say "you should have used SVG". Avalon is a developer platform. We want to enable an entirely new breed of applications that span UI, graphics, and media. Integration of typography with imaging with video with controls with styling is a core part of our value proposition. We aren't trying to create a new 3D system or animation system, we are creating a new developer platform. "
  
  --
  ChrisAn http://blog.simplegeek.com
12. Re:Ignoring standards by philipborlin · 2004-09-10 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  Would you care to explain to the crowd what you think CSS and SVG are "standards" for?
  I won't defend CSS, but SVG is used to render icons for GNOME (any KDE people who know if KDE uses it too?). Also, there is a Java toolkit by Apache called Batik that allows you to add SVG support to Swing apps (along with all the other uses of Batik). SVG's are great for rich client apps if you want your images to scale up as people increase the font size - It helps keep the screen looking balanced.
13. Re:Ignoring standards by Abcd1234 · 2004-09-10 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  From what I've seen, they're standards used on web pages.
  
  Then you're be wrong. Both Inkscape and Sodipodi are tools along the lines of CorelDraw, and guess what, they use SVG as their format! SVG is designed as one thing: a format for specifying vector-based images (along the lines of, say, PostScript or PDF). Nothing more. It can be combined with CSS, ECMAScript, and other technologies for doing other things (eg, displaying graphics on a webpage, or even doing flash-like animations). But SVG is most definitely *not* used just for "web pages".
14. Re:Ignoring standards by Forbman · 2004-09-10 10:32 · Score: 1
  
  ...or, say, "why not do it this way instead, and it improves X by a factor of 2, halves the time spent doing Y, and reduces the memory footprint by 30% to boot?", along with a reference implementation to boot (to which you can double the numbers above with your own implementation of the standard)?
  
  Now you've improved a standard to support your base more, you've improved good will amongst a group of people who are out to hate the playah, and not the game, etc., and just been an overall good team player for the whole industry, instead of trying to cut off everybody's heads and shit down their throat holes?
15. Re:Ignoring standards by spectecjr · 2004-09-10 10:39 · Score: 1
  
  Then you're be wrong. Both Inkscape and Sodipodi are tools along the lines of CorelDraw, and guess what, they use SVG as their format!
  
  And they use GTK+ as their toolset. SVG as it stands is NOT a good way to go for UI design + development.
  
  --
  Coming soon - pyrogyra
Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:42 · Score: -1, Troll

And why do we care?
1. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:46 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  Here's a picture of him .. he looks like a fagot.
2. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 14:49 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  He's some mole hired by microsoft to create ports of microsoft technologies to linux but with "legitimacy" of an open source hacker that microsoft could never get if they did it themselves.
  
  Also by having Miguel do the porting microsoft can deny that they ever ported anything to linux therefore not giving linux any added legitimacy but giving their own products legitimacy.
3. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 15:58 · Score: -1, Troll
  
  he is a troll
  
  --
  Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
4. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:28 · Score: 0
  
  A troll Who usually posts as the Bungie(192858) except in gnome/mono/KDE/ruby/python threads where he openly trolls and has even been known to argue with him/herself. Yes we know.
5. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:58 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  You and I both know what I say is true, that's all that matters.
6. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:36 · Score: 0
  
  Faking someone else should be strongly discouraged, but maybe not by modding down. When he actually does defame Miguel, he gets modded down properly. Of course, the Karma system at Slashdot has some decent flaws, and this is very obviously one of them. (Bad usernames posting good things.)
7. Re:Who is Miguel de Icaza ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:05 · Score: 0
  
  I am not sure what you mean by your post
  It looks like you misinterpreted somewhat.
  Anyways if you meant what I think you meant...
  
  bless you
same old same old by Miguel+de+Icaza · 2004-09-09 14:53 · Score: 0, Troll

1. embrace & extend svg & xul by anouncing avalon/xaml vaporware
2. sit on hands as svg & xul die
3. profit

--
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
1. Re:same old same old by _undan · 2004-09-09 16:00 · Score: 1
  
  This is why I love Slashdot.
  
  The people we talk about actually talk back.
2. Re:same old same old by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:11 · Score: 0
  
  post your email address below or make visible in your prefs (to save some karma) if you would like a gmail invite. (offer applies to undan 804517 only)
  
  you are why i love slashdot indeed
  
  tmdit
3. Re:same old same old by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 22:02 · Score: 0
  
  Are you a newb? Cause that ain't miguel.
4. Re:same old same old by DrWhizBang · 2004-09-10 01:00 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The people we talk about actually talk back.
  
  Yeah, except this isn't one of them. Look here for the real Miguel.
  
  --
  Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
5. Re:same old same old by _undan · 2004-09-10 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Aha. Bollocks. I feel stupid. Cheers, man.
  
  *tries to discretely hide the packaging he recently arrived in*
6. Re:same old same old by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:19 · Score: 0
  
  I hope not always. The moment Bush posts on /. is the day I quit being a geek and go out with the in-crowd and get laid. On a second thought, forget Bush. I need to get laid now!
No, it doesn't... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:01 · Score: 0

"Hard core" means "death march."

No, it doesn't! It means things done right. It means things done so that a definitive API with expandability for the furure may be developed that doesn't have to be scrapped and started over because everyone working on the project was brain-dead and so desperate for a quick solution to meet looming deadlines that a poor implementation was chosen over no implementation at all.

Microsoft... where do you want to go today? To hell!
Following Standards? Right! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:04 · Score: -1, Flamebait

"... Interestingly enough, we never "ignored" standards. We spent a huge amount of time understanding and evaluating the existing standards...."

I guess he is talking about Microsoft's efforts in programming. It is certainly not true elsewhere with MS. Take for instance the new Microsoft online music store. If I use a W3C complient HTTP client that isn't IE (or risk security issuse adding ActiveX to your HTTP client), you can't use or view their site correctly. Hum, no customer HTTP client choice there. And certainly not W3C complient. So tell me about following standards again.
About inheritance and the API by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 15:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

Miguel makes a semi-interesting point, but Mr. Microsoft makes a better one: why on earth would the average programmer be rooting upwards through the class tree 10 or 11 levels?

The whole point of abstraction is that Joe Programmer knows "button" derives from the next highest object. That's it. It's nice to know the other levels when you're learning the language's abstraction model for the first time/creating it, but once you get into down and dirty practical programming, you only really need to look up and down a few levels. If you're going all the way back up to Object and reconfiguring it, you're reinventing the wheel. That was the language designer's job.
1. Re:About inheritance and the API by caseih · 2004-09-09 16:15 · Score: 1
  
  Umm, maybe because he has to in order to make something function the way he wants to? GTK has a clean inheritence tree, and I can, if I need to, grab methods out of the parent class in a completely sane and clear way. Honestly, I think GTK is better designed than Swing. It should be a model GUI api.
2. Re:About inheritance and the API by SilentChris · 2004-09-09 17:01 · Score: 1
  
  "Umm, maybe because he has to in order to make something function the way he wants to?"
  
  Exactly. HIM. I agree it must be a pain in the ass to translate all of that to Mono. However, his statements are blanketing: basically he's saying multiple layers of abstraction are bad in a GUI. Not true at all.
3. Re:About inheritance and the API by IrresponsibleUseOfFr · 2004-09-09 17:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The average programmer doesn't care the the hierarchy is 10 or 11 levels deep (well at least until the next avalon release comes out). But Microsoft should care, and Ximian also cares. Very deep inheritance hierarchies are tough to maintain. Inheritance is a pretty intimate binding of two classes and changes higher up in the hierarchy sometimes have disasterous changes down the line. From a talk that I heard Stroustrup give, he doesn't care for them much either. (I didn't attend this one, but I imagine it is the same based on the slides.)
  
  In this day and age, the commonly accepted wisdom is that you break functionality into interfaces and you write shallow helper classes to degalate to for common implementations of those interfaces. (C# is quite possibly the best language there is for supporting this architecture.) This way you don't force the user to use implementations they don't want when they want to program to a particular interface in your system.
  
  If you look at the code for eclipse, you'll see a good example of this design in action.
  
  --
  Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! -Homer Simpson
4. Re:About inheritance and the API by master_p · 2004-09-09 20:43 · Score: 1
  
  In the blogs they say that class Button is 11 levels deep in the class hierarchy. The large class diagram is the result of cleaning up the OO model; in previous versions, most of the functionality went into class 'Control', which it had many properties, some unused by inheriting classes.
  
  There is a programming paradigm that is way better for GUIs than the object-oriented one: the prototype-based paradigm: instead of inheriting classes, classes are cloned and new functionality is added as needed. This paradigm allows for maximum reuse of properties and methods, without the mess that an OO model brings.
5. Re:About inheritance and the API by jcr · 2004-09-09 23:28 · Score: 1
  
  Honestly, I think GTK is better designed than Swing.
  
  Now, that's what I call damning with faint praise.
  
  How does GTK compare to a sharp stick in the eye?
  
  -jcr
  
  --
  The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
6. Re:About inheritance and the API by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:24 · Score: 0
  
  There is a programming paradigm that is way better for GUIs than the object-oriented one: the prototype-based paradigm: instead of inheriting classes, classes are cloned and new functionality is added as needed. This paradigm allows for maximum reuse of properties and methods, without the mess that an OO model brings.
  
  You're correct, but your terminology is a bit off. Prototype-based is still OO. The paradigm you're criticising as inflexible is class-based OO.
7. Re:About inheritance and the API by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  Care to back up that last statement, punk? They're not using Javascript to build Avalon, dumbass.
8. Re:About inheritance and the API by caseih · 2004-09-11 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  Have you actually ever used Swing before? Swing is one of the best designed GUI *apis* out there. Just because the implementation of the drawing routines was slow and the look and feel out of place on any OS doesn't mean the API wasn't well-designed (has a few java-isms, though). GTK is object-oriented through and through. Its api is very clean and fast.
Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by callipygian-showsyst · 2004-09-09 15:21 · Score: -1, Troll

...who thinks that murdering innocent women and children is prefectly OK.

--
Best Buy can have you arrested
1. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:31 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  When I first read this I said "huh" but then I see that Miquel De Icaza supports the Palestinean intifada, including all its violence. He has a link on his website to pro-intifada web sites.
2. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by easter1916 · 2004-09-09 15:38 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  One could say the same about anyone who supports any group involved in conflict, including those who "support our troops".
3. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Barlo_Mung_42 · 2004-09-09 16:52 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  This being the first time I've heard of Miquel De Icaza or EI I clicked on your link. What I found seems to contradict your statement.
  From the site:
  Q: What principles guide your work?
  EI: EI is committed to communicating the realities of life on the ground for ordinary Palestinians and challenging myths and distortions about them in the commercial media through analysis and our own reporting. EI is independent of any political, factional, ethnic, or religious affiliation, and bases its view of the conflict on the foundation of universal human rights and international law. The Electronic Intifada condemns all attacks on civilians, regardless of the perpetrators, yet encourages people to examine the structural roots and dynamics of violence in the conflict and the imbalance of power that perpetuates these dynamics.
  
  EI seems to be about the spread of information not violence.
4. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by JustAClam · 2004-09-09 19:05 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe you should read the articles on the site before you try to smear someone on a topic not related to this thread
5. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Polaris · 2004-09-09 23:59 · Score: 1
  
  Well, the word "intifida" is used by Arab terrorists to describe their murder of innocent civilians, so one would have thought that anyone *truly* dedicated to forwarding a non-violent agenda in the Middle East would have avoided that loaded word. Besides, since when do you judge an organisation by what they say about themselves? Do you believe what SCO or Microsoft say about themselves on their website?
  Also, since media bias is in general in favour of those who claim to speak and act on behalf of the Palestinians, it's difficult to understand why media activism would be required (see another perspective)
6. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:33 · Score: 0
  
  You wasted your time replying to an Anonymous COWARD trolling...
7. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Barlo_Mung_42 · 2004-09-10 04:11 · Score: 1
  
  "Besides, since when do you judge an organisation by what they say about themselves?"
  
  You think I should trust a /. AC more?
  The parent AC claimed Miquel was a terrorist sympathizer and posted a link that they claimed proved this. The link does not prove this and the AC provided no other proof so I call bullshit on him.
8. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Barlo_Mung_42 · 2004-09-10 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  Only because someone had wasted a mod point calling it informative.
9. Re:Miquel de Icaza is a terrorist sympathizer... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 07:25 · Score: 0
  
  Also, since media bias is in general in favour of those who claim to speak and act on behalf of the Palestinians, it's difficult to understand why media activism would be required (see another perspective)
  
  It is a common claim of those on the right of American politics that the two ends of the political spectrum are the Republican and Democrat parties, and that any media organization to the left of Fox News has a "left-wing bias".
  
  Needless to say, it's complete nonsense.
  
  So, let's have a look at the situation in Israel and Palestine:
  
  1. Which side has tanks, helicopters and the like?
  
  2. Who is building settlements in whose country?
  
  This is not to say that suicide bomings are a good thing - clearly going in to a restauant and blowing up civilians is a bad thing. But, and here's the elephant in your little worldview, so is driving tanks over people's villages and shooting their children. What word do the Israelis and their apologists use to describe that? Oh yes - a security action targetting known criminals...
They just don't get it by quanta · 2004-09-09 15:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

I do not think I could have solved a problem of this magnitude, am sure the complexity is huge and the Microsoft folks are doing their best, but maybe a change in the way that features are interlocked and how those are delivered to users must be rethought.
Well, yes it is complex. But it only appears complex because of a lack of abstraction. It is a matter of perception.

There has always been a big clash between the simple black box and the gazillion arugument camp

In case you haven't noticed, I favor the simple black box.

Let me just say that the reason why people don't fall over when they walk, or birds do not fall out of the sky when they fly is because of an interface which was designed with a very simple black box interface.

Enuf said. Either you get it or you don't.
1. Re:They just don't get it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:15 · Score: 0
  
  In case you haven't noticed, I favor the simple black box.
  Who are you? And why should anyone give a flying fuck what you think? In case you haven't noticed, this is a stage for dialogue, not pontification.
  Enuf said. Either you get it or you don't.
  Let me guess - you're one of those annoying pricks who always has to have the last word. I have a final word for you. ASSHOLE.
So? by servoled · 2004-09-09 15:44 · Score: 1

"My concerns stem from the fact that we do not want to waste our time with dead-end APIs as we are vastly under-resourced, so we must choose carefully."

So? Does he expect Microsoft to change what it is doing because they don't have the budget to port everything they are releasing? If you don't feel like it is a priority then fine, but I fail to see how that should factor into a analysis/review of the software itself.

Then again it seems to be increasingly rare for people to make unbiased decisions these days, so I guess I shoudln't expect anything less.

--
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
1. Re:So? by jjohnson · 2004-09-09 17:43 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Do you mean there was a time when people *were* making unbiased decisions?
  
  --
  Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Re:Coming soon Indows and Inux by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:57 · Score: -1, Flamebait

If you didn't notice, today's headline pointed out that US troops killed 22 gunmen, and 23 others, many of whom were children.

If you have a "Support Our Troops" sticker on you truck, and you probably do, then you think murdering innocent women and children is perfectly OK too...
Re:Coming soon Indows and Inux by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 16:02 · Score: 0

I'm waiting for the part where you tell us all how to disarm an enemy soldier without killing anyone, especially when said enemy soldier is hell-bent on killing you.

It's one thing to be an idealist or pacifist; it's quite another to actually implement it. Ask Ghandi's dead Indians how much fun it is to be a pacifist.
The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by miguel · 2004-09-09 16:09 · Score: 5, Informative

Hey guys,

Just wanted to point out that the inflamatory
comments that are being made in my name are someone
else's idea of fun. Some guy decided to squatter
the login `Miguel de Icaza'.

Miguel.
1. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:03 · Score: 0
  
  Really what gives it away?
  sig/email address/user homepage/bio/journal
  
  Jeeesus H Mods: Informative?
  Moderaters remember we should mod the comment not the user... parent is redundant (imho)
  
  who is the bigger troll, the troll or the troll who feeds the troll?
2. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:42 · Score: 0
  
  Faking someone else should be strongly discouraged
3. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:52 · Score: 0
  
  Perhaps, but there was nothing inherently trollish about his posts. You moderate the post, not the person. Think about how metamoderation is supposed to work. Also there seemed to be quite sine effort to make sure there was no confusion. Would anyone really believe the real miguel would really quote Balmer in his sig?
4. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:57 · Score: 0
  
  I seem to recall Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, Dark McBride, Bruce Perens and whoever runs the RIAA posting all the time.
5. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:15 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Miguel, you're a great developer... ! DEVELOPERS! developers! developers!
6. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Brendan+Byrd · 2004-09-09 19:53 · Score: 1
  
  You can tell by the 4-digit number in your name.
  
  --
  Zodiac Survey
7. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by don.g · 2004-09-09 20:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Wow, I never realised I was Miguel.
  
  I must tell all my friends. They will be confused.
  
  --
  Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
8. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 01:11 · Score: 0
  
  Get a life.
9. Re:The fake Miguel de Icaza posts. by JPelorat · 2004-09-17 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  Muy bueno!
  
  --
  Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Apple.. by BawbBitchen · 2004-09-09 16:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

so I will....

after years of programing I have come to the following:

1. Object-C rules. NeXT was the best.
2. Aqua is better thought out then any of this crap!

Just my 2 cents.

Oh, yes I am an Apple Fan Boy and proud of it!
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by prockcore · 2004-09-09 16:30 · Score: -1, Troll

2. Aqua is better thought out then any of this crap!

Except that Aqua is pixel based and cannot handle scaling.
Definintely. by sp0rk173 · 2004-09-09 16:51 · Score: 1

Oh dear God, this needs to be modded up. I'm seriously sick of extraneous linking.
1. Re:Definintely. by codemachine · 2004-09-09 19:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, but it seems to be the only way to get a story accepted. Or at the very least, it does seem to help you get picked above other similar ones.
  
  Another option is to wait a month until they've rejected everyone else's submission. By then it is old news, and they'll run it right away.
  
  Funny how this place works sometimes.
2. Re:Definintely. by bigman2003 · 2004-09-10 01:32 · Score: 1
  
  I'm tired of putting my comments into the discussion, and have some jackass write "where's the proof- show me the proof, or your comments are meaningless."
  
  Like a link to another website created by a bigger idiot than me actually is proof to anything.
  
  But I put the links in, just to pre-emptively shut them up.
  
  Although I was very happy that on a recent post I was able to link to a porn site, in context.
  
  --
  No reason to lie.
3. Re:Definintely. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 06:32 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, but did you notice that the "interesting" and "debate" in the story submission were two separate links? Yes, there are Web pages from two separate days. You might reasonably expect the "interesting debate" to be a single link. The other anonymous coward was complaining about senseless linking, not all linking.
Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:03 · Score: 0

Quote:

"In Windows today there is the secure desktop, but you must press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get to it first. "

He must be talking about pre-NT days, because he cannot be talking about their worthless taskmanager. Telling the taskmanager to kill a process is like a police officer telling Rodney King to pull his car over. In theory it should work, but most of the time is just ends with a system crash.

Dont believe me?? Well try developing M$ service application's for a living and see how many times you reboot your dev machine because of processes getting stuck in M$'s memory "wonderland". Annoying to say the least...
1. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by jdunn14 · 2004-09-09 18:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  As a windows developer (thank god I haven't done that in a few month at least) I have to agree with you about the annoyance of kill in taskmanager. However, the security from ctrl+alt+delete has nothing to do with task manager. That key combination is always caught by the operating system, not a running program. This means that the user can be sure that the interface brought up by pressing ctrl+alt+delete is provided by the OS, not some application.
  
  Think about stealing passwords. One of the easiest ways is popping up a real looking login box and then complaining that the user entered the wrong password and dumping out to the real one for the next password entry request. No user is going to be suspicious. Everyone assumes they slipped on the first try, but in a public lab situation this can be pretty effective. Can also get your ass tossed out of school these days.
2. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by the_B0fh · 2004-09-09 19:34 · Score: 1
  
  This means that the user can be sure that the interface brought up by pressing ctrl+alt+delete is provided by the OS, not some application.
  
  What a load of hogwash. You're telling me that VMWare and PCAnywhere are part of the OS when they trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE and ask you whether you want to use it locally, or send it to the remote computer?
3. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by beuges · 2004-09-09 21:26 · Score: 1
  
  I'm sorry, I write windows services for a living, and I haven't rebooted my dev machine in... 30 days now. Record was 134 days. Clearly you're not doing something right.
4. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 22:17 · Score: 0
  
  I used VmWare yesterday and when i press CTRL+ALT+DEL i get the Windows Security dialog box where i can Lock,Cancel and do other stuff. If I cancel I am returned to the desktop where VmWare tells me to use CTRL+ALT+INS instead.
5. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by Alioth · 2004-09-10 00:33 · Score: 1
  
  The old fake password dialog isn't that hard in Windows either - all you need to do is develop a replacement GINA (the bit Winlogon calls to popup the login screen), boot the machine with something like the Trinity Rescue Kit, copy in your new GINA, reboot.
  
  Then Ctrl-Alt-Delete will bring up your GINA instead of msgina. Capture passwords at your will.
  
  Of course, the price of entry is a bit higher than making a fake login: prompt at a vt320 terminal, but it's not that difficult for most programmers familiar with Windows (I wrote a complete replacement GINA for a retail application - including changing the GUI to make it look exactly like the rest of the touchscreen driven POS app, which is a hell of a lot more work than writing a simple gina stub for stealing passwords). There are docs from Microsoft on how to write replacement GINAs (and writing them is done - for example, if you're on a Novell network your GINA will be nwgina.dll)
  
  --
  Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
6. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 03:30 · Score: 0
  
  Eh??? Oooh a record of 134 days... so what, I know daemon writers who reboots once a year to do upgrades(kernel or hardware) for their boxes.
7. Re: Ctrl+Alt+Delete makes my M$ Secure?? by Nurgled · 2004-09-10 03:54 · Score: 1
  
  Applications can find out that it has been pressed (although they have to go to a bit of effort to do so) but they can't prevent Windows from recieving the message. Windows then switches to a completely different desktop (or "Window Station" as it calls them) to display the options window, so there is no way that running applications can display anything onscreen until the user dismisses the Windows Security window and is switched back to the primary window station.
  
  Of course, in order for this to be effective users must know this is the case, and in most cases they don't want to know about window stations and interrupts and things like that so it's enough simply to give a login screen which doesn't require Ctrl+Alt+Del; how many users are going to remember that they normally have to press this key combo and notice that today they didn't? Even some of those who do notice will assume that someone already pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del but walked off without clicking cancel after failing to log in.
English Please by Zebra_X · 2004-09-09 17:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

This guy is doing good things... helping mono is awsome.

I'm not trying to be Xeno Phobic but write in the language that people can best understand your arguments. Miguel's blog is a bunch of off the cuff un-supported arguments.

Un-supported only in the sense that there are no examples and/or references. He may be right but doesn't do a very good job expressing his thoughts.

It would be nice to see a better articulation of why it is that he's so concerned with Avalon, in the section about the developer needing to know a lot of the internals to implement code, he's very short on details of why this is. If your going to go to the trouble of jotting good thougts down in a blog - make them worthwhile.
1. Re:English Please by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 23:26 · Score: 0
  
  This is the problem with blogs, people don't understand that this is the equivalent of idle banter in a bar or cafeteria, and not a scientific paper or newspaper article.
  
  Miguel writes mostly for the ximian/mono/gnome developer crowd, not for random outsiders.
  Yes, his entries on avalon does leave a lot of details out, but for good reason - the people he's addressing either already know enough details to fill in the blanks or know where to find the details if they want to know more.
  He's casually addressing his peers, not writing infomercials for the unwashed masses.
Patent issues? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:29 · Score: 0

Isn't this kind of discussion rather lethal? What would stop Microsoft from doing the same thing they did with Sender ID? 'Royalty Free but non-transferrable'. Is that why they are acting more open and saying .NET stuff will be RF patented? Are we sitting on a landmine?

It's all fine and good if Miguel's plan is to license them for use in Mono if needed, but that means it's more useless than Java to the Free Software world.
.NET by rd_syringe · 2004-09-09 17:39 · Score: 1

If you've looked at .NET, you'd see that they have. MFC is dead.
1. Re:.NET by Billly+Gates · 2004-09-09 18:22 · Score: 1
  
  I thought .net only made calls to the MFC and is more like a wrapper/hack?
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
2. Re:.NET by Keeper · 2004-09-09 20:05 · Score: 1
  
  You thought wrong. Taken at the most basic definition, they're the same thing -- at the core they're all making calls to Win32. The difference is in the design and implementation. .Net forms are lightyears better using than MFC.
3. Re:.NET by Billly+Gates · 2004-09-09 21:18 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks
  
  I am not a windows developer and I new it was a wrapper to something. I guess the win32 api is the answer.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
4. Re:.NET by Keeper · 2004-09-09 21:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Calling it a wrapper really underestimates what it does. It essentially transforms UI programming on windows from a painful contorted nightmare to something enjoyable. The implementation under the hood does indeed call Win32 methods, but calling it a wrapper implies a simple 1:1 correlation between what Win32 does and objects/method calls in the forms library (which is not true).
  
  However, I suspect that line of thought comes from a lack of understanding of how little Win32 really does ...
5. Re:.NET by Hway · 2004-09-10 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  So, in other words, Microsoft finally managed to "innovate" something that (for example) Borland has been doing for what, ten years now?
6. Re:.NET by Keeper · 2004-09-10 06:57 · Score: 1
  
  If you think borland made programming Win32 "easy" you're smoking crack.
Worry About Your Own Short Commings by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 17:50 · Score: 0

> Perhaps the most shocking revelation is the
> absolutely horrendous inheritence hierarchy
> exposed by the Avalon API.

Good grief. This coming from a GNOME luminary
which said project uses Gtk? Gtk is a piss-poor
toolkit. They should have stuck with the X model
of toolkit implementation. Instead we got stuck
with a toolkit which doesn't integrate well with
X and doesn't particularly stand well on it's
own. Get your own house in order first.
1. Re:Worry About Your Own Short Commings by Trejkaz · 2004-09-09 18:16 · Score: 1
  
  I sometimes imagine how neat it would be if Windows was reworked to use Qt for everything, instead of Qt sitting on Windows...
  
  --
  Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
2. Re:Worry About Your Own Short Commings by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:12 · Score: 0
  
  That's sad man, just sad.
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 18:09 · Score: 0

Noooo, Quartz is based on a PDF-like model.

Icons, and the decorations on the widgets (such as buttons) are currently done with bitmaps, but there's no technical reason they couldn't switch to resolution-independent graphics for those elements.

Aqua would scale *now* though certain elements would be somewhat blocky at larger sizes.
PDF like? by Da+VinMan · 2004-09-09 19:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I don't know anything about Quartz, so this has piqued my curiosity. By "PDF-like", do you mean to say that Quartz is based on Postscript? And it's fast???

Now, THAT would be a thing to behold.

--
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
1. Re:PDF like? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 19:40 · Score: 0
  
  display postscript, yeah. It's vector and via opengl hardware accelerated.
2. Re:PDF like? by tyrione · 2004-09-09 19:45 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Quartz is Display PDF.
  When I worked at NeXT and then Apple during the merger and a year afterwards, we had the big financial decisions to rip out Display Postscript which NeXT co-developed with Adobe on the basis that Adobe would not negotiate on terms regarding the licensing fees they charged to use Postscript.
  
  So Engineering designed Quartz to utilize all the Postscript primitives ala PDF and since Adobe already opened up PDF the financial issues were resolved. The addition of compositing and all the fancy Quartz Extreme capabilities came from years of Window Server development at NeXT and Apple.
  
  Hands down the most brilliant and accessible group of people to work with and learn from. If California wasn't so damn expensive I never would have left. I have not remotely been around such talent since leaving in mid 98.
3. Re:PDF like? by jcr · 2004-09-09 23:20 · Score: 1
  
  Quartz is Display PDF.
  
  Well, sort of.
  
  Quartz is several things, actually: There's the Quartz Compositor, which is the process that actually owns the display hardware. Then there's Quartz 2D, which is a client-side shared library that implements graphics primitives that follow the Display Postscript imaging model. (Path construction functions like moveto and lineto, rendering functions like fill and stroke, etc.)
  
  Because Quartz 2D and PDF have this common imaging model, it's trivial for any set of Quartz 2D API calls to generate a resolution-independent, PDF description of an image instead of rendering into a window. Whether you get PDF data or a rendered image depends on the context. In a PDF context, the commands to draw a circle get recorded as the appropriate PDF operators. In a raster context, the commands cause the circle to be rendered to a raster at the device resolution.
  
  I point this out, because I find that many people have the misconception that Quartz keeps PDF data around, and runs it through a PDF interpreter every time you need to draw something in a window.
  
  -jcr
  
  --
  The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
4. Re:PDF like? by jcr · 2004-09-09 23:25 · Score: 1
  
  Quartz 2D has the same imaging model as Postscript, PDF, and SVG. It's built around the concept of paths that you build up with path construction operators, which are then filled or stroked. It's quite fast, and for that matter, so is Postscript.
  
  Postscript has gotten a bad rap for many years, mostly because most people's impression of its performance was skewed by Microsoft's brain-dead implementation of PS output from their apps.
  
  Try running PS output from MS Word through the PS Distiller sometime.
  
  -jcr
  
  --
  The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Has anyone tried out Athene desktop by pkphilip · 2004-09-09 20:21 · Score: 3, Informative

I wonder if it is possible for Rocklyte to implement 3D rendering features like in Avalon in their Athene Desktop.

I have tried out Athene and it is very fast - they claim over 25% speed increase to X11.. This is a complete alternative to X11 but can also run X11 apps.. Try out the free version http://www.rocklyte.com/athene/. You can run games on the desktop using SDL.. they have a version of Doom and Quake available for download as well.

I was very impressed with both the desktop as well as the underlying technologies - the desktop is scripted using an XML-like language called DML..and the engine used is called Pandora.

The graphics driver technology is based on SNAP graphics from SciTech and seems very easy to manage.

My two primary gripes with the system were that the licensing seems a little restrictive.. and also, the package management software seemed very weak (if you are using the OS).

But other than that - a very polished desktop.. and underlying API. Most impressive.. Definitely the most innovative and cutting edge Linux desktop and distribution around.

Also wonder if there is a move to implement Windows Forms (for Mono) using the Pandora Engine SDK.
it is an MS issue by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 20:39 · Score: 0

"This isn't a Microsoft, Linux, or Java issue"
The whole point is that it *is* a Microsoft issue. Java is seldom used to write viruses because it is difficult to do. This is because Sun thought about security when the designed the thing in the first place. Linux is pretty secure, too, partly by design and partly in the nature of OSS model iteslf. Windows is not secure and cannot be (consider, for instance, that any application can post an event in any other applications event queue). To misquote Douglas Adams the reason that the fundamental deign flaws in Windows are seldom experienced is because they are entirely hidden by the superficial ones. SP2 has been largely and extensively debunked for the lipstick on a pig that it is here.
object model by smallguy78 · 2004-09-09 20:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

The object hierachy does look horendous for buttons compared to .net 1.1/2.0 which has System.Object System.MarshalByRefObject System.ComponentModel.Component System.Windows.Forms.Control System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase System.Windows.Forms.Button I hope .net doesn't go the way of the java framework - complex and unintuitive - as this is what attracted me to .net from java in the first place, the excellent hierachy of the classes, the extra functionality and also the extra bit c# has. Having said that, Chris Powell does point out that it's not even beta yet...

--
Nothing costs nothing
1. Re:object model by smallguy78 · 2004-09-09 20:48 · Score: 1
  
  Some newlines to <br>'s please?!!
  System.Object
  System.MarshalByRefObject
  System.ComponentModel.Component
  System.Windows.Forms.Control
  System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase
  System.Windows.Forms.Button
  
  --
  Nothing costs nothing
2. Re:object model by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-09-10 01:46 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  On the Right of the Preview button is a little combobox that lets you select the format of your post. Just choose "Plain old text" if you don't want to use any html.
  
  --
  Like what I said? You might like my music
3. Re:object model by Teckla · 2004-09-10 06:35 · Score: 1
  
  So your argument is that:
  
  System.Object
  System.MarshalByRefObject
  System.ComponentModel.Component
  System.Windows.Forms.Control
  System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase
  Windows.Forms.Button
  
  Is more intuitive than:
  
  java.lang.Object
  java.awt.Component
  java.awt.Container
  javax.swing.JComponent
  javax.swing.AbstractButton
  javax.swing.JButton
  
  Sorry, but they don't seem that different, as far as intuitiveness goes, to me...
4. Re:object model by Forbman · 2004-09-10 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, I think that was the point he was making, which is very similar to the hierarchy in VCL (you know, Delphi) to TButton.
  
  The MS's side of the debate seems to want to take a quite different tack into the wind, as it were. So Anders Hjeilberg isn't in control if this part of the project, it appears...
5. Re:object model by smallguy78 · 2004-09-10 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  I wasn't comparing .net's button to swings, i was comparing version 1/2 to the new avalon model.
  
  As far as drawing is concerned, dot net 1 probably draws about as well/fast as the most optimised swing app does, fortunately the .NET team have improved their winapi wrapper calls to be a lot speedier in version 2.
  
  --
  Nothing costs nothing
Eat there own dog food by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 21:11 · Score: 0

From the simplegeek (Microsoft) guy.

'I actually really do understand some of the technical and political reasons why everyone (Real, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) participate in these format wars, but in the end it is consumers that pay. '
Well, it pays your salary!
A lot of developers for Linux don't care for formats. They just make everything work the same - xine, mplayer vlc.
Then some app is build upon this technology - and bazaam, both Ipod, CD's and music players can 'play' every format.
Why? Because the developers wanted it. In Microsoft and Apple it would be a disaster if they suddenly had support for the other standard (their own standard would loose).

So get your ass out Chris - com*friggin*plain to your Boss. If you think it is hurting you - a technology expert, how do you think the rest of the world is feeling towards Microsoft?
It is the same problem with .doc, but in this case it is much more than a music experience taking place.

As Miguel said - please start to cooporate, in the long run it is best for both of you.
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-09 21:11 · Score: 1

How is something that doesn't provide any evidence or arguments at all considered insightful?
Blind fanboyism doesn't get you anywhere ...
Display driver, not GUI subsystem by chiph · 2004-09-09 23:03 · Score: 2, Informative

With NT 4.0, they moved the display drivers into the system space, not the entire GUI subsystem. This was for performance reasons.

I knew it was a bad idea, and I'm sure that there are those at Microsoft (Dave Cutler, probably) who thought it was a bad idea too. But it's a tradeoff, and at the time the business risk was considered acceptable because they had a driver certification program, and they were going to make sure that drivers would behave themselves.

Chip H.
1. Re:Display driver, not GUI subsystem by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-10 00:31 · Score: 1
  
  Nope, I'm pretty sure the windowing system is done at kernel level as well (things like message routing definitely are). If you have specific evidence that the GUI objects are run in a standard userspace process I'd like to see that - what is the task name, for starters.
2. Re:Display driver, not GUI subsystem by FuzzieNorn · 2004-09-10 01:53 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You're correct. It used to all be in CSRSS, now the window management and the GDI code is in kernelspace. Not actually 'integrated' into the kernel as you were arguing further up the thread, though; just provided as another kernel-level service.
  
  This talks about the transition between the NT 3.51 userspace model and the NT 4 kernelspace model for GDI and the such.
3. Re:Display driver, not GUI subsystem by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-10 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  I guess we disagree on the meaning of integrated. As far as I'm concerned, the kernel is what lives in kernelspace, therefore if something is running in kernel mode it's a part of the kernel.
4. Re:Display driver, not GUI subsystem by Foolhardy · 2004-09-10 04:43 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Everything on an AS/400 runs at the same privldege level; it's secure because users can't make executables on the system without using the trusted compiler. Under your definition of the kernel, everything everywhere on an AS/400 is part of the kernel.
5. Re:Display driver, not GUI subsystem by chiph · 2004-09-11 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  I thought the AS/400 had a 65th bit that indicated privledge level? Chip H.
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by jcr · 2004-09-09 23:06 · Score: 1, Insightful

Aqua is pixel based and cannot handle scaling.

I infer from the sentence above that you don't really grok what Aqua is.

Aqua is the look & feel of Mac OS X: the shape of the scroll bar elements, the standard window title bars, the way that modal dialogs "slide out" from the window they pertain to, etc. IOW, Aqua is appearance and behavior. To say that it's "pixel based" is meaningless.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Was not Avalon a super-killer-dangerous thing? by TaQ · 2004-09-09 23:20 · Score: 1

Seems that was the way that Miguel used to see Avalon, and the almost-defunct WinFS (check out ReiserFS4 metadata, btw), but now, surprise, is not!

Check this out:

"They are all fine points of view, but what makes Longhorn dangerous for the viability of Linux on the desktop is that the combination of Microsoft deployment power, XAML, Avalon and .NET is killer. It is what Java wanted to do with the Web, but with the channel to deploy it and the lessons learned from Java mistakes."
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Ap r-24.html

"Avalon will be a lot easier to write than the previous ActiveX; it's a lot prettier, so when organizations are using Longhorn-based machines, which I assume will be sold everywhere by 2008, it's going to be increasingly hard for the rest of us to get there unless we have an implementation of an equivalent technology."
http://www.theserverside.net/common/printthread.ts s?thread_id=27453

"Longhorn has kind of a scary technology called Avalon, which when compounded with another technology called XAML, it's fairly dangerous. And the reason is that they've made it so it's basically an HTML replacement. The advantage is it's probably as easy as writing HTML, so that means that anybody can produce this content with a text editor."
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/04/28/inter view_with_miguel_de_icaza_cofounder_of_gnome_ximia n_and_mono.html

So, what was all that crap that he told us "fear Microsoft, you morons, we need something like they have to have more 'competition' there" about?

A big FUD? A way to try to implement and waste time with, all we know, some probabily vapourware or with a product that does not work well? Think about WinFS. He also used to say that it will be the doom for all the Linux users don't have a stuff like that, but even the Microsoft users will not have a stuff like that, at least the way all the utopic dudes wants to!

Now that the technology owner is in trouble with it, he says that it's a lot of shit? Oh, come on.

The big point here is that, with some effort, you don't need Microsoft programs anymore to do what your company needs to run your computers. And we don't need people trying to convince us that WE NEED THEM if we really don't need. Gimme a break.
no img tag! by oliverthered · 2004-09-09 23:40 · Score: 1

just use embed instead.

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
New reply by bonniot · 2004-09-09 23:42 · Score: 3, Informative

New reply from the Microsoft guy.

--
Watch great movie opening scenes!
Conspiracy Theory. by fatgeekuk · 2004-09-09 23:58 · Score: 1

Hmmmm,

OSS has more developers than Microsoft as a whole.

Microsoft has more developers than Mono alone.

Mono is tracking Microsoft APIs.

Would microsoft choose to generate a mass of APIs, wait to see which one MONO follows and then deprecate it?

Nahhh... couldnt possibly do that!

That would be mean!
Mach isn't even a microkernel by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 00:31 · Score: 0

The key problem with the microkernel debate is that there were few true microkernels around at the time. Mach (the only freely available microkernel at the time) was a perfect example of how *not* to write a microkernel. The microkernel is about as big as Linux itself and it's slow. It's little surprise that Microsoft integrated tons of stuff in to their Mach microkernel. It would be pig slow if they didn't

If you want an example of how a "microkernel done right" looks like, take a look at the L4 kernel.

BTW, Linux *has* been ported to this real microkernel:
http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/Linux OnL4/
It's a bit slower than regular Linux but not noticably so and it gains all the advantages of a microkernel design.
Isnt there already an Avalon? by nitehawk214 · 2004-09-10 00:47 · Score: 1

Hmm typical MS blinders. As they have forgotten that there is already a project with this name.Apache Avalon is a API/Framework for java.

--
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
1. Re:Isnt there already an Avalon? by sonamchauhan · 2004-09-10 16:14 · Score: 1
  
  Easy does it... :)
  I expect MS would use plainer names when Avalon is ready for general release.
  
  Remember "Chicago" and "Cairo"?
Listen Folks by codepunk · 2004-09-10 01:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wrote software on a windows platform for years. The problem with MS is that it is first and foremost a marketing driven company. They don't release any software unless it somehow ties you to the operating system.

I don't want to be chasing their tails I like technically driven solutions. If you want to make me a linux developer happy give me this. Take mozilla and make it a real development platform. Put a nice clean api on it and let me use mozilla to write all of my software so it will run fast on anything. This is what I want, doing so would neutralize the platform, the only thing I care about.

--

Got Code?
Microkernels and stuff by Arker · 2004-09-10 01:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

You make some good points. But remember a few other things.

NT is (or at least was) a microkernel. That's been compromised considerably with poor decisions later on, but you can't consider it a monolithic kernel - it's really a hybrid kernel that started as a microkernel and then adopted some monolithic practices.

On the other hand, Linux started as a monolithic kernel, and clearly still is, but it's incorporated an awful lot of that 'modular design' logic when it made sense to Linus, and in some ways could be considered closer to a microkernel. You don't see the UI running in kernel space, obviously, while NT, the ostensible microkernel of the pair, does exactly that. Linus started with a monolithic kernel and adopted microkernel-ish logic wherever it made sense to him, whereas MS started with a microkernel and imported monolithic logic where it made sense to them.

So the labels can be a bit confusing when applied to the real world. There isn't just A and B, but all sorts of possible variations and permutations with some features of each.

L4-Hurd, I agree, will be something very sweet, when it's finally ready, but it does seem to be a dish that needs a very long simmering time.

Lastly, I'm not sure who you're listening to, but obviously not people worth listening to, if they're saying that binary-only drivers are a good thing. They aren't. Linus doesn't support them, the Linux development model doesn't support them, they are strictly not to be encouraged. Anything that discourages them is probably a good thing.

--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Obligitory Reference #42: by bujoojoo · 2004-09-10 02:01 · Score: 1

"My name is Miguel de Icaza. You killed my development environment. Prepare to die."

--
This space for rent
bill and bull debate. by flibberdi · 2004-09-10 02:32 · Score: 1

This reminds me of the kind of debate that goes on in the corp world. Say, two guys (good guy, bad guy) argues the right way of using a product.
One of the (good guy) says, "Well, Yea ... I agree that everybody needs this soap, but it should be used with warm water",
the other guy answers "No, no no no! It can be used with both cold AND warm water!". To add to the cred, the "disussion"
turns ugly (now, this reminds me of the 2 dudes Bush&Kerry) and they start to throw soaps on eachother. Whereupon the good guy proceeded to take
that mittenful of the deadly soap crystals and rub it all into his (bad guy) beady little eyes with a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of
this area (this sound familiar), Well he (the bad guy) was very upset, as you can understand And rightly so, because the Deadly yellow snow crystals had
deprived him of his (hang on, yellow snow?? This is a RIPOFF!!).

Ehhrr ok, this has turned a itzy bit OT, so I wish U all a nice holiday!

Cheers.
Exposes too much? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 03:31 · Score: 0

One of Miguel's complaints is that Avalon exposes too much? This is actually something I *like* about Swing.

Let's say you project that involves storing a little extra info with each character in a text editor. Each character has unique info, so you can't efficiently use the usual sorts of mechanisms...what you really need is to replace the core storage model of the editor, so that each character is 64 bits, with a few extra methods to pull those out.

In Swing, this is easy to do, because it exposes every component of the text editor. The storage object implements a simple interface, so it's easily replaceable. I haven't found any other API that allows this.
IMG is a bad example by Nurgled · 2004-09-10 03:37 · Score: 2, Informative

IMG was added for Mosaic in one of the first short-sighted decisions which led to the mess that was later called HTML 3.2. When submitted for peer-review (your so-called "proper channels") people suggested that maybe it would be better to make a more general embedding element and that it should be a container so that backward-compatible content could be included inside. The ALT, element, if you think about it, is useless for this because no previous browser knew to look there! Also, it can only support plain text, so more "rich" alternatives such as a link to another document or even just a few paragraphs of text are not an option.

Mosaic developer said "tough luck, I've already written it" and released it as it was. Since Mosaic was the biggest browser at the time people quickly sucked down this new IMG element and everyone was forced to co-operate.

To me, this sounds like exactly what Microsoft is doing. IMG was a quick hack with little forward planning just to get images into web pages as quickly as possible. Mosaic and then later Netscape continued this trend by adding poorly-considered features such as FONT, APPLET, EMBED and framesets which are now, thankfully, deprecated in current W3C specifications in favor of better thought-out and more general features. Sadly, W3C's versions have buggy support in most current browsers. (They haven't replaced frames, but I suspect that's because it was a pretty bad idea in the first place, so the best thing to do is just to avoid it.)
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 04:26 · Score: 0

How is something that doesn't provide any evidence or arguments at all considered insightful?
Blind fanboyism doesn't get you anywhere ...

Wow. As they say: "You must be new here". On Slashdot, blind fanboyism (as long as the object of adoration is Linux, Apple, or Kerry/Dems) gets you all the mod points you could want!
Consider Just What Was Writen by Miguel by LifesABeach · 2004-09-10 04:54 · Score: 1

i wish someone had the time to separate the facts from this discussion.

microsofts 'avalon' is the 'next version' of software to come out of redmond, ok.

i submit the following tensor:

microsofts' ( avalon ) < Hardened ( Linux + mozilla + openOffice + Apache + mySQL/PostSQL + Perl/PHP/Java/Mono )
My favorite quote by David+Leppik · 2004-09-10 04:55 · Score: 1

Imagine Outlook viruses gone wild.

Imagining... imagining... nope, can't do it. Must not be possible. :-)
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by prockcore · 2004-09-10 06:57 · Score: 1

Aqua is appearance and behavior. To say that it's "pixel based" is meaningless.

What I mean is that controls are absolutely positioned. Avalon and Gtk and Qt are container based, controls are positioned based on the containers they are in.
Re:Hum, Notice no one has said anything about Appl by jcr · 2004-09-10 08:35 · Score: 1

What I mean is that controls are absolutely positioned.

No, they can move and resize based on their resizing attributes.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
- Microsoft astroturfers call Icaza "zealot" by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-10 11:05 · Score: 0

- Microsoft apologists mock /. programmer defenses of Icaza

- Mods find mocking funny, mod them up

- Insightful discussion of topic is stifled