Slashdot Mirror
Avalon Preview Released for XP
CliffH writes "For those that want to play with a preview release of Avalon (the November Community Technology Preview) and the SDK, head on over to this page and download to your heart's delight. It is 261MB+ and is already going slow so be warned."
From the article...
The company warns customers not to use it even on a primary development computer, with there being every likelihood of bugs and a pretty good chance developers will want to reinstall their system once they're done using the Avalon preview.
If Microsoft thinks it's that buggy, I don't think I wanna see it yet.
What really gets me down is the time I spent reading Charles Petzold's book on Win32 programming. 6 months of headscratching, all for nothing. I couldn't even sleep until the brain damage was complete.
Now I have to do the whole freaking thing over...
They must hate us more than we hate them.
"The goal is give developers a consistent set of APIs," or application programming interfaces, Montgomery said.
And they're doing this by adding ANOTHER set of graphics APIs to Windows, to complement the ones we have now, and the ones we had five years ago, and the ones we had five years before that, and the ones we had five years before THAT?
I don't get it.
Instead of discussing the technology (which is actually pretty cool...they do have smart engineers at Microsoft), I have a feeling this will be a bunch of +5 Funny Microsoft-bash posts.
:)
One third referencing some obscure GUI from the past where something almost like this has been done already, another third referencing some future project not released yet doing the same, and the rest a bunch of +5 Funny "jokes" rehashing old Microsoft jokes from the last eight years. Okay, I'm generalizing, but that's also what people will be doing about this.
Seriously, it looks like interesting stuff, and I can't wait to not only develop with it, but develop with the competing technologies that will also spring up as a result.
Oh, and for the record, before people say it--OS X does use the 3D card, but only for fast blitting. It is still 2D. Not actual 3D acceleration using hardware triangles like this, where you're dealing with a camera viewport and using meshes.
I don't know about the rest of you but i would rather bypass downloading a 250MB file and would just like to see some interesting screenshots.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Read this. This is a truthful essay. Of course it will be moderated down as blashphemy by the church of the linux zealots!
./* | grep -v sizeof', I discovered 4 exploitable vulnerabilities in a matter of 15 minutes. More vulnerabilities were found in 2.6 than in 2.4. It's a pretty sad state of affairs for Linux security when someone can find 4 exploitable vulnerabilities in a matter of minutes." - Brad Spengler
In light of the disastrous 2.6 development model that has given sysadmins everywhere a headache by introducing development code into a production line, Linux has signed its own death knell. With more and more people looking to alternatives like FreeBSD 5.x, OS X, and DragonflyBSD, Linux is slowly shovelling the dirt beneath its feet to dig its own grave.
Linux And Windows
Quite simply, the revolution against Windows has run out of steam. While Linux was a viable alternative in the days of Windows 98, when the rallying cry of geeks everywhere was "Down with M$, Linux never crashes," we now have the majority of the Windows userbase running NT-based operating systems. Except in cases of hardware or driver issues, reliability is no longer an issue in the comparison between Linux and Windows.
Eventually, the movement became one of security. In the years after its release, Windows XP was discovered to have several high-profile security flaws. Microsoft underwent a major code audit and released SP2. The rallying cry for OSS was now about security.
However, the community has discovered major flaws in the Mozilla software suite, including bugs marked "confidential" for years at a time. Additionally, major security holes have been appearing in the 2.6 line of Linux kernels, some having existed for years and affecting the 2.4 line. Declaring Linux to be the secure alternative is no longer as true.
Worst of all, the Linux kernel developers have no clear process, nor any clear contact person, when it comes to security issues.
Evidence: http://lwn.net/Articles/118251/
Evidence: Long-time shell-provider SDF used Linux until they got hacked into. Now, it's a 64-bit version of NetBSD.
Evidence: PaX discovered the mlockall hole. It was fixed in PaX for two years. Linux just now (2005) caught up.
Evidence: "Using 'advanced static analysis': 'cd drivers; grep copy_from_user -r
The New Linux Development Model
With the 2.6 line of kernels, a new model has been adopted that is considered easier for the kernel developers. Instead of branching a 2.7 line, following the model of odd-numbered version numbers denoting development code, everything is now being thrown into 2.6.
"Not all 2.6.x kernels will be good; but if we do releases every 1 or 2 weeks, some of them *will* be good. The problem with the -rc releases is that we try to predict in advance which releases in advance will be stable, and we don't seem to be able to do a good job of that. If we do a release every week, my guess is that at least 1 in 3 releases will turn out to be stable enough for most purposes. But we won't know until after 2 or 3 days which releases will be the good ones." -- Ted T'So
In other words, this Linux kernel developer believes it is perfectly fine for one in three kernels of the stable line to actually be stable. The new development process is anti-user. "Release early, release often" has outlived its reliability and applicability to the real world.
The excuse given is that Linus is only one man, and there are only 24 hours in a day. If that is true, than Linus needs to address this shortcoming of the process; otherwise, the process is poorly managed.
The Community Has Regurgitated Itself
In a frenzy of newbies, the Linux community has grown, with Slashdot as its rallying center. The cycle of self-feeding groupthink has created a userbase unable to see outside its own perceptions. This leads to unrealistic attitudes about the safety and stability of Linux and its applicability to various solutions.
you can and should provide multiple icon sizes
Why? You should only need one icon size.
(You are storing the icon as vector graphics and not a bitmap, right...?)
The last Windows you used must have been Windows 95. With all the Microsoft bashing going on (which I understand and rather enjoy) you should still be honest. A well set-up and firewalled Windows system can be very stable nowadays. Besides, your joe average won't need his system to stay up 24/7. I'm a definite power user, but I turn my system off when I don't need it for extensive amounts of time. The last time Windows crashed on me? I can't even remember it. If you're going to troll, at least bring up some constructive statements.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
"Anyway, you can run GUI-less windows servers on 2003 today. And even if you do choose to use the GUI shell for administering a Windows server ..."
This deserves a "Why does every MS apologist insist that Windows can be run without a GUI?"
Or, more accurately, "Why does every MS apologist insist that their half-dozen Resource Kit utilities adds up to Remote Administration Without a GUI?"
I'm constantly amazed that this kind of uninsightful crap that you consistently trot out over and over again gets modded up as insightful. Probably because of the fact that you are a drooling MS fanboy, you seem to forget perhaps the most important feature that this "coolness" comes with: Next Generation Secure Computing Base.
Yes boys and girls, underneath all the ooo, shiny is that wonderful bit of technology: Trusted Computing. You know, the kind of trust where your computer doesn't trust you? But I suppose you wouldn't want to yell too loudly about that particular feature of Longhorn, now, would you, since it paints MS in a less than favorable light?
So you can have your fucking spinning Notepads and videos looping in the background of windows--to me the price that comes with that technology is simply too high.
At the end of the day, you just have to face the fact that foo bar baz.
HD makers have decided that a 40GB drive is 40 billion bytes
That's because only tech dorks care that a GB isn't exactly 1 billion bytes. Most people that own computers these days were tought in high school that giga- means 10^9, not 1024^3. It's a difference that unnecessarily complicates things for users who don't care. In the world of marketing, simpler is better.
"I am psyched about Avalon. Here's why:"
I am not psyched about it and here is why.
99% of windows users won't give a flying fuck how their IE or outlook renders. They use their computers for email, web and maybe an occational word document.
99% of business users won't give a flying fuck about avalon because they spend their days inside outlook, excel and access.
99% of sysadmins won't give a flying fuck because they only log into servers once is a great while.
100% of linux users won't give a shit.
100% of Mac users won't give a shit.
So the only people who care will be 1% of the windows users who are geeks.
la di freaking da as they say.
evil is as evil does
Luckily for MS, businesses are less likely to do that. Of course, I've worked for places that did. Shamelessly.