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Windows Longhorn Beta for June Release
An Anonymous Reader writes "According to CNET, the Windows Longhorn Beta 1 is supposedly set for release this June. The Register has commentary on the delays the new OS has faced." From the article: "Longhorn was originally supposed to ship in 2004. In May, this year release was pushed back to 2005. This week Longhorn's availability has been delayed even further, with Microsoft execs declining to say when exactly the operating system might ship, eWeek reports."
... to beat "Tiger" to the punch.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I like the 'different ways of distributing throughout large corps' thing... in the way that it's basically code for "we're going to try another convoluted way of stopping corporate editions from being pirated. COUGH"
Methinks Microsoft is out to keep the next version of OS X, which is believed to be shipping at around the same time, from getting too much press.
XP seems fine to me. All my utilities, programs, and games are in working order and I have never had a problem with security. Why exactly should I udgrade? The only reason I stay on Windows is for the games, and unless Micosoft has some magic optimizations it pulls out of its ass, I dont see a new operation system on here anytime soon.
Considering the rate Longhorn is shedding features, I don't see why it can't ship on time.
Simply put, the shipping date approaches zero as the number of new features approaches zero.
Database-driven filesystems are sorta like nuclear fusion.
Marketing time to release is a constant in the range of 10-15 units of time. Actual time to release is the same -- but you use the next higher unit.
That is, WinFS has been 6-12 months away for about 15 years, and fusion power has been about 5-10 years away for at least the past 5 decades.
When the world wakes up and sees that Microsoft is asking them to upgrade yet-again they will either 1) jump at the chance or 2) ask what was wrong with XP. I think we need to be there to tell them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Despite it being modded as funny, my original post was meant to be taken seriously. Using versioned components on Windows has already been attempted and failed quite miserably, something Microsoft has aimed to change with .NET's global assembly cache.
Irokitt, I like your thinking. You have a suprisingly opened mind, which is something truely refreshing here on Slashdot. I have to agree that with all the hype built up over several years, will it truely be worth it? As a developer coming from a programming standpoint, I've already tried out the Avalon and WinFX APIs, and for me it is worth it. The real question is will it be worth it for the end users and will security finally be a first class feature rather than a footnote. I certainly hope it will on both counts.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Sort of like Debain:
I like it. GNU/Debian/Windows
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
A June beta release from Microsoft may or may not beat Apple's June final release, but Tiger's punch was the beta DVDs that went to all Worldwide Developers' Conference attendees LAST summer.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
Did anyone look at the date of the article? Even in the /. snippet it shows that 2005 is not written in present tense.
Microsoft delays Longhorn. Again
By John Leyden
Published Tuesday 2nd September 2003 10:55 GMT
Microsoft is far from being the only OS company who has had ever slipped a schedule, or reduced their deliverables. Or have their marketing types try to weasel their way out of it.
Besides, all that market pressure to release stuff early is what causes developers to lose sleep and relationships. Personally, I don't need a new version of Windows anytime soon. I'd rather wait for a fully baked version before giving my feedback.
Instead of going through all this fuss and bother, why don't we all give Microsoft whatever rope they feel they need to let them eventually hang themselves properly?
I'm sure Microsoft isn't going to say a word about Tiger, but my guess is they're no longer considering Apple the 98-lb. weakling as they once did.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
No, sustainable marketable Fusion is and has always been 25 to 30 years away from the day you first seriously dedicate your resources and time to it, since the 1970s. The ITER is only a stepping stone to saleable fusion and should reduce that to 10 to 15 years away once it is constructed and experience gained.
We know Fusion can work, but politicians are not committed to the longterm economy.
WinFS on the other hand is a marketting thing and not a science. Its arrival is as late as possible to slow the pace of innovation but not too late to lose control of the monopolistic market.
That article is from September 2003, yet the way it's quoted in the summary makes it sound like Longhorn has been delayed again this week, which is not the case.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Microsoft has many times in the past cut very important functionality all in the name of making release dates. This time they appear fairly serious about overhauling their development model and aren't allowing time to be a major factor.
Right, that's why they've dropped WinFS from the feature list. Again. What is this, the third Windows version that was supposed to have it?
~Philly
There is no technology in Longhorn that will convince people to start developing windows-only applications.
.NET who are shooting themselves given the rise of Apple, Linux, and other non-Microsoft platforms (cell phones, etc.).
Does there need to be? Seems like the majority of commercial software vendors already only develop for windows. Of course it's not going to convince the current exceptions (Adobe, Oracle, IBM) but then nothing short of a gun to the heads of the CEO's of those companies COULD convince them.
As it is, I look at all of the people who have written applications to
Why? Excepting Linux and OSX there pretty much are no other operating systems that have any signifigant user base. Linux users are not exactly known for rushing out to pay for software. And I don't think there are enough people using apple computers to keep ISVs up at night wishing they had went cross platform, either.
Some combination of Java and/or the Web is the way to go for the forseeable future.
I can certainly see benifit in going towards the web, just because of the ease of rolling out changes across an enterprise (update the server, everyone is updated). The cross platform there is just a (nice) side effect, though.
Just to let you know, though, as soon as OSX or Linux have the market share to make it profitable to develop for them is the day I start developing software for them.
Because microsoft don't say 'it'll be out when it's ready'. They give date after after date, breaking them each time.
And people who've bought the three year subscription 'upgrades free' licences feel like mugs because they listened to microsoft PR and got nothing out of it.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
As chance would have it I was actually at Microsoft's UK campus today and one interesting piece of information that was mentioned was Microsoft's long-term OS strategy which is to release a new full OS refresh every 4 years with a "feature upgrade" every 2 years between releases.
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This means that Windows Server 2003 is due a "feature upgrade" this year (XP had one last year in the form of SP2), with the XP replacement due in 2006 and Longhorn server in 2007. WinFS is likely to be included in a "feature upgrade" to Longhorn sometime in 2009.
Both Avalon and Indigo are likely to be available for current Windows platforms (2k3 and XP) although WinFS is, as widely publicised already, not going to be available even for the release of Longhorn.http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/under
Therefore, the chances of WinFS being available for 2000, XP or Windows Server 2003 is unlikely particularly in light of the fact XP mainstream support is due to end next December (2006) and Windows 2000 support actually officially ends in June this year! (see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh
The main reason for the WinFS delays, they stated was that they made the decision that its features would also benefit several other key products such as SQLServer and Exchange and the integration with these products/developer teams was worth the delay.
I suspect that the Longhorn team are victims of the old "moving target specification" problem that we've all dealt with. In other words, they get 80% of the way done and someone says, "Hey! Add this feature I just saw in Linux" or "add this media ability," or "fix this batch of security holes," or "how about making the code compile for both 32 and 64 bit systems," etc etc etc. Once they get 80% done again, the target moves again and they get stuck in a hell that engineers understand and fear. I'm interested to see if there's any features, other than security, that I'm really going to care about. What can Longhorn do that Windows XP SP2 can't do? Or more aptly, since I switched to linux a couple of months back, what can Longhorn do (besides play games) that Linux can't? Raydude
A Preview of Longhorn is available here.
A rather thorough documentation of the future featureset is available
here.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
1. The entire OS will be accessible through a set of managed APIs. This makes coding 10 times easier and faster, and raises productivity to unprecedented levels. This also makes buffer overflows and some other security issues a thing of the past.
.NET code on your machine. Kind of like applets, but the entire webapp will be built out of them. Just think about the possibilities there.
"Managed APIs". I can see where this is going already.
2. New, resolution independent, vector based, GPU-enabled UI engine. Two years from Longhorn release people will be buying 200+ DPI displays because things look a lot better on them. What's KDE/Gnome users gonna do? That's right, try to discern tiny non-scalable icons on these displays.
Gnome/KDE already support SVG. So gnome/kde have scalable fonts/icons.. right now, today. Not only that but work is already being done in this respect http://cairographics.org/introduction.
3. Completely new UI, including some significant paradigm changes.
PARA DIG EM! Yeah.. when I wanna be wowed by UI i'll use Enlightenement or OSX. Suprisingly nothing from Microsoft has ever impressed me in that department. I mean, the screenshots I've seen of gnome/kde/enlightenment/osx/xfce. Microsoft needs to hire new UI designers.. I mean, seriously.
4. Seamless integration of client and server side (that's what XAML is all about, IMHO). Your webapps will actually run sandboxed
Mozilla and XML. Thats what Mozilla is all about. Your webapps will actually run regular ole XML on your machine. Kind of like google mail, but the entire webapp will be built out of them. I'm living in the present by the way.. Just incase you were wondering.
5. Reliable Web Services - Indigo, web services that don't suck. More importantly, web service protocol that's supported by the majority of computers in the world (when most people upgrade). And you can bet your ass they will upgrade, just like a couple of years after W95 was released almost everyone ran W95.
Reliable Web Services? Web service protocol? So whats that called? HTMP? is that going to be ontop of HTTP? Making it more reliable and supported worldwide (after everyone switches from HTTP). Bet my ass i'll upgrade for a protocol, just like when I upgraded for ftp!
It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying Longhorn. Gnome devs have already realised that.
What you say?! Stop copying XP and start copying Longhorn?! Why my lad, you can't copy what doesn't exist.
Seriously though, I hate Microsoft and if they had anything genuinely original coming out in Longhorn i'd probably be interested. Especially if it's good technology. To date, i'm hearing about stuff people have either already implemented or wrote about. Things that have been discussed by numerous people over the years. The innovation isn't happening at Microsoft, it's happening elsewhere. It's not even an attractive company to work for nowadays and i'd be hard pressed to say they've ever invented anything original.
I mean, if I wanted to do original shit i'd have to go to work for anyone other than Microsoft.
It's the frequency with which it's being quoted, and the inappropriateness of the quotes. Think. What did the aforementioned comment have to do with Orwell or with 1984? Nothing at all. It was just a drive-by allusion.
No, 1984 is not "one of the most important books ever written," unless you expand your list to include tens of thousands of books. It's just that it's a book that's widely assigned to high-school students. It's pop-culture wisdom, a mile wide and an inch deep. It's the beginning of insight, not the end. C.f. Rand, Ayn, for another example of the same phenomenon.
Too many people point to 1984 as an illustration of the insidiousness of totalitarianism, when what they completely miss is the fact that 1984 is a book about the insidious of totalitarianism. It takes the insidiousness of totalitarianism as a given. The book doesn't contain a discussion about whether the slope is slippery or not; it just assumes that the slope is slippery and tells a story based on that premise.
To put a point on it, 1984 begs the whole question. Which is fine for a novel. Problem comes when people think of it as more than a novel.
Somebody who reads 1984 and thinks that he then has something insightful to say about language or society is like somebody who reads Beat to Quarters and thinks that he then can sail a tall ship around Cape Horn.
1. The entire OS will be accessible through a set of managed APIs. This makes coding 10 times easier and faster, and raises productivity to unprecedented levels. This also makes buffer overflows and some other security issues a thing of the past.
.Net is great, but not that great.
.NET code on your machine. Kind of like applets, but the entire webapp will be built out of them. Just think about the possibilities there.
I call bullshit. 10 times easier to develop/faster - I think not. And managed APIs whilst they may reduce the incidents of buffer overflows will not automagically solve your security problems. The fact is
2. New, resolution independent, vector based, GPU-enabled UI engine. Two years from Longhorn release people will be buying 200+ DPI displays because things look a lot better on them. What's KDE/Gnome users gonna do? That's right, try to discern tiny non-scalable icons on these displays.
And who are going to be buying these new 200+ DPI machines ? I surely doubt the ordinary user is going to find a need to view their word documents in super high quality. So do explain what is going to be the driver of these displays ?
3. Completely new UI, including some significant paradigm changes.
Completely new ? And what lose the ability of their installed base to jump right in and use the system. What about the significant investments in training done by companies ? The fact is Longhorn will be 95% identical to Windows XP simply because it has to be. If it isn't and businesses have to invest serious money in retraining staff, then why not retrain them in how to use Linux/OpenOffice ?
4. Seamless integration of client and server side (that's what XAML is all about, IMHO). Your webapps will actually run sandboxed
Whilst your thinking about the possibilities, some of us are actually implementing it. Java/Flash are already heavily used and Google is only just showing that JS/DHTML can be used to do amazing stuff. And they all work cross-platform.
The fact is developers can't target XAML so long as they have they have a significant number of end users that are running Windows 95/98/Linux/Mac/Firefox etc etc.
5. Reliable Web Services - Indigo, web services that don't suck. More importantly, web service protocol that's supported by the majority of computers in the world (when most people upgrade). And you can bet your ass they will upgrade, just like a couple of years after W95 was released almost everyone ran W95.
Web Services like CORBA is a developer's technology. Most end users won't know what web services is and why it is useful. You've been drinking the Microsoft kool-aid if you think end users are going to upgrade because of it. And Web Services works just as well on other platforms as well you know. Some even require little to no programming.
The most important thing is, all of this will be available to Windows users out of the box, without any tweaking/recompiling/downloading dependencies. That's where the real strength of this all is. Developers will be able to rely on this stuff when building next-gen apps and be reasonably sure that if a user runs Longhorn, the app will run there.
Bzzt. Except that when Longhorn comes out your going to have a even more fragmented Windows market (95/98/XP/Longhorn). Which means that as a developer you want to use the technology that will target the most number of platforms i.e. Win32. This is a huge problem for Microsoft and is why more Longhorn technologes are being backported to XP.
It's time to stop copying Windows XP, folks. It's time to start copying Longhorn. Gnome devs have already realised that.
WRONG. It is time for Linux to start making itself more and more interoperable with Windows XP. To the point where businesses will sidegrad
Funtage Factor: Purple
I would certainly think so, because OS X shows people what can be done with computers -- it shows them that viruses, trojans, and other malware aren't acts of God, but a preventable result of bad technology; that computers don't have to crash; that drag'n drop can do so much more; that Plug and Play can be more than an empty marketing slogan; and finally that computers can actually look cool. In short, Apple makes Windows machines look bad by comparison, and with the iPod and Mac mini actually penetrating the mainstream, this can't be good for Microsoft.
Futhermore, I think your comment
With less than 2% marketshare, Mac OS X is pretty much inconsequential in both the predominantly Windows consumer market, or Windows/Linux enterprise market.
shows a widespread but flawed view of the computer world: Market share is all that matters. In fact, look at Porsche: Pissy market share, but great cars and -- more important -- great financial performance of the company. Apple's stock is doing just fine, thank you, while Microsoft's is starting to underperform to the point where they are now paying dividend. Comparing Microsoft to Apple makes just as little sense as comparing GM to Porsche and then saying that Porsche is hopeless because they don't have a large percentage of the mass-market.
In fact, at least up to the Mac mini, that was exactly the point.
You seem to be making several orthoganal points. Some of them I even agree with, but to tie them together I think you'll need a bit more glue.
First off the correct (IMHO) bits:
Somebody who reads 1984 and thinks that he then has something insightful to say about language or society is like somebody who reads Beat to Quarters and thinks that he then can sail a tall ship around Cape Horn.
Well, of course. I'm not sure that you're making a non-obvious point here, but ok. Of course, someone might read 1984 and then have something insightful to say about language or society... but that's no more or less likely than reading it and having something insightful to say about 20th century authors.
No, 1984 is not "one of the most important books ever written," unless you expand your list to include tens of thousands of books
Obviously you are just as correct as the grandparent who claimed the opposite. This is purely a matter of opinion, unless you're going to assign a quantitative definition to "most important books".
Too many people point to 1984 as an illustration of the insidiousness of totalitarianism
Here you lose me. It's not that this might not be a valid statement, but you place it in the center of a response to a post which makes no such claim. Thus, this can only be catagorized as a strawman.
However, to take up the challenge, I'll argue that 1984 is not an illustration of the insidiousness of totalitarianism, but rather a illustration of the abstract nature of totalitarianism and the ability for the average member of such a society to lie to themselves about the choices they are making.
Of course, we see this sort of book all the time, just not always about politics. Books about women who persist in abusive relationships, criminals who look in the mirror and see a hero, and any number of other common themes are all expressions of this. 1984 simply happens to be one example of this sub-genre where the average reader tends to "get it".
Does 1984 beg the question of the insidiousness of totalitarianism? I don't think so. It shows us what the author thinks people are capable of, lets the readers own sense of the human condition demonstrate its truth. Most of us on reading 1984 come away a bit frightened. Not all of us realize why, but years after reading it, I realized that it was because nothing in the book was terribly difficult to imagine. People DO behave this way, and it's important for us to come to terms with that.
Now, you can say that 1984 isn't important, but here's why I think it was: it opened up a dialog that we had with each other. Many other books have been written since -- some scholarly, some novels like 1984 -- but all further exploring this theme. Certainly philosophers had beat the idea of man's inhumanity to man around for a long time, but Orwell brought a language in which to frame the discussion to the common man, and in this I think we can rightly say that he was an important and influential author.
By way of exmample, Asimov and Feynman didn't write the General and Specifc theories of relativity, but each of them produced clear, understandable and engaging information for people outside of the field that gave us the tools to intelligently disucss these complicated matters. This, in many ways, is just as important a step as introducing the concept to the scientific community.
So, I'll put 1984 somewhere on that list of yours, but I suspect that I'm placing it quite a lot higher than you are.
No. Instead, I think that it very likely prevented at least some non-totalitarian states from moving in that direction.
Countries don't just slip into totalitarianism
Sure they do. A leader with dictatorial tendencies gets voted into office, then starts changing the laws to increase his powers and decrease checks and balances. It has happened dozens of times, including Germany in the 1930s.