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Microsoft Uncertain About WinFS for XP
Ant writes "As a follow-up to WinFS to be available in WinXP story from a few days ago, BetaNews reports that Microsoft (MS) stopped short of confirming reports that it plans to back-port its next-generation WinFS file system architecture to Windows XP. MS tells BetaNews it is only evaluating the move while also acknowledging WinFS is still years off. "We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews."
What if they include a converter, sorta like they did with Windows 98 and FAT32?
All it would do is make locating files easier, at least that's pretty much how they were shopping it around. You could do that without adding another layer to the HDD by simply having an element of the OS scan in the background efficiently.
Conversely, though, I wonder if the reason they're starting to back off of WinFS now is because including it would mean that all of those obscure file locations where companies like to hide setup files would be that much easier and faster for people to locate. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed to hunt through hidden folders to find some stupid file to edit or delete. And the search taking 30+ minutes didn't help.
Maybe instead of working on WinFS, they should focus on coming up with an alternative to the registry.
My definition: software thats talked about, even pre-sold - that never materializes as an actual product or feature (read:bug) for one reason or another. There have been cases where vaporware is a complete contrivance - a con job designed to empty consumers pockets, then hide the assets from the presales and run with it. Microsoft kinda fits that definition...except they don't do us the favor of hiding their assets and running. Oh god I wish they would.
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
WinFS runs on top of NTFS anyway, so you probably wouldn't need to format.
And if I could get the database features to find and catalogue all my documents, pictures, music etc. then I would consider it worth it. Finding things even when organised can be a real pain after a period of time.
From the posting, my emphasis:
...and please order those Microsoft WinVoting units, I don't want to do any thinking come the begining of November anymore.
"We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and [We, at Microsoft] will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews.
Thank you...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Its in consumer's best interests to force them to upgrade lest they be left behind and forgotten.
Normally this is standard MS mentality but I disagree in this case. Here's why:
Hard drive space is friggin' cheap. Look closely there. The 80GB unit is $55 while the 40GB unit is $48. Wow... For that kind of bang/buck, manufacturers might want to start bundling Linux with Windows in a dual-boot configuration. And coming soon, virtualization - you'll be able to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on the same damn PC.
What better method of migrating people from Windows?
WinFS, however, throws a monkey wrench in that. While linux NTFS is coming along nicely, Microsoft is fearing the loss of the proprietary-ness that has locked them in for so long.
Linux on the desktop is close (though ever so frustrating at this point). WinFS is Microsoft's last ditch at thwarting it for another couple years.
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Whatever makes them money... Announce your kewl new product way ahead so that people are reluctant or at least pause before going with a competitor's today. Since it's not illegal, immoral, or fattening, I'd do it too if it made me money.
While MS is all on about how much better they are or going to be, the fact of the matter is that you'll get there, where YOU want to go, sooner by going more direct and without incompatable file formats, DRM type of constraints, etc..
How often does a company use a cracked version of some sofware package that they actually purchased, so to avoid the problems of the additional protection complexity?
WinFS also adds the ability for any program to use a supported format through the WinFS API, as the API uses meta data to describe the format to the program, as XML does. This allows the application that created the file to be used through WinFS to access the data, sort of like making applications into libraries. It is similar to piping in Linux, as the program produces intelligable information that another program can make use of.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Database FS's make things easier to search for... but that can be a bad thing too.
If someone found an exploit to run queries on that database, then you can surely find passwords, addresses, vital documents, etc. in a snap!
At least when you obfuscate your folders, you make it harder for both you and intruders to find your info.
To be honest, he didn't even say that they'd do what the customer wanted, they'd just ask the customers what they want and for all we know do the exact opposite. Something like that had to be what created clippy.
today is spelling optional day.
The only problem with this is that they'd have to have two filesytem interfaces: a traditional directory structure and a database-query interface.
This means that only new 'WinFS-compliant' applications can take full advantage of the quick-find, and as of now, thats pretty much just a search window.
OSX 10.4 has Spotlight integrated into everything they run, plus an open interface for using Spotlight. This allows everyone to use that searching technology to their advantage: a real timesaver. Doing so also helps solidify the user experience: You can walk the tree, but you can also search EVERYTHING all at once. I like how this is setup.
Wrapping a new FS over NTFS doesnt allow for such a great integration, and really makes any deployment to WinXP fruitless.
I've seen many comparisons between Tiger's Spotlight, and MS's WinFS in features... and heard from people I know that have Tiger betas running as full time desktops who say the spotlight problems & updates seem to be where the most work is going into Tiger at the moment.
Does anyone know just what the differences are in concepts here? Is Spotlight going to offer much the same functionality from the point of view of a user? Is it really even the 'killer app' it's supposed to be?
I'm curious as I've heard so much mentioned about it these last few years (10 now with Windows).
You know, it's pretty hard to keep 'your' files organized on shared systems; say a lab or business share. Even harder when they aren't 'your' files; system files, program files, etc.
This makes a common network drive so much more accessible; imagine 20 users with 30 shared folders and 30 personal folders all on a network storage unit.
The OTHER point of view to yours:
I want the computer to do the stuff it's good at (organization and storage) and I want to do the stuff I'm good at (creation, manipulation, modification).
So if the computer can do a better job of keeping my files organized than I can, I say, let it.
GPL Deconstructed
With all the delays for Longhorn, I wonder if Microsoft fans don't feel like Apple fans during the late 90's, eternally waiting for Copland. During the wait for Copland, Microsoft was basically ahead of Apple, since it already had a true preemptively multitasking OS and Apple fans had to put up with cooperative multitasking and frequent crashes. Now, while Apple is poised to ship OS 10.4 Tiger with Spotlight (aka all the functionality of WinFS) and CoreImage (aka all the functionality of Avalon) before July, Microsoft faces delay after delay. Of course, Microsoft OSes are frequently late (who can forget the many delays of Windows 95?), but though the release came fast and furious for 98, ME, 2000, and XP, Microsoft has been stagnating since then. Even a simple service pack has turned into a huge production for MS to produce and ship.
I think all of these signs point to MS's code base being too big and unwieldy. I don't think anyone doubts that IE is too bloated to fix. Just compare the time between the release of 5 and the release 6 to the time between the release of 6 and now. If Microsoft could implement full CSS selector support and non-broken PNG display, I'm sure they would have by now, but IE is just too tangled to fix quickly anymore.
So, if MS is wandering in a Copland-esque desert, what's to be done? As unbelievable as a suggestion as it may seem, maybe they should take the OS X route and just buy a competitor and cut their loses. Starting over from (not quite) scratch will give Windows a shot in the arm. WINE has already proven that backwards compatibility with Windows applications doesn't have to be dependent on using their existing OS code. They should just buy out Be (a good choice since they already have a metadata filesystem) or someone else with a Unix-like underpinning, and rewrite Windows the right way. It will take another 3 or 4 years, but at this rate, they're going to need that much time anyway. Spinning their wheels on Longhorn won't get MS anywhere. If MS wants to innovate (and that's a reasonable question), it's time to take a chance, kill Copland, and try something new.
Any plans to port ReiserFS to Windows? There are 3rd party tools like Paragon's Mount Everything that allow read/write to ext2 partitions, so it seems Windows can be extended in this way.
You might want to take a look at Apple then, they hired the guy who designed the BeOS filesystem to work on Spotlight. It's a pervasive search interface that indexes everything on your drive(s). The demo video is pretty impressive.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Inst predates not only tools released by companies called Slackware or Red Hat, it predates the companies themselves. By a decade or more. It's been around since God was a boy, and it's still the standard by which these things are judged. I think Sun had one too, but I forget the name. The command-line program was called "pkgadd" or something like that.
And boot-loader programs like Lilo merely simulate firmware boot prompts that, again, have been around since God was a boy. The standard three-phase boot process -- firmware, a stand-alone bootstrap program, the kernel -- is not new. It's just that the PC world never had proper firmware, so the interactive and diagnostic aspects had to be shoved one step up the chain to the bootstrap program.
The disadvantages are legion. You can't do basic things like control power to the system's components from Lilo. You can't even enable or disable CPUs or memory, because Lilo runs in the CPUs and main memory. It's an incredibly poor substitute for a real firmware command monitor, really.
See? You're completely out of touch with the way things are done today. You say that "most people turn on their computers to do some work, then turn them off." That hasn't been true for five years or more. People put their computers to sleep, they don't turn them off.
You do name some good examples. However, Outlook, Access, Excel and PowerPoint are not among them. These are good names. Names don't have to be purely descriptive. They can also be evocative, or even just whimsical. "Macintosh" is a good name despite the fact that it does not meaningfully describe what it refers to. It's good because it's distinctive and memorable. Ditto Outlook, Access, Excel and PowerPoint.
... which is twenty-five years old. Which kind of proves my point, if you see what I mean.
... in no small part because people like yourself keep making up new names for it. First it was Linux, then it was Gnu Linux, then it was Red Hat, then it was some other hat-related name that I can't remember right now, and now you're calling it Foss. It's not catching on because nobody knows what the hell you're talking about.
(In fact, the names are the best things about three out of four of those. As much as the other three stink, Excel is a very good program.)
However, most of the names you give are bad examples. The names "regedit32" and "winipcfg" are low-level system utilities that aren't meant to be used by typical users, so they don't count. "NTFS" and "FAT32" are file systems, low-level components of the computer, so again, they don't count. And "IIS" is slang; the proper name is Internet Information Services.
So the only example you gave that really fits is "cmd.com"
And no, I'm sorry to break it to you, but Foss (whatever the hell that means) is not catching on. Open-source stuff has an enthusiastic, almost rabid following among hobbyists and other aficionados, but it's not even making a dent out there in the consumer market. It's got zero branding, zero momentum and zero name recognition
You may want to rephrase that to the desktop market. In the server market, MS is a poser. AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, VMS, etc have support going back over a decade (In some cases even further). MS server software, well that's win 2k, Win2k3 or well nothing. So at this point, they support something ~5 years old. Colour me unimpressed. Our new servers are running Solaris 6 (Moving to Solaris 8 sometime in the next 2-5 years).. You do the math on the support time frame of an enterprise class OS.