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Microsoft Lifts Curtain on Indigo Software
daria42 writes "Microsoft has released an early version of Indigo on the Microsoft Developer Network. Indigo is a new communications system intended to let Windows programs more easily connect to other software. Indigo was one of the three original "pillars" of Longhorn, however under the new plan it will be re-tooled to work with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, in addition to Longhorn."
After Microsoft back ports everything from Longhorn to XP, will the $499 upgrade from XP to Longhorn be like 95 to 98? Just some bug fixes and a free browser?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Yet another proprietary communications protocol in order to keep people trapped inside the windoze paradigm. Yesss. It's going to be a failure.
Yet another Microsoft(and company) protocol to block from my firewall (* Worms bound to ensue *)
Bye!
That was an old SGI workstation IIRC
(You may google for it, if you please)
I see 57005 people
Is it me or nothing MS is pitching in Longhorn sounds that exciting? A new version of COM+, wow how exciting!
For ONCE, I want a newer version of Windows to be faster and smaller than the previous version and more stable as well.
I've got a great idea. Now that all the DCOM holes have been plugged (either at the OS, or at the firewall, or both), let's pick a new port number that'll be open and listening to the world by default, and on which all the OS components will have to rely.
For bonus points, I'll justify this by saying that it makes something that sounds really cool on paper if you're a CTO, but is actually the first line from the functional spec for "A platform for writing remote exploits" to anybody with even a millineuron of cynicism left in their brain.
Why didn't they just call it Purple People Eater and get the whole "scary" thing over with?
Will Prince's 1999 be the theme song for this technology or will they choose Purple Rain?
Will they get the Indigo Girls to do a version of Galileo that goes "how long til they get the software right?"
My name is Indigo Montoya -- you killed my father, prepare to die!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
They are not going to give these away for free. You will have to pay to get these products for XP. Either way. I think Longhorn will be much better in the sense that you will finally have an OS that is both awesome looking yet more functional. The whole deal with using CSS type files to control interfaces for example is the most attractive thing for me from longhorn, besides the fact that I can finally shut up some mac fanatics who take about the mac being "prettier" (although XP came quite a way in making things look better).
"By making Avalon and Indigo work on older machines, Microsoft hopes more developers will want to write software that takes advantage of the new technologies" I guess .Net isn't selling fast enough.
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
This, Avalon, and WinFS are all jokeworthy now, but at least one of these if not all of them will see decent implementation in GNU/Linux three to five years after they're being used in Longhorn, at which point Microsoft will have the replacement ready for release.
It might even have a better interface than Apple, spawning a whole new series of Longhorn themes for X-Windows.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Sounds like a MS plan for global domination of net APIs that will more likely end up as a hacker means for global domination of windows desktops.
No more having to write terrible wrappers and using command lines invisibly to manipulate external programs. I hope everybody takes advantage of this, this was one of the main reasons that I turned to python to simplify things. Maybe I'll switch back from scripting to programming if it turns out to be easy and useful.
Maybe people will stop switching to scripting languages.
"Indigo will replace the five different programming methods that Microsoft has today for sending messages between two programs in a distributed system, said Ari Bixhorn, the lead product manager for Web services strategy at Microsoft." Hmm....Thats going to upset a lot of people who use those methods. There gonna be a lot of porting work to be done....
Nah, just kidding. That will never happen.
Easy communications via proprietary protocols etc is just another breeding ground for malware.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Wouldn't this just be Microsofts (proprietary) implementation of CORBA?
At once I felt trapped into a time warp ; I swear I read the same sentence when NT 4 was announced (plus or minus a few cosmetic details). Same old BS, at the time it was already a cold marketing ploy, nowdays, it's smelling like a rotten corpse.
Micro$oft employees always on duty, it seems. How about the usual "embrace and extend" tactics used by M$ ?
XP came quite a way in making things look better
guh!?
... how Indigo is treated these days.
From the colour of the year, the 6th chakra or a hype system to M$ software.
Sheesh.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
No.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Indigo is a new communications system intended to let Worms and Script Kiddies more easily connect to other software.
Indego, in they go!
I'm really glad to hear this. DDE, I mean, COM, I mean, I mean, OLE, I mean, DCOM, oh no wait, ActiveX, er, COM+, uh, LOL, um, Indigo! will be really great.
Oh, the Mac users will still have plenty to talk about... Longhorn might have some new features, but stopping us from laughing at you (for using an inferior OS with a bad GUI and even worse security) isn't one of them. /MacFanaticism
Everything in Longhorn will be based on the .NET framework and sandboxed, with the Win32 API scrapped. Longhorn's ability to run the Win32 API will be through a compatibility layer, similar to the DOS compatibility layer in XP. However, WinXP's ability to run Indigo and Avalon, the two pillars of Longhorn, will be done through a forward compatibility layer.
Fortunately, they're doing everything clean this time with XML and SOAP, with an open API, as opposed to binary-only files, arcane RPC calls, and endless piles of undocumented, insanely messy code dating back until the early 90s. There actually might be some interoperability this time around -- Longhorn SAMBA certainly won't be nearly as hard to code and reverse engineer, especially with Mono in hand.
More details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/p illars/default.aspx
- - - - - Fear not the reaper, but my shiny white teeth.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Indigo Screen of Death !!!!
With the way they're promoting Longhorn, you could swear it was a religion. Next, they'll declare a jihad on Linux.
"For example, the Indigo communications system will allow an application written with Microsoft's .Net tools to share information with a Java application without the need for special code to bridge the two systems."
So it'll be kind of like TCP/IP then. Except with a much more exciting name.
(Yeah, up until now I was ticked off cause I couldn't ever get this one program I wrote in Java to communicate with this other one I wrote in C, man!)
I'm going to have to agree with the parent poster. I work at MS, and just recently saw a pretty thorough ppt on Longhorn features, a lot of which didn't depend on the pillars. It took an hour just to talk about all the security revamps in the kernel. Unfortunately, its all 'MS confidential' for now... The first Beta should be out during the summer, lets reserve our judgements of Longhorn until then.
If you do a search for Inigo Montoya on Google, a couple image previews come up on the main search page (not the image search)!
What happened to COM+? DCOM? SOAP? All the other moving targets for distributed app integration?
--
make install -not war
Indigo will replace the five different programming methods that Microsoft has today for sending messages between two programs in a distributed system, said Ari Bixhorn, the lead product manager for Web services strategy at Microsoft
More likely Indigo will be a sixth method for sending messages between two programs in a distributed system.
As in you'd have to be in a drug-induced stupor to trust a whole new communication protocol from Microsoft.
The .NET Framework is a layer on top of the Win32 API. How exactly are they going to scrap the Win32 API and use .NET?
I try to as well, but I'm pretty sure neither of us succeed. Why? Because far too many protocol designers think their protocol is "special" and "more important" so they implement a fallback to tunnelling over HTTP (port 80, even over a proxy).
Unless you have a *very* smart transparent HTTP proxy, there go a lot of your RPC blocks. SOAP seems particularly vile in this respect.
yeah... almost as bad as those "This is the year of Linux" comments I read every other month...
What can you do with XML that you can't do with .ini files?
2003 was made as the server companion for XP. Now, maybe i missed something because a lot of what has been said in this thread has gone way over my head but I was always under the impression that Server 2003 and XP were akin to Windows 2000 and 2000 Advanced Server?
Well you don't need a motor vehicle to go from LA to NY, but it would sure make it easier, right?
Well okay it is, but look on the bright side; you wont have to work for MS any more when the public find out!
Spoken like someone who hasn't the foggiest idea of how .NET works. The only way to refute your claim is to just say it's wrong. .NET is implemented separately from Win32, different DLLS, different system.
You mean iexplore.exe?
Warning Windows have detected that some critical files have been replaced. Windows will now replace them with back up copies.
All your user-interface are belong to us.
although XP came quite a way in making things look better
Hey, I have fond memories of Fisher Price products from my youth as well. But when I sit down at a computer, I don't want flashbacks to using a Speak n Spell (unless I run it as an emulator (Yeah, I know, TI made it, not Fisher Price, but you get the idea).
It really, truly horrifies me that people actually like XP's interface. As the first thing I (and every single competant computer user I know, without exception, N>40) do when setting up an XP box, I disable the themes service. Poof, no more craptastic prettified round window edges taking up valuable screen real-estate.
I've used various versions of MacOS. It's not that great.
For centuries, Indigo used to be a very valuable dye; the exclusive looking deep blue color was a sign of wealth. Of course that "exclusivity" went down the toilet when they developed synthetic indigo in 1905 and everyone with a new pair of blue jeans could have some of that exclusivity.
It sounds like a good name for a Microsoft product.
No, actually you're wrong. While I love .NET, it basically is a set of wrappers around Win32 at this time. Even in Longhorn, last I checked.
The eventual goal is to write them from scratch -- for real, and eliminate the dependency on Win32.
Isn't SOAP unclean?
We don't see as many Microsoft stories on msn.com as we do here.
Slashdot: News for microsoft, stuff that microsofts...
From what I heard, they are NOT scrapping the Win32 API. And .NET will continue to be a bolt on...
Now about the Open API, not so sure on that...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Currently this thing could be described as DDE and earlier it was known as OLE and OLE2. So please, Microsoft stop remarketing everything which is already in your OS... simply improve it.
I agree with you that XP came a long way in terms of a functional UI, but there's still some pretty bad problems. Namely, there's a lot of examples of what Kai Krauss calls "Boeing Cockpit Syndrome" where you have a window with just too much stuff in it (preference windows, etc).
Those first leaked screenshots of longhorn (the only ones I've seen) seem to take it to the next level with more buttons along the top of the explorer windows, more widgets in the start bar and hella more crap on that sidebar thingie. Longhorn, seems to me, is going to be a UI nightmare.
Also, using CSS for a userinterface is good, but I don't think it's THAT good for a whole system. It'd be fine for designing WinAmp skins, or the like, though. Hell, I think it'd be best for that.
I'd be willing to bet that M$'s CSS has some micro$pecific enhancements that aren't supported in anything except M$ products.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Last I checked firefox will not work as the windows shell ;)
Actually, its probobly more like the change between Classic MacOS and OSX.
Its a totally new windows API with the old API being supported only through backwards compatibility layers (I assume its basicly something like WINE but better and able to use bits of the windows source code where needed)
One of the main causes of security problems in Windows is the ease in which Windows programs can interact with the operating system and each other on a low-level without the interference of proper security restrictions. Nothing about this "new" communications system leads me to believe it will be any different.
Windows will never be secure until and unless Microsoft changes its design philosophy to something a little more paranoid, and a lot less "let's all be friends".
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Yes it is. And you know it.
Karma Schmarma
frameworks.. sandboxing.. scrapping legacy API's.. documented code.. interoperability.. So basically, what you're saying is that MS has finally realized that the Java folks had it right all along. (:
Fortunately, they're doing everything clean this time with XML and SOAP
Truly distributed applications using XML/SOAP for RPC tend to be horribly slow. The development community has largely rejected distributed architectures because they simply aren't the right tools for the job in most cases. What's left is basically "B2B" functionality.. but this is readily available via Web Services today using Java. IMO, the future belongs to more heavily server-sided applications (think rich-web, standards compliance, etc.) due to reduced administrative costs and simplified security. The ultimate would be, for instance, a bunch of diskless Linux workstations with little more than a highly evolved web browser. Sure, XML in one form or fashion will be used to communicate between heavy servers and thin rich-web clients, but that doesn't make the applications distributed. And it sure doesn't require a whole bunch of complicated RPC and DCOM layers running on top of a heavyweight client-side framework that is interwoven all through your desktop shell. Indeed, MS would like the "PC desktop" to remain relevant even though the industry is now trying to pull in the opposite direction. In the end, we have this super-complex framework that basically talks XML and produces a shiny native Windows-only interface (Avalon.. which got most of its ideas from XUL). I'll stick with Java, Linux, and Mozilla for now, thanks.
.NET is only free if you want an abusive monopoly to become a totalitarian technocracy.
Prettier? I don't think most Mac users care that it's pretty; they care that it works better.
"C:\WINNT> copy firefox.exe explorer.exe"
This doesn't work on XP. Explorer.exe is automatically restored when you mess with it. Of course, it'll be assumed that this is because Microsoft is enforcing a monopoly instead of it simply being a security feature.
"Derp de derp."
When are all these developers going to stop naming all their goddamn software after objects they've dated or women they've spied upon. It's the beginning of the End (TM), because Apple is retiring Aqua(TM)! What are we going to drink? Oh no! I hope everyone gets back to calling their software by the date development was begun...
Columbia 1492
America 1492
colonial church estates ~1500-1700
united states of North America ~1742
united states of America 1776
united States of America 1784
United States of America 1792
several states 1812
Several States ~1850
Union States 1861-1865
Confederate States 1861-1865
United States of District of Columbia 1871
United States ~1905
United States 1933
He's a witch! Burn him!
However, on a somewhat more serious note...
"It took an hour just to talk about all the security revamps in the kernel. Unfortunately, its all 'MS confidential' for now... "
... I think you have a real future working on a rumormill blog. You're supposed to post this stuff as an AC, though. :)
In theory you're right, in actual reality you're completely wrong. A massive portion of the .NET Framework is actual a thin veneer over Win32 calls (ildasm - this isn't rocket science). The .NET Framework pulled it into a much easier, and more organized structure, but the bulk of the code is actually Win32.
.NET interface, as will some of the new higher level services like Avalon and Indigo.
The post several generations before was actually talking the standard smoke and mirrors of distance "it's all gonna change!" bullshit. Longhorn is basically taking Windows XP, with largely the same kernel and underlying subsystems, and of course all of the Win32 API, and adding a new managed shell. Let's remember that explorer.exe is just an application. This new shell will have a first-class
A PPT? Do they stop you from saying presentation just in case it is mistaken for the Impress format? lol.
Haha, yeah. I have to admit my post is kind of lame. 'oooh they talked about... uhm... stuff!! top secret! r0xx0r'.
:)
But seriously, I was really worried that LH didn't really offer much until I actually was able to sit down and peer into what is going into the system. It's not a 95 to 98 jump, but a 98 to NT. Should be interesting when the official beta comes out, 'sall I'm saying!
Never plan around one technology, or in this case, one programming methods for distributed communication.
As we all saw the slow crumbling and demise of each Microsoft protocols falling to disuse due to the wrath of Virus-writers, trojan-puller, malware-pharming.
To roll out a new technology and then place all your products' planning around this untested-in-the-wild technology, has been proven to be exceedingly risky.
I wish them the best of luck.
Flamebait? Dumb-ass moderator... Must be one of those mac fanboys that tells you how pretty their OS is ;)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I haven't tried this myself but wouldn't changing the shell value to point to firefox in the registry have the intended effect?
e.g.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENT VERSION\WINLOGON
Shell = Your_Firefox_Installation_Directory\firefox.exe
It's the Canadian version of Amazon.com.
... who hears the voice of a pseudo-scientific Monty Python narrator as I read this? "Indigo was one of the three original "pillars" of Longhorn, however under the new plan it will be re-tooled to work with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, in addition to Longhorn, which will, in fact, never ship."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
IBM and Microsoft developed soap/webservices hence we got two standards Document and RPC. Microsoft has had a soap toolkit since 99. Java is just following the crowd. Tell me when java gets properties or real generics(compile time checks don't count).
Aero is not being backported to WinXP.
So?
Getting rid of the cruft. I like it already.
Didn't someone earlier today comment on how Windows XP still runs programs from 1981?
There ain't no way Microsoft is going to scrap the Win32 API anytime in our lifetimes. They cannot. Their lifeline of revenue depends upon it.
Is anyone else getting a funny feeling that just maybe Longhorn will never make it out the door?
I'm wondering if by the time the market is ripe for Longhorn (ie, enough of us can justify the more expensive hardware it needs that it stands a chance of competing in the market), there will be too many of us who will be migrating core pieces of our daily work to thin client models that run on established internet protocols. As that migration starts to pick up steam, it is going to become increasingly important that all our file formats comply with accepted international standards. I seriously doubt that Longhorn could be revised to meet those criteria.
I'm wondering whether Longhorn is going to be like one of those twelve cylinder straight block touring cars that came out of Detroit in the late 1920s. Fantastic engineering, luxorious coachwork and super powerful, but way too much engine for anybody's needs and dang hard to park when there is twenty feet between the front bumper and the windshield. You don't hear much about those cars; their engineering was good but their marketing plan didn't connect with reality.
I'm wondering whether the Dynamic Marketing Duo of Gates and Allen have recognized this, and are gutting Longhorn's feature set to realize at least some profit from a failed effort.
Actually, you really should know what you are talking about before you make bold statements. Avalon - NOT the shiny new interface, is the new display subsystem. It handles the layout of windows forms and such. It also has NO knowledge of XML. XAML - A declarative programming language based off of XML. It allows you to instantiate objects using XML. Such as - would instantiate a Hello object and set its Color to blue. Aero - The new shiny interface system. This is actually what makes things pretty and is built off of DirectX. This also has no knowledge of XML or XAML. But this is slashdot, so I should expect geeks to talk out of there arse before knowing what they are talking about! :-)
"Ideas without action are worthless."
Actually, WRONG. You can download them now. As you have been able to download .NET for free for the past 5 years, along with VB for the past 10 years, and much more.
"Ideas without action are worthless."
I hate to say this but technology from MicroSoft is just plane boring. Linux desktop's move at a faster rate of change and are now smoother and better in every respect that matters to me. Why buy another round of interim fixes that you code to for 5 years then have to recode again! Linux still runs code I wrote in 1985, and at the same time has nice implementations of new design paradigms. If I'm rewriting code, I don't see any reason to write to a MS API anymore.
of course, i could just log in as administrator and do it and it would stick, right?
i mean, the operating system wouldn't prevent me, as machine owner and admin, from doing something i wanted to do, would it?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
You don't have to disable the themes service to revert to the W2k style. The W2k style is one of the theme choices in desktop properties.
I like the XP theme, although I don't really like the default colors. The main thing I like is the visual feedback that buttons and tabs give you as you hover over them, so I am less likely to mis-click.
Everything in Longhorn will be based on the .NET framework and sandboxed, with the Win32 API scrapped.
You're a damn fool if you believe that. Or at least, if you believe that and that Longhorn will be released this decade.
#!/
is it possible to replace the window manager on a windows box? i recently held my nose and tried litestep on a win2k machine, and though it was kind of nice, i still had to put up with the windows window manager.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
. Longhorn's ability to run the Win32 API will be through a compatibility layer, similar to the DOS compatibility layer in XP. However, WinXP's ability to run Indigo and Avalon, the two pillars of Longhorn, will be done through a forward compatibility layer.
You don't know what you're talking about. The Win32 API will be there and accessed in exactly the same way. There is no 'win32' compatibility layer like the DOS layer. The
Actually, you can replace the shell in XP. I messed around with GeoShell for a while. It's actually pretty nice.
GeoShell
Heirachies and arrays in a clean way (no property name hacks)
There's more to configuration data than name=value.
You forgot to mention that the
Dunno! We're not all Seppo's here!!
I can only assume that the people that understand how XML, Web Services, Service Oriented Architecture, Enterprise Application Integration effect large corporations have remained silent.
The people that have replied have stated clearly that they don't know what Web Services are, have never worked with XML, and don't understand how EAI has changed the way businesses do things.
Indigo is an extraordinary technology that will very likely be copied by IBM for Java (IBM and Microsoft both partnered on all of the WS-* standards) and will usher in a whole new era of interoperability for the business world.
If you're even the slightest bit curious about what this is all about I suggest the following reading material:
http://www.ws-standards.com/
http://community.java.net/java-ws-xml/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/p illars/Indigo/default.aspx
WinFX Indigo Docs
http://pluralsight.com/blogs/tewald/default.aspx I'm sure there is a lot more.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
Even when parts of the Longhorn shell was being built on managed code (which is no longer the case), there was no "compatibility layer" for Win32. Longhorn will still have all of the Win32 goodness.
The relationship bewteen Longhorn and managed code will be the same as the relationship between XP and managed code.
Trust me...
A speech...
Truly distributed applications using XML/SOAP for RPC tend to be horribly slow.
You are thinking of the old hardware, back when computers only ran at 2.0 GHz and had only 1 GB of RAM.
You're going to need a hardware upgrade for Longhorn.
There's a reason it is called Longhorn. Because you're really, really going to get screwed this time with all of the DRM.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Yes, but things have changed. Joel explains: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
I'd rather be lucky than good.
There's a reason it is called Longhorn. Because you're really, really going to get screwed this time with all of the DRM.
As someone who pays for the software they run (when commercial) and also pays for the smattering of media they consume, could you please explain exactly how DRM is going to screw me over?
Also, considering that I write and sell commercial software, is a decent, working implementation DRM going to do anything but stop people from stealing (whoops, i mean infringing) from me?
And Gene Ray explains that you are educated stupid:
www.timecube.com
This started out as practically a greenfield project within MS with a brand new team at least five years ago. It's being done by incredibly competent people, and they have done a huge amount of work on interoperability issues- that whole raft of WS standards represents solutions to a whole range of issues that no else is really confronting. And I'm not saying they've solved them in an ideal way but as long as no one else puts anything out there that is less proprietary, they will jump out in front here. Remember how they eventually "got" the Internet?
Those of us who love F/OSS and Linux need to be less dismissive and more frightened.
MS is fragmented and balkanized internally but there are pockets of real capability. Web Services have not achieved anywhere near the level of adoption they could/should have by now (to all you trolls: the few dozen desultory SOAP projects at your company prove my point, not disprove it). And that's because of lack of "security," which boils down to lack of widely supported standards. We gotta be more proactive about this, and not make the same mistakes we are making in regard to Avalon.
Heh, simply s/XP/Mac, and your post would go from a +4 to a -1!
I'd be wiling to bet that you're an a$$hat.
Wow, you mean Microsoft is supporting the 12-year-old SGI Indigo platform now? :-)
So that's it? Simpler connectivity is a "pillar" of the OS? M$ is gonna market that to home users? To developers? To corporate IT? To who? And the DB stuff seems aimed *only* at corporate IT. And the 3D graphics at gamers? Where is the new killer app? The only thing I see compelling to any large group of users is -- "crashes less and needs much less patching... really... take our word for it" And if that's how you market to corporations I certainly see some push-back in microsoft's future. If I am IT I don't want a whole new round of incompatible software upgrades I want my current crop of XP machines to stop giving me trouble. Oh yeah and add in that I am sure that the new OS will most likely be sold as yearly rentalware -- M$ has gotta have a constant income stream doncha know. Nope, I don't think we will be seeing mass upgrades to a new M$ OS anytime in the next 5 years.
Dude! You forgot some kind of postmodern mental masturbation! At least, that's what it is so far as I can figure it out. It's not "Time Cube", but it sure is confusing.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
How is this different from XML-RPC?
You can embed XML-RPC into almost any program in any language in very few lines of code. It's easy to work with, well established, open, and cross-platform. It functions typically over http but can easily be adapted to your choice of transfer method.
Why should I use Microsoft's new offering instead of XML-RPC?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I'd be willing to bet that M$'s CSS has some micro$pecific enhancements that aren't supported in anything except M$ products.
You mean like how Gecko's CSS has some proprietary enhancements that aren't supported in anything but Gecko, so that it can support XUL?
Quit it with the $ as well, you just look like a childish idiot.
as someone who also pays for software, i personally hate DRM. i pre-ordered the special edition release of Unreal Tournament 2004 on the 2 DVD set (1 game, 1 tutorials on how to make games w/ the engine). i get the game home, pop it in my DVD reader... start installing.. BAM!!! errors! copy-protection errors. which is total BS, considering it was a brand-new right out of the box game on the release date.
this is not the only time i have seen copy protection and other DRM technologies fail for legit users. in the case of UT2004, a buddy of mine gave me a no-cd cracked version of the game just so i could play what i rightfully purchased.
Dude, it's just a theme. Some people like it, some people don't. I've actually disliked every single KDE and Gnome default theme until the recent ones where Gnome looks really clean. But I was surprised to hear that some people hated that as well. Luna is just a theme, and you can disable it. That's what matters.
Dr. Spock Wrote the guide to baby and child care that was so popular in the 50s and 60s. Mr. Spock is the Science Officer on the Enterprise.
You mean I can run extra theming software to gobble CPU cycles and memory to get a look and feel that I get if I don't run any theme software at all? Cool, lets burn the extra cycles then, that sounds like an idea to me. Actually, I don't use XPee or winDOZE often enough to know what the overhead for Windows Themes are, but I just find it funny you want to turn on extra features to get what you'd have with the extra CRAP turned off.
God knows I am no fan of MS, but statistically they have to get something right once in a while and since they have missed a number of times in the past maybe this is the one they get right.
What I am worried about is that people will dismiss SOA (Indigo is MS's SOA framework) for two reasons:
1) It is from MS, and no one wants to think they are ahead in moving to the next development paradigm.
2) Everyone is so entrenched in OO (esp. those who are making big money off of it) and people don't really want to learn something new, they will poo-poo it.
But I think the writing in on the wall, OO has pretty much run it's course and didn't pay out as promised. Something has to come next, I'm bettingit is going to be SOA. Look at BEA's web site - middleware vendors are scared shitless that SOA will make middleware obsolete since you can run each subservice separately (and esp. since MS will package Indigo on every machine, you will have your distributed middleware built into each server for free, uh-oh).
Don't worry, even synthetic indigo's are being replaced.
p0lar is the new blue.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I don't know why but OSS doesn't seem to have the balls to get it together and write something truly innovative.
Things like ReiserFS were only possible when OSS moved from 'free' to commercially funded free, firefox also seems to have quite a bit of funding, and has been going for years.
Most of the other components are still in the dark ages of unix, X Windows has only just got clipping, it took them years to implement DRI, the kernel has only been thread safe for the past year or two etc....
Why can't we grab the bull by the horns and write tomorrows software instead of yesterdays?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Great, another program-to-program communication system! Maybe M$ will finally finalize this one and not leave it as the same mess as the previous incarnations. Just a new name for the old bag of shit, a new shell around the shit of the past, or really a newly and cleanly developed system? I wonder. When M$ calls something trustworthy, reliable and/or secure (like in 'WS-Security and WS-Reliable Messaging'), I can't believe them any more: in the past it always turned out to mean just the opposite: sneaky, unstable and insecure. Why should I believe this M$ marketing crap this time?
your just pissed that you work for some shit company cranking out lowly html 3.2 docs....
So everything that makes up Longhorn is being backported to XP. Does anyone else get the impression we will never see Longhorn arrive? Someone at M$ has decided that Longhorn will be either a failure or too late, and they're now salvaging the parts worth salvaging. I can just about hear a voice saying "it's dead, Bill".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
mod the last 2 up they're absolutely right - the winapi is staying. I asked the question at channel 9 recently, and got the response that it's hard enough changing one winapi function, let alone ditching the whole lot.
Nothing costs nothing
Rumour is it's called Longhorn 'cause with this release M$ are really gonna bend you over and shove it up your ass.
And you, little sheeple consumeroid, are gonna say "yeah baby.. give it to me. GIVE. IT. TO. ME."
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"The page cannot be found"
Having read the article, it does not convince me that Microsoft will release a version of Windows that obsoletes all current Windows software.
As you have been able to download .NET for free for the past 5 years, along with VB for the past 10 years...
Please direct me to the Microsoft page that will allow me to download Visual Basic for free. Last I checked, Microsoft still wanted money for their product. Enlighten me, please.
If a company uses DRM to place unacceptable restrictions on what I purchase I'll simply not buy it. It's really that simple. And I'm sure a lot of other people will do the same. All the DRM will do is stop people from using it in a way which the companies don't "like". Which is fine by me as the choice to buy or not to buy is always going to be mine to make.
We've been through a past generation of this whole "copy protection" nonsense.
In case you were not born yet, let me summarize...
If a company uses DRM to place unacceptable restrictions on what I purchase I'll simply not buy it. It's really that simple. And I'm sure a lot of other people will do the same.
I strongly disagree.
Most people will just roll over and take it. Fair use disappears.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
"Prettyness", IMO, is relative. I for one hate both the MacOSX standard GUI and the Windows XP GUI with the "Themes" service on - seriously, what is wrong with "Windows Classic"? It's fast, and it doesn't look ugly, nor does it take up 32+ pixels for titlebars.
As someone who pays for the software they run (when commercial) and also pays for the smattering of media they consume, could you please explain exactly how DRM is going to screw me over?
Also, considering that I write and sell commercial software, is a decent, working implementation DRM going to do anything but stop people from stealing (whoops, i mean infringing) from me?
Hey, I'm in the same boat. Developer. Consume very little media. Don't run ANY pirated software. I use only SuSE at home for almost six years now, and NO windows. And I don't mean that I have a secret Windows boot partition or Wine on the side.
Now that I've qualified myself as not a blatant software pirate....
As for media, DRM takes away fair use. If I buy a disk, I should have the right to make a copy for my car, or play it on my mp3 player.
As for software, the computer is MINE. Not THEIRS. It is MINE. I control it. The possibilities of someone else being able to "trust" the software running in my computer are scary. Automatically deleting e-mail. Copy and Paste content that can change over time. All kinds of possible abuses in the future.
In short: the copyright people need to get over it and adapt. The world has changed. We now live in a time where it costs almost zero to shuffle bits quickly to any part of the planet.
I am cynical enough to believe that DRM will eventually enable some future generation of tyrants to create locked down networks that only accept "trusted" clients. Censored and/or monitored communications, etc. Basically, "they" don't want the kind of uncontrolled communication that the Internet has brought to the masses.
You may think this sounds crazy, but just go back to your high school World History class and review.
The world was a different place in 1948. So why then would George Orwell write a book like 1984? When Aldus Huxley wrote Brave New World, the world of the time was quite different. What was the same was: people. Like the oracle said: what do men with power want?
DRM is about more than "piracy".
Hey, if you want to pay cartel-imposed prices for media that you cannot copy or legitimately use in multiple locations, or on the hardware/software of your choice -- be my guest. It is your right to pay high prices for low quality and restrictions.
Please don't suggest that everyone else should go along with it. DRM is going to screw everyone. Maybe not in the first year it is released. You are entitled to roll over and take it if you prefer. I'm not going to try to convince you not to fall in love with DRM. Go ahead. I don't like DRM, and I have a right not to like it. And rational reasons.
You wanted an explanation, there it is.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
The best "theme" by far was BeOS. Too bad it is gone now.
I tried litestep, (and geoshell,) but I have stuck with bblean ever since I've tried it. Litestep was too much of a pain to customize, and geoshell was too unstable. http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/
Redundancy is good And also good.
But such way it won't cause the anticipation and growth of sales connected to release of the "new" operating system. The only purpose of developing XP is easy way to get more money from the users.
Right now you can download the .NET Framework at www.microsoft.com/dotnet for free. This includes the VB compiler.
"Ideas without action are worthless."
Well I am more then competant and I personally like the way that XP looks.. That drab grey is ok for my Audio workstation or my Servers but personally I like a little color and eye candy.. but then again maybe I am just new school, I have only been a "computer geek" for the last 15 years..
That is only a rumor.
.NET Rocks, they are not scrapping Win32. Even if I didn't hear it there, I would still come to this conclusion.
From what I heard in an interview with some people at MS on
It would be a big mistake. Why run 99% of desktop apps in a virtual Win32? Managed apps aren't that popular yet. Not even close. With C++/CLI being introduced very soon, MS is clearly not giving up on native code. It would take way too much work and have a signifcant performance hit to make a virtual Win32 environment.
I have an Indigo, it was made in 2000 by Apple Computer. It's a blue and white laptop shaped like a clam shell, or a toilet seat if you prefer. It has a handle on the hinge for easy carrying.
I don't understand why MS would rerelease a 366MHz PowerPC based laptop. I don't think anything MS related runs on such hardware. It has good battery life, but ???
I think this whole thread must be a joke, I don't think this is true. Even Steve Jobs abandoned this design years ago...
Personally I think it's a good product, but why Microsoft would rerelease it as a rebranded 'futuristic design direction infrastructure insert buzzword here' is beyond me...
Besides, that would have to be patent infringement if they didn't buy the rights from Apple, and besides, you can't, there's no, it's a violation, um, aquatic wildlife, in a civic, within the city limits, Dude...
Hmm, I wonder if COM will still work in Longhorn. I use it a LOT to automate Word and Excel via Python. I would hate to have to redo all that work if we ever upgrade.
I haven't forgotten about Aero - Rowntree/Nestle's Aero was 'unforgeta-bubble' according to the advert. In the UK at least, an aero is a bubbly chocolate bar. So MS have named their system after something that contains a large number of small holes....
Avalon is supposedly one of three "pillars" of Longhorn according to MS literature. Presumably this name encompasses the other related components so it can be used generically. If that's not the case, they need to work on the clarity of their marketing materials. Regardless, I am aware of the internal distinctions of what each component does. But that doesn't change my original stated opinion -- that Longhorn / .NET in reality is going to be about WS-enabled heavyweight client-sided applications that only run on Windows. Duh.. I mean.. if it was anything else, MS would be giving up their monopoly! They don't want a world full of web-standards driven applications where Desktop and Server platforms don't matter anymore.
Because I've tried to gain a detailed understanding of how it works, and found it far, far too complex. I strongly suspect that nothing that complex will succeed in delivering security.
Xenu loves you!
I agree that 98SE has slow boot times, but it is the most stable Windows out there for my needs. Or it was until DirectX 9.0b.
Granted I didn't do MS development on it (but I've done Java dev and used MS- and Open-Office), nor use it as a public webserver, but I have installed and played nearly a hundred games on that box and Win98SE was perfectly stable for over 2 years. I use the Opera browser and have a HW firewall to my DSL. I still don't have antivirus software installed, but never got involved with a P2P network with that box. I also always powered it off when not in use which I do for every computer I own or use regularly.
In fact it wasn't until I tried playing the Warcraft III demo that it actually froze. Then KotoR froze it once - I upgraded my video drivers and installed their patch and it started freezing about once an hour and giving other bugs. Installing WinXP on the same box (diff HD) and it still freezes regularly, but I'm not installing their patch! So my thought is that it is really Direct X's newest incarnations which can't be supported by Win98/SE.
Except that computers at work using 2000 regularly did things like insta-rebooting, and XP has frozen and crashed for me too. My conclusion is that Windows was most stable with Win98SE and the quality has gone down ever since. Except I can get USB HDs to work on XP and not 98SE.
FWIW...