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New MS Shell Will Not Be In Longhorn
sootman writes "Remember that new Windows shell? Looks like it'll be yet another technology that won't make it into Longhorn. 'It will take three to five years to fully develop and deliver,' said Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia this week at Tech Ed 2005. However, it's not dead yet--despite not shipping in Longhorn in 2006 or Longhorn Server in 2007, the article says 'Exchange 12 administration functions will be built atop Monad, which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface.'"
So the question on everyone's minds at this point is: What *will* Longhorn actually have in it? Avalon, Indigo, and WinFX are all being backported to XP/2003, WinFS has been dropped for the release, and now Monad (I love that name) is being cut. I'm not quite sure how Microsoft plans to sell the OS on such exciting features as "Better DRM!" and "We've got the security thing right this time. Promise!"
;-)
"It will take three to five years to fully develop and deliver," said Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia this week at Tech Ed 2005.
*Jaw hits the floor*
Five years? Whoa. Five years ago, Windows 2000 was brand new. Five years ago, Mac users were still stuck with OS 9. Five years ago, the tech boom was still on. Five years ago, Bill Clinton was still President. Even worse is that Win32 is only ten years old!
If it takes Microsoft five years to get something out the door, I think they will soon find themselves becoming irrelevant in the desktop market. Confidence can be a good thing, but over-confidence can mean disaster. The bright side to this is that users will win when Microsoft is forced to go back to being an applications vendor instead of an OS vendor. Maybe they'll even get around to making another BASIC that doesn't suck.
On a slightly different topic, I really think that Microsoft is really on the wrong track with their combined Desktop/Server codebase bent. As technology marches on, Microsoft will quickly find that their competitors are taking advantage of technological solutions that only make sense on one side of the fence. I have to wonder if some of the delay that we're seeing isn't caused by Microsoft attempting to make all of their technology work in both arenas.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe MS could just make it easier by letting us know what actually *will* make it into Longhorn...
graphics characters input and output, except for a now pleasing RSOD, which has been shown to be %20 more frightening.
42
Almost redundant. You can already write scripts with WMI that will let you do MOST of the things in Exchange that you would want to do from the command line, and once it's in the script, it's at least semi-permanent.
Even in UNIX, I tend to write scripts when there's more than 5 commands (even if the commands are all piped together into a single command) - I may know it well enough not to see it later, but my assistant tends to find the scripts very useful for his learning and library.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
Where was it ever stated that monad would be IN longhorn?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
What's new technology is actually going to be introduced in Longhorn?
Microsoft = Yesterday's technology.. tomorrow!
Sadly this reminds me of HL2. They had so many delays, and still haven't released DOD source.
assumes fetal position and begins to cry (not that I really care about windows CLI, I care about HL2)
It will still be available for Longhorn, just not when it is initially released.
I'll belive it when I see it
I swear I was going to get first post on this one, and then decided... "Meh. Do I want first post in an article as blah and predictable as this one?" I just couldn't bear to be marked redundant while writing first post.
My little site.
After hearing about all of these features that Longhorn *won't* have.. have we seen a confirmed list of stuff that it *will* have?
Right now, it's beginning to look like nothing more than Windows XP Service Pack 3, just with a new name and bigger price tag to keep the stockholding twatwaffles happy.
Redmond, WA
Microsoft (TM) announced to day that it's new graphical user interface, code-named Avalon (TM) will not ship with Longhorn (TM), it's next operating system. However, Avalon with be an integral part of Windows 2010.
I read Slashdot for the articles
First Post?
What will Longhorn include that will make Windows 2000 or Windows XP using businesses want to move? All of the technology that was supposed to be Longhorn isn't Longhorn anymore.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Microsoft just doesn't have the Monads...
^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
welcome our new longhorn overl - what? Oh nevermind, they're not here yet.
My guess - you will still be marked redundant ;)
Monad, which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface
Yet another innovation from microsoft? first borrow the windows paradigm and now the cli paradigm.
As we all know, Microsauft programmers have been hard at work, producing the next version of Windoze, known as Longtooth. Here is a culmination of my thoughts, based on what I've read in the press, and based on what all of my friends have said.
Now I know that some of you, upon reading the phrase, "viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, crackers, and phreakers," will think that this post is a dupe, as has been discussed at length. Astute readers would note that past posts were, in fact, slightly modified from one version to the next, but due to their length and complexity, those less careful readers perceived them to be verbatim copies of one another. The present post is a complete rewrite, and has much new information to offer. This is, in fact, version 3.0 of the now notorious "The Longtooth Post".
Without further ado, let's begin: Last weekend, I spoke at length to all of my friends, and he told me some interesting facts. As luck would have it, he works for Microsauft as an "Associate Engineer Custodial Specialist.NET" or something like that. Anyway, he has lots of inside information, and I'll pass it on here:
The most significant news first: Microsauft has been in ongoing negotiations with IBM and FreeScale. Apparently, Longtooth will require a switch from x86 hardware to PPC hardware. This move is designed to give Microsauft partners a chance to make additional profits by selling boatloads of new computers in response to the release of Longtooth, and will eliminate the chance that more advanced users will simply "upgrade" their existing software installs. It will also help Microsauft sell many copies of Microsauft Visual Estudio.NET Developer Edition, which will allow thousands of software developers to convert their application to the PPC format. Microsauft plans to initiate an advertising campaign to point out the advantages of PPC hardware over the less capable x86 hardware.
Other interesting tidbits from emails he picked out of the trash dumpsters. (Internally, all emails at Microsauft headquarters are physically printed out by the sender and hand delivered by couriers. Apparently, ever since switching their email servers from FreeBSD to their own internal software, email doesn't work electronically anymore.) For example, the projected release dates and product prices were sent in one email he found in the trash. Longtooth is a vast undertaking, and will be the biggest improvement in the software since 1995. Despite Microsauft's claims that Longtooth will be released by 2006 or 2007, the planned release date is actually late in 2019. The price list will be as follows:
Of course, all components in the more expensive versions of Longtooth (except Simple Edition) will be available separately. For example, Microsauft's anti-virus software will be available separately for $39.95. Visual Estudi
Maybe MS could just make it easier by letting us know what actually *will* make it into Longhorn...
The usual... trojans, worms, clippy...
2nd: The more time goes on, the more Windows takes on the features of unix.
3rd: Most every OS is some form of unix at this point except for Windows.
4th: Even Windows has a POSIX layer and unix-style command utilities for free as an add-on.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
...That Longhorn updates won't come out nearly as regularly after Longhorn's release as they do now.
With all the features being removed, and the release date getting pushed farther and farther back, Longhorn will end up as nothing more than an expansion pack for Duke Nukem Forever!
- shadowmatter
HAH!
Also, what is it with the Not Invented Here syndrome? Use bash or perl damnit. Yes, builtin XML (de)serialization is nice, but it is useless for an average admin anyway. And a programmer that knows what it even means would probably be using a proper language, like, I don't know, C# or Java!
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
lol. GENIUS, i tell you, GENIUS :P
My little site.
They were going to call it the Monad shell. I think that the marketing department realized that "mshell" looks too much like "MS Hell"
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
That they're going to use BASH instead?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I've always found it annoying that M$ is constantly pitching new products that are some time off. This FUD speak causes PC people to encourage you to get excited about vaporware. How many companies use future products to compete with competitors existing ones? (look at windows 95 and OS/2 and now OS-X and some future windows product)
Look at Google (and many others). They announce products when they are ready to ship (or test). Ignore the M$ FUD -- believe it when you see it.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you listen to yourself when you talk or do you just drift in and out? Exactly what "bug" are you talking about. My LINUX box would like to know since it must be out of the loop because it's been running without reboot for over 4 months. I've heard of this bug existing in WinNT but not in LINUX.
Boss: "Hey, Build that new Shell thingy"
... Year Later ...
... Three Years Later ...
/etc/*.*;/dev/*.* i ngy
MS Engineer: "I'm on it !"
Boss: "Hey, is that Shell thing done ?"
MS Engineer: "Not yet, been working on vector graphics stuff... it's funner !"
MS Engineer logs into *n?x system...
> scp
lamer@dev.microsoft.net:/dev/shell/new-shell-th
Boss: "Is that shell thing done yet ?"
MS Engineer: "Yup ! Still needs to be tested though... Hey... can I work on a different project ?"
This is why monopolies don't last forever.. When you get to be that large, and have so many competing priorities and dependancies even simple things take a long time..
"It will take three to five years to fully develop and deliver"
Eventually, this sort of slow response will cost them.. Those quick startups, pulling them in many different directions, will overwhelm MS.
What the hell is still in Longhorn?
offer today in three to five years? Great...just like they will beat the searching in Spotlight in 2-3 years :)
MS is good at betting current competition within a few years!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
beavis, did he said "more nad"
yeah, YEAH! hehhehheh!!!
It seems like every feature that was supposed to be cool except for the 3d-accelerated desktop is going to be either taken out of Longhorn or is going to be backported to XP to promote developers' use of it (like Avalon). Does anyone else see how this could end up with Microsoft effectively having no good reason for the average person to leave XP unless they buy a new PC? Why would a business want to move to Longhorn if it is a warmed over rehash of Windows XP?
So many people went to Windows XP because even those who used Windows 2000 saw a lot of good benefits in it. Despite what some people may say, Windows XP can be a lot faster than Windows 2000 on things like disk I/O. I remember ripping a DVD under Win2k and then doing it again under WinXP when I got XP and seeing significant performance gains to the tune of going from about 4000kb/sec to about 7500-8000kb/sec under XP. Then there were other enhancements, but we all truthfully know that XP was a big jump for the average user of Windows.
But why should people who like XP leave it for Longhorn? Unless Microsoft follows Be's upgrade path for BeOS and charges only $25-$50 for XP upgrade CDs, why should people switch? What does it do for them that can't be done just as easily with XP and which isn't negated by more hardware needs?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
It's just a troll talking about a Windows 95 bug with an integer overflow. It is not a bug in Linux of course.
The next thing that Microsoft will announce is that Longhorn won't run on the new Mac-Intel machines.
Don't give up hope just yet. It may still be ready for the Longhorn release!
Soon to be announced: the Kernel will not make it on the first incarnation of Longhorn, and will be released in a subsequent version..
SeqBox
We already have CYGWIN
If what we have now didn't work at all it could be out the door in 1 year or less.
But if we have something that works fairly well right now, then it is more important that the new version is significantly better than that it comes out fast.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
I didn't want to use a shell that sounds like it's only got one ball anyways!
You need more practice. That was a pathetic excuse at a troll attempt.
Bzzt, you lose, go back to school.
What's the problem here? Windows 2000 and XP already have a working shell available from the following website.
http://www.cygwin.com/
Okay, so it's called Monad -- I've only heard this name in one other context, and that's Haskell (http://www.haskell.org./ The interesting thing is that Simon Peyton Jones went to MSR a few years ago.
So, it seems that, either the name is unrealated, and that would suck. Or, that somehow, this is related. *IF* it is realated, I'm not sure how adoption will go. Functional Programming can be a little odd.
Anyone know?
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Maybe it's time for a "Vaporware" section of the news? Or is that the M$ section? *ducks*
-Valiss
Yup, five years. So what I'm lead to wonder is which we'll see first:
1) A good command line for Windows
2) A good GUI for Linux
I also have to wonder if Microsoft would be putting an ounce of effort into developing a command line if that wasn't something beneficial in Linux.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Considering I've seen and used Monad binaries for over a year I don't think you can call it vaporware. I am surprised about the 3-5 year bit though, it seems relatively stable _today_. I knew it wasn't going to make it into the Longhorn desktop, but I was under the impression that it was going to be released with Longhorn server (the same goes for WinFS).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
When that pot wears off, you might want to repeat this - "Linux and Windows 95 are not the same" (five times with a Hail Mary)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Geez--RTFA.
The white paper says it will be Clippy.Net.
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
Dont make fun of first post redundancy.... I had first post on the current poll (apple/intel good idea?) and I got marked redundant... How this can be I do not know... But I am sure I can blame it on M$ and the delayed Longhorn.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
This was my only reason to really get longhorn. oh well. I'll just stay with what I have now. gj micosoft. :rollseyes:
or is MS starting to sound really pathetic with all their multiple-year-till-release product announcements?
to me they sound like a really scared company making very slow progress. have the run-ups to previous Windows releases been like this or is it a new phenomenon for MS?
You're new here aren't you?
Why does it take so long to compile Cygwin and Bash for Windows?
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
And, predictably, I get modded Troll for pointing it out...SSDD...Ho hum...
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Dude. It was funny the first time. Made me smile the second.
It's long since stopped being funny, and just makes stories on Slashdot annoying as hell to read as we scroll past your 8 pages of the same joke.
Remember, breveity is the essence of wit.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
What makes them think Longhorn will be out before then?
Both have been available for many years.
Good command line for NT.
For GUIs on Linux, take your pick, there are tons of them. Unless your definition of 'good' requires that one must somehow kill off the others, in which case there will never be one, thankfully.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Virtually every niche and cranny in Windows is getting some sort of makeover. Not everything is big enough to deserve new acronyms but the sum is much more important than its parts. The motto behind Longhorn is "make it just work" and so every function of Windows is being reexamined to make it fit in with that philosophy.
There are many internal improvements. Changes to caching and scheduling. Lots of things you will never see reported or expierence directly.
With MSH they want EVERY option you can set in the Windows UI to have a command-line equivalent. Which is a big undertaking.
Users announce publicly that "Users Will Not Be In Longhorn"...
It seems that next-gen windows is not next-gen after all. What's left? "Windows graphics foundation v2.0" and ".NET"?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former" - Albert Einstein.
Look at the Longhorn driver development page for insight as to what's going on:m spx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/WDK/default.
"Exchange 12 administration functions will be built atop Monad, which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface." is a strange statement to me. My struggle with Windows has always been how to do things with the graphical user interface that I could easily do from the command line. Is Windows de-volving...??
For GUIs on Linux, take your pick, there are tons of them. Unless your definition of 'good' requires that one must somehow kill off the others, in which case there will never be one, thankfully.
Which "good GUI" are you speaking of?
Uber-bloated KDE or uncustomizable Gnome?
Both of course usually looking like shit compared to e.g. Aqua.
Sorry, but I can't really call them "good" -- more like "competitive". They spend a heck of a lot of time to imitate Windows anyway, and little time trying to revolutionize the genre like Apple at least try to occasionally.
Really makes you wonder about how easy it is to build large-scale (or medium-scale) applications if writing a CLI application is this hard and labor-intensive.
From the article:
Aside from not completely understanding that last sentence, I understand it enough to know it's one of the most frustrating things about how Microsoft chose to implement Windows. They came from the angle "gui is better", almost "gui is everything", to the detriment of allowing streamlined command line scripting. I'm sure many have their own examples, but most frustrating for me was trying to:
So here we are now in the, let's see, Twenty-First Century!, and Microsoft is talking about plans to provide the same functionality from the command line that exists in the GUI? If this is really true, if this is really how they've approached their design for Windows and the underlying technology, I am amazed beyond belief! Seems like they've done this completely upside-down!
So it'll take 5 years to remove the dependance on a GUI eh? Good to see they're taking a page out of *nix that sometimes a GUI is not a good idea... I'm assuming you can still do everything via the GUI if you wanted, if not I wonder if this will remove the "Windows is cheap to support because even a monkey can hit ok" mentality (not saying I agree or disagree with it) I wonder if eventually they'll ship a GUI-free server edition and go full circle? Interesting
(that WORKS -- hedging my bets here...)
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 14.1) here we go again, slashdot's patented idiotic anti-troll technology stopping me from making my perfectly legitimate idiotic posting! Way to go guys, I guess I'll just have to spool off a goddamned rant here until that stupid.pl script is satisfied that I'm not posting MPAA-copyrighted song lyrics that might get slashdot sued by Digital Convergence, Inc. I can see your house on the satellite image on google maps, you better watch out or I'll smear peanut butter on the underside of all your doorknobs! So, anyhow, I had leftover Chinese for lunch -- General Tzo's chicken. What I always wondered, is why the cook would call the general chicken, that just seems to be asking to be sent to the front lines, but then again, what do I know? Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 14.1) here we go again, slashdot's patented idiotic anti-troll technology stopping me from making my perfectly legitimate idiotic posting! Way to go guys, I guess I'll just have to spool off a goddamned rant here until that stupid.pl script is satisfied that I'm not posting MPAA-copyrighted song lyrics that might get slashdot sued by Digital Convergence, Inc. I can see your house on the satellite image on google maps, you better watch out or I'll smear peanut butter on the underside of all your doorknobs! So, anyhow, I had leftover Chinese for lunch -- General Tzo's chicken. What I always wondered, is why the cook would call the general chicken, that just seems to be asking to be sent to the front lines, but then again, what do I know?
What gets me is if msh is not in Longhorn then Admins are going to have to use batch files to automate tasks ... I rather experimental shell then resort to crappy 20 + year old batch files to automate tasks.
I think Gates needs to grow Monads and actually give us some info as to what Longhorn will do that would make it any different than a proposed XP service pack 3...
E = m * c^(Hammer)
... buckets and gobs of RAM and CPU cycles. MS is scurrying to do what they can to staunch the bleeding, but it's not a very compelling turn.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I just want to make it clear that this has nothing to do with monads in Haskell and other functional programming languages.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
People, let's try making a list of that which we do know that (for now at least) will be in Longhorn. Each person who replies just has to copy paste the previous list and add his content :P
Let me start with:
* RSOD (red screens of death)
* Dropping the prefix "My" from "My computer", "My network places", etc
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
And when will it ever be released? Why not just add the search and IE7 to XP and call it Longhorn?
Here's where else you might've heard "monad" before.
See Gottfried Leibniz's "Monadology" - here, and with
background info here.
Then check out Gilles Delezue's The Fold -- here. Deleuze is a total nutjob, like so many other French "theorists" or "literary theorists" (whatever that means), but he writes almost cogently about Leibniz.
I assure you that Haskell is not the "one other context" for the concept of a "monad."
"Interesting side note: as a head without a body, I envy the dead."
It may have something to do with this. (Though to be honest, it wouldn't take much stretching beyond the ideas in that web page to argue that BASIC is a functional programming language that uses monads.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Storm
I agree with you about KDE and Gnome.
There are also the terrible fonts. Both are plagued by this problem. That's something that should just work. It's inexcusable for someone to have to spend ANY amount of time on things like that.
Bill Joy wrote BSD while on the crapper one day! He also wrote csh, and ever since then, BSD users are always whining that engineers are ignoring their shells. And of course, they'll never give up csh, because it's tradition, damn it!
Personally I prefer WindowMaker, but to each his own.
I've got KDE running quite well on a PII 300, if you think that's 'uber-bloated' you must really be down on WinXP and OSX.
Oh, and my KDE setup doesn't look much like Windows at all, so I don't have a clue what you're talking about there either.
I hate to guess about other peoples personal problems, but it sounds to me like you're just trolling.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
- Become the only operating system for desktops and servers.
- Become the only or most major game console and games provider.
- Become the most major search engine provider
- Become the only or most major embedded OS provider.
- Become the only offices productivity tools provider.
- Become the only or prevalent music download provider.
- Become the most major e-books provider.
- Become a major hardware provider for peripherals - keyboards and pointers.
- Become the most major progran development tool provider.
- Become the most major publishing tool provider.
- Become the most major browser provider.
- Become the most major media player provider.
- Become the most major media editor provider.
And this is just the list my poor tired old brain can come up with on short notice. I'm sure there's more. And all of it must be tied into the OS so he can claim "it's embedded and I can't get it removed with damaging my product".Gates is spreading his resources out to the breaking point to cover every blasted computing use on the planet and to smother all his competition. Just like a rubber band that's streached too far, it will snap and get ugly quickly when the end comes.
Too lazy to create a sig...
1. Release "eXpansion Packs" for Windows
2. Say features are coming
3. Release bug fixes
4. Skip "???" step, Microsoft profits no matter what
5. Profit more
I'm not sure which is better, Longhorn on time, but wit hno new features, or longhorn delayed a fey years, but with great new features. I think delayed is better.
longhorn will be a gayed up xp. i have put some hope into the shell... 2 days ago they were posing with their shell being better than the linux one... now they want to keep it out of longhorn. so they publicly agree their development leeway compared to linux. thank you m$
I havent read all the comments so i dont know if this has been brought up. Anyway if M$'s next "big" product ( ie, longhorn ) doesnt make leaps and bounds then will they still be able to have a decent market share ? Many things they have on the drawing board like WinFS and this "Monash shell" would help them bring back their market share but they are delaying them so much that by the time they get out and are tested ( like 1.5 yrs after public release ) then many would have changed the the other options avalible.
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
... I'm gonna go over there and BASH what little Monads they've got!
Why does it appear that every feature in Longhorn is being removed? New file system was removed a while ago, the new version of IE (assumidly bundled) doesn't even match the features of a stock download of FireFox, and now the new shell will be removed? What is new in Longhorn? Will it just be another GUI upgrade? I don't understand how Microsoft can (mis)use their resources to this extent while remaining competative. It seems like Longhorn is a sinking ship, and their throwing as much overboard as they can to keep it afloat. It already seems to be an expensive Service Pack, and I'm sure they'll throw more features overboard before it's release.
XP came out when... in 2001? With all these cuts to planned features Longhorn, apart from fighting lawsuits and finding new and innovative ways to spread evil, what has MS been doing for the last four years?
Oh yes... that's right. They gave us Windows XP Starter Edition. *slaps head* Taking out all that functionality must have taken a lot of effort, too.
Ho hum...
In direct contrast to Apple (who had the sense to realise a good thing when they saw it by using *BSD as the basis of OSX) Microsofts new mission statement seems to be to prove the adage:
"Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
--Henry Spencer
(apologies if the quote is attributed to the wrong person but I'm drunk and simply Googled for the first result...)
And I'm not saying humanity can't do better than *nix but, currently, it's still a hell of a good start (mind you I've worked on ICLs, now Fujitsus, VME which is simply a pure pleasure... a pure pleasure... File generations... Mmmm... recover that file from 10 edits ago before you made a complete balls up of everything...)
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
This is more proof of how screwed up that mess of code is. Remember NT and how they kept cutting features. At some point in time you've got to say screw legacy and move on to something better. The customers will bitch, but were else are they going. Enterprise requires too much hand holding to go anywhere else.
First MS announce some vapourware and then they reschedule their vapourware, to make it even more vapous - what would it be now? Mirageware?
Oh well, what the hell...
You are thinking of a windows bug. Specifically the bug that hit the FAA when they were trying to use windows for their new ATC system.
You are a tool and an idiot.
Who said KDE and GNOME are the only GUIs for Linux? I don't use either one, and I have a GUI.
Apple may not be the only one to start experiencing the Osbourne effect. If so many features will not ship with Longhorn, a lot of people may decide to wait until they are available (and the core has been stabilised by a few patches/service packs).
Longhorn is going to be packed with golden goodies which are so wonderful that nobody will be able to see them. It will take the few years following for their opacity to set in.
...'Exchange 12 administration functions will be built atop >Gonads ... OUCH!!!
what was wrong? point and click search and replace couldn't change all the GNU BASH references in the source to MS Monad?
or is all the search and replace in the copied tab browsing code of Mozilla Firefox to MS IE taking too much time?
bummer, i was almost looking forward to trying out MS Firefox on MS Linux.
KDE wipes the floor with Windows, and looks better too now that they've switched to Plastik as the default theme. It's not harder to use (well, except for sorting desktop icons...), and it's much more powerful.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Not that I was hoping for it or anything, I dont use Windows. But, it is pathetic that a goliath such as MSFT with all their resources cant implement any feature or product they want overnight.
$ whatis msft msft: nothing appropriate
1. Microsoft is looking at implementing a subscription model instead of standard box sales in the near future.
2. Microsoft takes, on average, 5 years plus between major revisions of their operating system.
3. Microsoft's next operating system will not have the cool whiz-bang features they promised us, in spite of its six year lead time.
4. Microsoft's Windows operating system does not come bundled with any useful applications. Their video editing application has a featureset close to zero, and MSPaint is simply unchanged since 1990, having not so much as a smudge tool. WordPad is a completely inferior word processor compared to ANY other currently available.
5. Microsoft's operating systems cost a minimum of 99 US dollars, double that for anything useful in a business or network.
In conclusion, Microsoft's "option" will cost you a yearly cost for a product that is improved minimally every five years, with a smaller feature set than you were promised, and you have to buy any applications separately if you'd like to do anything WITH your computer.
Oh, Microsoft stock? SIGN ME UP!
It goes without saying that Miguel Icaza will have a reference implementation of Monad written in C#, running under Mono and incorporated into the GNOME environment by 1Q2006.
In a reflection of it's GPL nature, it will be called Gonad, and the boot splash will proclaim: "Gonad: Doesn't Microsoft wish they had one?"
years ago - it has nothing but crap to add to its product.
From what I see, MS has been building and building atop of the same OS since Windows 1.0.
Sure, sure, we are in a completely different arena than then, but hear me out:
Windows 3 was the first real advancement to come out of MS since DOS 6.xx...I know I know, Win3 and 9x were simply just shells overtop of DOS, but this illustrates my point. MS's has a rap-sheet list of patching its previous offering.
We all know the list, so I won't reiterate. WinXP is like a huge building that has hit its ceiling. The Longhorn push-back is proof! If it took MS, what, only a year-and-a-half to push out XP, why has it taken this long to scrape together Longhorn? If what we all hear here is correct (slashdot is NEVER wrong, esp when Netcraft confirms), then what is MS doing? I am certain the big problem is integrating DRM, no doubt. Besides that, what is going to be offered?
I believe MS is at its ceiling as far as its OS goes, as long as it tries to conform to complete compatibility (well, as far as it goes) for ancient DOS and 9x apps. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to run ancient apps, run it in its on virtual machine (VirtualPC is great for this, I would say (not a troll), but I don't see VPC anywhere because it's not needed! Why not!?).
I'm not saying trash everything that the current kernel has, just eliminate the bundles and bundles of legacy code already!
Sure, I'm a pack-rat too, but sometimes you have to let go of the 5-year-old newspapers and adverts collecting in the basement, right? MS can keep building on the 10 year old foundation, but it is apparent that the infrastructure can only hold up so much. To what end?
MS has worked so hard to refine things like NTFS and file/user security, scrapping things like FAT16/pseudo FAT32, blanket admin privs., Win9x pseudo-kernel. Why not scrap the rest of the cobwebs?
I'm not an OS expert, as I have only every coded apps, but if it takes, what, 5 or 6 years to offer no new real features, obviously MS (what...the largest s/w vendor on the planet?) is having trouble. This reminds me of the old game Jenga(R).
Still...I wish Win2k wasn't being killed. It's my fav MS OS to deal with when things go wrong.
Inject.
Start with an installer that had about a jillion checkboxes to include/exclude optional components that I may or may not need. By default, include as few as necessary, but make these options easy to enable later if I run across something that needs it.
The basic OS should run most run-of-the-mill Windows programs.
There should be no GUI that "twiddles things" that doesn't also let you save the settings to a command-line version, so you can do it again, without having to remember (or document) how you did it the first time in a GUI.
Aww, crap, I thought I'd have more to say, but let's just cut to the chase. Windows is nice to use, why? It's hard to say why. I use both Linux and Windows, but more often than not, Windows, for whatever reason. However, I think the Unix model is the correct one - separate components, each with a specific function. For a small glimpse into my whacky world, ponder the fact that I still use "vi" almost daily, even on Windows.
If I could mount Windows(tm) in a read-only partition it would be great.
It seems to me as soon as "Marketing" gets involved and starts mandating engineering decisions, you end up with crap, like Windows. You have a product that most people use, because it is good enough, but it is not as good as it could be because there is so much stuff tossed in, embedded deep, for no reason other than "marketing". There is no technical reason, for example, why IE is so deeply entwined in Windows - as any user of FireFox can attest, you can get a 5 MB browser that works great! IE sucks like it does, not for strictly technical reasons, but for marketing and legal reasons. (I have no idea what I am talking about here, but it sounds right.)
Finally; Aren't there laws against software doing stuff that it is not supposed to? Everytime I see a blurb about an "Easter Egg" - I don't think "cool", I think, how much space is wasted on that "feature" I don't need. Does it add any instability to the product? Seems to me Windows does a lot more than an OS should, much that I didn't ask for.
I am going to press Submit now, and go off an watch a movie.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Complicated command parsers are overrated, so perhaps they are trying to do this by enumeration: the will anticipate every command ever to be typed, and special-case it. That could account for the 5 years, and it would add the proper bloat as well.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler filename
I think Steve Jobs summed this up nicely years ago:
"Real artists ship"
Didn't I SAY EARLIER that MORE would be cut from Longhorn before it was done?
And here we have Microsoft DIRECTLY proclaiming the benefits of a CLI interface by saying, "You can do everything from the CLI that you can do from the GUI!"
So NOW what are the Windows trolls going to do? Proclaim the new Windows CLI the best thing since...the Linux CLI?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
OOPS, that would be too easy and would allow easier migration between Linux and Windows.
"It came with my PC!"
C'mon, people! The freakin' source for BASH is **FREE**! These guys took IE from crap throwaway to #1 in FOUR VERSIONS faster than that! What are they spending their time on? Poker tournaments?!?!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Monads & strife...
Most insightful post of the day. Mod up.
1. Cycle through each tab-completed option?
2. Crash your system?
3. Rip off an open source project with twice the functionality?
NOTHING will be in Longhorn by default. They threw everything away from the main branch and now to re-enter the branch individual teams must pass a hardcore quality bar. It's unlike anything you've seen before. The code must build on all platforms and must pass all unit tests. It must also pass static code analysis. These are not the only requirements there. With every major release Microsoft reinvents their development model for Windows (because the team size doubles). This was a painful but necessary evolution. I have no doubt this will have measurable benefits, in terms of security, stability and overall architectural consistency.
So FOSS community should be writing code like mad right now instead of this verbal masturbation as to what will and will not make it into longhorn. There are very few pieces without which longhorn will not ship. Other things will depend on the efforts of the individual teams, and folks are willing to go the extra mile, so chances are some of the things that you've heard won't make it into longron will end up shipping.
After six years of blasting Microsoft (sometimes deservedly), FOSS community will be caught with their pants down. And BillG will not skimp on lubricants, you know.
Awesome song...I have the T-shirt.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It seems like a week doesn't go by where MS is saying this or that WON'T be in Longhorn. Sheesh.
OK, so with $x billion in resources, their own aircraft carrier, and their own cabinet-level secretary in the government, why oh why would/could MS wait to implement all these features in the next release. Could it be because they are HIDING their deliberate paradigm shift? Could it be that OS/Office-suite is going to soon not be their "thang"?
Microsoft takes the opportunity to get out of the OS wasteland and throws all its apps to OSX for Intel. Their strategy "Well new Macs can run Windows, so none of our users will be left behind"
So there.
I don't get it. Even a single developer could do it in much less than that...
This is probably more of a distribution thing since i've never had ugly font issues (except with apps that don't support aa... which all apps should support).
Just because there are tons of GUIs on Linux doesn't mean it's OK for the programs I run to look and behave differently from one another. Or for me to have a bunch of different libraries that do the same thing loaded in memory.
OTOH, the quality of the GUI is improving very quickly.
SuSE 9.2 Pro.
It's set by default to use aa fonts. To me, and many others by my observations, this results in blurry (some would say "smooth") fonts. Unlike the fonts in Windows that look crisp and are readable even at small sizes, the fonts (at least in that distro) must be set to a much larger size to be readable.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Somebody's never heard of GNUStep / Windowmaker. Best dang GUI out there
All's true that is mistrusted
This is the fatal flaw of Windows and other GUI's out there. Shells are simpler to design than the comparatively worthless window dressing that makes up a GUI, but some are better conceived than others. Unix gives MS a lesson in 20+ years of interactive shells, and MS still can't get it, even after they managed to free themselves from the awful legacy of QDOS.
Hope he gets modded up.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
the problem is that there are too many.
I use the KDE window manager because it is configurable, works well, and has some useful little applets (Klipper, Kfm, Knote etc.), a great file manager, and the ability to open files off an ftp server in a text editor and save them back.
On the other hand most of the apps I use heavily, use Gtk (Thunderbird, Firefox, Gnumeric, Realplayer)
This does not cause any major issues, but it is far from ideas
I know this is slashdot, but I should at least try and dispell some of the info here.
.NET fallout at MS. At the time, Monad was fine in terms of meeting its goals - and it still is, today. Monad didn't get cut because it failed; monad got cut because .NET versioning failed. Monad was a fairly robust tool that was ahead of the Longhorn ship schedule.
First off, you can download monad already via betanews. It's old, but it's there. It's fairly great in terms of functionality. The extensions aren't there (because they haven't - and at this rate, never will - be built) but being able to browse the registry, Active directory and the filesystem all the same way should be there for you.
This had happened over a year ago, because of the
Monad isn't just a copy of bash, and those of you who think so don't know bash and don't know shells. It is a combination of a powerful scripting language that can access underlying data structures in a common way, a way to make everything look the same and be accessed the same, and an interactive process similar to lisp's interactive shell. WMI did not and does not have the same kind of interfaces to access everything the same way, nor does it deal with objects particularly well - and if you really missed it, you could use WMI in monad without too much problem. Bash doesn't treat the data produced as actual objects that can perform actions and be queried on - it still relies on strings. Perl's interactive shell hybrid comes closest, but it doesn't have the hooks into the OS that this did.
It's really sad, because this was one of the most innovative products that MS has thought to produce, and killing it for longhorn is a good sign that MS has stopped trying to innovate.
That is some funny shit!!!
Just so you know, ipv6.exe was deprecated when they 'finished' the stack. Using the IPv6 contexts in netsh.exe (which also configures v4+v6 TCP port proxies) is much better.
Microsoft's toolset has been improving over time and you can download Windows ports for most common utilities. I'm all for a new and improved shell, but the MSH beta has been available for some time and it's a long way from release.
Microsoft's problem is that their process is zeroing out the Most Significant Bits.
No wonder they're going to the different-endian PowerPC for the XBox. They must hope that, in their process, the Most Significant Bits will then be preserved, and they'll only lose the least significant bits.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
VB script has come and gone, so has WSH...losing support that is.
Was their another way to script registry edits back in 1994?
Actually some part of dos will likely still be in longhorn. I've found parts of win3.1 in XP, i'm sure there's some that i'm not aware of from dos.
+ Announce features to dissuade migration to other platforms, keep Microsoft in press, increase Windows:Linux signal ratio.
+ Announce billions of features to make people view longhorn as a necessity upgrade
- Don't deliver those fearures because:
a) costs money
b) needs all those developers who left for google
c) you won't have any features to advertise for the *NEXT* Microsoft upgrade
d) you still haven't checked it for gpl code.
It is no secret that microsoft has double blinded (supposedly) the copying of the gnu core tools into windows now (it is downloable as unix-tools on their own website I believe for NT os's) and this whole 'SHELL' was going to the be first embedded version.
In 5 years, a PC won't exist, people will buy various computers: they will all access the intarweb, they will all run firefox, they will all run cracked copies of adobe photoshop.
70% of computer owners I know do not even play games, despite having bought a 56* series nvidia card with their machines.
Linux doesn't need distros. IT NEEDS KILLER APPS.
For all the elitest (no linux doesn't have to do that, linux is mine, if they want something else (sometimes the fucktard uses the sports car / family saloon car example) they can choose windows - if you were intelligent you would realise that greater adpotion of linux means more $$$ spent on gpl projects, which means your sports car goes faster, twat, you can help great adoption by not being a knob head like the GIMP author was when a uy reconfigured the gimp menus to be like photoshop))
Yep.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
OS X is the chosen one!
Mac-zelot
Still, people are drinking the Kool-Aid(TM) daily. My now former employer (I was downsized last week) is looking at CE with a Flash(TM) player as a small-form-factor machine HMI. The prototype runs like molasses. But they all insist that Microsoft(TM) is the best way to go.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Cool, maybe this will allow the open source community to come up with an equivalent before they even push it out the door, for once ;) .
Ok, sorry about the troll.
However I have to admit that I really adore the concept of an 'object' console as opposed to the standard text shell we've been using and loving for, what, 30 years now?
It could be awesome if your programs output standard 'objects' instead of your traditional string. The console would become much more powerful!
I know the power of a text console is its simplicity: all programs can output text with an easy printf() or whatever. Outputting an object is a wholly different paradigm altogether. STDOUT and its brothers will have to change...
There already exists a Perl SHell (psh!), but I can't say I've ever been carried away by Perl's OO system. I have been carried away by python's OO style however
Does anyone know of a python system shell?
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
(obligatory) Duke Nukem Forever?
But then again, I could be wrong.
Why didn't they just look at what was available elsewhere, and copy the VMS shell (which Digital released for the VAX machines in 1978)? Clean, simple, and with command and option names that are actually possible to remember.
One of the most advertised aspects when Windows NT came out was that it was "designed by the people who wrote VMS". If this was true, does anyone know why they forgot to include the only part of VMS that's actually visible to normal users?
Sorry for ranting. I really loved the VMS command line. :-)
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
trojans, worms, clippy...
Oh my!
They should change the project name to Gelding.
I hear it all the time: Microsoft is sooo flexible. Well, to me it seams that microsoft isn't flexible at all, they just don't know what they are doing. They launch an idea, and a few days later they go whining that they can't make it!
You may hate posts google this, google that, but at least they DO what they SAY.
Microsoft says it from the beginning of their firm: we will make a stable OS, have they done that one yet. Once I hit the one week uptime, the system just crashes... and we all accept.
Blame MacroHard, they don't deserve the position they have, strangling everybody. (remember that they requested posts to be removed from THIS forum). Don't believe anything they say before it is installed from the box, on your test server.
so MS's copy of bash + applescript will take 5 years. by then, bash and applescript would be far ahead again.
-- rahul benegal : http://kalki.benegal.org
It takes three to five years to bang out a scripting language that scripts some "commandlets" on top of an already existing platform? I don't get it.
Maybe you'd be interested in Syllable. O.K, it isn't a suitable replacement for Linux just yet but it has serious potential. It avoids the exact problems you highlight (Among plenty of others).
Windows will never have a "good" commandline until it has a tabbed terminal emulator. Alt+Tabbing through tons of DOS boxes is a huge pain. Windows doesn't even support magnetic window snapping like most Linux window managers do.
Gnome has the ability to use sftp, ftp, and some other things in gnome-vfs... unfortunately it only works for apps using gnome-vfs, and there are still a few bugs, but it's getting much better all the time.
;)
One of the many things I like about linux is choice.
"Obviously apps look inconsistent."
I believe there is a gtk+ qt theme.. maybe you should try that? Unfortunately I can't find something similar to make qt apps look like gtk+ apps, but it's not a massive problem anyway. All the apps I use apart from rosegarden use Gtk+.
"Feel is inconsistent - different file selectors, for example (and one of them crap anyway)"
Yeah.. this is unfortunate, but if they both felt the same to use, then they wouldn't really be all that different.
Also, gtk's file selector is getting much better than it used to be,
"I have to set file associations twice - once for KDE, once for Gnome - this is really annoying."
I think that this isn't so much a problem in recent releases because they're following the freedesktop specs for that now.. aren't they?
Choice is good, but it comes with some problems too. I think choice's advantages outweigh the disadvantages too. Especially now that they're trying to make them more interoperable using freedesktop specs.
"...which would enable users to do everything from the command line that can be done from the graphical interface.'"
Does that mean that I will type "doubleclick" on the console?
How about a shorter list... features that aren't going to end up in XP anyway, and features that actually have value.
.NET, and vector graphics.
.NET framework 2.0 (the foundation for Longhorn)
Avalon: a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML,
Which will also be available for XP. Scratch one.
WinFX: a new API replacing the current Win32 API (there's of course still Win32 + Win64)
That's two (or is it three) new APIs. New APIs by themselves have negative value. What can you do with them... that's the important bit.
Lower user privileges (IE 7 will run in these on Longhorn)
Fixing the wrong problem. The only reason to run IE in some kind of sandbox is because of its broken active content model. Instead they should fix IE by backing that out and split off a local HTML scripting environment (like Dashboard, but without the stupid UI), and making IE into a normal browser... a purely web aplication that has no ability to download applets and automatically* run them with full local rights.
Included compiler (msbuild)
Ah, finally catching on to what every UNIX vendor figured out by the early '90s. Even SCO ecentually "got" that. Of course you can download SFU and get an included compiler AND a decent shell, RIGHT NOW... so this is also available for XP and Windows 2000.
New document format competitive to PDF
Something else with negative value.
An application deployment engine ("ClickOnce")
Sounds Linspired. I hope they've actually thought about security this time.
New desktop search capabillities
Already available for XP, not a Longhorn feature.
Improved security through lower privileged accounts and services
You're repeating yourself.
* popping up a routine dialog box that people are used to clicking OK on is hardly better than running it with no warning.
Yeah, I know it's supposed to be funny, but anyway, I'm sick of that prejudice.
Yes, Linux isn't ready for everybody's desktop. But that is because of
Guess what? "A good GUI" isn't on the list because KDE is a very good GUI and has been for several years.
Of course "A good GUI" won't automagically let you run AutoCAD, it won't let you use hardware for which there is no driver. And most importantly the smart kid down the street who supports the whole neighbourhood won't automagically know a new underlying system.
So quit it. KDE is a great GUI and a lot better than MacOSX (and of course Windows) in many aspects. But for a desktop you may need more than a "good GUI".
Cialis Soft Tabs: perfect feeling of being man again. Surprise her with your new and improved Longhorn, starts working within just 15 minutes.
People aren't getting it. I don't know anyone, *anyone* who will buy an OS upgrade.
I bought Windows 2000. I didn't buy XP because it was a downgrade from 2000, but 2000 was an improvement over 9x and NT4 (heck, NT3.51 was an improvement over NT4).
I also bought Jaguar and Panther and as soon as I get the time set aside to actually do the upgrade I'll be buying Tiger. But then newer versions of Mac OS X are more stable and run faster, and even with a short release cycle they manage to include useful new capabilities.
Turn on clear type in Windows.. You want bad fonts.. You've got it.. And best yet.. You PAID for that monstrosity.
Why not just use some shell with a GPL license?
Like with so many other things, Linux gives you a choice where others don't.
If consistency of look and feel is more important to you than a wide variety of apps, you can get that by simply choosing, say, KDE or GNOME and using only their apps. Both have all the essentials for the typical 'desktop' user covered.
If you prefer a wider choice of apps instead, you can get that too - all X11 apps will still run, if you install them and their libraries.
Of course, on windows you can't run OSX apps, so you might consider it the most consistent, but that consistency is achieved only by eliminating choices.
On OSX you can only run windows apps if you go to the trouble of getting VPC, and only run X11 apps if you bother to go get X11, so for people that don't do that, there is consistency (for the most part - MS apps like Word for Mac break that too however, if you use them.) But if you install VPC and X11 it gets just as inconsistent as any GNU/Linux system.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I have a friend who's trying to do installs on windows, and the lack of a decent scripting language, a way to produce a nice date-named file, or even a friggin' SLEEP function makes it almost impossible. A small, ported bash, ksh, sh, zsh, csh or any other shell would be FANTASTIC for lan admins.
Firstly, is there already one -- something which can be installed in \WIN or \WINNT or whatever, takes less than a 1M or so, and doesn't require a bunch of support files?
That's the requiement if you're going to put it on a bunch of machines without causing more trouble that you save.
If there isn't, I'd love it if someone ported over something with enough functionality to be useful, and running on all these different OS versions (even if you need different executables on each). It'd get a large following quickly. Monad would be a frustrating complication in the face of it, if everytone was using winsh, and had been for a year, and didn't need to use longhorn to get it, and knew it was available for use on one's entire installed based, so that no upgrade (besides a trivial install) was necessary.
I'm not quite sure how Microsoft plans to sell the OS
Same way they sold XP, and same thing that made XP so successful: by getting OEMs to bundle it with all new PCs/laptops sold. The vast majority of XP sales were because "it came with the new computer" - only a very tiny percentage of users actually upgraded existing computers to XP, and XP offered virtually no addition value (i.e. little incentive) to upgrade.
Most people will buy Longhorn simply as a result of the natural process of buying new laptops/PC.
Longhorn will be a (financial) success regardless of if it has any new features or not, so I don't think MS care too much, which is why they're never really in a hurry to add new features. Strategy is more important. A new "look and feel" is all that's necessary to distract people (and the media) from looking at anything else, and making people think that it's really a brand new OS. And most people think computers = Windows anyway.
Microsoft cannot "become irrelevant" in the desktop market so long as virtually every new computer sold has Windows on it by default. Longhorn will be a great success, financially.
I don't use Clear Type in windows...so I don't know what point you're trying to make there. I know not what method is used in SuSE 9.2 to "smooth" the fonts but the result is nearly identical to using Clear Type in Windows. I would at least know how to fix it in Windows (If it WERE on by default, which it's not).
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
So, you pick two obscure (avaliable on several platforms but rarely used) features and say that they're needed to be "good"?
The basic programming functionality is much more important. Compared to that, your points are a non-issue.
What reliable secure contemporary of DOS and early Windows ran on a PC? In any case, I wasn't providing an excuse for Windows based on its roots, I was responding to the claim that MS had historically always done a poor job. The fact was that more capable OS's were MIA at the time simply because they couldn't be implemented on the platform or wouldn't be any more stable if they had.
tricking it into privilege escalation is a step that no-one has ever had to do in a compromise before.
Every single cross-zone attack is a privilege escalation. Whether it's the browser or the OS implementing the protection boundary, the fact that a mechanism exists to allow an object on the low-security side to request the right to execute on the high-security side makes it a privilege escalation.
And Windows uses just too complex an API and privilege mechanism to ever trust. I mean I figured out a way to get LOCALSYSTEM privilege on NT five minutes after I first sat down at one, by trying a variant of a cron exploit that had been fixed on UNIX years before.
no longer forcing people to run as root cannot be anything but a good thing
Whoa, hold on, you were talking about a lower-than-normal-user privilege level for IE7. Now you're just talking about not running it as Administrator or Power User? Normal user privilege is already WAY too open for IE.
If I was going to run IE on UNIX, here's what I'd do to it: I'd have it chrooted into a filesystem with NOEXEC and NODEV enabled, and run it as a UID that had no write access except to a subtree that was purely cache, so I could wipe it without losing configuration.
And even then I'd be worried, because IE has to be able to make outgoing TCP/IP connections, so even in that environment it could be used in a botnet.
I don't see a credible way to even implement that kind of protection on NT. NT doesn't have a concept of chroot, it doesn't do traverse checking, and there's no analog of the "execute" bit so it'd still be able to hide executable code in its writable space.
People make way too much of the whole "don't run as root" thing. There's lots of things a piece of malware can do that can cause just as much damage to the net or to your own real life if it gets a chance to run code on your machine.
THe only acceptable way to build a browser is to arrange things so there is no mechanism implemented for untrusted code to request execution except in a fully interpreted hardcoded sandbox. Even if you think you can't trick the escaltion path into passing it, the existence of an escalation path in a browser is unacceptable.
Even relatively benign things like Safari's "open safe executables" to Firefox's "XPI install" mechanism bother me, and there isn't even any live viruses that use them. I don't care what Microsoft might do to "defang" ActiveX and Active Content and and all the rest of the words they use for the holes in their sandbox: nothing less than completely removing the holes counts as anything but a token effort for PR purposes.
So Longhorn converted from Unicode to URL entities?* Talk about your two steps forward and eighty steps back...
*%20 is a space in URLs. See the RFC on URLs and one example. 20% is twenty percent.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.