Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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 $39.95. Visual Estudi
2nd: The more time goes on, the more Windows takes on the features of unix.
3rd: Most every OS is some form of unix at this point except for Windows.
4th: Even Windows has a POSIX layer and unix-style command utilities for free as an add-on.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I've always found it annoying that M$ 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.
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!
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.
True, but the problem is that in GNU/Linux most programs are designed to work on the commandline.
In Microsoft Windows, they are designed to work with the GUI. So they have to code a CLI, and add to all the apps. Plus Microsoft are beeing threaten on thiere two main incomes (office and windows) and facing a humilation on browser area.
Freedom or George Bush
If that's the case, isn't it even more pathetic that Linux or any other OS hasn't posed any signifcant threat to them?
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."
In general, I like the 'keep it simple' philosophy of traditional UNIX, but I'll try MSH, when it gets to a more mature stage, before deciding whether or not Microsoft have come up with a better CLI than the simple UNIX model.
- 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...
Because there are a lot of tasks that require a good, programmable shell. WMI sucks big time and the primitive batch file methods of CMD.EXE are barely any better than the COMMAND.COM batch files of fifteen years ago. I gave the example a day or two ago of how easy it is to extract parts of the system date in Bash, which is really great when you've got automated scripts to move logs and put timestamp in the file name. It can be done in CMD.EXE batch files, but with the very odd FOR command.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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 !
I think AppleScript is more like the existing Windows Scripting technologies. The difference with MSH is that it's an attempt to merge that sort of thing into an interactive command-line environment, and include every aspect of the system that the GUI can manage. (I don't know if AppleScript covers every aspect of the system that is accessible from the GUI, but I know Windows Scripting doesn't.)
You must work for Microsoft PR. Nobody else would spin "taking something out" as "putting something in"!
... Microsoft has 5x more employees than Apple, haven't released an OS in 4 years, and next year's release promises to have pretty much nothing in it? WTF do they do in Redmond all day?
I have translated your list into English for the benefit of other slashdotters.
The following technologies will not be in Longhorn:
- the new shell
- the word "My"
- the color blue
If anybody's keeping score, they'll be releasing this next year. It takes time to deal with these drastic changes to the codebase, you know.
(For comparison, since Windows XP was released, Apple has made 3 major releases of their OS. In addition to significant performance improvements, they've added Expose and Spotlight. And they plan to ship next year's version for both PPC and x86. Of course, it's not a fair comparison: Apple also has only about 10,000 employees to Microsoft's 50,000+.)
Wait a second