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The Microsoft Singularity
jose parinas writes ""Microsoft Research has published the first details of a wholly new operating system under development called Singularity, designed new from the ground up, built on a new language and designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance.""
I've heard that Microsoft Singularity sucks.
(Go ahead, mod me down... I deserve it.)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
so theyre building from the ground up, just like they were going to with longhorn. whoop de do
The first link is broken. To microsoft's site.
"Because when we blue screen, all of your data goes down into a black hole."
Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
so this one is going to be *so bad* that it's impossible to predict what will happen after its release?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
So, a new OS that can distroy all data AND matter.
So much more advanced than a BSOD.
"We're sorry -- you have reached this page because a web server error occurred."
They're talking about reliability and yet it looks like we already sladotted the page.
Somehow, this leaves me wanting more</toungeincheek>
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Reliability, eh? Obviously, their web server isn't based on this OS.
Man- XP boots fast but that is about all.
... Microsoft's research site is already slashdotted
Wow, that page came up pretty fast. I guess their web server is built for performance instead of dependability.
Their depandable servers obviously aren't running Singularity. ;)
except that this implies that their other OSs emphasized performance over dependability.
".....designed new from the ground up, built on a new language and designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance."
How about security? God knows their OS'es need some.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Current setup was slashdotted within six comments.
Future setup will place an "emphasis on dependability instead of performance".
I'd say it sucks galactic black holes through buckytube, but that still wouldn't approach the Singular suckitude we're looking for.
Bite my dimly red-shifted neutronium ass.
Will the user interface be called Event Horizon?
wholly new operating system under development called Singularity,
appropriate name, as the gravitational pull of bloated code will cause
the OS to implode into the black screen of death....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Glad to see they're sticking with their naming convention... This just confirms that it will take MS until the end of time to ship a stable OS.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
Quote:
"designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance."
Well since there goal has always been to have both dependability and preformance and they never succeded I suppose it is rather wise for them to cut back on the complexity and just try to get one of them.
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
I hope the website isn't a testament to the dependability of the new OS...
Last week, the latest build of Windows Vista became so horrendously bloated that it underwent gravitational collapse... coincidence?
anonymous so as not to whore karma:
One interesting concept is the abstraction of Software Isolated Processes (SIPs).
SIPs provide the strong isolation guarantees of OS processes (isolated object space, separate GCs, separate runtimes) without the overhead of hardware-enforced protection domains. In the current Singularity prototype SIPs are extremely cheap; they run in ring 0 in the kernel's address space. Singularity uses these advances to build more reliable systems and applications. For example, because SIPs are so cheap to create and enforce, Singularity runs each program, device driver, or system extension in its own SIP. SIPs are not allowed to share memory or modify their own code. As a result, we can make strong reliability guarantees about the code running in a SIP. We can verify much broader properties about a SIP at compile or install time than can be done for code running in traditional OS processes. Boarder application of static verification is critical to predicting system behavior and providing users with strong guarantees about reliability"
Source: Singularity Site
From the report we can read that:
SIPs are the OS processes on Singularity. All code outside the kernel executes in a SIP.
differ from conventional operating system processes in a number of ways:
SIPs are closed object spaces, not address spaces. Two Singularity processes cannot
simultaneously access an object. Communications between processes transfers exclusive
ownership of data.
SIPs are closed code spaces. A process cannot dynamically load or generate code.
SIPs do not rely on memory management hardware for isolation. Multiple SIPs can reside
in a physical or virtual address space.
Communications between SIPs is through bidirectional, strongly typed, higher-order
channels. A channel specifies its communications protocol as well as the values
transferred, and both aspects are verified.
SIPs are inexpensive to create and communication between SIPs incurs low overhead.
Low cost makes it practical to use SIPs as a fine-grain isolation and extension
mechanism.
SIPs are created and terminated by the operating system, so that on termination, a SIP's
resources can be efficiently reclaimed.
SIPs executed independently, even to the extent of having different data layouts, run-time
systems, and garbage collectors.
something wierd happens here and we don't really know why.
[paraphrasing of course, sure the math battallion will come in to clarify]
Not the greatest marketing name I would think
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Single user, single threaded MS OS
I suppose that this will be MS UNIX... a child of XP and Xenix...
I know nobody will be interested to see this, but here is the link to google cache http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:IVJK6x-SMwYJ: research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/+microsoft+s ingularity&hl=en&client=firefox-a
I read through some of the "merits", and I have serious issues with the lack of DLLs. DLLs have become my patron saint of programming, and this thing wants to get rid of that. I'm not even sure MS could really continue if they got rid of DLLs. There may be other problems with their idea, but this is the first the leapt out at me.
here's jim larus and galen hunt talking about their project.
I saw and worked on this a bit while interning at Microsoft. Although what I say is my own and doesn't reflect Microsoft in any way, it's important to remember that this is a research operating system, so its not challenging or replacing Windows. They have some very good, solid ideas. I hope that, someday, it will be released.
fnord.
How is that different from every other OS Microsoft has ever released?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Wow.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
You're not even trying to make sense anymore, are you?
Nothing but redundant posts and tired cliches for comments on this article so far. But being critiques of Microsoft the mods will be retarded enough to mod it all Funny/Insightful/blah/blah/blah instead of Redundant and Overrated that they deserve.
Slashdot's credibility as a serious news site went through a black hole for all it's worth.
For what it's worth, HotOS is an actual respected academic workshop. It was sponsored by Microsoft, but then again, Microsoft sponsors lots of real, respected academic conferences.
The Singularity project is run by top-notch researchers with very good reputations in the academic community. This is the real deal.
I think Slashdot has an acronym for things like the parent post... FUD, was it?
Likely it will by default hide entire file names, and not merely the file extensions, for known types. /. for affording me an opportunity to share my enthusiasm for Redmond's non-command of OS design.
Just wasted 10 minutes on that degenerate, perverted mis-feature.
Props to
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Of course, this would really suck for all those developers who have fine-tuned their software to Windows madness only to have it all exploded a few years down the line.
Perhaps that would be a valuable lesson about developing your software to a propietary, closed API, wouldn't it?
I'm not sure what would be gained from doing this, as opposed to doing what Apple did, and put a slick user interface onto a decades-tested BSD core.
..don't panic
And how would that be different from every other OS Microsoft has ever released?
They're all money sinks into Bill's pocket. They have no other purpose, let alone trying to extend the state of computer science or IT productivity.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Have you actually read any of the papers?
I am an OS academic, and we take Microsoft Research seriously, because they're fucking good.
HotOS is a pretty serious workshop for Operating Systems research. Microsoft Research, among others, pays for the conference room. Singularity isn't far enough long yet to get into a bigger conference like SOSP or OSDI, but you can be sure it will in a year or two.
I wouldn't call Singularity pseudo-academic.
You're being way too optimistic.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Or, that despite notions to the contrary, a lot of Slashdot readers actually read the stories.
Posters and submitters might be a different situation though.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Try checking out the Microsoft Research page, and their past systems stemming from there. You might be surprised.
Remember the other defintions of Singularity. They probably apply more than the one MS picked.
- point where a mathematical function goes to infinity or is in certain other ways ill-behaved
- so massive it implodes in on itself to become a black hole, etc
Security means your safe. Dependability could mean that or that you can depend on being shafted on a regular basis. This is MS, so I'm guessing they mean the later.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The relentless bashing of Microsoft in this manner is tiring. Have they made flawed products? Absolutely, but to generalize their contribution to modern computing as nothing more than theft and good marketing is pure garbage. However such posts are good at karma whoring...
B O R I N G
What! No screen shots?
www.aleo.no
I don't understand your complaint. They wrote some papers about their research project, why wouldn't they put them on their site? Before you dismiss the quality of the papers, you want to actually read them.
Service Unavailable
As far as I can see, the language in question is not exactly "new" anymore, being C#. In other words, this is sort of a demo OS written in a managed-code environment as a way to test various OS principles (which in this case sound a lot like the virtualization stuff that so many other vendors are also doing). Singularity seems like the equivalent of writing an operating system in Java for a school project.
Breakfast served all day!
But from the second link it seems that almost everything - including user programs - executes in socalled Software Isolated Processes (SIPs), and that these SIPs all run in ring 0.
[sarcasm] Looks to me like Microsoft is working hard to keep their current security leadership... [/sarcasm]
An OS written in C#? Could be good. Not for a gaming machine, but what about an ATM? A controller in an industrial environment? Imagine a PC with no memory leaks,like ever. No buffer overflows. No monthly patching hell. Would make one tough SOB as a firewall.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
They're all money sinks into Bill's pocket
There's no need to be bitter; You too can get in on the action with an Ameritrade account at $26.44 per share for MSFT plus a transaction fee.
PS - No guarantees on ever having another dividend payout like once a while back.
If you read the paper, the idea is that, yes, it'll be slower, but the reliability will be built in from the beginning, rather than other systems which take something fast and bolt reliability on. They make a good point that they will be able to use optimising compilers for CLR languages in this context, too.
It's named "WinUX."
In stark contrast to Windows XP's vision of "performance over dependability."
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Black holes can't destroy information nearly as well as an MS OS can.
'Singularity'; Usually associated with blackholes->money.
Will business never learn if anyone takes this up as another 'innovation' for the supposedly next best thing to sliced bread rather than MS's usual maloney?
ok, let's try: In most latin words, the prefix "in-" is the sign of negation or opposition, e.g. "incompetence" is contrary to "competence". And "nova" obviously stands for "new" - so, "innovation" is the opposite of ...? ;-)
Their contribution to modern computing is to have ridden the wave of cheap commodity PCs that needed a GUI to run them. When I think of all the time and money that has been wasted keeping Windows systems from falling over themselves, I shake my head. People are now afraid of computers, paranoid of being on the Internet, and have been convinced that it's normal to require anti-virus and anti-spyware software as a layer between you and the applications you run.
Can you really name a positive contribution they were on the forefront of making?
"Sufferin' succotash."
"Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability?"
Um, is it just me or isn't this the primary goal of just about every operating system built since practically the first OS (but, obviously excluding OS's from MS). They could just pick up a 25+ year old book on operating system concepts to know how to build this thing. This is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. But I guess if MS didn't "invent" it then it can't be taken seriously by MS.
I wouldn't call it FUD. Considering all the "independent" OS studies MS puts out, not to mention the outright lies their marketing department (or marketing firms hired by them) passes off, I think MS has very little credibility when it comes to announcements that aren't backed by much substantial. I don't doubt they have very good people doing very good research, but the company as a whole has no credible marketing capital.
This OS seems like it is much more suited for server applications - where if one process fails, it doesnt crash the system.
Gee, that sounds familiar?
Check out EROS for an implementation that exists now. Granted, EROS itself is no longer being developed, it was definitely around before this OS, and EROS has spawned some new projects (look on the link for links).
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
It's a different approach to writing OSs in general. BSD is dependable (when built right) because it's been around for a long time. This system is aiming to abstract everything so that sources of instability just can't happen. Everything is abstracted to an object model, it's similar to a system running in a Virtual Machine, but "not really".
As for developing to proprietary APIs, this system appears to be built upon CLR, which is an open specification.
When it comes to Microsoft its hard to take them seriously. Considering how much of Windows Vista and its predecessors that came out as real products and functionality everything is just pointless PR blabber. Until we see something that runs on a computer its all about appearence. Heck RMS can issue a press release tomorrow claiming to have invented an unbreakable system that can run on a calculator. Microsoft has done this before and continually does it to stop people from migrating through vaporware. "-The next version will be secure" "This new version is going to be faster than the older ones" etc...
HTTP/1.1 400
Microsoft is well known for spouting "Everything before now was crap. We did it right this time." as a marketing ploy to sell new versions of their OS.
However, I'm surprised that they're pulling that out before Vista's even on the shelves. Of course, maybe they're just hedging their bets because Vista is probably vaporware...
let's all hope it doesn't have anything to do with technological singularity!
coming soon.. MS Skynet
-metric
I don't believe that we will really have dependability until upgrades can be installed without rebooting or restarting the OS or applications.
As software starts to take over from mechanical controls it needs to be super reliable. It looks like Microsoft is getting ready for a world where their software flies our planes and drives out cars.
Well let's see, there was Bob. Now that was real innovation.
01/20/09
Yea, we've never seen a LAMP site /.ed now have we?
/.ers kill a LAMP site do you post with the subject, "This just in LAMP sucks . . . already Slash Dotted"?
So when
And they , just as with Vista, probably will have to ditch some features. Dependability being the first one ...
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
"Those who fail to learn from Unix are doomed to repeat it" - unknown
Welcome to 1969 MicroSoft!
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
The question is what have they made that's "innovative".
/.'d a little, but that's one thing that comes to mind. Like the GP suggested, browse through their site some time.
Would their Virtual Wifi count as "innovative" to you? Their site seems to be
Wow, and the last time I saw a /.'ed site spewing MySQL and Apache errors I thought it was just me. Because, well, I've heard that using open source will automagically upgrade your DSL to a T3. Free!
Moron.
I thought Vista was meant to be a whole new operating built from the ground up with dependability - not to mention security - in mind? Oh well. I guess I'll just have to pretend that's what Vista is all about while waiting 20 years for Singularity. Actually sounds an extremely interesting idea but perhaps it won't see the light of day till Gates and co have gone.
Hmmn, a completely new operating system from Microsoft: "It's a complete lie, of course. But you can't afford to be too scrupulous when you have world domination in mind." E.L. Wisty
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
to generalize their contribution to modern computing as nothing more than theft and good marketing is pure garbage.
Perhaps you can specify some of their alleged contributions?
That's OK, we'll wait.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I believe that TRSDOS (or at least it's predecessor) was written by BillyG and crew from scratch.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Well I guess John Titor was a bit off when he predicted we would harness the power of a singularity. Instead of time travel we get a crappy pre-pre alpha research OS..while he came back bending lasers and building time machine devices resembling a toolbox. I guess this is how our universe differed from his.
The situation, that is.
Not the jokes.
Well, maybe the jokes too...
Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system (named Singularity), with the aim of producing a more robust and dependable software platform. Singularity demonstrates the practicality of new technologies and architectural decisions, which should lead to the construction of more robust and dependable systems.
Where have I hear that before?.
A key aspect of singularity is ... Software-Isolated Processes, which encapsulate pieces of an application ... and provide information hiding, failure isolation, and strong interfaces. All code outside the kernel executes in a SIP.
That sounds alarmingly like a closed address space. Microsoft in 2005 is giving us what UNIX had over 30 years ago. thx u sir!
SIPs are closed object spaces, not address spaces
I stand corrected! What's the difference?
Two Singularity processes cannot simultaneously access an object.
Ruh ruh! So we're going back to the model where two processes can't open a handle to the same file? You mean ... like .. er... DOS?
A process cannot dynamically open or generate code.
So like ... you can't run Perl on it. Or shared libraries. #include <dlfnc.h> is a thing of the past.
SIPs are created and terminated by the operating system, so that ... resources can be reclaimed.
Yeah uhhh... the runlib library for, say, C executables in UNIX does this. And has for a long time. Like, since Gerald Ford or something.
I'd go on but I'm just making fun of them. If you read through their overview document there's actually some very good ideas in there, and knowing a few programmers from W2K, I can tell you that they do employ some top-notch talent there.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
This provides a chance for Microsoft to flex its development muscle (i.e. money) to get something done, free from the constraints of history.
They tried it once before. Remember OS/2?
MS's customers are all about inertia. This effort is doomed, whether the software's any good or not.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Okay, Microsoft, I think I'm with you on this one...you're telling us not to use ActiveX, right?
Stay away from the singularities!
Also it's worth noting that, first, HotOS isn't "invite only." That's why there is a call for papers on the web site referenced by the grandparent. Second, the review is double blind, so there's no chance of papers submitted by Microsoft Research getting special treatment by the reviewers. So I'm not really sure what the grandparent is alluding to.
MSR isn't the first research group to think of using new language constructs to enforce security. Check out this paper on Asbestos, appearing at SOSP, for something similar. But one thing is certain: MSR has a large pool of talent and the money to push this research endeavor farther than any other company or academic institution could, and that is something exciting.
- shadowmatter
n/t
you had me at #!
Why on earth would I not allow a SIP to modify its own code? Certain types of advanced computation are not easily done without it. If it is so bloody self-contained why should anyone care? Curtailing languages and programming to only what can be statically verified even within ultimate sandboxes is pointlessly restrictive for highly illusory "safety". Say goodbye to Python, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Scheme and all those other "unsafe" languages. It also allows M$ unprecedented ability to control all code run, which I imagine has not escaped them.
This is a giant Microsoft FUD attempting to ride on the recent Singularity press. Microsoft has no real place in a real technological Singularity. Don't drink the koolaid served by the Redmond Dinosaur.
Well everything that google has put out hasn't been comlete failures like almost all off Microshafts. #2 at least google gives it back to open source, #3 and most important so listen up...Bill Gates does own google..Once Microshaft comes out with a decent OS that is secure, reliable and doesnt cost and arm and a leg, then maybe the bashing will stop. We are sick of the lies spewed by Microshaft. Plain and simple
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
"...designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance."
I thought that was the point of Windows NT? So I guess there'll be 3 versions of Singularity and then they'll make a home version (a la XP), and then they'll start over from scratch again?
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I've hacked on this project also. It's a microkernel architecture akin to Mach. But they have some pretty interesting ideas on performance and the programming model (they have their own C# language extension). Like the parent said, this is a research prototype and nothing like Windows. Also, don't let the absence of a sosp/osdi paper bother you too much. There is surprising little whole systems os research done in academia anymore. It just takes too many people and too much time to do well; MSR is one of the few places with enough resources to be able work on a system like this.
No. It was not that it was sponsored by Microsoft; it is that it was sponsored almost to its enterity by Microsoft and it was "invitation only", where invitations could come only from... Microsoft.
False. "Sponsored" by Microsoft means they donated money to it. It's a USENIX sponsored conference (which, if you're not aware, is an organization that sponsors highly respected systems conferences). It does not mean that Microsoft ran the show. Out of a 12 person committee, only two are from Microsoft Research.
Thoughts:
1. Be nice to have some real competition versus Linux/OS X in terms of architecture. XP/2003 just aren't there. Vista won't be, most likely.
2. Where such a beast (research OS) ever to become a product, would it demonstrate a high level of backwards compatibility? If not, would it actually have to compete on merits, rather than vendor lock-in?
3. It's taken ~10 years to write Wine to the point where it is in _beta_. Now, I'm sure MS can do it faster, because they have the documentation; after all, they designed it. But how long will it take? Or will they use a virtual machine architecture?
In any case, if MS switches to an entirely different OS architecture, I forsee the end of the MS monopoly. Release of a non-Win32 based OS, one that runs older applications (either desktop OR server) in emulation validates Linux/OS with QEMU/Virtual PC/VMware/Xen/Whatever.
4. I doubt this will ever leave the lab. Singularity will be a test bed for MS researchers who want to play with various concepts. These things will be ported over to Vista, or whatever comes into the future. I cannot imagine a world in which MS actually started from scratch; having to market such a product against mainline-Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX, and FreeBSD would be pure madness. It's already extremely difficult for MS to push Office against older versions of Office; this has generated substantial pressure towards alternative Office packages.
It'll be significantly harder for MS to push towards a non-Windows MS operating system. Every single CIO willing to consider moving from Windows will be willing to consider moving to Linux/OS X/whatever instead.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What distro are they going to base it on?
Considering the problems their web server is having though, here's the link to the technical paper (In PDF Format) so you can skip the website altogether. Singularity PDF
God, Root, what is difference? -- Pitr from Userfriendly.org
Did Windows have this disclaimer when it launched? Or ... yesterday?
0 2)
"Again, this is a prototype research OS, not a full fledged OS that can run the typical applications you've come to expect of an OS"
(from http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=683
After all... why would you need to focus on dependability....
unles...
your current OS wasn't dependable?
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Defining a way for SIPs to communicate with communicate between each other, what an incredible idea.
Reclaiming system resources, I new Microsoft would get around to that eventually.
So it will DEPENDABLY crash... just takes longer?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Absolutely, but to generalize their contribution to modern computing as nothing more than theft and good marketing is pure garbage.
Compare Microsoft's contributions to modern computing to those made by IBM, Sun, Apple, and SGI.
From Microsoft's very inception the undercurrent has been driven by opportunism and a keen desire to take advantage of others.
Perhaps due to time distortion effects, Singularity will reach production before Vista. : )
Hey, maybe this will get more people interested in the Hurd, since they appear pondering a change to a EROS/Coyotos microkernel thingy.
Maybe a good chance if you are interested!
We are hiring! If you are interested in a full-time Researcher position, please email a C.V. or resume, a research statement, and the email addresses of three reference letter writers to Galen Hunt. You may also email copies of two publications you feel represent your best work. Minimum education requirement for a Researcher is a Ph.D. in Computer Science or equivalent.
To facilitate our hiring process, we strongly encourage interested fulltime researcher candidates to submit their application materials as soon as possible and preferably by February 15, 2006.
In evaluating candidates, we pay particular attention to demonstrated qualities of research taste, innovation, and first-hand system building. We value highly a proven research track record as demonstrated by strong publications in top venues.
If you are an exceptional Ph.D. candidate interested in a research internship, please use the MSR Internship Application.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and supports workforce diversity.
Yeah, like the Navy ship that launched with much fanfare running Windows NT (no doubt courtesy of some bribes to the Pentagon.)
Which then went dead in the water and had to be towed back to port.
Whereas most of the submarine force software was designed by techies and runs on forms of Unix.
Buy a car that runs on Microsoft software? Hah! No chance. And the only plane I'll fly in that uses Microsoft avionics had better be one with an escape pod on every seat.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
1. One who pays a stipulated sum in return for regular meals or for meals and lodging - or software (see "Subscription Pricing.")
2. One who goes on board a vessel as part of an assault or military action: repel all boarders. (See "Linux as Threat to Microsoft.")
Sounds like Microsoft's thinking to me.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
... does it run linux?
no, of course not, but wouldn't it be great if microsoft (like apple) changed windows to a bsd or other unix core and ported the interface to run on top it?
After browsing the pdf this os looks very promising. It's implementing a lot of technologies that have to this point only been theorized or tested in very small scale environments. I personally applaud microsoft for taking this initiative on dependenability, for it is something that they have lacked focus on for the past 15 years or so. And i'm honestly kind of disgusted with general microsoft bashing in these comments. Judge technology by it's merits and pitfalls not by it's creators past acheivement, or personal disputes with it's creator. -- nuff said
Later,
Phil
Heh.
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
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Posting as AC, so I don't care who reads this, I just wanted to get this off my chest.
I have wondered what would ahppen if Microsoft sent a team of developers off to build a new operating system from the ground up. Regardless of what people think, they have some of the worlds best developers. Now, they've gone and done it. I can imagine Micsrosoft having the best operating system out there, under those circumstances. They could just end up winning, after all.
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Bill, Steve says answer your email: another of our servers has crashed from those damn Linux zealots at Slashdot.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
PDF of the Microsoft paper
[SIG] Far better to be thought a fool then to post on
Microsoft is really great at marketing their products. They got people to stand in the rain, at midnight, to buy an OS.
If that's the case, then what is Apple, omnipotent? Apple freaks stand in line, all night, seemingly every few months when the new Apple Gadget version x.x.x.x comes out. MS is good at marketing, but they're nothing comapred to Apple. MS is selling what is now a cheap, commodity OS. They come out with a new one every fewyears. Apple sells high priced, super-premium consumer OS, with a new full priced version every few months, and their customers STILL wait in line for it. On top of that, have you ever seen a MS tattoo? I've seen pictures of a bunch of Apple tattoos...
It'll be slow as fuck.
:P
Well, sometimes slow is good
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
can't be slashdotted already surely, not the great microsoft, for http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ i get the following error message -
...
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
In other words, it will be a black hole for your processor cycles.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Whats your point?
Dictionary.com defines Innovation as "The act of introducing something new." It doesnt need to be completely new or never seen before. 95% of innovation is about building on existing things -- Thats how humanity progresses.
Most innovation is about finding a new application for an existing idea, or about combining two existing things in a neat and *new* way. Innovation doesnt require completely new ideas, just new applications.
If we use your definition of innovation, then it rarely, if ever, happens. Every genius, in virtually every field worth mentioning (physics, math, CS, any science, business, economics, politics), is just building upon previous work done in the related subjects.
Get a grip. MS has done plenty of innovation, and not only in computer science, but also in business, marketing, operations, and HR.
B
Hawking has come out and relented on the whole 'destruction of information' thing with regards to a singularity. Now, he HAS said that any information that you drop into a singularity is munged so badly as to be useless for re-constructing the original information when it comes back out. Oddly, this seems more appropriate for a Microsoft product....
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I'm going to rush out and get it because of the description on the website.
Quote:
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>
Have they ever heard of "Non-Stop"? You know, the Tandem kernel? These machines have 99.99% up-time. They don't perform great always but they are bullet proof....and essentially non-hacked because....well, they don't really make root-kits for these things.
In case you never heard of them, they are a mainframe based computing system that is used heavily in stock markets, banks and ATM devices. Basically in places where up-time and reliability is rather important. I personally don't like programming on them too much (COBOL anyone!..language with no stack...just wrong) but it can be a fun learning experience. At least there is a program called "OSH" that emulates the bash shell, rather poorly I'll admit...but nice for a guy like me anyways.
I guess a neat thing about Tandem, that also makes them awkward to use initially, is that they don't have a typical file structure. Everything is "Volumes" and you write all these "Servers"....just different. In the end, there is a one-to-one mapping of their file system to something most of us find traditional.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
MS singularity? What is that when MS becomes so intelligent it doesn't need human employees anymore?
Once your soul is sucked into using Singularity, even a force as strong as Linux cannot pull you out of it
but then gravity is the weakest of the 4 forces, and a singularity is the apex of gravity, so MS is essentially suggesting their OS is the strongest of the worst?
Because they have a massive astroturf budget, and you don't. So what's new?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
It's all relative...
the farther away you are from anything, the more it appears like a... Singularity!
I'm betting that that ring0 is inside the advertising event horizon and
I dislike MS production software and business practices as much as the next guy. But don't make the mistake of underestimating MS Research just because you dislike MS.
Does anyone know if this means no restart required after a driver update?
The rewrite was based on the Mach kernel and it was done for the PPC. It was really nice. It's a shame it was killed - as far I as know. IBM is a huge company and I haven't worked there in 10 years, so take what I've said with a grain of salt or two.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
MS Singularity is just their version of jxos - pure Java OS. Their version is actually somewhat worse than jxos, since that at least includes a functional AWT user interface, simple network stack, nfs server, ext filesystem, and minesweeper (you can even try it in vmware, just download the boot disk image). Last I checked singularity had a command-line only interface. It is equivalent to a school project, but that doesn't mean the approach is wrong... it isn't.
Of course neither are as advanced or usable as Sun's JavaOS... I wish they would open source that! Monolithic unsafe kernels are old hat. They suck in so many ways it isn't even funny.
Without Microsoft we'd be paying £1000 for Macs just to send an e-mail, or fiddling with Linux command lines.
So it's not just another MS project. That's interesting. But who will own the copyright to it when it's finished?
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Is Longhorn even out yet? I haven't been watching (or do I care) about its release, whether or not its out, or what the date is, because I won't be using it. If it already has been released, then it must be relatively recently. They're already talking about their NEXT operating system? Allow me to say:
WTF?
Once, just once, I'd like to see Microsoft release an operating system where they actually PLAN (note it doesn't really have to happen, just planned) for it to be out there for a while? Hasn't the world seen enough of their new and exciting operating systems?
Yes, this is a troll. Yes, I hate Microsoft. Yes, I'd rather be hacking my 2.6 kernel at home right now.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Not saying that at all, I just expect a company like microsoft to have infrastructure that can stand up to a slashdotting better than most.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
It's a better name than Pink, at least. Although I suppose if they teamed up with the Apple developers Jobs sacked, you could call it HotPinkOS.
English is easier said than done.
As is typical when I read Microsoft articles/publications/press releases, I got to the word "innovation" and stopped reading.
"You think your Commodore 64 is really neato What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito? You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?"
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Again one would expect that Microsoft would have the infrastructure to survive the massive traffic surge of a slashdotting, better than this...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
This could mean that it automatically reboots itself for you instead of hanging at the BSOD.
Personally I prefer the VMware approach that only the virtual machine dies on any non-recoverable error.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Since you are pointing out the modifications to the posts and comparing the "alleged" disparity in comment, you sir, ARE karma whoring.
B O R I N G
And you have knowledge to evaluate the source code and spot problematic areas or would you have to rely on others and their motivations behind a review?
I've been using OSS software since way before linux surfaced, got old quarter inch tapes from EUUG in the 80's with software 4 times a year, but I don't think OSS is the holy grail which fixes everything, nor do I think MS is any better than OSS or worse for that matter. For 99.999% of all software users access to the source code is not adding any value to their computing experience nor do they or will they ever have the ability to do anything with that source code. OSS is good for many things, but using this as an argument against another OS which is currently under research seems farflung and downright ridiculous. Besides, the technical paper is quite good and they are definetly on to something, what the endresult will be, we can only speculate about, but I reserve any opinon for the finished product if or when it appears.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
The real question is who owns the intellectual property that the research group comes up with. Since it's MS sponsored, it is MS' baby. Singularity could turn out to be the next OS after Vista. Because, come on, Vista has all the signs of being the next ME. On another note, SUSE 10 has rocked my socks off. I'll stay with that.
MadOgre.com
What is so new and innovative about this? Java has been doing this for 10 years.
Like the parent, I read the PDF writeup (linked to from the story page), and got kind of eager to see and play with this.
I think this issue is that Microsoft is so large that it's becoming a sort of confederation of departments (though an analogy with a more totalitarian feel might be better), in which each part is by orgizational necessity granted a degree of autonomy. Also, with a company this big, I don't think you can truly speak of one, overarching "Microsoft Culture" to be found in all departments of the company.
I predict a movement of the "Microsoft as a whole still sucks, but Their Reasearch department is doing some *cool* stuff" variety in coming times.
Just my 0.0167 EUR
I think the "start -> shut down..." GUI design is pretty innovative.
The rest, as they say, is history. Or marketing. Whichever.
Anybody questioning how this is done has not realized the the "program" is interpreted byte code, not any kind of present day machine language. The interpreter (assummed to have no bugs itself) is incapable of writing over memory not owned by the current process.
"...it is impossible to predict how a singularity will affect objects in its causal future." - NCSA Cyberia Glossary
Sounds like a Microsoft operating system alright...
"Absolutely, but to generalize their contribution to modern computing as nothing more than theft and good marketing is pure garbage."
Fucking name one then.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
When I think of all the time and money that has been wasted keeping Windows systems from falling over themselves...
I think of the over $300,000 that I have made the last ten years doing so.
It's good that, after a 20 year hiatus, people are starting to write operating systems in languages again that are a bit saner than C.
While not new, maybe this will spur on others to start similar efforts. We really need a successor to Linux and BSD, something with runtime safety and garbage collection in the kernel.
Yeah, they're so afraid of the Internet that growth has been doubling every year since around the Windows'95 release timeframe. They are paranoid about being on the 'net and think it's normal to run anti-whatever ware as a basic acceptance (whether right or wrong) that computers are not infallible. In some ways, computers have evolved from being "magic" and "universally fantastic" to being "just another device" that has its share of problems and issues just as any other product. I think this has been good, overall, for the world. Holding something as being "magic" by the general populace leads to some bad things (worship, etc.).
Positive contribution my Microsoft: commoditized and standardized the personal computer products. An example of standardization is graphics cards (before Microsoft imposing standards, every card was different, etc.) Have you ever set up Glide? or had a game that ran against VESA (crappy) or Glide (proprietary but good)? The reason why graphics cards are like they are today is because of Microsoft. Derived from this is games on the PC. Software developers don't want to have to build against and test against several grahpics APIs. A standard graphics API has made making software (games) much easier to write to target a large market (all Windows PCs as opposed to PCs with Brand X or Y video cards). Commoditization of PCs can be seen in the fact that so many households around the world have PCs now.
Do not underestimate what benefits having (practically) a single platform to code against has had on the software industry. Being able to write one piece of software and have it runnable by 90%+ of the world's machines is a very strong benefit.
Not only this but Linux itself has benefitted. Not only did Microsoft give all those folks someone to hate (someone to motivate them) but the standardization and commoditization of PCs has directly enabled Linux to be successful. PCs are cheaper as well as have a number of features that Intel and Microsoft developed together.
If we travel deep deep into all the Microsoft vaporware, we will find an all-resource sucking Singularity. My best bet is that that codename will be the kernel and the box will have a "Galaxy" brand (after all, is what you see high in the sky when you look beyond your window).
So what? Specifics regarding Microsoft's contributions are not welcome here, therefore the moderation is correct. Note that insightful/interesting and certainly funny are subjective.
Microsoft Research. Quite a different thing.
MSR has a large pool of talent and the money to push this research endeavor farther than any other company or academic institution could, and that is something exciting.
Except that MS will just patent anything these guys come up with, making the information useless for another ~20 years by which point it will be obsolete anyway.
I'd prefer that MSR not be doing work on anything useful, that way others who aren't so patent hungry can actually produce something useful to the rest of the world.
The two are very different beasts.
EROS uses C and relies on memory management hardware for isolation. EROS also can't analyze or verify code it loads.
Singularity uses C# and does not use memory management hardware for protection; it guarantees isolation via runtime checks, and it can perform extensive code analysis on load.
I don't know whether Singularity is going to make it, but I have used and developed on systems like it (the idea isn't new), and it is a lot nicer than either UNIX kernels or EROS-like kernels.
I allways knew that going with MS was pretty hard choice - But until now I did not realize it was actually a choice between reliability - and performance. (I guess one cannot get everything - even with a great company like Microsoft.)
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I don't think OSS is the holy grail which fixes everything, nor do I think MS is any better than OSS or worse for that matter.
What do you think would be the best setup? I mean do you have any ideas on how things could be done, or have you seen any that just haven't reached the popularity of those two models?
Microsoft bashing is fun, especially when PR goons promulgate buzz instead of substance, as though everything that matters is virtual and buzz not only reshapes consensus reality in the realm of cash flow, but in the realm of actually getting things done. I roll my eyes too, but hey, you know, Microsoft has been getting things done for two decades. I'll cut 'em some slack with this one -- it's the same thing Steve Jobs did when he cut loose from legacy OS 9.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
The main bits of the story0 2
Also, there is a link to this video
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=683
---
"...it is impossible to predict how a singularity will affect objects in its causal future." - NCSA Cyberia Glossary
What's New?!
We recently released an extensive Technical Report describing the current state of the Singularity Project in great detail.
Overview
Singularity is a research project focused on the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools. We are building a research operating system prototype (called Singularity), extending programming languages, and developing new techniques and tools for specifying and verifying program behavior.
Advances in languages, compilers, and tools open the possibility of significantly improving software. For example, Singularity uses type-safe languages and an abstract instruction set to enable what we call Software Isolated Processes (SIPs). SIPs provide the strong isolation guarantees of OS processes (isolated object space, separate GCs, separate runtimes) without the overhead of hardware-enforced protection domains. In the current Singularity prototype SIPs are extremely cheap; they run in ring 0 in the kernel's address space.
Singularity uses these advances to build more reliable systems and applications. For example, because SIPs are so cheap to create and enforce, Singularity runs each program, device driver, or system extension in its own SIP. SIPs are not allowed to share memory or modify their own code. As a result, we can make strong reliability guarantees about the code running in a SIP. We can verify much broader properties about a SIP at compile or install time than can be done for code running in traditional OS processes. Boarder application of static verification is critical to predicting system behavior and providing users with strong guarantees about reliability.
See, it's like having a bunch of eggs. You want to keep them safe, right? So you build a really, really nice basket (or at least one that will hold all the eggs) and then plop those bad boys in there. Thus you are assured NOTHING can happen to those eggs, after all they are in one basket.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm only replying to the parent so that this post is high up the screen.
3 5.pdf
Look at page 31 of this PDF. Microsoft publish benchmark statistics showing Linux (and FreeBSD) to be better than Windows.
ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-1
Isn't it used in Romulan Warbirds?
Microsoft Research dominates other areas of computer science as well. For instance, check out how many papers from MSR was accepted at SIGGRAPH 2005. Or check out their NLP and AI research. MSR hires some of the brightest minds in computer science research and provides them with a *lot* of money and a completely free rein to do whatever they want. Furthermore, a lot of the research is then published in open conferences. Don't underestimate MSR. Although a lot of MSR projects don't directly translate into shipping projects, many ideas from MSR do filter down to products as time passes.
You are screwed. Even universities are getting into the "patent everything" game.
It seems as if every method of handling all the major subsystems of an OS has been patented by someone and/or his brother.
Honestly, this thing has patent lawsuit written all over it, and no one outside Microsoft has even seen a lick of code yet.
ways....
Bell Labs and MSR are both highly accademic institutions which have supported research not immediately profit-oriented to the parent company. And the parent company has generally failed to do a whole lot with them.
Heck, Bell Labs invented cell phone technology in the 1930's but for a number of reasons (concerns about reliability, lack of emphasis on miniaturization, etc) they never rolled it out until after the breakup of 1984. Again, electronic switching systems were developed long before they were rolled out and this hurt AT&T when MCI and competitors were able to roll out AT&T's inventions far faster than they did.
Also, how many MSR projects have ever made it into a Microsoft product?
I have a lot of respect for MSR. But this doesn't translate into respect for Microsoft Corp.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I would argue, however, that later generations can be innovative - provided they do something revolutionary in and of itself. For example, CERN's webserver was the first (and therefore innovative by being first) but I'd consider NCSA's webserver to to have posessed qualities that the CERN server did not have, in a manner such that NCSA's webserver (IMHO) deserves the title of innovative as well. Although Apache has yet more qualities, I would not consider those to be in a manner that justifies such a title.
By implication, I'm saying that a quality must have some attribute that distinguishes itself above and beyond being a mere addition, for the idea/project to be called a true innovation. To me, that attribute is that the addition not simply be an extrapolation or an interpolation of what already existed but must exist outside of the covered space, yet intersect the covered space in such a manner that the extension is a natural extension, not forced.
The "dumb person's test" for true innovation is that it must be so difficult to see in advance that it had truly occured to nobody at all. EVER. Yet be so obvious once found/developed that nobody really realizes it hasn't always been there,
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I get an Error when using Firefox.
On topic, I'm wondering how well an OS written in C# would do, if released.
~The TwoTailedFox posts again....
Absolutely, but to generalize their contribution to modern computing as nothing more than theft and good marketing is pure garbage.
Ok, that's your opinion. I however beleive that they have only copied and stolen products without any real innovation.
Microsoft started by selling BASIC intepreters for the old Altair computers. However, their compilers were mainly based on public domain alternatives at the time. (Copy and/or stolen, not innovation)
As we progress to the era of DOS, When M$ was approach by IBM, they said they had a CP/M clone (but didn't) and bought the rights to QDOS which they resold as their own. (Clone of CP/M which they bought)
Further history of Microsoft reveals much more of the same.
Microsoft is a monopoly and does not innovate. I have shown multiple examples of this. Microsoft will buy or copy things that are truly innovative and then try to rewrite history as if they were their own all of history.
You have not given even one example of Microsoft innovation. When you do I may consider your post valid.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
EROS was a direct descendant of KeyKOS, a capability-secure OS that ran on IBM S/370 systems, and Coyotos is a direct descendant of EROS. FWIW, KeyKOS was itself based upon a prototype design for a secure mainframe OS called GNOSIS (which I do not think was ever actually implemented, while KeyKOS was a real product back in the days when mainframes ruled the earth.)
Care to try again?
They are going to use Java OS.
"Judge technology by it's merits and pitfalls not by it's creators past acheivement, or personal disputes with it's creator."
Can you say 'vendor lock-in'? Microsoft is driven by money - that's it. Like it...or don't. But don't expect people to blindly trust something that's so utterly ubiquitous and, indeed, open to abuse...because you're asking too much.
What happens when 'they' crack the human machine interface? Will MS own a bit of my brain? My kids' brains? Their kids' brains?
Oh, the humanity!
Choices was an OS written in C++
I believe DEC WRL wrote operating systems in Modula-3 (type-safety helped here)
The Mayflower project (at MIT and elsewhere) planned to use CLU (a type-safe language from MIT) as a base.
The C# guys are adding dynamic language features to their VM, so Microsoft research can hire/distract/annoy a lot of Lisp and smalltalk fans.
It's all good!
I already wrote about this four days ago so I won't repeat the whole thing here. Short version:
Even shorter version: lots of great ideas, lots of work still to be done. Anybody with a clue about operating systems should be following this with interest.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
This is, what MS always was. The takeover of an idea, a name, a shape ... is their great art, since the beginning.
And I am not a blind MS hater at all!
It would seem, based upon the current ratings (mine shown):
0, Troll
1, Offtopic
1, Troll
0, Troll
2, Redundant
that questioning Microsoft leads to lowered scores. While claiming that
Or are you defining "karma whoring" the same way you define "innovation"?
Anyone have screenshots?
When the first version was compliled, the infinitely dense singularity manifested itself as the one we call Steve Ballmer.
Great new book on Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
*Laugh*
Since when did any Microsoft OS have good performance?
While I applaud the effort to create a dependable operating system , dead-slow dependability is an academic exercise at best. However, we should keep in mind that this is an R&D project and therefore by definition is an academic exercise from which some practical lessons/applications may arise.
I will note that I have never had a client ask me to make an application perform more slowly though....
I've believed for a while that Microsoft need to get away from their current codebase/s, and it's gratifying to discover that apparently at least a few people within the company feel the same way. They need to get this out the door ASAP, but if they can pull it off, this could be the rebirth opportunity they have so desperately needed.
The problem though is that even if the core is good, as some have suggested here before, they may not be able to resist the temptation to slather security-reducing crap all over it in the name of user-friendliness. We shall see.
No screenshots...this must be the OS designed to run DukeNukemForever!
Has anyone noticed that even the Singularity name is an analogy with the Unix (unique) name ?
They didn't make that to obvious so that people don't have to much high hopes on them !
Wierd Al rules!
I agree with you about the reasons for despising Microsoft. I had no particular feeling for or against them at first. I learned contempt through using their products and watching their corporate behavior over the last 16 years or so...
looks promising
technologies that have to this point only been theorized
disgusted with general microsoft bashing
Judge technology by it's merits and pitfalls not by it's creators past acheivement
You can't judge a technology, only an implementation. Implementations from a vendor tend to follow the same quality trends. So a company known for slipshod and insecure implementations is experimenting with some unproven technologies, and you call that 'promising'?
Can I have a toke of that stuff your smoking?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
As an experienced .NET programmer with some Common Lisp knowledge, I'd say that it will take C# another ten years before it reaches the level of CL. Well, at that point it will probably become just another Lisp dialect, differing from CL as much as modern .NET differs from Java. Then it will take them another ten years to match Genera development environment capabilities.
Don't you see this?
...
Both names are based upon the number 1.
Hell, I forgot, what this is supposed to mean, sorry, I'l post again, when sober
Dammit MS! It's amazing that anyone will buy your products anymore.
"Designed new from the ground up", "Designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance" - didn't they say that's what they did for Vista? Didn't they promise that it'd be rebuilt from the ground up with security and stability in mind?
www.linuxpenguin.net
Software developers don't want to have to build against and test against several grahpics APIs. A standard graphics API has made making software (games) much easier to write to target a large market (all Windows PCs as opposed to PCs with Brand X or Y video cards).
You write of Direct3D as though OpenGL didn't exist. Cheap, commodity PCs existed before Windows 95. Like I said, it's because of cheap, commodity PCs that Windows is everywhere, not the other way around.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Can you be a little more specific about what you mean by "cell phone" technology out of Bell Labs?
I know they were working on RF/microwave technology, for *stationary* microwave relays, but to me "cell phone" = "wireless phone sets, being handed between multiple base stations without dropping calls"
I don't think Bell Labs was working on that in the 1930s.
The previous anger displayed is certainly well justified, if a little one sided. Still, to downplay said frustrations is equally biased.
What would be closer to accurate than either of these equally slanted statements would be something along the lines of the following:
"Microsoft funds R&D programs which will, through one means or another, help to contribute to their stranglehold on the Desktop Market. Alternatively, some of these R&D programs eventually end in new concepts which increase usability in computing for all but on the whole most are rehashes of existing computing practices."
Take a look at research.microsoft.com There are some genuinely interesting R&D projects in the hopper, as well as in the past. But as is pretty evident few things listed are/would be revolutionary.
Silly href. research.microsoft.com
How about IXMLHTTPRequest, or what everyone now so fondly calls AJAX now that its all the rave.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
This sounds a lot like containers in Solaris 10.
Since there exists truly enormous amounts of code written, I think there is no justification from building a new O/S from scratch.
A new truly good PL that minimizes coding but at the same time provides a way to express all the requirements of an application so as that the compiler verifies them at compile time is truly needed.
Functional programming languages have been quite a step in the direction towards program correctness, but they have performance problems. We need new calculi for imperative languages that manage referential transparency as specification, rather than an ad hoc principle over which a programming language is built.
with no prior agreement as to the size of an angel...
...or who's cranium represents the pin.
So now we'll be hindered by virtual speed limit signs instead of Crashes, corruptions, etc?
/_ |
_____________
| |
| SPEED LIMIT |
| ___ |
| | |
| --| |
| ___| |
| ___ __ |
| | _ |_| / |
| |__| | |
|_____________|
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
All the things you've come to expect from Unix, without the platform portability!
If you're willing to relax the rules a little - require no obvious precursors - then the number of innovations grows considerably. But they're still pretty thin on the ground. I'd say that there would be maybe one or two such innovations every decade, somewhere on the planet.
If you go further in relaxing the definition, and merely require no trivial precursors (ie: it cannot be a simple extrapolation or interpolation of what already exists), then there are maybe half a dozen each year.
I tend to go somewhere between those last two cases, in the way I look at innovation. I want the term to be used often enough to be meaningful to people, without being so broad as to be meaningless within itself.
However, I would like a clear term that is expressly for the rare cases that meet the first definition. A spectrum isn't just defined in terms of the progression along it, it is also defined in terms of the extreme ends. Calling them "totally unoriginal" and "totally original" tells you nothing other than they're points on the originality continuum. Zero and infinity, on the number line, are not just points. The expression of zero unleashed whole areas of mathematics, as did the expression of infinity. Their value in defining the limits vastly exceeded the value of any other point on the number line.
What this argument over innovation does is tell us about the line of creativity. It does not define the limits and we're all still arguing over the relative merits over some small segment of the line in its entirity. I think it's time to study the line, the dynamics of it, the maths of it, and the limits of it. Do that and we won't just agree on what is innovative, we'll be able to express the innovation in a way that has meaning.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If only I hadn't just used all my moderation points; I'd mod this up six ways to Sunday. Who knew (not I! and maybe not some of you reading this) one could find researchers in MS employ who are substantive to the point of being fascinating. Leslie Lamport's site, for instance, is well worth a scan. I find it amazing MS is willing to invest in people of this quality.
Results are mixed;
According to the benchmarks published there
- at most OS jobs like threading/process creation, Singularity is at least twice as fast as linux, Linux is very fast at process creation, while XP is good at threads
- in File Operations FreeBSD and Linux beat XP and Singularity at random reads
- in File Operations XP beats Linux and Singularity at sequential reads, with the exception of FreeBSD being fastest if blocksize is high(and very bad for small blocksize)
- linux executable size are larger than these of the other OSes, (whatever that means, more good coding, or less bad code SCNR)
Please bear in mind that a benchmark does not it tell whether the "slower" OS actually invested more time in doing some smart stuff that pays off in some other way.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
This Tony hoar guy looks nuts. I mean, look at that... was he wearing his pajamas, or did he stole his wife sticking ? And why did he put this protograph on his bio ? Even the worse geek would take more care of what he gives to see. He must of an ancient, forgotten species. The uber alpha geek, or the Meta Punk Geek Granny ! Anyway, i like his pants.
making novel uses of existing technology is "innovation"
creating new technology is "invention"
Sometimes people use "innovation" to mean creating new technology. I don't know whether this is an acceptable use of the word or not, but either way, taking existing technology and applying it in a new way is most definitely innovative.
"designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance."
Does this mean Singularity will be as dependable as current Windows OSes are performant?
Shriek!
Peyton-Jones and Meijer are extremely active in the functional programming community. Hoare is getting on towards retirement these days, but still actively contributes to the advancement of concurrency theory (and programming theory in general - see his work on "Unifying Theories of Programming"). Lamport is mostly focused on his Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA) as a method for formally specifying concurrent systems these days, and has done a bunch of work with (IIRC) Intel on processor design. I have no idea what Cardelli is up to these days, but I know he's still active. I mentioned the results that you "knew about 20 years ago" mostly because they are considered pretty seminal and there's a good chance most people have heard of at least some of them. We probably won't know if any of their current work is as seminal until it's had a chance to percolate out into the CS community.
The "microsoft bashing" bashing is getting pretty bad on slashdot lately. I got modded troll for saying that Windows XP was basically shit. Which I guess is fair. But I still think it sucks. Microsoft really needs to tear that thing down and start over, so I think this sounds good to me. Windows NT was never intended to be what it is today. It was written as a single user desktop operating system. UNIX and friends were intended to be multi-user server operating systems, which coincidentaly is very useful on the desktop these days. Microsoft has done a commendable job bolting security, multiple users, real memory management, etc onto an os that wasn't designed with those things in mind. That said, at a certain point its never going to get better without starting from scratch.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Being somewhat involved in the VoIP(/telecom) world I think Software Isolated Processes is a poor name for their new technology. SIP as in Session Initiation Protocol is the de facto standard for VoIP communication, hell even Microsoft has adopted it
/almost serious
/almost...
..8p
They gonna take BSD, and code a new UI on it, and they'll call it Ultimate Microsoft Windows.
A la Mac OS X...
Now I'll just step back and look at my karma burning.
But you know I may be right, and for the Mac part, you know I am
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Quick: how fast can we start running, before the Singularity is built an we simply cannot ever escape from Microsoft? That must be the evil plan...
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
> Perhaps you can specify some of their alleged contributions?
The combobox and the scroll wheel are the first things that come to mind. I'm sure there are more.
In other words, we're back at the beginning.And we're still back at the beginning.
What is the "new way" that you claim is "novel", therefore, "innovative"?
The "wheel" was an invention.
Using the wheel to create a cart for humans to push or pull was innovative.
Domesticating horses/mules/oxen was innovative.
Adding a horse/mule/ox to the cart was innovative because it replaced the human and required some expertise in animal control. It also required the invention of the "harness" and/or "horse collar".
And so on.
"...with emphasis on dependability instead of performance.""
So, they're making a Mac... again?
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Really? And how, exactly, would you generalize their contribution to modern computing? Please, enlighten us, for all the evidence I have seen has pointed precisely to Microsoft being nothing more than thieves and marketers.
Nathan's blog
I have had an idea like this. My idea was for drivers to be written in a language in which the result of programs is independent of instruction set architecture and compiler, like the description here .
The drivers would be distributed as binary code for a virtual machine. This would allow a company to ship one version of the driver for their device, which would work on all architectures, like, x86, PowerPC, Alpha, Itanium, etc.
Um, most users of XP are not using it as a multiuser OS, so why should they "tear it down" and re-write it as one?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette.
You're the biggest joke of the internet.
Le français vous intéresse?
designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance
And Intel and AMD simultaneously wet themselves.
With IBM slowing the speed of light with their latest generation of chip technology, and with Microsoft working to engineer a singularity. . . Knowledge is Light, and black holes suck up light as surely as computer-powered DRM and RFID and similar technologies work to track and control and limit. Slowing Light, indeed!
As this reality of ours is little more than a shared holographic dream sequence, (there is no such thing as matter; those atoms divide all the way down to squiggles of energy, and what is energy other than a medium for consciousness to exist within and self-observe?), it is my editorial opinion that metaphor flies thick through this world of ours, and those who pay attention are more able to surf the bumps and rough spots on the ride of Life.
-FL
Has anyone bothered to collect the data about /.ing in regards to how long it taks for a server to fall over and burst in to flames to see what role OS plays?
Load testing to the point of failure in real world conditions is a daily occurance for sites listed on /.. What's being done with all the load data? It's mentioned every few "Dang, dead before the First Post!"about how /. should offer to host the content of some of the smaller sites rather than just hammering them into the ground without notice... Why not offer to do that not so much out of benevolent concern, but to have a reliable source of real-world stress that can be applied to a server whose configuration can be modified under controlled conditions?
Compare products from different vendors, multiple products from a single vendor, several configurations of a single product... all in a controlled and replicable real-world load condition.
Who needs benchmarks?
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
1. Make a reasonably, but not overwhelmingly, funny comment.
2. Note that you expect to be modded down.
3. ???
4. +5 Funny!
Honestly, it works every time.
See this way too often on slashdot. You stupid fuckers have no idea of what evil is, you'd crap your pants if you ever ran into a real nutter.
Nah, they're thinking of calling it OpenW32 and will be using a cute little daemon as its logo.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Can you tell me if was the MS link the /.ed one? Because the second link is on my site with Linux Centos, in this case is a blog site, and not tunned to a huge traffic, I want to improve my site, so you information will be valuable for me.
Windows is slow enough (from a responsiveness point of view).
Hi, It was the top link. "Singularity" I didn't click on the bottom link. I'm glad that to see that you are doing what you can to improve performance of your site though! I've developed some free public sites that have huge surges in activity on occasion too. So I'm familiar with what you're feeling. Best of luck to ya!
Thanks, I just want to be prepared in case of being /.ed :).
I think that CentOS could do the job as expected.
Exactly. The parent poster obviously needs to read up a bit on microcomputing history. As an aside - I can't believe I'm agreeing with Overly Critical Guy on something. :P
It might be worth noting that Microsoft did provide one of the key components that lead to the commodity computer market; an identical OS. MS DOS, the non-IBM licensed version of PC DOS, allowed those who were able to piece together the software and reverse engineer the BIOS an identical OS to IBM's systems and therefore exact compatability with IBM systems. And this is why Microsoft flourished - it rode the wave of the commodity hardware market.
You gotta wonder... without QDOS... would CP/M have ended up providing that same key component to Compaq?
Their contribution to modern computing is to have ridden the wave of cheap commodity PCs that needed a GUI to run them.
"Helped is the word your after. "Microsoft" and "cheap commodity PCs" have a symbiotic relationship. Both fed off the success of the other.
People are now afraid of computers, paranoid of being on the Internet, and have been convinced that it's normal to require anti-virus and anti-spyware software as a layer between you and the applications you run.
What's funny is that you think the situation would have been any different if MacOS, AmigaOS or anything else had captured 95% of the userbase.
People are scared of trying to program their TVs, VCRs and Microwaves as well. You really think a PC without Windows on it would be any less intimidating ?
So, by your measure, who has innovated ? And how ?
Microsoft is a monopoly and does not innovate. I have shown multiple examples of this.
Who does ? How ? What's your definition of "innovation" ? It's impossible to have any sort of rational discussion on the topic without knowing where the goalposts are.
Microsoft will buy or copy things that are truly innovative and then try to rewrite history as if they were their own all of history.
Where do they do this ? Have you got any examples of Microsoft buying a product or technology and then trying to claim they did it all themselves ?
. . . will require downloading the .NET runtime.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
For fuck's sake.
Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil. Stalin was evil.
Microsoft is a standard business operation. Hell, they're not even towards the "bad" end of that scale like, say, Nike, Nestle or De Beers are.
(Although, at least by calling Microsoft "evil" you demonstrate how small the pinhole through which you view the world is, and warn others of your incredibly insulated existence.)
Considering how few security breaches have anything to do with coding problems, I think that's a pretty ridiculous measure.
http://www.mslinux.org/
Considering how few security breaches have anything to do with coding problems, I think that's a pretty ridiculous measure.
So security breaches are mostly the result of... ? Social engineering?
My statements have offended the moderators.
I have made statements that CONTRADICT the bias of the moderators on
"Karma whoring" means when one makes statements that the moderators will mod UP. Not DOWN.
If you are capable of reading, you will see that many of those posts have been mod'ed "Troll".
"Trolling" is the OPPOSITE of "karma whoring".
I trust that this revelation will not cause you undue mental anguish.
Today, I posted comments to the effect that Microsoft was not innovative and those comments were ruled as "trolls" by the moderators.
On
Either way, you are wrong. Live with it.
Let us stop companies playing physicists.
GL did exist and was partially supported by Glide, for example, in the early '90s. OpenGL was ratified in 1992 but took a while for adoption. Not even all the Un*x vendors adopted OpenGL quickly. The amount of support vendors offered even differed (both on Un*x machines and PC video cards). It was hardly a "standard" on the PC side of the coin and never really was *the* standard. A number of cards delivered OpenGL libraries for their cards and OpenGL came close to being *the* standard with the Voodoo cards but DirectX came out and for various reasons, DirectX pretty much won. On the PCs, you had lots of choices... CGA, EGA, VGA, VESA (hopefully only if that was your only option), and others, in addition to a few cards like the Voodoo Glide cards that supported only a subset of OpenGL and some other cards that supported their own proprietary APIs. Also, Microsoft/Windows was defining graphics cards standards during the Windows 3.1 timeframe, which was quite a bit of time before Windows 95 and a bit of time before PCs were really commodity items.
The history of the PC and how it became a commodity is entertwined with Windows since Windows was delivered with PCs the whole time. Which caused which? I guess I'd have to think about it more.
Commodity computing came about during the time of DOS - far, far before Windows.
In linux, "switching between two threads in the same process through a synchronization object" can be done by the first thread doing a system call to increase a semaphore to activate the second thread, and then the first thread doing a system call to lower a semaphore to put itself to sleep.
I suppose Ms-Windows has a way of doing this with only one system call, which might explain the factor of 2 in the parent post.
Apache. Every connection spawns a unique process which terminates upon completion. That's one of the things that makes it a little more secure - you can perhaps exploit the process, but before you kno
Most of the stuff on
Sorry What?
Microsoft with emphasis on dependability instead of performance
is it april fools day already?
I haven't read the whitepaper yet, but the front page article makes it sound a lot like any of the OSes listed above. What's new here? Not to mention any of the proposed (but not deployed?) Java OS systems...
-- Andrew
Most of these new features are not new ideas, seeing as I have had most of them 5 years ago. It is only now that the technology has advanced enough to let me do this right for KAOS.
What I would say is that this would take a fair while to complete, as I have taken about 4 years to think of 90% of the features I want in my operating system.
However, I am using proven technology that has merely been abandoned, and I intend to rescue what I can.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
They could just buy Palm, and get the (proven) Be codebase. No legacy issues, reasonable documentation, kernel in C, C++ API, potential to hire back to it some of the best OS engineers around.
.net. Some loss of face, but a lot of people would have respected them for it as well :) And they could knock palm out of their PDA market at the same time.
It's just waiting for someone to come along, fix up the quirks and expose the APIs for
Believe with me, my saplings.
It was there, somewhat, but not to what we know today.
Take graphics cards, for example, I thought about this some last night. Before there was a "standard" API, they spent time on performance, price, their own API, and wooing developers (games and applications such as AutoCAD) to use their API. When Microsoft said "use our API and we'll handle the developers", that freed up the graphics companies to concentrate on performance and price (freeing up the companies from the kickbacks and such allowed prices to drop even more). Microsoft handled getting the developers (games and other applications) onto Windows.
"Commodity computing came about during the time of DOS - far, far before Windows." Simply stating this over and over without definition does not make it true. Did you ever buy a DOS machine? I did... several, and they were not really commodity. Sure, they were mass produced but they were not cheap (which is the other side of the 'commodity' coin). The prices of the machines back there were roughly what they cost now. You could get a decent machine for $1200 or so (today, I'd say you could get a decent machine for $600 though), however, the economics of the time were that the $1200 of the machine was a lot more money relative to other costs (and paychecks) than today. If you don't believe me on the price, go look at advertisements from that time period (late 80s early 90s). I bought a machine that was "workstation" quality in/around 1994 for nearly $5000, which was a lot of money at the time (still is, but it was relatively more then). It wasn't the highest end CPU at the time even (only a Pentium-60, yes, with the bug, but the 90s were out) but it had 32M memory and the largest HDD available at the time (540M). Since 8M was the norm for the time, it'd be like getting a 4G machine today with a 300G HDD. What kind of machine can you put together for $5k today? What's the difference between having $5k in 1994 and having $5k today?
Providing a unifying platform (both hardware and software) that was on the vast majority of PCs allowed hardware vendors to benefit from economies of scale just like software.
Yes, PCs were starting to benefit from economies of scale (becoming commodity) during DOS (which... was MSDOS, btw, which was made by Microsoft as was Windows 3.1 and 95 and on) days but the full extent of commoditization hadn't been realized at the time. It took a unifying software architecture as well to complete the picture. So, Microsoft probably did help PCs to become commodities even, as DOS was Microsoft's thing.
I wonder if this is what they're trying to develop.
What I think you're talking about here is really aimed at the 3D accelerator market. And that particular segment was rather young. Young markets do not often begin as commodity markets - it takes time. Even then, there were standards such as OpenGL that Microsoft initially supported. Of course, Microsoft then produced their own API and dumped OpenGL. The interesting piece here is that chipset developers are STILL working with OpenGL as well as Microsoft's API. So while working with Microsoft is certainly good business - I don't think it has quite the same effect as you're portraying it.
To begin with, commodity does not mean cheap... or even affordable. Driving down prices is an effect of commodity products in a free market. It is not the "other side of the 'commodity' coin". True - prices have dropped over the years. And a good part of the reason is commodity hardware. But there are also other factors such as economy of scale (more demand for microcomputers) and increased efficiencies gained by the new technology.
Yes - I bought a DOS machine. A also bought a CP/M based Osborne 2 (Executive), a Commodore 64, and a couple TRS-80's (not to mention other machines from various bargain bin sales). There's a couple interesting things to note here. First - all the non-DOS systems were proprietary and cheaper than the DOS system. And the DOS system... well... it was a commodity box. It was a Compaq portable.
Compaq blew open the commodity microcomputer market. They did it by turning the IBM PC in to a commodity platform.
The IBM PC dominated the business computing market, arguably due to the IBM name. The IBM PC also made a strong showing in the home computer market since people were buying computers for home in step with what they were using at work.
For the IBM PC to go from proprietary product to commodity platform, three distinct areas had to be tackled. First - the hardware. That was simple enough since the IBM PC was off-the-shelf components and IBM also published plenty of details about the inner workings of the IBM PC to attract peripheral manufacturers. The second part was the Operating System - again easy since this wasn't an IBM property (more on this later). The final part was the tough one - the BIOS. That was the proprietary gateway. Compaq spent a million dollars to reverse engineer the BIOS. They produced a better PC than IBM. And in doing so, they flung open the floodgates. It wasn't long before Tandy 1000 was getting kudos for the best bang-for-the-buck. And an entire industry of local computer stores piecing together systems on-order sprung up in strip malls around the world. It was also the beginnings of Dell... although they wouldn't become the dominating name years later.
Let me stress something less it got lost in my rambling - the microcomputer industry was entirely proprietary up to the point that Compaq produced the first commodity systems. That is, systems built of specs that were not unique to Compaq. Others... many others... also producing compatible systems to these same specs solidified the commodity computing market. This was happening long before Windows became a household name.
So what about DOS?
So in this respect, Microsoft does play an important role in the creation of commodity computing. But they did not create the market. And they certainly didn't create the market with Windows.
I agree with this statement. I don't think they created it either, but I do think they helped it along a lot.
And thanks for a good reply, it was a good read. It seems that you and I are "of an age". I, too, got my first computer before there was such a thing as an IBM PC.
I completely agree. Microsoft played an important role; they were a key player. Having said that... I wonder what the current landscape would have been like if Digital Research hadn't waited so long to get CP/M ported to the 8086 or at least been willing to work with IBM earlier on.
Yep. Odd world it is today compared to the early years when having a home computer was rare and a MODEM was completely bizzare.
Users. This encompasses user error, user ignorance, social engineering, malicious sabotage, poorly configured machines (admins are "users", too) - anything where the user must play an active part to the breach (so, just about every email "virus", all those bits of spyware that get installed when the user clicks "OK", etc).
*Very* few security breaches happen because of coding problems (buffer overflows, backdoors, bugs, etc).
Actually, they were working on a basic FDMA wireless mobile phone system for a long time. The first trials of such a system started in 1946, so I am inclined to think that Bell Labs had the basic concepts down at least 10 years earlier at the latest.
Interestingly I was wrong on one important point. Advanced Mobile Phone Service was an AT&T subsidiary which began to roll out cell phone service in 1982 and was split up among the baby bells when the divestiture occurred.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think the "start -> shut down..." GUI design is pretty innovative.
Isn't that illogical? Clicking Start to shut down the computer? I always thought that was the dumbest part of M$ Windows when used it in the past.
Microsoft-free since March 28, 2004
> > These facilities make it impossible for any application to have
> > buffer overruns, segfaults, or overruns of other apps' data
> > -- as a result, all applications can run in ring 0 and virtual
> > memory is not required.
>
> Which is complete nonsense, because there are many other classes of
> security problems, some of them application-specific, other than buffer
> overruns and memory access.
The original paragraph did not claim that bytecode verification would prevent all security problems. Rather, it specifically claimed that verification would prevent "buffer overruns, segfaults, overruns of other apps' data". (See above).
> Or, tell me how Singularity helps me to protect cases where I want to
> right-click on an email address in the body of an email, but garantee(!)
> that there is no hole that would allow the sender to anyhow access my
> address book.
The original paragraph did not claim that Singularity would prevent you from right-clicking something, or would prevent an app from sending out your address book. It claimed that bytecode verification could prevent buffer overruns, segfaults, overwriting of other apps' data, etc...
> Right. They are orthogonal. That's what he tried to say.
No, that's not what he tried to say. The parent post said: "They [Singularity] aren't the first... Check out EROS [eros-os.org] for an implementation that exists now" which clearly (and wrongly) implied that EROS was an implementation of the same idea, which came before. And the subsequent post claimed "Singularity is a Microkernel, EROS is a Microkernel" which is clearly intended to point out the supposed similarity.
Someone just failed a humor check. I had plenty of problems with Windows when I used it at home, and still do when I wind up using it on the job, at a library, et cetera, but the name of the Start button wasn't one of them. "Menu" might've made more sense, but...Meh.