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Vista the Last of Its Kind
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a TechWorld story about Windows Vista. According to the Gartner Group, Windows Vista is likely to be the last of its kind. "The problem is that the operating system's increasing complexity is making it ever more difficult for enterprises to implement migrations, and impossible for Microsoft to release regular updates. This, in turn, stands in the way of Microsoft's efforts to push companies to subscription licensing. The answer, according to Gartner, is virtualization, which is built into newer chips from Intel and AMD, and has become mainstream for x86 servers through the efforts of VMware." Speaking of Vista, C|Net reports that a new release candidate is on the way. The average tester should expect it by the end of September.
There'll never be another ridiculously late, overhyped, massively over budget, features touted then dropped software project again? ;-p
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I'll let you in on a little secret - Linux (OSS in general) is the poor mans porn downloading system, and porn has driven its development. No one prints porn, so forget printer drivers. A few people want to upload pictures of themselves naked, so there are a few camera drivers. Scanners, forget it. USAB keys ? Handy for trading PORN. I don't know how to do it, but if some sort of survey could be done I think you would find that 90% of all Linux systems are used for porn excusively. The other 10% are scientists Latexing their papers, and downloading porn. And don't forget, these are the biggest cheapskates in the world. They don't want to pay for porn or software.
Just because windows is bloated it doesn't mean that all other OSes are. This sounds awfully much like the "Mainframes are dead" and later on the "Unix is dead" (no, not the BSD-troll) predictions.
you have to agree with that post.
Speaking of Vista, C|Net reports that a new release candidate is on the way. The average tester should expect it by the end of September.
Well - you can wait until September if you like, or you can just download the torrent.
If you're an Apple employee - this is OK, but make sure you dont download something from Apple - they will fire you.
KISS = Keep It Simple Steve (ballmer) and leave the chairs alone
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Most of the time Windows provides few simple file, display and input services to MS word and excel. I can see why you would want to rewrite it to cut down on exploits, improve scalablity, etc. But why would MS need to create so much additional complexity? Other than the obvious reason that they already have windows built to do what they need and may as well rewrite it since they have all that revenue.
My advice is for Microsoft to spend the next 20 years rewriting windows to run on future quantum computing devices. Word will keep working in the mean time. Should make a killing.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Gartner analysts: We predict Microsoft will start making OS'es like this.
Microsoft: Umm, no - there are a ton of problems with doing things that way (even more than with the way we do things now!!!11)
Gartner analysts: Pffft, what would you know.
Seriously, speculation can be fun, but I find it hard to take these guys seriously.
So, when's Linux going to take advantage of the hardware virtualization?
The owls are not what they seem
What does this article mean anyway? Its a bunch of buzz words mixed together in an apparently random order.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to start with a core operating system unit that could then have additional modules and applications bolted on as necessary? You'd have full control over exactly what functions the machine will and will not have. Too bad such a beast will never exist...
This guy's the limit!
The slashdot group think have known this since before XP came out and now a research firm predicts what we already knew, 6 years later. Microsoft haven't commented on this so its not worth discussing further (as we already have for years) until some announcement at some MS developer conference mentions it. Oh shit its saturday, slow news day.
Jonathanjk.com
That ought to be fun to work with. What will this stack do?
However what is not understandable is how virtualization will be helpful. Sure, you can make a virtual machine run only one process (services), but these services need to interact with each other through some mechanism to do useful work. Will the Windows kernel just do this interaction?
This seems to be oversolving the problem. Service isolation is good, but do you have to go overboard on that?
Quantum computing units will probably be an addon, like the GPU or the math coprocessor. You only need them to do some semi-specialised stuff like search, I don't think they'd help in displaying graphics and the like. It's scary how they can search an entire space at once though.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
And Microsoft's absolutely right on this point. I don't typically defend them, but when groups like Gartner with no experience in computers makes up such ridiculous ideas, I think it's justifiable.
There's no reason they need to resort to using virtualization to accomplish this task. They could do it now with the current NT code, but it works now so there's no need to fix it for the time being.
It just seems like a waste of resources to completely re-engineer Windows to make efficient use of virtualization that still presents a consistent user interface.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I am rather thankful about all the dropped "features" as they tend not to be so good until v3.0 and tend to be less than standard implementations (Internet Explorer) of technology that simply displaces 3rd party functional products.
As for being late I am hoping that they are taking he time to debug them more than previous products that were shipped to schedule with major problems. Anyhow the longer they take the longer my win2000 will remain viable.
Drop a curse on Microsoft.
The OS should just allow one to run perl scripts or binaries. We don't need the shell to be so complex that it becomes unfeasible to maintain it. MS should take a long hard look at the likes of WindowMaker and XFCE, or even geoshell etc. From what I can see the 2003/NT5.1 kernel is reasonably stable, which is a first, so this vista release to me is just a cosmetic on (RICE indeed), those improvements to the three year old kernel should be just driver, and possibly performance upgrades.
Why UNIX?
Slashdot today released a report showing that stupid Garter Group releases will never come to an end.
Instead of critical evaluation or even serious research, the respected organisation will stick by its tried-and-true method of spatial-temporal probability matrix randomisation (marketed under the trademark Making Shit Up, Even If Obviously Stupid).
At a recent demonstration of this technique, Garter Group analysts showed releases on their drawing boards for next week's bullshit sessions, including:
* IBM to buy Apple and force the line back to PowerPC, in order to cripple Microsoft's XBox.
* Sun will no longer release any hardware products, pending a buyout offer from SCO.
* George Lucas will admit he's a dud and bankroll a new new trilogy written and directed by competent artists, such as Britney Spears.
At the time of writing, no Garter analysts were available to comment; being too busy trying to find where the crack pipe got to.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
And it's late as well. I don't believe so much in virtualization on this level to create security. I mean, how are the components going to communicate? Sockets? Sockets are their own security problem. Microsoft clearly thinks in the same direction. What we need is a more fine-grained security model, in which applications only get the resources they need. Applications themselves also must be able apply the same security directives to their internal components. Just assigning a user per application won't work either, I mean, I would like to continue to work with my text editor as myself.
.net and works with assemblies. Where Microsoft has an advantage is that it owns the Windows operating system, and can therefore easily use a centralized Virtual Machine (as in MSIL virtual machine), installation procedures etc.
Currently, applications can install themselves anywhere they want. They can destroy everything I own, including most things in the registry. They can take every bit of CPU power they like. Any amount of memory. Any amount of threads. Any amount of desktop space (including the whole lot through DirectX). They can even take away my keyboard. I don't think you can solve this by just giving every application it's own CPU and operating system. You can do this by restricting access, and by letting the OS take care of the installation and access conditions (maybe not configuration).
The way to do this is to create dependencies with modules, and create security managers to handle access. This is e.g. part of the Java security model, which is sadly hardly ever used. Microsoft has it's own copy of that of course. It's in
I've little doubt that this is the direction Microsoft is thinking for the long run. Unfortunately they don't seem to grasp it on the same abstraction level that Sun can, so it will probably take time. No doubt it will take double that time for Gartner to understand it. Just running every app in its own OS is much easier to grasp, especially when it is already there.
1. Collect Buzzwords
2. ???
3. Publish Report
I assume they use a Bot to trawl the internet collecting the latest buzz words, and then another to automatically assemble the report... but after reading that piffle I don't think they would have the compitence to turn on the computer.
Fuck Slashdot
Don't tell them that there are computers out there with more power. The way they have been designing Windows so far they will consum^H^H^H^H^H^Hutilize all resources available.
I can just see the minimum requirements for the UI in 20 years.
- Beowulf of Quantum Computing Devices
- 20TB of Memory
- 2MB of HDD (We don't trust you so the OS will run off a Blue-Vinyl(TM) disc)
Maybe this will be the last release from MS of its kind. They are looking to achieve perfection in the UI and it's about the only thing you can guarantee that MS doesnt have on the chop-block for Vista.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
I know I'll probably get moderatad as troll/flamebait, but... Well, if we look at Linux (Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu), there's no problem to upgrade to a next release / release updates.
Another thing. I don't think Vista's gonna be "the last of its kind" - it's like 640K should be enough for everybody
The dash wasn't invented for no reason you know
Kevin Kelly's Out of Control got me thinking about this a while back. Although the book is a little dated, it is all about network economies and their similarities to ecological systems, and I realized that evolution is at work when it comes to platform adoption. Greater than 90% of desktops run Windows, so there's no variety in the PC platform genepool. Just like inbred populations, this PC pool is unhealthy: it can't adapt and infections run rampant because all specimens are susceptible to the same illnesses.
Of course, who's going to change to another platform when there's no software out there? (No flames please - try to remember perception is everything, and ask yourself whether an average user realizes alternatives exist.) Virtualization, I think, is a good answer to this. I like the idea of "booting" to an application like in the pre-DOS days, and if your games run no x86/x64 architecture, you could bypass the OS altogether to get the most out of games by just booting straight into Halo 4 or HalfLife 3. I also like the end of the API: we can go back to the days of static linked libraries (no version conflicts, ever!) and headers and just build our own OSes from scratch to run in a VM. Since you can virtualize anything, even VMs, you can get cross-platform apps and cross-platform platforms (Java, .NET, etc.) and consumers don't have to worry about physical hardware or their underlying OS components, apart from cost and performance considerations. As far as their apps go, everything could, theoretically, work the same on any system (whether business decisions will allow this to happen, we'll just have to see). In fact, my only worry about this is how to allow for a standard GUI on such a system (but since nobody, not even Microsoft, follows GUI principles these days anyway, it probably doesn't matter).
This is, IMO, a far superior way to do things than how they're done now. So, okay, then, OSS community, please get to work so you will be finished before MS is. Thank you.
"Upper layers could have dependencies on lower layers, but lower layers could not be dependent on upper ones," the analysts wrote. "This would allow it to lockdown lower layers when complete and worry less about compatibility changes as it worked up the stack."
Trying to figure out what this means....
divide the Windows client into a "service partition", controlling system functions such as management and security, and one or more application partitions.
I get it! It is like a Virtual Anti-Trust System!
Seriously, just because Microsoft is having such a difficult time releasing an updated operating system they feel like they can charge money for on the x86 platform, doesn't mean there aren't other companies who are selling updates annually to another operating system.
I thought that Microsoft had a lot of marketing power. Why are they so flaky on delivering an operating system which has no competition. They could sell a service pack to XP and make a fortune.
Given Microsoft's history of progression, I guarantee that this will be the most unstable, insecure, unusual, and unnecessarily complex operating system in it's history. Yes more so than Bob and WinMe.
Gartner or no, it seems unlikely that Microsoft would be able to sufficiently modularize Windows in order to do this even if they did agree it was a good direction to go. Modularity and separation of problem domains haven't really been Microsoft's strong suit, have they? I'm thinking, for instance, of how Windows Explorer locks up while waiting for a device (CD drive, network connection) to respond. There are good reasons for not mixing UI and device communications on the same thread, and yet they didn't even bother to separate them in the main user interface to the OS. (Well, they hadn't as of XP, anyway -- 18+ years into developing the OS.) That's just one example of a failure of modularity in Windows. The usual path they seem to follow, be it the message pump (remember when it was one pump for the OS and all apps?) or Internet Explorer, is to go monolithic and only modularize when the monolith fails. Not commenting on the good or bad of that strategy (that would be a different flame wa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussion), but it gives insight into their approach to software development, one which is not particularly friendly to Gartner's ideas...
Here I am writing code, where the smallest slip can cause serious damage to our company, our customers, and my paycheck.
When instead I could be writing *pure quasi-random blather*, with no consequences even if the stuff is pure blue-sky speculation, and unlikely for a multitude of reasons.
( *must* *get* *job* *at* *gartner* *group* )
( writing sample: )
"Huge monopoly software company will screw their own pooch and dump their cash cows for no visible reason and instead (mumble) (not clear who) will use (completely different type of technology with not much in common with previous sentence) or (hot new buzzword that hasnt been seen-thru yet) to completely bypass all the laws of human ignorance, inertia, established base, software trends, and economics. "
There, that should move me right to the top of their hiring list.
The problem with Vista has been that innovation and technology growth in Linux follows a trajectory similar to e^x where in the Microsoft space it follows a growth pattern similar to ln(x). When things start out, the appearance is that the ln(x) formula grows at a spectacular rate compaired to e^x, but after a few iterations the exponential growth blows everything else away.
*hunches over and arches wrists -- picks at a few keys*
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
So, when's Linux going to take advantage of the hardware virtualization?
Sarcasm duly noted. Still, I think it should be mentioned that the problems Gartner claim will be solved by this use of virtualization can be solved in other ways than virtualization, and in Linux sometimes are. For example, the kernel and GNOME (or KDE) are separate entities, developed separately, and runnable separately - you can use different kernels with GNOME - e.g. BSD, and you can use KDE/Xfce/etc. instead of GNOME. Perhaps Windows would be easier to maintain and improve if things weren't tied-in as they are, the most famous case of which is perhaps IE.
I really don't see where hardware virtualization used to compartmentalize an OS is a better idea than correct modularization of the OS (which includes choosing the runlevel for the various parts, i.e. it may use 'virtualization', in a sense). Am I missing Gartner's point somehow?
My favorite (this week) is Austrumi. 50MB and I can't imagine anything my mother would need to do that it doesn't do. It loads itself into RAM ('cause see it's 50MB and not bloated). I remember when I used to squeeze my whole System into RAM on a 512K Macintosh ("FatMac" !!). Runs like greased lightning. I could name a dozen others, but I'll let everyone else talk first.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Wasn't this already presumed, I mean, Blackcomb/Vienna was supposed to be completely different ot the current Windows system including Start menu?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vienna
Reguardless of what model of software life-cycle you use, software does die eventually. Only instead of calling it "death", software engineers call it "retirement". The retirement phase of the software life-cycle occurs when the product (in this case Microsoft Windows) is removed from service. This happens when the functionality provided by the product no longer is of any use to the client.
As much as some of us have loathed Microsoft and Bill Gates and Windows, it is quite untimely for all of this to happen. Talk about a private sale of the company, the retirement of Bill Gates, and the recent series of product failures is tragic.
Even if we never liked Microsoft, it is sad to watch this mightly sparing partner collapse under the weight of mutual self-destruction. Even bitter enemies mourn the loss of their rivals.
The wonton self-mutilation of Microsoft would be that in its hubris, they kept delaying Vista or Longhorn or whatever it was called in the beginning. Add to that, a list of software patents that while it protected themself from competition, prevented growth and development within the company. Greed settled in because the people in charge were happy making a ton of money with the status quo. Then they started to maximize their wealth by cutting out things that made the company what it was. Outsourcing workers. Removing subsitities and extras (i.e. Vulcan Enterprises which ran TechTV). Shortening the leash of how much code was released.
As the company became more miserly, the man who was the corporate face of this software empire wanted out.
We now see it not just as the death of a software product but the death of a corporation.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
After many years of excellent service, it's almost time to retire the BillGatesBorg icon for Microsoft stories. Esp. since he won't be with them any more, sorta. I vote for a chair icon. It can be a borg chair, I guess.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'd actually like that! I'm sick of the overly enlarged tits - waaaaaayyy too big. They look like balloons about to pop! Or Cows udders! Yuk!
Also, I'm tired of shaved snatches. I don't like women who look like they have an 11 yr-old pussy. I want muff - damnit! I actually prefer amature porn.
2. ???
3. Publish Report
Dude! You forgot
4. Profit! Lots and lots of profit!
These guys are the CIO's version Cliff Notes! They don't have the time (or desire) to do their own research. That's why they pay Gartner and shit load of money!
Did you see before the post-to-slashdot link at the bottom of the page? It simply posts the story to slashdot, using the submit.pl page, filled with its story.
What do they expect?
That by flooding/spamming, their story will be accepted? It seemed to work!
Sorry for me spell bad, not a native but I'll do my best
Let's leave the HURD out of this.
Someone tell me what qualification Gartner analysts have in predicting the future of OS research? To me, this looks like BS, virtualization is a tool for a different problem. But if these analysts have a PhD in OS design, maybe I could believe it. But come on, they are disputing with MS what MS is going to do. Mostly MS doesn't know what it is doing, how Gartner can know more... . Argh..
This is complete BS. Microsoft would love nothing more than to have Windows be a modular snap-together, snap-to-upgrade, easily patched model like this. But to do it properly will require a good decade of work, and a complete redesign of Windows.
Windows as it is designed today is monolithic. You can't separate one layer from another in the "dreamy" way that Gartner is wishing for. The irony is that Netscape once used the term "spaghetti code" to describe the pre-Mozilla rewrite. The same could be easily used to describe Windows in it's current condition.
Gartner analysts often amaze me. I've met a few who deserve the respect of people in the industry. But I've met many more who have an amazing talent for talking out of their bottoms about technology they don't understand. Analysts have the best job. They get to make crack-filled predictions about the future. And nobody ever calls them on them, because in 3-5 years, when it hasn't come true, nobody remembers it, and the analyst is there preaching some hazy, totally new vision of the future (that probably contradicts their earlier "prediction").
It's also reported that Duke Nukem Forever will have another release candidate by the end of August.
Will your next box be an xbox?
Low cost, fast gpu and a networked OS that lets you sit back end get on with 'enjoying' portals?
Great for short fun hd streams and myads.
Dial up and drop out. Stuck between pay per play or play per ad.
But what about the developers?
Will they be happy to be locked into a closed DRM net box OS?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They used this tool to write the article: http://www.lavarnd.org/cgi-bin/corpspeak.cgi
To: All slashdotters
From: Your Boss
Date: Sat Aug 26 07:07:03 2006
Subject: Important Announcement
Surely, we can conclude that the drop dead dates indicate that the resource will knock your socks off. Allowing widely-distributed multiple-sourcing. So, a quality-oriented merger restores. Our company must balance killer apps in a number of areas in a way that maximizes technological a technological culture change.
During this period of company transition, the killer apps provide an indication of the execution. If we can foresee the benefits of the multimedia culture changes, then the ISP will assure us the super-scalar products. The diverse strategic and tactical actions foster multimedia supercorridor, which was outlined recently on our internal Web site.
Surely, we can conclude that the market realignment indicate that a Windows-compliant alliance takes the initiative. The professional tangent coordinates market-driven scalable shared memory multiprocessor. We will boldly take over the high-impact market for visual computing.
The staffing e-mail achieves a new leadership skills. We absolutely have to develop the compatible information superhighway as well. The seven-habits-conforming standards outsource multimedia supercorridor, on a going-forward basis.
We have been looking into the UI. If we can foresee the benefits of 3-D, then multimedia will assure us super-scalar neophytes. We are pleased to announce that massively parallel methods of empowerment interface with the growth years.
Now that the merger is complete, time frames are not going to customize. Due to the based missions and the product lines, what has changed is the pace of change. We will long-term kick this idea around.
In order to obtain annotation, we took a close look at the win-win parameters to understand what they mean. I think that the next step has possibilities for future technical advances. We are ahead of the sponsorships curve.
Gartner Group is the best proof I can find for George Carlin's theory that the most profitable business in the US is the manufacture, packaging, and redistribution of bullshit. It reminds me of friends of my sister who got a top-notch education, aced the SATs, got a degree from Harvard, and now get paid top dollar to go around giving Powerpoint presentations on how to create "synergy" in an "n-Tier multi-platform Web 2.0 AJAX solution".
I am officially gone from
Which is what is happening at Microsoft.
After many years of excellent service, it's almost time to retire the BillGatesBorg icon for Microsoft stories. Esp. since he won't be with them any more, sorta. I vote for a chair icon. It can be a borg chair, I guess.
Sure, we all know that Bill is no longer calling the micro management shots - ha ha ha ha ha, want to buy a bridge? The whole hog co-option of a BSD or whatever else M$ will turn to will make the company less like Bill's Personal Borg Collective too. I propose we adopt a cute little butterfly or something to more accurately reflect Microsoft's intentions and influence.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
>>each new feature or bug fix seems to require an exponential number of new engineers to add
Well, you expressed it a bit differently then I would have... but still.
Each new feature you add increases the complexity of the overall system. After you add X number of features, the system suddenly starts increasing in complexity MUCH faster then it does in features. Of course, this is true of pretty much ANY programming (and I suspect non-programming as well) project.
Yeah, cus EVERYONE had a computer back before Windows 95.
Cheap, ubiquitous computers largely coincide with Microsoft's support for cheap 3rd party hardware combined with a good-enough operating system.
Someone else MIGHT have come along to fill the void if they hadn't been there, but there's no proof that it would have happened, and certainly no proof that they set computers BACK 10 years. (Do you even REMEMBER what computing was like 10 years ago?!)
>>"But Microsoft tends to keep backwards compatibility for a long time"
Yeah--mass market kind of appreciates that. I suppose you'd prefer that the techno-elite (who have large budgets for new hardware AND software) have their own technology platform with no way to connect to, or pass files to the rest of the world? I mean, it'd be HORRIBLE if the guy using a 3 year old computer at home could bring his documents to work and use them on his brand new computer. (?!)
Even if we never liked Microsoft, it is sad to watch this mightly sparing partner collapse under the weight of mutual self-destruction.
What is this "mutual self-destruction" you speak of? Is Microsoft some kind of dual-entity? Like Ernie and Bert? And they're both forced to commit suicide, for some inexplicable reason?
Dude, don't use words when you don't know what they mean. Don't repeat phrases that you heard some Republican pundit throw out on some radio show. The term you were likely thinking of is "mutually-assured destruction". It requires at least two parties, each with the capability to destroy on another. Your perversion of that phrase makes no sense. There's only one party involved here: Microsoft. How this destruction can be "mutual" when only one entity is involved makes absolutely no sense.
Slashdot + Diamond Age meme collision whilst remaining on topic. Impressive.
Personally, I think this captures it better. Just replace the podium with a chair and you'll have both the monkey dance and the chair incident in one shot:i c.gif :-)
http://www.msboycott.com/media/ballmer_monkey_mus
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Complexity increases at an exponential rate. Look at a simple amino acid. A single molecule is very simple and predictable. String a few together and it gets more complex. String a few hundred together and you need folding at home to even begin to model the problem. Now throw a few of those proteins together in a cell and you have a system so complex we still don't more than a basic idea of the workings, never mind modeling and predicting. All this and we still don't have 2 bacteria to rub together...
* Windows came on a few floppy disks?
* The primary job of an operating system was to launch user applications, not to assimilate them all?
The reason windows is so big and complex is not because it needs to be. In fact the most efficient OS's are the smallest ones.
Its all because of marketing. Microsoft has to keep adding bullshit to their os that slows it down and makes it consume ever more CPU/RAM/HD just so they can claim it does more, in order to sell it to you all over again.
I bet there's only like 1% of us that even know all the 'features' in windows, let alone actually use them.
I wish Microsoft would allow you to selectively install the basics, just like most linux distros already do.
That's a great distro. Needs some help porting for various languages better, that's about it. Fastest thing I have ever used, and yes, has about what you need for a home surfer edition. They could have picked that for the MIT cheap kids laptop I think, maybe just a little tweaking.
I say back to thin clients. Control, security and support are all easier if coporations would go back to thin clients.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I realized that I couldn't figure out how Gartner make money, especially in light of the fact that any articles I've seen bearing the results of their research have ranged from unlikely to improbable and all the way up to hallucinogenically created. It looks to me that they hire recent graduates with lots of opinions and absolutely no experiential knowledge. (and likely also milk them for all they can, burn them out and trash them at the first opportunity - just like most other analysis and consultancy firms do. Which explains much about the corporate world.)
So I thought I'd take a look at Wikiality... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner
Not entirely sure why someone bothered to create that page. One (more) example of why Wikipedia is not necessarily useful or respected... and Gartner's own web page is an absurd mix of buzzwords and corporate design - confident yes, but vacuous.
So, does anyone know how they make money? A serious question, just the "how", I'm sure that no-one really knows the "why".
> "Bloat" is - and always has been - just a term used by computing elitists (ie: geeks) to describe features they personally have no interest in.
No, you have only identified one source of bloat. And while it IS an important source there is another bigger one.
One problem is the 'legacy' problem. Take a good look at glibc. In the beginning was a humble C library, and life was good. Then threads became popular, yet C was designed before threads and had features that were most assuredly unthread safe. So it gained new thread safe versions of many functions while retaining the originals for backwards compatibility. That wasn't so hard right? That was the only logical course of action in fact since breaking all existing programs was never a realistic option. Of course C predated other important things also, like i18n. So again it was extended. But of course some programs needed i18n and threads and others didn't. So both sets of code had to be touched. So now some calls come in four flavors, regular, threadsafe, i18n and i18n+threadsafe. And of course a fully functional system has the current Glibc and one or more older versions around to support older binaries. Hell, it wasn't all that long ago that it was common to see an entire set of libraries to support a.out executables as well as the current elf standard.
And this is on Linux, the more sane popular OS. Microsoft's problems are even worse because a decade ago they planned far more poorly and now must keep an even larger universe of legacy code running. On a Microsoft machine you have to still support DOS, Win16, the NT 3.x version of Win32, the Win9x version of Win32, the Win2K version of Win32, the WinXP version of Win32 and now the Vista reimagined version of Win32 plus the new APIs being added. And the next version must support all of that plus the new features they will have to add to make people upgrade.
Another is the increasing amoung of code needed just to get to a desktop and launch an app. Find the minimum package set to get Firefox to launch on a Fedora Core (or Debian, Suse, etc) machine. Plot that MB count backwards through time. That is bloat. Yes some of those features are very nice, but we are continually increasing the 'minimum' set. To understand the system one must have a passing knowledge with everything in that minimal set because tracking problems can lead you into any of that stuff.
Democrat delenda est
Nothing to see here, move along.
No, really.
DO NOT RTFA.
Unless, of course, you are a XEO type and need your daily dose of buzzwords, technojargon, and prose than ultimately says nothing.
I buy the tag line of the article, in the sense that if future OS releases from MS experience the same rate of delay/feature removal, we won't see another OS from MS till some time after Infinium and 3D Labs release their flagship products.
But no, I don't see MS shifting to an alternative development paradigm.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Theres a very good one, in the name of PornTube. Is good to get now a few porn videos. As a linux user I dont really like streaming. I want downloads, but the tube concept seems to work, and PornTube is a really fantastic site to navigate with only one hand. And is very 2.0 (community + css stiling + etc..)
-Woof woof woof!
Vista appears to be a rare case where both apply.
Although Linux now offers all sorts of GUIs and some drivers, it's still suffering from a legacy problem similar to Windows': it's based on the design of UNIX, from the 1960s! Is there any reason why a modern OS should routinely use strings like "apt-get sudo" or "#/usr/bin" other than that several generations of hackers have gotten used to those abbreviations, and the code is now too embedded to replace?
A modular, free, open-source OS is a great idea. But wouldn't it be feasible at this point to abandon the UNIX/GNU legacy and start a new OS based on modern design principles -- and that doesn't look like a clone of Windows? Yes, it would start off as a toy since it'd have no drivers etc., but if we could implement a few basic applications in it it would start to become worthwhile.
Revive the Constitution.
We've gone from 128 KiB in the original Macintosh computer to 1,048,576 KiB in current models. How is that "not much RAM"?
But it's not "done already" for those publishers for which a rewrite of the flagship C++ application in a "managed" environment wouldn't generate enough additional revenue. Would you want to rewrite, say, the Firefox browser in the Java language with the Swing or SWT toolkit or in the C# language with the Windows.Forms or Gtk# toolkit?
Dear Gartner, let's set so double layer the killer delete select all
I think OSS is less influenced by this problem... we can re-write things in a much easy way...
that's because it's not like in Windows, where you have to write your software without using some other software... i mean... modularity and having lots of different programs that do specific thing helps. don't like 1 thing? then change that program, but you don't have to re-write even apps that use it... something like xorg/xgl... normal apps doesn't need to be re-wrote to use all his eye-candy...
so I think it's more "there won't be other Windows like this", not "there won't be other OS like this". at least for some more time...
I have a friend working on that right now in Linux.
(Not really, but he *is* porting BDB to Linux kernelspace for a filesystem he's writing.)
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Ballmer used to call this "strategic complexity". As Ballmer once put it, when asked why Microsoft kept adding functions to Windows, "If we stopped adding functions to Windows, it would become a commodity, like a BIOS. And Microsoft is not in the BIOS business".
There's no technical reason why an operating system has to be as bloated as Windows or Linux. Integrating Internet Explorer into the operating system was a business decision, not a technical one. And all that really meant was that IE's code was split up into various DLLs.
Technically, the "big OS" problem results from operating systems with poorly designed interprocess communication. When it's much easier and faster to call the kernel than another program, there's too much of a temptation to put stuff in the kernel. Both pre-NT Windows and UNIX had terrible interprocess communication systems, which is how we got to the mess we're in now.
On top of that classical problem, we now have the "DRM must be in the kernel" problem. DRM is really messing up operating system architecture. "Video streaming" crap is in the kernel, which means codecs with too many privileges and inevitably, codecs as attack vectors. Games want to have "drivers" to enforce their DRM. Even the iPod service wants privileged code in Linux. That has to stop.
I wouldn't be surprised to see next generation OSs beyond Mac OS X and Vista to take a more modular approach in terms of design. It makes more sense from a development cost standpoint as well. The idea being there is just one "windows" (for example) and Microsoft on a regular basis would sell/release replacement modules for the operating system. Need a server OS? No problem, just install the server core module. Want a fancier new desktop/interface? No problem, install the new graphical upgrade module.
Basically, make it more akin to Linux and other open source products. However, since it would be a single company developing these modules, they would have a unified design to them, which is arguably the biggest flaw from an every day Joe consumer standpoint with linux: the fact that by its nature, open source design is all over the place. That doesn't make open source a bad thing, because if you have the know-how you can customize it into exactly what you want/need. But your everyday consumer wants a unified feel to their product with minimal hassle. Something a Microsoft/Apple OS with a modular design could easily accomplish.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
This is complete BS. Microsoft would love nothing more than to have Windows be a modular snap-together, snap-to-upgrade, easily patched model like this. But to do it properly will require a good decade of work, and a complete redesign of Windows.
It seems they have gone the other way for political reasons. During the antitrust ligitation in the 90s, they claimed Internet Explorer was an unseparable part of Windows. Only to have this refuted by Shane Brooks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Brooks
In the next major version of Windows(2000) Internet Explorer was also used for browsing the local filesystem, and completely removing IE would indeed break the system. Conspiration theory:
I strongly suspect this design decision was made to support Microsofts claims in court, so they would not suffer the same embarassment with Windows 2000. Of course, making big systems un-modular is a bad idea, and some of the current Vista troubles may be late fallout from that policy.
C - the footgun of programming languages
the DR17 desktop. Beautiful.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
My guess is it is just PR, designed to lower the upgrade psychological barriers: It is way easier to have your boss accepting to spend a bunch of money saying "It is the last time, I promise..."
:)
My daughters try it with me all the time.
-- get your stickers out of my science book. I don't paste crap in your bible.
Witty, but content-free.
If you're saying that your science book reflects the same theological content as my Bible, then you're absolutely right and I'll keep my stickers off as long as you keep your theological tome out of the SCIENCE classroom.
I assume that you're saying that things influenced by theology should not contaminate science books. In that, you and I are in complete agreement. Get your materialistic philosophy out of my science books and I'll stop trying to restrict that content.
You think that the universe came from nothing via the Big Bang? You're free to believe that but since the scientific method can't be used to test that concept, it's not science and does not belong in science books.
Evolution as a means of speciation? Perhaps that is current thinking in science, but I expect that to change in the next 50 years. This theory will be the 19th and 20th century's equivalent of "stone knives and bearskins" to quote Star Trek.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I believe that they offer a subscription service with different tiers.
You pay something like $30k or so (can't confirm the number) to see their research and results for a certain portion of an industry, and more for more access to a larger portion of their research and results.
You start with about 20MB install image, and add on what you need from there. That's why it's so popular for old boxes, servers, base for other distros, etc.
It means: You don't get the software, you get the broken brandnew Vista Operating System and a superb support contract for fixing it also known as the Microsoft tax.
I think we would be better off when our governments would spent a billion or two, fix the remaining issues of Linux and switch to the open plattform. It is very important to avoid strategic dependencies in procurement. Governments secure oil abroad, but what nation defends its digital interests against MS exploitation? What if It plattforms are more important than oil? It is time to think 'digital geostrategy'. Hmmph?
"I wonder if there are any web 2.0 porn sites out there?"
you mean teenage boys don't actually drool over and get off to fantasies of unattainable teenage girls on MySpace, or "dream" of that girl from school who never talked to them who they just found on Friendster?
Porn is in the mind, which is why i guess so many people worry over it and its effects. Just today however i was reading an article (having lost it, NO, i am NOT going to google for it) where a researcher proposed there may in fact be a connexion between availability of porn and the *decline* of rape.
back to trying to be on topic . .
okay, well, in sort of answer to your question, in true porno take-off industry style, first there was YouTube, now there is www.pornotube.com
Microsoft quietly licenses OSX and begins releasing new upgrades based on Dog names so the buyer has a clear choice. Vista being halfway to OSX Leopard made it the perfect transitional OS so no one would notice the migration. Kind of like when New Coke hit the scene allowing them to switch old Coke from Sugar to Corn syrup. Since the migration to OSX limits programming to inserting Windows sounds the Vice Presidents of the company outnumber programmers two to one. Profits soar and a more stable OS increases customer satisfaction dramatically. Bill Gates finally passes the 100 billion mark and is once again seen as a visionary.
BFs (BeOS).
Question is, what percentage of people using Windows would ever use it? 1%? I doubt it'd even be that many users. (Disclaimer: I'd be part of the sub-1%. I just don't think it would be used much in the general sense.)
Reiser 4?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you need virtualization to "unbundle" it into modules, then something's seriously wrong with the overall design... or you're not actually unbundling it.
I mean, when I think about "unbundling" Windows, I think about something like this:
* Windows NT "core" - NT kernel, the Win32 subsystem, Windows explorer and registry editor and the other associated utilities needed to boot to a desktop with no bundled applications or enhancements.
* Windows Network "core" - Windows firewall, Windows Networking, TCP/IP, and associated utilities. Depends on the Windows NT core.
* Windows Graphics "core" - DirectX 2d and desktop enhancements that use them, Aero, Windows XP effects and transitions, and utilities. Depends on the Windows NT core.
* Windows Web "core" - The HTML control, HTTP and other internet protocols, Internet Explorer and Outlook, and the associated utilities. Depends on the Windows Network core.
* Windows Media "core" - Windows Media Player, CD and DVD burning, and associated utilities. Depends on the Windows Web core and the Windows Graphics core.
* Windows Gaming "core" - DirectX 3d support, Windows 9x compatibility support, and associated utilities. Depends on the Windows Graphics and Network cores.
* Windows Access "core" - Interix, Remote Desktop, Telnet, FTP and other legacy protocols, User Switching. Depends on the Windows Graphics and Network cores.
* Windows Office "core" - Active Directory, RPC, SMS, all the "Pro" versus "Home" stuff. Depends on the Windows Networking core.
I mean, Windows is designed from the ground up to be divided this way. They sell embedded versions of Windows NT that work this way, and Windows CE uses the same basic API with a different set of libraries... you can even develop for CE on Windows and run CE applications under Windows with the right DLLs.
So I don't believe they need virtualization to make Windows "modular", the monolithic nature of desktop Windows is a marketing decision... not a technical one. By virtualizing, they get to sell you multiple copies of Windows for one computer. No wonder they want to go that way... it's more a wonder they took so long to catch on!
How about the operating system prototype called Singularity?
Having tried current betas of Vista, I don't believe it's worth upgrading. There are several improvements I'd like to get compared to Windows XP, but Vista is not bringing these. The most important one is ability to manage, share and access all my files regardless on what PC or where I am. Currently I'm using FolderShare.com for this, but it's a feature of Windows Live, not included in Vista (at the moment at least). Then I'd need my operating system to offer an easy way to manage all the thousands images, pictures, videos, MP3s and other media files, and also Office and other documents I have on my hard drives and network drives. There's some effort for meta data in Vista, but clearly we're not there yet.
... the sound of Windows developers shooting themselves over the prospect of having to learn yet another API/OS model/architecture/whatever.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now that Microsoft has added dynamic language features to the CLR with .NET 2.0, you'll see python,
smalltalk, scheme and other Lisps run tolerably well in that environment. This will enabling fresh new approaches for software development.
If Microsoft offered an operating system release that was:
1) An OS Kernel, no User Interface features
2) Allow new device drivers to be installed/uninstalled to support video, disks and other I/O devices
3) Runs only managed code on top of the kernel
you might have something a bit less bloated. But, you would essentialy be destroying the Earth in order to save the rest of the Solar System. It wouldn't really be Windows anymore.
After about 10 years, enough people will figure out that you can build common (shared) libraries that encompass the needs of word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, video and audio codecs, network protocols, web services.
So applications are delivered as scripting code that tie these components together. [Look at the Flux& Fluke project from Utah, and Jini for ways to make all of this work.]
Then you'll be able to run most anything you need for 'everyday' computing in 2017, whatever that is. Will it seem like 1993 all over again? Probably.
I think DIY porn (and even teledildonics down the road a bit) has the potential of being a very interesting thing. I know that I have enjoyed watching amateurs on online video and enjoyed seeing their pics. Sure, not everyone is pretty with big tits/huge cock (depending on your taste) but either online chat with pic exchange or online videos are interactive and thus allow the users to explore their own sexuality. Potentially, this could be used to desensitize someone with a serious psychological sexual problem (I've even read about people experimenting with this), it could be used to help train women in how to say no (or yes) - doing it online is not the real thing but often involves communications that feel real enough.
Also, while I surely do not have the greatest body, I've turned the online cam onto myself and played and quite enjoyed it - and got good feedback along the way. Probably helps to be a gay male - gay men seem to have taken up this kind of thing with enthusiasm - but I know women do it as well (though given the harassment I've seen women take for showing their bodies, I don't blame them for being shy (I do wonder though if more women did it if it might over time lessen that kind of rudeness on the part of the observing men)).
1) Take one Buzzword Dictionary(TM)
2) Put dictionary in blender
3) Run blender at high-speed for 45 minutes
4) Spill content on a clean piece of paper
5) Give to editor
please explain why the scientific method can't be used to probe the origins of the universe?
Can it be observed? Can you repeat it and document the results of the repetition?
Seriously. It's not testable. If it's not testable, it's not science.
What theoretical physics is doing is gathering data, speculating about what *might* have happened, and calling it science. This is not the stuff of science. For that matter, creationists have the same data as naturalists and have a different, non-testable explanation. To me, it's the same thing, with just as much religious fervor. I don't claim that creationism is scientific in nature, although I do lend great credence to the ID argument - "look, all of the stuff around you is so complex it certainly appears to have been designed."
To my way of thinking, that's just as credible as the multiverse theory.
And what exactly do you expect to fill the role of evolution?
Evolution as it describes variation within types of creatures is testable and credible science. Evolution as a means of speciation is not supported by the fossil evidence. This is demonstrated in the need to develop "new" theories like punctuated equilibrium.
My view is that God created the universe from nothing. Perhaps you don't find that believeable. I find the idea that it all came from nothing by natural processes to be ridiculous. If matter is "all there is, all there ever was, and all that ever will be" then the universe should have equilibrated an eternity ago. All heat and motion and should have stopped virtually an infinite amount of time before you and I existed.
Frankly origins is not science and has no place in science textbooks because it's all speculation.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
if it's obsolete before it ships, why even bother with it?
No, the networking stack is in the Kernal, iptables is a separate userspace program that helps you manipulate the kernal networking / routing tables for the purposes of creating firewall functionality. So the kernal does networking stuff and a "firewall" controls that networking stuff, but one does not have to install iptables (ie. the firwall), it is a separate program.
--
Harvey
"Vista the Last of Its Kind..."
I sure hope so! Vista's got enough CPU-munching eyecandy to rerelease itself in 3 years and STILL be underpowered.
http://www.glscube.org/index.html
My Tech Posts on Twitter
Do you even REMEMBER what computing was like 10 years ago?
g _system)
Running the GEM desktop over DRDOS. When was that? 88? Presentation Manager over OS2, 1988 as well.
Then there was GEOS. 1986 I think. Wow, that was 20 years ago.
The first Macintosh was 1984 which brought the GUI to the masses.
That was the golden age of personal computing when a virtual cornucopia of affordable machines exploded into consumer space.
We have more power today, the machines are a quarter the price dollar for dollar and much of it we take for granted now, but it was better then and many of you will simply have to take my word on that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operatin
You make great mention of them, and how your install is an XP killer, but you dont give one concrete example. I call BULLSHIT.
Microsoft has for too long been the hangout of idiot marketing drones and lazy/stupid wieners who don't know much about computing, but lots and lots about suckering people. They cannot create a decent OS themselves. They never have. DOS was bought from ABC Computer of Seattle, and then M$ gave it to IBM who fixed 6000 lines of assembly (out of a total of 8000 lines of code). Microsoft screwed IBM over by stealing IBM's contribution to OS/2 (and calling it NT). Even NTFS is a direct rip-off of HPFS. Microsoft has been playing the WinNT game (now in version 7?) called XP and version 8? (Vista). Except now there are too many things to change away from IBM's original code. They don't really have anything left. Microsoft knows the end is finally near. It isn't just that Linux or Open Source or BSD or Solaris or IBM have gotten so much better (although they have), it isn't just that GOOGLE has grabbed a lot of mindspace (it has), its just that as far as computers go, the novelty for most users has worn off. They realise that you can do impressive things with these things, but not if it's flaky has hell. Microsoft has been promising better and better for years and has not delivered. People (even accountants and business people who may be swayed by the window dressing or Microsofts balance sheets from their monopolies) are starting to understand that they cannot believe Microsofts story any more than they can trust Microsofts systems with valuable data. Perception is all Microsoft ever had. That is evaporating. Its hard to argue against the myths of other systems as being better than Microsofts, when people can back those myths up with hard data and proof. Microsoft is done like dinner. They admit it themselves. Linux supports 10 times as many drivers (natively), 10 times as many architectures, and all the very latest gadgets and gizmos. There are new versions coming out every week. The patches are easy to apply and virtually guaranteed not to cause hair to fall out (and if one should happen to, rolling back is brain dead simple). Its time to move on.
http://pornotube.com/
is that web2.0 enough for you?
Just another crappy blog
If Vista is going to become extinct, then Linux can replace it.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Microsft themselves was someone who MIGHT have come along. Check out QDOS, Gary Kildall and CP/M on wikipedia - looking at that whole story wearing my technical cap, I can't help but think that Microsoft reduced the personal computer from something great to something good enough - all the while taking the ideas from others.
Yeah, I am confident that virtualization will make the OS less complex...
Speaking as the guy who has to keep the critical factory applications running for one of the largest vendors of Microsoft operating systems on planet Earth, I wish like heck that there were a version of "Windows" that didn't include so much unnecessary cruft. Yes, unnecessary. Why do I need an html rendering component on an application server? Or a database server? Or a middleware server?
What it means is that every time there's another security patch for that unused Piece Of S...oftware on my servers, I have to shut down operations and apply patches. And then when one of those servers fails to boot after patching (happens almost every time) we have to bring the backups online or reinstall the OS, or...
If there were fewer unused bits on the box, this would be much easier.
Like it is on the Linux, Solaris, SCO (eek!), Non-Stop, and assorted other server OSes I have running in my data centers. (None of which has any kind of GUI installed - much less a pile of unremovable desktop apps)
I guess you would have to call it something else besides "Windows", though. Maybe something like "Microsoft Works"... [snicker, guffaw]
There's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place.
WALSTIB!
If virtualization is the answer, it must have been a very stupid question. IMHO Gartner "studies" just keep get weirder and weirder. I quit trusting their studies long ago.