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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.
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.
. . .why would MS need to create so much additional complexity?
"Trusted" computing.
KFG
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
*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?
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
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
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. (?!)
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.