Slashdot Mirror
Next Version of Windows? Call it '7'
CNet has the news that Microsoft is currently aiming to release the next version of the Windows operating system in about three years. Previously known as Vienna, the OS is now simply known internally as '7'. After achieving a quality product, the article states, Microsoft's big goal with 7 is to recapture a regular release schedule for their operating system product. From the article: "Like Vista, Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows, but did not provide specifics or a time frame. Next up on Microsoft's agenda is Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, which is expected before year's end. The discussion of Windows' future isn't surprising, given that Microsoft has been criticized by business customers for delays related to Vista. Many business customers pay for Microsoft's software under a license agreement called Software Assurance."
Bill: [with a Fed-Ex delivery of the new version of Windows] Linus, I never got to tell you how much I admire you and your operating system.
Linus: What's in the box, Bill?
Bill: When I saw your operating system, I wanted all the features in it. Everything from the widgets on the desktop to the exhilarating smell of its security policies.
Linus: I said, what's in the box?
Bill: And when I implemented them into my commercial operating system, I realized I had committed the sin of Envy, for which I must pay.
Linus: [Shaking] Aurgh! What's in the the booooxxx?!
Stallman: [voice suddenly crackling over the radio] Torvalds! Do not open the box! I repeat! Do not open the box!
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I would call it Venice, it will be stinking and sinking anyway.
As in 7 of 9?
And of course Windows 7 will finally be secure, stable and simple. Which is always what Microsoft promises their new operating system will be.... a few months after they release their current version and victims start realizing that it wasn't any of those things. And they fall for it every time.
Just watch, all discussion of the shortcomings of Vista will now be answered with, "yes but Windows 7 is going to address that issue."
For about two years that is, then will come the talk of features being dropped on the cutting room floor to make it to a shipping date. But never to fear, they will only be leaving out stuff you don't really need and Windows 7 is still going to finally be THE secure, stable and simple to use OS you have been waiting for.
Then it will ship, after a four year development cycle (see, we beat Vista's development time!) and it will be wash rinse and repeat as people actually see it and realize it is Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Vista all over again. And somehow the masses will escape coming to a 'sad realization' or will and still rationalize not doing anything about it.
But there is one ray of hope in the announcement, not that anything they say at this point can be believed of course, but if they are still staying with a 32bit version it means they have pretty much given up on ramming Trusted Computing down our throats.
Democrat delenda est
And the worst seven bugs would be called the seven deadly sins?
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
7 eh?
I'm assuming they're using this name to tell us how many service packs it will take before it should function like advertised, right?
Microsoft is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year time frame...
Somehow I think, like Visa, this will take a hell of a lot longer than expected. Anyone else think that MS will have to endure lots of we'll-see-it-in-seven-years jokes?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Are they going to hire Jeri Ryan to promote it? If so, does that mean Windows versions are capped at 9?
Seven? Who were they thinking on? Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt... or Kevin Spacey
My photography
My guess is its biggest sin is Gluttony. Any disagreements?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
To name it after a hot Star Trek character.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Is it really neccessary to support 32bit processors when it probably won't run on anything that doesn't support 64bit anyway? Kind of like Windows 3.1 being 16bit when it wouldn't run on anything older than a 386 (32bit) anyway.
No, seriously, is there really anyone even using vista?
What's next, firmware upgrades for Ngage?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Isn't that the bar on the MS campus that has free beer and test the Windows code quality?
If the beer is free, it would explains the quality of the Windows code.
Fight Spammers!
32bit operating system in 2010...I wonder how many floppy disks Microsoft will be supplying it on.
7
I like microcars
It seems to me that the FSF has a secret trigger in PHP5, because if you sort the list of recent Windows releases plus Windows7, you get them in descending badness order.
# php
$a = array("Windows XP", "Windows Vista", "Windows 7");
sort($a);
print_r($a);
Result:
Array
(
[0] => Windows 7
[1] => Windows Vista
[2] => Windows XP
)
I though Vista was the last of its kind? Will 7 really be something deeply different? Can they dare try or is this road too risky (and do they know what to try)?
;-)
I'm amazed at the pace technology goes. Even if I don't (regularly) use their products, Microsoft still plays a very important role in the industry and 7 will (probably?) be important whether we want it or not. Between virtualization and Web OSes, where will 7 lead its customers? (Aero-like feats don't count as major contributions to operating systems...) And with Linux making (slow but real?) inroads into homes, as well as MacOS X, which innovations / killer features will 7 provide? (ok, I admit, I haven't read TFA...
Animoog.org
Because that is what it will take to run it. And 16GB RAM, minimum. And you will need a new UltraMegaPCI spec to run a graphics supercomputer for the "NitroXtreme" interface. And security will still be for shit.
I have a better idea - why don't they morph whatever it is they run on Xbox360 into a full blown OS?
Right-click on My Computer, click on Properties, check the version number.
Windows NT4 = 4
Windows 2000 = 5
Windows XP = 6
the next one = 7
Ummm no, OSX is supplying PPC32, PPC64, ia32 and supposedly x86-64. Apple has no interest in IA64, and rightfully so.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
Call it Ubuntu.
> Kind of like Windows 3.1 being 16bit when it wouldn't run on anything older than a 386 (32bit) anyway.
:)
From your profile it is clear you are too young to remember it first hand so I'll educate instead of flaming ya.
Recall that there were versions of Windows prior to Windows 3.1, the first clue to which should have been the version number. Moving to Win32 was a major upheaval in the software world, keeping compatibility with Win16 and more importantly, DOS were the major selling features of Windows 3.1. By 3.1 a lot of major software was running in Windows 16-bit AND business depended on a lot of DOS code, home users depended on DOS for the majority of games, etc. Heck, most of the software people were actually running on WinNT was 16-bit code. And most games were DOS based well into the Win95/Win98 era. It wasn't until XP was looming and game makers saw sticking with DOS as a death sentence that they drank the DirectX Kool-Aid for any project not depending on 3D.
And there were a LOT of 286 based machines not only in the installed base but still being sold. For example on the day Win3.1 shipped I was working at a Radio Shack in the D/FW area and the only 386 class machine in the store was the SCO Xenix box in the stockroom running the store. To buy a 386 class machine from Tandy you had to go to a Business Computer Center.
Democrat delenda est
You're assured that your software isn't as good as it should be?
They should have told it's out in December, not specifying a year. So they wouldn't be the laughing stock of the industry when they have to admit in three years that it's expected for 2017, or so
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Looks to me like this is an announcement of a schedule, and not an announcement of a product.
There are no project goals here, and no definitive statements on what it will include or exclude, except the 32/64 bit statement (which seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a firm plan). The subscription method of distribution (which recently was portrayed as "the future"), is mentioned as being possible, but not necessarily included in the plan?
IMO this is all about calming market fears about release schedules. This is about the marketing department asking the software engineers about what two or three "safe bet" features they can announce for the future version of Windows when the engineers probably don't even have pencil sketches on napkins at this point.
They change their name because windowsvienna.com has already been taken.
Oops, windows7.com and windowsseven.com have been taken as well!
I'm sure those who named new version of Windows are not smart enough to register domain name prior to announcing it.
WOW that's pretty quick turn-around for Microsoft. Maybe they had better just stick to a few new 3-D icons, a more eco-friendly retail packaging, and a mandatory upgrade to 14 or so price levels. Now thats what I call INOVATION!
Well, that's what some people call it anyway.
I must be ahead a few versions, it says 10.4.10
Let's see:
Glutony: It will probably require at least 32 GB of RAM.
Envy: They keep copying other peoples ideas.
Sloth: Too lazy to fix bugs, so they release new operating systems instead.
Lust: It's hard to beat all those porn trojans.
Greed: Well, it's M$ after all.
Wrath: That's how you feel after 5 minutes of using it.
Pride: And after all that they'll still pretend it's the best OS ever...
Yeah, Windows 7 is a pretty good name for it.
Do they spell it "Se7en"?
check your waites quote...somebody (not waites, to my recollection) has confused phrases "frontal lobotomy" and "full frontal nudity."
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Microsoft have always looked to Apples OS for innovation. They look everywhere for innovation since they themselves are incapable.
George Costanza's gonna be pissed...
Three years isn't that far away, and most businesses aren't planning on moving to Vista any time soon. My guess is that many of them will just skip it entirely if the next version of Windows, which presumably will be what Vista SHOULD HAVE been, is right around the corner.
It just confirms the widely-held opinion that Windows Vista was rushed to market, and is really just a crappy "place-holder" operating system, much like Windows ME.
"Microsoft is currently aiming to release the next version of the Windows operating system [CC] in about three years. "
Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle Ha Hee He Snarfle
Sorry
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
"Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions..."
Really, is there any point whatsoever in reporting stuff like this? I don't think that any of us have the foggiest notion where personal computing will be in three years, much the the five to seven that it likely will take for MS to deliver the next generation OS.
My prediction is that instead of hard drives and DVDs, the OS will be inserted into my head on a chip.
Hmmmm... what will a Blue Screen of Death look like from the inside out? Just imagine Windows on 'shrooms! Pretty screensaver......
Three Squirrels
and this chiastic reversal didn't originate with Waites, it's also been attributed to Red Skelton (as "I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy") and was copyrighted by M.D./songwriter Randy Hazlick in the 70s.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
It must be something like 20 years behind this time?
Get off your asses and release XP SP3.
Jeesh, Microsoft is getting as bad as most OSS projects. busy working on new shiney crap while the core sits and rots.
WHy would anyone bother with vista is it will be reaplaced just as it begins to reach maturity?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Let's see, the Mac OS is up to version 10, so yeah, 7, that's about right. Windows is about 3 versions behind the Mac OS.
Linus: What's in the box, Bill?
Bill: When I saw your operating system, I wanted all the features in it. Everything from the widgets on the desktop to the exhilarating smell of its security policies.
Linus: I said, what's in the box?
Bill: And when I implemented them into my commercial operating system, I realized I had committed the sin of Envy, for which I must pay.
Linus: [Shaking] Aurgh! What's in the the booooxxx?!
Stallman: [voice suddenly crackling over the radio] Torvalds! Do not open the box! I repeat! Do not open the box! Sorry, but I can never hear that scene without hearing it like this:
Brainy: What's tin the booooxxxx?
BANG!
Jokey: It's a surpriiiiise! *manic giggle*
Brainy: What the fuck is wrong with you?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
That's "7 of 9" to you, buddy.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You are aware that 2010 is a mere 2 1/2 years away, right?
Which by my calculation is about when Vista SP2 should be coming out. You won't see 32-bit go bye-bye until around 2015 at the earliest.
The average person is no where near the 2GB RAM barrier. And even "power users" like me can exist just fine at the 2GB barrier (multiple VMs). Now servers need 4+ GB of RAM and therefore a 64-bit OS (or at least one that doesn't go unstable past 2GB). But normal humans don't need it.
Infinite time is a regular release schedule?
I agree! The last time I checked my windows system for stability it asked me for a credit card number for verification and when I refused to provide it, it formatted my hard drive and rebooted. I'm sure that was simply because it wasn't windows 7. I heard windows 7 is so great that when it comes out in my lifetime there will be a celebration!
Seven for the amount of new fundamental features that will be announced and then subsequntly dropped?
Didn't George want to call his first born 7? What a looser!
Come on guys, this is _good news_. One of the biggest complaints about Vista is that it took so long to get finished, three years for a new OS is perfect. No,it's not going to take SEVEN gigabytes of ram or DX 17 - Vista runs _fine_ on a half-gig, with a geforce FX.
Is Windows the best OS? Defenitly not. Should we resort to hyperbolye and pot-shots? No. Am I the only one who thinks all such commentors are jerks? Apparently.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
This announcement is a fake: a 'Leopard' has more than '7' spots!!
I think Microsoft have one real option if they want to stay in the game.
They have to do like they said before Vista: Rebuild everything, implement winFS, and give us a new, functional GUI, and a stable system. They also have to maintain a near 100% compatibility with Vista and/or XP.
I think Vista might be the last time that software companies will even bother to rewrite software for a new Windows. By the time 7 comes, Linux and Mac will have a significant part of the market share (I would guess at least 15-20%). If Microsoft fails this time, the future for Windows looks very dark.
Remember, no other Windows version is as hated as Windows Vista. Proof here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcARXN7cr9Y
In 3 years time (5 with slippage) is anyone actually going to be wanting to put this new OS on 32-bit hardware? Let me put it another way, Vista barely runs on a 32-bit box (all that memory reqired) and the hardware requirements are likely to be much higher in 5 years time.
Is anyone still going to be running Windows at all in 5 years time?
Stick Men
The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows
The more you tighten your grip, Ballmer, the more desktops will slip through your fingers.
is to build a new OS from scratch. This is the only thing that can save Windows from its own increasingly complex API and general sluggish performance The Singularity Project could give us a clue of what a future OS from MS could look like.
.NET is a move in the right direction, pushing and encouraging developers to use managed code. Legacy code will probably run under some virtualization technology.
The problem is that MS cannot just abandon all the software that is built on NT so the only solution is to take it very very slowly.
Getting good performance under a virtual machine still requires a lot of resources that the average home user never has. Perhaps in order to push home users to buy this new version of windows - which will give everyone worse performance when using the software they all know and love (NT software) - MS will decide to give it away for free and make their money selling ads
Of course this is just wild speculation and I haven't really looked into its viability from a business point of view.
Seven of Nine... Sorry, I could not resist it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
A broken mirror causes 7 years of bad luck...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Don't buy Vista, wait for "7"!!
... they haven't even gotten Vista out of beta yet. Maybe Microsoft should focus on finishing Vista before they start working on the next version.
Strange, my windows version is 11R6...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"2000 was the best product I've seen from Microsoft (and the best major release they've done)."
Uh, considering 2000 was just NT 4.0 with the IE 4.0/Explorer shell jammed on and a bit of tweaking under the covers for DirectX, I'm pretty disappointed. NT 4.0 ran reasonably well on a 486 with 24mb of RAM, and even better on a K6 233 with 128mb of RAM. However, without DirectX support newer than 3.0, the only real thing that I use Windows for (since the Wine/Cedega DirectX support lags a bit), I was forced to start using Windows 2000 -- an OS which does not run nearly as well as NT 4.0. NT 4.0 was also hobbled a bit by a lack of USB support. If you were to take a computer from anywhen between 1998 and 2001, and compare its performance under Windows 2000 and NT 4.0, you'd find it was not as close as you might think. By that metric, Windows NT 4.0 appears to be better than Win2k, and thus makes it the best Microsoft release ever.
Windows XP is only a minor revision to Windows 2000 (far more minor than Windows 2000 is over NT 4.0) -- which is why the internal nomenclature for the two is Windows NT 5.1 and Windows NT 5.0, respectively. Activation and a fisher-price interface (which you can disable) are the big differences, although the broken VM (minimizing a window to the taskbar lets it tell the VM to pageout its memory to swap -- even if you have many gb of RAM free!) and some other "tweaks" are also "features" of Windows XP. In any normal setup I've had, the only really bad difference between XP and 2K was that XP was limited to 10 TCP/IP connections at a time OOTB.
You could even argue that Windows Server 2003 is the best Microsoft release ever -- it's definitely the successor to Win2k in terms of no fisher-price UI, and the code tree used inside. Have you tried any of these, or are you making your claim purely on XP vs. 2K? I don't consider your Win9x experience to count, because that's a completely different codetree/build from Microsoft.
Of course, YMMV, since I only run Windows inside virtualization with either MacOS X or Linux as the real host operating systems (no troubles with search or sleep inside MacOS X -- although I disable Spotlight due to its rather large and unwelcome metadata cachces).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Unless someone else comes out with Six-Minute Abs... George Costanza was also smitten with the Seven if people remember... MS is really in a strange position these days- they design, write & promote a software engineering mess meanwhile their B2B departments must be really keen because they've fooled so many hardware manufacturers in to near (or sometimes complete) exclusivity contracts so they are virtually guaranteed a cash flow while they continue to pump out hit-or-miss products. I don't know why this is news but I'm sure that just like Longhor-erhm Vista, '7' will have a long and public development cycle that I strangely remember MS stating they were not going to be so public in the future...
If your active distribution *can* run 64-bit, all the drivers are 64-bit. The kernel must be 64-bit (and by extension all drivers, where we define drivers as loadable kernel modules). It's simply not that big a deal as the lion's share of the drivers of interest were open source and the change to a new architecture for many was little more than a recompile, however, there were many exceptions, and early adopters of x86_64 linux distros are probably painfully aware of them. Source code explicitly calling out uint32 data types as memory addresses, some funky things with PCI addressing and memory holes, etc etc. I think the open source world benefits somewhat from 'code nazis' with nothing better to do than nitpick such peculiarities as they find them, even before they would have functional impact, while commercial development has project managers with whips to meet schedules, leaving no time for being pedantic. Additionally, many of the most popular drivers frequently were somehow applicable to an existing 64-bit platform (i.e. sparc and ppc64), therefore the code had largely already evolved to be more platform agnostic, or at least trained a large number of OSS developers in how to do it so porting of those drivers was not bizarre. Applications are another matter, i.e. because of Sun's Java plugin and flash, my 64-bit systems still run 32-bit firefox, and provided all the libraries are there, the 64-bit kernel doesn't mind hosting 32-bit applications at all.
Now Windows 64-bit is a different set of circumstances. Most drivers have source guarded by the hardware vendor, and most of these hardware vendors ever really cared about support Windows and the only platform where Windows dominated was x86. Thus the situation is pretty grim for those companies, many of which still don't care about 64-bit, and the ones that care being ill-equipped for knowing the sorts of things that break in a platform change of this sort. The fact that the driver API is so close to what they've been using, it means the logical schedule move for them is to try to port their existing code. Of course, as Vista has shown, the commercial vendors have even more of a hard time getting it right porting from XP driver model to Vista (even without an arch change) than 32 bit to 64 bit within the same driver model.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ballmer: I think they really went for that Soda. ...especially an app. Or an OS.
Gates: What, are you crazy? They hated it. They were just humouring you.
Ballmer: Ah, alright. Believe me, that OS is gonna be called Soda.
Gates: I can tell you, I would never name my system Soda.
Ballmer: Oh, no no no. Course not. I got a great name for our OS. A real original. You wanna hear what it is? Huh, you ready?
Gates: Yeah.
*Ballmer uses his finger to draw a number 7 in the air, while whistling*
Gates: What is that? Sign language?
Ballmer: No, Seven.
Gates: Microsoft Seven? You're serious?
Ballmer: Yeah. It's a beautiful name for an OS or an application...
*Gates scoffs*
Ballmer:
Gates: I don't think so.
Ballmer: What, you don't like the name?
Gates: It's not a name. It's a number.
Ballmer: I know. It's Mickey Mantle's number. So not only is it an all around beautiful name, it is also a living tribute.
Gates: It's awful. I hate it!
Ballmer: Well, that's the name!
Gates: Oh no it is not! No program of mine is ever going to be named Seven!
Ballmer: Awright, let's just stay calm here! Don't get all crazy on me!
I work for a mid-sized business; four locations with about 500 employees.
We use Avaya (formerly known as lucent, formerly known as AT&T) phone systems. They are truly awesome -- in a not-good-at-all way. I am the primary administrator (UNIX background, not old-fart-telecom background).
So first we bought them, paying thousands and thousands of dollars, but now we have to RENT them too. You see, you pay a maintenance fee every month that works out to something like $8,000. If we stop paying, it's Avaya's policy that they will dial into our phone systems and cripple them so that we can't use about half of the command set. No, I'm not kidding -- they've done it to us by mistake and they are being sued over it in other states.
What do we get out of it? Not much. If some of our server hardware breaks, then Avaya will replace it, but Avaya won't assist with programming unless we pay them something like $80/hour for assistance. Given that a 24-port digital line card costs as little as $3K from authorized resellers, and we've never had one break, we would be much better off just hording our cash and buying a couple of spare cards and parts.
Unfortunately, Avaya also has a tight control over their supplier market. They have "authorized resellers" and then the SCARY "GRAY MARKET" oooooohhhhh BE SCARED!!! It's also known as eBay, where part prices are roughly 1/3rd of the cheapest Avaya authorized-monopolistic reseller.
Our sales person reminds me of a used auto salesmen.
Subscription services usually suck when it comes to software. Be warned.
Why does it even matter if they ship a 32 bit version? How many of us will have 'only 2GB' of RAM in 3 years? Isn't the biggest reason to go to 64-bit for the extra memory allocation that's available? I know I have 2GB of RAM today, so in 3 years I'd expect to have at least 4GB. If Microsoft is having so many problems with getting products out the door, why don't they work on products that people will actually use? I don't own Vista at home, but at work I hate seeing it run with only 1GB of RAM. God help Microsoft with running their 'next' OS with 'only 1GB' of RAM. I don't see the OS becoming more system friendly in 3 years. It's always gotten more bloated, so it's not gonna suddenly outperform XP in 3 years.
Jerry: Seven? Yeah, I guess I could see it. Seven. Seven periods of
school, seven beatings a day. Roughly seven stitches a beating, and eventually
seven years to life. Yeah, you're doing that child quite a service.
There are probably only three application classes that really *demand* 64-bits: ultra-high resolution video, virtualization and commercial databases. Most consumers could care less about virtualization or databases, but video includes games and porn. QED.
I figured on upgrading to Vista a couple of years from now.
They've just saved me the trouble...I might as well skip it altogether.
No sig today...
Windows 7 is going to implement WinFS.
Really.
I'm serious!
Would you stop laughing?!
Rethinking email
Funny you should say that, but i recenty got a couple of old bondi blue imacs. I had never used one, but can remember when they were new and being praised as so much better than the equivalent windows boxes. I was surprised to find they seemed as crash-prone and craptacular as win 95. This was os 7.5.something. Now i am curious if os X is as shabby as XP. And OS/2 2.1 knocked them both into a cocked hat. I still miss Neko.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Remember when 95 was released, and we all made those jokes about 95 meaning the minimum recommended memory in MB, or the amount of disk space in MB it would use? Sometimes I think "If we only knew."
Businesses have always been conservative about moving to new versions of Windows (or any software for that matter). I've heard the same about 3.1 -> 95 NT4->W2000 W2000 -> XP etc... How is this any different? Vista will be adopted by businesses as part of their replacement cycle. By the time Win 7 comes along Vista will be well established
According to a previous MS annoucement, there will be no more Windows 32bit operating systems
v er_2008_The_Last_32bit_Operating_System/1179359920 ">http://www.betanews.com/article/Windows_Server_2 008_The_Last_32bit_Operating_System/1179359920
a href="http://www.betanews.com/article/Windows_Ser
"Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit operating system that we'll produce," Laing then pronounced. "Post-2008, we will transition to 64-bit. Many Microsoft products are becoming 64-bit only today, because they're realizing the benefits of 64-bit computing. Exchange Server 2007, Windows Compute Cluster Server, and Windows Server Virtualization are all 64-bit only today, because they give significant benefits."
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
hahahaHAHAHA...HAAA...HAAA...HAAA...HAAAAaaa! Oh, please, stop! You're killin' me here.
Okay, that's enough.
What?
...that many users will feel 7 will be the best Microsoft OS in the series, though many will feel nostalgia for Vista. Then 10 will come out and sell the most copies.
I mean, besides the media's biased view, which in reality means nothing. I've run Vista since before the first release candidate. I've run unusual, and old hardware on it. I've run every game I've come across on it. Nothing ever asks me dumbass questions because I disabled UAC within the first 5 minutes. There are no security flaws that effect me (that actually matters) as "the usual user", oh noes, someone can see my porn or saved games! Hax! Who cares. Vista has crashed a whole 0 times since purchase. Vista has had no incompatibilites with anything. All of the drivers I've needed are all redily available and work perfect.. Will someone please tell me why Vista is "zomg Vista no way LOL". I expect the replys to go something like (1)"The UI is sooooooo demanding of GPU's", (2)"it iz unstabl3 n u r jus dum n stoopid lol15", and (3)"You obviously have no idea what you are talking about, be quiet." My pre-response to these: 1- Get a video card made within the past 3 years, it'll be fine, im doing it right now. 2- ..
3- You are apparently quite stubborn and opinionated, try it for yourself before reading "reviews".
Microsoft Windows Vista, try it. It's not as bad as they say.
This response to the article explains it. (Executive summary: just because Microsoft stopped selling NT as "Windows NT" followed by a version number, that doesn't mean the version numbers went away.)
Inside the box were the hideous remains of Linus's love. Cut off from community, it had was putrid and anything but alive. Bill himself did not look much better but he continued his gloat at the visibly nauseated Torvalds.
Gates: It's perfect. I am Envy and you are Vengeance.
Linux: Keep your boxed bits Bill, no one wants them. Ha ha, what a stupid scheme.
At this point, Stallman arrives and cuffs the deranged Gates.
FIN
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
At least get the version number right -- the original iMacs shipped with Mac OS 8.1. Granted, it still shared the same problems as the rest of the "Classic Mac OS" family (lack of protected memory, etc). Mac OS X brought a "modern" OS to Mac users.
Microsoft is run by the Borg!! I can't believe this was the first Borg reference on a product called 7!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
most businesses aren't planning on moving to Vista any time soon. My guess is that many of them will just skip it entirely if the next version of Windows, which presumably will be what Vista SHOULD HAVE been, is right around the corner.
M$ won't last that long
. Their stock price is already too low to keep their talent from moving to Google and other competitors with products that can't be stolen. Vendors are going to revolt long before M$ can get another OS out the door and things will only go downhill from there. Good riddance.Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Wasn't there an episode where George had created the perfect baby name, and one of his friends stole it by giving it to their baby? The baby name was "Seven."
I can see Gates and Ballmer ripping off a Seinfeld episode...
Sent from my iPhone
Bill: When I saw your operating system, I wanted all the features in it. Everything from the widgets on the desktop to the exhilarating smell of its security policies.
And it comes with the Billix kernel. Taken from the spanish word "bilis", meaning bile.
Can't you just smell it? Ah, spam in the can.
Yes, it's MicroSoft. They tell you what to expect in advance with wiener name.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That means that the next version should be, at least, Windows 8 or 9. Sure, maybe I shouldn't count Win98 and WinMe as full version increments, which would put as at just about 7.0 for the next version, but with all the other funny stuff MS has done with the Windows version numbers, why should I cut them any slack? If I were really a stickler for version numbers, I'd say that Windows NT should be at 5.0 as of Vista, which means that the next version is 6. Let's not even consider what the current DOS version number should be.
If I weren't so confused I'd just be disgusted.
just a ghost in the machine.
the Xbox360 more or less just has a system library that supports running one process at a time. Yes. ONE. (after all, its not like you do other things while you're playing a game on it). That system library can steal some cycles from the game to play mp3s or whatnot, but they might as well start with Windows 3.1 for all the good it would do them as the basis of a new OS.
So, this is how Micro$oft makes up for the travesty that is Vista by getting right on the next release. Hasn't Micro$oft learned that its users aren't upgrade but once every 10 years?
Bearded Dragon
In which case what you need to do is pull the remote dial in just before you cancel the support contract. Just cut that line. With a knife.
We have a small Lucent system. Its dial-in line is on an extention, and extentions can only be dialed into from inside the building (otherwise, the operator has to transfer, and the operator doesn't know that extension anyway).
I could have sworn I read an article on Slashdot recently claiming Vista was the last version of Windows OS which would be released with a 32 bit version?
I would've called it Number 2, because with all the DRM and such it'll surely have, it'll make you feel as though you're Number 6.
Be seeing you.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Most PC programmers seem not have a grasp of basic programming concepts/practices. They do stupid things and these things often make it past release and into the wild.
For example, at one company I worked, they had sleeps randomly sprinkled in the code that were required to make it work properly. The rub was that no one knew the reason why. If the code didn't work on new hardware they dingled with one of more of these magic lines until it worked.
Of course this type of behavior is indicative of bad multi threaded code. The core developers had little idea how the Windows threading system worked, so the code was littered with loops polling on global variables.
Take comfort in the fact that this code handles credit card transactions for nearly all non-IBM POS systems in the US. I wrote a part of a multi-threaded engine to interface with IBM, so they are probably in some IBM shops now.
During my short stay, I work several simple multi-threaded apps and became the resident "Guru" for Win32. Ah the joys of being a big fish in a little pond.
The point is that M$ cannot due much to mitigate problems caused by bad coding downstream.
Their 'big goal' is to actually just be able to ship *something*, in three years? 'Wow'.
Well, at least then it would be easier to look it up in a search engine. Hey, publishers: please use unique product names, make some shit up, we don't care what, be our guests! However, naked numbers are a no-no, what is the search term "windows 7" supposed to come up with, shopping lists for building contractors?
On a serious note, I'm rather sure it's just for internal reference, see, on a horizontal time bar we can faintly see Windows Vista Service Pack 1 looming on the horizon. Take the distance between that SP's assumed shipping date and Vista's original release date, and multiply by 7. Voilà, Windows Pinata, codenamed "Vista Service Pack 7"!
Whatever. As long as they don't make that Windows 007. But luckily all rights to that number belong to Sony.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
It seems like they're very into scams and buisness models now, rather than providing a solid OS that is just an OS for everyone to easily enjoy.
Subscription models? Ad driven Os buisness models? I mean what the fuck are they doing? The computer is not a tv, and if you dare try to make it into some advertisement based platform... we're all jumping ship to linux or whoever else dare to provide an OS that is easy to use, and is an OS first, and a buisness scam second.
Maybe the Billborg logo finally has a successor...
Heaven forbid Slashdot using a Borg icon with large knockers and wearing a spandex cat suit.
build a new OS from scratch
That would be a disaster which would finally bury them, so I hope they do it.
IMHO they should do what Apple did: Start with the best around (UNIX), and get on with adding value.
you had me at #!
I doubt this will happen. An operating system does not need that much code, and kernel developers are not evaluated on line counts. Linux is an OS. It does not include a GUI, and that is a mountain of code all by itself. The source code for the current (2.6.22.1) version is only 43MB compressed. I seriously doubt the Aerogel interface and DX10 could fit into 43MB compressed.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Exactly! If one OS had to win on merits back then it was OS/2! I used Windows 95 and it wasn't all that hot. Back then I didn't use Macs, but when I got my first (and last) iBook in 2001, it was preinstalled with Mac OS 9. What a piece of shit was that! Especially that I was used to Windows 2000. The Mac OS X disks were included and that OS is good though, very good.
That said, I will fondly remember OS/2.... Multiple DOS sessions, native office suite (IBM Works?!? Nah, it was called something else.), all the Win32S programs I wanted to run. I played Terror from the Deep for months on OS/2. Sure, it was a DOS game, but boy, did OS/2 run them well! Neko, ah, Neko... I have Neko on my Palm ;-)
I think Windows is a dying software OS.
If Microsoft had any brains they would focus all their efforts on making proprietary software that can run on top of not-so-proprietary OSes: Mac OS, Linus, and other Nixes.
"The problem is that the industry - especially Microsoft (and with an even worse attitude) - is pushing the limits of the current software development technology. The result is what we see everywhere: "Nothing works and nobody cares.""
Read this and understand that "software development technology" is BROKEN. Right now all the buzzwords isn't doing anything to bring good code. And even the fabled Bazaar isn't a silver bullet.
My OS IS 11!
-B.G.
The widgets on the desktop? That is not Linus' work, and that is not in Linux. Linus does not have an operating system. All he has is a kernel.
Windows NT itself has a great API that is much more self-consistent than Win32 ever was. It's also somewhat simpler to understand.
Win32 is actually a user-mode wrapper around the native NT API. CreateFile calls NtCreateFile. NT has a single root directory named "\"; the Win32 drive letters are actually symbolic links within the native namespace.
Many things in the NT API have no equivalent within Win32. For example, forking a process is NtCreateProcess[Ex] with a null image handle.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
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)
This one will be all se7en deadly sins.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1. Windows 3.1
... which means that it will have very large breasts and be covered in blue Spandex.
2. Windows 95
3. Windows 98
4. Windows 98ME
5. Windows NT4
6. Windows 2K
7. Windows XP
8. Vista
9. Seven
Seven-of-Nine
This one may have potential.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Then the next version could be called Windows Snake Eyes.
Task Mangler
Why do we need another windows?
Is it necessary? Should they instead focus on getting the stuff they already shipped working stable and secure?
Apple doesn't need to ship another OS every three years.
IBM, Red Hat, Novell, et al. don't need to ship a new OS every three years.
Microsoft just wants a "new for the sake of new" OS.
Though, it will keep a lot of underskilled and overpaid MCSEs in business.
They're using their grammar skills there.
... 7 of 9?
Does this mean there are only 2 more versions to go, or does this mean I should stop watching "Star Trek whatever" re-runs on TV?
Is this something they found online?
Most of the stuff on
I think "7" is the amount of memory in Gb that the new OS will need. I think they have OSX jealousy here. OS7 anyone?
Will buy if:
*Contains no advertising
*Contains little to no DRM
*Is Modular (Updating one device/service/etc doesn't require a whole reboot)
*Is more useful and less bloated than previous versions.
Will NOT buy if:
*Is only a graphics update, or
*Is anything like Vista
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Yes, but they made such a prettier chime when you rebooted than the Windows box.
Another vote for OS/2. I ran 2.1, then the v3.0 betas through the 4 series. Wrote my thesis using DeScribe on a 386/40. I see you can get Firefox for it; maybe I'll put it on an old Thinkpad for nostalgia, though I'm not certain about wireless support.
Like BeOS, another step into the future, doomed by poor marketing and fighting a pre-installed based of DOS/Windows.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Apple says their followup to Leopard will go all the way to 11.
from George Costanza.
Just cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.
Honest, it will!
"My mum upgraded and it's exactly the same, except now it's got 'rounded corners', big deal it's the same thing except the 'corners are round'!!!"
I was quietly suprised, but she went on..
"My mum has gone throught the same hassle everytime she decides to upgrade her computer, she spends a whole lot of money, a whole lot of time and in the end the result is the same thing, except 'the corners are rounder'".
That is the perspective of a average computer user with no technical interest, I simply agreed with her and said I had noticed pretty much the same thing.
For as long as I can remember M$ have underdelivered. I don't even support windows users anymore, it's simply not worth the effort, if I fix it, it will break again subject to the three R's of windows;
Reboot the machine.
Reload the application.
Reinstall the Operating System.
I can charge them for it, but I usually just make suggestions on how to fix it so they have to go through the hassle themselves, after all it was their choice.
Nowadays, I just give people a Ubuntu live install to try, I tell them it will probably be a bit slow running of the CD or DVD and to focus on the way it works rather than the speed. I think that, despite the fragmentation in the Linux distribution's, I continue to notice a trend of installing more Linux, either Fedora or Ubuntu. This year I've actually had people asking me for linux installs, I haven't had any of these lay-users wanting to go back to windows even though I give them the option to. In reality, I think it comes down to this,
You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I don't think this simple peice of wisdom factors into M$'s business plan.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well, let's just hope they don't let William Shatner have a hand in its design.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
People will be saying "Windows Nana" in japan...
Their marketing campaign will simply state, "this one goes to eleven".
- passion
it might be named after Mike Vick -- it'll give you viruses
GEORGE: Oh, no no no. Course not. I got a great name for our kids. A
...especially a girl. Or a boy.
Real original. You wanna hear what it is? Huh, you ready?
SUSAN: Yeah.
George uses his finger to draw a number 7 in the air, accompanying the
Strokes of his digit with a two-tone whistle.
SUSAN: What is that? Sign language?
GEORGE: No, Seven.
SUSAN: Seven Costanza? You're serious?
GEORGE: Yeah. It's a beautiful name for a boy or a girl...
Susan scoffs.
GEORGE:
SUSAN: I don't think so.
GEORGE: What, you don't like the name?
SUSAN: It's not a name. It's a number.
adventure-today.com
Ya know what? After the huge disapointment that is Vista and the barely acceptable precursor, XP (stability, good security but why all the eye candy), who really cares? Unless and until they really GET security, I fully expect this to be the same lame shit as Vista!
Thx, but no thx!
I bet the Windows version is just as top heavy as the Borg version.
Max.
I could think of it as such, and use a popular 'Borg' name for the product:
1) Windows 3.1
2) Windows 95
3) Windows 98
4) Windows 98 SE
5) Windows Millennium
6) Windows 2000
7) Windows XP
8) Windows Vista
9) Windows "7 of 9"
Oh, I get it - you were going for a funny moderation. Seriously, .NET is one of those technologies that developers love but users absolutely, positively hate.
.Net has a fairly decent set of standard libraries. Otherwise, as a VM, it's only middle-of-the-road. As an environment, it sucks so hard, it blows. We have a vertical application that requires re-installation every month. The customer launches the application (which worked fine the day before), and they are presented with the little "Install now?" application. It installs the application, all right-- usually the wrong, older version. (I suspect it's because we haven't paid Microsoft for a real signing key, but I'm not sure.)
.Net is indicative of Microsoft's usual approach to things. They started with a decent idea: replace their Win32 programming environment with something better. Instead of cooperating with Sun in building up Java to suit their needs, they basically copied Java, with some ideas from the Parrot project. That's okay: they got a cleaned-up API along the way, which was worth it.
.Net.
You are right, in that
The worst sign of bad engineering decisions is in the implementation of C#. For instance, it has race conditions *built into the language*. (SEE delegates.) Why? It's a poor engineering decision that could've been easily avoid, simplifying and tightening the language at the same time.
Back when I was young, my dad taught me how to sharpen knives on a whetstone. He showed me how to hold the knife at an angle, and slide the blade across the stone. I would get the knife a little sharper, but then my angles would go all to hell, and I'd end up dulling the edge.
I don't know if
Then their angles went all to hell, and they fucked it all up, in all the little ways, and a couple of big ways.
I'm a developer.
I hate programming in C#, and in
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I think they simply rolled the dice on this one.
Call it "9", put it in a tight suit and give it big tits and a camel toe. Now THAT will sell.
Apple's System7 was released a LONG time ago. Microsoft is only about fifteen years late!
...Microsoft knew full well what f*cked up surrounding Vista, and they're going to fix it.
They're going to *attempt* to fix it.
I think the failure of Vista is the result of much, much more than a poorly-managed project.
I think it's the result of warring factions within Microsoft. There's the group that wants to build a good product, and have the drive, resources, and capability to do so. There's the group that wants to use their market dominance to gain control of other markets, like media distribution (in which Apple is kicking their ass). I think there's a third group, too, from the looks of things, but I haven't worked out what their goal is, or even if it's really a distinct third group.
I think *that's* what fucked up Vista. And that is something I don't think they are willing to change.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If they keep renaming Longhorn, they might never have to release it.
Dos, 6.22, The number of weeks it was good for. Win 3.11, The number of minutes it would run reliably before needing a restart. Win95, The hours it takes to get it to work (mostly) right. Win98, The hours it takes to fix the muck up after upgrading from '95 WinNT, New Toast. (What it does to your wallet.) WinME, Mostly Excuses Win2000, What it will cost for the consultant to get it to work (occasionally) right. WinXP, Xtreme Pukage. WinVista, Watch your time go away, and your dollars to float into Bill's pockets. Win7, Years before it actually (Mostly) works as advertised.
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
Lucent/Avaya has truly shat the bed that the once eminent Bell Labs made for them.
Install Asterisk, and let the crusty UNIX admin in you transform into an all-powerful telecom guru:
BY OUR POWERS COMBINED....
>Lucent switch explodes under a flood of IAX packets...
(...you can probably find a media gateway that would let you keep your desksets......)
I think it would indeed be revolutionary for MS users to get a UI that actually works, and 15 years behind is about right for the style of "innovation" MS users have come to expect. :-)
In that time, Ubuntu will have gone through 6 releases.
We will be up to "Lurking Lemur", or "Loony Lion", or whatever they plan to call it.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Its (IMHO) NOT named after Seven of Nine.
How about Balmers Seven (parody on Blakes-7)
Let mee see,
1) Wobbly scenery = Bug ridden kernel
2) Dodgy Dialogue = NTSC ( Never twice the same crash )
3) ORAC = Balmer on the phone to B-G trying to find out what to do next.
All Orac can reply is 'Don't Panic' as he morphs into the HitchHikers Guide.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
...or better yet, Windows version 6.66?
7? 'Cause thats how many cores it takes to boot!
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
Because it's PowerPC-based.
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
first thing I thought of too. I figure they can call her 7 OR 7 of 9, just so long as she calls (the actress, not the operating system [yuck]).
Yes, this is exactly what I was about to post.
the episode is when George is engaged to Susan. They were talking about baby names with her pregnant friends, George said he would name his first born "Seven," becuase it's the perfect name. It's completely original and unique, and it has a nice ring to it.
Is there someone at Microsoft who has watched too much Seinfeld? Or are they just making a tribute to Mickey Mantle?
Well then, I guess we can adopt the old 7-Up slogan, with different voice inflection. Make "Seven"? Up Yours!
That's "7 of 9" to you, buddy.
Does that mean we only have to put up with 3 more versions of that crap before they stop making it?
Come on, it'll be called "Windows Red" or "Windows Doorknob" or the like. I mean, think about it:
...)
Windows 3.1 (a version number. Logical)
Windows 95, 98, 2000 (a year. Switched gears, but that works)
Windows ME (Let's just not talk about that)
Windows XP (Ok, what the... where are we?)
Windows Vista (Wait, I thought we were... ok I have no idea what's going on)
Windows 7 (... I give up
I think calling the next version Windows 8 would be giving them too much credit for consistency. Not to troll, aw hell this is trolling but I think it's funny: an example would be Vista's interface compared to XP's. So very, very consistent.
Why Windows 7 ?
Very simple: billg wants to create his own legacy; something that mankind never forgets. An operating system reflecting his name.
'William H Dot Gates III' isn't very marketable. Beginning and some intermediate letters of his name quite reasonably lend themselves to 'Wi m Do s'. But what to do with the 'III' ? He remembered the good old days in the garage with BASIC and started counting in binary. The result was inevitable.
And probably sufficiently disastrous as to enter the history books. Just as HE aspires.
Not funny!
Apple did System 7 over 15 years ago!
(I can't believe nobody made any jokes about this)
There is no need to re-invent everything, especially at the hardware level.
What Microsoft needs to do is write a UNIX like O/S with the following features:
1) write the successor to the C language: a strongly and statically typed C derivative with none of C's deficiencies but allowing access to the bare metal, also incorporating functional features. They certainly have the stuff to do that. Then use this language to:
2) simplify the driver development system using microkernel techniques.
3) write a single tree file system, like in Unix, where filesystems are mounted/unmounted.
4) write a network-abstraction system on top of the file system described above, where resources of the system are abstracted over the network.
5) write an object/typed database layer on top of this network abstraction system, and offer it as the default. Use MIME as the typing mechanism.
6) write a Window System, ala X, which is a regular process sitting on top of the database system.
7) write a truly object-oriented toolkit which includes gui, xml, database, and everything else required for modern apps. See the Qt model for a good example.
8) use unicode throughout the system. Don't have 8-bit functions and wide-character functions. Make character a single 32-bit data type which can host all unicode characters, so you don't have a problem on how strings are handled. Forget C string handling, and do it in the modern way.
9) provide garbage collection where appropriate. This means that all code, except the microkernel and system drivers, should be garbage-collected.
10) use the Erlang model for multithreading. Provide userland multithreading libraries for the fastest multithreading possible.
11) virtualize the O/S for the user. Make it as if the user can read/write/execute everything, but any change will not be reflected to the system files or other users' files. Provide a ring security mechanism, like 80x86 rings, so as that networked applications can not hurt the rest of the system and can only communicate with it through specific call gates.
Microsoft's problem is entirely a software problem. They want to use 70's technology for the 21st century. It's doable, but only if UNIX like principles are followed.
(Thank God Microsoft does not read slashdot though, because there are quite a few interesting proposals here).
I detest those simpletons who mistakenly put quality back into business sensible equation offered so much for the pretty cool people.
Not to mention the inevitable driver issues. The bad one we hit was certain Trident cards, all claiming to be the same chip, weren't. Minor revisions resulted in different appearances (or working at all) on nominally identical cards bought as a batch. My suggestion to buy ATI or Tseng-based cards only didn't go over well, as it wasn't the cheapest solution.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Except...
First versions of 98?
Windows ME?
The patterns seems to be one big step forward, a few small steps back.
Win 2000 was the high point for me so far.
Crap! Really? I will have to find the thing in the junk pile now :-)
I am sure the cd that came with it was os 7.5doodah, so it will be most amusing if i am wrong.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
"After achieving a quality product, the article states, Microsoft's big goal with 7 is to recapture a regular release schedule for their operating system product."
If Microsoft ever achieves a quality product, armageddon is upon us.
I was using Office 2007 the other day for the first time. OMG, the UI is actually pretty good! But... what's this? The fucking outline numbering system STILL DOESN'T WORK RELIABLY.
It has been TEN FUCKING YEARS I'VE PUT UP WITH THAT BUG!
Goddamn, but I'm glad I've removed Microsoft entirely from my home life. I only have to put up with its bullshit at work, and even that might not last as I push the boss to give Ubuntu a try.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
+2 Insightful ;-) ...gotta have 1 for teh ladies tho
Instead of current year, weird letter combinations or words that mean nothing
3.5 - NT 3.5
4 - NT 4
5 - 2000
5.1 - XP
5.2 - XP x4
6 - Vista
7 - Even worse....
Can someone explain to me why this post is a "troll"???
It's on-topic, explanatory and insightful as far as I can see. There is no bashing of anyone, no outrageous claims, and no incitement to riot (or even spit).
Has slashdot become Digg now, where people just randomly go through posts calling everything they don't agree with a troll?
thats how many terabytes of hard drive space, CPU cores, and gigabytes of ram its minimum spec is.
Or a head, upon reviewing that most disturbing link.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I read that Vista was the last 32 bit operating system to be released by Microsoft on standard pcs ( not counting emebedded devices, etc.). Now it says there will be a 32 and 64 bit version? I have to say, why bother. Try and find a decently cheap new computer that does not have 64 bit ....you can buy an athlon x2 3600 processor for a mere 50 dollars... On top of that, Vista wont even officially support my NForce 2 Ultra chipset and its only a few years old, so how can anyone expect decent 32 bit support in Windows 7?
...bad analogy with the movie Se7en.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, douchebag, considering the iMac only runs 8.1 or above I'm going to have to call bullshit. I had a revision B iMac, it was a great machine at the time. And sorry, but 8.1 is light years ahead of Win95. I mean fuck, Win95 ran on top of DOS. I never had any stability issues with my iMac and I ran a LinuxPPC/Mac OS dual boot (anyone remember LinuxPPC?). And while XP is surprisingly stable, it's still way behind OS X. As per usual Microsoft is 5 years late with a watered down xerox of an Apple OS, this time it's called Vista.
I imagine each version of Windows still offers undocumented interfaces to tilt the playing field in favor of Microsoft's other applications. They were found (and memos leaked regarding) doing that, and AFAIK the antitrust ruling against them didn't curtail the activity at all. They would have to maintain these in perpetuity because not only do old versions of their apps persist but third party developers start using them too -- usually badly. That's a lot of persistent cruft Linux is never going to have.
There's also the accumulated bad ideas that persist that Linux doesn't need, like NetBEUI/NetBIOS Microsoft inherited from IBM which was created to support a network of up to 80 devices back in 1983. Back in the day when Microsoft was attempting to take ownership of all of networking by reinventing every protocol ever written with their own incompatible version they came up with some doozies. In terms of protocols and standards Microsoft is notoriously nearsighted, so their stuff winds up with a ton of workarounds for stuff that should have been considered and dealt with cleanly before the first line of code was written. Every kludge has to be embedded in the code for backward compatibility reasons. Also, the downside of "embrace, extend, extinguish" is that you have to support those extensions in perpetuity. This is part of what has made Samba and NTFS support such a chore to code for. It's also why a recent exploit for Vista had been in every version of Windows since '98. Much of this evolutionary engineering was done for linux before it started and codified in the POSIX standards so foresight was a good deal easier to achieve.
Sure linux has some of that stuff but when every now and then somebody wades through the muck and replaces the workarounds with an elegant solution that includes the corner cases.
I imagine there's quite a bit more that makes up Windows' secret sauce, or serves to help obfuscate its workings in an attempt to prevent reverse engineering, or provides the DRM linux will never have, and so on.
Backward compatibility in Linux is often an afterthought -- if your critical app need version x of library y, just add it yourself -- it doesn't need to be included with every version of the OS.
In summary, I don't think Linux will ever need to rise to the level of complexity even of Windows Server 2003, even if you consider all of the filesystems, GUIs, virtual machines and services that a reasonable box would ever be using simultaneously, and for Linux that would include a complete GNU development environment with debuggers, compilers and interpreters for your favorite programming languages.
Of course if you want to include emacs that's a different story.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Gosh, thanks that you reminded me, I almost forgot that Apple invented the operating system and the computer...
Georg
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
the geek infantry marches in hordes to Google image search for leaked pre-pre alpha screenshots and mods!
So that they can get a whole new EULA out there to be agreed to whether you Agree or Disagree.
XP was nearly good enough to install despite the "you agree to let us hose your computer if we think it needs to" EULA.
Now MS needs a new EULA to ensure that you can't run FireFox or OO.o on your system (or must allow them to remove it) and new vistas of patents need to be shoed in to the public consciousness. So they need a new OS.
Pfft. I think it's just further proof that the reverse takeover by Bungie is complete: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_trilogy#Moti fs
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It seems that microsoft is going to take a hint from one of footballs finest leaders, my hero, John Elway!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Man, Microsoft is always behind the times! Slackware reached version 7 in 1999!