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How Microsoft Plans To Get Its Groove Back With Win7
shawnz tips a blog post up at thebetaguy that details Windows 7's huge departure from the past, and the bold strategy Microsoft will be employing to maintain backward compatibility. Hint: Apple did it seven years back. There are interesting anti-trust implications too. "Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn't think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows."
The thing is, the only reason most people run Windows is so they can run legacy Windows applications. A Windows that can't run Windows apps? Yeah, that'll sell like an iPod that can't play MP3s.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Over ambitious as always. I say work on improving XP . Make it more efficient and add features. Perhaps get all those other features that were promised 10 years ago working. Like WinFS. Like a dozen other things. MS is just digging itself deeper.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
....shooting themselves in the foot. WIth Vista they screwed up half of the drivers and now with Windows 7 they screw up the entire lineup of software? WTF?!
No really... we'll get it right next time. The last five years were a mistake, but give us a few more years and we'll be more Mac-like. Honest!
I mean Cairo, I mean the next piece of vaporware that will be used to keep Microsoft in a dominant market position even though their current product is inferior to the competition in both the desktop and server space, because why migrate off when "Windows 7" is just a few years away and will be SO FAAARRR ahead of everyone else.
Same tune.
My Babylon
Oh, right - it's harder for force upgrades like that.
I'm gonna agree that this may not turn out how they want it to. Although I'm all for throwing out the old and starting new, the sheer fact that Windows has to support not just legacy software (which can be easy to emulate, sort of) but legacy hardware as well, probably means more people will have issues with this than not.
Wasn't this what Vista was supposed to do in the first place? It was supposed to be a dramatic departure from previous versions, but too much politics pressured developers into making backwards compatability a little too over-bearing on the system. This is clearly what they were trying to accomplish with Vista, but higher-ups were too afraid to do it, so they told them to half-ass everything to make it all work. After seeing what a disaster Vista has become, both on the development and user experience side of things, the Higher-ups have no choice but to listen to what their devs wanted in the first place; kill legacy. Not build it in and make it limp along half-working and hard to develop for, but just start with a clean slate and build a kickass base OS and worry about compatability with older applications and frameworks later. Basically, they tore a page out of OS X's plan of action.
I know you've been disappointed with Windows in the past, but THIS version is gonna be awesome!! srsly!!!
...but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows Sure Vista does that now.I seem to remember Vista was supposed to be a huge departure from what was done before - and then reality hit.
The mistake they are making (will make) is that that they think their software is what is broken - when in fact the software is just a representation of the business model they have chosen. Their system design is market driven not engineering driven - and whatever they produce from this point on will be the same as all the others. Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix etc are all products of the ethos in the organizations in which they are created.
If the mould is defective, there's no point is making a second one in the hope that it will turn out differently.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
how many times Microsoft has gotten away with "Our current version has issues, but the NEXT version of x will be great! Make sure you use current version in the meantime - we're announcing this only because our competitors DO have a better product/will be releasing a better product soon!"
./'er stating that they did just that to his small company - funding dried up because they didn't want to compete with MS, and MS never released whatever it was anyway.)
I'm not even an MS hater - but damn, they have crushed more than one alternative by doing something similar, even NEVER releasing, sometimes, whatever it is they announce (I recall reading an account from a fellow
Unfortunately, the article itself is a work of fiction. The guy has lots of bad reasoning, poor memory and is desperately lacking in technical understanding.
;-)
For once, I'd say just read the article summary
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Why can't they do what Apple has done about 3 times now?
Move to new technology, but provide a compatibility layer so legacy apps still work, even if they are in some sort of emulated environment?
The new hardware people will be using with the new system will be fast enough that even an emulated environment will be as fast (or faster) then their previous machine.
With the virtualization technologies available today this should be even easier to do then, say, Apple's transition from 68xxx chips to PowerPC chips, or PowerPC chips to Intel, or OS 9 to OS X.
Were they all seamless transitions? No. But they were arguably better then then the transition from XP -> Vista has been so far.
Microsoft seems to want to either take the course of backwards compatibility at the expense of progress, or progress at the expense of backwards compatibility.
Why not go for the best of both worlds through emulation/virtualization?
...releases lost the game long ago. It is useless to think in an OS as a package, much less something you put in a box. Given that the OS is the first software building block of a system and due to the sheer complexity of the thing, it has evolved into a continually updated and polished piece of engineering, where you take snapshots of the development and call them releases.
An operating system evolves and you don't sell it. You either provide it as a service, or provide it for free, so that you can hook people on some service you offer.
I'll tell you why Win 7 will be a huge flop: since it breaks almost all compatibility between itself and previous windows releases, it has to compete on the same grounds as Linux, *BSD and OSX. Which means, that without the massive inertia of the previous windows releases, those three will kick the living crap out of Win 7 in terms of maturity, usability and price.
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Be yourself no matter what they say
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find their privates are on the Internet.
I couldn't get past the first paragraph.
"In the face of the mass-media criticism of Windows Vista, mainly with regards to the performance issues present when compared to Windows XP on hardware with similar specifications. However, very little information has been presented with regards to the performance of Windows 7, this article however shall change that."
Microsoft is always promising the next Windows will be built new from the ground up so not much is really new this time. The only difference here is the promise to break backward compatibility. Thebetaguy contradicts himself about that by having the balls to promise, "This should allow the majority of legacy applications to run perfectly," while Vista provided less than 60% of the same.
There are lots of other contradictions because thebetaguy does not really want to admit several things and he's angry about the few he's given in to. The Microsoft way of doing things was inadequate, but the change is blamed on legal challenges that competitors strangely don't have. He cites some of Vista's insane processes but fails to mention digital restrictions or the last minute elimination of XP drivers as reasons for poor performance. It's funny to watch a fanboy admit Microsoft is following Apple, but it would be nice for him to also admit that Apple followed free software and Unix practices.
Like I said, there's not much to this article. It's mostly a fanboy making excuses and casting blame for the failure of his favorite operating system. No real details have been announced and the game plan will, as usual, change before release - a sure sign that there's nothing really open about the "new" Microsoft. They are going to keep their secrets and continue to mess with anyone who's got any revenue potential.
If all applications need to be rewritten from scratch to be compatible, it should be just as easy porting to Linux/Mac as Windows 7.
'Start your photocopiers' anyone?
I doubt that they can pull this off. It is not that the Microsoft engineers are not capable. In fact, I am sure that they are. I just don't think that management and marketing have the balls.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Oh, Yeah. Ray Ozzie.
But really. Windows 7 will be what? Does anybody really want something the don't have in XP?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...isn't that what apple did with OS X? Honestly why is this such a hard pill to swallow for them? Can someone explain why they refuse to do it (especially if now they are breaking reverse binary compatibility anyway)?
NOT!
*DrugCheese rants*
Really? Its groove? Does that mean we're going to see another article on how some guitarist spent two years of his life writing the login theme for Win7?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Apple used FreeBSD and this was a success. What Microsoft needs is a service based operating system kernel, such as this one. It would be nice to see it used. ;-)
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
This is really the path Microsoft should have taken with Vista.
I'm not sure who this "TheBetaGuy" is, but if the article is accurate I'm more interested in Windows 7 than I have been in any version of Windows since '95.
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
It's amazing how they keep trotting out the integration lie about IE. The US Federal Government did not spank Microsoft because they made a better browser and tied it to their file manager, they spanked them for screwing Netscape in every orifice by creating problems for them. Anyone who does not understand that is either confused or lying.
No calls now, I'm
...because all I can think of now is the fact that this would probably mean there will be people working very hard to port WINE to run on Windows (7)...
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The first article tries to push the idea that all problems Microsoft is experiencing come from the antitrust wrist slapping they have got. This is stupid. Also takes some jabs at Apple and Linux.
The second part of the article is telling us the real problem Microsoft is facing. Code bloat. Dll hell. They have decided that they canÂt hold it any longer and they are going to start from scratch and run the old windows apps on a virtual machine for backwards compatibility.
There is a third part that is missing in the article. Most people around here suspects that some of VistaÂs performance problems, specifically on the the multimedia department are caused by the interference of DRM code. Is Microsoft removing all this code from Windows 7?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Mac like?
You mean like the Zune is iPod-like?
What a joke.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
noone posting here seems to have read the actual article that was linked to...
Will it Blend?
No single link to source - where did they get this info, just unfounded speculations.
Windows 7 early builds was already demoed and there's no evidence that it will be backward-compatible.
Also WinSxS (side-by-side dlls) is what windows xp uses to maintain different versions of runtimes from the start and obviously it has little to do with OS speed.
While reading this article the only thought prevailed - wtf author is smoking. Complete rubbish.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
From the article: On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit. ... In Windows 7, Microsoft will break from the Windows' norm by breaking previous API compatibility, offering new API frameworks as a native solution, and providing support for legacy frameworks (COM, ATL, .NET Framework, etc) through monolithic libraries designed to provide the functionality of all previous revisions of the modules in question.
And so, the answer is to put everything in one bloated DLL?
It apparently hasn't yet penetrated to the Windows 7 group that computers aren't going to get much more powerful for years to come. That stopped once laptops started outselling desktops. In laptops, what matters is size, weight, and battery life. The future is the OLPC and the Asus Eee. In a few years, laptops in bubble-packs for $89.95 will be hanging on racks at the drugstore. Microsoft isn't ready for that.
Progress now will come from reducing software bloat. Microsoft has, in desperation, extended the life of Windows XP for little machines. That's only a stopgap measure. Now they need to de-bloat their whole product line and get their costs down.
If Microsoft was at all smart, they would use a light weight "Windows on Windows" strategy similar to how they implemented 16 bit Windows on the NT base on a new VERY stripped-down 64 bit Windows kernel and use virtualization of every Windows application.
In this day and age, it makes no sense to me to write another massive OS.
No numbers. No estimations. Just some hand waving of "they are doing something different". The article doesn't change that fact at all.
Because OS X and Linux aren't de facto monopolies with 80%+ of the market.
Yes, because loading 1 MB of code as part of one executable is vastly faster than loading it as 1 MB of library. This is especially true when loading 10+ different executables that have the same code statically linked in. That is way faster than loading it once. More efficient too.
No, wait...
Besides, that code (such as MSHTML.DLL) was already an external library. Just about every operating system tends to get new libraries with major upgrades. Windows was not one monolithic executable before. Heck, it wasn't way back in the 3.11 days.
That has not always been the lure. The lure was it was pretty and not a DOS prompt. Then the lure was simply that there were more programs for it when it became dominant. But then again, Leopard runs programs designed for Tiger and before. OS 9 ran programs designed for OS 7. Just about every OS does that, including many UNIXes.
You've GOT to be kidding. "Proven" for OS 9? It didn't have memory protection. It didn't have preemptive multitasking. Heck, you still had to pre-allocate memory to programs at launch, didn't you? It was a fine OS design for 1992. It didn't work so well in 2000. It was a weight around Apple's neck and would have killed them if they didn't try to escape. It needed to updated, and previous projects had failed. A clean break was a very smart decision.
This is somewhat true, (quite on the laptop side later in life with the G4s), but it's also highly troll. "...in order to obtain the hardware-locked user experience of their new flagship operating system"? That's unnecessary.
It's not like anyone had ever thought of that before. If only Windows had a virtual environment in it. Maybe since 95. It could have run old DOS programs. Oh, wait, it did. Then there was WoW, Windows on Windows, that let 95 and up run old Win16 programs. Emulating older stuff is a common way of handling it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Looks like things are playing out as Joel predicted. It should be interesting to watch.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
MS didn't think this through very carefully - it seems like a giant "oops!" waiting to happen.
Though I'm really looking forward to Linux with Wine being better at running existing Windows applications, than Windows 7. That's an amusing thought, isn't it? I'm also giggling inside at the thought that the company to jump on the idea of Windows 7 will be HP, since they have developed a habit to embrace doomed technologies of this sort.
I keed, I keed... Besides, I really doubt the veracity of this rumour. MS would be crazy to do this (they might as well rewrite their corporate strategy as "shoot ourselves in the feet with machine guy").
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Of course they are immune from this criticism - the criticism was aimed at a monopoly. Microsoft has a defacto monopoly, Apple and Linux distributions do not. Indeed, Linux distros are the very antithesis of a monopoly.
So of course they were immune from this criticism, because they are not monopolies!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
We can sit and arm chair direct Microsoft in to all sorts of fun things, but why bother when we could just pick up some free software codebase and do better for ourselves? Hopefully hardware makers will start thinking like this rather than going down whatever SDK path Microsoft tries to sell them next.
With this announcement of total backwards break, Microsoft has declared complete defeat for their business model. It would be nicer if they would fly the white flag and be good sports about it. The free software community will welcome them if they just GPL their code and act nice. Hell, XP would survive longer than 2010 if they GPL'd it because the community could really make what they want. They don't seem ready to do that, so they can sink for all I care.
Already exists.
So why would we want Win7 w/o backward compatibility and with hardware support on par w/ Vista?
Backwards compatibility is a trap. There have been countless better ways to approach OS challenges but they all end up sacrificed on that backwards altar. You just can't break applications or your users will leave. Linux is more immune to this that Windows simply because you have access to the source - you can just recompile when the architecture breaks things and you're fine. On a binary only system however this simply doesn't work so you end up with the infamous "thunk" layers. Emulation/Virtualization is a good way out. You encapsulate all the old crap into one big ugly ball and prop that ball of emulated crap on top of a clean-break of an operating system which works the way you wish you could have made it work five years ago but couldn't because of compatibility. You're still in a trap however. The new trap is that the new operating system must offer tangible improvements and abilities or developers will not transition to it in effect keeping the emulation the defacto standard and wasting the effort of developing the new. Back in the 80's I experienced this situation first hand: I owned a Commodore 128 which had built into it a Commodore 64 mode (which was the previous generation of computer) and what actually happened was that even though the C128 was superior from a programmers perspective, the C64 software base was large and good enough that end-users had no reason to buy C128 software. Without end-users buying C128 software none was written for it and myself and everyone else with a C128 ended up running the machine exclusively in C64 mode. There was no compelling reason to move to C128 mode and this is the same challenge that faces Win 7: without something that really makes it worthwhile to write programs for Win 7 - that end-users can see and touch - then people will stick with the emulated mode and developers will ignore the fancy new capabilities.
Shh.
I think he typed :shell and forgot how to get back.
The summary is incorrect. Windows 7 will be executable backwards compatible. Though the author of this article claims early on in the article that win7 won't be executable backwards compatible, he contradicts himself at the end where he states
.NET Framework, etc) through monolithic libraries designed to provide the functionality of all previous revisions of the modules in question."
"Microsoft will break from the Windows' norm by breaking previous API compatibility, offering new API frameworks as a native solution, and providing support for legacy frameworks (COM, ATL,
In other words, older executables will still work, but they will just run more slowly than natively compiled apps.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
Why should it be called "Windows" at all? If it is as backward-compatible as (let's say) Ubuntu or OpenSuse or OsX, then technically it is not Windows (ok, you do not need to remind me of all the commercial reasons). Besides it, it is a very well known issue that most old dos games run much better on Linux+DosBox than on Windows+command prompt
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
If I cry like an iPhone user, can I get a free upgrade from Vista?
He goes on to explain that the problem with Unix is that when you upgrade, you lose compatibility with old applications because the libraries change. I'm not Unix wizard, but I'm damned sure that you can always just keep copies of your old libraries and get about anything to run. That's why you can still run old Mosaic Netscape versions, right?
Finally, he claims that they will replace all existing frameworks with a new monolithic framework. I'm sure
I ain't buying this.
The article doesn't cite any Microsoft sources or even any sources "close to" Microsoft. It's pure speculation. Kdawson is nothing but an intellectually void troll.
you would think the idea would be in their heads.
either that, or their ultimate goal is to make it impossible to do anything Windows(tm) without their getting a cut off the top.
either way, folks, I'd short the stock over about two years.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...the same amount of complaints when Apple did this for OSX. And then AGAIN when Apple finally decided to cut Classic mode adrift.
Oh wait, this is an article about MSFT
I thought that this article was real until I saw:
partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows
Come on, Microsoft's business only depends on its large collection of programs, and every new version of its OS breaks a large percent of them.
A full binary incompatibility is dead from the beginning (except for server applications, and we all know Microsoft earns money from the desktops).
And Vista's performance problems - no mention of all the DRM processes inspecting every bit of data and each other constantly. Nope, it has to do with the way the libraries are structured and it's all the DOJ's fault.
If you ignore all the marketing bullshit then it's nothing more than the same old line; the next version will be much better. Gaze in wonder at all the new features that will be cut before the product actually ships. Ship date? Take their estimate and add two and a fraction years.
Heck, I can predict what will be different in Windows 7 too: slower, less compatible, more expensive
I wonder how long it'll be before someone uncovers the connection between "the beta guy" and Microsoft marketing...
That was an oversimplified and somewhat wrong opinion on things. First off, MS integration of IE into every facet of the OS is NOT seen on Linux/MAC. The reason is they ARE modular. MS is getting a clue and is getting painted in a corner. Their current method is cumulative. They add more and more features on top of legacy, hence bloat. Plus they use hidden features and undocumented secrets and tricks. What MS has realized is that the flexibility of *nix is the way to go. I've predicted that some day MS will follow a similar model as Linux, possibly even create their own distro using the Linux Kernel and a Windows GUI and WIN32 API. More likely they will build their own kernel, more for control and licensing issues.
Vista is to XP as _____ is to Win98? Answer WinME. We see what happened to ME. The only thing hurting MS, they don't have a Win2k in the pipeline.
Wow .net is already a legacy frameworks now. I guess that will surprise some .net developers.
Just to clarify, Im not a fan boy, I use windows at work and linux/windows at home. With my windows box being pretty much a dedicated gaming box and nothing more, and my Gentoo box doing the real work.
Anyhow, thebetaguy didnt mention some of the other improvements of windows 7. The entire architectural structure of windows 7 is being changed to be modular. Meaning you can strip down the OS to nothing but the command line and the core OS if need be. Much like the windows server 2008 core installation. The main idea behind this is that it allows customized installations for different applications without making a completely different version altogether for things such as mobile phones, and htpc's.
I don't have a lot of faith in the quality of the product but this is definitely a more sensible approach. It allows the possibilities to pay for and install only what you need, and nothing more. Or remove certain aspects of the OS that you want to replace with something else such as the GUI itself with more integration. Not like LiteStep which still uses all of the native windows(explorer) function calls. Its a modular approach that allows them to keep the kernel small and the entire os generally more secure.
Yea, its still Microsoft, but its definitely a step in the right direction.
Vista sucks and the next version won't be compatible with what users are running. Then everyone will stay with XP or switch to ReactOS. And for everyone else who doesn't rely on legacy code there is Linux.
I read the internet for the articles.
"Competitors complained that offering internet and media solutions with the operating system harmed competition in the marketplace (despite other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux apparently being immune from such criticism)."
Most operating systems come with these things. Its the fact that you couldn't remove them was the problem, right?
Most of this thread is twitter responding to himself. What a nutbar.
I may never see it. This is what they promised for Vista. Remember? Well, look how late Vista was. I may not live long enough to ever see Windoze 7 roll out.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
I made the prediction upon the launch of vista that Apple would slowly erode away windows market share till they had about 30-40 percent of the global PC market from their ten 5 percent. At which point, Microsoft would release something that was capable of competing with Apple. I predicted this would happen around 2010. Thus far, I've been proven right. Buy Apple stock while its cheap BTW...
I think what Microsoft is going to do this time around is support more universal interfaces and advanced technology. Basically, hardware manufactures aren't all each making their own specific interface with the system. Instead they are each making their hardware to a higher required compatibility spec as pre-determined by Microsoft with tools to test it over and over again in a million different scenarios. Similar to the XNA tools they have for game manufactures.
Micro$oft's definition of "New" (as in "New Technology" or "NT") is "Uses a memory model taken from VAX minicomputers back around 1978"...
Will the virtual machines allow direct hardware access? Especially in the video department? For those of us who play PC games or use video graphic intensive programs like maya,photoshop,etc, this is a very important question. Spending thousands of dollars on software/games for xp/vista and then not being able to use them in the new OS will turn MANY people off from upgrading.
Yet again, the NEXT version of Windows will be a stunning break from the past ?
How is this news ? they say that about every next version of Windows.
The NEXT version of Windows will sing, dance, do your shopping and make your coffee all at the same time.
Come time for release when they have to rip out all the stuff they promised but can't deliver you'll discover that it's tone deaf, has two left feet, can't find the shops but makes a passable cup of instant.
The advertising will hail it as a marvelous step forward because it can make coffee and forget that it was supposed to sing, dance and shop as well.
When I think about it, where's my object file system that you've been promising me since 1991 ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Cairo/
Since MS is going to break compatibility, the WINE team would have a lot of headache.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Rather than making offensive rants and accusations, why not put your energy into learning how to write code, and let that do the talking?
Well, in this article, Bill Gates and Jim Allchin speak of the new technologies that will make it into the system.
I for one am thrilled to see that it will feature a better DB based filesystem (This would be awesome for speedy searches, I mean come on, it's 2008 already, I don't want to wait for the computer to do a record search for the file I need...)
But more importantly what I'd welcome the most is the one click application install that doesn't require a reboot!
This would be just revolutionary.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
At least it's fun to read.
Especially now that they stand out so (I foed them, so they're nice and red.
Please tell me it's red and I'm not making a fool of my colourblind self.)
Ignore this signature. By order.
Some select quotes:
For Windows Vista, Microsoft had to change their design and development strategy in order to comply with the DoJ and EU regulations regarding the anti-trust issues present in previous versions of Windows; specifically, the integration of assistive applications such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player into the core operating system. Competitors complained that offering internet and media solutions with the operating system harmed competition in the marketplace (despite other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux apparently being immune from such criticism).
Well, the rules are different for a monopoly and second, on Linux all the pieces are quite separate and replaceable, especially the media and web browser.
In response to this, Microsoft made fundamental changes to the way Windows Vista was linked together; shifting more towards modular designs rather than the monolithic processes used in previous versions of Windows
Bzzzt! Wrong, this is an outright lie or they guy is a complete idiot. It's all just DLLs the way it has always been.
I could go on, but the first half of the post is a set of bogus excuses that don't even touch the real issues. So how much quality would follow?
Really, this pressure is painfull. Here are stuff for geeks and nerds that matters. So the borg stuff? errrr... don't care, random noise.
Everyone wants to do useful things with their time and that's why we hate M$.
Oh, for FSM's sake... we? We?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Every time MS comes out with an OS that is completely backwards compatible and carries forward lots of legacy stuff, you guys bash MS for failing to innovate. Then, when they announce plans for something completely new, you bash MS for failing to be backwards compatible.
.NET or Office? Just chant "Down with Microsoft because they are evil" and your point will be clearer.
Seriously, just admit that in your eyes, MS can do no right. Why bother discussing Windows or
"We can sit and arm chair direct..."
And here I thought Balmer was in charge of "directing" the chairs around here.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
How does a comment get tagged "Insightful" when it's completely obvious the person didn't read the article? It clearly states that there will be an emulation layer/virtual machine for supporting legacy applications. And to all the trolls that jumped on that bandwagon in response: You can have your opinion, but please make it an informed one!
might be the answer. ReactOS should be ready for at least beta testing by 2010. No need for Microsoft to GPL XP as ReactOS is a Windows clone built by GPL code to run Windows XP etc programs in it and use Windows drivers.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I only see two posts on this site in total. According to his "about me" page,
So is he writing based on some information coming from inside MS? Is he taking educated guesses? Why does this guy rate a slashdot story?
In any case, he makes some interesting points. As a dissatisfied Vista user and the owner of an iBook G4, I'm gradually making my way into a Mac-only world at home. In my wildest dreams -- and this will tell you how lame my dreams are -- I hope that Microsoft will use the same BSD core as Mac OS and build a different GUI, as Apple has done. It would unify commercial application development to some degree, which would be pretty cool. I admit, I don't have any idea if the relevent licenses allow for it.
On an unrelated note, I'm still kind of irked that I can't get Quake 4 to run on the Vista box. $1700 and pretty much all I do with it is email and web browsing. I have a firewire card, but doing video on the iBook is so easy I can't even be bothered to install the card.
This is what they should do:
Windows 7 with Wine. How's THAT for backwards compatibility and strange bedfellows?
With this announcement of total backwards break, Microsoft has declared complete defeat for their business model. It would be nicer if they would fly the white flag and be good sports about it. The free software community will welcome them if they just GPL their code and act nice.
Yeah they could just GPL the code and become a company for mostly just supporting their products. It's just that Microsoft seems to notoriously suck at support, so they won't be making any dime with that one. Seems it's really either fly or die for them.Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
With this announcement of total backwards break, Microsoft has declared complete defeat for their business model.
I don't think that announcing breaking backwards compatibility is declaring defeat for a business model. It is more a cleansing process. And I welcome that. A lot of the hardware and software we use could be a lot more efficient and, quite possibly faster, if backwards compatibility were dropped.We're to the point now where processors are fast enough now to handle VM's. Let VM's handle the backwards compatibility, translating old code for newer uP/uC code.
I, too, would like to see Microsoft's practices of messing with their user base to satisfy their customer base stopped. But for the sake of competition, I don't think Microsoft sinking is a good option, either.
(I would also like to say it's the year of the penguin, and signs are showing that people are fleeing MS Windows... they just also happen to be fleeing the WIntel world, too, towards Macintosh.
And...I'm all for them trying something new. Start over! Look at apple. They've started over a few times, and I think it's been worth it...there's just not as much community pain felt because the install base is relatively small.
If you want a stable, mostly command line, system that'll be backwards compatible for decades to come, use your flavor of *nix...but if you want a fancy graphical interface with pretties (targeted at an audience who enjoys them)...you're gunna have to deal with sdk's and API's...that's just smart/efficient programming...where have you seen anything else?
In my opinion, it's marketing that screws the tech of MS. They come out with stupid as claims before knowing what the final product will be, over hype everything, and seem to get their hands in determining code paths. Their sdk's and api's (directshow for instance) and are mostly pretty neat. Marketing makes it so abstract and burried in coined tech terms that somehow make their way into the msdn (I consider this in the marketing goup...cause an intelligent software engineer would never make something like msdn) that it takes all the fun, desire, and some ability to learn it (at least for me)!
I agree, they are admitting defeat...but that comes with a realization that the customers (us) obviously want something better (sales of vista), but are limited with the current platform/code organization/model that they use now. Sounds like innovation/renovation to me...and that should be something constant in any field.
What do you think people are more likely to do, given the choice between (a) spending much money and having almost none of your software from before still work, or (b) spending no money and having almost nothing from before still work?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"Windows Is Not Windows"
While I agree with the sentiment, I disagree with the tactic. In my opinion, it makes much more sense to go long AAPL, or for the adventurous, RHAT.
Disclosure: very long AAPL and slightly long RHAT.
You're right, let them sink!
Let them perish in that huge heap of cash they're bringing in. Look how their utterly failing business model is killing them. St00pid ancient business model. They're just bringing in 16 billion dollars per quarter. Muahahaha! S00 sp00pid. Linux FTW, etc, etc.
The Linux vs Windows flame war was fun back in 1995. Can we move along?
It's so funny how for over 20 years now every single time a new version of Windows comes out it's a huge disappointment relative to what it had supposedly going to be/have. Then a year after, like clockwork, we start hearing about how the next Windows is going to be so unbelievably awesome it's going to be an almost incomprehensible revolution in computing technology.
See also Sony Playstation for another example of the same "marketing strategy".
and name the new OS "Curtains."
Apparently you didn't RTFA in its entirety. How does M$ plan to handle the backward-compatibility issue? by including a Virtual Machine to run all your legacy apps... exactly what Apple did with "Classic" for OSX.
This is exactly what I've been suggesting for some time now -- a modular version of Windows (consisting of core OS, drivers, networking, and a basic browser suitable for downloading a better browser with) where I can install as much or as little of it as I wish, and a VM to run my old shit that won't work with this new modular Windows.
Also, it's a great razor-and-blades marketing opportunity for M$: make the core OS cheap or even free, and charge for various levels of "Plus Packs" suitable for people who WANT a monolithic software experience.
The big OEMs can make hay from that too -- basic machines with the core OS only would be cheap, while "complete solutions" (with all the Plus Packs) would be proportionally more expensive. And I'm sure the OEMs could make a good enough deal with M$ for bulk licenses that they could make a hefty profit -- exactly as they do now with preinstalled software.
If M$ were to include VMs for both WinXP and Win98-atop-DOS, everything would be covered, including old games (maybe even DOS games!), old apps, old installers, old drivers...
Also, there is some security imposed by running potentially vulnerable OSs/apps in a VM, if only because it's harder for malware to reach. A few malicious apps can "jump across" into a VM, but most can't.
Also, at a guess the new core OS will be more UNIX-like or even *NIX-based, which ought to make y'all happy.... after all hasn't "*NIX is better" been the mantra around here since forever??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I am seriously curious twitter, you spend a lot of time on Slashdot, you talk incessantly about honesty - when did you decide you were going to turn it into a mockery and a circus by organizing these "bad zealot-good zealot" clusterfucks where you use the troll accounts everyone knows about (twitter and Erris) to give your other sockpuppets an opening to blabber their way on to karma heaven?
The problem here is not what you're saying on this particular post for example, which I suppose might be considered halfway insighftul without the "fuck shit rape fuck M$ Winblozes LOLOL" tone of your earlier accounts. The problem is your blatant gaming of the comment and moderations systems. You call Slashdot a community and you spend a lot of time talking about "us" and "we", but you sure seem to spend a lot of time lying (and therefore ridiculing) to everyone as well.
How long do you figure this can last?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
What good is Windows in comparison to the alternatives, when all those niche apps people keep bringing up no longer work? I'm sure those dependent on Microsoft software will still get working replacements, but where will the gamers and 'niche app' crowd go when Linux and OS10 run more Windows apps than Windows?
I suppose a lot more Windows users will be downloading WINE for the next few years.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
This is just like Microsoft's ill fated Cairo OS. It will never happen. The only way I'll believe that MS will actually succeed in creating a successful OS is if they throw out their old OS completely and start again from scratch. This is exactly what Apple did, and it led to an extremely stable and secure new system. The legacy systems can be supported by some sort of VM, again, just like Apple did when it went from OS9 to OSX. The future increases in computing power will negate any drops in performance in legacy programs.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Think about it: License OSX from Apple and Rebrand, Buy Parallels and run legacy applications in VMs and you have the best Win7 you could ever dream of!
Say it slowly: Windows 7 is Unix-based. WOAH!
EVER, just a monopoly that should have been razed to the ground forever.
Bill, never let me find you, it will not be pleasant. Creme pies will
rule!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When apple redesigned OS X not only did they break binary compatibility, but they took a look at what was wrong with the API for OS 9 and did their best to change it. They also lost source compatiblity.. which is why those legacy APIs exist.
Since microsoft is breaking binary compatiblity, why not break source compatiblity as well? The core C windows API has been around since Windows 3.0 (possibly earlier). Why not redo the Win32 API? Programming windows is painful, and no amount of MFC/.NET whore makeup is going to rectify that situation. Surely in the past seventeen years Microsoft has come up with some ways to write better software.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
Maybe Balmer just needs his long lost relative Rosalea (Balmer) Hostetler to take up the cause and direct the development. Note the sign in the window which seems to be apropos (even better if she just changed the first word on the t-shirt to "Windows").
Programmers in mirror are brighter than they appear
Maybe I missed something but where does 7 come from... I remember Windows 2 Windows 3.x then you have Windows 95 (windows 4) Windows 98 (windows 5) Windows ME (assuming we count it say windows 6) Windows 2000 (we'll say this was the NT line ) Windows XP (windows 6) Windows Vista (Windows 7)... So who doesn't count??? ME?? Vista?
I once bought a macintosh a few years ago. I'll never buy another one.
While I really like the platform itself, I find that apple has too much planned obsolescence built into their stuff.
Windows, on the other hand, has excellent backwards-compatibility. If I were still running win2k, I'm certain that it would still run 98% of the apps out in the wild. Try taking the equivalent MacOSX from the same year and try that.
So, if Microsoft breaks backwards compatibility, I won't have much reason to want to stick with Windows. In such a situation, compatibility becomes just as much as hassle as it is with the Mac and with Linux.
Faced with that, I'd take Linux just because of the prince tag.
A) RTFA. There will be a separate compatibility layer, much like Classic for Mac OS 9 apps under Mac OS X. By the time they drop it years later, the world will have largely moved on.
B) Even if there wasn't, commercial developers would find it *far* easier to port their old Windows apps to the new Windows 7 API than to port to completely foreign systems that share absolutely no code in common. In other words, there will be a lag in production, but the vast majority of software development houses will continue to target Windows to the exclusion of other platforms.
You're crazy if you think this will spell a death sentence for Windows apps.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You can put only so much dung into a wheel barrow until you have to dump it.
What M$ is *actually* doing is **FINALLY** ditching the MS-DOS that has been secretly running under each version of Windows since the beginning (like the over-worked hamster family secretly hidden in every Prius) and they are now going to start using DR-DOS underneath it all. They are just going to pay the $25,000 Buy Out cost for DR-DOS and be done with it all once and for all. Obviously, ^THAT^ is where all the incompatibilities will stem from...
When a software company needs to hire PR bloggers, it gets very hard for me to continue taking them seriously as a software company... I mean really it just throws light on how many previous screwups they have to dance around.
Well, I guess it's kind of transparent... but Windows does NOT support older hardware better. It *may* support old device drivers better, but, since these are (almost) universally closed source, changing the kernel will cause worse support. Especially for the IHVs that are now out of business.
BSD and Linux both support open drivers; it is more likely that drivers from BSD will be ported into the Windows ecosystem to provide that support. Unfortunately, VISTA needs driver signing, and I suspect (85% confidence) that WIN7 will also need this. Making it prohibitive for the hobbyist to provide the support.
Of course this doesn't matter, because the Windows adoption model is driven by NEW hardware acquisition; this is the "sheer" fact generally forgotten.
If WIN7 wants to penetrate into that software ecosystem (the one currently ruled by Linux) it will have to provide much better driver support than any previous version of Windows. If WIN7 want to penetrate the enterprise ecosystem, it will have to offer features that compete with Solaris (much more inspection and control, think dtrace and prset). If WIN7 wants to penetrate the existing Windows market, it needs more drivers. The actual ecosystem I think WIN7 wants to occupy is the new system market (which Microsoft owns). Of course WIN7 doesn't have any opinions -- its the design direction for the product.
Maybe Microsoft is afraid of new system market saturation. Maybe the growing market is in cheap subcompact laptops (OLPC, eeepc). VISTA is not targeted there; XP is barely functional. Is that where WIN7 is going? I *really* don't see a head to head fight against Linux on the old desktop arena, or Solaris/Linux in the datacenter (sure, maybe some token activity, but nothing serious).
Just my 2 cents.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Thanks!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
If the speculations in that blog come to pass, that's really the only conclusion I can make. I remember what a clean break NT and Win2k were from the DOS-based model. Precious little worked across platforms, older, cheaper hardware never had drivers produced, but the improvements in the NT platform made a clean break a good excuse for cleaning house. And it proved to be well worth it.
I went through much the same evolution with Kubuntu, I found it to be a capable enough desktop that I could get enough stuff to run on that I was satisfied despite the lack of compatibility with a few of my old Windows applications.
I think the biggest mistake with Vista was that it didn't just start over from scratch. Offering a hit-or-miss compatibility layer to a fresh-start with Windows 7 would have the potential to increase Microsoft's profits, and allow them to have their cake and eat it too. It would come closer to pleasing the users who are tired of the bloat and all the kludges and hacks Microsoft has done to cobble the NT/2k/XP platform together and eek another couple years of life out of it, and it would keep the legacy people somewhat happy by offering a migration path just as the Classic environment did for Mac or Wine does for Linux.
On a related tangent, I wonder if Microsoft going into the compatibility layer business rather than trying to enforce desktop OS dominance (and seemingly starting to fail) might actually be the greatest win for both them and consumers. I don't think I'm alone in that I'd seriously consider buying an official Microsoft compatibility layer for Kubuntu, and I'd probably pay as much for it as I've paid for a full version of Windows just to play games. I tend to put my money where my mouth is, and used to be a Cedega customer before Transgaming seemed to get apathetic about support and compatibility & Wine just plain outshined their derivative product. If they did it right (came up with products that allowed Microsoft-platform apps to run flawlessly on Linux, OS X/UNIX, and of course their own platform), they'd stand to earn the goodwill of all but the most hardcore freetards who won't be happy until all commercial software vanishes from the market. They could make the claim that developers only needed to develop for the Windows platform because then almost everyone could run it regardless of OS choices. Their OS would have to compete on merits, but that's a good thing for everyone, and it would free them to push the limits of innovation (or at least catch-up to Linux!) rather than being bound with the shackles of legacy bloat.
I'm actually cool with this idea. In fact I really like it. I would much rather have a fresh clean OS that runs good, with VM support for those pesky old apps that don't like the new shoes. Vista was a half-way concept, trying to get the new bling without breaking too much old stuff, but fails miserably. I say screw legacy, VMs should handle the corner cases. In fact that's already what I do to some extent, running legacy apps in VMs as needed.
It would bring Windows to the same level as Linux, as far as application compatibility is concerned. The main difference is Windows will still have broad industry backing (and Visual Basic for the morons).
It worked for Apple, I'd love to see it work for Windows.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
For you folks that must have your Microsoft Windows XP, why not get behind the ReactOS guys? Why depend on Microsoft at all when you can do it yourselves - *better*?
AT&T did horrible things with the Unix we knew and loved so we wrote our Free version. Microsoft is apparently doing horrible things with the Microsoft Windows some of you know and love. So, just do it. There's another precedent from our world too. The founding father of our O/S, Ken Thompson went on to do Plan 9. Who runs Plan 9?
By we, of course, the twitter-troll means he and his four sock-puppets(gnutoo, inTheLoo, Mactrope and Erris). That's the only community he knows. Sadly, he's not a child living in his parent's basement, he's a grown man who should know better.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
We don't really know what the Soft plans to do, do we? Will they really do what Apple did and help themselves to a new round of BSD injections or are they just going to shuffle their own cards into new piles? There's not technical information in the fanboy blog post that somehow made Slashdot's front page.
Please don't try to blame those "lazy" "third party" developers again. That's a double insult to anyone who's been sold a Vista SDK now and projects like Wine prove where the problem really comes from. The design decisions you talk about are things that Microsoft should be transparent about but are not, as usual. People thought the "Plays for Sure" licensing turn around was a big knife in the back but Vista and now Windows 7 have taught everyone new lessons. Meanwhile, Wine and ReactOS make steady strides in running legacy applications in a way that Vista can't. The only explanations for Vista's lack of backward compatibility are incompetence or malice. The new Windows 7 plans point toward malice because others can do what Microsoft claims is impossible. You can be sure that people are going to port Wine, dosbox and others to Windows 7 and that will still be the preferred way to run legacy applications.
You have to be off your rocker if you think that Microsoft does not view the ability to run legacy applications as a competitive threat. The easier it is for people to get away from Microsoft, the faster the customers will flow. Steps taken to thwart virtual machine running of their own code point back to their fear of competition.
With this announcement of total backwards break, Microsoft has declared complete defeat for their business model.
I figured it would just be a way to sell people virtualization software PLUS a copy of an old OS.
doesn't work, sucks rock salt through a small straw and is the biggest debacle for MicroSoft since Windows ME. So much for Vista being "The OS for the New Decade" as previously touted, I guess!
NT4 was a very solid OS competing with win9x.
win2k and win2k3 are also solid and compete(d) with ME, XP and Vista.
The approach works.
Sorry to nitpick but ... 'fleeing MS Windows' is the same as 'fleeing the WIntel world', since all new Macs run on Intel procs, its not like anyone using a Mac is running away from the Intel processor, if anything they lose the chance to use an AMD processor without being a hackintosh user.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So it sounds like they are doing a complete rewrite of Windows. Is this correct? Isn't this what they tried to do in the past but failed at, e.g. Vista? Does MS have the institutional competence to pull this off?
One reason OSX went so fast and was much higher quality was it was based on tried and true code bases and OS paradigms, i.e. UNIX. If MS is starting from zero (if I read the article correctly), how can they pull this off without years of development and testing and even then probably hosing it up?
my $.02
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Microsoft using Vista as a way to get the 64 bit drivers locked down, and 64 bit applications in the pipeline.
But inside, they already have Win7 done. Its everything we were always promised and more.
Microsoft just had to wait for drivers and apps to continue the lock in through the conversion to Win7, with VM to host the old shit.
Oh, wait, did Job's rent Ballmer the RFD?
So is it a royal We or multiple personality disorder?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Linux is apparently immune from such criticism? Linux's total lack of an integrated media player, must be awfully subtle for it to merely be "apparent." A Toyota Corolla apparently doesn't have 7 wheels (but we're not quite sure, huh?).
Just how many thousands of libraries does the average application load? If you can actually perceive this load time on modern hardware, it must be an awful lot. And I guess they haven't learned the trick of .. oh, I don't know .. leaving libraries in memory until there's a memory crunch. Is this guy running Vista on 386SX with only 2 megabytes of RAM and a hopelessly fragmented 40ms drive?
Actually, I think the anti-Microsoft naysayers will say, "It's about time; you're only a decade or three behind the common everyday practices of every other computer programmer in the history of civilization."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
MS splitting with their legacy apps? Say it isn't so!!!! But why not? It would force, ahem, encourage, sales of their new Office package and server components. As long as you don't want to install on a HD bigger than ~120GB, or use a wireless network easily, then yes, windows 2000 is pretty much the same thing, without the fancy graphics. That would be a partition bigger than 120GB, not a HD, IIRC.
Wireless shouldn't be a problem, unless there's something I'm unfamiliar with (as my Win2K system worked just fine wirelessly for 4 years)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The quote provided in the parent is a classic example - the Microsoft fanboy's whine of "How come I have to unbundle my browser, etc, when none of the other kids have to?" The answer, of course, being that the other kids are not convicted monopolists, and therefore can't unlawfully leverage their dominant position in operating systems to take over other markets. So, betaguy... shut up already.
The title of this article on /. is misleading. If you RFTA, you will know that the author mentions that the new architecture will *greatly improve* backwards compatibility.
The approach used to get the backwards compatibility will be different and superior to that used in Vista - that is the main point of the article.
The whole reason why I have stuck with Microsoft for this long (as well as many other people), is that apps I use aren't compatible with other OS's. If I could have iTunes for Linux, my wife would let me switch at home. Why doesn't Apple provide it? Because Linux doesn't have the marketshare. Why doesn't it have the marketshare? Because there aren't enough of everyone's favorite apps.
How much of the corporate reluctance to migrate to Vista is because of incompatibility with current apps? Some people are still running Windows 2000 to support old apps that were never updated to be compatible with XP, muchless Vista.
I understand that MS would have reasons to want to "cleanse" itself, but doing so would make them lose the one major advantage they have over Linux. If software companies have to re-write every app to work with Win7, why even bother with it? Who would use Win7, since all the apps are broken? Why not just write for Linux or Mac? The Apple market may always stay relatively small because of the price and the limited number of PC configurations, but Linux doesn't have either of those issues.
Linux has been in a tough spot for years because its marketshare is tiny next to Windows. But with no functional applications, Win7 would be starting over on marketshare, with no good reasons for anyone to buy into the new OS. Apple was able to start over with OS X because there was a relatively small number of users, who are fiercely loyal, and the change enabled them to get more users. I don't think MS can risk pissing off 90%+ of all computer users. Their biggest problem is that they could lose users, and breaking backwards compatibility can only increase the probability.
I'm sure they'll have some type of virtualization-enabled "Classic Mode", but you can do that from other operating systems as well, and if we have 2 years to prepare for it, Apple and the Linux community can have solutions that are just as elegant (or more so) than what Microsoft will cobble together, because whatever solution MS provides will most likely be an afterthought, since it's just a stop-gap solution until all the developers move over to Win7... if they ever do.
Yes, I realize that. My purpose was in pointing out that they (the general public) aren't necessarily buying the faster/cheaper hardware and going with Linux, but choosing another vendor... one with stronger "lock-in" potential and not necessarily more freedom. You can't put MS Windows on a Mac and you can't put MacOS on a Windows box (at least in the past when the term WIntel was coined).
Don't let the Microsoft Software Department off the hook. They are a total disaster and are completely incompetent. Everyone knows Vista is a total disaster, so I'll focus on their other technologies.
First off, it is a pain the ass to write anything for Windows. You go out and learn MFC. Then they tell you, "Oh no!! Don't do that! We want you to go learn our new language, C#, and learn Windows Forms." Before you are done with that you get, "No! Windows Forms is the old way of doing things. We want you to learn WPF and XAML!"
I mainly want Microsoft to fail so that I never need to deal with any more of their bad technology and horrible standards.
I call bullshit! "This increased amount of componentization, while satisfying the DoJ and EU, also led to performance issues due to the increased number of libraries which comprise the operating system." So, it is DOJ and EU that is to blame for the sloooooow Vista? Well, I remember them "rewriting" the whole shit before Vista came out too, but maybe that was a lie?
If Microsoft is doing this because it worked for Apple, Microsoft may want to look at a few more important details from Apple's situation. It isn't really the same at all.
One, Apple chose a 30-year-old established code base with familiar APIs. This instantly made the solid part of the OS accessible and compatible with *some* software; so the OS could do useful work on day 1, even if nothing else were added on top. Microsoft's going to create some shiny new API, and many of the APIs people actually know won't work, so Windows 7 will be a lousy platform out of the gate.
Two, when Mac OS X arrived, not many were asking Apple to hobble along with updates to Mac OS 9; the customers were *looking* for a new system, there was a clear need for one. Conversely, Microsoft has just tried and failed with Vista...their customers aren't looking for any more heroic engineering efforts, they're looking for a decent upgrade to their PCs. Microsoft needs to offer, in 1-2 years, some really good Windows update (probably XP-based) to restore customer faith. It may still be wise for them to try reinventing Windows in parallel, but mostly for the sake of their future; it shouldn't be the only thing they ship in the next decade.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
Pardon me, but didn't they ("and we know who THEY are..." - Robert Anton Wilson) say the same thing about XP AND Windows Millenium Second Edition aka Vista??
Ok, I had my fun. I will go back to the Apple section now.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
well now we know why vista failed: the gubmint dun it.
as for this blissful take on win7, i'll believe it when i run it...if i run it.
- js.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Maybe they should call it XENIX
i Dev,
I read your article on Windows 7 and have to say it was dripping with problems. I'd like to hear your response to some of the things I noticed.
Blame the DoJ for Bad Engineering?
You neatly blamed the performance issues of Vista on the DoJ, saying that Microsoft "shifting more towards modular designs rather than the monolithic processes used in previous versions of Windows. This increased amount of componentization, while satisfying the DoJ and EU, also led to performance issues due to the increased number of libraries which comprise the operating system."
The DoJ didn't force any sort of modularization on Microsoft; it demanded the company not tie products representing new markets to its existing monopoly position in desktop OS software. The DoJ was supposed to be demanding a removal of the tying of IE from the core OS as an inseparable system component that users could not realistically replace with a competing product.
Oh Noes, Too Many Files!
And this sounds good, but is just wrong: "On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit."
A default install of Mac OS X has tens of thousands of files. It does not have the performance problems of Vista, but has instead gotten faster with every release. Linux distributions have similar numbers of files to load, but run on simple hardware that even XP struggles to run on. Vista's performance isn't strangled by the number of files the DoJ forced Microsoft to use, but rather the poor engineering of Windows combined with legacy cruft Microsoft did a poor job of managing.
The fact that Microsoft jumped through loopholes to cram IE and WMP libraries into the core OS in order to argue that there was no way it could not tie those products together is not a problem caused by the DoJ, but by Microsoft's insatiable monopoly expansion tactics. Microsoft shot it self in the foot.
Backward compatibility
The comments on breaking backward compatibility are also a bit specious. Microsoft has always courted its existing customer base. Windows continues to maintain conventions from DOS, such as 70s era drive letters. That's there to be familiar to users stuck in the past. That's the user base Microsoft serves.
Apple courts an outside installed base of new users with products targeting the future. It drops old conventions as rapidly as possible. It even moved past traditional problems of Unix by inventing new mechanisms that are clean from the ground up, such as launchd. Even the Linux market is too conservative to adopt those types of aggressive, modernizing changes.
That's why Mac OS X could rapidly usher in new technologies, such as its groundbreaking display compositing engine with a fundamentally new graphics model from 2001. Microsoft couldn't copy that until Vista in 2007, and has ran into problems getting graphics vendors to support it properly, and getting it to perform decently, even on modern hardware. That can't be blamed on the DoJ.
Apple could migrate developers to Carbon from Mac OS 9 because Mac OS X offered both them and existing Mac customers major new features. What big feature gap will Windows 7 bridge for PC users? Vista didn't offer enough value to attract attention as a retail upgrade, and many users getting it installed on new computers are having it rolled back to the more familiar XP. What in Windows 7 will change that, less compatibility with existing apps?
Vista's DirectX was supposed to push gamers to the new platform, but has largely failed. Will Windows 7's limited backward compatibility serve gamers better? What about enterprise customers who are firmly suck in the past, and haven't embraced Vista at all? Are they going to jump on Windows 7 because it gets rid of backward support?
And how exactly will Windows 7 be a fresh break from the past if, as you say, Microsoft will be "offering new API frameworks as
Seriously though, I read the article and was not impressed:
On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit. Sure, there's a tiny performance hit for seek time, but once the libraries are loaded the application will be responsive.
providing support for legacy frameworks (COM, ATL,
including the MSHTML library (Internet Explorer's rendering engine) in the monolithic libraries would provide support for the old rendering functions of Explorer to legacy applications while still remaining hidden from the end-user, the primary complaint in the antitrust cases. On the Windows 7 side of things, Internet Explorer can be abstracted from the Windows 7 codebase making removal/inclusion as simple as installing a normal application. Mshtml.dll is already hidden from the end-user. Internet Explorer is a wrapper around the MsHtml COM control, so it is already a "normal application".
While the anti-Microsoft naysayers out there will claim that this is unethical business practice, however, technical users will appreciate that this is an excellent way of providing new features while maintaining backwards compatibility with legacy applications. I don't see how providing backwards compatibility through a virtual machine would be an unethical business practice, but I do agree that it's a great way to provide new features while still allowing legacy applications to run.
Since there are such obvious errors in this essay, I wonder if he really knows what he's talking about and what his source for information is -- or if he just made it all up. As a (former) Windows developer I can see that maintaining binary compatibility with the Win32 API is really holding Microsoft back and an Apple-like emulation layer would allow them to switch their focus completely to a new framework such as
Will they really do what Apple did and help themselves to a new round of BSD injections or are they just going to shuffle their own cards into new piles?
God, I hope not. The world doesn't need another UNIX.
Please don't try to blame those "lazy" "third party" developers again.
What ? Upwards of 90% of Windows's "problems" are directly attributable to third party code.
The only explanations for Vista's lack of backward compatibility are incompetence or malice.
There are few products that have better backwards compatibility than Vista.
You have to be off your rocker if you think that Microsoft does not view the ability to run legacy applications as a competitive threat.
The level of delusion necessary to look at Microsoft's history and come to this conclusion is truly staggering.
The comparison is to OS X Classic -- it's virtualization, emulation, and an all-around compatibility layer.
If know half the bullshit Microsoft goes through to ensure that new versions of Windows are backwards-compatible... MS will fix a bug, only to find that certain old programs rely on said bug. So they will then have to deliberately implement the old, buggy behavior, at least for that one app. I have a new respect for Wine developers after reading about some of the more horrible hacks they do...
We're talking about software which would read the version number into a buffer that was exactly right for Windows 3.1, but not Windows 3.11, where changing the version number will cause a buffer overflow and crash the app.
In light of that, is it any wonder that Linux has so much less cruft? We're not afraid of breaking buggy apps -- we have the source code to most of them anyway. People who do stupid things like the above either learn very quickly, or become irrelevant.
So this is pretty much the best possible way Microsoft could support backwards compatibility, and pretty much the only way they could do so while actually improving the system.
It's also something that I've been advocating for a long time, and something that I argued that they should have done with Vista. I'm not going to complain about it now just because it's from Microsoft. Good ideas should be acknowledged.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The geeks are happy because we pay nothing, and get the core then build whatever we want onto it,
The home users are happy because they get whatever but as its modular, its more stable.
The rich idiots are happy because they can by module XYZ to get everything
The marketers are happy because they can ship version for windows 7 basic, home, business, advanced, etc
The OEM are able to differentiate their hardware again based on what modules they support (and avoid the stupid vista capable problem)
With any luck it will be the last windows 'release', they will then shift to linux style development where the core, interface, driver, audio, etc systems are all improve at thier own pace. I dont see it as too hard to pushed paid for updates, while allowing security updates for free.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Windows 7 is designed to be "modular" - that is, you can add and subtract components.
What this means is: Microsoft will CHARGE you EXTRA for stuff you now get free (even if you don't want said stuff).
In other words, although now you'll have more price variance for versions of Windows, basically Microsoft's answer to a free OS like Linux is to CHARGE YOU MORE and make it LOOK like you're not being charged more.
If this isn't the perfect expression of Bill Gates, I don't know what is.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yes you can.
Of course I didn't RTFA.
This will get all windows users over to the DRM-side of things if all their software is toast, and it will require all new hardware too ( to get that chip level DRM in place ).
Its all or nothing, and no way back to freedom.
Can you imagine the upheaval in the industry ( actually, several ) after a move like this? At least Apple had a smaller market share.
I hope i'm out of the business by then.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unlikely, while a unix based app would make it easier to port apps *to* the new windows, it would also make it easier to port apps away from it to linux...
Microsoft don't want to make it easier for third parties to choose what's best for them, they want to take away that choice so that the users have to run microsoft.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Who is this guy and how did this biased, baseless, crap make it to the front page of slashdot?
Dude, that's ingenious enough for Microsoft.
But I think they would try to buy VMware instead, just because they're bigger and thus more of the MS corporate culture (which appears to be "corporate for corporate's sake").
And then once they own VMware, they could kill off this whole nasty virtualization thing. Maybe it's bad for profits or something.
*nods covertly but reassuringly to the colorblind user*
Apple didn't introduce a new OS that was only source-code compatible with existing applications. Apple introduced a new API that was very similar to the old API, restricted in some areas, expanded in others, designed to run efficiently on both the old and new operating systems. They did this before the new OS was released. Then, in the new OS, old applications that were not written to the new API ran in an emulator, and old applications that were written entirely to the new API ran native on the new OS.
.NET this way: that .NET code would run on some future Windows platform, but Win32 code would only run in an emulator.
.NET, or Microsoft is doing something completely different from Apple... and what Apple did was risky enough to start with.
At the same time they introduced two more APIs, one that was an enhanced version of the old compatible one that took advantage of the new OS, and one that was new to the new OS. They also introduced a new development environment that generated code for the new APIs.
When they introduced the Intel-based Mac, they abandoned the oldest API, provided an emulator for existing code, and code written in the enhanced API using Apple's development tools could be recompiled in a mode that supported both Power PC and Intel processors.
At no point was there a stage that broke code written within the previous two generations of APIs.
I was under the impression that Microsoft was planning on using
Either the article is wrong about Microsoft abandoning
This stuff is absolute rubbish for a number of reasons. 1. Note how his site is new. Also note how he doesn't say where his information comes from. Sure it's exclusive, but where is the "A source in Microsoft which I can not mention" or "According to a leaked e-mail" etc. 2. Microsoft are scared of breaking compatibility too much. And rightly so, as we noticed with even a few apps not working or not working perfectly under Vista, people are up in arms (and I am referring here to genuine problems, not people just moaning without evidence or just trolling). 3. A complete redesign of Windows breaking everything will kill it, at least in newer developments. Developers will get tired because they want something that works on all modern versions of Windows, without redeveloping it for each version (though .net should help in this respect). Users and businesses want it to Just Work.
Is it worth the time?
I wonder if the FSF will successfully campaign to see the source and check for GPL violations, which I'm sure Microsoft will try and get away with. Stallman better sharpen his katana, and probably train up some extra ninjas.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
... was bought from Ray Ozzie.
That is all.
That's actually one of the funniest things I've read this year.
Exactly. I don't see any downside for anyone. I see a lot *more* opportunity for money to flow in all directions, and not just toward M$.
I would hope that drivers would be developed at more than "their own pace", tho, because otherwise only a few popular components will have a chance. One of the reasons so many different types and brands of hardware are in the market today is because for most, drivers are available NOW, no waiting (at least for Windows. Linux, not so much.) Buy it, install it, works right now. Exceptions are not well-received in the market.
Small 3rd party developers could partner with OEMs or even with M$ and build up a repository of both free and pay-to-install software, rather akin to what Linspire originally did. This is an opportunity for apps that are presently shut out because there's just not a NEED for 'em when Windows already includes the kitchen sink. As to pricing, market forces will decide what's worth paying for. And if something gets pirated a lot... well, maybe it was overpriced.
As to updates, there's really no reason to complicate it by making into pay-per-level or pay-per-update -- why would I want an update that addresses software I didn't install in the first place? and unless an update is a wholesale replacement for a component, it's not going to install a complete app anyway, so it's of no use to someone trying to pirate a level of Windows they didn't pay for. Hell, updates could be unified and only install required packages per autodetect. -- This also prevents the disaster that's currently going on, where my non-WinXP system can't download updates for my WinXP customer whose machine is presently borkend.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I don't understand the reasons the author of the article gives for Vista's problems.
First, he claims that Vista had to comply with DoJ and EU anti-trust regulations that neither Apple nor Linux are being held to. I don't know whether one can run OS X without having Safari or Quicktime installed, but at least on Linux I can choose whatever browser or media player I want. I don't know whether I can run Vista without having Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player installed. Nevertheless, if not tying in IE and WMP as part of the Vista OS is slowing it down so much, then why do I not have the same problem when running Linux. That seems like a bogus excuse for Vista being sluggish. I have read that Vista is slow because of constant DRM compliance monitoring processes running on the OS. Maybe that is one reason why Vista is slow compared to Linux which does not have the same DRM checking going on.
Second, the author claims that Vista is slow because of having to provide backwards support for every DLL revision. I don't know how far back Linux binary compatibility goes. But when the author disses UNIX for not providing backwards binary compatibility in the past, he doesn't address whether Linux also has this problem. One thing that is vastly better about Linux, though, is that even if binary compatibility is broken, at least you have the source code for a lot of the major applications which run on Linux. So even if you cannot even get the app to recompile and run on the newer Linux kernel, someone out there will make the appropriate changes to the application source code to reflect API changes in the kernel system calls and libraries
So this article didn't provide much useful information to me. The author did admit that for Windows 7, Microsoft is copying steps Apple took when switching over to OS X by using virtualization to run the older apps. Most of the time, Microsoft proponents refuse to admit that Microsoft has a history of copying things while at the same time they claim they are "innovating".
I don't think M$ feels as threatened by apps being ported away as some folks think. All you have to do is look at Wine... yeah, it works, but is it up to what enterprise business (M$'s REAL customers) needs? Highly doubtful.
In fact, I think part of why M$ is looking at this scheme is because they know damn well that most businesses would rather buy a monolithic solution, and a modular OS makes it easier for M$ to customize that solution and thereby maximize profit.
To refute my own post [g] the main reason I'd put forth as to why M$ probably wouldn't go to an outright UNIX kernel, is because they have a known entity in Windows; why throw out two decades of expertise with their own product? And the Windows core is really a pretty good OS in itself; it goes wrong when too much crap gets shoveled in on top. If we no longer bury it in junk, it can better do its job.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
UNIX isn't so bad, and at least it's a standard API. So we know MS wouldn't use it because the last thing they have ever wanted to give you is anything standard.
YES BACKWARDS compatibility to.....vista HAHAHA there most popular piece a garbage to date. good innovative move that wins you what 2 of the millions that went mac/linux? and wtf does this mean "....but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows." that mean my binaries for xp or vista or win98 won't work odd phrasing considering the so called 'compatibility'.
Obviously the WINE project was getting too good, and too much of a threat, and so now MS have decided to move the goalposts. Already WINE is a better Windows that Windows Vista - I wonder how badly this move will backfire on them.
hearing someone on slashdot call this guy a Microsoft "fanboy." There are none who so slavishly worship their operating system, even to the point of defending it's faults as features, than Linux users.
.NET is a legacy framework that is going to also require legacy support through a "monolithic library." First of all, I don't know what he means by monolithic library, and I don't think that he does either. It sounds like 2nd hand knowledge. Second, .NET doesn't require any kind of special legacy support... it already runs in a virtual machine. All they have to do is port the VM to Win 7. The only things that would be an issue would be libraries like Windows forms that are tightly integrated with win32.
I probably shouldn't put a dig against Linux fanboys in my opening paragraph on a post on slashdot (0, flaimbait anyone?), but what can I say? I'm tired of seeing childish Microsoft bashing like, "It's funny to watch a fanboy admit Microsoft is following Apple, but it would be nice for him to also admit that Apple followed free software and Unix practices."
That said, I also noticed the contradiction. I think he was trying to make his article sound more impressive by declaring that Win 7 would be "partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows." But then he turns right around and says that Win 7 will "allow the majority of legacy applications to run perfectly."
Maybe he means run perfectly *after* recompiling? If he means they are ending support for the old ABI, that would be a more impressive thing to say. However, he is too vague, and doesn't sound particularly knowledgeable.
The author also *implies* but does not *say* that Win 7 will use virtualization to run vista and xp win32 applications. This indicates to me that he doesn't actually know, and is just blowing smoke out of his ass.
Also, he seems to imply that
If microsoft is going to revamp win32, which would be nice since the core windowing routines are pretty ugly to use compared to modern GUI libraries, then win forms which lets you basically plug into win32 by creating WindProc and handling messages, etc, would need some translation to the underlying API. Mono in particular had some trouble making WindProcs work on top of X.
This is a really easy strategy for MS to pull-off and the way I'm seeing it, they could easily release "Windows 7" within one year!
/. to list it last - Profit!!!!
How is this possible? The key here is they're building Windows from the ground-up and not guaranteeing back-supporting other Windows apps.
Here's the strategy -
First: Adopt a 'nix Codebase. With conspiracies of MS copying Apple, running OpenDarwin as the code-base for most of the OS wouldn't be a bad idea.
Second: CodeWeaver's Crossover. Buy the company. Then stop development for other platforms (see Virtual PC). Helps those Office/Photoshop users until exclusive Windows 7 software comes out.
Third: Security > deltree or (more apropos) rm -rf
Fourth: NTFS. Well there's kernel patches for most Unix OS'es to run NTFS. Done.
Last: Oh I forgot the "Windows" experience. Last I saw, there's lots of Windows-type (emphasis on the plural) interfaces. for 'nix OSes. Should be too hard to mash some code together in this area and get a similar experience.
Last, Last: I shall be the first on
Heck, with this codebase, it shouldn't be too hard to make a faster OS with better drivers that don't crash the OS!
From a developer's point of view the prospect of having to test my apps with so many possible configurations of a modular Windows does not appeal to me. Then imagine the user experience. You try to install a new app you just bought and then discover you have to buy new modules from Microsoft to get them to work. This will not fly with the general public. Look how much people hate the various version of Vista and the compatibility uncertainty it brought.
i wish i could stop
If a linux iTunes is such a show-stopper why hasn't someone written one?
Isn't that what OSS is all about? The author of a linux iTunes would have brimming tip jar.
Plus, there is already an OS out there that is completely 100% secure -- MacOS.
/bin/bash to inetd.conf or something as dumb.
To date, in over 14 years, MacOS has never had a hole exploitable in the wild. Yes, people can break into a rigged Mac, but almost nobody adds
As of now, no Mac in the wild has ever been cracked.
Isn't that what OSS is all about? The author of a linux iTunes would have brimming tip jar. Pretty simple answer really. Because it would have to interface with the Apple store and use Apple's DRM. Neither of which will happen in the near future. Apple would not allow it, and the developer would need Apple's permission to do so.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Communitarianism: Communism Lite! Now with fewer corpses!
I'm actually dipping my toe into doing some research on awareness and perception of communitarianism as a political philosophy, and I'm curious about how you were made aware of it, what sources have subsequently informed your understanding of it, and what led you to the apparent conclusion in your sig.
This is not a value judgment on your conclusion at all, by the way. I'm simply having some trouble discovering a sample of people who are even familiar with the term and I really need to (a) engage more of them and (b) get some ideas of how I might start going about constructing the right sample population.
Email's in the profile if you're interested. But spam filters being what they are, you may want to reply to this message instead, or let me know via reply here when you've sent email.
Tweet, tweet.
I think the problem started when they went from the Petzold-style C programming (the WndProc()'s with the giant switch statement) to MFC (omigosh, omigoodness, whata mess!).
The minute the PHB comes along and says, none of the C stuff, we gotta get object oriented and program in C++ that the funny stuff starts.
The problem is that you have the native Windows object, referenced by an HWND, and then you have a C++ object as its proxy, stand-in, OO Overlord Protector. Window handles and C++ objects obey different kinds of rules for creation and especially destruction and lifetime management. A Window handle and its underlying window object can go Poof! in response to a DestroyWindow() call, and how is a C++ object to behave or respond when this happens. Not only that, a Window handle can go poof during CreateWindow -- WM_CREATE can return a value indicating that the Window handle can be destroyed.
Syncing the lifetime of the C++ object with the underlying Window handle is really hard. Another problem is that Windows messages are dispatched to a WndProc, which is not that hard to hook up to a C++ method through some function pointer and calling convention boojum, but the WndProc then has to dispatch to C++ object methods some how. The Microsoft C++ MFC message map macros are the ugliest looking kludges, or maybe I am sensitive to the message map macro statements IN ALL CAPS AND WHY IS THIS SOURCE CODE SHOUTING AT ME LIKE THAT!
Dunno, that MFC is so ugly is not so much evidence that the Win32 API is that bad but that the dudes at Microsoft are completely without clue as to how to use C++ as a developer's language. I disagree with you about Win32 being a bad API -- Charles Petzold pointed the way to know it, use it, and even love it, but he eschewed writing code or books about that goshdarnawful MFC and the MS way of C++ programming.
The other way to deal with the Win32 API is to wrap it so tightly that application programmers cannot get at the HWND to do something dastardly like DestroyWindow() on their own HWND. Java does that -- it presents Swing as an object framework on top of Win32 when hosted on Win32 and spanks your hand about reaching for the HWND. Delphi does it, and they modified the Object Pascal language enough to be friendly with WM_ messages being routed to object methods, and they let you touch the HWND, and the DC, and other things if you are inclined -- I do have to admit that the source codes to the Delphi RTL are this marvel of handling the corner cases of when things burp on HWNDs and other native resources, and the guys who wrote it as early in the history of Win32 as they did must have been geniuses.
Why .NET does that too -- yeah, yeah, various ways to "drill down to native", but by and large they wall of Win32, and they do an even worse job of exposing its features than Java does -- I want my ScrollWindowEx(), my CreateDIBSection(), where did they all go!
So you tell me that Trolltech has a passable C++ wrapper to the Win32 API in their QT4 when running on Windows. So, I heard something. Yeah? Well, just a little bit. Just a little bit. C++ GUI development can be halfway tolerable? Just a little bit.
Being incompatible with existing PC apps is what killed IBM and their move to OS/2 - it will take Microsoft out of the game as well. Apple didn't ignore legacy operation, either. They kept compatibility for 68k binaries on PPC, they used Classic under OS X and Rosetta to run PPC code on Intel hardware. That's why Apple succeeded. That's why Microsoft will be toast if they make a significant break from their past.
Most of the stuff on
Virtualization is the next big tech for windows. It lets them leave their old code base and computability issues behind. I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple applications of virtualization. We may even see driver virtualization so that old devices will continue to function albeit slowly.
On a separate issue it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft strong armed device companies to escrowed their driver code with them or even more radically compelled them to release the majority of the code under a Microsoft open source license with case by case exceptions such as software only drivers. In many ways it would compel companies to use Microsoft's blackbox tech and other DRM code while insuring that devices continue to function.
Good luck with that ;)
:)
Microsoft is doing the right thing here. One of my biggest complaints about using the OS has been all the legacy 3rd party code. The OS and the software need to evolve together in harmony. When you are using a modern OS, it's a pain to put up with shitty 10 year old programs. They lack compatibility with new standards, have bugs that will never get fixed, and simply tend to be a lot less convenient to use (ie. notepad vs. any modern light-weight editor).
Now, keep in mind free software has been doing this since day one
Seriously, Vista is slow because there are more libraries and thus more disk seek time? Give me a break. That's an utterly trivial performance implication. Once a library is loaded into memory, it can be referenced and used without spinning up the god damn hard disk again. That's a trivial optimization that Microsoft has almost certainly made by this point. You're looking at some applications taking a little longer to launch if they haven't been launched for a while. Vista's perceived slowdown is more likely due (at least in part) to virtualizing the GPU address space and inserting another layer of abstraction. Instead of allowing applications direct access to the GPU's memory, the memory is now virtualized and backed by main memory, which is backed by the disk drive. GPU memory became swappable. There were very good engineering reasons for doing this. Microsoft gave up performance for stability, and it was the right decision. (If memory serves, you could get "out of memory" errors in XP if an application requested too much memory from the GPU.)
And his claim that Cocoa on Mac OS X is somehow more "native" than Cocoa is just stupid. Carbon may be being phased out, but it certainly doesn't go through any additional interpretation layers. If anything, Carbon is lower-level than Cocoa, and many Cocoa APIs are wrappers around Carbon APIs. It all compiles down to the same assembler. Where Cocoa and Carbon differ is expressiveness, and that comes from the choice of language, not some artificial design constraint on Carbon.
Really, who is this clown, and why is he considered an authority on software development?
That's about where I stopped taking the article seriously as well. I tried to remember all those times I elected to drop kernel modules and compile everything into the monolithic core, because it makes for such a tremendous performance gain. Wait, no, it fucking well doesn't. Or perhaps that time I cat'ed all of my libs together into one big .so in order to make them load faster, because caching several different files in memory is slower than caching one file of the same total size? No, he's full of shit there, too.
The icing on this cake of hackery is that the author goes on to say that keeping full virtualization environments around is going to be less expensive in terms of memory and disk space than keeping a store of old libraries which are loaded as needed. I expect that his next tour de force will be explaining to us how ice is hot, bananas are purple, and dogs are actually shellfish.
What a hack.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The "killer app" for Win7 is virtualization. I didn't RTFA but "Win7 doesn't care about backward compatiblity" does not translate to "MS will not bundle a virtualized XP box with Win7".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Vista is slow because of all the disk seeking caused by having the libraries in separate files?
You can't write comedy like that if you try.
No sig today...
You say "they notoriously suck at support." And this is based on what? Is this the same "Microsoft is bad because they charge for software" argument rehashed and expanded to cover their support.
Please name anyone that supports their products better than Microsoft (on the same scale.) Oh that's right they sell the post product so no one can compete in that reagrds.
Here's the deal. When I call Microsft for support on let's say Server 2003 I know one thing that they will fix it or I won't have to pay. Also, if it is an obvious Winodws bug, guess what, you don't pay then either. If my problem is so serious that I don't have time to figure it out myself, I am HAPPY to pay them.
I don't see Linux based server paid support being any cheaper. Actually it looks like it's more expensive in general.
"Oh, you won't need it as much because Linux is so stable." I haven't seen that either.
I guess the main issue will be backward compatibility. This preety much seems to be the main complaint about Windows Vista. A "new" version will even be less compatible. Even if they have some VM-based compatibility system it's not likely to be based on XP or 2000.
The main selling point of Windows is not the OS itself, but the fact that you can run software on it written over the last decade. Even in the year 2000, many businesses were running DOS applications.
In fact it is very rare that you find Windows applications actually using new features.
Most Windows software is legacy software. No developer would write for Windows 7 if that meant the software wouldn't run under Windows 2000 or Windows XP anymore. They might as well write it under GTK and just port it to whatever platform they want.
Who is he? Is there any other sources confirming this?
I remember thinking in 2001 that Microsoft would deliver something similar in 2011 and I thought what a disaster that will be for their users. And here it is, right on schedule. Well, OK, it will be in beta for the first couple of years, but basically you can see them finally getting the picture now.
Previous reports had listed Vista as the last desktop OS to come in a 32-bit flavor. Then I saw that Windows 7 is supposed to come in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Now they're saying that Windows 7 won't be binary compatible with previous versions. If that's the case, why bother with a 32-bit version then? Just about any new PC from the last 4 years includes a 64-bit capable CPU.
Do you mean solving "run-time" problems? That is if one can't figure out how to configure Windows 2003 to do this and that? That's one thing.
The kind of support i'm speaking of is the entire effort that is being put in e.g. a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, and packages in general; continuous upgrades (they're a no-brainer and cause no problems using a package management system like apt+dpkg), where an actual bug gets *fixed* after a forseeable timespan and you actually *can* participate in the process of fixing the code you need to be fixed. There are still people around who think this is spaced out, that's not for them to do, it's up to the great big thing above that bemothers them, but they're really shifted from reality.
If this is what you mean (the run-time help) then i'd call this "advice"; as someone else has aptly put, an OS is the foundation of a company's offerings which offers services that enable you to use your computer for specific tasks. Putting out one version every few years with few updates in between (SPs) and otherwise just helping users out to work better with what's there just doesn't cut it; I realize that i'm setting the standard here at how i just described it how Linux distros work, but that is the way this is going to work for the future.
Doing it the Microsoft way works only in a closed ecosystem which Microsoft has thrust upon all its users in the past 20 or so years, but the moment you turn open (and i don't mean open as in open source, but in the entire breadth of the meaning) you just can not afford to publish one monolithic piece of software and expect everyone to keep it using as-is while other components of your entire stack keep evolving.
It's as if Microsoft expects you to buy a newspaper on let's say Jan 1st 2009, and stay with the same headlines for the next 3 years, and if reality shifts away from those headlines they just tell you how best to cope with it.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Vista was a kludge; and I'm sure M$ is likewise sick and tired of having to test against a bazillion possibilities, hence this concept. And I expect with modular-Windows you won't have to test near as much, because your app will only need to speak to the core OS, and won't care about any other crap. Fewer layers, less hassle. Think sideways rather than vertical.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What is this 'groove' you speak of?
It's funny how many seem to suggest that Windows 7 will be the first version of Windows that will have to fix a major problem.
To me this just seems like a slow step by step process. Which is reasonable considering the number of Windows users who depend on it every day.
I rolled my own Windows API object framework -- very lean, the bare essentials, if it was missing a feature, I added it as needed rather than trying to make the base classes Swiss Army knives. I had a Delphi Object Pascal version and a C++ version of that object framework, and the C++ base class had a WndProc() with a big switch statement to intercept those Windows messages I was interested in -- I didn't see the message map macro as worth the bother for a tiny bit of speed advantage. My widgets were all done in Delphi, but without the Delphi VCL runtime library, making them very lean and giving very small exectutables for apps developed with them. I had the C++ version because at one time I thought my students would want to roll their own Win32 API programs using my widget library.
The next thing I did was to rewrite my object framework around a Model-View-Controller structure. The main insight was to put most of the functionality of the custom widget into the Controller object. I was able to use the same controller objects within the lean-and-mean Win32 apps as I used to create custom Delphi VCL widgets with them. Those custom VCL widgets are something I use "in house" when I need to rapidly customize an application using them. I then used the Delphi facility to make a set of ActiveX widgets out of those VCL widgets.
So I have a lean-and-mean, a Delphi VCL, and ActiveX libraries of the same widgets using the same code base. As far as the student projects are concerned, I kind of gave up on having non-CS students do anything with C++/Win32, even though engineering students say they want C++ experience as a line on their resume. They are completely sold on Matlab, and they do their projects in Matlab, embedding ActiveX controls in Matlab GUI apps. For my own work of producing customized apps, I pretty much go with the Delphi VCL controls -- I keep the lean-and-mean controls around for the big legacy app that I have done that way. But any change/bug fix/added feature to these widgets appears in all three places anyway.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall about Win32 and ActiveX controls, I also pretty much gave up on .NET and WinForms either. Why should I knock myself out doing WinForms when it 1) has less functionality than either Win32 or Java Swing, 2) who knows what MS is coming up with when they break legacy ActiveX support. These days I am pretty much doing Java Swing for graphical front ends of the completely new stuff I am doing, C++ for the numeric-intensive back end.
Java Swing is clumsy in a lot of ways, but at least I am not longer at the mercy of what MS decides. The performance is not native, but for my current projects and current generation of computers, it is good enough.
You mean "support" more like Linux. Let's talk about third party support. I have seen a bunch of free software that rarely offers the level of polish or functionality of the Windows software that can be purchased. I have also been a big fan of shareware. None of that for Linux, they'd be drummed right out of the corps.
.NET, SQL, you definitely cann get support. If you need support for similar components on Linux, you generally have to post messages to a bulletin board where a group of mostly hobbyists looks down their nose at you since you are dumb and they ar smart.
What about software provided by the OS vendor. Linux has none of course. If you use IIS, Exchange, Sharepoint, ASP,
Hey, the concept is great, but the implementaion is poor (Linux.) And, until smart people can feed their family doing it, it will never be professionally (by definition if I may add) supported.
Because it's an obvious troll.
This discussion of twitter is more interesting.
The error you're making is thinking anybody cares about the twitter sockpuppets. It's not honest but it's within the rules. Perhaps when you've posted as much content to slashdot as twitter has (since 1999!) you'll be a more jaded about such things.
Thanks for the list of accounts though. I'm sure what I did with the information doesn't suit your purpose, but oh well. That's life.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well, they'd just have to fix that sad deficiency to be marketable, eh?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Thanks
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Wine has it's problems because it's reverse engineered from a moving closed target...
Porting apps from one unix to another requires significantly less effort, and achieves better results far more rapidly, so you very rapidly increase the number of users who would be willing to use it.
As for a monolithic solution, the likes of Sun, Apple and IBM already offer much better in this area - a complete stack of hardware and software, all from the same place and all centrally supported by a single entity.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Now, in standard form, I will proceed to completely rip your argument to shreds:
I don't troll and I don't lie. Every post of your's is nothing but a troll or flamebait. You have nothing intelligent to add to any topic. You're stupid, and out of frustration, you pick arguments with people more intelligent than you (which is basically everybody). For Christ's sake, you even go so far as to lie about having more karma than the mods!! You should know that on this site, you shouldn't spew lies that are so easily falsifiable. You lose credibility when you do that.
I've heard that if you keep repeating it, eventually you'll believe it's true. But I don't know why you're trying to convince yourself of that, because nobody else believes you. Remember, you have to have a shred of credibility for people to believe a claim like that, and I've proven that you're a lying troll, left out in the cold without an argument.
If I think anyone believes I'm not that AC?!?! I AM THAT AC, YOU DUMBFUCK!! And dude, NOBODY ELSE CARES!! Darby doesn't care - he doesn't even reply to your fucking insane rants. I can't say Darby is the most intelligent Slashdotter, but by looking at his record in comparison to yours, I'd certainly say that you are the pants-shitting asshole. And I don't know how many times I have to tell you, before I get it through your thick fucking head - I COULDN'T CARE LESS IF YOU THINK I'M DARBY. Didn't I tell you that like, six or seven fucking times already? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - if it wasn't for that you'd have nothing else to say since your whole argument is based on "liar liar, pants of fire!! Oh, and I especially like that part at the end, where you call me a twat. Well, I have to say, you finally got something right. After all, I am what I eat. But just remember, I'm not the one who brought your mom into this.
Of course you were trolling - that's all you know how to do. But, you've never insulted me in your entire life. You couldn't; You're not smart enough. Like I said, we're all virgins posting from our mothers' basements. Nobody here is insulted by that - at least, if they're man enough to admit it.
The truth is - I play you like a fucking violin. I play you like the little pwned punk bitch that you are. But, sadly, there's no challenge here for me anymore; I've defeated every argument you put forth, with proof of your lies and stupidity. I've called you out and proven you're a dim-witted piece of shit. You see, there is something that you've got to realize, and I know it will be hard for you to grasp, since it is coming from the point of view of a winner - and that is: When the competition is so weak and winning is so easy, I get bored. You're a hack. You're a fucking novelty act.
And so, like a child who is bored with his new toy, I put you down now. The novelty has worn off.
Checkmate!! I win,
Maybe you forgot the Xenix days at Microsoft when Xenix was based on Unix System code?
Microsoft used Xenix as a standard until IBM talked to Microsoft about OS/2, which Microsoft eventually dropped in favor of Windows.
Of course Microsoft sold the rights to Xenix to SCO and it became SCO Unix later.
Ironic that Xenix came from almost the same roots as Mac OSX in Unix with BSD parts added. Had Microsoft decided not to take up IBM on their OS/2 offer, they might have developed the Windows GUI on Xenix and eventually replaced MS-DOS with Xenix with a GUI instead of Windows 95 replacing MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. I think what got Microsoft basing Windows on MS-DOS was the MS-DOS legacy code that most businesses needed to run. Which is why OS/2 had a DOS and Windows mode, because Microsoft couldn't find a way to get DOS and Windows apps running in Xenix, so they sold Xenix and went to OS/2 and then back to MS-DOS and Windows.
I think that Steve Jobs saw that Microsoft made a mistake in not using Unix, and that was the flaw of the Macintosh as well. Which is why Next based their OS on Unix and the MACH kernel. Then when Apple and next merged, they merged Mac OS with NextOS to get a new Unix based OS that worked like a Macintosh.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
They're already escrowed the drivers in a sense by requiring an MS signature. Which, by the way, can be arbitrarily revoked anytime MS damn well feels like it. Which means that if you're a driver writer, you kiss MS ass and kiss it real good if you want your hardware running in Vista.
So if MS wanted to, they could do this VERY easily...well, at least on a technical front. Dunno if running a game of signature brinkmanship a la "You play by our rules or we simply won't sign your drivers" would piss off an anti-trust regulator, but we can hope. At any rate, MS can impose whatever terms it damn well wants to.
So unless you've figured out how to use the swapfile to load unsigned code into the kernel, you are *already* at the mercy of vendors who are themselves at the mercy of MS.