Slashdot Mirror
Windows Phone 8 Detailed, Uses Windows 8 Kernel
MrSeb writes "Thanks to a leaked video — a video that Microsoft made for Nokia — we now have lots of details about Windows Phone 8 (WP8). From deep Windows 8, Skype, and SkyDrive integration, through to the addition of NFC 'wallet' payments and BitLocker encryption, it sounds like Windows Phone 8 will be close to iOS and Android in terms of features. The interesting stuff is under the hood, though: WP8 will have the Windows 8 kernel instead of the Windows CE kernel of its predecessors. Through the Win 8 kernel, WP8 will support native code and multi-core processors. It will also have the same network stack, security, and multimedia support as Windows 8. While Win 8 apps won't be directly compatible with Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore says developers will be able to 'reuse — by far — most of their code.'"
And it'll still scroll more smoothly than an Android.
Now with 'handwarmer' function!
Great, now anyone who manages to hack a win8 desktop also gets phones for free -- and vice versa. Species that have little diversity are always at risk of extinction.
Im pretty sure anyone with a brain figured this was the general direction they were gonna go when Win 8 was announced. MS wants to unify mobile, living room and desktop. The Xbox 720 will probably be the Win 8 kernel too.
Good-bye
"While Win 8 apps won't be directly compatible with Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore says developers will be able to 'reuse — by far — most of their code."
Good. I'll only need 8 handsets to display the ribbon in MS Office.
I predict a world where Microsoft has the best mobile platform but can't break the stranglehold of Apple and Google.
Will they be able to reuse their Windows 7 Phone code, or was that a dead end?
From TFA:
through to the addition of NFC 'wallet' payments and BitLocker encryption (...) It will also have the same network stack, security, and multimedia support as Windows 8.
emphasis mine
Could this finally be the realization of the long held dream of write-once, run-anywhere malware?
Or forward. Or sideways. WP8 won't be binary compatible with WinCE-based WP7 (which itself wasn't compatible with WinCE-based WM6), nor with desktop Windows 8, nor with, apparently, any other OS that's ever existed. Sure hope they make it real easy for developers to build their existing code for WP8.
Oh, and it'll also be real interesting to see whether any WP7 devices can be upgraded to WP8.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I haven't really seen Windows 8 yet, but, this could potentially be a really awesome direction. I don't much like Windows personally, but I have always wished phones, tablets in particular had the flexibility of a general purpose computer. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping Microsoft let's this happen.
Mark my words, and I can't believe I'm even saying this, but Windows Phone, will soon be considered the best mobile platform, due to it's unification with the desktop, and XBOX. Unfortunately, it won't mean much because people will still want shiny iPhones and will clamor to the numerous free Android phones that they can get. From a technical standpoint, there is nothing about Android that is good. The reason it is so popular, is because it is cheap and most people can get one. There, I said it. /standby to be marked as Troll in 3, 2, 1
I have nothing clever to put here...
Is this a free upgrade for anyone already running WP7?
I guess the name, as silly as it is, makes sense now. Windows Phone is only on phones (as opposed tablets) and gets FREE upgrades. Windows 8 does not.
I'll bet this was in the roadmap for some time, and helps to explain why they do not offer a native SDK currently.
I think this is great for their phone platform as the Windows 8 kernel is likely to be far more robust in the areas of thread scheduling and memory management. Given that Windows 8 demonstrably can execute even in 128MB RAM (http://windows8beta.com/2011/10/windows-8-runs-on-64mb-and-128-mb-ram), the resource impact probably isn't an issue.
Why would this surprise anyone? Windows has been touting one OS that works for all platforms since the very first tablets with windows XP were released.
Windows 8 will show us if they are visionaries or just extremely stubborn.
So, viruses for Windows 8 will be also portable to WP8? :)
If developers port their code with too much re-use, you're going to see a lot of terrible apps on Windows 8 phone.
Fundamentally, apps that work well on a conventional screen need to have a different UI than ones on a touchscreen. And, the interface should vary between the size of devices as well. If developers just took Mac OS X apps and recompiled them as iPad apps, the results would be horrific.
So you have:
Windows 8 "slate" devices
Conventional Windows 8 desktops/notebooks
Windows 8 Phone devices
Each should have applications thought out, from the ground up, for their respective platforms.
Microsoft may best Apple in the sheer volume of phone apps as a result of this strategy; however, most of them will suck.
I never understood the desire to unify desktop and other things (XBox) on a phone let alone why is it valuable. There is value in creating apps that interface with other systems but one is overstating the value of a whole phone dedicated to interfacing this way when it turns out people would rather have other features (mobile location services, e-readers, etc).
Another way to think about not: Are people chomping at the bit who support Android and iPhone to get or sharing accessing to their home machines? These platforms aren't popular because of this nor do I see that changing in two years. If you can answer "Why do you think that is valuable?" then I can begin to see your stance otherwise I suspect that such features are "gee-whiz" but not necessary or the best use of the mobile phone platform.
I'm waiting for the day when mobile HW and SW platform will not be linked. I buy a phone and I buy the licence for the operating system i want (Android, Windows, I-something, Linux etc.)
You say that like it's a good thing.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Unlike Apple, Windows doesn't really have a history of charging for anything but the largest OS updates. Windows Phone 7 to 7.5 was a free update, even though they were a full year apart.
Yeah, but I don't believe they've ever changed to an entirely new kernel before for free. What do you think they are, an open source company or something?
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
True, but there's no precedent in the cell phone market for ever charging for OS updates, I'm pretty sure. I don't see any reason why they'd consider starting to do so now.
I don't respond to AC's.
Not marketing! Not marketing! Curiously many leaks abound.
It took a while but maybe MS has pulled their head from their asses. If not it might at least be a glass belly button so they can see where they're going.
Windows Phone 7 is C# only, which is why I don't support the platform with my games (99% of my C++ code is shared between the iOS and Android builds, which is how it should be). So if Windows 8 developers can "reuse — by far — most of their code" does that mean Windows 8 is C# only too, or that Windows Phone 8 will allow 3rd part apps to be written in C++?
IMO, if Windows Phone 8 doesn't support C++, it is dead in the water from the perspective of 3rd party apps. Only the really big players have the resources to completely rewrite their iOS or Android apps (mainly games, which usually aren't intimately tied to the native GUI) in C#. That is one of the reasons there aren't many apps for Windows Mobile 7, and certainly why there isn't as much commonality as you see between iOS and Android apps. If MS had half a brain they would allow development in C++, and include APIs like OpenGL ES which is supported by both Android and iOS, which will make it very easy for developers like me to release my games for Windows Mobile 8.
Better known as 318230.
Samsung, HTC, and LG have licensed Microsoft's patents for use in Android. The only major player not to is Motorola and they're currently being sued by Microsoft. So given that Microsoft likes to patent things and collect royalties on their patents, why wouldn't they patent everything they could?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
move by Microsoft.
In a statement, Hacker 'A.N. Other' said,
Our colleagues will be redoubling their efforts to produce botnets, viruses and other nasties for Windows 8. WE relish getting out hands on all those juicy phones. We are excited about the prospect of a Botnet with a 100million members.
Seriously,
WTF? What are MS playing at. Do they really expect us to spend 20 minutes a day downloading 'Essential Security Fixes' before I an make a call?
Not to be a dick, but your argument comes about half a decade late. Microsoft really did everything right in terms of security since XP. They minimized the damage that the biggest issue, user, can cause to the system, hardened the system itself significantly, slapped a properly functional firewall into a default installation and so on.
Was this video "leaked" in the same way the first Nokia Windows phone was "leaked"? Meaning...
1) Call a press conference
2) Wait for media to assemble
3) Halfway through, say "everyone turn off your cameras (wink wink) because we really don't want this next part to get out... (nudge nudge)"
4) Hope like h*ll at least one reporter was too stupid to notice the play
#DeleteChrome
Plus, I don't want to have to learn a new interface every time MS upgrades its OS.
Until your Linux distributor replaces familiar GNOME with the mystery-meat navigation that is Unity. But you're right that Linux distributions at least offer the option to, for example, sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop.
That appears to have been a response to "rumors" that WP8 would use a different kernel than WP7.
So what? I run the same apps, native compiled apps at that, on an OS with an NT kernel (Windows) and an OS with a Linux kernel (Xubuntu). The apps run in the Win32 subsystem under Windows or in the Wine subsystem (sudo apt-get install wine) under Xubuntu. Likewise, during the early Windows XP era, the same apps ran under both NT and Windows 9x.
Windows Phone devices might have slide-out keyboards, just has Xbox 360 controller have snap-on chatpads.
As for the differences among a touch screen, a mouse, and an Xbox 360 controller, that's for the input layer of a game to decide. If porting a game means rewriting the input layer and dialing down the detail level, you may have just cut out 90 percent of the effort.
there's no precedent in the cell phone market for ever charging for OS updates
Yeah, they just sell you a new phone and a new 2-year contract instead. The iPhone and any Nexus brand Android phone are the main exceptions to the trend of abandonment of old Android devices by their manufacturers.
Is the conversion to JavaScript automatic, or is it one-way and by-hand? Say I find and fix a physics bug in the original Objective-C version of a game. Does my fix propagate to the JavaScript version?
They minimized the damage that the biggest issue, user, can cause to the system, hardened the system itself significantly, slapped a properly functional firewall into a default installation and so on.
Except real security comes from a well-designed system, the Firewall is just a mitigation factor. I agree with you that the biggest issue is the user.
Still, if you consider that Android (which is Linux based) runs in a virtual machine which was target of many FORMAL security studies and that the Kernel (Linux), OS and VM are open and available for anyone to dissect and see; then you will be more sympathetic with my argument.
The problem with you and everyone else that modded me down is that they only consider Windows 8 alone and ignore the alternatives..
Each should have applications thought out, from the ground up, for their respective platforms.
You, like many other people who have posted comments to Slashdot, appear to have forgotten about the model-view abstraction. There are two parts of a program: the part that manipulates data (the model) and the part that presents the data to the user (the view). If you can share 100% of the model and half of the view code across platforms, you're way ahead. For example, the Firefox web browser has one HTML/CSS/JavaScript model and several rendering front-ends, one for each platform. But this is possible only if all platforms support the same language in which to write the model, which means unless your program is written in C#, you can't port it to Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live Indie Games.
I wrote more about this.
XNA means you can code once, write 3 interfaces, and release on Xbox, WinPhone 7, and Windows 7.
But if you drop Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7, you can code once, write several interfaces, and release on Windows, GNU/Linux, Android, Mac OS X, iOS, and (if you're a big company) PS3 and Wii. So a developer has to choose between Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 on one hand and Linux, Android, Mac, and iOS on the other hand. As I understand it, the only big win of XNA is if a company too small for the PS3 or Wii developer program wants to make a console-style game because Xbox 360 is the only console open to small family businesses.
If anyone broke anyone, it was Nintendo putting a size 6 Japanese boot in both Microsoft and Sony's ass.... at the same time.
Japanese shoe sizes are metric -- the number is the length of the foot in centimeters. So a "size 6 Japanese boot" would probably actually fit in both Microsoft and Sony's ass, and comfortably too at that... well, if you're into that kind of thing. "At the same time" would make it kind of hard to walk, though.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Not to be a dick, but your argument comes about half a decade late.
There's nothing dickish about it. Blue Screen jokes still fly at full score around here even after a decade of the BSOD being virtually extinct.
You're curing their ignorance, no dickery here.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware of pass-the-hash exploits? Because I find its persistence to be unacceptable.
Microsoft may have resolved their security issues.
But a bridge builder who fuxked one goat 5 years ago is still a goat fuxker. It takes longer to fix a damaged reputation than it does to fix the problems that created the reputation.
END COMMUNICATIOn
OK, don't be a dick. I will:
And after ALL that MS has done, billions spent on research.... Windows boxes are still vulnerable to malware? Only logical conclusion is that MS knows fuck-all about computing; it's a MARKETING company, not a tech one.
If we look at the progression of these devices, from the IBM PC/Mac, to laptop computers to the current phone devices, the obvious trajectory is smaller, lighter, less power hungry and ever more powerful.
Eventually we'll surely have a credit card sized AMOLED display with built-in personal computer. We'll carry one or more (personal and business machines) around in our wallets (which will have speakers and microphones so we can answer our wallets). But we'll also be able to pair our credit card computers up to ubiquitous speakers, mice, keyboards and displays.
Peripherals.
Our cars won't have satnav systems that need to be updated. They'll just have peripherals (screens, speakers, etc). Our big screen TVs or audio systems will become just another peripheral. We'll be able to easily pair (one of) our computer(s) to the large touchscreen display in the corporate boardroom in a simple way and deliver our presentation.
Our wallets will even give back the space currently occupied by credit cards and various ID cards, as our credit card PC's will do the job better.
too bad Oracle screwed the pooch. we could Java apps on desktop/ phone / tablets !
Jokes aside, I've actually had a couple of blue screens with Windows 7 at work for the last year, and a lot of freeze-ups. (I'm not saying it's all Micrsoft's fault; it's a large part due to crappy video driver that doesn't handle too much memory demand gracefully and an older version of AutoCAD with known problems with file dialogs in Windows 7. But still, it shouldn't freeze the whole computer)
Ever hear of Windows 95? The unit of measurement for BSOD's on that OS wasn't "n times per year".
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
We are considering W7, and to a smaller degree, Vista. We are comparing them to modern up to date Mac OS and Linux desktop installations.
Wow!!! Can't wait to see one!
a permissions-based filesystem is Linux's saving grace... if Microsoft implemented the same in Win8, their woes would be over (well, at least as far as viruses etc goes)
I did not know that Android sucked so bad you had to compare quad core devices with single core ones.
It's possible now that these phones might actually have a shot.. At least they have a chance to compete... Lighten up on the walled garden, do some better marketing, and improve on carrier relations, and maybe MS has a fighting chance.
I opened it in Paint, and there was no right-click copy
http://i.imgur.com/mtebr.png
If you want to lie successfully about problems with Windows use the usual slashdot way of doing it. Here are few examples.
I was doing X and it did not work.
I cant get X to work at all.
I tried to do X but it kept on bluescreening.
X is too slow.
X is too buggy.
Whatever you do, *DO NOT* give people ways to reproduce the problem, or they will find out that you are lying.
A quick Google search revealed no stats on what proportion of spam comes from spambots running various operating systems.
As Windows XP doesn't have an outbound firewall and Vista/7's are disabled by default, I think it would be interesting.
Most notably with the N900 and N9. The latter is outselling every single WP7 device in spite of not being supplied to Nokia's main markets and Elop basically telling everyone it's dead.
Again we are having something from microsoft what is "'coming soon". Do not buy anything else! Wait for us!
Marketing BS from MS is not valuable at all. The video was not leaked. It was put on the internet to make a fuss of something that's not available. FUD at its best.
I see your Android, Win95, XP and Linux and raise you...
Maemo, Easy Debian chrooted and WebOS games natively. My N900 can emulate Windows 95, DOS, PSP, Neogeo and probably several others I don't remember. It can also multiboot Kubuntu, Meego and Android.
There is an interesting consideration, though: the Android marketplace has something like half a million apps, while Windows Phone still has only about 60,000. If you run research on how many apps are there to compete with the one you want to develop, which platform is likely to be less crowded?
Unless you have an existing code base in C++ or Java, the initial app scarcity may be actually a winning factor. And it looks like they are going to enable C++ in WP8.
They must both be delighted.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What ? Windows NT has had filesystem permissions since 1993. Consumer Windows has had it since XP in 2001.
So what are the design problems ?
A permissions based file system is only really useful in a server situation, even then it's limited. Most "hacks" are privilege escalation. There must always be some sort of administrative account that is able to install or update portions of the OS. The point of an exploit is to gain access to that account and install a payload. A permissions-based file system does not protect anyone if an adversary gains access to root.
the Android marketplace has something like half a million apps, while Windows Phone still has only about 60,000. If you run research on how many apps are there to compete with the one you want to develop, which platform is likely to be less crowded?
By now, the other major smartphone platforms already have a 3.5" or 4" Wi-Fi-only tablet. Android has the Galaxy Player ($200), and iOS has the iPod touch (also $200). Windows CE used to have Pocket PC aka Windows Mobile Classic, but that was dropped sometime in the Windows Mobile 6 era. What option is there to run Windows Phone apps without paying $50+ per month for yet another voice and data plan?
Again, "visually" is a matter of the view, not the model. When I talk about the model, I'm talking about issues such as how high the player can jump, how much damage weapons do, collision detection, and the like. If a game is ported to another system, and it turns out one of the weapons needs rebalanced or a corner case in the collision needs to be made more robust, I want that fix to propagate automatically to all platforms for which support is planned. Line-by-line translation by hand from C++ into C# or vice versa doesn't do that.
when you havea gazillion dollars in the bank and a virtual market monopoly in several core businesses, you can afford to go 5-10 years playing catch up little by little. AMD was the clear technology winner over Intel who looked like they should just sit back and hope they'd catch up one day. But after nearly 7 years, they reinvented the x86 processor and AMD hasn't seen anything but a distant image of the lead elephant's ass since then. In the past 5 years, ARM's CEO went from laughing at Intel to swearing that Intel is wasting their time trying to compete on low power CPUs. And this year when seen at CES, he said "ok, it's good enough, but we'll always be better.". Intel is progressing in low power computing at about 110% the speed of ARM, wonder what he'll say in 2014.
The world has been saying the same about Microsoft...and well... let's see what they say in 2015.
windows might have some kind of frogshit feature that Microsoft called "permissions" (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_permissions#Differences_between_operating_systems), but there is no prevention of viruses infecting system files. if its easy enough for viruses to get around windows' filesystem "permissions" there isn't much point having them in the first place. real (and utilized) filesystem permissions is what makes linux less vulnerable to malware than windows.
hacking is different from malware infection. the whole point of having filesystem permissions is that it prevents access to files that enable getting root.
/etc/passwd to /bin/false (as a simple example). merely keeping your system up-to-date is another simple measure.
privilege escalation only works on non-hardened linux boxes, including setting shell for all non-human users in
NTFS ACLs in Windows are considerably superior to traditional UNIX permissions. Viruses can only infect things they have permissions to write to, just like in Linux.
NTFS ACLs in Windows are considerably superior to traditional UNIX permissions.
that's why you need a virus scanner for windows, but not for linux. I think you're claim of windows permissions being superior is also frogshit, but it doesn't matter anyway (you use what you like, and I'll use what I like, and we'll agree to disagree).
Viruses can only infect things they have permissions to write to, just like in Linux.
difference is that i don't need a virus scanner for my linux boxes because the OS has set up file and directory permissions in a way that viruses can't infect the system... viruses can't infect linux system files because they don't have permssions to do so, but viruses can infect windows system files because there is no real protection for them (unless you feed Norton or McAfee shareholders).
if if (for argument sake) windows had superior filesystem permissions, they are like a guard dog with no teeth if they aren't set up to protect the system
File permissions and virus scanning are completely unrelated pieces of functionality.
File permissions are the doormen making sure the undesirables don't get into your club. Virus scanners are the bouncers inside who throw out the two guys that started a fight.
You can believe all you want, but it won't change the facts. Traditional UNIX file permissions, for example, have no facility to cater for different per-user permissions (you can sort of kludge around it by abusing groups). Nor can they make a distinction between deleting a file and changing it.
So has Windows.
I've run Windows for 15+ years without a virus scanner. No problems yet.
Viruses most certainly can infect system files if they are running as root, or some other user with appropriate permissions. Windows system files actually have more protection (via both the superior permissions infrastructure plus other watchdog processes) than Linux ones do.
They are setup to protect the system. The problem isn't that the guard dog has no teeth, it's that his owner keeps telling him those strange folks walking in off the street are friendly.
File permissions and virus scanning are completely unrelated pieces of functionality.
i've already said how they are related, but you keep telling yourself that.
Windows system files actually have more protection (via both the superior permissions infrastructure plus other watchdog processes) than Linux ones do.
Nice try, but you're not going to sell Windows with that argument. Even consumers aren't that stupid anymore.
Viruses and malware are the bane of any windows sysadmin, but you're welcome to roll around in your own ignorance.
Meanwhile Linux will continue to power more and more of the world's corporate and web infrastructure, and it will do so on its merits rather than marketing and OEM deals. Shills must really hate that.
At the end of the day though, my obvious preference for linux over Windows will never change as a result of anything you can tell me (I don't believe anything you've told me so far), and my arguments here are more for my amusement from your reaction.
File permissions and virus scanning are completely unrelated pieces of functionality.
Just to highlight for you (maybe just to rub it in a little bit more - can't help myself), file permissions and virus scanning are related because one (the virus scanner) detects and in some cases removes viruses after they have already infected the system, and the other (filesystem permissions) prevents the viruses from being able to infect the system in the first place. They are both intended to combat viruses (that's the functionality relationship you're apparently a bit confused about), but one method is rather obviously better than the other. Virus scanners on Windows systems try (often in vain) to combat the threat after infection, and Linux systems never have to worry about virus infection corrupting the system (though if you try hard enough I'm sure Linux system infection is possible).
Viruses most certainly can infect system files if they are running as root
The problem with your statement here, while being technically true, is that the virus must be run as root. Unless you are a complete moron (granted there are a lot of them in the world) you wouldn't install a package off the web as root. In Windows however, a user simply clicks a button in a dialog box that they don't read and a setup program is thereby granted root/admin priveleges. Regardless of whether the dog has no teeth or its owner is a retard, Windows effectively has no effective filesystem permissions as long as the rediculous click-through previlige escalation exists. Real filesystem permissions actually prevent system files from being infected. That's the security of the Linux filesystem (along with the healthy lack of a bullshit eyecandy dialog box fetish).
It doesn't really matter what *you* say, they're unrelated pieces of functionality.
It's unfortunate you choose to broadcasat your own deliberate ignorance. Everything I've told you is factual, trivially verifiable from multiple sources, and widely known by anything with even a passing technical understanding of the relevant systems.
Everything I've told you is factual, trivially verifiable from multiple sources, and widely known by anything with even a passing technical understanding of the relevant systems.
It's widely known that Windows is a virus-prone piece of shit, but you can use it if you want to, and I'll continue to use Linux because I want to.
I've run Windows for 15+ years without a virus scanner
I wish you luck with that (I'm just glad I don't have to share files from you).
...and by sharing files i mean offering to others, not using myself (just in case you're stupid enough to assume my linux machine might be at risk of infection)
there are actually virus scanners on many linux computers though (such as clamav); usually mail servers that scan attachments that could be opened by windows clients