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Possible Reason Behind Version Hop to Windows 10: Compatibility
First time accepted submitter ndykman (659315) writes The Independent reports that a MS developer has suggested a real reason behind the Windows 10 name: old code. More specifically, code that looks for "Windows 9" to determine the Windows version. Fine for Windows 95 or Windows 98, but not so great for a new operating system. The article includes a link that shows that yes, this would be a problem.
Windows 9.8, Secure Edition
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It would have been better if they'd gone with Windows 11. One better.
Who ordered that?
If something as stupid as the name of the operating system can trip up some applications, what about the rest of the code?
Instead of giving programmers dozens of ways of checking and doing things, they should be forced into doing it one way. Easier to prevent mistakes, check for errors, etc.
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Because only Java attracts bad programmers? Or is it simply observation bias? Certainly Java is not the only language which can give you the OS name.
Its the same thing as with the whole Document and settings vs C:\users. There's always been a good way to get it, but most developers suck balls and won't spend the 20 seconds it takes to figure it out.
GetVersionEx(Inout_ LPOSVERSIONINFO lpVersionInfo);
Returns the major and minor versions, build number, platform id, service pack major and minor, and the product type.
It basically spits out all the crap in that appears on the bottom right corner of windows when you boot up in safemode.
Also unlike the stupid marketing names the OS versions actually make sense.
Windows 8 returns version 6.2.
I call this hogwash. When you ask Windows what version it is in software, it doesn't return its marketing name (Windows 95, Windows 2000), it returns it's platform ID (1 for DOS based, 2 for NT based), and its version numbers in major, minor format. Windows 95 returned 4.0 (platform 1), Windows 98 returned 4.1 (platform 1). Windows 2000 returned 5.0 (platform 2).
In fact, I can't speak for the latest versions of Windows (because it has been a while since I've programmed), but even as late as Windows XP, a call to "get version" returns something completely different from the marketing version number/name.
For example, under Windows 95, GetVersion() would return "4.0." Under XP, it reports NT 5.1 or NT 5.2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
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I'm reminded of checking for browser version in Javascript when you need to hack around a limitation or non-standard here or there (especially back in the IE6 days). Anyone worth their salt said "You don't ask the browser what it is, you ask what it can do" because the easy ways to check were also easy to spoof. So it was better to see if it threw an error when you did X, or if you could access property.Y, etc., then use those results to figure out which browser you were running in. I don't think it's done as often these days, partly because of engines catching up and partly because of frameworks doing it for you.
Anyway, I don't know how trivial it would be to spoof the system information, but relying on the system to report its proper version doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Speaking of version, code like the last link is looking at the marketing name when looking at the actual version (i.e. Windows 6.1) would be better. Maybe Microsoft should just go with the internal version number: it will cause as much marketing confusion as Windows 10, avoid the "Windows 9" checks, and make the internal/marketing names more consistent.
they should have just changed the whole name from "windows" to "Balmers gone, and its safe to us windows again, please come back".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Shame there's not some method for inserting plain text into code that will explain what you're doing, but has no effect on the actual compiled application. Maybe we could call them comments or something.
Or maybe there's some way of referencing a number, but with a name which describes what the number is so that it can be reused. It's be great if you could guarantee that the number couldn't be changed. Hmm, what could we call that?
I figured it had to do with Roman numerals.
They skipped Windows 4 (IV) and they are skipping version 9 (IX)
I figured there is a bug in the roman numeral check for the numbers the need to subtract before the value.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And looking at the code examples like 90% of the cases where in the Java sources.
Exactly.
The problem isn't Windows, the problem is incompetent programmers. Instead of calling the proper API to get the version number, morons are doing things like
if (os.startsWith("Windows 9")
Fuckin' PHP programmers! You guys need to die off. How about a GetReallyFor ReallyHonestThisTimeIMeanItVersionNumber()? Or are we going to be using a GetVersionEx47() at some point?
Considering the industry move to 64-bit (how long ago now?), how easy is it to get a 16-bit DOS or a 32-bit Windows app to run in a 64-bit *NT* environment?
Between 16 and 32 bit, you had (for 9x) the fact that the kernel was actually 16-bit but could address a 32-bit address space, for 32-bit NT systems you have WOWExec (a DOS VM with a shared memory space) but for running 16-bit apps on 64-bit platforms you have to go one step further than a compatibility subsystem (ie WOWExec) and run the app in a third party sandbox - or virtual machine, if you will - such as VirtualBox running a dedicated DOS or 9x session in a segregated memory space. Other esoteric limitations particularly in 64-bit Windows versions prompted Microsoft to issue an update which included zero-length root files (AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS among others) in August 2010.
Long story short, if you're running into problems with "Windows 9" it's nothing to do with pulling a version number, you're trying to make a 64-bit system do a 16-bit thing which it was clearly not meant to do and will fail spectacularly anyway.
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The problem isn't Windows, the problem is incompetent programmers. Instead of calling the proper API to get the version number, morons are doing things like
if (os.startsWith("Windows 9")
You're right. Failing to close your parens is a sign of an incompetent programmer.
Type this into powershell:
(Get-WmiObject Win32_OperatingSystem).Caption
There's your marketing name.
Took about 60 seconds of Googling to not only find this, but to find it in code that was making the same sort of error we're talking about (not literally the number 9). See this: http://ss64.com/ps/get-wmiobje... -- that's using the -match operator which is a regex comparison, and thus inferring whether it's a server build by a mismatch between the marketing name and the build name..
Granted, I don't think powershell existed on Windows 95. I expect it's just wrapping an API that did exist. If it comes right down to it, the registry itself has the versioning information available to anybody who can use ctrl+f in regedit to find the key, and people do indeed do that.
Trust me, MS doesn't give the slightest concern about any broken Java apps.
No, I don't trust that statement in the slightest. Why would you think that? It's very contrary to Microsoft's behaviour in the past.
I have no idea why they chose to name Windows "Windows 10", and I'm not convinced of this, but this is not so implausible as you seem to think.
The whole article is Bull since MS Windows uses the NT kernel and their so called Windows 10 has an NT 6.4 kernel (see here ). For those that won't read the article the following is a list of NT versions from MS Windows Vista.
:)) but the basic kernel is only a minor increment. If the developers find difficulty in writing software that can't determine revision difference then I suggest they go back to school. Basically the whole reason to go to version 10 is IMHO marketing hype of which the Microsoft PR department excels (pun intended).
NT6.0 - MS Windows Vista, Server 2008
NT6.1 - MS Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, Home Server 2011
NT6.2 - MS Windows 8
NT6.3 - MS Windows 8.1
NT6.4 - MS Windows 10
Sure some of the apps my be different (slightly
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
That is only via some Java API, which does exactly what I said above, which is turn the actual internal version into some higher-level OS name.
So what do you think that Java API would return on Windows 9? Don't you think Oracle would have it return the string "Windows 9"?
Trust me, MS doesn't give the slightest concern about any broken Java apps.
Perhaps you should read some of the stories on The Old New Thing about the hoops MS jumps through to maintain compatibility. Here's one (of many). In that one, we find that MS changed the internal implementation of critical sections in Vista, but found that some programs were looking directly at the internals instead of using the API. So in order to not break those programs, MS made sure the value in the internal struct people were peeking at had the value those programs were expecting. Keep looking back through the archives and you'll find dozens of examples of MS doing crazy stuff just to keep programs working in newer versions of the OS. And with many Java apps being big and enterprisey, you can be sure that MS is going to do whatever it can to keep them from breaking on Windows 9^H10.
C++
If you'd actually look at the example provided, this is generally modern applications looking for Windows 9x versions in order to throw an error, and they did it in a time when "Windows 7" and "Windows 8" are actual things that really exist, not a nebulous time where MS was changing its naming format every couple releases.
The very first example is a fork of OpenJDK 6, and it appears to be code carried over from the original, not new code. Another result was from OpenJDK 1.7, so this is more than likely poorly written code that has simply never been a problem before.
People would probably blame Microsoft if all Java apps broke on Windows 9, even though it was Java's shitty programmers that did the deed, and really lots of programmers do stupid stuff like this and would blame MS for it. Unlike most bugs, MS doesn't really have any option but to change its name to fix this for software developers. It's not like a dev relying on the buggy behavior of an API that MS can work around for them. This is wide scale, pervasive shitty programming in third party programs that spans more than a decade, and Microsoft gets to deal with it.
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