Business Week Online Laughs at Win2K

ethereal writes, "Business Week Online has a really humorous article about how we're all going to end up running Win2K. There's a small pro-Linux wrap-up at the bottom, however. " The surprising thing about this article is that it was written by Sam Jaffe, who is a stock market writer, not a tech guy. I had one nit-pick with the story (that I'm sure many of you will pick up on), but it was minor. This was such a blatant Linux plug that I almost (but not quite) felt sorry for Microsoft after reading it.

Comments

Re:Embeddibility

[qmrf]

I want to know what will happen when the Win2K embedded in your Xerox copier crashes...Will it just start printing out blue sheets of paper?

99.9%? It's the Boundary Conditions that count.

[CabanaBoy]

99.9%, aka 999/1000 sounds like a nice ratio, until you consider that (as every programmer worth his salty snacks knows) the /real/ problems occur in the boundary conditions. You know, that eventuallity that you didn't plan or lay code for? Like trapping certain nasty but rare exceptions?

Now this really _is_ nit-picking, but what eventuallities does this 99.9% cover? Successive pings? I don't really care about the ordinary stuff that users do. What happens to /me/ when I hit one of those boundary conditions? Do I get to sleep that night? That *week*?

Now, the Journalling-NTFS will help... Maybe... I'd feel better about it if MS had a better history of writing good file system standards and disaster recovery code. Do I really trust MS to rollback dirty writes?

The answer is typically 'No'.

Re:No, you missed my point

[IntlHarvester]

Apologies for missing the subtleties in your point. However, I'm still not convinced that it 'holds' with regard to the WinWord versus WordPerfect/DOS comparison:

WP/DOS required a fairly steep learning curve even to get a decent looking document on a laser printer (mainly do to being designed for monospaced line printers). However, figuring out how to do tables also was a steep climb. Furthermore your knowledge about tables didn't really help you with mail merges and so on. The curve to reach efficient use of all features seemed pretty linear, and steep. People were justifiably proud of their abilities to master WordPerfect, but there was no inner circle of improved efficiency once you learned all of the bits it could do. (Unlike, say, unix commandline usage.)

WinWord (and WordPerfect for Windows, etc.), on the other hand, presents the feature set in a much more accessible fashion. Just having a wysiwyg view on your work makes it easier to experiment and learn what the functions are. The curve is still linear (until you get to the macro language), but is much shallower.

The biggest problems with Word is that it just doesn't scale very well, so much of it's huge feature set is really moot, because no one in their right mind would try to do a very long document in it. That and all of the auto-correct stuff, which actually makes the program less predictable and harder to learn, IMO.

(Referring to "lazy Word drone who couldnt go up a curve" is uncalled for, and appears to be an elitist attempt to diminish GUI and/or Microsoft users. A two page memo shouldn't take anything more than a drone, and the drones aren't doing the complex stuff. Using Word as the target of derision is especially bad, because it's probably the most customizable and extendible GUI program I've ever used.

Disclaimer: I'd rather use FrameMaker anyday for most of my writing work. But since my average document is less than 100 pages, I deal with Word for the standard file format compatibility reasons{99.5% of my customers seem to use Word}.)

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Re:The Most Important Program Ever Written

[IntlHarvester]

Yeah, the one that coasted for a longtime before their big comeback.
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The Most Important Program Ever Written

[j a w a d]

It is, declares one Microsoft executive, "the most important program ever written."


yes, it is quite humorous. unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be that way...


..................................@ @

Re:The Most Important Program Ever Written

[Black Parrot]

I nominate "Hello, World!", since that appears to be the way most programmers get started at their trade.

Re:The Most Important Program Ever Written

[IntlHarvester]

Saying that MS will be gone in 5 years is stretching a bit, but bad things could happen:

1) Customers skip Office 2000 upgrade - lots of missing revenue
2) Customers go ahead and slowly install Windows 2000 workstation, but skip the Windows 2000 file+print server upgrade (quite possible, it happened to Novell with NetWare 4.x) - more missing revenue.
3) Customers start to use more Linux/Unix for database servers, application servers, etc (already happening) - Win2000 never gets the big piece of the midrange market that MS is betting on.
4) MS+DOJ comes to settilement, Microsoft's ability to tie products together is limited.
5) MS's investments in MSN, MSNBC, cable companies, and so on fail to show any profit.
6) Stockholders start to notice that revenues ain't as good as they used to be, stock price drops.
7) Loads of talent betting on their stock options coming through see that the options aren't worth so much anymore, quit and go work for someone competing with MS.
8) More projects get delayed or off track = revenues fall further in the long run.

So, Microsoft could look a lot less invincible in 5 years, but they've got enough cash in the bank to coast for a long time. (See Apple.)

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The "nit"

[davie]

When I read this article yesterday, I was surprised to learn that Linux hadn't had a widely-accepted GUI until six months ago, when KDE and GNOME were born (I suppose that as far as some writers are concerned, nothing exists until it's been hyped in the media).

I'm sure Mr. Jaffe will receive hundreds of polite emails like the one I sent with a short background on X, window managers, etc.

My quandary is, where do these trade writers keep getting these silly notions about Linux not having a GUI? Is the MS FUD that pervasive?

Re:The "nit"

[Anonymous Coward]

If KDE and GNOME are GUIs, then GUIs are terrible, clumsy get-in-the-way-of-work systems. It's by biggest disappointment that so much energy has been spent imitating the Windows interface, as if it is the best thing ever to come along. Just as Jaffe points out:

...most companies in the world will eventually end up using Windows 2000 -- or a competitor that by necessity will have been heavily influenced by it.

I cannot and do not believe that anyone that works with a computer really thinks that a Windows/CORBA/whatever 'environment' is better than fvwm and eight xterms. If linux must follow Windows, it will never surpass it. Sorry, but it's so bliningly obvious.

I really beleive that w2k will kill Linux. I think it's sad, but, there will be little reason to choose Linux over W2k except the ones we little people like (open-source, cheaper.) But w2k will be a better server, will be leaps and bounds beyond Linux as far as consistent GUI goes and it will have great games. Wish it weren't so, but I see KDE and GNOME as being the defeating tactical "catch-up" error. You must look way ahead---it's how Linux got so good to begin with. Pray for plan-9.

Re:The "nit"

[JohnnyCannuk]

My Stars! Another CLI vs GUI troll. Just because a person does not want to learn bizzare commands does not make them not want to think. As a matter of fact, I would say that most users DO want to think...what they want to think about is another story. You and Imay use the CLI for some things because we, as programmers or IT professionals, find it easier or more powerful to do what we want it to do - we want to think about the commands, how they work and what they do. My wife, on the other hand, would prefer to think about graphic layout, ad placment, ad costs and potential income reports (she's in advertising) rather than how to move a file or find a program or how to compile. For her the computer should be a tool to do what she wants to do, not an end in itself. She would like it to be easy, almost thoughtless to use so she can concentrate on her job of producing print/tv/radio ads not on "chmod ugo+x" stuff. Her jobs is to use her computer for work, not to administer and set it up.

For her, a simple thoughtless GUI is the RIGHT WAY. Pushing the CLI as the only RIGHT WAY is as wrong as pushing a GUI as the only RIGHT WAY. There's room for both. If you don't want to use a GUI, don't. But don't be an idiotic CLI snob and say that people who use GUI don't want to learn or are too stupid to use a CLI. Its just not true.

Remember, Linux is about choice.

4000 programmers

[jemhddar]

" Its greatest advantage is that it has tens of thousands of programmers throughout the world who can adjust and improve it in their free time. Poor Microsoft, by contrast, can afford only 4,000 programmers to work on the code for Windows 2000. "

I gotta say I like that... Linux programmers outnumber (and outcode?) windows 2k programmers. That's gotta sting.

Win2k appliances??

[griffjon]

"Another key feature of Windows 2000 will be its "embeddability." That means it'll be possible to embed it into other programs or hardware. Already, Xerox has signed on with Microsoft to create Windows 2000 copiers that will have the OS built in and will operate seamlessly with a Windows 2000-run network"

(I already posted this to the defcon list, but thought it'd be good here, too)


Oh, yeah, that's what I want, W2K appliances. Like, say, coffee machines.

7:30AM:
[Try to take out used coffee grounds from yesterday]
"Alert! User has requested to open basket which is currently in use. Continuing this action will cease all programs using this basket! Continue? {Y/N}"
[grumble, wipe sleep from eyes, press No by mistake]
[Remove grounds, take two]
"(Windows repeats itself, this time you hit the right button)"
[Add coffee grounds, reinsert basket]
"Warning! Cannot autorun this coffee. Please remove from basket and try again {OK/Cancel}"
[*whang!*]
"Warning! There is no water in the carafe. Please insert MS Water v.H-20 build 4535 into Carafe {OK/Cancel}"
[grumble. take carafe out]
"Alert! User has requested to open drive which is currently in use. Continuing this action will cease all programs using this drive! Continue? {Y/N}"
[hit Y.]
"Another program has requested a drive that is unavailable. Coffee production is halted"
[fill carafe, ignoring Windows, begin to fill reservoir]
"Warning! Any malicious water you pour into the reservoir may be contaminated and could possibly kill you. Continue with this action? {Y/N}"
[hit Y, HARD]
[Replace carafe under basket, hit "Start"]
"Sorry, but the carafe was previously removed, cannot fulfill request at this time"

[It's now 8:30AM, late for work, and now coffee. Leave anyway, grabbing some easily portable java on the way to work...]

[While at work, the home coffee machine power-cycles randomly and finds that both the basket and the carafe are actually inserted properly, and begins making coffee. It's cold by the time you get home... Try to remove it to place into a Linux microwave to warm it up]
"Warning! Any coffee reheated by non-Microsoft compliant appliances may not be the same. Loading webpage for MicroSoft CoffeeHot! countertop appliance..."

Re:%99.9 Stable?

[Inspector]

No no no, time scale doesn't work here. He's talking about an arbitrary set of states, chosen by microsoft for testing purposes, like "on" or "off" or "upsidedown". But since he says %99.9 of computer situations, it means he must have tested every possible set of situations a computer could be in, like, "underwater, on jupiter while the sun is exploding."
But wait, I guess that wouldn't be a "computing" situation. So what does he mean by that? Well, why would you want to use a computer in microsoft? Hmm, that's a tough one. Let's say 50% of computing situations at MS involve solitaire. Well, I've never had a problem playing solitaire, so that's 50% covered. Another ~50% would be devoted to consuming idle cycles while the coders, go to the washroom, eat lunch, spin in their chairs, etc. If there's one thing windows does extremely well, it's consume idle cycles, so that's ~100% covered. So the final 0.01% must be the rare time someone actually tries to code, or compile a kernel, or open a menu, or do WORK.
There, that's all cleared up now.

Apple Computer has no server?

[Tiro_Dianoga]

I don't know about that, I think a fast G3 running OS X Server is a formidable setup. That hardware may not be cheap, or the software fully featured yet, but at least we know both of those factors will improve before W2K even ships! Apparently the author can only see hype, and all else he is blind to.

And if that doesn't work as an ideal solution, you can always keep the hardware and install a variety of OSS OSes on it.

edlin is crap compared to ed

[AJWM]

Edlin is and always has been a piece of crap compared to ed, let alone ex.
I've used ed for fifteen years. I've written a couple of versions of ed. Nope, edlin is no ed. Anyone who says otherwise has never used one or the other, or is trolling.

Re:Embeddibility

[ShadowStar]

As a Xerox Support Engineer, I must say this...

If your W2K embedded in your Xerox product crashes, several processes will take place, all in an easy to follow manner. They are:

1) Product will fall off of desk/table/etc., in hopes on landing on the user.

2) Product will then take control of any computer nearby, and start to duplicate it's programming onto it. (read: eat up all the disk space and ram, then print a message saying that the computer requires several upgrades, to insure "Futureproofing, compatibility, and that Freedom to Innovate will succeed."

3) Product then starts playing the default windows "start sound", while simultaniously spewing forth blue sheets of paper.

4) Product then holds your data/printout for ransom, demanding all non-microsoft products be either A) burned at the stake or B) thrown out.

5) Finally, Product will send an E-Mail to Bill Gates praising him for his "Forsight in the Computer Industry", cc'ing Rick Thoman.

Hope this answers your questions. =)

The importance of Hello World

[poopie]

"Hello, World!" May not be the most functional program ever written, but it is definitely the most portable and most widely ported. It may be the single most popular program considering the number of times it has been re-implemented from scratch by different programmers.

I'd venture to guess the almost every programmer has written hello world apps in more programming languages than any other program.

But, now that I start thinking about it, we really need an I18N version of hello_world and we need a manpage to hello_world. Better yet, we need sgml docs for it that can be converted to html, info, tex, and manpage.

I'm concerned about the license that hello world is distributed under, though. I'd hate to think that someone could take the free hello world, enhance it, and start selling it. Worse, yet... Imagine if some commercial company included "Hello, world" in their commercial software, and didn't redistribute the changes. I think hello world needs to be GPL'd to protect it.

Then we need a hello world daemon that when queried, responds with a "Hello, world" - hmm, could be a modified ping.

root@my_dumb_whitebox #> hello_world gatekeeper
gatekeeper responds "Hello, World!"

and... of course we need a hello_world gui so that we can welcome all of the non-unix gurus to linux. Please everyone, let's avoid the silly toolkit wars. I think it's good for linux to have both a khello and a ghello, and using corba, they should both be able to communicate "Hello, World" with each other.

and then we could have hello_world broadcasts from servers, and all clients on the network would respond with a storm of "Hello, World!" responses (no, wait, we already have that.. it's called Netware)

Lets complain some more

[nadador]

Sometimes I think slashdot readers are like Pittsburgh football fans -- it doesn't matter whether they win or lose, they complain afterwards.

So an article written by stock market analyst with presumably no technical background comes close to being a reasonable interpretation of the truth. Factually not entirely correct, but the difference between the truth and his version of the story is only wide enough to cram a couple of 14 year old script kiddies in.

In a non-technical article, a non-technical writer managed to adequately and intelligently discuss both Windows2000 and Linux, without bowing to almost any FUD. There was no "Windows is so easy to use" or "The command line is scary." There was no "Linux is so hard to install" or "There are no applications for Linux." He managed to avoid the most oft-repeated, mind numbing FUDs, and you still complain.

I just don't get it. Be happy that for once, someone without any techincal credentials almost got it right. That means we're starting to win a couple of battles.


Andrew Gardner

Curiosity: 30,000,000 lines of code vs. ??

[CodeShark]

I haven't moved up to the 2.2X kernels yet, and am curious what the avg. line count for a full build (including a browser and a GUI) compared to M$'s -- 30 million lines in W2K? (I suppose if W2kK is supposed to blur the distinction between the server and the desktop, we ought to include Apache as well, to be fair)

Numbers, anyway

Oops.

[CodeShark]

I meant to say

...numbers anyone?

Sigh...

[landley]

I'd like to point out that a Journaling filesystem is a high priority on NT for the same reason that parachutes and fire extinguishers were high priorities on the Hindenburg. If the primary cause of system crashes is a backhoe taking out the power, quickly recovering from crashes isn't a primary development priority. On a system that crashes in the presence of large flowers or brightly colored wallpaper, rapid crash recovery is a big time development priority. On Linux, JFS is primarily for bragging rights, isn't it? We're focused on not crashing in the first place. Rob

"It's reputation will suffer"

[educko]

Correct me if I am wrong... but wasn't Windows 2000 once called NT 5.0. I remember reading an article when Microsoft changed the name of the OS that said the name change would probably make people forget the numerous delays from NT 5.0. I didn't believe it at the time, but it seems that the article was correct. A simple name change can easily make the general public forget that the product has already missed numerous production dates. Well, just thought I'd at my two cents.

"so-called source code"?

[bushido]

and here all this time i thought there was such a thing. jeez, do i feel silly (and have i been wasting a lot of time with this whole CS degree). why do some many writers put quotes around terms that are even very technical like "operating system" or "source code". i think the average reader can figure it out from the context.
if it wasn't "so-called source code", it must just be computer elves then. i heard if you leave a 486 under your pillow, they will leave you a new p3.

Linux not feature-rich?

[eponymous cohort]

I haven't spent any significant time using W2K betas, our local copy took several minutes to display the start menu after clicking the Start button, but what do they mean by feature-rich? It seems that a good Linux distro comes with far more tools and Applications out of the box than any version of Windows I have ever seen.

Are they talking about these wizards that can "automatically configure XYZ" for you then fail or crash during the auto-configuration because your system is slightly non-standard?"

True story: I've used a serial mouse, and just bought a PS/2 mouse. When I booted Windows, Windows detected that I had new hardware, and automatically removed the video driver for me! It took about six reboots to get the system right.

Re:You added an assumption in removing the other.

[IntlHarvester]

So why does M$, Apple, and every other major vendor like the shallow learning curve over the more efficient use?

I think it's the *customers* (aka computer-using white-collar) businesses that want the shallow learning curve. The vendors are responding to this demand. Consider back in the DOSsy days, being able to do a presentable document in WordPerfect was actually a marketable skill, with a higher salary to go along with it. Using MS Word is just another $7/hour job.

Now, I don't think anyone would disagree that system administration or programming can be more "efficient" with a GUI. However, normal users do very little system admining or programming. In fact most users don't even copy files all that frequently, instead managing their files through the File+Open and File+Save commands (and even back in the DOS days, after a four hour class most folks could 'get' COPY, XCOPY, and DEL.)

But can you say the same thing for text-mode user applications with psuedo-GUIs? Is WordPerfect or pine* really anymore "efficient" or powerful than a GUI equivalent? (Hint - users like WYSIWYG printing). You mention vi - how much more efficient can the expert vi user be over the moderate WIMP text editor user (assuming the WIMP editor has the same feature set)? You might be saving a few seconds with vi prowness, but I doubt it's even that quantifiable.

In short, once you're talking about user-level applications with any complexity, the whole GUI = inefficient argument goes right out the window. (And nobody is going to take the CLI stuff out of Linux anyways.)

(* I mention pine, because my sister failed in using it because nowhere in the app does it mention that the caret, "^", actually means hold the control key down. So, she couldn't figure out how to send her mail. Of course, every old timer knows this, but in this case it was hours wasted on the learning curve.)
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another Nit to pick?

[mdvkng]

> "... great OS for servers with a limited number
> of processors, usually less than 16"

Much ado about Nitting.

Great OS for servers? *cough cough* That's highly debatable as anyone knows. Adequate - well OK.

Less than 16? Well, that's true, as 4 16 is a true statement. Less than 4 is more accurate. I've heard rumours of 4+ proc Wintel servers roaming the woods in the Pacific Northwest, but I've never seen much evidence apart from a few footprints and a bad fuzzy video. But 16? I'd sooner believe Sasquatch wanders onto the Redmond campus for high tea with Bill on Thursday afternoons. Call me a cynic.

-MWR-

%99.9 Stable?

[shogun]

Ed Muth, group product manager for Windows 2000, claims that the most recent iteration of its NT operating system is crash-proof in 99.9% of computing situations.

So by this quote I can assume that since the 'situtation' on a computer is in reality changing constantly, I can be assured that for every 1000 seconds I am running a Win2K machine it will be in a crashable state for 1 of them? Of course we should be realistic and scale this down to instruction cycles instead of seconds, it is a Microsoft product after all...

let's cut him some slack

[Mr. Punch]

It seems to me that Mr. Jaffe did a pretty darn good job with this article. He's not a technical writer, yet it seems that he has kept himself fairly well informed about the state of the OS market. (Is "market" the right word for a system containing a free product? Hurm. Might "situation" be better?)

He talked about Windows 2000 in ways that would make sense to businessmen, and I bet they wouldn't like what he said. Similarly, he talked about Linux in comprehensible terms, and he painted quite a pretty picture of it. While errors and misinformation are not good, in this case, he made Linux look *better* because of it -- he wasn't saying "There is no GUI," but rather "Look how quickly they made a GUI!"

This article is exactly the sort of thing Linux needs if it is to gain credibility in the business world. System administrators need opinions like Jaffe's as ammunition to fire at the managment of their corporations in order to convince them that Linux is a workable responce to their needs.

I'll be pretty disappointed if his next column is about how he was brutally flamed for one minor error in an otherwise sterling article.

Good article

[Restil]

It states the obvious facts (that win 2K WILL, whether we like it or not, be used on a great many computers in the near future). However, after mentioning the positive aspects of it, it starts to display its disadvantages and even takes the occassional jab at the operating system. I like the Sysadmin quote.

And the take on Linux wasn't the usual FUD. The article pretty much sticks to the facts, that Linux is growing and is slowly becoming the only major competitor to Microsoft's server market, but that it still lacks in features by comparison. The author also doesn't make the usual claim that linux will eventually be overcome, and even presents a few good reasons why.

I also like the "Poor Microsoft" comment. If that doesn't say something about the efficiency of the company when with all their money and power, Linux is still creeping up on them and investors, whom the article seems aimed toward, should be careful to notice.

-Restil

the most important program ever written.

[ethereal]

Granted, as others here are sure to point out, this probably wasn't intended to be a humorous piece. Any article which contains It is, declares one Microsoft executive, "the most important program ever written." can get a laugh out of me, however. Microsoft: we're nothing if not overweening.

(first submission!)