Lets take your example of mail. There are 2 aspects to it:
-- Complexity of getting mail to work. That's been steadily decreasing. -- Complexity of policy regarding mail. Thing like storage, retention, information retrieval... That's been steadily increasing -- Complexity of integrating mail with new systems. That's the real problem with a generic cloud solution. As soon as you bring in something that needs more than a basic API someone has to write middleware. That middleware then becomes part of the company's custom infrastructure. If there are 6 services connected to that middleware which have c1, c2... c6 chance of changing each year the chance the middleware has to change is: 1-(1-c1)(1-c2)...(1-c6) which gets fairly close to 100%.
I'm not getting one thing - why would they need all versions of.NET - aren't they all compatible?
No. AFAIK from a program perspective each version of.NET is independent. I know for certain that.NET 3.0 and.NET 4.0 must both be present on an XP system to run applications compiled against 3.0 and 4.0 respectively. You can see that React themselves are tracking the different frameworks as separate sub-projects: http://www.reactos.org/compat/?show=entry&id=646
Oh, and as far as Networking goes, support only IPv6 initially, and let IPv4 support be a separate addon program later - if needed. For both OSs
I'm all in favor of IPv6 migration. But many Win7 and certainly many XP applications are IPv4 only. v4 vs. v6 isn't the problem though between Win7 and XP. XP had a fairly basic networking stack. Win 7 has a networking stack with many layers of complexity each with their own API and the capabilities for self and programatic adjustments which are truly impressive http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx
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The reason I'm arguing for the same time, is that mostly we are looking at subsets in terms of technology. There isn't much that's thrown away and each step builds on the previous replacing simple systems with vastly more complex systems. But even if that weren't the case, Win 7 includes compatibility modes, and many of them. So for example programs can make use of Win95/WinMe compatibility subsystem. And then quite literally you need to a have a functioning DOS for Win 7 application compatibility since some Win 7 applications still have parts that use emulated DOS.
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The only thing ReactOS has going for them is the huge number of people still using XP and thus the huge number of applications that don't want to walk away from XP compatibility. The problem is more and more those XP users are people who just don't buy software at all. Once the developers move away from XP the desire to support Win8 is going to push them towards later versions of the.NET framework and ReactOS is going to be a system for legacy support.
That's not bad, but it ain't a threat to Microsoft.
No I'm not just assuming the Russians. Assume everyone who wants to be 10 years behind is fine with it.
There are a lot of things they need to do go from XP to Vista. They are working on.NET 2.0. To get to VIsta and more modern stuff they have to do.NET 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5. That's years and years of work. They have to build Aero, which is on the order of the complexity of building all of Windows XP. They have to rebuild the entire drive system to work with flash drives. They have to rebuild their network stack for all the complexity that was added to Vista, etc... That's years and years of work. Going from Vista to 7 isn't nearly as hard but they ain't gonna finish that in a week either.
So assuming they get XP done by 2015 (still aggressive), how long for Vista? I gotta figure 3 years minimum, 10-20 wouldn't shock me. Another year for Win 7, minimum and you are talking 2019 till they ship Windows 7. And that is very best case.
Windows XP came out in 2001. They are well over a decade behind. Even if we assume they can move at twice the speed of Microsoft starting from 15 years behind it takes them 20 years to get to 5 years, a major version behind. React is not going to run "all current Windows software" anytime in the foreseeable future. React OS is just not a threat.
Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?
I'm an iPhone user but I envy the BlackBerry Balance feature. The ability to completely cordon off work from home is a terrific feature. Far too often I end up accidentally sending work related emails, calendar invites... from my home email.
Microsoft has introduced the.NET framework and updated it multiple times. They've already created an operating system to transition people away from WInXP applications, Windows 8. Windows 7 had an XP as a VM built in and Windows 8 has Hypervisor standard. So the solution for Windows XP only applications is just to run XP as a guest OS on Windows 8, and later 9, 10, 11.... If ReactOS replaces the guest OS for legacy support, why would Microsoft even care?
Once you start talking people who are a decade behind you are talking customers who don't want to pay for software or services at all. How is losing them a threat to Microsoft? Even if we assume that React follows a disruptive pattern and is able to reduce that time from a decade to say 3 years ReactOS would be in the same situation as OS/2 just starting from further behind. Or Wine. And that's best case. The APIs can move much faster than a compatibility layer.
Microsoft win Windows 8 is starting to turn the machine back on for changes in the Windows ecosystem. The days where it was comfortable being this far behind are rapidly coming to an end.
The issue isn't performance it is responsiveness. And kernels aren't irrelevant to end users. If you are on windows try loading Enterprise Server if on linux take your desktop kernel and tune the config file setting it like you would configure the prioritizer as if were a database server with several thousand clients. You'll see the difference rather instantly.
Most of the cool things in BB10 have nothing to do with QNX. But QNX is a rather unique advantage.
Deskop is a shrinking share of the market. There isn't much advantage in upgrading the OS for a legacy hardware desktop. In terms of upcoming laptops, it isn't really that much more expensive for touch. The real cost is the adjustable hinge to let the screen go to tablet form and that's about $150 even in quantity. OK so it costs $200 extra.
For a desktop you use a mirror device. These are common among artists where you have a high quality touch screen mirroring what is on the screen in front of you. The high quality touch gives tremendous precision. Right now they those pointing devices are around $2k but they aren't made in quantity. In quantity they could be done for about $200.
I think you meant XNU, which is more properly referred to as Darwin. It's definitely not "Xenu". That's the big bad guy in Scientology
LOL. I did, and I think you are right about what I mixed up:) That's funny.
Whether it's an RTOS is essentially irrelevant. RTOSes are about providing guaranteed scheduling or IO response latency. A hard RTOS can provide an absolute, will-never-exceed delay, a soft RTOS will do it most of the time with rare exceptions. Either kind usually requires a fair degree of design cooperation between the kernel and userland code. (Particularly the hard flavor. You can't call a kernel in isolation hard-RT, it's a characteristic which applies to a complete system running a particular set of userland processes.)
Agreed. QNX also includes a fairly rich stack. I don't know enough about BB10 if it propagates all the way up.
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I'm losing you on the rest of your argument. If the kernel can treat input as high priority and guarantee that any app that gets an input gets Y amount of CPU within Z time how does that not effectively guarantee responsiveness if apps are written to give feedback within Y?
Exactly. Windows 8 is designed for newer hardware. I don't know why people insist on using Windows 7 hardware with Windows 8 and grading Windows 8 based on how well it drives Windows 7 hardware. Though it would be nice if Microsoft were stricter as well.
In terms of regular settings... BlackBerry provides OS updates for their own phones. This is totally unlike Android and more like Apple. BlackBerry has a good reputation but they can do whatever they want.
As far as configuration and what you can turn off... I'm not sure what you mean at all.
Even for iOS users hundreds of dollars in apps is very very rare. iOS users spend 25-70x as much on apps per user as Android users. Moreover BB10 offers an Android emulator.
Home mode which is open. Inside the home mode the end user can download what they want. Work mode which is secure. Inside the work mode the end user is restricted. Data cannot be copied from inside workmode apps to home mode apps.
QNX offers a RTOS. Linux, WinNT kernel and Xenu are all fundamentally server kernels. For smartphones, and for that matter desktop/laptop the extra responsiveness are likely worth lower throughput. It is an edge. I don't know if it is a huge edge but the functionality isn't quite analogous.
So it's completely broken then, and promotes insecurity.
How is it completely broken? It doesn't look inside applications and from Apple's perspective that's inside. If you want to enable specific things you turn them on.
And if the XML isn't documented, no matter how "clear" it may or may nor appear to be, then I risk in the future having entire companies shut down because some update assumed something I didn't know. Nice one Apple.
Apple provides a management interface to push updates on managed computers. You don't have any risk because managed computers update from the management servers not Apple.
I don't know that the FCC is particularly bad, they are meant to be business friendly. But this concern to government regulators in general. I think we need to start having two types of government agencies.
Good cop agencies where people flow back and fourth rather freely. Bad cop agencies where people are firmly on the regulator side and if they leave government leave for work outside the companies being regulated.
A: I don't like the way that sentence reads. What about a tense change like this. B: OK that works but see this sentence I'm highlighting we are going to have to do a tense change there. A: OK what about... B: That works. Let's read it out.... Still unclear. I'm thinking another sentence here. A: Maybe a diagram above this paragraph
The complexity of multi simultaneous users vs. syncing documents sequentially between devices is like an order of magnitude. It is rather easy to have conflict resolution strategies (i.e. merge) based on time when you start talking intelligent commutable change sets that's a very hard problem. Multi-user is not just a throw in, you design a product ground up to support that.
Huh? Adobe shop used to be more common before Adobe started growing through acquisition. A collection of tools built around PostScript rendering was how Adobe got into making many of their products. That market is what led them to acquire Macromedia and integrate their tools.
Oracle is newer to vertical integration. We'll have to see what being primarily and ERP vendor not a database vendor does to them over the next decade.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets take your example of mail. There are 2 aspects to it:
-- Complexity of getting mail to work. That's been steadily decreasing.
-- Complexity of policy regarding mail. Thing like storage, retention, information retrieval... That's been steadily increasing
-- Complexity of integrating mail with new systems. That's the real problem with a generic cloud solution. As soon as you bring in something that needs more than a basic API someone has to write middleware. That middleware then becomes part of the company's custom infrastructure. If there are 6 services connected to that middleware which have c1, c2... c6 chance of changing each year the chance the middleware has to change is:
1-(1-c1)(1-c2)...(1-c6) which gets fairly close to 100%.
BTW here is a pretty good diagram that shows an example of what I was talking about in terms of each version building on the previous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DotNet.svg
This is rather typical for the move from XP to 7 and specifically address the .NET issue.
I'm not getting one thing - why would they need all versions of .NET - aren't they all compatible?
No. AFAIK from a program perspective each version of .NET is independent. I know for certain that .NET 3.0 and .NET 4.0 must both be present on an XP system to run applications compiled against 3.0 and 4.0 respectively. You can see that React themselves are tracking the different frameworks as separate sub-projects: http://www.reactos.org/compat/?show=entry&id=646
Oh, and as far as Networking goes, support only IPv6 initially, and let IPv4 support be a separate addon program later - if needed. For both OSs
I'm all in favor of IPv6 migration. But many Win7 and certainly many XP applications are IPv4 only. v4 vs. v6 isn't the problem though between Win7 and XP. XP had a fairly basic networking stack. Win 7 has a networking stack with many layers of complexity each with their own API and the capabilities for self and programatic adjustments which are truly impressive http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx
___
The reason I'm arguing for the same time, is that mostly we are looking at subsets in terms of technology. There isn't much that's thrown away and each step builds on the previous replacing simple systems with vastly more complex systems. But even if that weren't the case, Win 7 includes compatibility modes, and many of them. So for example programs can make use of Win95/WinMe compatibility subsystem. And then quite literally you need to a have a functioning DOS for Win 7 application compatibility since some Win 7 applications still have parts that use emulated DOS.
____
The only thing ReactOS has going for them is the huge number of people still using XP and thus the huge number of applications that don't want to walk away from XP compatibility. The problem is more and more those XP users are people who just don't buy software at all. Once the developers move away from XP the desire to support Win8 is going to push them towards later versions of the .NET framework and ReactOS is going to be a system for legacy support.
That's not bad, but it ain't a threat to Microsoft.
No I'm not just assuming the Russians. Assume everyone who wants to be 10 years behind is fine with it.
There are a lot of things they need to do go from XP to Vista. They are working on .NET 2.0. To get to VIsta and more modern stuff they have to do .NET 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5. That's years and years of work. They have to build Aero, which is on the order of the complexity of building all of Windows XP. They have to rebuild the entire drive system to work with flash drives. They have to rebuild their network stack for all the complexity that was added to Vista, etc... That's years and years of work. Going from Vista to 7 isn't nearly as hard but they ain't gonna finish that in a week either.
So assuming they get XP done by 2015 (still aggressive), how long for Vista? I gotta figure 3 years minimum, 10-20 wouldn't shock me. Another year for Win 7, minimum and you are talking 2019 till they ship Windows 7. And that is very best case.
Windows XP came out in 2001. They are well over a decade behind. Even if we assume they can move at twice the speed of Microsoft starting from 15 years behind it takes them 20 years to get to 5 years, a major version behind. React is not going to run "all current Windows software" anytime in the foreseeable future. React OS is just not a threat.
Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?
I'm an iPhone user but I envy the BlackBerry Balance feature. The ability to completely cordon off work from home is a terrific feature. Far too often I end up accidentally sending work related emails, calendar invites... from my home email.
Microsoft has introduced the .NET framework and updated it multiple times. They've already created an operating system to transition people away from WInXP applications, Windows 8. Windows 7 had an XP as a VM built in and Windows 8 has Hypervisor standard. So the solution for Windows XP only applications is just to run XP as a guest OS on Windows 8, and later 9, 10, 11.... If ReactOS replaces the guest OS for legacy support, why would Microsoft even care?
Once you start talking people who are a decade behind you are talking customers who don't want to pay for software or services at all. How is losing them a threat to Microsoft? Even if we assume that React follows a disruptive pattern and is able to reduce that time from a decade to say 3 years ReactOS would be in the same situation as OS/2 just starting from further behind. Or Wine. And that's best case. The APIs can move much faster than a compatibility layer.
Microsoft win Windows 8 is starting to turn the machine back on for changes in the Windows ecosystem. The days where it was comfortable being this far behind are rapidly coming to an end.
OK. Interesting so is your theory they are buying it from someone or just keeping it in house? And if so why?
The issue isn't performance it is responsiveness. And kernels aren't irrelevant to end users. If you are on windows try loading Enterprise Server if on linux take your desktop kernel and tune the config file setting it like you would configure the prioritizer as if were a database server with several thousand clients. You'll see the difference rather instantly.
Most of the cool things in BB10 have nothing to do with QNX. But QNX is a rather unique advantage.
Deskop is a shrinking share of the market. There isn't much advantage in upgrading the OS for a legacy hardware desktop. In terms of upcoming laptops, it isn't really that much more expensive for touch. The real cost is the adjustable hinge to let the screen go to tablet form and that's about $150 even in quantity. OK so it costs $200 extra.
For a desktop you use a mirror device. These are common among artists where you have a high quality touch screen mirroring what is on the screen in front of you. The high quality touch gives tremendous precision. Right now they those pointing devices are around $2k but they aren't made in quantity. In quantity they could be done for about $200.
Java started life as Oak an embedded language. It was always meant to do real work.
I think you meant XNU, which is more properly referred to as Darwin. It's definitely not "Xenu". That's the big bad guy in Scientology
LOL. I did, and I think you are right about what I mixed up :) That's funny.
Whether it's an RTOS is essentially irrelevant. RTOSes are about providing guaranteed scheduling or IO response latency. A hard RTOS can provide an absolute, will-never-exceed delay, a soft RTOS will do it most of the time with rare exceptions. Either kind usually requires a fair degree of design cooperation between the kernel and userland code. (Particularly the hard flavor. You can't call a kernel in isolation hard-RT, it's a characteristic which applies to a complete system running a particular set of userland processes.)
Agreed. QNX also includes a fairly rich stack. I don't know enough about BB10 if it propagates all the way up.
____
I'm losing you on the rest of your argument. If the kernel can treat input as high priority and guarantee that any app that gets an input gets Y amount of CPU within Z time how does that not effectively guarantee responsiveness if apps are written to give feedback within Y?
Exactly. Windows 8 is designed for newer hardware. I don't know why people insist on using Windows 7 hardware with Windows 8 and grading Windows 8 based on how well it drives Windows 7 hardware. Though it would be nice if Microsoft were stricter as well.
In terms of regular settings... BlackBerry provides OS updates for their own phones. This is totally unlike Android and more like Apple. BlackBerry has a good reputation but they can do whatever they want.
As far as configuration and what you can turn off... I'm not sure what you mean at all.
Even for iOS users hundreds of dollars in apps is very very rare. iOS users spend 25-70x as much on apps per user as Android users. Moreover BB10 offers an Android emulator.
BB has two modes.
Home mode which is open. Inside the home mode the end user can download what they want.
Work mode which is secure. Inside the work mode the end user is restricted. Data cannot be copied from inside workmode apps to home mode apps.
QNX offers a RTOS. Linux, WinNT kernel and Xenu are all fundamentally server kernels. For smartphones, and for that matter desktop/laptop the extra responsiveness are likely worth lower throughput. It is an edge. I don't know if it is a huge edge but the functionality isn't quite analogous.
So it's completely broken then, and promotes insecurity.
How is it completely broken? It doesn't look inside applications and from Apple's perspective that's inside. If you want to enable specific things you turn them on.
And if the XML isn't documented, no matter how "clear" it may or may nor appear to be, then I risk in the future having entire companies shut down because some update assumed something I didn't know. Nice one Apple.
Apple provides a management interface to push updates on managed computers. You don't have any risk because managed computers update from the management servers not Apple.
I have to admit I'm not an expert but I believe they are just using: http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/ to implement File Quarantine.
Does it even allow disabling only applets?
No.
Is it even documented anywhere??
It is a pretty clear file.
Is it even documented anywhere??
It is at the Darwin layer. Darwin is open source.
Is there a gui for it?
There are lots of XML editing GUIs.
I don't know that the FCC is particularly bad, they are meant to be business friendly. But this concern to government regulators in general. I think we need to start having two types of government agencies.
Good cop agencies where people flow back and fourth rather freely.
Bad cop agencies where people are firmly on the regulator side and if they leave government leave for work outside the companies being regulated.
Collaborative document.
A: I don't like the way that sentence reads. What about a tense change like this.
B: OK that works but see this sentence I'm highlighting we are going to have to do a tense change there.
A: OK what about...
B: That works. Let's read it out.... Still unclear. I'm thinking another sentence here.
A: Maybe a diagram above this paragraph
etc...
The complexity of multi simultaneous users vs. syncing documents sequentially between devices is like an order of magnitude. It is rather easy to have conflict resolution strategies (i.e. merge) based on time when you start talking intelligent commutable change sets that's a very hard problem. Multi-user is not just a throw in, you design a product ground up to support that.
Huh? Adobe shop used to be more common before Adobe started growing through acquisition. A collection of tools built around PostScript rendering was how Adobe got into making many of their products. That market is what led them to acquire Macromedia and integrate their tools.
Oracle is newer to vertical integration. We'll have to see what being primarily and ERP vendor not a database vendor does to them over the next decade.