But WinFS is just a service. It doesn't change the on disk structures, thats still NTFS. The metadata is cached into an SQL Server Yukon based database that is stored in a hidden folder. They are changing the file system driver code, but only to make it more transactional to ensure the database and the file system remain consistent with one another. WinFS itself just runs as a usermode service, albeit a very heavyweight one in the early Alphas. I doubt the actual on disk layout will change at all, though they will probably start to make more use of existing NTFS features like multiple datastreams and junctions.
Do Apple let you install the Mac Mini bundled version of iLife on your other Macs? If not then you still need to purchase is seperately to run it on anything other than the Mac Mini, I find my 1Ghz Powerbook is barely fast enough for running Garageband 2 so I wouldn't think the Mini would be much better.
Well any kind of fast searching and browsing will require the metadata to be read from all the files and placed into some kind of indexed structure.
You don't want to be doing a query that requires thousands of individual files metadata to be read from locations all over the disk, there has to be a central storage, and you need to use an API provided by the central database to peform queries.
The remaining choice is whether you access and write the files though the central storage API or the standard platform API. Apple is going one way, Microsoft the other, though for backwards compatibility both methods are supported under WinFS. To support Win32 applications querying WinFS you will even be able to use paths for arbitrary queries. \\localhost\store\contacts\surname\williams etc.
Being journaled has nothing to do with needing to be defragmented. Journaling means that all file system operations are written to a log file before the changes are made to the state of the disk. Should anything go wrong during an operation, the state of the disk can be rolled back to before the operation started. Some journalling systems log the actual file data, others just log the state of the file system tables. I believe NTFS just logs the tables. See this for more information on how journalling works and what it is used for http://www.backupbook.com/03Freezes_and_Crashes/02 Journaling.html
All file systems need defragmenting. This is because file size can change, so a file that fits neatly into a gap at one point, once expanded, must be split into several parts. The only way to solve it is to reorgansise the files, so that a large enough space is created for the entire file to fit.
Some systems might do this silently in the background, HFS+ in OSX works this way, they reorganise the files as part of the write operation so the file is not left in a fragmented state. That just leads to reduced peformance all the time as a replacement for a long intensive reorganisation process only at scheduled times.
Its not the same thing. CoreImage is a way of using the GPU to speed up bitmap image effects, like blurs, distortions etc, the sorts of things you'd do with photoshop plugins.
Avalon is a way of using the GPU to speed up vector graphics operations. Lines, paths, animations, gradient fills, text layout and typography effects etc.
Its about getting Windows up to the same stage as Quartz on a Mac, a single advanced display model for all media elements,2D,Images,Video,Text etc, except Avalon uses the GPU through Direct 3D for all operations, while until now Quartz has beed CPU based which just the final desktop layout using the GPU with Quartz Extreme.
Avalon is not about doing 3D applications, though that is a possibility, its about using the power of the 3D processor to speed up 2D drawing and animation. Avalon also includes some image effect classes similar to CoreImage, but to say one will wipe away the other is a misunderstanding of their indended uses.
Well the main point is that it becomes part of the OS platform, rather than just a database in a particular application. I used Outlook in my example, but Thunderbird and Sunbird would work just as well, provided they used the underlying system concepts of Contact and Event. This means you are less dependant on all the latest MS stuff, so long as the applications stick to the system provided schemas.
WinFS acts as the common platform that allows anyone writing a photo management application to interpret metadata from all the various sources available, without coding for each one individually. Should Picasa have to know how to look inside Eudora's contact database?
Part of WinFS is about harvesting the information already embedded into files, and keeping the embedded information in sync with the database relationships. It hooks into the file system calls so that it is updated in realtime, ie. when tou use Winamp 2 to modify a ID3 tag through a Win32 file api, the database catches the write and updates its record of the metadata. Using the shell to change the same attribute would go through the database API, but the engine would then also update the ID3 tag in the file stream.
Its not just a background indexing service, Windows already has that. Its a relational layer on top of the file system. You don't just modify the file and hope that the system will get around to updating it index, you use the database level APIs to access and modify the data in the file, and the stream of bytes on the disk gets updated as a consequence.
If you think like a Microsoftie you see how this works. They have the Company picnic scheduled in Outlook (time, date and location), and have exchanged a few messages with Bob telling him they would meet him there, and messages with the organiser asking what activities will be taking place, (softball).
When the download the pictures off their camera, the system matches the available metadata from the pictures, with the rest of the data available from other sources. The pictures were taken at the time the company picnic was occuring and they said they would be attending, therefore the pictures were taken at the company picnic.
It might ask them to identify who is in the pictures (drag and drop into smart folders representing contacts), or it may run them through a face recognition system matching people with the list of picnic attendees.
Even so, if they do a search for "Bob playing softball", it will be able to find both Bob and Softball mentioned in emails relating to the Picnic event, and a set of photos taken at the time.
Its not a matter of manually tagging everything. The more useful informtion you put into WinFS, the more relationships it can create to help you locate things.
I think WinFS will only run on top of NTFS. In order to maintain the consistency of the database and the file system they are making changes to the NTFS file system driver to make it transactional.
You might want to watch this video on Channel9. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4670 2 Its discussing a research project called MyLifeBits, but in general it shows the sorts of queries that WinFS is trying to solve. Its about following a thread of information through relationships from several data types to reach what you are looking for. In his example he is able to locate pictures of a house he was interested in by following a trail from a contact, through a phone conversation, to the web pages he was viewing while having that conversation.
WinFS is about creating relationships and linking together data from different sources. As much as possible this will be done automatically based on existing data. So for example you go to your cousin's wedding, when get back and you import the photos from your digital camera the system can compare the photo timestamps in the exif data to the contents of your calender app and correctly link the photos to a specific event, time and place, and even contacts.
The fact that it is built into the platform means the core data is equally available to all applications. This means you won't have to keep your calender in Outlook for it all to work nicely, Sunbird would work just as well, and Picassa can show you your photos filtered by people you know from ICQ etc.
Lucovsky was one of the original core designers of NT, specifically he created the Win32 API as the primary API personality of the system.
There can't be many people who know more about Windows than he does, if Google wanted to create a Windows compatible system he would be a good person to have on their side.
I was reading "Showstopper!", the story of the creation of NT, a few weeks ago. It looks like Lucovsky was one of the original seven engineers that followed Cutler to Microsoft from Digital.
According to the book there was a standoff on their first day, as they all refused to sign the employment contract because it contained a 'paragraph 10' that specified that on leaving Microsoft they would not be allowed to work at a competitor for at least a year. They reasoned that if their contracts with Digital had such a stipulation, then Microsoft could not have hired them away so easily. It only seemed fair that Microsoft could not impose that restriction on them either. In the end Cutler complained, and with the cooperation of Microsoft's lawyers that paragraph was removed from the contracts before they all signed.
That doesn't mean Lucovsky was still working under the same contract in 2004 as he started with in 1989, but its an interesting question.
thats IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, which is usually a driver problem. Basically the driver should either lock any memory that it needs to access at a high IRQL, to prevent it being paged out, or only attempt to access the memory when the IRQL at or lower than DISPATCH level. Its not really a problem, provided the driver plays by the rules.
If you get the latest public build, WinHec 2004 4071, and enable the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) and then use Atl-Tab, all your windows stack on top of one another and tilt away from you. http://www.stardock.com/video/june2004/longhorn/lh 4074_6.jpg
Thats about the only 3D effect thats in Longhorn, you must be thinking of the Task Gallery research project or SphereXP.
Longhorn uses the 3D accelerator to render everything, Avalon the new presentation system is built on Direct3D, but so far theres not much actual 3D in the interface.
Re:The Problem With XML
on
Effective XML
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But with ITMS, you have to transfer the music between the Activated computers, and you have to keep backups in perpetuity. With Napster I can download the WMP plugin, sign in to my account, and instantly access to download or stream anything I have previously downloaded on another machine.
If in a couple of years another company comes out with a better subscription deal, even one that is incompatible with WMA/Janus, I can stop subscribing to one service and sign up with another without losing anything. An iTMS user is always locked to using Apple supported hardware and software.
As for burning mix CDs and letting your friends borrow them, did you read the iTMS terms of service?
"Usage Rules
You shall be authorized to use the Products only for personal, noncommercial use.
You shall be authorized to use the Products on five Apple-authorized devices at any time.
You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.
You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules, and that any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement. The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products. The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party. Apple reserves the right to modify the Usage Rules at any time."
When you press the "burn cd" button you do not have exactly the same thing as you would have bought in a store. Firstly the iTMS downloads were compressed with a lossy codec, so you have less audio information than you would with a bought cd. It will expand the 3MB AAC file back up to a 35MB PCM track, but you won't recover the information that was stripped out in the compression process.
Also part of the CD standard allows you to dictate how long a gap a cd player should leave between tracks. Artists use these values as part of the experiance of an Album. If you burn a CD from iTunes, you just have a CD with all the same tracks as an album, you don't have a copy of the album.
Well thats OK if you only want to listen to them on that one iPod mini "forever". If you want to continue to play them on a computer or transfer them to another portable device in future you have to hope that Apple doesn't go out of business in case you ever reformat/reinstall/buy a new pc/mac/harddrive/have your computer stolen etc and have to reactivate iTunes.
You also need to keep a backup copy of your purchased tracks. Perhaps currently on CD-R/DVD-R or an external firewire drive. Writable optical media tends to only last 18 months, and most hard drives go out of warrenty in 3 years, so you will have to do a regular backup-backup onto whatever media is popular at the time, perhaps blueray next time and some sort of holographic media a few iterations down the line. Or you might decide to keep them stored on a RAID array in which case you need to pay to have it powered up continuously and have drives swapped out periodically
You'll also have to make sure you always keep a backup copy of Windows2k/XP/OSX so that you can run iTunes, even if only under emulation, on whatever hardware/architechture/OS is popular a few decades down the line.
WinFS is not a file system, it is a database metadata store and file access API. Actual files will still be created and stored on NTFS underneath but will be indexed, accessed, linked and searched through an thick database layer.
You don't seriously believe that the HTML renderer is in kernel mode do you?
You should read some books on Windows architecture sometime. Lets just say its more like mshtml.dll -> gdi32.dll -> ntdll.dll ->/kernel mode/->win32k.sys -> ntoskrnl.exe
The MVPs can also get access, so all you need do is hang out on one of the MS newsgroups and answer the same questions over and again for a couple of years.
Slashdot Mirror
But WinFS is just a service. It doesn't change the on disk structures, thats still NTFS. The metadata is cached into an SQL Server Yukon based database that is stored in a hidden folder.
They are changing the file system driver code, but only to make it more transactional to ensure the database and the file system remain consistent with one another. WinFS itself just runs as a usermode service, albeit a very heavyweight one in the early Alphas. I doubt the actual on disk layout will change at all, though they will probably start to make more use of existing NTFS features like multiple datastreams and junctions.
Do Apple let you install the Mac Mini bundled version of iLife on your other Macs? If not then you still need to purchase is seperately to run it on anything other than the Mac Mini, I find my 1Ghz Powerbook is barely fast enough for running Garageband 2 so I wouldn't think the Mini would be much better.
Well any kind of fast searching and browsing will require the metadata to be read from all the files and placed into some kind of indexed structure.
You don't want to be doing a query that requires thousands of individual files metadata to be read from locations all over the disk, there has to be a central storage, and you need to use an API provided by the central database to peform queries.
The remaining choice is whether you access and write the files though the central storage API or the standard platform API. Apple is going one way, Microsoft the other, though for backwards compatibility both methods are supported under WinFS. To support Win32 applications querying WinFS you will even be able to use paths for arbitrary queries. \\localhost\store\contacts\surname\williams etc.
Being journaled has nothing to do with needing to be defragmented. Journaling means that all file system operations are written to a log file before the changes are made to the state of the disk. Should anything go wrong during an operation, the state of the disk can be rolled back to before the operation started. Some journalling systems log the actual file data, others just log the state of the file system tables. I believe NTFS just logs the tables.2 Journaling.html
See this for more information on how journalling works and what it is used for http://www.backupbook.com/03Freezes_and_Crashes/0
All file systems need defragmenting. This is because file size can change, so a file that fits neatly into a gap at one point, once expanded, must be split into several parts. The only way to solve it is to reorgansise the files, so that a large enough space is created for the entire file to fit.
Some systems might do this silently in the background, HFS+ in OSX works this way, they reorganise the files as part of the write operation so the file is not left in a fragmented state. That just leads to reduced peformance all the time as a replacement for a long intensive reorganisation process only at scheduled times.
Its not the same thing.
CoreImage is a way of using the GPU to speed up bitmap image effects, like blurs, distortions etc, the sorts of things you'd do with photoshop plugins.
Avalon is a way of using the GPU to speed up vector graphics operations. Lines, paths, animations, gradient fills, text layout and typography effects etc.
Its about getting Windows up to the same stage as Quartz on a Mac, a single advanced display model for all media elements,2D,Images,Video,Text etc, except Avalon uses the GPU through Direct 3D for all operations, while until now Quartz has beed CPU based which just the final desktop layout using the GPU with Quartz Extreme.
Avalon is not about doing 3D applications, though that is a possibility, its about using the power of the 3D processor to speed up 2D drawing and animation. Avalon also includes some image effect classes similar to CoreImage, but to say one will wipe away the other is a misunderstanding of their indended uses.
Well the main point is that it becomes part of the OS platform, rather than just a database in a particular application. I used Outlook in my example, but Thunderbird and Sunbird would work just as well, provided they used the underlying system concepts of Contact and Event.
This means you are less dependant on all the latest MS stuff, so long as the applications stick to the system provided schemas.
WinFS acts as the common platform that allows anyone writing a photo management application to interpret metadata from all the various sources available, without coding for each one individually. Should Picasa have to know how to look inside Eudora's contact database?
Part of WinFS is about harvesting the information already embedded into files, and keeping the embedded information in sync with the database relationships.
It hooks into the file system calls so that it is updated in realtime, ie. when tou use Winamp 2 to modify a ID3 tag through a Win32 file api, the database catches the write and updates its record of the metadata.
Using the shell to change the same attribute would go through the database API, but the engine would then also update the ID3 tag in the file stream.
Its not just a background indexing service, Windows already has that. Its a relational layer on top of the file system. You don't just modify the file and hope that the system will get around to updating it index, you use the database level APIs to access and modify the data in the file, and the stream of bytes on the disk gets updated as a consequence.
If you think like a Microsoftie you see how this works. They have the Company picnic scheduled in Outlook (time, date and location), and have exchanged a few messages with Bob telling him they would meet him there, and messages with the organiser asking what activities will be taking place, (softball).
When the download the pictures off their camera, the system matches the available metadata from the pictures, with the rest of the data available from other sources. The pictures were taken at the time the company picnic was occuring and they said they would be attending, therefore the pictures were taken at the company picnic.
It might ask them to identify who is in the pictures (drag and drop into smart folders representing contacts), or it may run them through a face recognition system matching people with the list of picnic attendees.
Even so, if they do a search for "Bob playing softball", it will be able to find both Bob and Softball mentioned in emails relating to the Picnic event, and a set of photos taken at the time.
Its not a matter of manually tagging everything. The more useful informtion you put into WinFS, the more relationships it can create to help you locate things.
I think WinFS will only run on top of NTFS. In order to maintain the consistency of the database and the file system they are making changes to the NTFS file system driver to make it transactional.
You might want to watch this video on Channel9.0 2
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=467
Its discussing a research project called MyLifeBits, but in general it shows the sorts of queries that WinFS is trying to solve.
Its about following a thread of information through relationships from several data types to reach what you are looking for. In his example he is able to locate pictures of a house he was interested in by following a trail from a contact, through a phone conversation, to the web pages he was viewing while having that conversation.
WinFS is about creating relationships and linking together data from different sources. As much as possible this will be done automatically based on existing data. So for example you go to your cousin's wedding, when get back and you import the photos from your digital camera the system can compare the photo timestamps in the exif data to the contents of your calender app and correctly link the photos to a specific event, time and place, and even contacts.
The fact that it is built into the platform means the core data is equally available to all applications. This means you won't have to keep your calender in Outlook for it all to work nicely, Sunbird would work just as well, and Picassa can show you your photos filtered by people you know from ICQ etc.
WTF?
NTFS has always been journaling. It was the primary design requirement.
Lucovsky was one of the original core designers of NT, specifically he created the Win32 API as the primary API personality of the system.
There can't be many people who know more about Windows than he does, if Google wanted to create a Windows compatible system he would be a good person to have on their side.
It's interesting you should say that.
I was reading "Showstopper!", the story of the creation of NT, a few weeks ago. It looks like Lucovsky was one of the original seven engineers that followed Cutler to Microsoft from Digital.
According to the book there was a standoff on their first day, as they all refused to sign the employment contract because it contained a 'paragraph 10' that specified that on leaving Microsoft they would not be allowed to work at a competitor for at least a year.
They reasoned that if their contracts with Digital had such a stipulation, then Microsoft could not have hired them away so easily. It only seemed fair that Microsoft could not impose that restriction on them either. In the end Cutler complained, and with the cooperation of Microsoft's lawyers that paragraph was removed from the contracts before they all signed.
That doesn't mean Lucovsky was still working under the same contract in 2004 as he started with in 1989, but its an interesting question.
thats IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, which is usually a driver problem.
Basically the driver should either lock any memory that it needs to access at a high IRQL, to prevent it being paged out, or only attempt to access the memory when the IRQL at or lower than DISPATCH level.
Its not really a problem, provided the driver plays by the rules.
Yes it's written in Java, and uses the Java3D API.
If you get the latest public build, WinHec 2004 4071, and enable the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) and then use Atl-Tab, all your windows stack on top of one another and tilt away from you.h 4074_6.jpg
http://www.stardock.com/video/june2004/longhorn/l
Thats about the only 3D effect thats in Longhorn, you must be thinking of the Task Gallery research project or SphereXP.
Longhorn uses the 3D accelerator to render everything, Avalon the new presentation system is built on Direct3D, but so far theres not much actual 3D in the interface.
Sounds like you've been reading Joel.3 19.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
Well they were stress testing SQL Server 2005, on a 64 CPU HP Machine. I don't think you'd consider that a toy.
1 6
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=314
But with ITMS, you have to transfer the music between the Activated computers, and you have to keep backups in perpetuity. With Napster I can download the WMP plugin, sign in to my account, and instantly access to download or stream anything I have previously downloaded on another machine.
If in a couple of years another company comes out with a better subscription deal, even one that is incompatible with WMA/Janus, I can stop subscribing to one service and sign up with another without losing anything. An iTMS user is always locked to using Apple supported hardware and software.
As for burning mix CDs and letting your friends borrow them, did you read the iTMS terms of service?
"Usage Rules
You shall be authorized to use the Products only for personal, noncommercial use.
You shall be authorized to use the Products on five Apple-authorized devices at any time.
You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.
You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules, and that any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement. The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products. The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party. Apple reserves the right to modify the Usage Rules at any time."
When you press the "burn cd" button you do not have exactly the same thing as you would have bought in a store. Firstly the iTMS downloads were compressed with a lossy codec, so you have less audio information than you would with a bought cd. It will expand the 3MB AAC file back up to a 35MB PCM track, but you won't recover the information that was stripped out in the compression process.
Also part of the CD standard allows you to dictate how long a gap a cd player should leave between tracks. Artists use these values as part of the experiance of an Album. If you burn a CD from iTunes, you just have a CD with all the same tracks as an album, you don't have a copy of the album.
Well thats OK if you only want to listen to them on that one iPod mini "forever". If you want to continue to play them on a computer or transfer them to another portable device in future you have to hope that Apple doesn't go out of business in case you ever reformat/reinstall/buy a new pc/mac/harddrive/have your computer stolen etc and have to reactivate iTunes.
You also need to keep a backup copy of your purchased tracks. Perhaps currently on CD-R/DVD-R or an external firewire drive. Writable optical media tends to only last 18 months, and most hard drives go out of warrenty in 3 years, so you will have to do a regular backup-backup onto whatever media is popular at the time, perhaps blueray next time and some sort of holographic media a few iterations down the line. Or you might decide to keep them stored on a RAID array in which case you need to pay to have it powered up continuously and have drives swapped out periodically
You'll also have to make sure you always keep a backup copy of Windows2k/XP/OSX so that you can run iTunes, even if only under emulation, on whatever hardware/architechture/OS is popular a few decades down the line.
WinFS is not a file system, it is a database metadata store and file access API. Actual files will still be created and stored on NTFS underneath but will be indexed, accessed, linked and searched through an thick database layer.
You don't seriously believe that the HTML renderer is in kernel mode do you?
You should read some books on Windows architecture sometime.
Lets just say its more like
mshtml.dll -> gdi32.dll -> ntdll.dll ->/kernel mode/->win32k.sys -> ntoskrnl.exe
Someone mod this up please, Its a classic.
The MVPs can also get access, so all you need do is hang out on one of the MS newsgroups and answer the same questions over and again for a couple of years.