No. The NT kernel is stable, reasonably well documented, and supported by a very large company. ReactOS is none of the above, although they're working on it.
With it, people would compile UNIX apps for OS/2, and they would just require a single DLL, not the entire craziness that Cygwin-compiled apps can be.
Technically, Cygwin is just a single DLL. All the extra craziness you see is an attempt to build a complete environment instead of just single tools. As a result, Cygwin ends up being something of an "OS shell inside an OS shell". But there are supposedly quite a few programs using only the DLL. In fact, you can install the DLL into the path, then use the command line utilities from CMD.exe.
The Windows people couldn't care less, and the UNIX people would rather swallow swords than use the NT kernel, especially with FreeBSD and Linux out there... Is this doable? Absolutely. Is it worthwhile? People's words to the contrary, there hasn't been a huge groundswell of support...
There are a couple of reasons why Unix support never materialized:
1. Microsoft pushed the Win32 API whenever possible. They knew it was crap (see: Barbarians at the Gates) because they had intentionally made it crap to lock in programs and prevent Win32 copycats such as WINE.
2. The Unix vendors who did embrace NT found that Microsoft was actually using as a way of killing them on the vine, and had no interest in actually following through on their promises. i.e. There used to MIPS and Alpha versions of Windows NT. Where are they now?
3. The smart Unix vendors (e.g. Sun) knew that the NT kernel was quite powerful and could potentially offer up real workstation competition once mature. As a result, they buried the NT kernel as best as they could. In Sun's case they penned an exclusive deal to port NT to the Sparc architecture. Too bad Microsoft didn't add a delivery date to the contract, because Sun happily sat on their exclusive contract while Microsoft stomped around angrily. While Sun didn't manage to keep Microsoft permanently out of the server arena, they did delay them until PC hardware managed to catch up to the Sparc architecture.
Of course, Gentoo is free from these political issues, so they're in something of a unique position to produce a *working* OS. If this goes anywhere, I do expect Microsoft's lawyers to start getting itchy, though...
*happy dance* *happy dance* *doing the happy dance!*
If you check the FAQ for the project, they say that it is a REAL project! There's even installation instructions to get it up and running! Now if you bozos would stop slashdotting the damn thing into the next century, I might be able to try it out!
IE for Unix was horrid anyway, but it demonstrate that there was absolutely no technical barrier to porting code to that platform. In fact I reckon it would take considerably less work to port Office to Linux (using WINE) that it woulde to port it to OS X.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me. Remember when Win95 first came out? Win32 was offerred as an upgrade to Win3.1. Once you had the Win32 library installed, you could run many of the programs supposedly designed only for Win95. Interesting how a completely incompatible OS could be updated with a single DLL, isn't it? It sort of proved to the world that the Win32 API and the underlying kernel were actually two separate entities. (As they should be.)
Why is this supposed to be "funny"? I actually think it's a decent concept, potentially worth pursuing. Believe it or not, beneath all the cruft, applications running in kernel space, and other oddities of the Win32 system, there actually exists a solid VMS kernel at the core. It was reasonably well designed with all kinds of modern features that are hard to find on any OS (including Windows itself:-/). I've always thought it to be one of the greatest crimes to humanity that Microsoft first allows the VMS team to build a truely competitive kernel, then cruftify it with all their Win32 crapola. They *should* have defined a WinNT32 API from scratch and deprecated the old Win32 cruft.
Sooo... has anyone actually tried hacking the NT kernel like this yet? I've got QEmu all ready to go if you can give me some scripts and point me to the source packages.
though if you want a legit 4/1 laugh, read this for an explanation of how SQL Server and Oracle might be equal in the "you get what you pay for" area
Looking at your link, I suddenly realize why Oracle always seems so much faster and flexible. It seems that it is. (Especially when you've got a good DBA. Booyah!):-)
Now if only Oracle didn't cost so damn much...
Thank God IE 5.5 for Mac died a swift death.
Sorry sport, there was nothing swift about IE4Mac's death. Even after IE 5 for Solaris and HP-UX was long dead, Microsoft continued to "support" IE 5.5 for Mac. Unfortunately, that "support" meant that they were actually letting it rot and didn't give a damn. So Mac users continued to blithly use it thinking it was the best thing since sliced bread. All I can say is, thank God for Safari.
Interesting. When I tried to install IE on my Ultra 5, the installer corrupted my CDE desktop. It was at that point that I realized that I didn'r actually *need* IE all that much, and I started doing nightly builds of Mozilla. Mozilla 1.0 turned out to be only a few months down the road at that point.
It's too bad this is a (rather stupid) April Fools joke. There's actually a lot of sense in porting SQL Server to other platforms. For one, SQL Server could take advantage of larger machines with more memory, I/O, and multiprocessing capability. At the same time, the portable engine could be linked into far more products, including XBOx games which need an embedded database for storage. (Hell, does anyone remember when BTrieve, now PervasiveSQL, used to be part of Netware's networking and routing stack?) As it is, they're giving Sybase a small amount of reason to live. If you check Sybase's marketing, you'll find that 90% of it is geared toward "convert your SQL Server database to Unix/Linux!"
The truth of the matter is that Microsoft could be doing a lot more business if they'd stop insisting that their OS be used at all times, period. Look at their Office X product line, for example. As I understand it, Microsoft is generating excellent revenue from its existence. While Office might not make as much sense on other OSes, Microsoft could probably sell SQL Server for Unix, IIS for Unix, and Active Directory for Unix. At the very least it would keep people from sticking SAMBA servers all over the place.
BTW, did anyone notice that Microsoft's "cross-platform" versions of IE disappeared shortly after the Feds found them to be a monopoly? Almost seems like the products existed only for the purpose of making it *look* like Microsoft was playing nice. Once it was proven that they weren't, they stopped trying to keep the image up. Not that I know of anyone who actually *used* IE for Solaris...
Yep, that's what's really needed for Pong, a higher resolution display. That'd make those big rectangular bricks look so much more realistic!
Well, when you compare it to a cheap-ass projector, it becomes apparent that high-resolution does have value. Using a cheaply made projector, the paddles and ball are likely to look blurry resulting in the need to constantly adjust the optics and/or position of the device.
Using an inexpensive laser scanner, you can build a projector that is brighter, has no focus issues, and can be projected on nearly any surface; even the side of a building! It's hard to show the same results for a similarly priced bulb-projector.
The only down side is that most commercial lasers are of a "pulse" type which cause a rather annoying flicker. (You may have noticed that the dot of many laser pointers appears to be "spotted".) This flickering can give users headaches, or potentially even seizures.
Funny you should mention that. I was just considering the idea myself. It would certainly give a higher resolution, but I'm concerned that the "pulse" aspect of most commercial lasers would give people headaches.
Nothing. It would just be nice to have a complete package for people with more money than time. Hopefully they'll figure out a way of making the projector a bit cheaper. (Shouldn't be too hard considering that the game doesn't require much. Perhaps an electromechanical game in front of a light bulb, plus a minor amount of optics.)
Am I the only one who wishes the Pong thing *wasn't* a joke? I mean, how cool would it be to project Pong onto an entire wall? If others are like me, ThinkGeek may end up having to make it into a *real* product.:-)
If you haven't done it yet, log out of your account and watch the MB counter on the front page. It's mesmerizing... like watching a disk defrag or something...
If Microsoft identifies Novell as a threat (I'm sure they have), they need only give away Microsoft products/service to their customers for a while - like they have already - until Novell runs out of money.
Except that's illegal fot a monopoly. That's why Microsoft keeps getting into hot water with evey government in the world. As a result, Microsoft has had to curb some of its more "generous" behavior.
Not that Microsoft is going to see Novell as a threat anytime soon. In order to get ahead in the market, Novell has to produce a compelling product. By compelling, I mean that you'll want to run out and buy it right now. Part of that is having better tech than everyone else (check), and part of it is having a powerful marketing image (not so check). The fact that I can't even see a *screenshot* on Novell's site isn't doing much to improve things for them.:-/
Hmm... seems you're right. I did some digging, and I think I'm confusing it with Star Crusader. The game I remember had a storyline that progressed through some text between missions, and had the "amazing" feature of allowing you to change sides during a battle. It was supposed to be the big Wing Commander killer, but I found it to be as boring as watching paint dry. Probably because I never really got a good feel for who was who, what was what, and what I was even fighting for.
It's interesting how tons of Wing Commander clones have come and gone, yet not a one has managed to capture that same "magic" as the true series. Starting with Jagged Alliance, then going to Allegience, Descent: Freespace, StarShock, all the way through X:2, they all manage to look nice but somehow lack gameplay. Even Chris Robert's Freelancer didn't manage to compete with his own series!
So, if you've got a craving for Wing Commander, go grab the original titles off of EBay. Then when you're done with those, go grab the free Wing Commander: Secret Ops starter kit. (Yes, it was official Wing Commander!) You may need to mess around with the XP Application Compatibility Toolkit to get it running. (Hint: Install ALL the shims for the Heap.) Once you've got that installed and played, you can try these great fan-made Secret Ops add ons:
Probably not, but at least they couldn't lay blame on anyone except themselves. Let their server come down a few times, and we'll see if they continue thinking the same way. Or perhaps the administrators really are that good, in which case let them disable it.
My only point is that 2003's current security model is pathetic. Only a few minor changes could make it not pathetic, but Microsoft isn't willing to go there.
1. You never hear anyone complain that they can't "surf" from their $50,000 Sun Server.
2. The option to reenable all of these features should be there, just have a nasty looking warning that says "Enabling this feature WILL compromise the security of this server. Are you sure you want to do this?" See if they still want to enable it then.;-)
Which is what most people do. Which enhances security... how again? It's really a stupid way of "securing" a Windows machine, because it really amounts to nothing more than a nag screen telling you to not click on anything or the boogeyman is going to get you.:-/
Considering that the only reason why you need a web browser on a server is for troubleshooting and patch downloads, then disabling browser plugins, disabling auto-file open/external URL handlers, and removing ActiveX support should do the trick nicely.
I think that's what he meant. It's actually a really stupid lockdown, too. For every bloody damn site in existence: "Internet Explorer has blocked this site because it is currently untrusted." (Add to trusted list button at the bottom.)
I don't know why everyone thinks this is funny. I should be getting a +1 "true 'dat!". Unless, that is, most people around here don't believe me? (In which case you don't know Bill Gates very well...)
They lied. 2003 is a very poor execuse for a Desktop/Gaming machine. Not even Microsoft recommends it as such.
FWIW, Microsoft did manage to consolidate things about the time of XP. The reason why they unconsolidated was to bring many of their security features to the server market so that they wouldn't get trounced on by the competition before Longhorn is released. And to actually say something nice about Microsoft, 2003 *is* more secure. Unfortunately, most of that security is added in a rather stupid way. "You can't run IE because it is insecure. Would you like to make it runnable anyway? (Y/N)" (rolls eyes)
And not even Billy Gates would bet against it, he's too good a businessman for that.
Pfff! As if! Bill Gates would take your bet, then he'd make sure that copies of SP1 stay out of the hands of the most common bug reporters, that tech support convienently "loses" any reports that do come in, and he'd send CERT on an all expenses paid (and tax deductable!) vacation for doing such a good job.
Then he'd collect his 10 pounds, and make a fortune off of advertising that 2003 is more secure than ever!
Slashdot Mirror
No. The NT kernel is stable, reasonably well documented, and supported by a very large company. ReactOS is none of the above, although they're working on it.
With it, people would compile UNIX apps for OS/2, and they would just require a single DLL, not the entire craziness that Cygwin-compiled apps can be.
Technically, Cygwin is just a single DLL. All the extra craziness you see is an attempt to build a complete environment instead of just single tools. As a result, Cygwin ends up being something of an "OS shell inside an OS shell". But there are supposedly quite a few programs using only the DLL. In fact, you can install the DLL into the path, then use the command line utilities from CMD.exe.
The Windows people couldn't care less, and the UNIX people would rather swallow swords than use the NT kernel, especially with FreeBSD and Linux out there... Is this doable? Absolutely. Is it worthwhile? People's words to the contrary, there hasn't been a huge groundswell of support...
There are a couple of reasons why Unix support never materialized:
1. Microsoft pushed the Win32 API whenever possible. They knew it was crap (see: Barbarians at the Gates) because they had intentionally made it crap to lock in programs and prevent Win32 copycats such as WINE.
2. The Unix vendors who did embrace NT found that Microsoft was actually using as a way of killing them on the vine, and had no interest in actually following through on their promises. i.e. There used to MIPS and Alpha versions of Windows NT. Where are they now?
3. The smart Unix vendors (e.g. Sun) knew that the NT kernel was quite powerful and could potentially offer up real workstation competition once mature. As a result, they buried the NT kernel as best as they could. In Sun's case they penned an exclusive deal to port NT to the Sparc architecture. Too bad Microsoft didn't add a delivery date to the contract, because Sun happily sat on their exclusive contract while Microsoft stomped around angrily. While Sun didn't manage to keep Microsoft permanently out of the server arena, they did delay them until PC hardware managed to catch up to the Sparc architecture.
Of course, Gentoo is free from these political issues, so they're in something of a unique position to produce a *working* OS. If this goes anywhere, I do expect Microsoft's lawyers to start getting itchy, though...
*happy dance* *happy dance* *doing the happy dance!*
:-D
If you check the FAQ for the project, they say that it is a REAL project! There's even installation instructions to get it up and running! Now if you bozos would stop slashdotting the damn thing into the next century, I might be able to try it out!
*happy dance* *happy dance*
IE for Unix was horrid anyway, but it demonstrate that there was absolutely no technical barrier to porting code to that platform. In fact I reckon it would take considerably less work to port Office to Linux (using WINE) that it woulde to port it to OS X.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me. Remember when Win95 first came out? Win32 was offerred as an upgrade to Win3.1. Once you had the Win32 library installed, you could run many of the programs supposedly designed only for Win95. Interesting how a completely incompatible OS could be updated with a single DLL, isn't it? It sort of proved to the world that the Win32 API and the underlying kernel were actually two separate entities. (As they should be.)
Why is this supposed to be "funny"? I actually think it's a decent concept, potentially worth pursuing. Believe it or not, beneath all the cruft, applications running in kernel space, and other oddities of the Win32 system, there actually exists a solid VMS kernel at the core. It was reasonably well designed with all kinds of modern features that are hard to find on any OS (including Windows itself :-/). I've always thought it to be one of the greatest crimes to humanity that Microsoft first allows the VMS team to build a truely competitive kernel, then cruftify it with all their Win32 crapola. They *should* have defined a WinNT32 API from scratch and deprecated the old Win32 cruft.
Sooo... has anyone actually tried hacking the NT kernel like this yet? I've got QEmu all ready to go if you can give me some scripts and point me to the source packages.
though if you want a legit 4/1 laugh, read this for an explanation of how SQL Server and Oracle might be equal in the "you get what you pay for" area
:-)
Looking at your link, I suddenly realize why Oracle always seems so much faster and flexible. It seems that it is. (Especially when you've got a good DBA. Booyah!)
Now if only Oracle didn't cost so damn much...
Thank God IE 5.5 for Mac died a swift death.
Sorry sport, there was nothing swift about IE4Mac's death. Even after IE 5 for Solaris and HP-UX was long dead, Microsoft continued to "support" IE 5.5 for Mac. Unfortunately, that "support" meant that they were actually letting it rot and didn't give a damn. So Mac users continued to blithly use it thinking it was the best thing since sliced bread. All I can say is, thank God for Safari.
Interesting. When I tried to install IE on my Ultra 5, the installer corrupted my CDE desktop. It was at that point that I realized that I didn'r actually *need* IE all that much, and I started doing nightly builds of Mozilla. Mozilla 1.0 turned out to be only a few months down the road at that point.
It's too bad this is a (rather stupid) April Fools joke. There's actually a lot of sense in porting SQL Server to other platforms. For one, SQL Server could take advantage of larger machines with more memory, I/O, and multiprocessing capability. At the same time, the portable engine could be linked into far more products, including XBOx games which need an embedded database for storage. (Hell, does anyone remember when BTrieve, now PervasiveSQL, used to be part of Netware's networking and routing stack?) As it is, they're giving Sybase a small amount of reason to live. If you check Sybase's marketing, you'll find that 90% of it is geared toward "convert your SQL Server database to Unix/Linux!"
The truth of the matter is that Microsoft could be doing a lot more business if they'd stop insisting that their OS be used at all times, period. Look at their Office X product line, for example. As I understand it, Microsoft is generating excellent revenue from its existence. While Office might not make as much sense on other OSes, Microsoft could probably sell SQL Server for Unix, IIS for Unix, and Active Directory for Unix. At the very least it would keep people from sticking SAMBA servers all over the place.
BTW, did anyone notice that Microsoft's "cross-platform" versions of IE disappeared shortly after the Feds found them to be a monopoly? Almost seems like the products existed only for the purpose of making it *look* like Microsoft was playing nice. Once it was proven that they weren't, they stopped trying to keep the image up. Not that I know of anyone who actually *used* IE for Solaris...
Yep, that's what's really needed for Pong, a higher resolution display. That'd make those big rectangular bricks look so much more realistic!
Well, when you compare it to a cheap-ass projector, it becomes apparent that high-resolution does have value. Using a cheaply made projector, the paddles and ball are likely to look blurry resulting in the need to constantly adjust the optics and/or position of the device.
Using an inexpensive laser scanner, you can build a projector that is brighter, has no focus issues, and can be projected on nearly any surface; even the side of a building! It's hard to show the same results for a similarly priced bulb-projector.
The only down side is that most commercial lasers are of a "pulse" type which cause a rather annoying flicker. (You may have noticed that the dot of many laser pointers appears to be "spotted".) This flickering can give users headaches, or potentially even seizures.
I wonder if you could do it with lasers?
Funny you should mention that. I was just considering the idea myself. It would certainly give a higher resolution, but I'm concerned that the "pulse" aspect of most commercial lasers would give people headaches.
what's to stop you from doing it?
Nothing. It would just be nice to have a complete package for people with more money than time. Hopefully they'll figure out a way of making the projector a bit cheaper. (Shouldn't be too hard considering that the game doesn't require much. Perhaps an electromechanical game in front of a light bulb, plus a minor amount of optics.)
Am I the only one who wishes the Pong thing *wasn't* a joke? I mean, how cool would it be to project Pong onto an entire wall? If others are like me, ThinkGeek may end up having to make it into a *real* product. :-)
If you haven't done it yet, log out of your account and watch the MB counter on the front page. It's mesmerizing... like watching a disk defrag or something...
If Microsoft identifies Novell as a threat (I'm sure they have), they need only give away Microsoft products/service to their customers for a while - like they have already - until Novell runs out of money.
:-/
Except that's illegal fot a monopoly. That's why Microsoft keeps getting into hot water with evey government in the world. As a result, Microsoft has had to curb some of its more "generous" behavior.
Not that Microsoft is going to see Novell as a threat anytime soon. In order to get ahead in the market, Novell has to produce a compelling product. By compelling, I mean that you'll want to run out and buy it right now. Part of that is having better tech than everyone else (check), and part of it is having a powerful marketing image (not so check). The fact that I can't even see a *screenshot* on Novell's site isn't doing much to improve things for them.
Hmm... seems you're right. I did some digging, and I think I'm confusing it with Star Crusader. The game I remember had a storyline that progressed through some text between missions, and had the "amazing" feature of allowing you to change sides during a battle. It was supposed to be the big Wing Commander killer, but I found it to be as boring as watching paint dry. Probably because I never really got a good feel for who was who, what was what, and what I was even fighting for.
Oooh, almost forgot Flight Commander. A *from scratch* fan made engine. In some ways better than the Vega Strike engine, in some ways worse:
http://flightcommander.solsector.net/
Sorry, wrong link for the remake. It's at http://priv.solsector.net/, not at http://privateer.solsector.net/. (What's this? New auto-links from Slashdot? Me like!)
Then play it again, Sam. :-)
:-)
It's interesting how tons of Wing Commander clones have come and gone, yet not a one has managed to capture that same "magic" as the true series. Starting with Jagged Alliance, then going to Allegience, Descent: Freespace, StarShock, all the way through X:2, they all manage to look nice but somehow lack gameplay. Even Chris Robert's Freelancer didn't manage to compete with his own series!
So, if you've got a craving for Wing Commander, go grab the original titles off of EBay. Then when you're done with those, go grab the free Wing Commander: Secret Ops starter kit. (Yes, it was official Wing Commander!) You may need to mess around with the XP Application Compatibility Toolkit to get it running. (Hint: Install ALL the shims for the Heap.) Once you've got that installed and played, you can try these great fan-made Secret Ops add ons:
Unknown Enemy
Standoff
Secret Ops Missions
And if you STILL can't get enough Wing Commander (*burp*), yell at EA that we need another title! See you at WCNews.
Probably not, but at least they couldn't lay blame on anyone except themselves. Let their server come down a few times, and we'll see if they continue thinking the same way. Or perhaps the administrators really are that good, in which case let them disable it.
My only point is that 2003's current security model is pathetic. Only a few minor changes could make it not pathetic, but Microsoft isn't willing to go there.
1. You never hear anyone complain that they can't "surf" from their $50,000 Sun Server.
;-)
2. The option to reenable all of these features should be there, just have a nasty looking warning that says "Enabling this feature WILL compromise the security of this server. Are you sure you want to do this?" See if they still want to enable it then.
Which is what most people do. Which enhances security... how again? It's really a stupid way of "securing" a Windows machine, because it really amounts to nothing more than a nag screen telling you to not click on anything or the boogeyman is going to get you. :-/
Considering that the only reason why you need a web browser on a server is for troubleshooting and patch downloads, then disabling browser plugins, disabling auto-file open/external URL handlers, and removing ActiveX support should do the trick nicely.
I think that's what he meant. It's actually a really stupid lockdown, too. For every bloody damn site in existence: "Internet Explorer has blocked this site because it is currently untrusted." (Add to trusted list button at the bottom.)
I don't know why everyone thinks this is funny. I should be getting a +1 "true 'dat!". Unless, that is, most people around here don't believe me? (In which case you don't know Bill Gates very well...)
They lied. 2003 is a very poor execuse for a Desktop/Gaming machine. Not even Microsoft recommends it as such.
FWIW, Microsoft did manage to consolidate things about the time of XP. The reason why they unconsolidated was to bring many of their security features to the server market so that they wouldn't get trounced on by the competition before Longhorn is released. And to actually say something nice about Microsoft, 2003 *is* more secure. Unfortunately, most of that security is added in a rather stupid way. "You can't run IE because it is insecure. Would you like to make it runnable anyway? (Y/N)" (rolls eyes)
And not even Billy Gates would bet against it, he's too good a businessman for that.
Pfff! As if! Bill Gates would take your bet, then he'd make sure that copies of SP1 stay out of the hands of the most common bug reporters, that tech support convienently "loses" any reports that do come in, and he'd send CERT on an all expenses paid (and tax deductable!) vacation for doing such a good job.
Then he'd collect his 10 pounds, and make a fortune off of advertising that 2003 is more secure than ever!