Actually, MS has already released the CLI under some special license. It is supposed to compile and run under either windows XP or FreeBSD. You can get it here.
mlk mentioned it a little, but the code for the real os is far from being useless. BeOS sold its assets (including BeIA and BeOS) to palm awhile ago. Be is still in existance solely to keep up the lawsuit against microsoft. There are about 2 employees. For all other purposes, as they have openly stated, Be is Dead.
BeOS on the other hand, will see the light of day again hopefully in palm os 5. Rumor has it that PalmOS5 will include many of the BeOS stuff, taken from both BeOS itself and its derivative, BeIA. If all goes well, we'll get a palm os that rocks and kicks the pants off of pocketpc!
I understand your assessment, and if correct I think this part of the license defeats perhaps the most valuable part of Remote Desktop
I've been using XP since beta 2 (anyone remember that? quite an experience) and have been using remote desktop the entire time. At school, we have a collection of 2k and NT machines, and a bunch of imacs. I have many programs installed at home that I don't have at school. When I need them, I sit at any of the computers, go to a web page hosted on IIS on the XP machine at home which loads up an activex version of the client. Suddenly, I'm at my home computer, running homesite or whatever. Even my visual styles and sound come through.
Now this is cool, but I can do this with VNC. What coolest part of Remote Desktop is actually disabled in XP Pro and Home for the very reasons that this license exists. In Windows 2000 Server I can have 20 clients, running whatever version of windows, or even Windows CE (or unix with 3rd party stuff) connecting to the server, each running their own instance of windows and applications, invisible to each other. But in order to do that, I have to have 20 licenses. As I recall, they're not full windows licenses, but Terminal Client Licenses. Microsoft is doing the exact same thing with XP client. I think this actually becomes a non-issue since the feature is disabled anyway, this just prevents 3-rd party programs from enabling it. Longhorn, supposedly, will have it enabled, so you can have multiple simultaneous sessions on one xp client computer.
Sorry this post is getting so long, but here's my conclusion. I don't think this license is preventing, or attempting to prevent the use of VNC or pcanywhere. It is trying to prevent the use of and XP client (pro or home version) as an application server. The functionality is essentially there, though disabled, and Microsoft would much rather have you buy the server version. Just like IIS is availiable, but crippled, in the client versions. If you're going to use the computer as a server, buy the server OS, according to MS.
In other words, this isn't an attack on VNC, it's an attack on people buying the wrong os verison.
Actually, The Terminal Services code is licensed from Citrix by MS. So, NT Terminal Server, 2000 Server, and XP all have Citrix Licensed code in them.
Citrix also still exists, providing add-ons that let you connect to a Terminal Server from Unix/linux/mac and others I believe.
Microsoft announced MIRA awhile ago, and this seems to be exactly the same thing. As Mira is just the software behind it, I would not be surprised at all if the phillips screen actually runs on Mira.
Just for more info, a Mira screen is running Windows CE.NET and connecting to a windows xp sp1 desktop through remote desktop. And no, it works terribly with video or 3d, since the CE screen can't render them well over an 11mb connection.
Supposedly MS will be releasing XP SP1 by the end of the year, containing Freestyle software. Freestyle lets you control Windows from a remote control, presenting a special UI and features just for that. The features included DVD playback, etc, and also television recording, pausing, just like the TiVO. Basically, MS disbanded it's ultimate TV, and sent the developers to either the Freestyle camp or the XBox camp.
Actually, when you try to send an image in AOL, you directly IP-to-IP connect to them, completely bypassing the AOL server, allowing you to send any file (not just images) to them. AOL doesn't route any of the files themselves. I don't know why this seems so novel - AOL's had it for about a year.
(By AOL I'm talking about AIM, I'm proud to have no experience with the AOL client)
The only reason I can see that happening would be a faulty driver that you knowingly installed (XP warns you A LOT before letting you install one). I've been running XP since Beta2, and have only had it crash on me about 6 or 7 times, at least five of which were due to bad drivers, mostly nVidia ones.
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Actually, MS has already released the CLI under some special license. It is supposed to compile and run under either windows XP or FreeBSD. You can get it here.
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wow.
all i can say is
wow.
mlk mentioned it a little, but the code for the real os is far from being useless. BeOS sold its assets (including BeIA and BeOS) to palm awhile ago. Be is still in existance solely to keep up the lawsuit against microsoft. There are about 2 employees. For all other purposes, as they have openly stated, Be is Dead.
BeOS on the other hand, will see the light of day again hopefully in palm os 5. Rumor has it that PalmOS5 will include many of the BeOS stuff, taken from both BeOS itself and its derivative, BeIA. If all goes well, we'll get a palm os that rocks and kicks the pants off of pocketpc!
I understand your assessment, and if correct I think this part of the license defeats perhaps the most valuable part of Remote Desktop
I've been using XP since beta 2 (anyone remember that? quite an experience) and have been using remote desktop the entire time. At school, we have a collection of 2k and NT machines, and a bunch of imacs. I have many programs installed at home that I don't have at school. When I need them, I sit at any of the computers, go to a web page hosted on IIS on the XP machine at home which loads up an activex version of the client. Suddenly, I'm at my home computer, running homesite or whatever. Even my visual styles and sound come through.
Now this is cool, but I can do this with VNC. What coolest part of Remote Desktop is actually disabled in XP Pro and Home for the very reasons that this license exists. In Windows 2000 Server I can have 20 clients, running whatever version of windows, or even Windows CE (or unix with 3rd party stuff) connecting to the server, each running their own instance of windows and applications, invisible to each other. But in order to do that, I have to have 20 licenses. As I recall, they're not full windows licenses, but Terminal Client Licenses. Microsoft is doing the exact same thing with XP client. I think this actually becomes a non-issue since the feature is disabled anyway, this just prevents 3-rd party programs from enabling it. Longhorn, supposedly, will have it enabled, so you can have multiple simultaneous sessions on one xp client computer.
Sorry this post is getting so long, but here's my conclusion. I don't think this license is preventing, or attempting to prevent the use of VNC or pcanywhere. It is trying to prevent the use of and XP client (pro or home version) as an application server. The functionality is essentially there, though disabled, and Microsoft would much rather have you buy the server version. Just like IIS is availiable, but crippled, in the client versions. If you're going to use the computer as a server, buy the server OS, according to MS.
In other words, this isn't an attack on VNC, it's an attack on people buying the wrong os verison.
Actually, The Terminal Services code is licensed from Citrix by MS. So, NT Terminal Server, 2000 Server, and XP all have Citrix Licensed code in them. Citrix also still exists, providing add-ons that let you connect to a Terminal Server from Unix/linux/mac and others I believe.
Microsoft announced MIRA awhile ago, and this seems to be exactly the same thing. As Mira is just the software behind it, I would not be surprised at all if the phillips screen actually runs on Mira. Just for more info, a Mira screen is running Windows CE.NET and connecting to a windows xp sp1 desktop through remote desktop. And no, it works terribly with video or 3d, since the CE screen can't render them well over an 11mb connection.
Supposedly MS will be releasing XP SP1 by the end of the year, containing Freestyle software. Freestyle lets you control Windows from a remote control, presenting a special UI and features just for that. The features included DVD playback, etc, and also television recording, pausing, just like the TiVO. Basically, MS disbanded it's ultimate TV, and sent the developers to either the Freestyle camp or the XBox camp.
Actually, when you try to send an image in AOL, you directly IP-to-IP connect to them, completely bypassing the AOL server, allowing you to send any file (not just images) to them. AOL doesn't route any of the files themselves. I don't know why this seems so novel - AOL's had it for about a year.
(By AOL I'm talking about AIM, I'm proud to have no experience with the AOL client)
The only reason I can see that happening would be a faulty driver that you knowingly installed (XP warns you A LOT before letting you install one). I've been running XP since Beta2, and have only had it crash on me about 6 or 7 times, at least five of which were due to bad drivers, mostly nVidia ones.