XPe is just XP but packaged as bits and pieces and it is for "embedded" devices. Microsoft would be crossing a line I don't think they want to cross if they allowed ASUS to install XPe on a full blown PC like the Eee PC is. It may be low spec, low power but it has all the standard PC parts. And if Microsoft allows ASUS to do XPe then they'll have to come up with a good reason to not let HP, Dell, etc use XPe on their laptops and pick and chose what parts of Windows they want to install instead of being contractually required to load the whole bloody OS.
Anyways, just how "small" is XPe when you add the GUI, the update applications, the browser, the control panel apps, explorer desktop, media player, networking, wireless configuration, etc?
It's one thing cramming XPe onto a VOIP phone with just your app for the GUI to do all system setup and funtionality. It's another to have to bring almost all of XPe onto the device because the device is expected to operating like a desktop OS.
But hey, Microsoft has been willing to take a hit in anti-trust court to save its monopoly position. There's nothing to say it won't take the chance and shake up its distribution channel by letting UMP device vendors get control of what Windows software gets loaded and what does not. But 13 years of complete control of what is and isn't loaded on the desktop by OEMs is not going to be given up easily. IMO.
throw in the hope for better/cheaper battery technology or else your XP capable UMP will be back to a ~2 hour battery life.
There's alot to juggle around with in making these UMP actually usable and putting software on it which keeps forcing higher end hardware and higher power usage moves the device down the scale of usability. OLED screens or something which can offset the added power requirements for running Windows would help. And all Microsoft needs is reviews which don't say it sucks because we all know, even if a user only needs a web based email device, they will pick one with Windows because it is what they know and the sheep will do what sheep do. Only if they see two systems priced side/by/side and there's a very large price differential would they ask about the other version. IMO.
anyway, more hardware is not going to help unless other aspects of the requirements are still met. ie power storage offsets higher power usage.
CE is a no-go. It's not XP/Vista so most of the XP/Vista software won't run on it. same goes for XP on these low end devices from what I've heard. They can get XP on there but stuff just the user eXPerience is really poor.
And the stuff that does run on CE was meant for handhelds and PDA's -- it has inadequate interfaces and needs a touchscreen most of the time. Sure, they could put CE on it but what will people do with it? sounds like if they could hack an interface on top of CE and move over some of the existing apps, People will think it is Windows and pick it over the Linux stuff because it is Windows. I mean come on, isn't Vista a pretty poor user experience too but they are forcing that on the market + dog.
Good points though and it will be interesting seeing how Microsoft plays it. WinCE can't play in the UMP device, Vista is totally out of the question and XP is old news and requires hardware boosts to pull it off. A tough job for the marketing masters at Microsoft. It will be interesting how they spin it.
Except it is not illegal for Microsoft to tie its marketing funds and other subsidies to sales or configuration restriction of Windows. There is no bullshit here, there is just nothing illegal about Microsoft doing it because the last anti-trust settlement did not cover this.
But somehow you think it is a blatant violation. Interesting.
By the way, I've heard of this happening at one of the top 3 PC OEMs and these marketing funds were what made the profit for the product line. Another product which didn't use Windows threatened those marketing $$$ and the project was axed.
First off, Microsoft will not allow ASUS to put open source applications on Windows preloads. Secondly, ASUS isn't dumb enough to put disparaging comments on the screen of a device which is already in the hands of the customer and tells them they should have bought the other model.
As far as how I see Microsoft moving on this goes, I see a new OS from them called Microsoft Windows CE-Vista for Eee PC or UMP Edition. I doubt they can get XP down to the size which can compete with Linux so putting a new face on a Windows CE variant and calling it XP or something like that to make people think it's something of value. In other words, they'll spend millions on marketing and throw garbage out as the product. But this time, it'll fail because they can't rely on quad core CPUs to hid their technical failures. IMO.
But it is only about shutting the windows of government workers and forcing everyone else through a handful of guarded doors with frisking. As if anybody currently expects some kind of free pass today with how the current admin is running this country. They shouldn't if they do.
Now, I wonder if every entry point will have a pop up asking of you are really sure you want to move forward to the next page?;-)
I'm not throwing up my hands and giving up but the millions who just take what given to them and make up the majority of the market are going to keep getting MS proprietary formats. There was great optimism that with ODFs ISO standard position and multiple implementations it had a great chance to gain acceptance where true open standards were required. Now that Microsoft had its MS OOXML declared a standard by two ORGs, there's little hope of ODF or any real standard gaining much if any ground. It is just reality given the situation and unwillingness of ISO to have stopped the bilking of its standards processes.
This seems like an assertion bordering on wrecklessness to me. What evidence is there that MS had no intention to support the ISO OOXML?
There may be some cause to doubt their sincerity in certain respects. It is not clear that they have promised to support the ISO OOXML in their products, but they may. They may also turn around and support ISO ODF as their open format instead, so they can have extra checkboxes in their "feature support" I.E. 'MS Word:' The only word processor built on open standards that supports both ISO ODF and OOXML.
If government bodies are mandated to use an open standard, then MS has every reason to support fully open standards versions of the ISO OOXML or ODF, otherwise their products' document types will not be compliant with an open standard, and government bodies as a result can either no longer use Office, or they have to start saving documents as something like HTML/RTF/PDF, instead. history, the reasons why Embrace, Extend, Extinguish are a longtime Microsoft trait and label, Halloween documents, and how they handled the creation of the "standard".
And from history, Microsoft can easily produce partial compliance and any failures will get fixed a year or two out and at that time, other inconsistencies will be introduced. A year or two later they might get found and the cycle repeats. All the while, slightly twisted versions of the standard are continued to be used and only Microsoft's products keep up with keeping the documents readable or formatted correctly.
Read as much of the history of Massachusetts trip down open standard file document lane as you can stand. If you spend more than 5 hours on this, you just might understand the lack of belief in them really supporting the ISO or EMCA OOXML standards.
Microsoft has no intention of supporting ISO OOXML, heck, they refused to support the ISO ODF format even when threatened with the loss of 10's of thousands of licenses for MS Office. It is a very well specified 600 page spec.
To hedge their bet on getting their own format standardized, the put out a pet project with little support behind it but a nice public face of attempting to support ODF. But it is half hearted at best.
Don't kid yourself, Microsoft has no intention of supporting the public spec which is now ISO OOXML or ISO ODF.
Also, it was Microsoft which made it a fight about MS Office vs all others. The requirement for ODF did not exclude Microsoft Office but instead, Microsoft refused to support ODF in MS Office. So, if you like MS Office you are stuck with their proprietary format and required licenses to read it.
why do they have to fully support the ISO standard? That was not the plan IMO and there is nothing which requires them to do this. They may have a poorly supported export/import function for the ISO standard but they do not have to support it. And there is no reason to believe they would even though they will say that they do and will support it.
There is nothing legally requiring them to do this. And the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish element here is to the ODF standard. They claimed to embrace XML, they extended the belief that everything in XML is open by embedding proprietary and patented stuff in their XML, and the Extinguished ODF's chance of being a valid competitor for office file formats by purchasing there way to standardizing a version of their MSOOXML.
There is nothing requiring them to support this new office document standard and I would think it very difficult to find a document from Microsoft which we could believe proves they will adhere to it. The ISO org will now spin its wheels pretending they have a purpose in this game of Microsofts and spend many years running around in circles working on these two documents, MSOOXML and ODF. And Microsft will continue on controlling access to the office document formats. IMO
we've got a noob here. Microsoft follow standards you say? ha, and to even mention language standards is a double ha, ha.
Microsoft does NOT follow standards and any piece of garbage coming from their employees stating they do is fiction and just a tool to fool the market into thinking they do. Learn your history dude/dudette.
And thinking that Microsoft will adopt ISO OOXML is foolish thought too. This whole exercise was created to block ODF because US State governments were realizing it would be best to have their docs in an open standard instead of one companies secret format. It is factually impossible for anyone but Microsoft to fully implement the ECMA MSOOXML standard and now that ISO has been corrupted and overtake by Microsoft partners to allow MSOOXML as also an ISO standard, it is game over for ODF. Microsoft got what they were after, no change to their control of the document specifications. IMO
ISO is a worthless org now that it has become obvious they not only allow corruption and deception but they also have refused to do anything about it. They knew months ago that Microsoft was paying business partners to join ISO and instructing them on what to say at the MSOOXML voting meetins. They/ISO have known that these fraudulent new members were not acting as concerned ISO members and voting on other ISO projects as is required and they/ISO continued to let another vote go through on MSOOXML months later.
ISO is worthless and should be disregarded until they fix what is wrong and repair the damage done in the exploitation of their poorly designed voting process by Microsoft.
As far as MSOOXML and ODF goes, it is over and Microsoft destroyed ODF just as they have done to so many public use standards in the past. Destroyed may be too harsh but they have basically diminished its value by about 90% because of the perceived openness of MSOOXML will trump choices to use ODF. MSOOXML will be viewed as some kind of vague standard and Microsoft will continue using proprietary versions in their MS Office products with mostly poor implementations of the "official" MSOOXML standard. IMO
since they can't figure out how to actually do a good job at locking down the system, they've decided it's a good idea to put spike-strips all over the place to slow down those running around. And they want the user to help do the work of clearing the spike-strips.
I can't wait until someone figures out how to automate the "ok" clicking of any and all UAC dialogs.
This is just going to further desensitize Windows users to informational dialog boxes. Most noob Windows users I've seen just click OK without reading what the box says. They already don't understand 90% of what they are doing so clicking OK seems to make them feel like they are doing the right thing.
not matter how bad it is or how many company's software won't work in it, Microsoft is the decider. They want you to use Vista and you will use Vista one way or another. SURPRISE!
BTW, because Microsoft has VERY lucrative contracts with PC OEMs, they have little to no choice in what PC operating system gets pre-loaded on the computers. If they were to stick Linux on any of those computers, some part of those deals would be rescinded and the OEM would lose money one way or another. It is what it is so if you play in the Windows game, you're stuck playing by their rules and Vista is what they want you to use.
this is the way it is and no dumb-ass petition to save XP is going to change that. The only way to change that is to do something which changes Microsofts control on the market and that means using someone elses operating system or at the very least, start moving off of all other Microsoft software on their operating system ASAP. IMO.
it does seem like the PPC would be the better choice over ARM for these low end systems. I'm just wondering why so much interest in keeping x86 compatible when we all know that Microsoft constantly stomps its foot when there's something x86 which does not have Windows on it. Because of this and the fact that there are other architectures which fit the platform and cut Microsoft out of the picture, why are they not doing this? ARM on Nokia's N800 is an easy choice but why for instance did Asus go with x86 instead of PPC for the Eeee?
Was there a partnership with Intel or something like that? I've seen Asus was there at the Intel Atom release party so maybe they get "perks" for going x86 instead of PPC. Did you know that Microsoft has plans to grow WinCE/Windows Mobile up to help compete on these non-x86 platforms?
Seems to me that GNU/Linux really helps these hardware vendors own their future and also realize some extra profits by fitting the OS to their hardware without MS license fees or strings. IMO.
What do you mean by "cross CPU/core boundaries" ? Windows NT has been able to schedule artbitrary threads onto arbitrary processors since *at least* NT 4.0 (and probably 3.1). you are right since I found a couple of pages which say that NT threads can cross CPU boundaries. Interesting since when I was working on OS/2 and NT apps in the mid 90's, NT performance was really bad on dual CPU systems with a heavily threaded app. It was explained to me at the time that the NT kernel didn't let a process's threads spread out across the CPUs. Whatever it was, the OS/2 port was much faster on the same dual CPU system as the NT port and that was before any 32bit data structure alignment was done since the Pentium Pro wasn't optimized for unaligned structs as much as aligned ones. I did read that in a comparison with Solaris, NT did not do so well when there were more threads than there were CPUs for each process. So a dual CPU system would mean 2 threads/process and after that performance starts going down. That's understandable and this is probably where OS/2 did better than NT and apparently Solaris did also.
I did read that NT has something called fibers which are not handled by the scheduler. I wonder what that was all about? Maybe some cooperative tasking mechanism left over from the DOS/Windows days.
So all this big deal about parallelism seems to be about building multi-threaded applications? Why is that making headlines?
sorry but I was commenting on what was available today and therefore could be designed with known results. Intel just announced this Atom chip 2 days ago so I think we'll have to keep the barn door closed on that changing life as we know it.
I wouldn't expect users to have to compile their applications, that's what a distro maintainer is supposed to do. If you use Ubuntu, you don't compile your apps, you just open your package manager( Synaptic ) which is already pointing to the distro's repositories of pre-compiled applications, and pick apps you want to install. Same for RedHat, Suse, PCLinux, etc.
But maybe you hit on something. Anyone doing a PPC or Arm UMP will have to work harder to get a distro to back their product if not start their own version of a distro. They have to make a choice between x86 and playing with Microsoft by enabling their device to run Windows and get easy Linux distro support or go off x86 and roll their own distro and leave Microsoft out of their market.
Still, it is probably a lot of work getting all those apps cross compiled and verified since probably more than 80% have only ever been compiled on x86 except for the kernel. Drivers should be the only things really needing much attention but still not a no effort task.
Think about it, some of these low power devices are easily in the power/performance range of ARM and PowerPC chips and a couple already run them on the very low end. The Nokia N800 for example. There's no way Windows XP can run on these and Windows CE is not up to competing against a full OS like GNU/Linux. So what could Micrsoft do and why for instance don't these vendors like Asus bring out ARM and/or PowerPC versions of devices like Eeee PC? They both have MMU's now-adays and are clocking up to the GHz range and GNU/Linux and OSS port pretty easily to these platforms. Getting drivers might be alittle more of a push but isn't the ball for Linux drivers rolling along nicely already?
IMO, it would shut Microsoft out of this market and give the hardware vendors the profit margins they can build a business on. Bulking up the devices so Windows XP will fit on them and taking money from Microsoft to put Windows on them is not a sustainable business. Microsoft will pull the plug when they've limited choice to Windows and Windows only and then pull the plug on the payola for being a Microsoft supporter.
Microsoft is not a hardware vendors friend and they should know this and be doing something about keeping control of their own destiny. IMO.
The NT kernel has supported SMP for 10 years. So what? It sucked at it compared to OS/2 and probably Solaris 10+ years ago and because of how poorly it did threads, most Windows apps did what Microsoft did and pretty much stayed away from threading. And to be relevant to the current discussion, Windows threading did not cross CPU/core boundries while OS/2's threading did 10+ years ago.
So, are you saying that Windows( XP and/or Vista ) threading can cross core boundries? If so, why would Microsoft be trying to come up with a way to get developers to target multi-core hardware when all they'd have to do is push multi-threading because the OS supposedly took care of the CPUs for the developers?
I think it has more to do with the lack of multi-threading in applications. Imagine you have a graphics app which pegs the CPU doing some particular image processing and you see the Windows hour-glass for 5 minutes. So you go out and get a dual-core system and fire up that same app but still see a 5 minute wait. Because that application is not or is poorly multi-threaded, the 2nd CPU is doing very little to help speed things up when one program is doing the CPU hogging. Ofcourse, the poor design of Windows could still prevent a multi-threaded application from doing any better since IIRC, in the 90's Windows could not spread threads across CPU's while OS/2 could. Nobody cared back then because only servers used dual+ CPU boxen. Also, it's probably not known but OS/2 application developers were forced to write multi-threaded applications because of how the GUI APIs were designed and therefore many OS/2 applications were quite smooth on one CPU and typically showed 30% or more performance boosts on dual CPU systems.
Back in 90's, Windows 95 really sucked at multi-threading and Windows NT was just really bad at it. So, what you got was hardly any Windows developers writing multi-threaded applications. Now, almost 15 years later, Windows probably still sucks at multi-threading, Windows applications are probably mostly single-threaded or poorly multi-threaded, or worst, the NT core of Windows XP or Vista still can't spread a processes threads across CPUs( or cores ) and so Microsoft is trying to fix the problem by trying to make some magic tool to spread apps across CPUs/cores.
BTW, the first time I got my hands on Windows NT, I was blown away at how much I got the hourglass just using the OS and the default utilties. I went and checked out how many threads things were using and it became obvious why. So there you have it, about 15 years of providing a poor platform for multi-threading and now it is time to start doing something about it because it is a marketing problem.
If only Microsoft were a technology company first and a marketing company second.
wow, so you've seen it the other way where the contractor was going down the wrong path on their own without direction and refused to take your advice? I've not seen that once since every contractor I've worked for has been more than happy to do what they are told to do by the government side. There's always been ways to get paid for the work no matter how off base it may be since failure is always an option. Again, because they still get paid.
Maybe documentation on the dangers of the current path up the chain could be used to move the contractor to what you have to prove is the right choice.
oh for the good old days when managment knew nothing about technology and only knew they didn't know anything about technology. Atleast then, they relied on a geeky type to interface between them, the developers, and the customer. Now, I constantly see management specifying the technology used by the developers to solve problems. That's right, management dictating the technology because they've been to Redmond WA and Microsoft told them what works and what should be used. This isn't really just a Microsoft thing but that is where I see it the most. Shops which tell you they are a Microsoft shop when you try to solve their problems with anybody elses tools.
This part of the 'good ole days' I miss the most. But hey, nobody gets fired for failed projects when they dictate tools everyone else seems to be using. And I doubt anybody will get fired for this failure and Harris will probably still get paid millions and millions in profits for letting this project get out of hand. Again, I've seen these so many times in government projects tied with commercial partners. Kiss ass to keep the project rolling and still get paid when it fails. How sickening.
that's right, they said it would add $3b on to the cost to do the census but the contract was originally $595 MILLION for the handheld devices and software. Because this company and those responsible for spec'ing the requirements failed, going back to the paper method is going to add billions to the original estimated costs.
And let's not forget that to get a ~$600 MILLION proposal through, someone had to sell someone else on a huge cost saves. Now that they've failed to get this simple questionnaire system built they have to revert back to the bloated "costs savings" figures or they'll look like more of a fool than they already do.
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XPe is just XP but packaged as bits and pieces and it is for "embedded" devices. Microsoft would be crossing a line I don't think they want to cross if they allowed ASUS to install XPe on a full blown PC like the Eee PC is. It may be low spec, low power but it has all the standard PC parts. And if Microsoft allows ASUS to do XPe then they'll have to come up with a good reason to not let HP, Dell, etc use XPe on their laptops and pick and chose what parts of Windows they want to install instead of being contractually required to load the whole bloody OS.
Anyways, just how "small" is XPe when you add the GUI, the update applications, the browser, the control panel apps, explorer desktop, media player, networking, wireless configuration, etc?
It's one thing cramming XPe onto a VOIP phone with just your app for the GUI to do all system setup and funtionality. It's another to have to bring almost all of XPe onto the device because the device is expected to operating like a desktop OS.
But hey, Microsoft has been willing to take a hit in anti-trust court to save its monopoly position. There's nothing to say it won't take the chance and shake up its distribution channel by letting UMP device vendors get control of what Windows software gets loaded and what does not. But 13 years of complete control of what is and isn't loaded on the desktop by OEMs is not going to be given up easily. IMO.
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throw in the hope for better/cheaper battery technology or else your XP capable UMP will be back to a ~2 hour battery life.
There's alot to juggle around with in making these UMP actually usable and putting software on it which keeps forcing higher end hardware and higher power usage moves the device down the scale of usability. OLED screens or something which can offset the added power requirements for running Windows would help. And all Microsoft needs is reviews which don't say it sucks because we all know, even if a user only needs a web based email device, they will pick one with Windows because it is what they know and the sheep will do what sheep do. Only if they see two systems priced side/by/side and there's a very large price differential would they ask about the other version. IMO.
anyway, more hardware is not going to help unless other aspects of the requirements are still met. ie power storage offsets higher power usage.
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Good points though and it will be interesting seeing how Microsoft plays it. WinCE can't play in the UMP device, Vista is totally out of the question and XP is old news and requires hardware boosts to pull it off. A tough job for the marketing masters at Microsoft. It will be interesting how they spin it.
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Except it is not illegal for Microsoft to tie its marketing funds and other subsidies to sales or configuration restriction of Windows. There is no bullshit here, there is just nothing illegal about Microsoft doing it because the last anti-trust settlement did not cover this.
But somehow you think it is a blatant violation. Interesting.
By the way, I've heard of this happening at one of the top 3 PC OEMs and these marketing funds were what made the profit for the product line. Another product which didn't use Windows threatened those marketing $$$ and the project was axed.
it is not bullshit. IMO.
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First off, Microsoft will not allow ASUS to put open source applications on Windows preloads. Secondly, ASUS isn't dumb enough to put disparaging comments on the screen of a device which is already in the hands of the customer and tells them they should have bought the other model.
As far as how I see Microsoft moving on this goes, I see a new OS from them called Microsoft Windows CE-Vista for Eee PC or UMP Edition. I doubt they can get XP down to the size which can compete with Linux so putting a new face on a Windows CE variant and calling it XP or something like that to make people think it's something of value. In other words, they'll spend millions on marketing and throw garbage out as the product. But this time, it'll fail because they can't rely on quad core CPUs to hid their technical failures. IMO.
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But it is only about shutting the windows of government workers and forcing everyone else through a handful of guarded doors with frisking. As if anybody currently expects some kind of free pass today with how the current admin is running this country. They shouldn't if they do.
;-)
Now, I wonder if every entry point will have a pop up asking of you are really sure you want to move forward to the next page?
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I'm not throwing up my hands and giving up but the millions who just take what given to them and make up the majority of the market are going to keep getting MS proprietary formats. There was great optimism that with ODFs ISO standard position and multiple implementations it had a great chance to gain acceptance where true open standards were required. Now that Microsoft had its MS OOXML declared a standard by two ORGs, there's little hope of ODF or any real standard gaining much if any ground. It is just reality given the situation and unwillingness of ISO to have stopped the bilking of its standards processes.
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There may be some cause to doubt their sincerity in certain respects. It is not clear that they have promised to support the ISO OOXML in their products, but they may. They may also turn around and support ISO ODF as their open format instead, so they can have extra checkboxes in their "feature support" I.E. 'MS Word:' The only word processor built on open standards that supports both ISO ODF and OOXML.
If government bodies are mandated to use an open standard, then MS has every reason to support fully open standards versions of the ISO OOXML or ODF, otherwise their products' document types will not be compliant with an open standard, and government bodies as a result can either no longer use Office, or they have to start saving documents as something like HTML/RTF/PDF, instead. history, the reasons why Embrace, Extend, Extinguish are a longtime Microsoft trait and label, Halloween documents, and how they handled the creation of the "standard".
And from history, Microsoft can easily produce partial compliance and any failures will get fixed a year or two out and at that time, other inconsistencies will be introduced. A year or two later they might get found and the cycle repeats. All the while, slightly twisted versions of the standard are continued to be used and only Microsoft's products keep up with keeping the documents readable or formatted correctly.
Read as much of the history of Massachusetts trip down open standard file document lane as you can stand. If you spend more than 5 hours on this, you just might understand the lack of belief in them really supporting the ISO or EMCA OOXML standards.
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Microsoft has no intention of supporting ISO OOXML, heck, they refused to support the ISO ODF format even when threatened with the loss of 10's of thousands of licenses for MS Office. It is a very well specified 600 page spec.
To hedge their bet on getting their own format standardized, the put out a pet project with little support behind it but a nice public face of attempting to support ODF. But it is half hearted at best.
Don't kid yourself, Microsoft has no intention of supporting the public spec which is now ISO OOXML or ISO ODF.
Also, it was Microsoft which made it a fight about MS Office vs all others. The requirement for ODF did not exclude Microsoft Office but instead, Microsoft refused to support ODF in MS Office. So, if you like MS Office you are stuck with their proprietary format and required licenses to read it.
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why do they have to fully support the ISO standard? That was not the plan IMO and there is nothing which requires them to do this. They may have a poorly supported export/import function for the ISO standard but they do not have to support it. And there is no reason to believe they would even though they will say that they do and will support it.
There is nothing legally requiring them to do this. And the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish element here is to the ODF standard. They claimed to embrace XML, they extended the belief that everything in XML is open by embedding proprietary and patented stuff in their XML, and the Extinguished ODF's chance of being a valid competitor for office file formats by purchasing there way to standardizing a version of their MSOOXML.
There is nothing requiring them to support this new office document standard and I would think it very difficult to find a document from Microsoft which we could believe proves they will adhere to it. The ISO org will now spin its wheels pretending they have a purpose in this game of Microsofts and spend many years running around in circles working on these two documents, MSOOXML and ODF. And Microsft will continue on controlling access to the office document formats. IMO
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we've got a noob here. Microsoft follow standards you say? ha, and to even mention language standards is a double ha, ha.
Microsoft does NOT follow standards and any piece of garbage coming from their employees stating they do is fiction and just a tool to fool the market into thinking they do. Learn your history dude/dudette.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/21/reborn_or_stillborn_all_new/
And thinking that Microsoft will adopt ISO OOXML is foolish thought too. This whole exercise was created to block ODF because US State governments were realizing it would be best to have their docs in an open standard instead of one companies secret format. It is factually impossible for anyone but Microsoft to fully implement the ECMA MSOOXML standard and now that ISO has been corrupted and overtake by Microsoft partners to allow MSOOXML as also an ISO standard, it is game over for ODF. Microsoft got what they were after, no change to their control of the document specifications. IMO
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ISO is a worthless org now that it has become obvious they not only allow corruption and deception but they also have refused to do anything about it. They knew months ago that Microsoft was paying business partners to join ISO and instructing them on what to say at the MSOOXML voting meetins. They/ISO have known that these fraudulent new members were not acting as concerned ISO members and voting on other ISO projects as is required and they/ISO continued to let another vote go through on MSOOXML months later.
ISO is worthless and should be disregarded until they fix what is wrong and repair the damage done in the exploitation of their poorly designed voting process by Microsoft.
As far as MSOOXML and ODF goes, it is over and Microsoft destroyed ODF just as they have done to so many public use standards in the past. Destroyed may be too harsh but they have basically diminished its value by about 90% because of the perceived openness of MSOOXML will trump choices to use ODF. MSOOXML will be viewed as some kind of vague standard and Microsoft will continue using proprietary versions in their MS Office products with mostly poor implementations of the "official" MSOOXML standard. IMO
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since they can't figure out how to actually do a good job at locking down the system, they've decided it's a good idea to put spike-strips all over the place to slow down those running around. And they want the user to help do the work of clearing the spike-strips.
I can't wait until someone figures out how to automate the "ok" clicking of any and all UAC dialogs.
This is just going to further desensitize Windows users to informational dialog boxes. Most noob Windows users I've seen just click OK without reading what the box says. They already don't understand 90% of what they are doing so clicking OK seems to make them feel like they are doing the right thing.
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not matter how bad it is or how many company's software won't work in it, Microsoft is the decider. They want you to use Vista and you will use Vista one way or another. SURPRISE!
BTW, because Microsoft has VERY lucrative contracts with PC OEMs, they have little to no choice in what PC operating system gets pre-loaded on the computers. If they were to stick Linux on any of those computers, some part of those deals would be rescinded and the OEM would lose money one way or another. It is what it is so if you play in the Windows game, you're stuck playing by their rules and Vista is what they want you to use.
this is the way it is and no dumb-ass petition to save XP is going to change that. The only way to change that is to do something which changes Microsofts control on the market and that means using someone elses operating system or at the very least, start moving off of all other Microsoft software on their operating system ASAP. IMO.
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it does seem like the PPC would be the better choice over ARM for these low end systems. I'm just wondering why so much interest in keeping x86 compatible when we all know that Microsoft constantly stomps its foot when there's something x86 which does not have Windows on it. Because of this and the fact that there are other architectures which fit the platform and cut Microsoft out of the picture, why are they not doing this? ARM on Nokia's N800 is an easy choice but why for instance did Asus go with x86 instead of PPC for the Eeee?
Was there a partnership with Intel or something like that? I've seen Asus was there at the Intel Atom release party so maybe they get "perks" for going x86 instead of PPC. Did you know that Microsoft has plans to grow WinCE/Windows Mobile up to help compete on these non-x86 platforms?
Seems to me that GNU/Linux really helps these hardware vendors own their future and also realize some extra profits by fitting the OS to their hardware without MS license fees or strings. IMO.
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I did read that NT has something called fibers which are not handled by the scheduler. I wonder what that was all about? Maybe some cooperative tasking mechanism left over from the DOS/Windows days.
So all this big deal about parallelism seems to be about building multi-threaded applications? Why is that making headlines?
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sorry but I was commenting on what was available today and therefore could be designed with known results. Intel just announced this Atom chip 2 days ago so I think we'll have to keep the barn door closed on that changing life as we know it.
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I would not consider UMPs as desktops.
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I wouldn't expect users to have to compile their applications, that's what a distro maintainer is supposed to do. If you use Ubuntu, you don't compile your apps, you just open your package manager( Synaptic ) which is already pointing to the distro's repositories of pre-compiled applications, and pick apps you want to install. Same for RedHat, Suse, PCLinux, etc.
But maybe you hit on something. Anyone doing a PPC or Arm UMP will have to work harder to get a distro to back their product if not start their own version of a distro. They have to make a choice between x86 and playing with Microsoft by enabling their device to run Windows and get easy Linux distro support or go off x86 and roll their own distro and leave Microsoft out of their market.
Still, it is probably a lot of work getting all those apps cross compiled and verified since probably more than 80% have only ever been compiled on x86 except for the kernel. Drivers should be the only things really needing much attention but still not a no effort task.
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Think about it, some of these low power devices are easily in the power/performance range of ARM and PowerPC chips and a couple already run them on the very low end. The Nokia N800 for example. There's no way Windows XP can run on these and Windows CE is not up to competing against a full OS like GNU/Linux. So what could Micrsoft do and why for instance don't these vendors like Asus bring out ARM and/or PowerPC versions of devices like Eeee PC? They both have MMU's now-adays and are clocking up to the GHz range and GNU/Linux and OSS port pretty easily to these platforms. Getting drivers might be alittle more of a push but isn't the ball for Linux drivers rolling along nicely already?
IMO, it would shut Microsoft out of this market and give the hardware vendors the profit margins they can build a business on. Bulking up the devices so Windows XP will fit on them and taking money from Microsoft to put Windows on them is not a sustainable business. Microsoft will pull the plug when they've limited choice to Windows and Windows only and then pull the plug on the payola for being a Microsoft supporter.
Microsoft is not a hardware vendors friend and they should know this and be doing something about keeping control of their own destiny. IMO.
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So, are you saying that Windows( XP and/or Vista ) threading can cross core boundries? If so, why would Microsoft be trying to come up with a way to get developers to target multi-core hardware when all they'd have to do is push multi-threading because the OS supposedly took care of the CPUs for the developers?
It's about the really bad OS design IMO.
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I think it has more to do with the lack of multi-threading in applications. Imagine you have a graphics app which pegs the CPU doing some particular image processing and you see the Windows hour-glass for 5 minutes. So you go out and get a dual-core system and fire up that same app but still see a 5 minute wait. Because that application is not or is poorly multi-threaded, the 2nd CPU is doing very little to help speed things up when one program is doing the CPU hogging. Ofcourse, the poor design of Windows could still prevent a multi-threaded application from doing any better since IIRC, in the 90's Windows could not spread threads across CPU's while OS/2 could. Nobody cared back then because only servers used dual+ CPU boxen. Also, it's probably not known but OS/2 application developers were forced to write multi-threaded applications because of how the GUI APIs were designed and therefore many OS/2 applications were quite smooth on one CPU and typically showed 30% or more performance boosts on dual CPU systems.
Back in 90's, Windows 95 really sucked at multi-threading and Windows NT was just really bad at it. So, what you got was hardly any Windows developers writing multi-threaded applications. Now, almost 15 years later, Windows probably still sucks at multi-threading, Windows applications are probably mostly single-threaded or poorly multi-threaded, or worst, the NT core of Windows XP or Vista still can't spread a processes threads across CPUs( or cores ) and so Microsoft is trying to fix the problem by trying to make some magic tool to spread apps across CPUs/cores.
BTW, the first time I got my hands on Windows NT, I was blown away at how much I got the hourglass just using the OS and the default utilties. I went and checked out how many threads things were using and it became obvious why. So there you have it, about 15 years of providing a poor platform for multi-threading and now it is time to start doing something about it because it is a marketing problem.
If only Microsoft were a technology company first and a marketing company second.
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wow, so you've seen it the other way where the contractor was going down the wrong path on their own without direction and refused to take your advice? I've not seen that once since every contractor I've worked for has been more than happy to do what they are told to do by the government side. There's always been ways to get paid for the work no matter how off base it may be since failure is always an option. Again, because they still get paid.
Maybe documentation on the dangers of the current path up the chain could be used to move the contractor to what you have to prove is the right choice.
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oh for the good old days when managment knew nothing about technology and only knew they didn't know anything about technology. Atleast then, they relied on a geeky type to interface between them, the developers, and the customer. Now, I constantly see management specifying the technology used by the developers to solve problems. That's right, management dictating the technology because they've been to Redmond WA and Microsoft told them what works and what should be used. This isn't really just a Microsoft thing but that is where I see it the most. Shops which tell you they are a Microsoft shop when you try to solve their problems with anybody elses tools.
This part of the 'good ole days' I miss the most. But hey, nobody gets fired for failed projects when they dictate tools everyone else seems to be using. And I doubt anybody will get fired for this failure and Harris will probably still get paid millions and millions in profits for letting this project get out of hand. Again, I've seen these so many times in government projects tied with commercial partners. Kiss ass to keep the project rolling and still get paid when it fails. How sickening.
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that's right, they said it would add $3b on to the cost to do the census but the contract was originally $595 MILLION for the handheld devices and software. Because this company and those responsible for spec'ing the requirements failed, going back to the paper method is going to add billions to the original estimated costs.
And let's not forget that to get a ~$600 MILLION proposal through, someone had to sell someone else on a huge cost saves. Now that they've failed to get this simple questionnaire system built they have to revert back to the bloated "costs savings" figures or they'll look like more of a fool than they already do.
How pathetic and what a freak'n waste.
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