How Microsoft Plans To Get Its Groove Back With Win7 612
shawnz tips a blog post up at thebetaguy that details Windows 7's huge departure from the past, and the bold strategy Microsoft will be employing to maintain backward compatibility. Hint: Apple did it seven years back. There are interesting anti-trust implications too. "Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn't think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows."
Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Interesting)
Maury
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes Vista run well on systems with high requirements and these systems 20 years ago would be considered super computers. But really lets get with the times a bit. There is no reason for OS Designers to make an OS that will run on your 486 or Even systems 5 years old. I am not saying Vista isn't a Pig but compared to OS X running on the same system (And OS X is no light and fast OS by any streach) OS X seems to run way quicker and efficent for the same amount of high end stuff... But the fa
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There's your problem. You assume it's "your" operating system running on "your" computer. By installing Windows you are agreeing to let Microsoft decide how your computer gets used (i.e., it becomes, essentially, their computer), and they want most of it for themselves, and the media companies. Windows is all about serving Microsoft's wants and needs and none about yours. The only thing that matters about users is that
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Insightful)
Were it not the fact that they (eventually) got something to stumble out of the door, that honour would fall to Vista.
The idea that Microsoft are really going to rip it all up and start again, with a company as profoundly conservative as they are, seems unlikely to me.
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course Vista was supposed to be this great OS with modulazation, a real command line, a fancy database file system, that ran older windows apps in a fancy VM(Virtual PC anyone?).
MSFT broke those promises, Windows 7 will have lots of hope but it too will fail. MSFt management is stuck in a rut and that won't change until all the managers do.
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Of course, I suspect that I'm the minority even there. Most people just want a current version of word, internet explorer, itunes, and maybe something to touch-up their photos.
What they REALLY want is a way to transfer to the new computer painlessly.
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, MS bought VirtualPC, and has been giving it away for free. Integration of the OS with VirtualPC would be pretty easy for MS to do. I've been waiting for it for a long time.
Customers win because they now have an OS that's not crap. Developers win because they just re-code the UI and sell a new version. And hopefully they have better UI libraries to do it with. MS wins because Windows7 isn't a joke.
Let's just hope that this doesn't get the same treatment that WinFS did. I'd rather they not under-promise and over-deliver, but that doesn't seem to be the microsoft way.
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Now Windows 7 is coming from a company that has not displayed itself as capable of meaningful innovation at the core of the platform for a while now. They promise doing things 'different' and claim it will be 'better', but they had the same thoughts and promises regarding a lot of the aspects of Vista that blew up in their face. They *thought* file copying would be faster, and quite the opposite happened because they mischaracterized a rare corner-case as being overly important. They again with Windows 7 claim multithreading will be faster, because they ditch ring 0 stuff, but who knows what the state of new hardware will bring to make perceived benefit evaporate and who knows what pain will happen. Will Windows 7 be any better than XP/Vista for the end-user, probably not. Will a compatibility layer be glitchy, with their history, probably so. Will Wine at that point be solid enough for most people to make the Linux platform of the day roughly comparable with Windows 7? Possibly.
Hardware vendors should want Linux (making a commodity of the software stack means healthier margins), businesses should want Linux (a level playing field means your software vendor can't aggravate you even a little bit without reprisal, MS can piss off customers and not sweat it). Software development companies should like Linux, they can't ask for a more transparent set of APIs. Home users probably in general don't care, except for the market of ~100 dollar systems that are made possible by lack of MS tax. It seems the market is ripe to take a big 'screw you' like this and jump ship given the frustration anyway..
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no good answer for Visual Studio + MSDN in the Linux community yet (mono is on the right path, but they are only just out of beta now) and that is one of the primary reasons that I and many other
I can't stop laughing... (Score:3, Interesting)
...because all I can think of now is the fact that this would probably mean there will be people working very hard to port WINE [winehq.org] to run on Windows (7)...
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:4, Funny)
It's called virtualization. Give Apple a call, they can tell you all about it.
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Re:Has "succeed" written all over it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what I've been suggesting for some time now -- a modular version of Windows (consisting of core OS, drivers, networking, and a basic browser suitable for downloading a better browser with) where I can install as much or as little of it as I wish, and a VM to run my old shit that won't work with this new modular Windows.
Also, it's a great razor-and-blades marketing opportunity for M$: make the core OS cheap or even free, and charge for various levels of "Plus Packs" suitable for people who WANT a monolithic software experience.
The big OEMs can make hay from that too -- basic machines with the core OS only would be cheap, while "complete solutions" (with all the Plus Packs) would be proportionally more expensive. And I'm sure the OEMs could make a good enough deal with M$ for bulk licenses that they could make a hefty profit -- exactly as they do now with preinstalled software.
If M$ were to include VMs for both WinXP and Win98-atop-DOS, everything would be covered, including old games (maybe even DOS games!), old apps, old installers, old drivers...
Also, there is some security imposed by running potentially vulnerable OSs/apps in a VM, if only because it's harder for malware to reach. A few malicious apps can "jump across" into a VM, but most can't.
Also, at a guess the new core OS will be more UNIX-like or even *NIX-based, which ought to make y'all happy.... after all hasn't "*NIX is better" been the mantra around here since forever??
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Too right. Most people agree: Vista is half-fast.
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Interesting)
Where you DO run into problems is with I/O, meaning we get the driver headache again. I believe that is one reason Vista pushed a new driver model - an attempt at future-proofing for this new OS model.
The plus side of a VM is you get a layer of stability for free if you do it right (I don't count on MS to do anything right, especially the first time...) - crashing the VM doesn't necessarily crash the native OS (depends on what caused the crash - bad memory crashes everything).
Re:Has "fail" written all over it (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely 100% true.
The last time I forgot our anniversary my wife crashed my car right through our living room. EVERYTHING was ruined.
over ambitious (Score:5, Interesting)
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The kernel is fundamentally insecure, period.
Most developers don't bother to write properly, forcing users to have elevated privileges to run their applications. Viruses love this.
Windows/Outlook Express/IE together are 8still* the most efficient virus/worm/trojan/malware delivery system available currently. OLE, DCOM, etc. all make Windows cool, but also allow malicious software to run through the system like grease through a goose. MS has patched XP in particular, and
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Just be patient, folks (Score:5, Insightful)
So, this is the new Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Same tune.
Or they could just keep XP and save some cash (Score:3, Insightful)
Drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to remember Vista was supposed to be a huge departure from what was done before - and then reality hit.
The mistake they are making (will make) is that that they think their software is what is broken - when in fact the software is just a representation of the business model they have chosen. Their system design is market driven not engineering driven - and whatever they produce from this point on will be the same as all the others. Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix etc are all products of the ethos in the organizations in which they are created.
If the mould is defective, there's no point is making a second one in the hope that it will turn out differently.
Re:Credit where credit is due (Score:4, Insightful)
Example: Microsoft has better system APIs than does Apple. For an application on a Mac (with an Apple library), your choices are pretty much either Carbon or Cocoa. Cocoa only works with Objective-C code (see the recent article about them having to port Photoshop from C++ to Objective-C. This should not every happen). But Apple has chosen to make Carbon not available for 64-bit apps. Microsoft provides the C API, a C++ wrapper, and the
Microsoft has the ability to make a platform that's much more friendly to developers and users alike. They have the ability to make a secure platform, and to address flaws that have existed in the design since its inception. If the seize the opportunity and truly redesign their system, they have the ability to beat Apple at this, and also to make a platform that is appealing to Linux users. If Microsoft produces a good operating system that is useable, good to develop on, and not overly costly, I will likely dual boot because I would like it. Apple would have to fundamentally overhaul their business methods before I would enjoy using a Mac (disclaimer: I do not use many of the things that are advertised for Macs on any platform. I use the command-line almost exclusively).
Microsoft is currently experiencing a powerful internal conflict between the status quo and new technologies. People deride them for making attempts like OOXML and the open source covenants because they don't mean anything, but I don't think that's it. Many of the newer and younger programmers, developers, and researchers have used or contributed to open source. The traditional corporate hierarchy, though (read: Ballmer), have their own opinions. So we get compromises that look like half-hearted attempts at embracing new technologies. Microsoft will soon have to swing one way, and I desperately hope that it will be towards openness. IBM knows how to unite a proprietary business with an open perspective. Apple is a bit unsure, but thinks they do. Microsoft doesn't, but wants to. If they actually figure it out, they will regain their position of superiority.
Re:Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you insane? The native c api for win32 is about the worst api ever designed, and absolutely the worst api that is still in use.
And the c++ wrapper(I asume you mean MFC) is a hack job too. Even microsoft have admitted that. And MFC is not at all a part of windows, it is a part of "visual studio", which is not part of windows. Hint: You can't make an application that static link with mfc and which are compiled with a port of gcc.
Microsoft should just buy a full license for QT4 from trolltech, and declare that QT4.4 + whatever extra microsoft need is not the new standard for gui development for windows. (Microsoft would still be required to rewrite the part of win32 that is not cowered by QT).
Re:Credit where credit is due (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 2003 R2 however, you have to choose ahead of time whether you want 64-bit or 32-bit. Then, if you choose 64-bit, 32-bit applications get dynamically recompiled at runtime, 32-bit apps get installed to a different path, some registry keys are written to custom redirected locations, applications that use regkeys can break because they don't know that Windows redirected them, and so on and so forth. So if you want to run 32-bit apps, your still better off running 32-bit Windows. This is why support for 64-bit is so lackluster, even though the product has been out for years. No one is rewriting the apps for 64-bit support. I have a GIS app running on 64-bit windows, which was the biggest mistake I've made lately. It's now running with IIS in 32-bit mode, with 32-bit Tomcat because 64-bit support was so bad.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft isn't a technology company. They don't seem to be driven by technical prowess, a la HP when engineers ran things, or google now. They are a marketing firm that employs programmers.
Argh, i can't beleive (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not even an MS hater - but damn, they have crushed more than one alternative by doing something similar, even NEVER releasing, sometimes, whatever it is they announce (I recall reading an account from a fellow
Poor article (Score:5, Insightful)
For once, I'd say just read the article summary
Re:Poor article (Score:5, Interesting)
And the best part about the circa-2002 article was that either in that post or on another post on the site the author railed on about how you can be a 40-something programmer and lose out on a job to a 28-year-old programmer because the 28-year-old has "social skills" and you don't and don't want to because if you wanted to have "social skills" you would not have become a programmer in the first place. His "about" page revealed that he was a 40-something programmer, complete with a laughably awful photo of him, morbidly obese, sitting in front of his PC.
So essentially this was a bitter old man making a bunch of shit up. I'd almost guess that this "betaguy" is the same person with some better web design skills.
I love the lack of understanding (Score:3, Informative)
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Seriously, Copy Apple Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Move to new technology, but provide a compatibility layer so legacy apps still work, even if they are in some sort of emulated environment?
The new hardware people will be using with the new system will be fast enough that even an emulated environment will be as fast (or faster) then their previous machine.
With the virtualization technologies available today this should be even easier to do then, say, Apple's transition from 68xxx chips to PowerPC chips, or PowerPC chips to Intel, or OS 9 to OS X.
Were they all seamless transitions? No. But they were arguably better then then the transition from XP -> Vista has been so far.
Microsoft seems to want to either take the course of backwards compatibility at the expense of progress, or progress at the expense of backwards compatibility.
Why not go for the best of both worlds through emulation/virtualization?
Re:Seriously, Copy Apple Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously, Copy Apple Again (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Seriously, Copy Apple Again (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe I used too many crazy indie apps, but I'm pretty sure Apple only really tests the big players when they make moves like this.
Those who think in operating system... (Score:5, Interesting)
An operating system evolves and you don't sell it. You either provide it as a service, or provide it for free, so that you can hook people on some service you offer.
I'll tell you why Win 7 will be a huge flop: since it breaks almost all compatibility between itself and previous windows releases, it has to compete on the same grounds as Linux, *BSD and OSX. Which means, that without the massive inertia of the previous windows releases, those three will kick the living crap out of Win 7 in terms of maturity, usability and price.
Re:Those who think in operating system... (Score:4, Insightful)
What Microsoft is doing here is a bold move. We all benefit if it pays off with an improved product.
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The hardware that Windows runs on is generic. Hence, Microsoft charges for each OS license, whether it be full retail, OEM, upgrade, volume.
How about this (for retail home consumers, not for business): Microsoft should work with CPU vendors. CPUs could be built with a Microsoft "license" built-i
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Try setting up a static (i.e. non-roaming) WPA configuration with a non-broadcasting SSID. I ended up having to create
Now go and look in Kubuntu and see if you can find WPA *at all* without having to depart from the stock installed configuration.
Legacy support may happen (Score:5, Informative)
This reads like a 7th grader's English paper (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the face of the mass-media criticism of Windows Vista, mainly with regards to the performance issues present when compared to Windows XP on hardware with similar specifications. However, very little information has been presented with regards to the performance of Windows 7, this article however shall change that."
Good idea? (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm. What could they base it on? (Score:5, Funny)
Two articles within one (Score:4, Insightful)
The second part of the article is telling us the real problem Microsoft is facing. Code bloat. Dll hell. They have decided that they canÂt hold it any longer and they are going to start from scratch and run the old windows apps on a virtual machine for backwards compatibility.
There is a third part that is missing in the article. Most people around here suspects that some of VistaÂs performance problems, specifically on the the multimedia department are caused by the interference of DRM code. Is Microsoft removing all this code from Windows 7?
Re:Two articles within one (Score:4, Insightful)
The first problem was Microsoft using bundling as a way to force Netscape out of the market. They tied IE to the OS after already getting sued (and losing) for using monopoly power in the market to influence hardware vendors (by giving drastically cheaper rates for exclusive contracts that forced competitors out). Part of that agreement was that they couldn't force bundling of products they own, either (which was mostly MS-SQL databases and MS Office).
So they were already being blocked from releasing competing products and what do they do as an encore? Release a media player. The only reason this was a problem was it was in their anti-trust agreement that they wouldn't do it.
To be honest, I don't have a problem with them releasing a media player or a browser - it was the tie to the OS that bugged me. This tie will finally be removed with Win7.
I seriously doubt DRM code is causing Vista slowness - why would that have an effect on game performance? Maybe when sound files are loaded, but general performance is slower. I suspect it's partially tied to resource issues, especially when Aero is used (Aero uses hardware resources) and partially due to insufficient profiling of code in a rush to shove it out to market. Remember Vista was a hack - it was meant for Win7 (probably even with the VM model described) and they pulled it off the top and grafted chunks of it onto Windows 2003. That's probably also the main reason WinFS support was dropped (if there's any feature I want in Win7 it's WinFS - a metadata supporting filesystem - finally).
So that's what slowed Vista down?! (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is just a troll.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 7 early builds was already demoed and there's no evidence that it will be backward-compatible.
Also WinSxS (side-by-side dlls) is what windows xp uses to maintain different versions of runtimes from the start and obviously it has little to do with OS speed.
While reading this article the only thought prevailed - wtf author is smoking. Complete rubbish.
Microsoft's answer to code bloat - bigger DLLs? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article: On traditional hard drives, the more separate files which the operating system has to load, the more seeking across the hard drive is required, and therefore overall performance takes a hit. ... In Windows 7, Microsoft will break from the Windows' norm by breaking previous API compatibility, offering new API frameworks as a native solution, and providing support for legacy frameworks (COM, ATL, .NET Framework, etc) through monolithic libraries designed to provide the functionality of all previous revisions of the modules in question.
And so, the answer is to put everything in one bloated DLL?
It apparently hasn't yet penetrated to the Windows 7 group that computers aren't going to get much more powerful for years to come. That stopped once laptops started outselling desktops. In laptops, what matters is size, weight, and battery life. The future is the OLPC and the Asus Eee. In a few years, laptops in bubble-packs for $89.95 will be hanging on racks at the drugstore. Microsoft isn't ready for that.
Progress now will come from reducing software bloat. Microsoft has, in desperation, extended the life of Windows XP for little machines. That's only a stopgap measure. Now they need to de-bloat their whole product line and get their costs down.
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Oh, it's worse than that. In a few years Apple could be selling a cheap iPhone for $150 that's more than twice as powerful as today's model. It'll probably support an external monitor and wireless keyboard, via a little docking cradle. It'll have 160+ GB of internal storage, and the ability to connect to your network storage, at home or at work.
So why buy a "PC" at all? If you're
If Microsoft was smart ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
In this day and age, it makes no sense to me to write another massive OS.
Am I supposed to take this guy seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
No numbers. No estimations. Just some hand waving of "they are doing something different". The article doesn't change that fact at all.
Because OS X and Linux aren't de facto monopolies with 80%+ of the market.
Yes, because loading 1 MB of code as part of one executable is vastly faster than loading it as 1 MB of library. This is especially true when loading 10+ different executables that have the same code statically linked in. That is way faster than loading it once. More efficient too.
No, wait...
Besides, that code (such as MSHTML.DLL) was already an external library. Just about every operating system tends to get new libraries with major upgrades. Windows was not one monolithic executable before. Heck, it wasn't way back in the 3.11 days.
That has not always been the lure. The lure was it was pretty and not a DOS prompt. Then the lure was simply that there were more programs for it when it became dominant. But then again, Leopard runs programs designed for Tiger and before. OS 9 ran programs designed for OS 7. Just about every OS does that, including many UNIXes.
You've GOT to be kidding. "Proven" for OS 9? It didn't have memory protection. It didn't have preemptive multitasking. Heck, you still had to pre-allocate memory to programs at launch, didn't you? It was a fine OS design for 1992. It didn't work so well in 2000. It was a weight around Apple's neck and would have killed them if they didn't try to escape. It needed to updated, and previous projects had failed. A clean break was a very smart decision.
This is somewhat true, (quite on the laptop side later in life with the G4s), but it's also highly troll. "...in order to obtain the hardware-locked user experience of their new flagship operating system"? That's unnecessary.
It's not like anyone had ever thought of that before. If only Windows had a virtual environment in it. Maybe since 95. It could have run old DOS programs. Oh, wait, it did. Then there was WoW, Windows on Windows, that let 95 and up run old Win16 programs. Emulating older stuff is a common way of handling it.
Well, Joel warned us (Score:4, Interesting)
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.net a legacy framework??? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is this bullshit? (Score:3, Insightful)
the ol' "Windows Next" is going to the messiah (Score:3, Insightful)
See also Sony Playstation for another example of the same "marketing strategy".
Rewrite? (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason OSX went so fast and was much higher quality was it was based on tried and true code bases and OS paradigms, i.e. UNIX. If MS is starting from zero (if I read the article correctly), how can they pull this off without years of development and testing and even then probably hosing it up?
my $.02
Is this article a joke? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is apparently immune from such criticism? Linux's total lack of an integrated media player, must be awfully subtle for it to merely be "apparent." A Toyota Corolla apparently doesn't have 7 wheels (but we're not quite sure, huh?).
Just how many thousands of libraries does the average application load? If you can actually perceive this load time on modern hardware, it must be an awful lot. And I guess they haven't learned the trick of .. oh, I don't know .. leaving libraries in memory until there's a memory crunch. Is this guy running Vista on 386SX with only 2 megabytes of RAM and a hopelessly fragmented 40ms drive?
Actually, I think the anti-Microsoft naysayers will say, "It's about time; you're only a decade or three behind the common everyday practices of every other computer programmer in the history of civilization."
It's NOT like Apple... or the article is worng. (Score:4, Interesting)
At the same time they introduced two more APIs, one that was an enhanced version of the old compatible one that took advantage of the new OS, and one that was new to the new OS. They also introduced a new development environment that generated code for the new APIs.
When they introduced the Intel-based Mac, they abandoned the oldest API, provided an emulator for existing code, and code written in the enhanced API using Apple's development tools could be recompiled in a mode that supported both Power PC and Intel processors.
At no point was there a stage that broke code written within the previous two generations of APIs.
I was under the impression that Microsoft was planning on using
Either the article is wrong about Microsoft abandoning
All Vapor. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is always promising the next Windows will be built new from the ground up so not much is really new this time. The only difference here is the promise to break backward compatibility. Thebetaguy contradicts himself about that by having the balls to promise, "This should allow the majority of legacy applications to run perfectly," while Vista provided less than 60% of the same.
There are lots of other contradictions because thebetaguy does not really want to admit several things and he's angry
Re:All Vapor. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is one key aspect of the X story that has to be remembered: Apple was effectively a dead platform with a small user base. The vast majority of active Mac users today are new to the platform, or on a new-ish machine. There was little to no installed base to lose.
To think that Windows can pull off the same stunt strikes me as ridiculous. There is hope, surely, in the rapid rollout of ever-better virtualization systems, and API mappers (like WINE). But does anyone really think that the MASSIVE FREAKING installed base of Windows can afford a semi-solution like Classic while new versions of their software ships?
Case in point: I looked into the
Hey, maybe they'll pull off a miracle and make a compatibility layer that totally kicks ass. You know, like the new Office kicks ass.
Maury
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As for MS Office kicking ass, I have access to Office 2007 here at work, but I still use OpenOffice most of the time. It's quicker, leaves more screen space for the documents, and has a UI that I don't really have to think to use.
Re:All Vapor. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, a non-Windows operating system would probably free them from the anti-trust agreements. After all, the old Windows line, that was the monopoly -- this new OS is competing with Windows.
Second, freeing themselves from the name allows them to experiment with new changes to the OS experience, which in turn would allow them to make much better use of their in-house R&D and their UI experience from their gaming division.
Third, it puts them in the position of underdog again, a position in which Microsoft historically thrives. They're a competitive bunch, and they just write better code in a competitive environment. With Vista, there was no real pressure to get it right, because they assumed that everyone would just upgrade from XP. If they're competing against XP, however, that frames the development process quite differently.
In a way, it's kind of a cheap trick, but I think that it would be very good for Microsoft to break out of this rut and break away from Windows. If they make a product, and compete fairly to get people to use it, they have the cash, talent, and reputation to pull off something good.
Re:All Vapor. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, Windows sounds too easily breakable. They should call it something like MS Bricks.
Re:All Vapor. (Score:4, Funny)
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windows 95 was horribly broken, so god awful that I started using FreeBSD because of windows 95... windows 98 was much more stable, but again that came out because windows NT still took too powerful of hardware, and nobody was ready for it to replace 98 until after year 2000 when XP was finally read
Re:All Vapor. (Score:5, Informative)
Any article that uses "loading excessive library files forced on us by the DOJ" as the first (and presumably therefore most significant) reason for Vista slowness should be laughed out of town.
Wo-ow (Score:4, Interesting)
I am seriously curious twitter, you spend a lot of time on Slashdot, you talk incessantly about honesty - when did you decide you were going to turn it into a mockery and a circus by organizing these "bad zealot-good zealot" clusterfucks where you use the troll accounts everyone knows about (twitter and Erris) to give your other sockpuppets an opening to blabber their way on to karma heaven?
The problem here is not what you're saying on this particular post for example, which I suppose might be considered halfway insighftul without the "fuck shit rape fuck M$ Winblozes LOLOL" tone of your earlier accounts. The problem is your blatant gaming of the comment and moderations systems. You call Slashdot a community and you spend a lot of time talking about "us" and "we", but you sure seem to spend a lot of time lying (and therefore ridiculing) to everyone as well.
How long do you figure this can last?
Re:Wo-ow (Score:4, Informative)
Twitter, Erris, InTheLoo, Gnutoo and Mactrope (not Macthrope btw, who is actually a vocal twitter critic).
There was never really any question whether Twitter and Erris were the same person. On more than one occasion Twitter would actually respond with the wrong account by mistake, exposing the sockpuppetry (of course anyone who reads any Erris/Twitter messages can easily see how similarly they are writen).
The newer 3 accounts he made after Twitter and Erris fell into karma hell a few months ago, and if you look at their posts you will find that they reply to each other "agreeing" almost all the time. This alone could be coincidence, but they always post just minutes apart from each other, in addition to many similarities in style (which I encourage you to explore/investigate yourself, if interested).
Luckily with the newest 3 accounts Twitter seems much more well-behaved than he was with Twitter/Erris. He still misrepresents facts and outright lies, but at least he's dropped the "M$ Windoze" childishness. As such I dont really care much about what he says, but I agree with willyhill that it's a dishonest way to engage in an online discussion (heck, Ive gotten by for years with NO account, does he really need 5 or more?).
That said, if anyone out there is into Twitter sockpuppet hunting, one good way to spot them is to look at the subject line when he replies to other posts. For some reason he seems to feel the need to always change the subject instead of just leaving "Re: whatever". Even when posting as AC! It's actually kind of strange that he hasn't learned to better impersonate multiple people after all this practice, IMO.
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Yawn.
Microsoft will, most likely, bow to the demands of their customer base and not break backwards compatibility. They'll release another half-done operating system that's a major drop in performance over the last version but has a few new bells and whistles bolted on to make it look like it's n
Re:Who cares? It's over. (Score:4, Funny)
And here I thought Balmer was in charge of "directing" the chairs around here.
GPL'ed Windows XP clone ReactOS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPL'ed Windows XP clone ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
If Apps manufacturers are forced to follow suit, all new apps will have no (or poor) XP compatibility and thus will not run on the likes of ReactOS - in other words, end-users MUST use Win7 in order to run the latest apps.
Re:GPL'ed Windows XP clone ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hardly a credit to MS that they've stuck with what is a bog of broken code and APIs for this long. ReactOS and wine just aren't large enough competitors to warrant this sort of radical "fix."
One can throw around a lot of paranoid speculation, but the reality is that a lot of the flakiness of Windows has been a byproduct of having all that stale code and 3rd party software interaction. Doing a redesign now with VM processor extensions and an awareness that right now things are moving to a multi-core 64bit environment makes this a good thing. Many of the design decisions would have been handled differently had the engineers known where things were going even 3 or 4 years down the road.
In terms of threat, the biggest threat here is that win 7 will not only not suck, but will do a genuinely amazing job at providing the end users and support staff with what they really want.
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But this way of doing things has one major drawback: a middle ground where Windows 7's application pool will be severely cut back. Not even Vista has ever been in this situation. It's a very delicate position to be in. A vicious circle: why would users upgrade to an OS without apps? Why w
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft already gives out free Virtual PC for windows, so they certainly have the technology... And I hate to admit it, but the speed of windows-on-windows emulation is just amazing. With hardware virtualization support you simply can't see a difference in performance between emulation and your native environment.
Re:Who cares? It's over. (Score:5, Insightful)
With this announcement of total backwards break, Microsoft has declared complete defeat for their business model.
We're to the point now where processors are fast enough now to handle VM's. Let VM's handle the backwards compatibility, translating old code for newer uP/uC code.
I, too, would like to see Microsoft's practices of messing with their user base to satisfy their customer base stopped. But for the sake of competition, I don't think Microsoft sinking is a good option, either.
(I would also like to say it's the year of the penguin, and signs are showing that people are fleeing MS Windows... they just also happen to be fleeing the WIntel world, too, towards Macintosh.
Re:Who cares? It's over. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole reason why I have stuck with Microsoft for this long (as well as many other people), is that apps I use aren't compatible with other OS's. If I could have iTunes for Linux, my wife would let me switch at home. Why doesn't Apple provide it? Because Linux doesn't have the marketshare. Why doesn't it have the marketshare? Because there aren't enough of everyone's favorite apps.
How much of the corporate reluctance to migrate to Vista is because of incompatibility with current apps? Some people are still running Windows 2000 to support old apps that were never updated to be compatible with XP, muchless Vista.
I understand that MS would have reasons to want to "cleanse" itself, but doing so would make them lose the one major advantage they have over Linux. If software companies have to re-write every app to work with Win7, why even bother with it? Who would use Win7, since all the apps are broken? Why not just write for Linux or Mac? The Apple market may always stay relatively small because of the price and the limited number of PC configurations, but Linux doesn't have either of those issues.
Linux has been in a tough spot for years because its marketshare is tiny next to Windows. But with no functional applications, Win7 would be starting over on marketshare, with no good reasons for anyone to buy into the new OS. Apple was able to start over with OS X because there was a relatively small number of users, who are fiercely loyal, and the change enabled them to get more users. I don't think MS can risk pissing off 90%+ of all computer users. Their biggest problem is that they could lose users, and breaking backwards compatibility can only increase the probability.
I'm sure they'll have some type of virtualization-enabled "Classic Mode", but you can do that from other operating systems as well, and if we have 2 years to prepare for it, Apple and the Linux community can have solutions that are just as elegant (or more so) than what Microsoft will cobble together, because whatever solution MS provides will most likely be an afterthought, since it's just a stop-gap solution until all the developers move over to Win7... if they ever do.
Re:Who cares? It's over. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a stable, mostly command line, system that'll be backwards compatible for decades to come, use your flavor of *nix...but if you want a fancy graphical interface with pretties (targeted at an audience who enjoys them)...you're gunna have to deal with sdk's and API's...that's just smart/efficient programming...where have you seen anything else?
In my opinion, it's marketing that screws the tech of MS. They come out with stupid as claims before knowing what the final product will be, over hype everything, and seem to get their hands in determining code paths. Their sdk's and api's (directshow for instance) and are mostly pretty neat. Marketing makes it so abstract and burried in coined tech terms that somehow make their way into the msdn (I consider this in the marketing goup...cause an intelligent software engineer would never make something like msdn) that it takes all the fun, desire, and some ability to learn it (at least for me)!
I agree, they are admitting defeat...but that comes with a realization that the customers (us) obviously want something better (sales of vista), but are limited with the current platform/code organization/model that they use now. Sounds like innovation/renovation to me...and that should be something constant in any field.
Yeah, let them sink in their record revenue... (Score:5, Funny)
Let them perish in that huge heap of cash they're bringing in. Look how their utterly failing business model is killing them. St00pid ancient business model. They're just bringing in 16 billion dollars per quarter. Muahahaha! S00 sp00pid. Linux FTW, etc, etc.
The Linux vs Windows flame war was fun back in 1995. Can we move along?
Re:Listen to Twitter, AC, it will do all of us goo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At least it's fun to read.
Especially now that they stand out so (I foed them, so they're nice and red.
Please tell me it's red and I'm not making a fool of my colourblind self.)
Re:The Netscape Thing is a giveaway. (Score:5, Informative)
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Since Apple isn't taking huge chunks of market share away from Microsoft, I don't believe it's too late to do anything. That's what's great about being a near monopoly, you can take your time and drag your feet.
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Far far better to refactor particularly bad code and restructure at higher levels. Takes less time, advances the product, and has a far better chance of actually being completed.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
NT 4.0, Win 2k (NT 5.0), Win XP (NT 5.1), Vista (NT 6.0).
Notice that XP -officially- used the same major version number as 2k.