Longhorn in 2006 639
worm eater writes "Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft officials are now aiming for a 2006 release date for Longhorn, the follow up to Windows XP. Microsoft has been hyping aspects of this OS to its partners since 2001. I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line."
Catch-22 (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it would if Microsoft wasn't around. But they will bend the future to their will using the power of 40 gigadollars
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:4, Insightful)
3 years down the road (Score:0, Insightful)
Wherever Microsoft decides the industry should be 3 years from now is where it will be...
Get with the program!
Re:Longhorn...and then... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm crying trying to use XP on my newest system.
Where has the speed of Win98 gone ?
Arguably, windows2000 was better than 98, which was better than win95, dos, and so on.. Now MS is going downhill, and.... oh, you're right
MS's vision: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I doubt that... Longhorn will be what Windows 95 was. 95 crushed OS/2 Warp, and Longhorn will crush whatever other OS crawls into its space while MS is developing it. Besides, with all the 'amazing new technology and breathtaking new UI' B.S., the media will have a field day with it for at least 3 months before launch... Mass hysteria will ensue, people will line up outside stores to get the first copy as it becomes available at midnight, Microsoft lines their pockets with a few more billions, and 2 weeks down the road, some major flaw in the OS will be exploited, bringing business and the internet to their knees... then the media will resume the Microsoft bashing, and Joe Q. Public will want to re-install whatever OS he had before, only to find out that the company has folded, and now he's stuck with this peice of shit... oh, but wait, now Microsoft is promising a new version that will have no flaws!
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said anything about secure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:2, Insightful)
And what do you base this 'expert' opinion on? From both reading about and using it, Win2k3 server is the best OS yet seen. Your supposed security holes arent being claimed by organizations such as SANS, so either they are in collusion with MS, or else you are talking out of your ass.
Even good programming cant stop the habitual complainers like you.
Re:I'm not sure I want to use Windows XP that long (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it the only reason for the delay? Doubtful. But it surely contributes at least on an intellectual / planning level if not strategically.
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 2003 Server Extra-Long Name Edition for Domains (tm) has every RPC/DCOM issue as WinXP. Both of the production deployments were affected.
Seriously - after a year of "trustworthy computing" audits with source and third-parties are able to craft 3 successive exploits against this service and its patches with only object code available to them?
That's why you are a Troll, and MS are racketeers.
Re:Screenshots (Score:1, Insightful)
Fitt's gonna commit suicide when he sees this.
Cue Sun Java Desktop (madhatter) (Score:3, Insightful)
Does MS really think people are going to be willing to run 5 year old technology on their work systems, when a cheaper and more current alternative is readily available?
I just hope Sun will be able to push madhatter well enough for companies to let go of their grip of Microsoft products and open the future of corporate desktops to any player with a plan; be it Sun or whoever. It's just that currently, Sun is the other company that can do it. Who knows what the corporate desktop will look like in two years.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
My own pet theory about the tardiness of Longhorn is that Microsoft has simply decided to do a re-write of a huge chunk of the code. There are two possible candidates for why that I can see; firstly they really are trying to take their new stance on security seriously and are redoing some of the cruftier bits of code. Far more likely though is that they simply got too ambitious (again) over their Cairo-esque multimedia filesystem, decided the hardware and market still isn't ready for it and went back to the drawing board.
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:3, Insightful)
766 files will be updated, 400 installed, 0 kept back
later:
Installation complete.
Re:Keep putting it off. Please ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting article, but counter questions... (Score:4, Insightful)
But then I would return the questions back to the CEO: Once you master the markets, why are you abandoning them? Why does IE still have linear browsing, linear back and forward buttons? Why does IE have so many unfixed bugs, and why isn't it fully W3C compliant? Why do all the Office apps change format with every edition, into something that prior editions cannot read? Why do my new Access databases not work with my old databases, and why does it ask to convert them when opened with the newer versions? Why don't any of the Office apps generate good HTML or XHTML or XML code? Why can't you copy certain complex pages from IE and paste them into Word without Word crashing?
The answer: Once you've made the other systems irrelevent, such as the comment about developers saying "How do we port it to that other operating system -- what was it -- Linux?" when Microsoft gets there, they abandon innovation.
And that, Mr. Balmer, is Microsoft's biggest problem.
Don't knock the NT kernel (Score:4, Insightful)
This is rather amusing, because it points out an odd trend amongst "technophiles" in computing today. Somehow or other, *NIX kernels have become synonymous with "software excellence." When this trend started is not entirely clear to me, but I'd say post-1995 for sure. If it is indeed a FUD campaign, it seems to be succeeding, because 10 years ago if anyone had mentioned that *NIX kernels were superior to modern OS multi-threaded microkernels they would have been laughed into submission.
BSD-style *NIX kernels are NOT, contrary to what you may have heard, the end-all be-all of OS kernel design. In fact, most people who architect operating systems for a living will tell you that most of the concepts contained therein are good ideas, but they're somewhat stale and in need of some serious revision.
I don't have the time or the inclination to go through a feature-by-feature comparison between a modern *NIX kernel and NT, but I'll point out a few examples. The NT kernel's native support for threads and access control list kernel object security are superior to what the *BSD kernels offer. Other newer features like microarchitecture to support several different system call APIs are virtually on par feature for feature with *BSD.
So why would switching the kernel make the OS any better? If a kernel has the necessary features it requires, performs well, and provides remarkable stability, that's just about all that a kernel can do.
I think you're confusing the recent security problems discovered in the Windows system with problems in the kernel itself, which are few and far between. Holes in IIS, or SQL Server, or even the "RPC System Service" are NOT problems with the NT kernel, and they should not be confused with them.
Don't misunderstand me: I think the number of features that have been integrated into the Unix framework over the years (by the Linux and *BSD projects) is astounding and a telling tribute to what the research communities can accomplish when they work together. But that doesn't mean they're superior to what alternative OS kernels can do.
And did I mention that trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security? If I hadn't, then I will say it now. Trivial bugs needn't be fatal flaws if the kernel enforces proper user level security!!!!
I don't even know how to address this one. The NT kernel does MUCH more for security than any *NIX kernel. The trick is, people writing software that runs on the kernel have to make USE of these features properly. NT offers complete Access Control Lists and security descriptors for every possible kernel object. This is just about as granular as you can get, and better than the simple "rwx" permissions on file descriptors available in *NIX kernels.
Now, why everyone logs into the Windows Shell with a superuser security account is an entirely different matter, but it is NOT the kernel's fault!