Microsoft Officially Shows Longhorn, WinFX 681
Theaetetus writes "Microsoft today unveiled its most detailed look yet at its new OS, Longhorn, due in 2006, during Bill Gates' keynote speech at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. An article at Internet Week describes some of the goals: avoiding viruses, worms, and 'building apps that are as smart as Outlook.'" The company "also unveiled 'WinFX,' which it described as a new application programming model for Windows that is the evolution of its .NET programming framework."
That's a goal? (Score:5, Funny)
I was hoping they'd shoot higher than that.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:2, Informative)
That was my reaction, too, but in all fairness a large part of the virus-infection problem lies with the end user who clicks on every attachment they receive. Perhaps Microsoft should put some effort into making an Online Help or "Intro to Windows" that's interesting enough to make the average user sit through it once. And make sure to stress some basic security practices in these presentations.
GMD
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't accept is virus that are automatically executed simply by viewing an email in the preview pane. As soon as you click on it, you're infected.
We've mostly got visual basic scripting to thank for that.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. There's nothing you can do about stopping someone from emailing a virus. You can stop it at an email gateway of course, but nothings 100%. I accept that.
What I don't accept is virus that are automatically executed simply by viewing an email in the preview pane. As soon as you click on it, you're infected.
We've mostly got visual basic scripting to thank for that.
I have to agree. What really gets me is I see the title of the message, right click on it so I can delete it, before I can delete it the virus scanner on my machine goes off and the menu goes away. A mail goes to my IT support and they yell at me for downloading viruses. And I get something like 20-40 of these a day.
And the rules in outlook to delete the messages don't work worth anything. Most of them say they're from microsoft. So I set up a rule to say 'if its from microsoft and it contains an attachment delete it' but does this work? No. Also alot of them say 'here is the qmail program' and I have a rule to turf those, but it only gets about half of them.
There is nothing you can do about these viruses as a user of an exchange server with Outlook. But we have to use it for meetings and resource scheduling, which is a piece of crap! Microsoft has almost a monopoly on this in small to meduim bussinesses. I've also used two of the other big time mail/scheduling software (lotus notes and novell groupwise) and they're crap too. But we can't use gnu in the office right now, damn SCO.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Informative)
2. Change this to "Restricted Sites"
3. Zone Settings - OK
4. Disable everything
Outlook is now sanitized for your protection!
Now why this isn't the default, well that's something we can blame on MS, but its not unavoidable. Oh and, just because I haven't done it before (and if I don't someone will):
5. ?
6. Profit!
Re:But don't forget (Score:5, Insightful)
1. User gets email.
2. User clicks email to view it.
3. User is infected with virus.
Explain to me how its the users fault again? Maybe they should have been running some 3rd party antivirus software?
Oh wait, if VBS scripts didn't have the inherent ability to automatically launch scripts, it would be a non-issue.
Ok, that came off a little more condescending than I thought but the point stands: How in the *world* is that the users fault? Should they just not read email?
Re:That's a goal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Funny)
> 1999 called, it wants its FUD back.
Valve Systems called and said that they want 1999 to return their fucking source code. [linuxinsider.com]
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is that Windows infers that a file is executable based on its name, rather than something like execute permissions. This DOS-heritage behavior is dangerous and should be removed from Windows.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
So they took the normal windows file-extension stupidity, and added another stupid vulerability on top of that.
I've had to deal with the, "No, I'm IE and I know better than you, Mr. web app designer, and I say this file is [whatever], and not [whatever] as you contend" problem. It's maddening.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
And Outlook is to blame for this, because it LETS THEM.
There is absolutely no reason to launch an executable file from an email attachment. If you attach a non-executable document file to an email, sure, let the application that filetype is associated with open it up from within Outlook, but any attempt to execute an EXE/COM/BAT/PIF/SCR file should result in 'not allowed.'
User security policies are only as good as what the system allows the user to get away with. A system that tells you DON'T DO THIS but then lets you do it anyway is worthless.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That's a goal? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny... Locked-down by default has been preached here on Slashdot for ages and ages. Here we have an instance of Microsoft doing just that, and folks on Slashdot bitch some more.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Marketing, marketing, and still more marketing.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
They mean smart as in crippling attachment functionality so that it's impossible to open anything even if you know the source and it can't possibly be harmful, like a PDF?
They mean smart as in built-in anti-competitive DRM designed to squeeze others out of the marketplace and stopping me doing what I want to do with my e-mail?
They mean smart as in the Outlook Web Access Client which doesn't work probably in any browser other than MSIE and uses (as always) their non-standard DHTML object model?
They mean smart as in so wonderfully secure that Napster script kiddie Fanning can reverse the password encryption with his new contact updater software?
Yeah I can see that's real smart. Microsoft Smart (TM).
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a configuration issue on your end. I have no problems viewing PDFs, JPGs, or other non-harmful attachments. You can even tell Outlook to stop annoying you with the bogus "potentially harmful" message if you're sure about it.
On the other hand, we recently discovered that our Exchange backend is configured to automatically delete certain attachments. We couldn't send an Access
They mean smart as in the Outlook Web Access Client which doesn't work probably in any browser other than MSIE and uses (as always) their non-standard DHTML object model?
I call BS -- I use Outlook Web Access with Firebird from home with absolutely no problems. It works differently than it does if you use IE, but it still works.
There's plenty to bash MS for, and Outlook is a lovely example of overly complex, overly insecure software, but at least keep it to the facts.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Informative)
My old company, www.appligent.com, wrote a tool to work around this. I'd feel negligant if I didn't inform you about APActiveCheck and APStripFiles. APStripFiles is free ($).
http://w
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's a goal? (Score:2)
Why don't you simply say that you don't understand what the DRM in Outlook 2003 is or how it works and haven't bothered to educate yourself about it?
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Outlook Web Access is built into the Exchange server, not the Outlook client. Further, OWA works very, very well under Mozilla.
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? As it turns out it's because Bass are pretty smart fish. They can make generalizations. This thing has certain aspects to it that edible things have. Let's see if it's good to eat.
Who knew that such things as Red Devils, Rapalas and rubber worms would come along?
Trout, on the other hand, are primitive and stupid. They rely on hardcoded pattern recognition to find food. If the available food doesn't match the pattern a trout can starve among plenty. Or ignore your fly.
The problem with Outlook isn't that it's stupid. It's too smart. It makes decisions for the user ( who should, legitimately, be the sole source of intelligence when reading mail. Post your luser joke here).
It's like a Bass. Too easy to catch virii and malicious code because it recognizes that it's something that might be able to run. Well hell, let's try to run it and see what happens.
Gotcha!
KFG
Re:That's a goal? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's a goal? (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't know soles could read!! So which fish is smarter, bass or sole?
Outlook is the ultimate app... (Score:2)
I mean look at Java trying with its "Virtual Machine", it can't do half the things that Outlook can. SURE it can read emails if you write some code, but can those emails infect the machine with a virus and bring down your database servers, email all of your contacts and format your hard-drive.
Outlook is the ULTIMATE application, it is a VIRTUAL OPERATING SYSTEM which is AUTOMATICALLY logged in as the administrator.
What more could you possibly want...
Except threading...
And a SPAM filter...
And not going b
Re:At least they'll be able... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, that scum in your septic tank does a pretty important job... don't start comparing it to outlook to it, that's just mean....
MS's bottom line... (Score:2, Interesting)
IT, stop the current rewrite because... (Score:2)
GEEZ! Just when the
Um.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Um.... (Score:2)
That's a feature, not a bug - if Microsoft keeps flexing it's monopolistic muscle, in a few years, there won't be any apps - only MS embedded 'programs' like Internet Exploder, Outlook, etc. So who needs screen space?
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Interesting)
These guys are real comedians (Score:2, Funny)
Mod Bill Gates up +1, ROTFLMAO!
Re:These guys are real comedians (Score:2)
Not impressed yet (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't you do that with kappdoc....???
I'd like to see some screenshots of this 'new interface'.
The article rambles on a lot, but doesn't actually tell you anything. And..well.. I've never really tried it, but is Outlook that amazing
Re:Not impressed yet (Score:2, Informative)
This means nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
These announcements are nothing more than vague future directions...
Re:This means nothing (Score:2)
It worked for them in the early 1990s, and they're hoping that it'll work again. However, they're facing a much more saturated and cynical market than before, so I think their success will be limited by this.
Re:This means nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
So.. I just have to ask: Where's Linux headed next?
Re:This means nothing (Score:5, Funny)
World domination.
Duh.
Re:This means nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay. If their goal is world domination, then the community needs to think a little farther ahead. I mean, you can dismiss Microsoft's comments as hype, but give them a little credit, they have a long-term ambitious goal for Windows. It'd be really nice to see that with Linux. It'd be nice to hear "Our goal is to create a new simplified UI for Linux in order to attract a wider user base. To accomplish this, we're designing a new UI standard and making it available so that Linux's p
Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the FX comes from effects, I can buy that on a video card (going for video effects) but how does that tie in to an application framework?
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, WinFX has been called that since some time in 2000, when the team was started.
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:5, Funny)
Geforce FX, WinFX - this is starting to get about as in style as neglecting the leading E on words such as Xtreme and Xpress.
it's because many of the e's had to be prefixed to Commerce, Business, Solutions, et al in the late 90s...
i expect a shortage of i's to appear soon as well.
there's a finite number of vowels, you know!
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:5, Funny)
It's neurological. For example, twitching, screaming, and throwing monitors accross the room are all common effects of using Microsoft Windows.
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can we please stop the FX branding theme? (Score:3, Funny)
uh? (Score:2)
Seriously, what the hell does that mean? It seems like it's something they've thrown together lately to patch up any
Already vapourware... (Score:2, Interesting)
How about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple has it right, they build incredibly intelligent apps, with a minimalistic approach to user interface that has only the options people want. The result is that the apps are very easy to use and they look pretty to boot.
Do yourself a favor, switch to Mac now, you won't regret it. You'll have a easy to use desktop system with strong UNIX underpinnings. Plus, three years between OS releases is a long enough time to significantly erode Microsofts marke
Re:How about this... (Score:4, Funny)
I turn to TV and a hotmail account when I want advertisements, thanks.
Re:How about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPod is a great littl
Re:How about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you add the most frequently requested features... "OH MY GOD IT'S BLOATWARE! The preferences are so confusing! It takes so much disk space / memory / time to load!"
If you leave anything out... "WHAT? I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY SHIPPED THIS PIECE OF CRAP WITHOUT IT! They must either be retards, or they think I'm too stupid to want it, or they think they're smarter than me!"
Even if you try to find a balance, there's gonna be some guy who is pissed off that you omitted his pet feature and kept a bunch of crap he doesn't want.
Re:How about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why didn't my document work on your PC?"
"Well, what did you use to make the diagrams?"
"Ahh, well, I used the extra super diagram maker plugin... why, don't you have it?"
"No, never heard of it."
"Ahh, well you can easily download it from , then just go to options, preferences, plugins, stock functions, diagrams, replace with that plugin... of course, you don't want to use it for everything as that plugin has a couple of bugs, so just switch between that and the standard on
Re:How about this... (Score:2)
And the best part about it doesn't show until you've got multiple machines on a network (be it mac, pc, or a mix of
Finally they get it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Go open-source !!
I had some hope (Score:2)
One of these 3 goals says much about the level of innovation Microsoft is capable of. Can you find which one?
(the two others too in fact, they should have been met a long time ago really. Oh well, I guess I'll just stay with Linux for now
still vaporware (Score:3, Funny)
Re:still vaporware (Score:2)
If you like to bet, I'm game : I'll even let you bet 20 to 1 that Microsoft's days are numbered. How about it?
Hmm. Pick any two (Score:3, Funny)
1. avoid viruses
2. avoid worms
3. as smart as outlook.
Pick any two as long as you don't pick 3.
My Outlook is Great!!! (Score:4, Funny)
--
Slashdolt
Improvements (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's hope Microsoft also does things we have been suggesting for who knows how long: firewall enabled by default, etc. Oh, and go through your OS and disable useless things such as Windows Messenger! Yes, it might hurt Microsoft's feelings if they read Slashdot for 5 minutes but who knows, they might actually get something useful out of it!
Goals? (Score:5, Interesting)
An XM-based FS is going to be a meta-data nightmare, with more churning than one thought possible. The pagefile size will need to be quite large to cache all that crap. But they'll use the extra-speedy Intels to compress is on the fly anyway.
Most of *any* speech recognition is going to be from research done on [cough] *nix machines of the past decade.
Revamping the graphics system is just what the DirectX doctor ordered: new APIs! Everything can be antialiased, from busy dancing icons to cursors to controls. yawn.
By keeping everyone busy adopting the new platform, form ignores function and we get the same stuff in a new box. I hope they keep pushing it out. Then again, we're talking about people who confuse an OS with their desktop images.
mug
Shooting fish in a barrel (Score:2, Insightful)
Insert obvious joke here.
Yeah, developpers are gonna get burned again... (Score:2)
Too many people got burned with vapor-ware and later-ware. Two or three years is too long to wait for the other shoe to drop. Only Bill Gates is made out of money. The rest of us have to generate revenue and profits.
I suspect that lots of c
WinFS == Apple's "Piles", patented in the '90s (Score:5, Interesting)
And ten years before this, Apple patented Piles:
"Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed by Gitta Salomon and her team close to a decade ago, a pile is a loose grouping of documents. Its visual representation is an overlay of all the documents within the pile, one on top of the other, rotated to varying degrees. In other words, a pile on the desktop looked just like a pile on your real desktop.
To view the documents within the pile, you clicked on the top of the pile and drew the mouse up the screen. As you did so, one document after another would appear as a thumbnail next to the pile. When you found the one you were looking for, you would release the mouse and the current document would open."
Re:WinFS == Apple's "Piles", patented in the '90s (Score:5, Funny)
prior art! (Score:3, Funny)
Screenshots Longhorn and some other info. (Score:3, Informative)
Simpson's quote (Score:5, Funny)
The magic 8-ball says: "Outlook not so good"
Bart: Wow, it does work!
RUN!!! (Score:2, Offtopic)
not to worry (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry about it. Many people experience similar hallucinations on psychoactives. Take it easy and try not to get paranoid. A beer or two would help too.
Evil Logo (Score:4, Funny)
Evil Logo [com.com]
Re:Evil Logo (Score:4, Funny)
Impersonate a woman.
ObFuturama (Score:4, Funny)
Win32 dog (Score:5, Informative)
The WinFX announcement confirms something that I had suspected for quite a while, and that is that .NET was meant to be a replacement for the Win32 API. Win32 is the "familiar" application framework for Windows, but as many have noted (and most Win32 developers know), it is a complicated, cumbersome beast. Give me a choice between Win32 and raw Xlib and I'd take Xlib, thank you very much (but Win32 is a full blown C API with windowing functions just one of many facets, so don't read into this comparison too much.)
Anyway, Win32 is implemented as one of many subsystems on NT and all its successor operating systems. .NET, and now WinFX, are/will be implemented in the same way, as just another set of APIs. But this is significant, because Microsoft hasn't done this just for kicks. I believe they are on the way to offing Win32. Why?
1) It's 32-bit, and the IA32/x86 market has its days numbered now. Honestly, not many of us need 64-bit computing, but at some point, killer apps will appear. As we all know, Microsoft's preferred method of forcing an OS "upgrade" down people's throats is bundling it with hardware. Aha.
2) It's not portable. This ties into the first point, but why might Microsoft be interested in portability? I don't just mean hardware, I'm talking about OS portability. Microsoft wants a contingency in case Windows (NT/2000/XP/2003/Longhorn...) finds itself becoming a legacy system (I think it already is, but that's just my opinion.) Maybe it's finally dawned on Microsoft that a VMS-based kernel with heavy process invocation fees isn't going to be able to win benchmarks while Linux keeps getting faster and better. Microsoft is only winning server benchmarks by virtue of building their SMB/CIFS and HTTP daemons into the kernel, you know. Who cares about stability? Benchmarks sell software to IT-ignorant PHBs.
3) Win32 is messy, and most Windows C(++) programmers avoid using Win32 directly at all costs (that's what MFC and ATL are for). Microsoft likes DRM, and DRM requires kernel/subsystem-level API calls. Likewise DirectX, which Microsoft is truly investing in; they know multimedia is their strong point and that the enterprise server market is something they can never corner. SMEs running VB apps using MS SQL, maybe, but not Fortune 500. So, they want a framework that is as "open" and "powerful" as Microsoft believes it can be, without opening up the source, of course.
So... whew. There you go.
Oxymoronic. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know I'm going to get slammed -5 redundant, but there are just so many things wrong with that statement.
Unless you are an MS zealot, the Outlook program was among the worst examples of a computer program. It was slow to start. It did a few different tasks, and it did them marginally. It took forever to shut down. It hogged resources so the whole system bogged down. It was dreadful!
This part is a bit off-topic, but back when I still used Windows, I recall installing Office, and it was an imparative to custom install only Word, Excel, Access, and Power Point. The default office install was a sure fire way to suck the life out of any PC.
BTW: Did anyone notice that the new Explorer looks suspiciously like a Mozilla skin?
OSS has always been better, now Faster! (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like Microsoft is already playing catch-up with Linux in some respects. The "sidebar"? What about Windowmaker's dock apps? What about gkrellm? What about the various panel apps for Gnome and KDE? I haven't seen any details about the WinFS file system, but I'm betting that whatever Microsoft comes up with could easily be done with some combination of MySQL, OpenOffice.org's document architecture, a pretty GUI and some glue to hold it all together. (It's an obvious point, but in case anyone has forgotten, developers have choices choices choices with open source: the GUI could be motif, Tcl/Tk, GTK, Qt, OpenGL,
In brief, unless Microsoft has a huge ace up their sleeve, whatever they want to do or come up with has already been done or can be done quite quickly with the enormous, comprehensive open source infrastructure that is available today.
Re:OSS has always been better, now Faster! (Score:3, Interesting)
Around 40 Longhorn screenshots from the PDC (Score:4, Interesting)
Gallery 1 [winsupersite.com]
Gallery 2 [winsupersite.com]
Gallery 3 [winsupersite.com]
Announcing WinFX is the Adam Osborne mistake. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates just made the Adam Osborne mistake. He announced "WinFX", whatever that is, as the improvement to
Adam Osborne's [bricklin.com] company made an early personal computer. Adam announced a new model long before it was ready. Sales stopped because everyone wanted to wait for the new model. Adam's company went bankrupt.
It was amazing watching the bankrupting of the company on TV at the time. Osborne's company went from being one of the fastest growing to having insufficient money for operations in about two months.
It was a sobering lesson. Computer companies sometimes die extremely fast. Novell, WordPerfect, Corel, Fifth Generation Systems, and Central Point are examples. There are many others.
Microsoft has not been managed well. The company survives and profits because of having a virtual monopoly on operating systems and on office suite file formats. Think about it, suppose someone had a monopoly on water. That person could soon be much richer than Bill Gates.
For most businesses, the free Open Office [openoffice.org] is all they need. There are significant benefits to Open Office. It is much less quirky than Microsoft Office, for example. Most people are not very observant about the software they use, and they hardly notice the difference between Microsoft Word and the Open Office word processor.
Right now, many businesses use software that runs only under Microsoft Windows. However, there are many desktops that only need software that is already available for Linux. Those can benefit from the increased stability of Linux.
People don't care about the cost of Windows. The cost is only a few dollars of the cost of the computers they buy. The biggest issue against Microsoft is its adversarial behavior toward its customers. Using Linux means never having to say "My operating system company is partly my enemy."
Microsoft is on the way down. Most people don't realize that yet, however. Microsoft is one of the biggest management failures the world has ever seen. If the company could make a few changes in its behavior, it could stay profitable. However, it seems that abusiveness is more important to Microsoft than money.
Note that WinFX [4mg.com] is someone else's trademark. WinFX is the most cracked and cheated [google.com] program I have ever seen. There are 50 times as many links to cheats as there are to the product!
Microsoft has scheduled an MSDN TV program about "WinFX" for November 6 [microsoft.com] (Subject to change by Microsoft, of course.)
Microsoft claims that WinFX is their trademark [216.239.53.104]. (The link is to a Google conversion of a
Microsoft has a history of picking inappropriate trademarks. "X" means unknown. It was inappropriate to use the letter X in conjunction with "Xbox" and "ActiveX". Aside from being someone else's trademark, WinFX sounds too trivial for use with an extensive programming product. Traditionally, "FX" has been used to signify "effects".
Not quite.... it's Freezeware. (Score:3, Interesting)
> Bill Gates just made the Adam Osborne mistake. He
> announced "WinFX", whatever that is, as the improvement
> to
> WinFX, and Microsoft will lose the profits it would have
> had from those who wait.
But unlike Osbourne MS has LOTs and LOTs of cash and
other sources of income.
What longhorn is right now is Freezeware. They are
going to keep hyping it for the next two years. The goal
is to keep people who are on the fence about switching
from d
Yes, I was writing too fast. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry. I was writing my Slashdot comment while I was supposed to be working, and I was a little too abbreviated.
At one time, Novell had 85% of the networking market. Now the company is still profitable, but much, much smaller. Part of the reason for the shrinkage was due to Novell's terrible abusiveness toward the consultants that supported its software. (In my opinion, it was terrible, that is. I still feel bad about the way I was treated.)
Actually, I have been hearing that Novell users are quite
Re:One little nitpick... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Novell is dead. But they were above that magic size for a corporation where you never truly die, you just become an undead dinosaur. But while feeding off of an ever shrinking installed base can keep the lights on for a few years, dead is still dead. When was the last time you heard of a NEW Netware install? And if there will never be a NEW Netware customer, and a few abandon it every year, the end result is forgone. Just like there are still sites using Toke
Two things really (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Managed code does not have buffer overflows. How many bugs in Windows and Linux, especially rootable bugs, are a result of a buffer overflow? 50%? 75% 90%? I don't know, but it is a lot. Dotnet code has zero buffer overflows.
3) Managed code avoids DLL hell: the GAC and side-by-side execution ensure that programs will continue to run on versions of libraries that they are designed to support, since minor/major version upgraded files will not be fed to these applications (although revisions still can for bug fixing reasons.) Neither the user nor developer need to even THINK about these issues - the runtime simply takes care of them.
4) Managed code upgrades to 64-bit in a neutral and architecture-independent way. Apps that are "bit neutral" will run on a 32-bit system JIT'd for 32-bit mode, and those same EXACT EXE files will run in 64-bit mode on a 64-bit system, including making use of new registers and other such things. No recompiles - the JIT takes care of it. This also means that much of the code Microsoft writes - mountains of it - to handle all kinds of things from Office to [insert favorite feature here] can be transported across 32/64 bits and architectures. No more Mac version of Office if they want - Abstract any platform-specific calls into one or two classes and have everything else be managed bit-neutral code. Notice that no one is being silly enough to suggest write-once-run-anywhere for useful apps; that is and always was a pipe dream.
I would not doubt that the dotnet runtime on Longhorn is not going to call the Win32 API much; They might just be doing it internally and only using the Executive (NT/2K/XP's kernel native API) when necessary. That would explain part of the time length. Not only do you have to upgrade your existing code to C#/VB.NET/Managed C++/whatever other dotnet language, but you need to rewrite the new runtime to completely rid it of any dependance on the Win32 API. In this way, you also make the runtime a little bit more platform neutral, vs having to convert it from Win32 to Win64 for other platforms. But this is just a guess.
Some good pics and commentary... (Score:3, Informative)
The pain! (Score:4, Funny)
Too.....many.....jokes!
Longhorn SDK site on msdn: (Score:3, Informative)
What the world doesn't need is another desktop bar (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway. Why are they adding yet another desktop bar? It wastes space, it looks ugly, and it's difficult to remove. If they're going to add yet *another* taskbar to the OS, please allow it to be turned off!
NOFX (Score:3, Funny)
And in other news, the band NOFX [nofx.org] has doubled their sales on the iTunes music store today among Mac enthusiasts.
Ok, sorry, it was funnier in my head five minutes ago.
Re:As Smart as Outlook? (Score:2)
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, you didn't honestly think that they'd let that continue for much longer, did you? This way, when Longhorn debuts in 2006, and all the
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:2)
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:3, Interesting)
When the signing thing comes, that's were it'll get weird.
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would they bother to kill Project Mono? Seems to me there's precious little enough code that runs on .NET right now, let alone that runs on Mono. If anything, Mono could be seen as helping to drive more developers to the .NET model. I don't see how it could be viewed as "competition."
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:2)
"Does this mean
Nah, it means that ".Net" was a marketing failure. They think they can fix it by changing the name, that's all.
The whole MS FUD strategy is built on announcing new technolgy before it's available. If there's no new technology, then you simply add a few features to the old one and give it a new name. Thus, "WinFX".
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:2)
Re:.Net Obsolete? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Everything that gets written for Windows will be
Everything I read in the article from this to the talk about the file system and how it allows "searching for an array of files...strewn across ever-larger hard drives" and creating all these "smart" programs that "automatically sniff out network connections," really makes me wonder how secure this OS is going to be. Am I the only one who reads this stuff and thinks that a security vulnerability at any point has the potential of corrupting an entire system or even LAN?
Having easy lines of communications between the OS, apps, files and networked resources is great, but who's doing the gatekeeping between all these resources to keep them secure? And how is it being done? Or is it just assumed that once something is "trusted" its trusted to do anything it wants?
Or am I just paranoid?
Re:If WinCE became known as "Wince"... (Score:4, Funny)
Just when I was about to order DevStudio
QT does not sound so bad right now.
Re:Ever changing APIs (Score:2)