Microsoft Uncertain About WinFS for XP 364
Ant writes "As a follow-up to WinFS to be available in WinXP story from a few days ago, BetaNews reports that Microsoft (MS) stopped short of confirming reports that it plans to back-port its next-generation WinFS file system architecture to Windows XP. MS tells BetaNews it is only evaluating the move while also acknowledging WinFS is still years off. "We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews."
WinFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Breaking news (Score:2)
Unlikely partners (Score:3, Insightful)
WinFS vs Tiger Spotlight? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone know just what the differences are in concepts here? Is Spotlight going to offer much the same functionality from the point of view of a user? Is it really even the 'killer app' it's supposed to be?
I'm curious as I've heard so much mentioned about it these last few years (10 now with Windows).
Re:WinFS vs Tiger Spotlight? (Score:5, Informative)
In that case, that's about half of what WinFS is supposed to be. It will make greater use of metadata, probably through the already existing NTFS streams in e.g. Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Yes, you can already store and search true file system-level metadata in those operating systems, an almost as little known fact as that you can mount devices in Windows XP to "folders", similar to how it works in Linux. I can for example mount my DVD-ROM at E: to C:\Devices\DVD. Anyway, that combined with the WinFS service running on top of NTFS helping out with indexing to allow instant database-style searches, should offer something similar to Spotlight functionality, if I understand Spotlight right.
However, there's more to it than fast database searches in WinFS. It also aims to change how we look on stored files altogether, taking away system-related concepts like "hard drives" and physical "folders" when navigating your stored data. Instead, your data will be organized into more abstract libraries of data. You'd for example store your games in your Game library, whose contents wouldn't be tied to one folder on one hard drive. You'd go to your Game library, and double-click on Doom III, instead of going to C:\Games\Doom III. Actually, C: wouldn't even be a concept seen by the user anymore.
It's even supposed to seamlessly work through network shares, however last thing I heard is that won't be in the initial release of WinFS.
So it's a new data model, and a new way to look at how you store data altogether.
All this is how it may look to the user. However, to Windows, it's a storage engine running as a service on top of NTFS.
Very early stages of WinFS could be found in the already released/leaked Longhorn alpha versions. Although you couldn't really say it was anything near functioning, you could see the concepts, and that was likely the intention at this early alpha stage.
Here are some quotes from Paul Thurrot's site:
------------
Re:WinFS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WinFS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WinFS (Score:2, Funny)
Sweeeet.
Re:Not Vaporware (Score:4, Funny)
"Vaporware" is sarcasm. Microsoft has quite a marked history of big claims and late deliveries.
No surprises here, really
Hate to say it. (Score:2, Redundant)
clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
Best interests? (Score:4, Interesting)
"We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and [We, at Microsoft] will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews.
Thank you...
Re:Best interests? (Score:2)
"We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and [We, at Microsoft] will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews."
They are not telling you to adopt it or not, but wether it will be available for xp. Heck, you can probably still use FAT with XP as far as I know (haven't tried it).
Re:Best interests? (Score:2)
Re:Best interests? (Score:4, Interesting)
FAT needs to access the disk a quarter of the amount of times for each read/write operation. It only makes sense to take all of these "extra" I/O operations and off-load them onto another drive. After I learned about this little trick (which is centered around the original strategy of moving the swap off the main drive) I've been a Windows user again in fact. I've setup and forgot about two Win2K machines with this strategy because they _never_ crash. [Of course you've got to admit that people get click happy and say the PC is frozen when Windows enters "trashing" mode and they reboot that bad mo-fo..]
Can't customers make choices on their own? Make it available and if it sucks we won't use it, problem solved.
Re:Best interests? (Score:2)
Assuming XP hasn't been EOL'd by the time WinFS is released (or that it ever is). This is just yet another example of how many companies, Microsoft in particular, will pre-announce features to distract attention from a competing product.
It seems that lately, MS has stepped up the tempo on their marketing campaigns: WinFS, Longhorn, etc. The question I'm interested in is: What competitor are they afraid of?
Re:Best interests? (Score:2)
Re:clearly (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally this is standard MS mentality but I disagree in this case. Here's why:
Hard drive space is friggin' cheap [newegg.com]. Look closely there. The 80GB unit is $55 while the 40GB unit is $48. Wow... For that kind of bang/buck, manufacturers might want to start bundling Linux with Windows in a dual-boot configuration. And coming soon, virtualization [google.com] - you'll be able to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on the same damn PC.
What better method of migrating people from Windows?
WinFS, however, throws a monkey wrench in that. While linux NTFS [sourceforge.net] is coming along nicely, Microsoft is fearing the loss of the proprietary-ness that has locked them in for so long.
Linux on the desktop is close (though ever so frustrating at this point). WinFS is Microsoft's last ditch at thwarting it for another couple years.
Re:clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Linux support for Linux from 2001? Yeah, yeah, theoretically you could download all the source and compile from scratch, yadda yadda...but even Red Hat recently killed stuff that was less than a year old.
How is APPLE support for their products from 2001? Hell, most new programs require 2 or more paid upgrades for X to even function.
This is standard mentality for pretty much anyone but MS. They support and back-port things for free quite regularly. Say what you will about their other business practices or security, but they are far and away the best in the industry (of major OSes at least) at updating things for free.
Re:clearly (Score:2)
If there is there is demand for support for older distros, it appears (Fedora legacy for instance will support your old Red Hat system) but most people (me included) are happy to run the latest and greatest.
Re:clearly (Score:3, Informative)
Re:clearly - there are two sides to every schwartz (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:clearly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:clearly (Score:2)
However I can do that now. In fact I'm right now setting up a Windows 2003 failover cluster in Virtual Server, with a Linux VM hanging round in the background ready to use if needed.
OK, you knew this, but just to stick my oar in...
Re:clearly (Score:2)
For the massess...
Right now, you've got to shell out additional cash. AMD and Intel competing will mean that we'll all have it for free. Combined with some hefty processing, there will be no reason not to use it.
So, yes - the geeks have it now but many more will have it in a couple years.
Re:clearly (Score:2)
So it would be a giant step backwards for users if somebody were to suggest that they reboot their computer to use different software.
The idea of a syst
Re:clearly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:clearly (Score:2)
Or, if you're a "the cup is half full" kind of person: It's in the best interests for the customers to not have a half-assed file system.
But, hey, karma doesn't grow on trees!
not cost-effective (Score:2, Informative)
Alternate meanings (Score:3, Insightful)
MMhhhmmm sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MMhhhmmm sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, Google has a free app which is great at local searching and incredibly fast. And it doesn't take a new filesystem to use it.
You're point is strong though.
Re:MMhhhmmm sure (Score:2)
BUT HAVE FAITH DAMMIT! >:o
Why the push in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
All it would do is make locating files easier, at least that's pretty much how they were shopping it around. You could do that without adding another layer to the HDD by simply having an element of the OS scan in the background efficiently.
Conversely, though, I wonder if the reason they're starting to back off of WinFS now is because including it would mean that all of those obscure file locations where companies like to hide setup files would be that much easier and faster for people to locate. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed to hunt through hidden folders to find some stupid file to edit or delete. And the search taking 30+ minutes didn't help.
Maybe instead of working on WinFS, they should focus on coming up with an alternative to the registry.
That is a small part of WinFS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why the push in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is. They're called INI files, and I always try to use them for my programs. Too simple a format? Try XML, or extending INI files to hold different datatypes. But local files kick the crap out of the registry, which should only be used IMHO for system data but is used all too often for app data.
Re:Why the push in the first place? (Score:3, Informative)
That's already what WinFS does. It's a background indexing service.
People, WinFS is just a service that indexes files silently in an internal database. There isn't "another layer to the HDD" being added.
What they say? (Score:5, Funny)
That never stopped them before!
Re:What they say? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is more of a REALLY DUH! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hard enough to design this WinFS, much less change all the OS components to be compatible with this filesystem. I also think the learning curve/'WTF is this' factor is too great to drop onto Windows XP users. Let it ride on Longhorn, but make sure you give a really full explanation on how to use this meta-data FS well.
I certainly don't find a need for a DB-based FS, but I know that it helps. Will it help enough people enough to make it worth implementing?
Re:I think this is more of a REALLY DUH! (Score:2)
Re:I think this is more of a REALLY DUH! (Score:2, Interesting)
This means that only new 'WinFS-compliant' applications can take full advantage of the quick-find, and as of now, thats pretty much just a search window.
OSX 10.4 has Spotlight integrated into everything they run, plus an open interface for using Spotlight. This allows everyone to use that searching technology to their advantage: a real timesaver. Doing so also he
Re:I think this is more of a REALLY DUH! (Score:5, Informative)
Index Server did just what it says: It indexed file contents. Every operating system can do that. The Mac, the platform with which I'm most familiar, has been doing that for at least five years now, and probably longer; I can't remember exactly.
It's not useful, and here's why: The days when most files were plain text are long gone. There are still plain text files out there, sure, but they're the vast minority. Most computer users probably don't create them at all, in fact.
Instead, people have e-mail messages (which are stored in plain-text files, but which are not plain text; they are in fact filled with what looks like gibberish to the casual reader), audio files, photographs, PDF documents, and application files. Most of your application files these days are being written in XML format which, like e-mail, is stored as plain text on the disk, but is filled with lots of stuff that's not related to the contents.
So merely indexing the contents of text files is not useful.
That's why Spotlight does things completely differently.
It's kind of hard to imagine that there's somebody out there who doesn't already know exactly how Spotlight works -- Apple's only been talking about it incessantly since last summer -- but I guess I have to concede the possibility. So let me explain it.
There's a program that runs in the background all the time. It's called "mds," for "metadata server." It's a system service; people don't interact with it directly. The purpose of mds is to store all the metadata on the computer and to respond to queries.
The mds program gets its metadata from another background task, mdimport, or "metadata import." The mdimport program reads files, extracts all the information from them it can, then passes that information off to the mds program.
The mdimport program is extensible through modules called metadata importers. Each metadata importer corresponds to a file type. When the mdimport program examines a file of a given type, it fires the relevant metadata importer module(s) to extract information from that file. Each metadata importer implements exactly one C function: GetMetadataForFile. This function receives a path to the file to be examined, a file type and a pointer to a key-value-pair data structure called a "dictionary."
GetMetadataForFile populates the dictionary with metadata stored as key-value pairs. When it returns, the mdimport program passes that information off to the mds program for storage.
The important idea here is that GetMetadataForFile can do anything to the file to extract metadata from it. A metadata importer might pull ID3 tags out of an M4A music file. Another one might extract EXIF metadata from a digital photograph. Another might parse a word-processing file in XML format, discard everything irrelevant, and return just the names of the fonts used in that file. Another might pull the date stamps out of a chat transcript and store them as start-time, end-time and duration metadata. Another might pull key frames from a QuickTime movie and store them as thumbnail data. Another might find e-mail messages with attachments and store the type and size of the attachment as metadata. The sky's the limit.
Spotlight is way more than just simple content indexing. It does content indexing, of course, using a new version of Search Kit, but that's just a part of it. (It's also not really that new. It's just a slightly optimized version of what's already in Mac OS X.)
As usual, the casual dismissal of something fairly revolutionary can be blamed on a high degree of ignorance on the part of the person doing the dismissing.
Re:I think this is more of a REALLY DUH! (Score:4, Informative)
Who actually thought that this would happen? (Score:2)
1. This is MS, the company that takes 15 years to realize viruses might be a problem.
2. If it wasn't going to make it in a new version of windows, which accounts for half of all their revenue, how were they going to give it away for free??
Y'all need to stop drinking that kool aid, or at least stop taking it rectally..
Best for customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if they were really interested in what's best for customers, you'd think they'd let the customer decide on a case-by-case basis. They could just release the filesystem for older systems via an extensive patch and see what the customers decide to do. Instead, Microsoft is going to determine what is best for all their customers.
The OSS folks would just release (and have released) new filesystems and let the bits fall where they may.
Central planning versus individual choices. Remind you of any 20th-century struggles?
Re:Best for customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense meant, but I think that your post is "a wonderful example of the difference between Microsoft and the OSS movement". While I agree fully with the OSS movement in theory, there is a lot more to a computing experience than the sum of the components. There is the overall presentation to the user, THAT is what Microsoft gets right, and THAT is what the OSS movement needs before it can ever truly be mainstream.
Re:Best for customers? (Score:3, Insightful)
OSS on the other hand needs hooks to get people to look at it. It has to counter all that MS say that they are going to come out without in order not to lose the PR battle. What OSS lacks is a clear spokesman, someone
Re:Best for customers? (Score:2)
They have a massive technet network along with MSDN. That gives them a semi-knowledgeable base to ask these kinds of questions to.
Further down the line they will show them betas and get feedback. Despite what you may think, most of the features MS implements are asked for by corporate America.In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
customers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:customers? (Score:3, Funny)
OK, but who is jordan and why is your ass on him ?
(This post brought to you by the keys Enter, Shift and the punctuation mark '.')
Soko
The turtle and the wabbit (Score:4, Interesting)
How often does a company use a cracked version of some sofware package that they actually purchased, so to avoid the problems of the additional protection complexity?
I see a security hole... (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone found an exploit to run queries on that database, then you can surely find passwords, addresses, vital documents, etc. in a snap!
At least when you obfuscate your folders, you make it harder for both you and intruders to find your info.
Re:I see a security hole... (Score:5, Funny)
So, by making your computer less useful, it becomes more secure. I'd say "that explains a lot", but I fear mod retaliation.
Problems with this... (Score:2)
God it's good to find good news these days. Especially with government "regulations" (aka. Filtering)
Re:Problems with this... (Score:2)
2 Alternatives That Work Now (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2 Alternatives That Work Now (Score:4, Interesting)
This makes a common network drive so much more accessible; imagine 20 users with 30 shared folders and 30 personal folders all on a network storage unit.
The OTHER point of view to yours:
I want the computer to do the stuff it's good at (organization and storage) and I want to do the stuff I'm good at (creation, manipulation, modification).
So if the computer can do a better job of keeping my files organized than I can, I say, let it.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. (Score:3, Funny)
Henchman #1: No, not ye--
Bill: HURRY IT UP DAMN YOU!
Henchman #1 and #2: Yes sir.
Bill: Damnit how long does it take to download the Tiger beta!?
*Bill scowls while looking over Apple's website*
Bill: We must hurry, it will take us surely a year to figure out how to create WinFS.
Still years off? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't Longhorn (with WinFS) supposed to ship next year or so? With WinFS still years off, does it means that Longhorn (and WinFS) is still in vaporware status?
64-bit XP (Score:4, Insightful)
But in another way, if they go to XP64, they might not have as much of an incentive to go to Longhorn. There would already be one 64-bit OS with WinFS. People might feel that Longhorn is unnecessary.
Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think all of these signs point to MS's code base being too big and unwieldy. I don't think anyone doubts that IE is too bloated to fix. Just compare the time between the release of 5 and the release 6 to the time between the release of 6 and now. If Microsoft could implement full CSS selector support and non-broken PNG display, I'm sure they would have by now, but IE is just too tangled to fix quickly anymore.
So, if MS is wandering in a Copland-esque desert, what's to be done? As unbelievable as a suggestion as it may seem, maybe they should take the OS X route and just buy a competitor and cut their loses. Starting over from (not quite) scratch will give Windows a shot in the arm. WINE has already proven that backwards compatibility with Windows applications doesn't have to be dependent on using their existing OS code. They should just buy out Be (a good choice since they already have a metadata filesystem) or someone else with a Unix-like underpinning, and rewrite Windows the right way. It will take another 3 or 4 years, but at this rate, they're going to need that much time anyway. Spinning their wheels on Longhorn won't get MS anywhere. If MS wants to innovate (and that's a reasonable question), it's time to take a chance, kill Copland, and try something new.
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:2)
Be, what Be? I think you'll find that company doesn't exist anymore. Th
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:2, Funny)
I feel a great disturbance in the Force...
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:2)
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:3, Informative)
Palm bought all of Be's IP. But Apple got many of the Be developers including Dominic Gianpaolo (I might be spelling it slightly wrong. I don't have his book handy.) who designed BeFS and now does filesystem stuff for Apple.
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:2)
Microsoft doing much of anything with the remains of BeOS is highly unlikely. Maybe they could buy out the Haiku [haiku-os.org] people, but that doesn't seem like much of a possibility either. Tjose people want to recreat and extend BeOS because th
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:4, Informative)
Core Image is a set of modular, hardware-accelerated image processing routines. It does things like scaling, color-correcting, blurring or sharpening and compositing raster image data. The modules, called Image Units, are written in a C-like language called CIKernel that's derived from the OpenGL Shading Language. Image Units are hardware-agnostic, meaning they can either run on the CPU or an available GPU, depending on what hardware is available. Core Image is smart enough to know whether the GPU or the CPU is faster, so if you have a fast CPU and an entry-level GPU, Core Image will pull the Image Units back into the CPU so they'll run faster. That kind of thing. It's a lot like SGI's ImageVision, according to this blogger who seems to have a clue [shapeofdays.com].
Avalon, as I understand it, is more like a 3D version of Quartz 2D. I've heard it described as Direct X gone way out of control.
According to a not-for-attribution conversation I had with an Apple employee some months ago, Apple hasn't invested any money in developing a 3D version of Quartz 2D because there's simply no demand for it. People who want to do actual 3D programming are already using OpenGL and it's working spectacularly. Quartz 2D is for the other 99% of developers who draw 2-dimensional things to the screen, and those guys don't give a flip about 3D.
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:3, Insightful)
And again, you're comparing it to Avalon. Stop doing that. The two things do not do the same thing. They are completely different. Core Image will not "blow away Avalon" any more than it will "blow away" the baked potato I had for dinner.
Re:Is Longhorn the new Copland? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft really doesn't need Longhorn at all, the core OS is in decent shape, the monopoly is chugging along, and they call add incremental features as downloads or service packs. Yeah, the next version of OS X will have more flash, but nobody has ever bought Windows because it's flashy. (Whereas Apple needs that consumer upgrade revenue.)
Avalon is already in Beta for XP and they've pretty much admitted that nobody was working on IE for the last few years.
The big news about really isn't WinFS or Avalon. It's the rewrite of the core APIs to support
The vapourware reason (Score:4, Insightful)
I presume that marketing also realised that too much talk about Longhorn features being backported to XP could significantly harm sales of Longhorn when it eventually does come out as people will obviously then simply use those features in XP instead of upgrading, thereby making the usual Windows version chaos (some 15% of all Windows users are still using Win98) even worse and pulling down MS' revenues.
On the other hand, MS knows that it needs to have some way to get the new stuff (XAML,
Damned if they do and damned if they don't. Strangely, I feel no pity with them whatsoever, as it was their own predatory monopoly practices, where they would kill their foes with beneath the belt tactics in order to get that very last 3% of users that they didn't already have, i.e. they were never prepared to sacrifice anything in order to have a cleaner and more unified user base.
What I love about Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
That's why I love 'em. Always thinking of what's best for their customers.
Fragmentation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, Novell managed to do it ages ago, with the file system that they created for NetWare... 'way back when NetWare 286 was state of the art for Network Operating Systems...
Later, it just got better, with sub-block allocation, as an example.
NTFS is up to, what, version 5? And, Microsoft still hasn't managed to make it efficient... file system fragmentation over time pretty much creates the "need" to replace computers: The defra
The Longhorn/Copeland comparision (Score:2)
I picture Gates in a cape and tights running endlessly from group to group giving 'genius' guidance to move things along. He finishes and leaves and the people gather and shake their heads.
The rest of the article... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, right, as if... (Score:5, Insightful)
They will make the decision based on what's best for Microsoft. I don't think the customer has mattered to Microsoft much since about Windows 95. In fact, 10 years later, I'd argue that customer welfare is near the bottom of their priority list.
Offhand, I can't think of a single move they've made in the last 10 years that really and truly had customers in mind. Being in a monopoly position, their mindset has shifted away from 'what services can we offer in exchange for money' to 'how many feathers can we pluck from the goose with the minimum amount of squawking'.
They've always been nasty, hardball competitors, but at one time they shipped some pretty kickass software, too. Word for Windows was particularly good. Even that horrible flop, Bob, was at least well-intended. But now that they are in a position of real power... if you'll notice, they never, ever ship anything that's really disruptive of or threatening to their main monopoly.
Most likely, their internal studies will be focused around how much money they can make and how much customer lock-in they can manage. Will giving it away free give them enough power to be worth losing the cash from selling it? Should they sell it at a low price, to generate some cash but get it into fairly widespread circulation? Should they sell it at a high price to corporations, to gather lots of cash but gain little leverage over filesystem standards? Should they bundle it only into Longhorn to help 'encourage' upgrades? You can rest assured, thoughts like "Is this technology something that every Microsoft customer should be able to use?" will never even occur to them.
Whatever their actual thought process ends up being, actual customer welfare will not enter into it.
Uh... (Score:3)
Uh, don't the customers get to decide what is best for themselves any more?
From the Microsoft Testing Labs: why it's late (Score:4, Funny)
(Hour later: Okay, it's up now) Cindy: Why is my computer so slow and the disk light on all the time? Programmer: It's indexing every file. Which requires unzipping every zip file and cab archive and calling upon special document translators to extract the text therefrom. It all goes into a big hash table in RAM or VM more likely. Cindy: Why is it really slow for about a day after I install this other app? Programmer: Well, it had to index all the installed files, including all the help files that are already indexed by the help file system. But don't worry, you can set a checkbox for "low priority indexing". Cindy: So this gloabl index of everything may be hours of days out of date? Programmer: Wellllll, yep. Cindy: Hmm, maybe it's not quite ready for the average Joe yet?
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:2, Interesting)
WinFS runs on top of NTFS anyway, so you probably wouldn't need to format.
And if I could get the database features to find and catalogue all my documents, pictures, music etc. then I would consider it worth it. Finding things even when organised can be a real pain after a period of time.
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:3, Informative)
It has been said a zillion times and I'll say it again because some still ignore the difference between these levels of abstractions.
Look at WinFF [wikipedia.org] on wiki as they say what many have said in the previous slashdot article:
The system is loosely based on a combination of the next version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, codenamed Yukon, and an underlying NTFS filesystem
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:2)
WikiPedia is not the same as wiki. WikiPedia is a wiki. The only thing that can be called Wiki (with a capital W) is WikiWikiWeb, the original wiki.
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:2)
Re:But why bother backporting? (Score:2)
How many people formatted/converted to Fat32/NTFS to use larger hard drives? My point? It depends on how attractive the benefits are. How many people are going to format their machines to switch to Linux? Same equation. If WinFS isn't interesting, it won't be well adopted. Mod me up.
Re:Call Me Bill (Score:5, Funny)
Steve?
Re:Call Me Bill (Score:2)
Steve?
Ballmer?
Re:Call Me Bill (Score:5, Funny)
I heard recently that you might be after a 'white whale'. As it so happens I have a few harpoons from my last job at HP, I would be happy to sell them to you on the cheap.
Drop me a line if your interested.
Carly Fiorina
Re:Call Me Bill (Score:2)
Re:Yeh Right (Score:2, Insightful)
MS release schedule == plan to maximize share value
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:2)
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:2)
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:3, Informative)
liquidwar?
matrem?
dpkg? apt?
rpm?
grub? lilo?
aptitude? synaptic?
imagemagick?
Xaos?
m4?
evolver?
nmap? nessus?
Python? Ruby? (I won't count Perl; it's based on awk.)
* Any number of biology and astronomy tools, of which I've got seven or eight.
ALSA?
Ogg? FLAC?
TeX?
3ddesktop?
apache?
lynx? (No, I wouldn't say it's an immitation of IE, Netscape, or even Mosaic.)
And that's just the stuff I've got installed on my computer. I don't feel like going through thousands of Debian packages just to drive home
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:2)
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:2, Informative)
The grandparent was implying there were few, if any, Open Source software packages that weren't basically immitations of commercial software.
Re:winfs is better because? (Score:3, Interesting)
And boot-loader programs like Lilo merely simulate firmware boot prompts that, again, have been around since God was a boy. The standard three-phase boot pr
Re:Beat them at their own game? (Score:2)