“The next version of the world’s most popular desktop operating system, code-named “Longhorn,” is due out in test form next year and in final form in 2004. It will have a new look and feel, very different from Windows XP’s. Its guts will also be radically different from Windows XP’s, because they’re based on XML — extensible markup language, the emerging lingua franca of the Internet. And it will be the first version that won’t function fully without new hardware.” Read the report at Seattle PI.
Next Microsoft Operating System will be Radical Change from XP
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.
Oh no! Furtunately there are still operating systems on the market which believe in KISS (Keep It Small and Simple or Keep It Simple, Stupid!)…
Has anyone noticed the two (currently) largest changes to Windows are extremely similar to two of the Mac OS X changes: Aqua & the Dock?
The fact that one universal program(“platform”) can do everything, does not necessarily mean that it will be difficult to use. Read here for my editorial:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2084
>Aqua & the Dock?
Not really. It is natural evolution of the Interface department. It is normal to expect UI changes from one version to another. You are too much into conspiracy theories my friend.
Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.
That’s about as far away from the philosophy of UNIX style OS’s as they can get.
It’d be interesting to see years later which approach is left standing.
Oops, duplicate posted Thomas’ view. I could sworn that wasn’t there when I started typing.
>The fact that one universal program(“platform”) can do everything, does not necessarily mean that it will be difficult to use.
Agreed. But Staroffice tried something similar and besides being confusing, it had huge performance penalties.
I don’t think that MS is trying to do what Mozilla and StarOffice tries to. The .NET platform allows for a “plugin” based architecture, similar to the one found on KDE, but even much more advanced, as it can install such addons via the internet and apply them automatically. Read the editorial I linked above for more.
>> Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all
>>
I think that’s actually a good idea, if it is well designed and implemented anyway. And no, it isn’t so much about having one jack-of-all-trades application, as having a common standard.
Unfourtunately, Microsoft will not willingly extend the same philosophy to non MS computing worlds. I don’t know why a document format should be a closed kind of standard, or why a browser have proprietary extensions. Not do I understand why a samba developer must reverse-engineer to get anything done.
Something that’s been a long time coming is the ability in Windows variants to switch to an isolated maintenance console in times of severe GUI crashes. A simple isolated kernel like in Linux would be nice.
A lot of software that we develop (in a prototype stage) is quite unstable and because it heavily modifies gui elements and uses hooks, it is prone to crashes and will cause GUI lockups (the entire desktop) etc… need a proper console damnit!
Sob. It’s taken ten years for hard disk recording to become reliable on Windows. I don’t do spreadsheets, I don’t use MS for Email or the Web, I don’t give a f*** if they base their next OS on XML, UML, perl or fortran, it had just better not get in the way and break low latency audio apps.
For those whose total requirements from windows are driver support, schedular, memory management and a Window manager, changes to the underlying OS are a very bad thing.
It will be the first version not to be fully functional without new hardware? History class…
Then again, it could be a way of saying “Palladium” in disquise.
What will be interesting is to see if they keep their promise to break ALL backwords compatiblity. Right now except for System utilities, most apps from 1995 on will run on XP. If MS does indeed break compatibility with the millions of current 32bit apps then Longhorn may be a really hard sell. Sure there will probably be advantages to Longhorn, but Not being able to run every app ever made since 95 won’t be one of them.
With 2k/xp we’ve reached the point of windows being mostly stable and I think it will be many years before companies plan on migrating. Of course being that MS groomed every OEM in the world to ship only MS windows and whatever version they happen to be putting out, they will win a lot of desktops by default.
Lastly you have Palladium which no matter what PR spin you want to put on it, is a attempt to take away users control of what they can do with their PC. Something so wrong and Un-American I don’t even know where to begin. I look forward to bios’s and motherboards which no longer work with alternative OS’s. Of course MS will just say that is a “side effect” and was never the intent.
So basically Longhorn means 1) No compatibility. 2) Expensive new hardware required 3) Loss of control over your PC(I’m sorry Dave I can’t let you play that unsigned MP3)
I have to say of all I mentioned Palladium seems the biggest threat. If online vendors,banks etc opt this “voluntary” system, there is no doubt in mind mind I’ll never be able to use something like a BEOS clone or Linux. I know, I know nothing about Palladium has been proven yet. Well yes that’s true. But one thing that has been proven is that MS will do anything illegal, unethical, or dirty in order to maintain and extend its monopoly. As far as I’m concerned I have no reason at all to trust them so for the time being I’ll be sticking with XP and Linux.
> 1) No compatibility.
You just assume that. You offer no proof.
> 2) Expensive new hardware required
This was never MS’ policy, on the contrary.
> 3) Loss of control over your PC
Dunno about this one. Probably.
1) No compatability.
That’s what I got from that article. If they’re going to rework all the internals of OS, how are legacy apps supposed to run? Will MS make their own wine? Doubt it…they’ll just make you buy all new apps…that’s what proprietary software is all about anyway, isn’t it? Not only for MS, but for all other software companies. It means money for all of them, so they will get lots of backing from many software companies.
2) Expensive hardware.
Of course it will be….at least at first anyway. To implement palladium requires some massive hardware changes to the way companies put things together. no more budget built home made systems anymore….again, at least for a while after it’s release.
3) Loss of control.
Don’t even kid yourself. you will lose control.
Until the government actually implements some polices that can prevent microsoft form building an even stronger monopoly than they already have…well…I’m very afraid.
Something that’s been a long time coming is the ability in Windows variants to switch to an isolated maintenance console in times of severe GUI crashes. A simple isolated kernel like in Linux would be nice.
98 and ME were monolithic kernels (like Linux) but the mikrokernel design of 2000 & XP has been proven to be inhenently more stable and less prone to one program crash bringing down the OS with it. In 2000/XP you can go to task manager and kill explorer then run it as a new task, try that in 98. Longhorn will probably be based on the XP mikrokernel.
XML? XML??!!!
XML is the opposite of what it wants to be.
It is hard to read by humans and it isn’t efficient at all, with up to 70% of the file contents being markup without any data.
No thanks, I have enough bloat and slowness in my life
MS says that Windows’ advantage over Unix and Linux is that it is tied to the x86 architecture.
And they consider this a plus? Why do I want to be locked in to a certain architecture?
” I don’t think that MS is trying to do what Mozilla and StarOffice tries to. The .NET platform allows for a “plugin” based architecture, similar to the one found on KDE, but even much more advanced, as it can install such addons via the internet and apply them automatically. Read the editorial I linked above for more.”
Well one it’s hard to take a code base from monolithic to modular.
Two any plan that depends on the end-user having internet access is going to be problamatic. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of people for various reasons who don’t.
Three I’ll leave the MS history for others, but I’ll say that it’s not an encouraging one.
Four as others pointed out W2K & XP is “good enough” for most. Convincing people to leave that, for the barely tangable that Longhorn represents is going to be very hard. Especially businesspeople.
I don’t need or want to be tied to a Palladium PC architecture ( Sniff, sniff…smells like a Mac clone to me ) or OS. This sounds to me that instead of actually fixing their security issues and improving the way their programmers implament the code that they create, in order to establish a more secure OS environment they are simply choosing the lazy way out and forking over that responsibility to the hardware vendors. Again why would I need PC if am going to be locked in ? I might as well go with a Mac.
Also I especially do not need or want a jack of all trades utilities application that more then likely be half assed in nature. Not to mention the on-going loss of control that LongHorn will deliver to the end-user and their PC. Sorry MS but I will continue on with duel-booting Linux and W2K as long as possible and when the time comes I will be all Linux if need be or I will just buy a Mac instead. Hopefully that Palladium crap won’t crawl it’s way over to Apple.
P.S. I bought my PC and it’s software I should rightfully own it !! What is this some commie socialist sick joke of a PC and OS ? I hope MS rethinks what they are doing but then again am pretty sure these guys are full steam ahead.
Brian Valentine spent over $400M developing what are now key components of Longhorn.
There will be substantive improvements in knowledge worker productivity from Longhorn.
Inlcuding the ability to track exactly what employees are doing on their new Longhorn PC’s.
There will be no more use of work computers for personal purposes.
Management is going to find a way to purchase these new machines… as they are losing “billions” in productivity to personal use of employer computers. Not to mention that all their secrets are being stolen too, right?
– Red Pill
98 and ME were monolithic kernels (like Linux) but the mikrokernel design of 2000 & XP has been proven to be inhenently more stable and less prone to one program crash bringing down the OS with it. In 2000/XP you can go to task manager and kill explorer then run it as a new task, try that in 98. Longhorn will probably be based on the XP mikrokernel.
True from a consumers point of view, you run apps they run in isolated page or physical memory location, the app crashes the kernel hashes the adresses and off we go again. In the development world however, where the stability of the system is paramount to productivity, there are many ways to kill windows and bring it to it’s knees. Some examples:
– Hooks – Common practice for advanced UI handling very tricky to get right, good chance of a total lock up or two
– Drivers – Using the DDK to develop drivers under windows doesn’t mean stability, crashes are common for video devices that cause the GUI to go boom!
– Console and standard class operations. A good example of this is potentially sending 2 tabs characters to the console and the three backspace control characters. Then passing any character. Boom bluescreens on WinNT/2K and XP.
Seperating the GUI from the OS is important and should be part of the overall architecture.
lol, Palladium will be a big joke on MS. They will be the losers. As for loss of control, I don’t see the masses here objecting to having xp and product activation shoved down their throats, or Media Player spying on them, so it doesn’t exactly give hope that the people will make the right decision. Seems people just want the new edition, flashy gui and empty promises regardless.
Oh and I can’t help but laugh whenever I hear the marketdroid term ‘knowledge workers’. lol
“And a new operating system takes at least 20 months, sometimes 40 months, Cherry said.”
What a useless statement. They have absolutely no clue whats going on and yet they spew out these facts like they come from years of experience.
The whole article displays a rather poor level of understanding.
“they spew out these facts”
statements. Obviously not facts.
What Microsoft believes in is somewhat correct, somewhat incorrect. I do believe that browser ultimately will be that one platform where you do almost everything, however there are problems. For certain tasks separate programs are still better. One example that comes to my mind is Video Editing. I also predict that people will eventually move some of their applications to servers where they can access to them from any browser in the world.
“Present a single, unified way of interacting with programs. Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.”
God, I hope not
The problem with integrated apps is that they usually do 1 or 2 things very well, and 3-4 other things either badly or very medicore. Take media players for instance. They are normally good at what they do, but then they try to be your mp3 player, cd player, cd burner, mp3 ripper, jukebox, etc .. when there’s already several stand-alone programs that do these things much better.
Think about it this way, after reading this I’d have to conclude that Microsoft feels confident enough that it owns all the markets for Office Apps, Media Apps, Web browsing, and almost anything else, which isn’t far off from the truth. But what this operating system will be doing is replacing the need for third party software companies, by replacing them with a built in integrated piece of software. This is HORRIBLE!!
It may sound like a big paranoid conspiracy theory, but this is the truth. I mean they’ve slowly but surely integrated all these pieces of software into their OS using other people’s ideas and concepts (innovating), and they’ve been widely accepted. MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Office. Now that they basically own all these markets, they are trying to push to monopolize them all by creating a OS which uses all their tools, and integrates them into a UI so that they only use their tools.
It’s like communism on your computer, talk about anti-competitive!
What happens when someone discovers an exploit with their all in one program? Then the entire thing is a risk until a patch is made.
Secondly, if everything is located in a single location you’re running the chance of serious damnage done by a hacker or virus because everything is in one place.
Third, if you’re as paranoid as I am of Microsoft with their “security patches” that demand admin access and how everything is becoming more intergrated and seems to always want to connect to a microsoft server or two every time you double click the program, then you have to wonder if MS isn’t just making it easier for themselves to see what you’re doing with your computer and/or add or remove files from your computer at will.
what are they planing on doing? one program for it all huh. so does that mean that they will build Word, Excel, etc all into explorer/IE? will the e-mail be a hotmail interface?
so perhaps MS is going to have hooks programmed into longhorn so that when you buy a program made for longhorn it becomes “part” of the OS.
it is very interesting. sucks though that I will have to buy a new PC to use it.
So much for the ability I have currently not to install space-wasters like the Office assistant, Powerpoint and Access…..
To the person who said that XML is hard to read. ZML is a whole lot easier to read than a binary file format.
From previous articles I have read the gui of the next windows will be fully accelerated –it will require Direct X 9 or 10 hardware to operate with no option to software render screens. It may not be all doom and gloom.
Also, for anyone who has studied BeOS, the modular application format is the future of OSes. it reduces the need for massive programs that have to wrap up basic functions in every .exe file.
Of course you will have to pay $$$$ to get your applet to play with the OS–but that’s another story.
OK: Theoretical Situation. KDE, Gnome, Ximian, and RedHat are going to join forces to create a distribution that unifies everyday tasks from office apps to instant messaging to web browsing and wrap it in a revolutionary interface based on OpenGL and utilizing mySQL as it’s filesystem/archive. Every distribution comes with a USB key to enable the utmost in security. Well this is revolutionary! Finally the open-source community is not simply mimicking Microsoft! But when Microsoft does it, all of a sudden we’re communists leaching off of Apple. Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft has many done some pretty sleazy things in the past, but dont’t mistake every new thing Microsoft comes out with as a strangle device for the masses. Then again I may be totally off and we’ll all become Microsoft Drones in the near future, but untill then… please try and keep an open mind. Thanks…
Did you even read what he wrote? he wants an operating system where by the graphics server is not rammed into the kernel space, aka, Ring 0 for “performance” sake, aka, GDI/GDI+. Do you know why QNX is stable? the clear boundaries are set between the kernel, drivers and user space. Keep them seperate, and you won’t have a problem. Throw them all into one pot under the grand illusion of “speed” and face the consequences.
One crappy driver, one crappy video card or chipset, and boom! there goes your so-called stable Windows. Need one use the example of GeForce and VIA chipsets. The grewsome twosome, the pinnacle of instability. The top of crappy drivers.
You may give X11 alot of crap, but atleast when this go tit’s up, you can always switch to another console using Ctrl-Alt-[function key] and simply kill the offending process.
[i]”and simply kill the offending process.”[i]
It’s not always that simple, I can recal multiple (recent)occasions where I can’t get by with even the all-mighty kill -9. I didn’t read into what he wrote and do agree that at least win-server should run drivers and the graphics server in user space. If I am not mistaken .NET server will use stable generic drivers for this reason. I don’t put my OS through the abuse of spyware and a million things in startup that some people do, but I would rate my windows desktop and workstation as stable. I have way more stability problems with Linux. The stability of my solaris workstation is much closer to winodws, but then again, unlike Linux, it actually feels like a finished product rather than a perpetual beta.
I’m so sick and tired of the MS hype that I could puke. Longhorn will yet again contain incremental and evolutionary (not revolutionary) improvements. It will be nothing more than WinNT 6.0 with the latest candy-coated “user friendly” shell that just obviscates OS functions even further in the name of making things easier.
As for defining the GUI using XML, well Mozilla has made that popular. It’s really not a bad idea, but as usual I trust Microsoft to twist it to their own needs and to claim it as their own idea.
Anyway, I won’t have to worry about it much longer. I decided to vote with my wallet and ordered a PowerBook. With the web-based management of our Novell servers, I can work quite happily from the Mac .. even when supporting windows desktops which is quite easy using wonderful tools like the VNC remote control program.
I would love to see a grass roots movement against upgrading our computers for two years. We need some real value in computing, not more mobile phones with annoying customized rings and fancy computer cases which leak electromagnetic radiation like crazy. We need to send a message to the vendors.
if they lose support for the current games and things no one I know will buy it because that is the only reason why they use windows(including me). IF they do break the line then this would be a good time for the other OSs to step up and get some games ported and other programs(If to keep with MS these companies will have to learn a complertely new thing, why not just switch to something like FreeBSD or Linux??)
I can recal multiple (recent)occasions where I can’t get by with even the all-mighty kill -9.
I honestly don’t believe you. I’ve been using Redhat for three years now and only once was I unable to kill a process. That was some ancient version of Netscape.<p> BTW, I’d like to point out that I had to get my mom’s computer running Windows XP online recently. AFAICT when starting MSN Explorer, which seems to be the only web brower on the system, you have to sign up for an email account with MSN or hotmail. If you don’t already have an ISP, MSN is strongly suggested to the user. I predict that Microsoft leveraging its monopoly power in this way will very much accelerate decline AOL’s decline.</p>
I’m surprised so many people here are criticising MS on the “one application does all” idea. Isn’t that essentially what most people knowlegable about UI design are advocating for Linux? A document-centric approach where instead of loading Word or Outlook or Powerpoint, you open a document or check your e-mail or view a presentation? Microsoft *is* essentially doing away with the idea of the application. Where that leaves their competitors is in creating a package that does it better… I guess that leaves proprietary Windows software developers out in the cold, with Linux/open source as the only other organization capable of taking on a project of that size.
MSN Explorere is not the only browser on WinXP there would have been lots of trouble for MS if it was I am sure, and yes MSN Explorer req. you to have one of their e-mailsof course it is meant to be used with their network, if you use them as an ISP. And yes I do own and use WinXP so I am nto just guessing.
As written here by others as well, I think Windows as a desktop operating system is nothing to MS anymore but a cash cow that milks money to other MS operations. Longhorn will, like W2000 and XP, be the same old WinNT under the hood with lotta marmalade on top of it. When MS already has a 90+ % market share, there is not much left there for it to win. Mainly MS is trying to lengthen the unavoidable Linux takeover of the desktop market so that it has time to make its other businesses more profitable.
“I’m surprised so many people here are criticising MS on the “one application does all” idea. Isn’t that essentially what most people knowlegable about UI design are advocating for Linux?”
Hells No ! What in gods name are you talking about ? If you want one solid UI design then select either KDE, Gnome and or a window manager of choice that you like and go with that one alone. Or better yet go with Lycoris, Lindows or Xandros Linux. All Linux apps can run in any GUI driven environment no matter what ! Stop it with the FUD already !
“A document-centric approach where instead of loading Word or Outlook or Powerpoint, you open a document or check your e-mail or view a presentation? Microsoft *is* essentially doing away with the idea of the application.”
No ! What they are doing is trying to crush all competitive applications that compete with them and throwing all their eggs in one basket which more then likely will hold MS only eggs. Now what happens when someone finds a hole in that big ole mighty application of theirs !?! You’re pretty much F’scked beyond belief ! Everything created by man can be brought done by man.
For example the X-BOX security keys and hard wired OS was cracked not to long ago and you can now install Mandrake 9.0 on the X-BOX. With the right mod-chip you can even dual boot the the native X-Box OS along side Mandrake ! With the right software you can wait outside of a X-BOX port connected on the net and gleam off any of the info it sends and recieves and use those cracked keys to crack whatever encryption those data packets are using and basiclly have free access to that data.
“I guess that leaves proprietary Windows software developers out in the cold, with Linux/open source as the only other organization capable of taking on a project of that size.”
Me hands MS the gun named LongHorn so they can shoot themselves in the foot. These guys are try to freaking hi-jack the x86 architecture for themselves and lock everyone else out !! This stinks of Apple ! Why not just buy a freaking Mac and get it over with already !
“OK: Theoretical Situation. KDE, Gnome, Ximian, and RedHat are going to join forces to create a distribution that unifies everyday tasks from office apps to instant messaging to web browsing and wrap it in a revolutionary interface based on OpenGL and utilizing mySQL as it’s filesystem/archive. Every distribution comes with a USB key to enable the utmost in security. Well this is revolutionary! Finally the open-source community is not simply mimicking Microsoft! But when Microsoft does it, all of a sudden we’re communists leaching off of Apple. Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft has many done some pretty sleazy things in the past, but dont’t mistake every new thing Microsoft comes out with as a strangle device for the masses. Then again I may be totally off and we’ll all become Microsoft Drones in the near future, but untill then… please try and keep an open mind. Thanks…”
This would never happen !! You forget that Linux is a technology as much as it is a OS. Along the way someone will always take the code and fork it in order to either make their own vision of what Linux should be, act and look like a reality or develop it to suit their current needs. Sure commercial distros have and will get togetheir to put out standards that make it easier for applications vendors to work off but never would they try to cut them completely off in the fashion MS is trying to do.
A new plished GIU, a XML Registry and a SQL filesystem is one thing. The biggest issue the have to solve is to replace their 10 years old ugly plain C Windows API! They MUST replay that with a well designed OO-API. Micrsoft has gone the way of the weakest resistance ist the last century. No technical revolution ony slow evolution. They are 90% shareholder-driven. As long as their product sells they change nothing real. Longhorn will be a big disappointment if they don’t integrate a new clean API. This is what counts!
Ralf.
Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.
If this is what Microsoft REALLY thinks, I dare them to write that single program in assembly, hand optimized for your comptuer. They can’t and won’t because it is not possible to get all the functionality you need in a computer from a single program. It is far more intelligent to write something called an Operating System, which handles scheduling CPU time for MANY programs all running at the same time. See, Microsoft is really having a hard time writing that Operating System, because they think that certain applications should have direct access to hardware, so they can outperform their competition, perhaps, but this breaks their HAL and pisses off customers, so now they have to convince their customers that what they need isn’t an OS, but instead MS Office 11, or whatever they’re going to call it. God, I love this company. The sheer entertainment I get out of their PR department is more than worth their marketting budget!
P.S. I bought my PC and it’s software I should rightfully own it !! What is this some commie socialist sick joke of a PC and OS ? I hope MS rethinks what they are doing but then again am pretty sure these guys are full steam ahead.
The funny thing is the commie socialist OS for your PC gives you back your freedom. Its sad most people can’t accept the simple truthes in life. Its not about money.
It’s like communism on your computer, talk about anti-competitive!
Communism is not about being anti-competitive. Perhaps the Russians forgot our essential liberties in their communism. But don’t blame communism for their mistakes. Communism is about community, working together. Competition is part of that (maybe this isn’t understood, people are morons… competition is also about learning from eachother and working together. Capitalists have a hard time doing this and many things like sharing). No, this is more like an oppressive authoritative government implementing controls instead of simply laws guiding what actions you are capable of making. They have been doing this for years. Only this one is making laws from a collection of organizations from the MPAA to the government. Do you really want Disney to write the law of the land? I know how much you love Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but sit down and think real hard about this one for a while. This might affect other media systems. It has the potential to invade the entertainment center and control what you can do with your TV, not that you have much control over that now, anyway. But maybe we were wrong about Microsoft all these years. Maybe they’re not such a bad company after all and will give you a tool to help you simplify your life and automate your job, giving you all the free time you could ask for. Yeah, and and they’ll like throw in a plushie and even give you a hug, cuz they love you so much… precious customer.
I bet this ‘All in one application’ will use modules that are loaded on demand, and will be protected from each other. Of course it will be possible to create 3rd party modules.
But most likely these modules will not need to run in separate windows, and IPC via delegates will make it more easy to tighly integrate them.
I don’t see what’s wrong with xml, a database fs or an OpenDOC style application-document approach and if it weren’t for Palladium, I’d find this windows release very interesting.
you go eug., when fud is the topic, you are the ceerleading squawed. gooed to go, know? don’t forget to moderate diss.
probully sum of the other fudlickers are on holiday, know?
shills. yuk!@#$%
“Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.”
I see this part of the article as more an idea as to what we can expect from Office 11, not implicitly longhorn. As far as I am aware Office 11 will be partially .Net framework based, and its successors will be wholly .Net framework based. Therefore Office as we know it will still have Word, Powerpoint, Outlook etc but will run using .Net and hence draw from a common codebase. Also due to the new SQL based filesystem the end user won’t need to knwo what office application they are using to open a file as that choice will be decided by the OS once the user has located the file of their choice based on a metadata search. For new files I suspect there will still be “Write a new document”, “Create a Presentation” etc – thereby taking responsibility away from the user to select the correct application to perform one of these tasks.
“Longhorn will be the first operating system designed for use with PCI Express, the motherboard design that will succeed the PCI standard currently in force, Enderle said. In addition to providing a performance boost of up to eight times current speeds, the new design is required to harness the increased security features of Longhorn”
All this is from my point of view is MS supporting future technology – supporting PCI Express is simply like supporting USB, USB2, Firewire etc in the core OS rather than supplying addon driver support.
From the security perspective, Windows will work without Palladium because in the white paper released a long time ago it clearly stated that it can be turned off by the user (as you can turn off the DRM in media player now)…..in the end I’m sure some of the specs will be based on existing technologies. Unfortunately this may include EFS – if you read into the basic aspects of palladium as below:
–The system purports to stop viruses by preventing the running of malicious programs.
— The system will store personal data within an encrypted folder.
— The system will depend on hardware that has either a digital signature or a tracking number.
— The system will filter spam.
— The system has a personal information sharing agent called “My Man.”
— The system will incorporate Digital Rights Management technologies for media files of all types (music, documents, e-mail communications). Additionally, the system purports to transmit data within the computer via encrypted paths.
The above items are from the below linked page which include an excellent collection of news items and information links: http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/palladium.html
Just my views on the subject – I honestly don’t believe palladium will be the big scary beast people are making it out to be. There is no point supplying a security system people will not use, and on the flip side there is no point supplying one that is of no use. MS have to be very careful when implementing their security, spam blocking, DRM etc to not alienate users who believe “Big Brother is watching” in Longhorn.
As far as the one application does all stuff….well, we’ll see…but I doubt MS would be stupid enough to do such a thing. My belief is there will just be simpler ways to carry out tasks – like the “Email” and “Internet” links at the top of the start menu as we now know it that can, thanks to SP1, be customised.
For further information on suspected MS patents related to DRM:
http://cryptome.org/ms-drm-os.htm
http://cryptome.org/ms-drm-os2.htm
-JC-
“Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to…”
I think the whole of the problem can be reduced to that. Microsoft always tries to think what users should have to or should not have to do.
I don’t like some company deciding what’s good for me. They can offer me something, they can’t impose it on me. And that, imposing, is what MS has been doing (or trying to).
This is far more relevant than what kind of stuff they implement in their future (read that as non-existent) OS.
on MS: “Microsoft doesn’t think computer users should have to use one program to read and write a word-processing file, another to use a spreadsheet, and a third to correspond via e-mail. Rather, the company thinks, a single program should handle it all.” MS got it the wrong way. i want a single copy of *data*. the data should be accessible either from a word processor, spreadsheet, any programs by other vendor. it’s the data that matters.
on XML: yes, i think we all agree here that XML sucks and is slow.
on Eugenia: “Re: KISS, The fact that one universal program(“platform”) can do everything, does not necessarily mean that it will be difficult to use. Read here for my editorial: “. i’m afraid your reply to Thomas is irrelevant. Thomas was not commenting about the usability of the unified program but about how it’s being against the KISS principle. the unified program will mostly be complex as hell.
The system has a personal information sharing agent called “My Man.”
Hehe, and you know the feminist movement is going to be all over that shit in a heartbeat
You CANNOT turn off DRM in the latest media player. It will still monitor your PC. It still creates the hidden DRM directories. It still installs the DRM plug-in for Netscape!If you turn it off, some of your content doesn’t work! The Media Player, even with all the “DRM” turned off, still connects to Microsoft over the net.
In one WHITE PAPER, it says you can turn Palladium off. Of course it says that. In the WHITE PAPER. Is Microsoft implementing the white paper? Of course not.
Do you honestly think it will work this way in the REAL WORLD? MAYBE you can turn it off… and then YOUR SOFTWARE WON’T WORK!
Most of the people who are the early adopters of technology — the real tech people — are frightened of Palladium. Here is a feature not ONE person asked for. This is an INDUSTRY feature, designed to CONTROL and MONITOR your usuage of YOUR personal computer. And if you turn it off, you will VIOLATE your EULA and YOUR SOFTWARE that you paid MONEY for turns into gobbly bits of junk.
Of course Palladium won’t be perfect… on purpose.
Show a dumb geek a prison cell with a broken door …
– Red Pill
I just needed to join in…
Squidgee: Has anyone noticed the two (currently) largest changes to Windows are extremely similar to two of the Mac OS X changes: Aqua & the Dock?
Aqua is a terrible mixture of two great UIs (Platinum and NeXTstep) to make one terrible mishmash UI. Microsoft have almost all of the Dock’s functionality currently in Windows XP, the Sidebar is way different from the Dock. I may accept that it may be similar to Photon, but Dock? Puh-leze.
offtangent: Agreed. But Staroffice tried something similar and besides being confusing, it had huge performance penalties.
Its performance penalties didn’t come from the integration. If you look at early OpenOffice.org code, you would understand why. Plus, StarOffice’s confusing UI was because they cloned Windows 95 UI, rather than making a smart easy UI ala Gobe Productive.
linux_baby: I don’t know why a document format should be a closed kind of standard, or why a browser have proprietary extensions.
Most, if not all of IE-only extensions are constantly under attack especially by Mozilla gurus as completely insecure…. wonder why would anyone want to run a ActiveX control on Mozilla. Plus, pre-Office monopoly, all formats weren’t documented… for obvious reasons. I guess Microsoft is “conservative”…
None: What will be interesting is to see if they keep their promise to break ALL backwords compatiblity.
They never said that. They said they would be fixing security issues with all current supported versions of Windows, and applications (meaning backward compatiblity) might just break.
None: Of course being that MS groomed every OEM in the world to ship only MS windows and whatever version they happen to be putting out, they will win a lot of desktops by default.
Allegations (i.e. plain ol’ AOL, Be and Sun crap) against microsoft exclusive deals with OEMs only have to do with big OEMs…. however, if this were true, somebody forgot to mention that most consumers buy from relatively small shops instead from big branded OEMs.
None: Lastly you have Palladium which no matter what PR spin you want to put on it, is a attempt to take away users control of what they can do with their PC.
Well, PR is actually Public or Press Relations. Microsoft haven’t mention much about Palladium and what it does. Pro-Windows sites praises it, while Slashdot, The Register and the like critizes it. Personally, I do neither. Why? I don’t have any concreate proof what Palladium does.
I’m not going into the monopoly question (I personally find it stupid), but be a little logical. With the amount of ligitations and private suites against Microsoft, plus close scrutiny of each Microsoft action by its competitors and the DOJ, I doubt Microsoft would do anything “anti-competitve”.
Lycoris User: That’s what I got from that article. If they’re going to rework all the internals of OS, how are legacy apps supposed to run?
Actually, the article DIDN’T say that. WinFS, which is the biggest change, is just NTFS plus Yukon. (Besides, Windows NT reworked all the internals (and externals) of Windows, yet compatiblity is still kept).
Lycoris User: Of course it will be….at least at first anyway. To implement palladium requires some massive hardware changes to the way companies put things together. no more budget built home made systems anymore….again, at least for a while after it’s release.
Actually, from what I have read, Palladium remains optional for a while. And with Intel pushing TCPA on most future chipsets, I don’t really think *massive* hardware changes is needed. Plus, I don’t see how homemade PCs would go. You get a Paladium motherboard, plus Palladium hardware, combine them together, maybe activate them or register them or something…
Don’t even kid yourself. you will lose control.
Then again, maybe not. What I would predict is that Palladium would be used to hinder fair use (e.g. getting rid of casual piracy with software and media files), plus with that and in the future faster broadband speeds, Hollywood would have movies showing though the Net, all I’m worried is that microsoft would advertise Palladium as a *feature*.
Lycoris Users: Until the government actually implements some polices that can prevent microsoft form building an even stronger monopoly than they already have…well…I’m very afraid.
If Slashdot and Devcon conspiracy theories can hinder competitors, I really really pity them. Cause they lack any form of business skills.
Jim: 98 and ME were monolithic kernels (like Linux) but the mikrokernel design of 2000 & XP has been proven to be inhenently more stable and less prone to one program crash bringing down the OS with it.
Except of course the fact that Windows NT’s kernel is actually more monolithic than micro. Windows 9x problems came from a DOS 16-bit kernel, not a monolithic kernel. Monolithic nor microkernel really affect the stability of the OS (Linux is monolithic, yet far more stable than OpenDarwin, which is microkernel).
Chris Richards: And they consider this a plus? Why do I want to be locked in to a certain architecture?
To take advantage of that archietecture? (Tell me a viable x86 altenative).
anon: I don’t need or want to be tied to a Palladium PC architecture ( Sniff, sniff…smells like a Mac clone to me )
When did Macs come with anything like Palladium?
Seperating the GUI from the OS is important and should be part of the overall architecture.
The only weak point that really matters you have mentioned is the drivers. The driver architecture is instable in nature because it is somewhat bakcward compatible with Windows 9x, making it easy to port drivers over.
Besides, the shell isn’t part of the kernel. explorer.exe, the graphical shell, is a seperate process. I never once saw a blue screen on Windows XP, and saw only one on Windows 2000 when my RAM fell out of place, although I have witness many crashes by the shell (explorer.exe).
Darius: They are normally good at what they do, but then they try to be your mp3 player, cd player, cd burner, mp3 ripper, jukebox, etc .. when there’s already several stand-alone programs that do these things much better.
A few months ago, I might agree with that, but after really using RealONE, I can’t see why I would want seperate apps.
jbett: It may sound like a big paranoid conspiracy theory, but this is the truth. I mean they’ve slowly but surely integrated all these pieces of software into their OS using other people’s ideas and concepts (innovating), and they’ve been widely accepted.
No, it doesn’t *sound* like a big paranoid conspiracy, it is one. The antitrust ruling pretty much erases this fears as all Microsoft middleware must be able to be hidden.
Matthew: Well, I haven’t actually have a instablity problem with any VIA chipset (for the past 3-4 years, all my computers except the HP laptop has a chipset designed by VIA). Not even one problem. And NVidia drivers may be instable on new versions of Linux and XFree86, but on Windows XP and 2000, never had a single problem with it. It is practically rock solid.
On your whole DRM issue, I don’t really see you supplying proof. Besides, DRM only works when you have DRM content. Without it, I don’t see why you should be so paranoid. If you find you DRM content not working when DRM isn’t on, when da, that is what that is suppose to happen (otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for DRM, right?).
The spyware inside Windows Media Player, as recent allegations say, has nothing to do with DRM. It reports to Microsoft on what you do, obviously to improve the product. The latest beta, WMP 9, this can be turned off. I don’t see you making Hollywood conspiracies when AOL previously employed far worse spyware into Netscape and AOL, plus AOL having closer Hollywood ties…
Besides, if you think there is no one waiting for Palladium, you are dead wrong (I’m talking about consumers). You are obviously are too caught up with the anti-MS side when sites like winsupersite.com preaches Palladium like God’s gift to men.
As for Palladium in software, software that uses it as anti-piracy meassures won’t work. They have already said it upfront. If you don’t want it, you can always use free software like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, etc. As time goes on, copyright-protection would use Palladium, and this is no new thing.
For the average non-Asian/African consumer, this really have no difference. (Asian consumers are too used to piracy, I guess).
Besides, since when was any White Paper about Palladium was ever released?
you cunt, where did you provide any proof at all
I think that Microsoft really just wants to get rid of the UI concept of running A app to view/edit “a” document.
The UI will instead be mainly a Yukon base filemanager (document manager) to access documents; Task specific UI can be docked to the dock bar, dock directly into documentmanager, or a floating control. Remember the UI is XML based hence it should be very flexible.
Microsoft is aiming for a flexible location transparent (.NET) document centric UI with database like properties, they might even add on voice control later.
Microsoft is not going to create one monolithic application to view/edit all documents, but they will get rid of the idea of running A application to do “a” work.
People Palladium != DRM
The white paper I was talking about is here http://www.bcsfinsig.org/docs/MSpalladium.pdf and gives a good overview of what it is ‘proposed’ to do.
Also, just because software ‘phones home’ doesn’t mean it is DRM based or spyware.
There was also an article on The Register a while back, although not the strongest of sources, still an interesting read http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26231.html – Palladium is more ‘digital trust’ than anything else.
I don’t understand the need for conspiracy theories around something that if you don’t like, don’t use it.
-JC-
> That’s about as far away from the philosophy of UNIX style OS’s as they can get.
I’d say it’s more an evoltion of it.
With this you have a set of standards, and standard GUI, with the sh you have a set of standards (the app shall send it’s output to std-out, take input from std-in) nd a set of standard for the “GUI” (in this case SH, ksh, csh).
It will not be as powerfull (unless a very cool set of cmd-utils come out), but then you will be able to proccess all media types not just text.
The real question is how will it handle biz apps (no not Word/Excel)
> Inlcuding the ability to track exactly what employees are doing on their new Longhorn PC’s.
You can do this now with 2k. WSH is scary, yet cool
> if you’re as paranoid as I am of Microsoft with their “security patches” that demand admin access
Unless your a home user, always logged on as Admin, in which it really does not matter, why have you give your users the right to install stuff?
Or write permision to x:winnt thats just asking for trubble
> not more mobile phones with annoying customized rings
The lattest set of mobile phones, do imo actually other something useful. User Apps.
> Why not just buy a freaking Mac and get it over with already !
A Mac is now “better”, your not “locked in” to MS-Only-Music with a Mac
> The biggest issue the have to solve is to replace their 10 years old ugly plain C Windows API!
Done. .NET
> Do you really want Disney to write the law of the land?
Yeah, it would be great, You will be forced to be happy, else your’ll be “mortally wonded” (only to come back a few mins latter) by a sword weilding mad man, who always gets the girls.
> The system will filter spam.
How does palladium help with that?
> WinFS, which is the biggest change, is just NTFS plus Yukon.
Is this NTFS, but with the attrib’s (which NTFS already has) stored in a RDBS (MS SQL Server (Home Ed.))? (sounds like early versions of BFS). I am quite looking forward to this.
> but after really using RealONE
Here here, RealONE is very cool, but I really liked its perdassator(sp) two, (Real Jukebox) which was almost the same, but with out the bloody crappy looking white interface)
> Microsoft is aiming for a flexible location transparent
They already have it with OLE don’t they?
This is just OLE super charged.
The thing I still see most often in Windows users, is the dialogue:
ME: Where did you save the document you’re looking for?
USER: In Excel
ME: But *what directory* did you save it in?
USER: Excel.
Of course, s/Excel/whateverapp/g here. For all that MS have done in mydocu~1, the desktop, and trying to get away from this “confusing” directory structure, end users still have no clue about the difference between a document and an application. Another common converstion:
ME: So insert that .GIF into your Word document – Insert/File (or whatever it is)
USER: But I saved that in PaintShop – it’s not in Word!
ME: Trust me. Go to imagesfooar, and click on new-image.gif.
USER: Wow! Microsoft are brilliant!
ME: Aaaaargh!
As far as I can see, the best thing MS can do for their users, is *make* each app have its own tree, invisible to the rest, so “I saved it in Word” actually *means* something to the poor bugger supporting them.
Of course, OOo is now giving them something they’ve lacked for many years now – decent software to imitate. Hence this new “one app to do everything” claim.
—————————-
Fave quote of the article:
FAT, FAT32 and even the newer NTFS, the most modern ways of storing data in Windows
NTFS – Ultra-Modern technology from 1994.
Having never been much of a Windows programmer, my experienece limited, however, is that Microsoft uses C++ for the majority of their OS and applications. At the VERY low levels, NT uses assembly, but that is/was mainly used for performance reasons.
What Microsoft needs to do it look at WHY UNIX has stuck around like a bad smell for so long, and why they have addressed issues that still linger in Windows.
Hence, I say, get rid of NT, build an OS based on FreeBSD 5.0 + Commercial X Server + Desktop.
“Microsoft is not going to create one monolithic application to view/edit all documents, but they will get rid of
the idea of running A application to do “a” work. ”
Which is a nonsense whenever you want to run a program from a third
party, such as Photoshop. Click on the icon for an image file and up
comes “Windows Magic Photo Editor” instead.
The logical structure is Subject -> Verb -> object
ie User -> Program -> data
or Hand -> Hammer -> Nail
(I suppose Germans might see it differently.)
I’ll believe it when I see it. Didn’t they promise lots of these improvements for XP, only to retract them at last?
JCooper, I never said Palladium is only DRM. It would be used for DRM, but my whole point is that it isn’t some kind of big brother thing where Microsoft employees get to see your private stash of you naked wife’s pictures.
Besides, your white paper link is a preliminary document, not enough to go by. But one thing I just don’t understand is why every ABMer (always bash Microsoft) just quickly bash Palladium without knowing anything.
“Docucentric interface’ ??
Ah, so Microsoft will take us back again to pre-Windows 1.0?
“Which is a nonsense whenever you want to run a program from a third party, such as Photoshop. Click on the icon for an image file and up comes “Windows Magic Photo Editor” instead. ”
No, what you are saying is nonsense. one can simply assign photoshop as the default editor for image documents (right click->edit to edit). BTW photoshop also saves stuff under its own format, and most graphic artist I know do not export to a different image format while working on complex works (multiple layers and effects).