Bill Gates’ dream of an end-to-end search tool for corporate networks remains just that: a dream, at least until the end of the decade, says News.com.
Longhorn Goes to Pieces
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m really starting to loose respect to any journalism whatsoever these days. They never care to do research, they never write anything new and insightful, they just come up with a catchy headline and write a long story about things that has allready been written about a hundred times before. In addition to their articles works as free ads for the companies since they don’t care to check the facts, they just blindly trust the companies.
I know there are some serious journalists left, but they are very rare. Media these days is starting to look more and more like a propaganda machine. It saddens me.
In this article they try to convince me that MS is solving a problem as old as the computer industry itself. And that no-one has ever managed to solve it before. That is: finding files easily.
I mean, if the “journalist” would have cared to do some research he would have found that “database-like” filesystems has been around for many many years, and that it has actually been integrated into a commersial desktop environment ages ago.
But it’s much more interesting to write a headline that gives the impression of MS having trouble, and then couple that with an article about MS saving the world.
Sure, mod me down. I just had to say how pathetic this really is.
And why did you have respect for journalists in the first place. Journalists have never been objective or even terrribly bright for that matter. Look at the New York Times. It’s supposed to be the epitomy of journalistic integrity, but they’re considered a joke these days.
Once you realize that almost everything you read has a lot of opinion in it, then you can approach what you read with some healthy skepticism.
“Longhorn Goes to Pieces” seems a ridiculous exaggeration even for the press for such a trivial matter as WinFS being delayed.
I couldn’t agree more. Todays journalism sucks. I don’t read NYT Lumberg but if I believe you it is almost scary. I just read an article on newsforge about cpu business and it was done by a woman who had absoloutely no clue of what is going on. I was surprised that the suse review here was done by someone who actually knows computers.
However, “some of the functionality of WinFS and some of the scenarios may be limited in terms of what it can do.
I think that is good. I would rather have certain that work reliably/predictably than something that is frustrating to use.
I am still amazed how fast a thread can get offtopic here.. From an operating system to socialism in 8 posts. I mean, wow..
And I love people who complain about a title even when if you read the article, it is lucid, well backed up, and objective.
Not sure which article you read, it specifically says just the opposite: MS is obsessed with an age old problem, that there have been plenty of attempts at it before, and it appears they still haven’t solved it.
Not sure which article you read, it specifically says just the opposite: MS is obsessed with an age old problem, that
there have been plenty of attempts at it before, and it appears they still haven’t solved it.
Oh but it has. It’s just the solutions aren’t being used in many places due to various reasons.
MS aren’t doing anything new here, and they do not deserve the creds to solving any problem.
This is just one of so many articles where MS gets the creds for doing innovative things that other people invented 10 years ago.
well backed up? if backup from one single source counts then sure.
objective? no way. no article is truely objective, but this is a fine example of a truely subjective article.
why don’t they just kick out the “journalists” and let the editors link to the companies press releases instead?
I would have settled for metadata, ID3 tag support, and a slightly improved indexing service with improved support for advanced search queries. Such a system would do most of what I would need WinFS to do but without the overhead.
I guess I still can’t think of many good reasons to place the files in a “real” database. The single main advantage od a DB is probably to “obsolete” the method of remembering which directory a file is located. This has never been a problem for me anyway.
ID3 tag support
It’s in WinXP allready, though I don’t know if it’s searchable through explorer.
The single main advantage od a DB is probably to “obsolete” the method of remembering which directory a file is located.
And the disadvantage of a DB is that a lot of people have problems remembering the name of the file. And I doubt everyone will put enough meta-data in them to find them easily that way. A combination is still the best way IMO.
You don’t get my point. This article gives Microsoft ZERO credit. They say it’s their dream problem, and they haven’t solved it yet. So where do you see the author gushing over Microsoft, acting as if they are the only ones working on the problem, and having solved it?
As for the content of the article, several quotes from Rudder, a quote from Allchin, realistic and sensible quotes from Gillen and Muglia, and no glaring errors about Longhorn does make for a balanced, well thought out and objective article.
Hell, even the less than 30 word blurb on this site says it:
“Bill Gates’ dream of an end-to-end search tool for corporate networks remains just that: a dream, at least until the end of the decade, says News.com.”
So what are you reading?
The problem Bill has is that he wants to personally control it all, not that the tech isn’t there. MS has had some pretty cool speech, search, and basyen filtering methods in the Research lab for better part of a decade now. The reality is that what Bill wants to do would reduce MS to being just like Apple…that’s the only way to pull it off. They’ll never keep the sales that way.
This is where Linux is really a monkey wrench in MS plans, open non-MS compliant systems are a bane.. because they were planning on introducing all this cool stuff with their monopoly. Much of these great ideas require a 100% MS system end-to-end. There’s very few companies that can do that…and with the economy the way it is, I’d fire any CEO for even trying!! Even that monopoly is turning against them because their processing demands are so high they continually eliminate vast installed base from being capable to upgrade just the OS…hence not really having a critical mass anymore.
Frankly, this is something OSS could do infinately better. The problem with these plans is that even a company as big and bright as MS can only plan for so many options…the real USERS will ALWAYS take the tools and do something far cooler with them than the creators intended. Again, Bills insistance on Absolute control of the platform…and increasing pay-to-play prices are removing all of the value proposition from buying MS tools and “experimenting” …heck nowdays they sue more people than praise them. MS forgets that it was providing the best tools that won developer praise…then getting out of the way that got them where they are now.
A company like Google could easily pull this off by migrating a little tech back to OSS. They could spin a wicked searchable & redundant distributed system with just a fraction of the stuff they use to manage that Google Cache! I think OSS has “missed” this because the problems of management in the OSS relm had to be dealt with years ago… Look at the crazy stuff like the Gentoo or Debian archives… or even sourceforge. These are massive collections of programs at different version, platforms and creators from all over the world….Updatable at a moment’s notice! The problem with MS approach has always been the PC… it doesn’t belong a decent business. That kind of autonomy should have been done away with years ago…it was in the Unix world. Rather than searching for random stuff they just told users where to stick it….or else!
The problem Bill has is that he wants to personally control it all, not that the tech isn’t there. MS has had some pretty cool speech, search, and basyen filtering methods in the Research lab for better part of a decade now. The reality is that what Bill wants to do would reduce MS to being just like Apple…that’s the only way to pull it off. They’ll never keep the sales that way.
So are you saying that MS has solved the problem and that Bill Gates is personally preventing the solution from escaping the lab because it would somehow decomoditize Windows and make it more like Mac OS X??? If so, then I doubt it since MS has the widest software distribution channels and adoption rate of any other software company. They could afford to give this stuff away just to corner the market.
This is where Linux is really a monkey wrench in MS plans, open non-MS compliant systems are a bane.. because they were planning on introducing all this cool stuff with their monopoly. Much of these great ideas require a 100% MS system end-to-end. There’s very few companies that can do that…and with the economy the way it is, I’d fire any CEO for even trying!! Even that monopoly is turning against them because their processing demands are so high they continually eliminate vast installed base from being capable to upgrade just the OS…hence not really having a critical mass anymore.
What processing demands are you talking about? I’m running Windows XP and Office 2003 on a 4 year old P3-600 notebook. I have several clients that run the same software on P3-333 and P3-400 systems from Dell. I would argue that Windows has scaled well on all of these systems with a mere memory upgrade, if anything, in most cases. So far, Linux hasn’t much proven itself beyond being an Internet server. Linux fails on the desktop so far because the UI is substandard in most distros and the applications are mostly shoddy.
Frankly, this is something OSS could do infinately better. The problem with these plans is that even a company as big and bright as MS can only plan for so many options…the real USERS will ALWAYS take the tools and do something far cooler with them than the creators intended.
Wrong – the real users are not the ones who are modifying the platforms for their own needs. The REAL users are the ones who are making money with tools like Windows, Office, SQL Server, and Visual Studio. As for OSS, there are so few projects that truly stand out and impress us REAL users. A few that come to mind: Mozilla, Evolution, gaim, OpenOffice (although the OO UI bites the big one), and perhaps even SharpDevelop. ( Notice that I left out Linux, GNU tools, and apache since REAL users scratch their heads when you talk of these things. )
Again, Bills insistance on Absolute control of the platform…and increasing pay-to-play prices are removing all of the value proposition from buying MS tools and “experimenting” …heck nowdays they sue more people than praise them. MS forgets that it was providing the best tools that won developer praise…then getting out of the way that got them where they are now.
Bullcrap – MS’s largest installed base of “developers” were once called VB/VBA/Access developers. These folks are accustomed to Microsoft being in the way and controlling the platform and still there’s consensus that they produce the best tools. VS.NET and .NET itself are revolutionary in many ways. The sheer scale of these tools is mind boggling. Bill Gates is the wealthiest man on the planet. I think he doesn’t need to control things as much as you do. BTW, Steve Ballmer runs Microsoft these days.
A company like Google could easily pull this off by migrating a little tech back to OSS. They could spin a wicked searchable & redundant distributed system with just a fraction of the stuff they use to manage that Google Cache!
Perhaps you’re right. But quite seriously, Google would be stupid to give up this incredible edge that they’ve maintained. Note that they haven’t given up any of their trade secrets so far. Hey BTW, MS seems rather benign when you think of the power that Google wields. The power to control what order search hits appear in that is.
I think OSS has “missed” this because the problems of management in the OSS relm had to be dealt with years ago… Look at the crazy stuff like the Gentoo or Debian archives… or even sourceforge. These are massive collections of programs at different version, platforms and creators from all over the world….Updatable at a moment’s notice!
I don’t get it – are you saying that these large projects have already dealt with the problem? I don’t know how you access SourceForge, but the search there absolutely sucks worse than any other site I’ve visited on the net. If you’re speaking strictly of CVS repositories I might agree.
The problem with MS approach has always been the PC… it doesn’t belong a decent business. That kind of autonomy should have been done away with years ago…it was in the Unix world. Rather than searching for random stuff they just told users where to stick it….or else!
Were you drugged or perhaps shot before you wrote this paragraph? You seem to digress into some unintelligable rant. Can you please clarify what you’re trying to say?
The problem Bill has is that he wants to personally control it all, not that the tech isn’t there. MS has had some pretty cool speech, search, and basyen filtering methods in the Research lab for better part of a decade now. The reality is that what Bill wants to do would reduce MS to being just like Apple…that’s the only way to pull it off. They’ll never keep the sales that way.
So are you saying that MS has solved the problem and that Bill Gates is personally preventing the solution from escaping the lab because it would somehow decomoditize Windows and make it more like Mac OS X??? If so, then I doubt it since MS has the widest software distribution channels and adoption rate of any other software company. They could afford to give this stuff away just to corner the market.
No, he is saying other people/companies have already solved the problem example BFS which there is an open software version of, but if Microsoft used that as the base of thier OS then anyone could write code for it without buying Microsoft’s tools, and worse yet they could move the code to other operating systems that also implemented the open version of that filesystem. Code written to Microsoft’s presently planned WinFS will need Microsoft’s tools to do it and will not be portable to other OSes.
This is where Linux is really a monkey wrench in MS plans, open non-MS compliant systems are a bane.. because they were planning on introducing all this cool stuff with their monopoly. Much of these great ideas require a 100% MS system end-to-end. There’s very few companies that can do that…and with the economy the way it is, I’d fire any CEO for even trying!! Even that monopoly is turning against them because their processing demands are so high they continually eliminate vast installed base from being capable to upgrade just the OS…hence not really having a critical mass anymore.
What processing demands are you talking about? I’m running Windows XP and Office 2003 on a 4 year old P3-600 notebook. I have several clients that run the same software on P3-333 and P3-400 systems from Dell. I would argue that Windows has scaled well on all of these systems with a mere memory upgrade, if anything, in most cases. So far, Linux hasn’t much proven itself beyond being an Internet server. Linux fails on the desktop so far because the UI is substandard in most distros and the applications are mostly shoddy.
Try BeOS sometime. Not to say it will run the programs you need, but to get an idea of how much CPU power is being sucked up by XP. If you have lots of memory on your laptop I am sure that running/using one program at a time works fine, but to take advantage of a DB type filesystem you want to do heavy multitasking and there XP sucks CPU-time big time.
Frankly, this is something OSS could do infinately better. The problem with these plans is that even a company as big and bright as MS can only plan for so many options…the real USERS will ALWAYS take the tools and do something far cooler with them than the creators intended.
Wrong – the real users are not the ones who are modifying the platforms for their own needs. The REAL users are the ones who are making money with tools like Windows, Office, SQL Server, and Visual Studio. As for OSS, there are so few projects that truly stand out and impress us REAL users. A few that come to mind: Mozilla, Evolution, gaim, OpenOffice (although the OO UI bites the big one), and perhaps even SharpDevelop. ( Notice that I left out Linux, GNU tools, and apache since REAL users scratch their heads when you talk of these things. )
I think you both have good point and will keep my mouth shut here.
Again, Bills insistance on Absolute control of the platform…and increasing pay-to-play prices are removing all of the value proposition from buying MS tools and “experimenting” …heck nowdays they sue more people than praise them. MS forgets that it was providing the best tools that won developer praise…then getting out of the way that got them where they are now.
Bullcrap – MS’s largest installed base of “developers” were once called VB/VBA/Access developers. These folks are accustomed to Microsoft being in the way and controlling the platform and still there’s consensus that they produce the best tools. VS.NET and .NET itself are revolutionary in many ways. The sheer scale of these tools is mind boggling. Bill Gates is the wealthiest man on the planet. I think he doesn’t need to control things as much as you do. BTW, Steve Ballmer runs Microsoft these days.
Problem, all the tools are designed to lock you into Microsoft Windows, people as starting to ask for more options. Second, good as the tools are they are expensive and getting more expensive to update than they use to be. Companies are finding out that Bill Gates is so rich because he has thier money, companies are looking for ways to cut thier expenses. In some companies the mircosoft software is a major expense. Finally, Bill Gates may not run the company, but he is the one who sets it goals PERIOD.
Although I think it might be good, I don’t think it would be much used. The only instances where I have seen documents being efficiently indexed is when a dedicated archive team is in charge of it.
Everywhere else (and especially in IT imho) it’s a mess. I’ve never seen anyone putting keyword in Office’s documents description.
There are a lot of independent journalists out there that are worth reading. You’ve got a lot of good original material on NewsForge, OSNews, and of course my site. We make money off of PPC and PPM ad revenue and in some cases subscriptions. So there is no agenda, except we’re compelled to write things that are interesting to our readers. That can be exploited, and it sometimes is on places like The Register and NewsForge where they occasionally write about analyst FUD data (see below) in some sort of attempt to provoke a reader reaction. If you find yourself getting angry after reading an article, you’ve been the victim of reviewer trolling — the act of writing an article to attract attention and, hopefully, traffic. Experience tells me that this is stupid because the traffic you get doesn’t generate any revenue and you end up with a bad reputation.
Then there’s mainstream journalism: CNet and News.com.com, Forbes, NY Times, etc. Mainly these are professional article writers who have impossibly short deadlines and end up doing little to no research as a result. They base their material on first impressions, usually, and yes in most cases their work sucks because they make no money off of content — they’re paid salary. TV news only shows the news that they have video for, and even the video is often staged somewhat — you’re getting the interviews and shots that show what the broadcast journalist thinks you should know (or think!).
The worst of the worst are the analysts. These are people who know a lot, but choose to withhold the facts that would make their commentary more balanced and accurate. They make money by preparing often inaccurate and always misleading “studies” that show what a sponsor wants them to show. These start with polls and then the analyst compiles the data in such a way as to say what the sponsor wants it to say. Examples of this kind of FUD peddling include the Yankee Group and the de Tocqueville Institute.
So no, not all journalists are bad. You just have to consider the source.
-Jem
First, let’s consider that an article by a journalist intended for the general public may contain technical inaccuracies. I would not expect a journalist to understand the underlying technical aspects of database systems just to write an article about Microsoft’s hopes to use such technologies in Windows. The journalist’s job was to provide a basic overview of what is happening at Microsoft to the general public (which does not know or care about SQL or any other “technical” details of database systems).
Secondly, what does any of this have to do with Linux? If I were to go to a Fedora forum about a feature in the most recent test version of Core 2 and discuss advantages of using Windows, would you consider this appropriate? Personally, I am a Windows and a Linux user and I happen to like both operating systems, but I am growing tired of some members of the “Linux community” that can’t shut up. If the topic of the thread is not regarding a direct comparison of Windows and Linux, then why would a Linux proponent come here to trash Windows and Microsoft? Although it is inevitable for operating systems to be compared to each other, there are many online forums and threads related to the topic. Entering a Windows discussion to boast about Linux doesn’t make more Windows users switch to Linux, it makes them think Linux is an OS for the socially dysfunctional.
In regard to the topic of the article, I think it’s great that Microsoft is experimenting with incorporating other technologies into their desktop operating systems. I’m not surprised that they are running into a few brick walls along the way, and I’m pleased that Microsoft is taking more time in development and testing, rather than try to rush the implementation of “new to Windows” technologies.
I don’t know if I’m qualified to say this, but I’ve read people in the fabled “practical world” talking nonsense about both linux and microsoft. I’m in the second semester of my undergrad now, it’s been less than six weeks that I’ve been using Linux, and I’ve never so much as laid a hand on a Mac. My prof said I needed a change of “flavor” from windows. The same OS I’ve been using for the last eleven years is now repulsive to me. So much so that already I’ve proposed incorporating the KDE GUI into the mklinux kernel, something you guys have been ignoring all along. I know the undergrad world is all peach and cream, but let me tell you that it’s something to say “I can use Word” here in Pakistan, and I’m ashamed of having remained only a ‘user’ for so long. So what if Linux’s huge, Pakistanis need to get off all this pirated MS junk we’ve been using. I agree that MS has done a lot for the industry. I just don’t know where the Fatherland will end up the day MS clamps down some antipiracy laws and we have to stop using software we get for under a dollar. That’s what they want; simply because they’re businessmen: They want a stranglehold on the emerging markets of the world. You don’t see these things as we do, but Pakistan, India even China need to define their own Linux standards asap so as to avoid the catastrophe about to befall us.
MS is great, but Linux isn’t just better- it’s free, and that’s what counts.