Author Topic: Some encourgaing Vista news...  (Read 1067 times)

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Offline IceFire

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
This doesn't overturn some of the crap we've been hearing but this is what I've been saying MS should have been doing for years.

Clean out all the old code and start fresh. Seems like they DID do some of that.  Impressive...

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112743680328349448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
- IceFire
BlackWater Ops, Cold Element
"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 

Offline Grey Wolf

Some encourgaing Vista news...
This, combined with the fact that the guy who was claiming outlandish system requirements may very well have been high on crack, is a good thing.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw

 

Offline Fury

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Slightly off topic for a moment. There has been so much rumours floating around the net, many from seemingly trustworthy sources. Most of the crap you've been hearing about Vista is just that; crap. Nothing to do with the final product. Save your judgements about Vista until you have seen reviews about the final product and you have actually tried it yourself.

As for the news itself, it is apparently posted by Wall Street Journal but I have my reservations about its authenticity. It is good news if it is indeed true, but I have my suspicions.

 

Offline Corsair

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Fascinating.
Wash: This landing's gonna get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define "interesting".
Wash: *shrug* "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die"?
Mal: This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then... explode.

 

Offline IceFire

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Well it sounds better than alot that I've been hearing.

This article is also pretty good: http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5219.asp

Its from Paul Thurrott's website.  The guy knows quite a bit about whats going on with Microsoft and Windows and so on.  He did call the previous versions of Longhorn a trainwreck and says things have turned around quite a bit in the last couple of beta revisions.  So maybe...just maybe MS will produce a worthy offering with the Windows name on it.

Since were still all stuck in a Windows world...at the moment anyways...its worth following I figure.  TO see what happens.  They still need to price themselves ALOT lower.
- IceFire
BlackWater Ops, Cold Element
"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 

Offline aldo_14

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
It's good if they're chucking out the old codebase, simply because of the law of diminishing returns.

What I'd hope - and I'm not sure if this is the way some other O/S' are structured - is that they (or someone) will develop a twofold layered O/S.  One layer would be the hadware, etc, base stuff; nothing to do with security, fancy UIs, etc, but just the raw process facilitation stuff.  And then on top of it another layer that handle stuff like security restrictions, fancy windows, etc.

I'm not sure exactly how you'd deliniate that, to be honest.  But it strikes me that windows is - and has - moving too far from the simple responsibilities of an O/S and implementing features that are really either restrictive to applications or things you'd expect in applications.  Anti-virus and anti-spyware things are, IMO, applications and not O/S responsibilities (for example).

 

Offline BlackDove

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
I don't get it really. Vista as it is now, has been cracked to work on top of XP (essentially like a patch). I don't see how "new core" exists, if it functions from an old core.

O.o

Maybe I'm missunderstanding something in that article.

 

Offline Grey Wolf

Some encourgaing Vista news...
I think they've been getting off the on top of XP thing with the more recent builds.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw

 

Offline IceFire

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
I think Grey Wolf has it about right....many of the Longhorn Alpha builds were just Windows 2003 and Windows XP and ultimately Windows 2000 slapped together in a fantastic conflaguration of code.  Something like the last three versions of MS Office.  There's a reason why Office 97 works just as well as the rest of them...

They are finally saying...oh damn we've been using the same code for ages...and it may not be worth it to keep it around for so long.

I'm a firm believer in starting over at some point.  When you're working on something...a big project or whatever and things aren't going well. Sometimes you clean the table off. And you start again...and thats part of the creative process.  

But for ages MS has been building ontop of the old stuff and leaving it in (I've heard rumors of horror stories).  It sounds terribly inefficient and terribly counter intuitive and it sounds alot like someone with some balls finally told Billy that he needs to get his thumb out of his ear and refine the process a bit.
- IceFire
BlackWater Ops, Cold Element
"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 
Some encourgaing Vista news...
IIRC there are still segments of code and assembly in windows XP that have been around since hte early 80s

 

Offline mikhael

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Has everyone forgotten the core/circle-0 rewrite from NT4 to Win2k? There is C source from the 80s in Windows still, yes, but that's all out in the device and network drivers (TCPIP stack being the chief example). But assembly? No. There wouldn't be any left. The only place they'd use assembly extensively is in the kernel, and that was rewritten from scratch in the 2k development cycle.

Quote
Originally posted by BlackDove
I don't get it really. Vista as it is now, has been cracked to work on top of XP (essentially like a patch). I don't see how "new core" exists, if it functions from an old core.

O.o

Maybe I'm missunderstanding something in that article.


In the same way that some stuff for Win2k can work on NT4: as long as the library interfaces are the same (regardless of what underlies them), then the program will still work (in general).
[I am not really here. This post is entirely a figment of your imagination.]

 

Offline Flipside

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
There are parts of code in XP that have been commented out simply because no-one actually remembers what they are for.

The fact is, this should have been done years ago, MS had made their own coffin in a way, now they have that much more work to do to strip out the un-neccesary junk from interfaces between things such as DirectX etc, and still maintain compatability at some level with older versions.

If done right, you could feasibly create a 100% XP compatible system streamlined and optimised into what XP should have been, and if done right, it has the potential to blow most other OS's out of the water functionality-wise.

But.... Who thinks it will be done right and not get clogged up with spreading it's cheeks to protect it's friends' monopolies as well as it's own?

 

Offline Mongoose

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
I'll give them credit for one thing...Minesweeper and Solitaire are lookin' pretty hot :D

 

Offline StratComm

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
There's one trap here that a lot of people are falling in to; the operating system and the graphical interface are two VERY different things.  Windows the Operating System originally was marketable because it was a windowed GUI, yes, but there's nothing stopping the back end from getting ripped out and re-written while still maintaining the original interface.  Microsoft has been unveiling the interface a lot recently but the betas were more to ensure that the kernel worked properly than to test the graphical goodies and tweak the presentation, nor should it have been.

That said, the 7 flavors rumors are definitely true, and this alone makes me really annoyed with MS.  Home and Pro were really quite unnecessary if it weren't for the ability to milk more money out of people who needed the extra functionality; the multiple versions of each is really inexcusable.
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Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM

 

Offline Kamikaze

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14

What I'd hope - and I'm not sure if this is the way some other O/S' are structured - is that they (or someone) will develop a twofold layered O/S.  One layer would be the hadware, etc, base stuff; nothing to do with security, fancy UIs, etc, but just the raw process facilitation stuff.  And then on top of it another layer that handle stuff like security restrictions, fancy windows, etc.


It's called a microkernel. Examples of it are Mach, L4, Minix, etc.

There's a lot of debate over whether it's a good approach or not. Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tannenbaum have had massive flamewars over the topic. Linus is sticking with a monolithic kernel because it's easier to code and maintain.
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation . . .Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. - Richard Feynman

 

Offline Grey Wolf

Some encourgaing Vista news...
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm
There's one trap here that a lot of people are falling in to; the operating system and the graphical interface are two VERY different things.  Windows the Operating System originally was marketable because it was a windowed GUI, yes, but there's nothing stopping the back end from getting ripped out and re-written while still maintaining the original interface.  Microsoft has been unveiling the interface a lot recently but the betas were more to ensure that the kernel worked properly than to test the graphical goodies and tweak the presentation, nor should it have been.

That said, the 7 flavors rumors are definitely true, and this alone makes me really annoyed with MS.  Home and Pro were really quite unnecessary if it weren't for the ability to milk more money out of people who needed the extra functionality; the multiple versions of each is really inexcusable.
You know they only added one, right?

XP/2003 have Starter, Home, MCE, Pro, 2003 Standard, and 2003 Enterprise.

These correspond to Starter, Home Premium, Ultimate, Pro, Small Business, and Enterprise from Vista. So they added "Home Basic". So what? This just deserves a "Meh."
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw

 

Offline IceFire

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Yeah the annoucement about the several versions of the OS really got me at first but it looks to be like they are just filling in what they already have.

There's a whole whack of Win XP versions floating about that most of us don't pay attention to.  Still, I'm glad I no longer work in a computer store as asking people which of 7 versions they need would be scream inducing insanity.
- IceFire
BlackWater Ops, Cold Element
"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 

Offline Grey Wolf

Some encourgaing Vista news...
The only ones you'll see in a store will be Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Pro. This is an increase of 2 SKUs, as MCE wasn't sold in stores.

Starter is only available in "developing markets", Small Business is for companies only, and Enterprise requires being a member of some MS program.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw

 

Offline IceFire

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Quote
Originally posted by Grey Wolf
The only ones you'll see in a store will be Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Pro. This is an increase of 2 SKUs, as MCE wasn't sold in stores.

Starter is only available in "developing markets", Small Business is for companies only, and Enterprise requires being a member of some MS program.

Well thats even better...

I still wonder why we need to have Basic Home and Home Premium...
- IceFire
BlackWater Ops, Cold Element
"Burn the land, boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me..."

 

Offline WMCoolmon

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Some encourgaing Vista news...
Quote
Originally posted by Kamikaze


It's called a microkernel. Examples of it are Mach, L4, Minix, etc.

There's a lot of debate over whether it's a good approach or not. Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tannenbaum have had massive flamewars over the topic. Linus is sticking with a monolithic kernel because it's easier to code and maintain.


Actually, I think what aldo is referring to is pretty much exactly how Linux is set up. You have the kernel, that handles all the hardware/filesystem to software interface; then on top of that you have whatever UI you desire, whether it's text-based or graphical.
-C