“Microsoft said last week it plans to hire 4,000 to 5,000 new workers and to increase research spending by about 8 percent, to $6.9 billion per year. The company also said it has $49 billion lying around collecting interest. So what should Bill and Steve do with these wondrous resources? My suggestion: Start over.” It’s radical, but interesting. Check out the rest on zdnet.
ZDNET: Microsoft Should Rewrite Windows
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
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MS word is the only editor that corrupts it’s own documents and then blows up when you try opening them again
Well actually let me tell you a little story about AbiWord. Now this is most likely a linux-related problem, but who cares.
This past December I was in my school’s UNIX lab (about 10 PCs loaded with Red Hat) using AbiWord to create a study outline for one of my finals. I had used Linux much before but never really trusted it for important things. After about 2 hours of work, out of nowhere I was kicked back to the login screen. I thought “ok linux obviously isn’t perfect…no prob, i’ll just go and reopen my file”. Heh. The file was *gone*. And yes, I was saving it very often as I was typing it. It was just gone from my home directory, with no traces of it anywhere. Now you try and tell me ONE time that MS Word/Windows has done something so terrible. I was sooo f*ckin pissed. I vowed never to use linux again for anything important. It’s ok to play around on, but when I have to work on an important document, I just can’t trust linux. End of story.
The alternatives? Chat clients and word processor apps are for LUsers. The only use for a word processor is to format a resume
Have you reached 6th grade yet? You’ve NEVER had to type a paper?
Whoa, another blue screen, time for a cig/fag … is your attitude. Luser.
You obviously have a very close-minded attitude towards windows. Ever since Win2k, the blue screen of death has been nonexistant. Now sure, maybe there are still a lot of people who use win 95/98/Me, a lot also use 2000 and XP…and I’m sure that they, just like me, have forgetten all about the blue screen of death.
I would fire this guy for writing such an ignorant article. This guy obviously has no clue how hard it is to write and debug such a large project and for that reason his opinion is crap.
Ok, you’re clearly a troll, as you talk about stuff you have no idea about. I use both Borland and MS IDE on daily basis at work, and let me tell you something, Borland is not even near to the stability, slick and efficiency of it’s Microsoft counterpart. The fact that you played with both of them for about 3 to 4 minutes doesn’T make you an expert. And it shows in your message.
“It doesn’t bother you when an app or the whole OS freezes because you’re not doing anything of value!!!”
Yeah. Right. You’re still stuck in the Candy Land world don’t you ? Try growing up, then maybe you’ll be able to talk with adults.
“Have you reached 6th grade yet? You’ve NEVER had to type a paper?”
And you type it with word… Ok, so you mustn’t be at a very high level, or don’t do any scientific stuff with mathematical expressions. Here is the big news : almost nobody uses word ( nor abiword ) for scientific reportd, articles, etc… Everybody is using latex, but it is just a proof of your lack of knowledge. See all the articles published in IEEE journals : everything is done with latex. The American mathematical society demands a .dvi file, which word cannot supply ( neither abiword, or with some dumb hack ).
You know what : linux is useable by someone who has some knowledge in computers, so is windows. I use the two of them, and are quite useable. Linux is far from perfect, but, let’s be frank, windows is far from perfect. Why can’t I read my linux partition with linux ? Why can’t i safely write on my NTFS partition with linux ? Just because Microsoft doesn’t want to.
Please back to more interesting stuff, without any trolling…
This is surely one of the most ridiculous articles I have ever read. Why do they need to start from scratch? And this “Linux is wonderful, Windows sucks” business is really boring. Windows is good for 90% of the world, everybody uses is. Is it the best? maybe it is not. Is it perfect?, far from that. Can Microsoft improve it?, yes, and they will. NT was better than 95/98, 2000 is better than NT and now XP is better than 2000. And I am sure longhorn will be better than XP.
And it is funny that people keep on complaining about how bloated XP is. At the same time, people want the OS to be simple and easy to use, and to support any kind of device. Men, aren´t your programmers?. You have to write code for that!
And you type it with word… Ok, so you mustn’t be at a very high level, or don’t do any scientific stuff with mathematical expressions. Here is the big news : almost nobody uses word ( nor abiword ) for scientific reportd, articles, etc… Everybody is using latex, but it is just a proof of your lack of knowledge. See all the articles published in IEEE journals : everything is done with latex. The American mathematical society demands a .dvi file, which word cannot supply ( neither abiword, or with some dumb hack ).
Whether or not I am at this “high level” that you tell of, I never spoke of advanced features in the word processor; just quality. So this, my friend, shows your lack of knowledge as well for finding something that was not part of my reply and using it to demean my intelligence.
And here’s my news for you: I don’t give a shit what Doctors and Scientists are using to create their super-sophisticated documents. Just because I don’t use mathematical expressions in my documents doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, and I think a lot of other people would agree. If I have to do mathematical functions, there are other programs I can use and import the data into Word. But I’ve never been required to do a lot of math in my papers, so this was never a problem for me.
So don’t tell me to stop trolling when you are participating in it too, you hypocrite.
Well, you completely misunderstood my post, but whatever…
You was the one telling to Willow he musn’t be at a high level for not using Word, which is really a stupid statement, as latex is by far the most used tool in academics. Sure, he said some common trolling ( windows keeps crashing everytime, etc… ) but so did you with linux who corrupt its files ( I really wonder why linux is so used in server. Damn, can you imagine ? A server which loses files… ).
Word is neither good or bad, but it was a lot better that its competitors. And let’s face it : a lot of people are using it to do some basic stuff, so basic that any word processor can do it without problems.
Neither you or Willow really discussed about the ( very bad and stupid ) article, or about the things which need to be changed in windows to be better for everyone…
And you type it with word… Ok, so you mustn’t be at a very high level, or don’t do any scientific stuff with mathematical expressions. Here is the big news : almost nobody uses word ( nor abiword ) for scientific reportd, articles, etc… Everybody is using latex, but it is just a proof of your lack of knowledge. See all the articles published in IEEE journals : everything is done with latex. The American mathematical society demands a .dvi file, which word cannot supply ( neither abiword, or with some dumb hack ).
Here’s the big news: almost nobody writes scientific reports, articles, etc. Hence why Word doesn’t do the same things latex does. Latex is meant for setting up the layout of a page for publishing, it’s a typesetting program, not a word processor. Guess what? Most people don’t have printers and software that require (let alone handle well) the output of latex, either. Not to mention that before PCs were considered common, the publishers simply hired people to do the typesetting for them, because there’s little reason for most authors to do their own typesetting (and realistically, the editors are going to change your file before they print it anyway, to break it up however is required by the advertising and other articles).
You know what : linux is useable by someone who has some knowledge in computers, so is windows. I use the two of them, and are quite useable. Linux is far from perfect, but, let’s be frank, windows is far from perfect. Why can’t I read my linux partition with linux ? Why can’t i safely write on my NTFS partition with linux ? Just because Microsoft doesn’t want to.
I don’t know, if you can’t write your linux partition with linux, why should you be able to read NTFS with linux? OK, so you meant why can’t you read your linux partition with Windows? Well, simple reason here: you don’t have the software installed to do it. Try Interix/Services for Unix, or download something else that’ll do it. MS supports the option but doesn’t make it default for the obvious reasons that (A) not many people need it and (B) they don’t want it to be easy to switch between Windows and Linux (who’d have thought?). You want to write to your NTFS partition with Linux? It’s all about brute force effort to figure out how to do it safely, not to mention that you’re trying to bypass the security of the filesystem and the OS… Now, if you’re asking for Microsoft to submit NTFS to a standards group or something like that, why not just say it straight out, instead of trolling that Microsoft should, for some reason, give Linux the capability to write NTFS volumes despite the fact that Linux doesn’t share the same security model as NT (for better or worse).
Windows might need rewriting, but it would have more to do with engineering a secure system then the ease of use.
If you can’t manage windows (as aweful as it is), YOU should get training on how to use computers / how computers work… If after that you still can’t manage windows, YOU should use something you understand how to manage rather then complain to Microsoft… Try Knoppix, MacOS or BeOS…
that’s what I get for bashing on a simple mistake,
I don’t know, if you can’t write your linux partition with linux, why should you be able to read NTFS with linux?
That should be
I don’t know, if you can’t write your linux partition with linux, why should you be able to write NTFS with linux?
You was the one telling to Willow he musn’t be at a high level for not using Word, which is really a stupid statement, as latex is by far the most used tool in academics.
What are you talking about? He was trying to state that word processors have only one use, and that is for fixing resumes. Basically he was saying that word processors are barely used, which is incorrect. Also, all through high school and college, I’ve not seen one PC loaded with latex. You don’t need a program that can do mathimatical functions for typing an English or history report. All you need is one that can do basic functions and is stable.
Sure, he said some common trolling ( windows keeps crashing everytime, etc… ) but so did you with linux who corrupt its files ( I really wonder why linux is so used in server. Damn, can you imagine ? A server which loses files…
Do you think I just made this up or something? I don’t make stuff up in order to defend my OS of choice. Maybe some people do, but I don’t. I was simply writing about my personal experience with that software. And actually, the lab was setup as a client/server network…so all my files were saved on the server. So yea, it was a linux server that lost my file.
Word is neither good or bad, but it was a lot better that its competitors. And let’s face it : a lot of people are using it to do some basic stuff, so basic that any word processor can do it without problems.
Well Word definitely has more features than AbiWord and OpenOffice, but for basic stuff they will do the job the same. I was just complaining about AbiWord because when I was using it once I lost a file, which has never happened to me before in word, and I’ve used word for probably 98% of all documents that I’ve written.
Jeeze, you’d think people would be a little bit more informed- after all, we’re not on Slashdot…
But, a registry isn’t an overall bad idea. Microsoft’s implementation in Windows is lack, to be sure. However, a Registry is still a good idea. A Registry could even be very much in alignment with the Unix ethos- a registry implemented as such could even be easier and more friendly to manipulate as our current mess in /etc- while retaining the ability to do it without anything beyond a text editor.
With a well-done registry, there are a handful of gains that more than balance out any (are there any?) drawbacks. Mind you, a “well-done registry” is well within our powers, it’s nothing hard to attain… It just requires a little bit of thought before hand,
I think thar Microsoft should give up of operating systems business and sell ports of Win32 API to another operating systems. He could still sell your WIN32 applications to anyone.
[quote]do agree that Windows needs to be drastically refactored and simplified[/quote]
Huh? Simplified, whatever windows is easy enough. All the bugs & security holes need to be fixed.
I think that Microsoft should give up of operating systems business and sell ports of Win32 API to another operating systems. He could still sell your WIN32 applications to anyone.
“1) IE is going kernel. It has to be moved to the kernel inorder to support MSFT’s DRM concepts; this means that IE will have to be secured and able to run in the secure memory partition. It will also have to be protected from other applications; DRM requires that all the images and sounds playing on the web page can’t be grabed by some other application. ”
You are misinformed. Moving IE into the kernel’s memory space will do absolutely NOTHING to further protect content. All memory in Win2k+ is fully protected. Moving IE into the kernel will only serve as more potential to take the system down in the event of a browser crash. Bad idea, and NOT going to happen.
What was known as “Palladium” is likely what you are refering to when you think about DRM and protected memory. It is a separate software package that will work with new hardware that will protect the integrity of “Palladium” enabled software and data. It will have it’s own physically prtected (and tamper resistant) memory, encryption across devices, and will be insulated from standard software.
Again, I am not a fan of Microsoft, but they are not completely stupid. They wouldn’t put IE into the kernel because there is no point. It is my understanding that they are not going to release anymore stand alone IE browsers, and that they plan to make the differences between Windows Explorer and IE go away.
I don’t know where you people got the idea that MS was welding it into the kernel… mind-boggling.
Yes, they “should” rewrite it. And the “should” have/use totally open, not controlled by one company file formats and communication protocols.
But what MS “should” do, and what makes business sense are 2 different things. MS doesn’t “need” to rewrite windows. They have more than 97 percent of the market, right? So they should rewrite to get that 3 percent? This just illustrates why a monopoly is so bad for consumers. There’s no incentive to do anything except rake in those monopoly profits.
It is important to note that a lot of Longhorn’s front end (GUI stuff) actually IS being rewritten in C#.
Is get the hell out of the commodity PC. Sure, they could rewrite Windows, or they can do exactly what they’re doing right now, try to stick their fingers in other markets. Microsoft does have a monopoly in the desktop OS market, but it’s lacking in the server side, for example. They’re venture into the enterprise services market, for example (.NET), has definitely forced improvements in Java. Here there’s competition, and it’s good. They’ve saturated the desktop market already, so they’ll use they should use the money to invest in less explored alternatives. They’ve posted profit warnings on the last quarter, and they refuse to pay dividends, so if they want to keep the stock up, prospects for future growth are needed. And they’ve got the luxury of enough cash to fail and try, try, try, try (ad infinitum), again.
The alternatives? Chat clients and word processor apps are for LUsers. The only use for a word processor is to format a resume. And even abiword will do that. Programming editors are the way to go. The features of programming editors put any word processor to shame. Kylix is much better than VS; borland has always made better compilers/IDE’s than MS, and it’s a cross development platform.
Why the hell would someone use a programming editor as a word processor ? ARE YOU HIGH? Ever need to write a resume ? A code editor works just GREAT for that! lol. When your mom finally kicks you out and you have to find a job you’ll start to see the benefits of something like a word processor vs. a code editor for creating documents.
Borland makes great compilers. They also are supporting .net now which is totally cool. C# builder is nice and I like it.
You are obviously a lightweight user who makes no real demands on the apps. It doesn’t bother you when an app or the whole OS freezes because you’re not doing anything of value!!! You’re just sitting there yanking your pud as
you type more gibberish into messenger and word. Whoa, another blue screen, time for a cig/fag … is your attitude. Luser.
I’m heavy weight user and I run Office, Messenger, VS6, VS.NET. I also run Borland Delphi, C++ Builder, TASM and a few other dev tools.
Yes I use messenger daily. Its how I keep in contact with clients and work.
Lets see… You use development tools and complain that the OS is locking up or that an app is freezing. Hmmm. Did it ever occur to you that it might be YOUR LAME ASS programming skills causing this problem ? Deadlocking a thread possibly ? Corrupting shared memory maybe ? Playing with address pointers when you don’t know what you are doing ?
Sounds like a real possibility at this point.
“It is important to note that a lot of Longhorn’s front end (GUI stuff) actually IS being rewritten in C#.”
Although I would think that this is indeed what they are doing (writing the new GUI in C#), can you please provide a reference for us to verify this? I am not saying that you don’t know what you are talking about, just that I personally would like some more concrete info. Thanks.
I actually agree with Coursey on this one. Scary thought. Starting over is a great idea. Break backward compatibility and make something secure and useful from the bootloader on up.
Did you even read the article? I didn’t see anything that said an OS for everyone, just those that want/need a simple, easy to use OS. I’m sure MS will always have a Pro os for the power user, so where’s the harm?
“almost nobody uses word ( nor abiword ) for scientific reportd, articles, etc… Everybody is using latex, but it is just a proof of your lack of knowledge.”
Oh I didn’t know that scientific papers accounted for 100% of every papers done in universities an colleges.
Or maybe it’s just a proof of your complete lack of knowledge …
“I think that Microsoft should give up of operating systems business and sell ports of Win32 API to another operating systems. He could still sell your WIN32 applications to anyone. ”
I hope you’re joking. I know you do, but I can’t resist, I’m in awe in front of such amazingly “in-your-face” sarcasm 🙂
Although I would think that this is indeed what they are doing (writing the new GUI in C#), can you please provide a reference for us to verify this? I am not saying that you don’t know what you are talking about, just that I personally would like some more concrete info. Thanks.
Although they (Microsoft) haven’t released any details of Aero, I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t re-implement the GUI in C# considering all the benefits it would bring.
By re-implementing the GUI in C#, it woule enable them to break compatibility, fix up issues and create a cleaner more efficient API set for programmers to use, lets hope that is the only implementation available so that coders are dragged kicking and screaming into 2005 rather than them clinging on a crusty API and demanding “forever” backwards comatibility.
Just consider this, a DirectX driven interface, C# bindings for DirectX so wouldn’t the next logical set be writing the GUI in C#?
I completely agree. Regading managed C++, IIRC, it is possible to compile into bytecode then decompile back into another language. Maybe that would be any easy way to migrate?
Regarding the issue of C#, nothing would please me more than Microsoft to simply push the evelope and make it the default API, completely open it up and standardise it and better still make C# the defacto language to be used Windows.
Regards to the mess that needs to be cleared up, INTERNET EXPLORER IS NOT GOING INTO THE KERNEL!
Read repeat for those who continue to spread the myth that Microsoft is going to integrate it into the kernel.
DRM and Palladium are closely related to each other, with inside Palladium there is a “mini-kernel”, which handles security issues. The operating system that runs on top of it, either Windows, Linux, *BSD or what ever simply interacts with the kernel as required.
Regarding IE, for example, will mearly link to the Windows API’s which then talk to the Palladium kernel, which then in turn provides autheticity and security to applications that call on those APIs.
For those conspiracy theorists out there, if the application doesn’t link into Palladium technology, you will still be able to pirate your music and make copyright protection even more draconian.
here we go again! every few years someone, somewhere, writes and article about how MS should re-write windows from the ground-up.
1) it will not happen for a long time (until the competition has taken enough market share away).
2) it is needed.
who wants to use an os where MINIMUM once a week you need to do the folowing to keep the os running?
1) defrag main hard drive
2) scan for viruses/worms
3) remove spyware
4) clean out temp files, recycle bin, cookies, etc.
5) install updates/security patches
and, even with doing all of this the OS runs slower and slower and slower, and crashes, more, and more, and more — even with hardware upgrades. which of course requires reformatting your main drive for the os, re-installation, re-downloading all of the updates/security patches, and then re-installing your software.
its time for ms to at least make an attempt to clean up their os.
Firstly, the NT kernel IS a “rewrite”, in that it’s a very clean, consistent microkernel (essentially), compared with the mess of the Win16/Win32/DOS of Windows 3.1 -> Windows ME. If the complaint is about the API, then Microsoft still has already effectively “rewritten” it with it’s .NET stuff. Also, the use of the NT kernel means that MS can throw on any new APIs without losing compatibility in future by simply writing a new subsystem. Evidence the POSIX and OS/2-16 availability under NT/2K/XP. Finally, if it’s just a matter of the UI, then a) they already redid things effectively from scratch with Windows 95, and b) They ARE planning a rewrite for LongHorn (albeit one many people don’t seem to appreciate, but that’s their choice
.
In other words, what real advantage would MS gain by a total rewrite? none. What would they lose? Experience with the current codebase, market share, compatibility, etc etc.
This is a troll.
Microsoft marketing strategy is akin to drug dealing, first you get everyone hooked and then the junkies(customers) are oblivious to everything else. M$ does not exist to do us a favor, so why would it rewrite Windows into something better? Quality is irrelevant.
Unix was made to please developers, the Macintosh was made to please the end user. Windows was developed to please the accountants.
That was in 1992, thus when Windows 3.1 just (didn’t) hit the market, and it is still true… 🙁
M$ does not exist to do us a favor, so why would it rewrite Windows into something better? Quality is irrelevant.
The only favour MS would be doing to anyone if they rewrote Windows would be to the *nix community, by putting themselves far behind and dumping tons of their cash reserves. Rewriting any software is a non-trivial task, an operating system even moreso. Scrapping the existing NT codebase and starting over (never mind that NT is only ~10 years old anyway) would just mean that everyone would see a product less polished with more bugs than what they already have, and it would take longer to produce than Longhorn (which is trying to replace a few good-sized portions of the code anyway).
If quality were truly irrelevant, then they would start from scratch every couple of years. You’d get to see a completely new buggy pos OS with each new release.
“So I guess you think OS X is just a revision of OS 9?”
No but it is of NextStep OS.
I don’t see why everyone wants Windows to be rewritten from the ground up. The current NT technology is decent. I think that the things that are going to be implemented in Longhorn will be a sufficient upgrade from XP. I’ve never had any problems with win2k and XP, which are based on NT. They are both good, stable operating systems. The one thing that I think really needs polished up is the GUI.
Conclusion : Windows is the best option for PC. & I am pretty much willing to spend 200$ on it.
And, I’m sure you’ll get your chance…..
//Firstly, the NT kernel IS a “rewrite”, in that it’s a very clean, consistent microkernel (essentially), compared with the mess of the Win16/Win32/DOS of Windows 3.1 -> Windows ME.//
Not true. NT is not a microkernel. The microkernel approach was tried with 3.51(?) and was then abandoned. NT is a horrible implementation of VMS. The seperation of code that VMS had is non-existant in NT.
//Finally, if it’s just a matter of the UI, then a) they already redid things effectively from scratch with Windows 95, and b) They ARE planning a rewrite for LongHorn (albeit one many people don’t seem to appreciate, but that’s their choice
.//
Windows 95 was not a complete rewrite at all. In fact there is still 3.1 code (program manager) in XP, nevermind 95.
//In other words, what real advantage would MS gain by a total rewrite? none. What would they lose? Experience with the current codebase, market share, compatibility, etc etc.//
The only advantave MS would have to gain is credibility amongst the technical crowd. MS might gain some power users out of rewriting the codebase but MS does not care about that. MS is out there to make money and they will not change until they absolutely have to, at which time it will probably be too little, too late.
“//Firstly, the NT kernel IS a “rewrite”, in that it’s a very clean, consistent microkernel (essentially), compared with the mess of the Win16/Win32/DOS of Windows 3.1 -> Windows ME.//
Not true. NT is not a microkernel. The microkernel approach was tried with 3.51(?) and was then abandoned. NT is a horrible implementation of VMS. The seperation of code that VMS had is non-existant in NT.”
My apologies. I was always led to believe that NT was still pretty much the same kernel as the 3.x series, with only some graphics (and recently other bits & pieces) thrown in for speed. As for being a poor implementation, well some would claim that the Linux kernel could also be described as such (personally I figure it works so what the hell). I have found NT to be a bit easier to deal with, if only conceptually, than the Linux/BSD kernels though (although I DO love Syllable/AtheOS’s
“//Finally, if it’s just a matter of the UI, then a) they already redid things effectively from scratch with Windows 95, and b) They ARE planning a rewrite for LongHorn (albeit one many people don’t seem to appreciate, but that’s their choice
.//
Windows 95 was not a complete rewrite at all. In fact there is still 3.1 code (program manager) in XP, nevermind 95.”
I should have been more clear here. I meant that the UI was redone. I was trying to say that if the complaint was about how Windows looked, then it’s a rather superficial complaint and irrelevant since there’s been a couple “overhauls” of the appearance of Windows. I didn’t mean to bring actual code in on this point.