“After months of speculation, Microsoft has released XP Service Pack 2 in order to fix problems in its operating system. Amid reports of problems and some successes, I recommend prudent users continue to wait before deploying this service pack. It has security holes and its own set of problems. Meanwhile, the company is pulling features from its next operating system, code-named Longhorn, in an effort to get it on the street by 2006,” Charlie Paschal reports for The State.
The Register has reported, “Two mainstays of Windows Longhorn will be ‘decoupled’ from the 2006 release, with Microsoft dropping the WinFS storage and query system. Originally intended to be a full-blown replacement for the NTFS file system that put a database at the heart of Windows, WinFS will now be available as an add-on no sooner than 2007 for Longhorn, XP and Windows 2003. Or to be more precise – and here is another new piece of jargon for Redmond watchers – WinFS will be released as an ‘out-of-band add-on pack.’ Got that?”
“A cut-down version of Avalon, minus the compositor and the new device driver model will be backported to Windows XP too. Microsoft had already pledged to backport the next generation of middleware APIs, code named Indigo, to XP. All of which has left developers questioning the necessity of a ‘big bang.’ ‘If WinFX (including Avalon and Indigo) are going to be available for WinXP and Win2003.
MS has a serious problem and it is called backward compatibility.
They have to worry about this because of the investment companies and individuals have in software – some of which is very old, but very expensive to replace.
Building Longhorn by starting with a clean sheet of paper would have been fantastic for MS and probably a good system, but then nothing, including millions of copies of Office, would work.
And there lies the problem. If MS started over every company running Windows apps would be looking at alternatives to determine which would be the best (most cost effective) to re-write apps for.
A huge albatross hanging around MS’s neck and it gets significantly heavier each year. At some point it is going to choke them. Pity.
yikes: thanks. You are really silly.
“No, I’m trying to explain how to test SP 2 in an isolated environment (test) then deploying it across a (live) network based on those results”
The above is the most idiotic statement I have ever heard on deploying patches/updates in a large network.
Seahawk, a suggestion: stop wasting bandwidth with the troll.
Alright. I know apple has done something similar in the past. BUT this is kinda sad. Why doesn’t microsoft have so many programmers working to get this thing done that it’s scary? They have the money to pump out an operating system a month. They just lack something known as a brain. At least it looks like microsoft realises that if they make a new OS they’re fucked, because than every company will say, “Why the fuck are we using this shit!”. Also macs are cheaper, when you get a $500 windows comp, you’re not going to be using it for 5 years. With a mac, you pay $1000 for an upgraded iMac, realistically a company would get the eMac with a business discount at like $700. At which point it will last a good 4-5 years before it needs to be replaced to continue to keep up with the latest OS. So, to finish this off, why don’t we all go and play with the new alpha release of “Let’s all get hurder up and slaughtered than served at a McDonalds for a $1”, otherwise known as XP after a decent graphic designer took a hack at.
Seahawk:
“No serious sw runs on Windows. And no, corporate and financial sw and FPS games are not serious software.”
Seahawk:
“yikes: thanks. You are really silly.”
I’ll take that as a compliment considering the ultra-intelligent posts you produce. How would any research get done without funding? Its silly you don’t think thats serious work.
“The above is the most idiotic statement I have ever heard on deploying patches/updates in a large network.
“
As opposed to not testing them at all first? Heck, why deploy at all? 😀
“MS has a serious problem and it is called backward compatibility. “
Thumbs up! That actually makes sense. No sarcasm, compatibility is an albatross around MS’s neck.
“Seahawk, a suggestion: stop wasting bandwidth with the troll.”
IT_Guy, have you READ what other people have posted here?? There is quit a bit of trolling. I was trying to point out that SP 2 was something (one of few) MS did right. It was in BETA for a long time (with public download) and provides some nice (free) add-ins like DEP protection. To not deploy it, without a good reason, is just…silly. With a good reason, fine, but have a scheduled deployment date.
yikes: “To not deploy it, without a good reason, is just…silly. With a good reason, fine, but have a scheduled deployment date. “
Which is what Seahawk have said all along. Big corporations, labs, educational sites are not deploying SP2 in that they cannot afford service going to an halt and THEN solve the issues.
It will take months and Microsoft knows pretty well that. These clients have well into 2005 before deploying at large SP2 and – mark my words – they have no reasons to rush.
Any MS patch and update, and SP2 is no different, takes months before it could be deployed in a large network. The leisure home user have with those patches would get any IT staff fired in no time.
Moreover, although SP2 is a step forward it falls short. It is more of a value for home users than large network with PC behind firewalls and traffic under strict scrutiny. Who cares whether you PC has port 132 open when network guys forbid any packets from outside willing to access that port? (MSBlaster case). Heck, there are ever closed LAN where PC cannot even see the outside world and only communicate among themselves. There are other big watch dogs in place already. SP2 is not an urgent matter in those cases.
For home user it is slightly better but if you believe SP2 gives you 100% security, think again.
“Which is what Seahawk have said all along. Big corporations, labs, educational sites are not deploying SP2 in that they cannot afford service going to an halt and THEN solve the issues.”
No, what you said was intelligent and makes sense. I agree totally. Seahwak says things like:
“It is pee allowing Windows users believe they drink champagne just because it is yellowish, have bubbles and tastes funny. Just like champagne.
Snaggle: you deserve your flute of pee and 1$ meal.”
“It is more of a value for home users than large network with PC behind firewalls and traffic under strict scrutiny.” -Agreed totally, the security API/firewall is worthless in this environment. DEP and the IE enhancements (more like bug fixes) are useful though. The firewall being able to be managed using group policy is nice for laptops.
“For home user it is slightly better but if you believe SP2 gives you 100% security, think again.”
I’d say more than slightly, still miles away from 100% though.
“SP2 was something (one of few) MS did right”
missed that at first. My comment: Not exactly.
Cheers
Well, it is not my role to defend Seahawk nor yours to defend Snaggle.
What Snaggle wrote about OS X and Linux was nonsense. A flamebait and flame he got.
If you are going to spend time on these forums get used to flame.
For Seahawk, he for the most is composed and gives the impression to know what is talking about.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> but usually a flame bait is the spark.
At least about OS X. Sometime he bursts out with colorful statements which might get correlated to a bad day
Apple OS X is good, but nothing spectacular, without BSD holding the back bone that is, plus steve does make you pay more dollars for something that is not Apple.
The more I read up on Commercial/Corporate IT systems the less respect I have for them. I believe governments have vast/wide knowledge about technology than most IT corporates.
The only reason these big shot IT corporates are so rich is because alot of silly people tend to keep over feeding them.
ITS TIME TO CHANGE BACK TO PURE UNIX.
You should not see professional rally drivers with automatic transmission.
Yet I see professional IT personels use automated, user friendly and pretty graphics Windows and OSX.
trippah: Perhaps OS X is not spectacular, but then there are no spectacular operating systems then.
Regarding cost, find out what RedHat, Suse, etc cost if you want official support and timely updates.
Of course those Unix/Linux/BSD/Any other OS hackers can do it (almost) all themselves. But even now there is no unified distribution with the seamlessness of OS X (or even NeXT for that matter).
So what is pure Unix? Are you old enough to remember? I have run many Unix distributions without any vestige of GUI (not even X11 support) and while they do take less space on disk, a GUI can be very handy.
Josh: What is your point? Let me make it simple for you in case you may not understand. Consider a simple model of operating systems with two criteria: ease of use and power.
MacOS – easy to use
UNIX – powerful
Windows – neither easy to use nor powerful
Mac OS X – easy to use and powerful!
Your one-dimensional comparsion automatic/manual transmission is not a good example – you need to work in at least one dimension higher.
But if we use your crude picture, we can take Mac OS X as a clutchless manual – ease of use of an automatic (yuck!) when necessary and the power of a manual (e.g. for overtaking other operating systems!).
Disclaimer: I haven’t used a clutchless manual (or selectric automatic) transmission but they sound like a good compromise unless you need to have clutch slipping ability: probably more useful in rallies than Grand Prix but then one would likely be using a AWD (with stability control) in any case.
I am talking on a technical side, not finance or marketing or any other business jargon.
OSX – UNIX = hmmmm
The only real reason OS’s are becoming easier to use is for the fact that there are far more people who know close to zero about IT than those who got the know-how. Popularity does not identify a quality product.
Stevo is good at recieving recognition and credit for other peoples work for far too long, but rest assured he is not alone.
WOZ is Apple Number One. (In technical terms)
On a bright side, creativity and innovative ideas cannot be easily brought out by these billion dollar companies.
Yikes:
“Impressive! And they can’t do what many home users have done- apply a free upgrade that you can instal while the OS is running?
I can only imagine how they handle upgrades of OS’s that are more complex than the click n’ drool of Windows update.”
Hmmmm. Where to start. SP2 breaks a number of MS’s own products, let alone a typical corporate environment that has a vast number of applications from multiple vendors, in differing combinations. Firing SP2 out into such an environment is begging for trouble. Testing prior to rolling out is not a small task. And this is in highly locked down environments where users cant do anything to their PC’s!!! Just imagine what it would be like in smaller businesses where users often given open slather access to their PC. And you wouldnt believe some of the stupid things that minor patches have broken in the past.
Mac v’s PC. My PC at work runs XP. My PC at home is a selfbuild running XP. Work is a predominately MS-based IT solutions/support company. Ive had to support every version of MS OS since DOS 2.2.
So, what do I actually use when I get home?? Well, Im typing this on my G5 PowerMac. When I come home, I want to use and enjoy using my computer – not support it. The Mac just works, the PC is just work. OS X is more fun and doesnt get in your way as much as XP. I dont have to spend time showing the better half how to do things on the Mac. She uses the computer far more since the Mac arrived home. The PC gets turned on a couple of times a month if I feel like playing a game (I dont play games often enough to warrant buying Mac games).
My take?? For home, unless you have some utter dependance on a PC running Windows for a hardware/software combination, get a Mac. As an example, one of my dive computers uses a serial cable with Windows only s/w for data downloads.
For business, I cant comment as Ive never had to roll out OS X into a large-scale heterogeneous environment so I dont know how nicely it plays in that world. A lot of business apps are very MS-centric, things custom written in VB etc. These business apps are usually quite core to the company as well, so getting Mac’s into that environment would be hard. Its getting easier with solutions like Citrix and web-based applications (as long as the dev’s dont write for IE only).
Small businesses should be fine as long as they can find applications that suit their needs on the Mac for business process.
Josh: “You should not see professional rally drivers with automatic transmission.
Yet I see professional IT personels use automated, user friendly and pretty graphics Windows and OSX.”
Use the correct tool for the task.
Grand Prix cars use semi-automatic clutches with sequential gearboxes (so do Rally cars IIRC). They are faster to change and basically banish gear-change mistakes (unless the electronics die).
GUI tools often do a lot of work for you that you would otherwise have to do manually, with more scope for making mistakes. Also, a lot of systems these days are only administrable by some sort of GUI. The downside of this is that people are more likely to play and/or do things where they dont understand the implications of what they are doing.
On the other hand, a unix shell, coupled with script languages are very powerful tools for the right job in the right environment.
“Well, it is not my role to defend Seahawk nor yours to defend Snaggle.” Perhaps not. I was just pointing out the I’m not a troll, and never will be. Others are, and behave like one, quite frequently.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue laugh” style=”border:0;” />
trippah: I too am talking about the technical aspects of OS X. As with other “Unix-like operating systems” (e.g. UNIX (e.g. AIX, IRIX, Primix, SunOS) , Linux, BSD) it serves as a good development platform. Darwin is the opensource component of OS X. I don’t see Stevo taking credit for BSD! Woz rules I agree!
Will LH be a “quantum leap” ? Yes probably only a quantum leap. But lets look at what that REALLY means. A quantum is the smallest amount of energy change a subatomic particle can make. And that is pretty small. So a quantum jump or leap is the smallest possible improvement that one could make.
I don’t know much about PCs, just because my family has never owned one, and back in my grade school days i would lug around my Powerbook 520c totally uninterested in PC life. What i do observe is that microsoft does lack originality and grace, but that doesn’t mean that Longhorn will fail. And to all those people who use the argument that X amount of people use PCs, is just plain stupid. PCs that have windows installed are cheap, and you get what you pay for. I didn’t know that longhorn exsisted until today. There is talk about it and forums and all this shit, but a simple screen shot of this “phantom os” is around. Personally i think microsoft should just keep making what works, like microsoft office. OS’s just isn’t their thing.
I don’t know much about PCs, just because my family has never owned one, and back in my grade school days i would lug around my Powerbook 520c totally uninterested in PC life. What i do observe is that microsoft does lack originality and grace, but that doesn’t mean that Longhorn will fail. And to all those people who use the argument that X amount of people use PCs, is just plain stupid. PCs that have windows installed are cheap, and you get what you pay for. I didn’t know that longhorn exsisted until today. There is talk about it and forums and all this shit, but a simple screen shot of this “phantom os” is around. Personally i think microsoft should just keep making what works, like microsoft office. OS’s just isn’t their thing.
hey, isn’t spotlight kina like butler, that beautiful donationware for macs? Available now, of course?
I work for a fairly large company and we have blocked XP SP2. It has caused quite a few problems with some of our apps, in fact I couldn’t install Symantec on my test machine because the MSI installer wouldn’t run with SP2 on the box. I think I have that narrowed down to a problem between SP2 and our Novell client. One of the guys who works with me did not have Novell on his machine with SP2 and the MSI loaded fine. Spyware is a big problem here as well because we had to give all users Administrator rights because of the ancient Win 95 based apps that are run here. We told the programmers that they need to change them but nobody wanted to pay for it. So we had to make them Admins so that the apps would run. Which in turn lets the spyware run rampant. Viruses, we’ve taken a couple shots with those as well. Not as bad as it could have been. Again the IT guys suggested to the network group that this and the spyware should be blocked at the firewall and routers from even getting in. Again we were shut down and told to manage it at a desktop level.
I use XP everyday and it is functional. When I get home however, I boot up my old 350mhz G4 and check my mail and browse the internet. I could just as easily use my 2ghz PC sitting next to it on the KVM switch but, I don’t want to anymore. I have found that I am much happier on my slower Mac with OSX than my faster PC. I don’t worry as much about virus activity or even pop ups as I do with my PC. I know that there are viruses for OS X, but there are definitely fewer. However, I still take the necessary precautions by loading the OS patches for my Mac and keeping everything behind a NAT router and firewall. My wife and step-daughter both have XP machines which I constantly have to clean spyware from after just a few days of routine web browsing. My Mac just works, I have added 1gb of PC100 ram to it and a CD Burner and the next machine I buy will be a Powerbook.