ALL,
Good Read !!
http://www.computerworld.com/a.....38;nlid=74
Regards,
Rick P.
How-To Geek Forums » Geek Stuff
Windows' days may be numbered
(21 posts)
Rick, I read a lot of articles bashing Vista. They were mostly written by halfwits like the one that wrote this article. People that have no understanding of operating systems or the development houses. Believe me, I have been with operating systems for 35 years (not on PC's though - but the basics are the same). And Lighthouse is right: Legacy is deadly.
Whs + LS,
You are both correct.
Read the article again.
MS may be thinking of doing away with Legacy and figuring out how to go down a different path ??
A company can't just keep putting "Lipstick" on a pig and calling it a different animal without folks noticing and having to pay ever higher prices for the same old "pig" :) :)
Regards,
Rick P.
The article was written to be sensational, but is really quite silly.
Windows already "virtualizes" in a number of places. 16-bit apps are run through a "compatibility layer", and even 32-bit apps are similarly treated in 64-bit Windows. This doesn't even mention the application virtualization that happens on every Vista box without you even knowing it (non vista-aware applications have their registry and some file access run through a virtualization layer so as to put things into the correct places).
Mac OS X does a type of virtualization for ancient Mac apps (not that anybody uses them anymore).
Virtualization is simply a better way to provide backwards compatibility for the next version of Windows, not a reason why Windows will die altogether... but sadly sensationalist titles make better headlines.
Don't forget that these groups (as the author calls it "skunkworks" - which I believe is a braintank at McDonnald Douglas) are very, very small. Usually 5 to 10 people. They produce a so-called prototype. If that works and is accepted by management, then the development houses take over. And unlike of what the layman thinks, a development house consists only to 10 - 15% of programmers (the people that write the actual code). The rest are testing, product assurance , publication, integration, planning, market research, standards, forecasting, pricing, lawyers, external interfaces (especially at MS who have to deal with a gezillion hardware and software vendors), several layers of management, etc. etc. (there are about 10 more I can think of). And if that big group of hundres of people starts working, then it gets serious and expensive. Make your own calculation: The total development house (all people considered) runs at about 1000 lines of code per manyear. A new operating system will be at least 10 to 20 million lines of code (Vista is 55 Mlocs). A manyear costs anywhere from 100 to 150K$. This is serious business and will not be decided on the back of an envelope.
@The Geek,
Vitalization has been around for a good while. The problem has been getting the Processioning Power up to speed so to speak to handle it. With new multi-core CPUs and less heat, etc., etc.; virtual real time O/Ses have even greater possiblities in the future.
Agreed; The Author of the article could have chosen better head line wording :):)
Regards,
Rick P.
Well, the article is listed as "opinion", though I would have called it "rumor" or possibly "gossip". :-)
I've seen some really great OSs, such as Amiga OS and NeXT. Like the Archimedes that Lighthouse mentions, notice how these are all obscure and obsolete. Rick mentions RTOS, but I'm not seeing it on my PC. There has also been a lot of talk about HALs and microkernels and hypervisors and on and on. Very little of this has materialized -- in a game-changing way -- on our PCs. So, what's this new one got? Oh, yes, it's distributed! As a former co-worker of mine liked to say, it's buzzword-compliant!
Rick, what's going on with you? You seem to be deleting as much as posting! :-P
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