Getting a higher level of expressiveness using a CLI

In a very recent item from Slashdot:

“According to Stephen Toulouse at Microsoft (rel="nofollow"), because of the possible virus threat that targets Monad the shell will not be included in Windows Vista. CNet is reporting that, even though Monad is not to be included on Vista, it will be included on a major server operating system for servers from Microsoft. Codenamed Longhorn server, that edition is due out by 2007.”

The inclusion of a CLI is primarily aimed at programmers, system administrators and Web hosts who require versatile remote access. I have some suspicion that Monad will introduce users to the power of the command-line¹, who will in turn realise that they can get it all under Linux without the high costs which Windows entails. In the past few days I converted about 3 people from Windows to Linux, which results in a rewarding feeling. It is not a religious war, but one of freedom. Free as in free beer. Free as in freedom.

¹ The “front line”, not MS-DOS, but bash et al. rather.

An article from Techworld proves how ridiculously easy it is to break the Microsoft authenticity check, which is needed to allow users to get software updates such as the common Service Packs. It is yet another story which reflects terribly on Microsoft and their security loopholes. Perhaps they try to make it easy and encourage distribution of illegal copies of Windows, just as they turned a blind eye to piracy in the far east. Some would argue that they simply cannot program a mechanism that is sufficiently secure.

To carry out the hack, users simply needed to insert the following line into Explorer’s address bar before the WGA authentication check was carried out:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')

This revelation is utterly embarrassing for any manufacturer whose annual revenue pushes the high billions. It took only a day since its announcement for WGA to be broken. Ironically, believe it or not, WGA stands for Windows Genuine Advantage. Piracy was definitely an advantage which promoted Microsoft when it was still in its diapers.

This picture was funnier when Windows Vista was still called Longhorn

t was roughly a decade ago when a mysterious journalism trend emerged. All of a sudden, in a matter of a few years, major newspapers began to migrate their content to the Internet and shield their on-line popularity. A frantic stampede — that was — to what would become the future of journalism. Editors came to realise that it was only a matter of time before readers would take advantage of technology. This new form of publication had very many conceivable advantages:

• Being able to isolate uninteresting bits from the unmissable (content tailoring)
• Ability to save article (electronic storage)
• Reduction in cost (physical properties)
• The ability to share articles with friends and colleagues (reproducibility)
• Being able to performs searches (indexing technology)

Whatever gains one can imagine, most likely computers will have them. So, paper was bound to become obsolete sooner or later.

Several years later, particularly in the beginning of this millennium, blogs (Web logs) began to emerge. Suddenly, people had easy access to powerful publication platforms. The growth of blogs in terms of number and amount of content was explosive and their extent soon became excessive. How could a mainstream newspaper keep up with blogs and attract the masses? Journalists became threatened. Later came he feeds frenzy, which unlike blogs, has not reached its anti-climax, yet. Soon enough, operating systems (as we know them) might be put aside in favour of on-line operating systems. So who will be the next victim if not Microsoft? And who will it be that inherits the Earth? Google and Yahoo are among the contenders. For Microsoft, who have made many enemies, the last resort has become software patents, which they are piling up like connonballs for application at the Patents Office.

Slow movement towards on-line data management has been well-comprehended by all fronts. Microsoft attempt to conquer the Net as they are investing a heavy load of resources to reach that goal. From this site alone, MSNBot fetched 13968 pages, trailing by just a decent margin behind Google with 20627 pages in the month of July. Without a doubt, Microsoft have gained plenty of bandwidth and computer power.

It was not long ago that Bill Gates gave his engineers just 100 days to steal Google’s idea of AJAX-enabled maps (satellite and hybrid maps too). In response to Mozilla Firefox, which kept Microsoft on their toes, a decision was make to update rusty Internet Explorer 6 and leap to Internet Explorer 7. Not surprisingly, many ideas were stolen from Firefox, which was considered the main danger at the time.

Later on, Microsoft decided to embed RSS support in the kernel of Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn). Again, this step was taken in order to compensate for the considerable lag behind some recent technologies. Gates et al. were then scheming to buy off popular bloggers — a shrewd idea due to general Microsoft disdain in popular and influential blogspheres. The main complaints of bloggers, along with some major voices in the media, was the lack of inter-operability, being proof that Microsoft are patronising the rest of the IT world with utter platform discrimination. They simply fail to internalise that it is nice to be important, but even more important to be nice (open).

According to Bloomberg, innovation definitely required motivation:

Microsoft has had the ability to develop a satellite map service for MSN since 1998. Chairman Bill Gates decided in April, the same month Google released its version, to rush the project. He gave his engineers a deadline of 100 days. Stephen Lawler, who runs the Virtual Earth group, and his team figured they would need about a year to get the satellite mapping technology ready.

Also on the same topic, it is rather frustrating that it took several years until Microsoft decided to fix the bugs inherent in Internet Explorer 6 and add valuable yet fundamental features like support for feeds. This move was a result of Firefox, of course, but more sadly, Internet Explorer 7 imitates Firefox, much like Virtual Earth intends to match Google Maps and show that development in the Microsoft compus is not dead, yet. Note the subtle use of the word development, not innovation.

Inkscape is yet another Open Source image manipulation program (admire the screenshot gallery). Its GUI resembles that of GIMPShop (a popular branch of the GIMP) or the commercial leader, Adobe Photoshop. It has the words “Photoshop killer” written all over it, as unlike the GIMP, it greatly assimilates to Photoshop, which makes a migration easier. It should also run neatly under Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

Some months ago I heard rumours that Microsoft intend to provide an image manipulation add-on (in the form of a download) for Windows, thereby addressing one of its deficiencies. Too often do I see people use paint.exe for image editing. This requires much more time than necessary and usually achieves appalling results. While on the issue, how about Windows’ urgent need for a decent text editor?

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

From a thought-provoking article in USA TODAY:

Speaking to hundreds of university professors, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says he’s baffled more students don’t go into computer science.

Also see:

• Gates: Lack of Computer Science Spending Is ‘Kind of a Crime’
• Criticism on exploitation of power

emonstration below is no screenshot. It is a fake composition which I pulled together under the GIMP, yet where are the spherical desktops? Where has this initiative disappeared? Microsoft are finally incorporating some transparency in Windows Vista, but why concede an attractive spherical environment? Surely in pragmatic terms, the gain from this graphical developments is nill; it is probably a loss. The heavy computational load, however, can be handled using graphical acceleration hardware.

Wallpaper from Houghi (click image above to enlarge; non-lossy PNG version)