主打作品:我爱人民币
作词:刘正标
作曲:吴品醇
姓名：吴品醇 英文名：Jason 编号：100012
性别： 男 年龄： 26 地区： 南京
教育： 本科 身高： 176cm 体重： 66kg
民族： 汉 血型： A型 星座： 处女座
活动页面
《我爱人民币》新浪试听页面
歌词:
我热爱学习 坚持锻炼身体
我工作努力 搞活市场经济
我认为赚钱是一种乐趣
只要取之有道 天经地义
我喜欢shopping 保持愉快心情
我酷爱旅行 周游世界各地
我觉得花钱是一种刺激
只要量体裁衣 合情合理
我讨厌dollar(堕落) 不喜欢卢比
不论走到哪里 都用人民币
我爱人民币 没有商量的余地
坚挺的人民币 我爱它到底
我讨厌汇率 不喜欢算计
不论走到哪里 都用人民币
我爱人民币 无需任何的道理
伟大的人民币 创造着奇迹
一张 两张 三张四张
五张六张七张 八张人民币
我存了半年的积蓄
狠下心 咬着牙 买了随身听
听见 某男和某女 拉埋天窗的消息
何如请客送礼 成了世界难题
恍惚中 走进某某电器
(同志) 您这卖不卖取款机
2005年10月30日星期日
2005年10月25日星期二
他们说……
原文引用网址(Trackback URL)：http://hopesome.com/wp-trackback.php?418
功在不舍的内心独白[MP3]
这是功在不舍寄来的Podcast。
功在不舍是一个很特别的学生。
初中读了五年，高中读了五年。
明年，和他同龄的同学大学毕业，而他，高中毕业。
痴迷于艺术的功在不舍，梦想成为中国的梵高、中国的毕加索。
虽是阳光遍洒的年龄，但他总是在太阳背后看风景—-他的外号是“烦恼加工厂厂长”。
读书、应试、文凭，在这条传统的路上，有多少人走过，多少人成功，又有多少人才被扼杀？
功在不舍是纯净、透明的—-但他只能面对一个模糊、不确定的未来。
功在不舍告诉我，他准备建一个网站Arthings.com。
这是一个连他自己和佛祖都不知道什么时候能建好的网站。
但这，或许就是个希望？
---------------------------------------------------
VeryCD 的 Dash 是这么说的。
引用网址(Trackback URL)：http://bbs.verycd.com/index.php?automodule=blog&cmd=showentry&blogid=1&eid=16255
妈妈说：“读好书长大才有出息。”
爸爸说：“多一张文凭，总是好的。”
xdanger说：“会改到周二开吧，周一早上要去见导师，枪手做的东西不知道行不行。”
晓东说：“老子读了2年大学，又被骗回去读高复了”
sosoke老板说：“不要应届毕业生。”
流氓说：“毕业论文在网上有卖，100元一篇，拿回来稍微改改就行了”
交大说：“为了保证毕业生就业率，找不到工作的不能拿毕业证。”
GGSoSo说：“大学这个市场多大啊，那么多本科生，那么多研究生，以后研究生和本科生一样多了。”
Soar说：“学费别急着交，考试先通过再说。”
Thilon说：“你们的招聘怎么那么怪？为什么不看重学历？”
小广告说：“代办学历文凭。”
功在不舍说：“中国的教育摧残了多少人，中国的教育又成就了多少人。”
山沟里的孩子说：“我要读书！”
Dash说：“老子不读了！”
功在不舍的内心独白[MP3]
- 录音内容
- 不知道是什么原因 这两天心情特别的不好
我也不知道该从何说起 大概是因为快要开学了吧
父母总是说我有一种开学综合症 读书综合症 考学综合症
是啊 读了这么多年书 难免会得那么一些综合症
我琢磨着 在中国 估计找不出几个像我这样的学生
初中读了五年 高中读了五年
九月一号 噢不 是九月四号 便开始我第五年的高中
第五年的高中啊 想象五年的初中 已经过了四年的高中
我人生最阳光最灿烂的日子 就这么过去了
而我以前的同学 明年也即将大学毕业 我明年是高中毕业
挺有意思
或许 造成这个差异的原因都是 因为我自己
是因为我叛逆 我去追求自己的理想
我不喜欢那些死板的教材 死板的人 死板的一切
我宁可喜欢偷偷地在上课的时候
翻些小人书 翻些杂志 哪怕只是报纸
或许我不是一个好学生 我上课经常走神 不知道在想些什么
脑子里总是转悠着我的梦想 我的艺术
我只相信自己是个艺术家 我可以创作出很美的艺术
我可以是梵·高第二 毕加索第二
中国还没有梵·高和毕加索的出现 为什么我不可以呢
我对艺术是如此的执著和追求
可是 几乎 几乎听不到人们的赞许
艺术是何其的孤独啊
漫漫长路 不被人理解
如果说 这么多年我学到了什么 我真的很难讲
还有什么值得我可以期待的呢
以前有一个朋友给我起个外号
叫 烦恼加工厂厂长
这个外号 我已经背了好多年
始终脱不开这个烦恼的枷锁
可是谁又能脱开烦恼呢
是人总得有一些烦恼
家家有本难念的经 人人有烦恼的心
我还有最后一年高中 我不知道这最后一年的高中我该怎么过
如果换作是别人的话 早该是什么的补习班 进修班
从早到晚的去补习 从早到晚的做功课做作业 每天埋在书堆里
或许他们是对的 也或许我看得太清楚了
在中国这个社会 你不读书你还能做什么呢
不读书你没有文凭 你拿什么去证明你
你有什么资格去证明找一份工作
有什么能力 去为自己的明天 去承担这个责任
话虽是这么说 可是 我真的是一个骨头很硬的人
岁数一年一年的在长大 我开始沉淀我自己
我想 我也应该是时候把我的心放下来
冷静地想一想这些问题
什么究竟是我需要的 而什么又是不需要的
每天我都很晚睡 我喜欢深夜带给我的这种感觉
很安静 我只有自己一个人 我可以遨游在自己的世界里
我可以驰骋自己的思想
就仿佛每年夏天我就喜欢去游泳池里游泳一样
当我深吸一口气 潜到水的时候
我知道 那时我要的感觉 做一条鱼的感觉
周围很安静 水很透明
我想 我的心也应该是透明的吧 很干净
世间有多少的甘苦我还没有体会过
我没有资格在这里多说些什么
我不知道 一个人去坚持自己的理想
而背叛他父母的愿望 该如何去评判 该如何去说
权当我是一个不孝之子吧
真的很对不起 我不知道这最后一年会发生什么
一个艺术家是不应该受压迫的
中国的教育 摧残了多少人
中国的教育 又成就了多少人
我只希望自己的心 慢慢的平静 慢慢的平静 慢慢的平静
再过三天 我就要走了
我只是舍不得离开 舍不得离开我自己的世界
算了吧 算了吧
这是功在不舍寄来的Podcast。
功在不舍是一个很特别的学生。
初中读了五年，高中读了五年。
明年，和他同龄的同学大学毕业，而他，高中毕业。
痴迷于艺术的功在不舍，梦想成为中国的梵高、中国的毕加索。
虽是阳光遍洒的年龄，但他总是在太阳背后看风景—-他的外号是“烦恼加工厂厂长”。
读书、应试、文凭，在这条传统的路上，有多少人走过，多少人成功，又有多少人才被扼杀？
功在不舍是纯净、透明的—-但他只能面对一个模糊、不确定的未来。
功在不舍告诉我，他准备建一个网站Arthings.com。
这是一个连他自己和佛祖都不知道什么时候能建好的网站。
但这，或许就是个希望？
---------------------------------------------------
VeryCD 的 Dash 是这么说的。
引用网址(Trackback URL)：http://bbs.verycd.com/index.php?automodule=blog&cmd=showentry&blogid=1&eid=16255
妈妈说：“读好书长大才有出息。”
爸爸说：“多一张文凭，总是好的。”
xdanger说：“会改到周二开吧，周一早上要去见导师，枪手做的东西不知道行不行。”
晓东说：“老子读了2年大学，又被骗回去读高复了”
sosoke老板说：“不要应届毕业生。”
流氓说：“毕业论文在网上有卖，100元一篇，拿回来稍微改改就行了”
交大说：“为了保证毕业生就业率，找不到工作的不能拿毕业证。”
GGSoSo说：“大学这个市场多大啊，那么多本科生，那么多研究生，以后研究生和本科生一样多了。”
Soar说：“学费别急着交，考试先通过再说。”
Thilon说：“你们的招聘怎么那么怪？为什么不看重学历？”
小广告说：“代办学历文凭。”
功在不舍说：“中国的教育摧残了多少人，中国的教育又成就了多少人。”
山沟里的孩子说：“我要读书！”
Dash说：“老子不读了！”
KAV2005"网页安全扫描"不可用的解决方法
问：我的金山毒霸2005网页安全扫描不可用，这是什么问题？
答：此情况一般都是因为服务没有被正确地加载，可能的原因：老版本毒霸没有卸载干净；其他软件冲突（比如安装完毒霸2005，再安装卡巴斯基2006beta并开启卡巴的网页监控，会出现这种情况，卸载卡巴之后就正常了）。你可以试试下面这个方法：开始，运行，输入：
regsvr32 "E:\Program Files\KAV2005\KAScript.DLL"
(假设金山毒霸安装在E:\Program Files\）
============================================
如果您的金山毒霸2005出现了网页安全扫描提示为不可用，一般有可能是以下的一种或多种原因造成的：
1、安装了其他杀毒软件。如果您的系统除了毒霸2005之外，还安装了其他的反病毒软件，就有可能出现网页监控的相互冲突，导致毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用。这时候您可以选择开始菜单－程序－金山毒霸2005－添加删除金山毒霸－修复安装即可恢复金山毒霸的网页安全扫描。
2、安装了有网页脚本扫描功能的类似软件。如果您的系统安装了一些带有网页保护功能的软件，就有可能出现相互冲突（比如金山安全助手），导致毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用。这时候您可以选择开始菜单－程序－金山毒霸2005－添加删除金山毒霸－修复安装即可恢复金山毒霸的网页安全扫描。
3、您使用Windows XP的用户切换功能。如果您使用了Windows XP的用户切换功能，您可以进入金山毒霸2005的综合设置，设置一下即可开启网页安全扫描。注意：如果由于您安装了其他反病毒软件或者带有网页保护功能的软件以后，出现了毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用，而经过对毒霸的修复安装以后，这时候网页安全扫描变成正常。但是过了一定时候再次出现毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用，这个是因为某些反病毒软件或者一些带有网页保护功能的软件可能会自动修复其网页监控，这时候就会再次导致毒霸网页安全扫描不可用，遇到这种情况您可以禁用其他反病毒软件、其他的网页保护软件或者拆卸它们后再修复安装毒霸即可。
答：此情况一般都是因为服务没有被正确地加载，可能的原因：老版本毒霸没有卸载干净；其他软件冲突（比如安装完毒霸2005，再安装卡巴斯基2006beta并开启卡巴的网页监控，会出现这种情况，卸载卡巴之后就正常了）。你可以试试下面这个方法：开始，运行，输入：
regsvr32 "E:\Program Files\KAV2005\KAScript.DLL"
(假设金山毒霸安装在E:\Program Files\）
============================================
如果您的金山毒霸2005出现了网页安全扫描提示为不可用，一般有可能是以下的一种或多种原因造成的：
1、安装了其他杀毒软件。如果您的系统除了毒霸2005之外，还安装了其他的反病毒软件，就有可能出现网页监控的相互冲突，导致毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用。这时候您可以选择开始菜单－程序－金山毒霸2005－添加删除金山毒霸－修复安装即可恢复金山毒霸的网页安全扫描。
2、安装了有网页脚本扫描功能的类似软件。如果您的系统安装了一些带有网页保护功能的软件，就有可能出现相互冲突（比如金山安全助手），导致毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用。这时候您可以选择开始菜单－程序－金山毒霸2005－添加删除金山毒霸－修复安装即可恢复金山毒霸的网页安全扫描。
3、您使用Windows XP的用户切换功能。如果您使用了Windows XP的用户切换功能，您可以进入金山毒霸2005的综合设置，设置一下即可开启网页安全扫描。注意：如果由于您安装了其他反病毒软件或者带有网页保护功能的软件以后，出现了毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用，而经过对毒霸的修复安装以后，这时候网页安全扫描变成正常。但是过了一定时候再次出现毒霸的网页安全扫描不可用，这个是因为某些反病毒软件或者一些带有网页保护功能的软件可能会自动修复其网页监控，这时候就会再次导致毒霸网页安全扫描不可用，遇到这种情况您可以禁用其他反病毒软件、其他的网页保护软件或者拆卸它们后再修复安装毒霸即可。
2005年10月22日星期六
喜欢Google？把Google设置为IE默认搜索引擎吧！
看来Google为用户想得够多的了。对于简体中文Windows用户，可能总是被系统指引到3721搜索。Google早就为我们准备好了一个简单的设置方法。
Google为我们准备的Reg文件地址：http://www.google.com/google.reg
该文件适用于 IE 4-6，且导入Reg必须登录为Administrator权限用户才可以。
如果你不喜欢把Google搜索结果显示在“频道”窗口，而想把结果显示在IE主窗口里，那么尝试这个文件：http://www.google.com/google_rsearch.reg
将任意一个Reg文件导入你的Windows注册表即可把 Internet Explorer 的默认搜索引擎改为 Google。
想恢复 IE 原来的搜索引擎？Google也给我们准备好了。http://www.google.com/default.reg
Make Google Your Default Search Engine!
Google为我们准备的Reg文件地址：http://www.google.com/google.reg
该文件适用于 IE 4-6，且导入Reg必须登录为Administrator权限用户才可以。
如果你不喜欢把Google搜索结果显示在“频道”窗口，而想把结果显示在IE主窗口里，那么尝试这个文件：http://www.google.com/google_rsearch.reg
将任意一个Reg文件导入你的Windows注册表即可把 Internet Explorer 的默认搜索引擎改为 Google。
想恢复 IE 原来的搜索引擎？Google也给我们准备好了。http://www.google.com/default.reg
Make Google Your Default Search Engine!
2005年10月21日星期五
百度败诉MP3搜索遭封杀
转载自YNET.COM
随着唱片公司诉百度案的不断升级，ＭＰ３搜索何去何从的问题眼下成了众多媒体的关注热点。面对媒体，败诉后的百度对这个话题一直呈犹抱琵琶半遮面之态；而版权条例制定机构则三缄其口；唱片公司则是一家接一家地表示要与搜索公司在法庭上对质；还有一些评论家也在指责搜索引擎在版权上犯下了“七宗罪”。所有的迹象似乎都在预示着ＭＰ３免费搜索的消失，取消网民们的种种免费大餐似乎成了趋势。
败诉没有意外
百度的败诉并不令人意外，因为依据５月３０日由国家版权局、信息产业部共同制定的《互联网著作权行政保护办法》规定，任何以互联网的形式，未经著作权人许可使用作品的这种方式，都是侵权行为，包括音乐作品。权利人有权主张权利，司法部门和行政部门可以根据网站侵权的性质和程度，分别给予法律的处理。然而这其中并没有具体的处罚规定。但是，众所周知，互联网正是因其拥有各类便捷、海量的免费信息与应用才成为人们追捧的焦点。而各类数字版权的拥有者们也曾借此享受了最广泛的知名度传播的快感，甚至是借此获取了巨大的收益。
封杀将引发倒退？
网络著名评论家方兴东日前在接受记者采访时指出，搜索网站若是停止ＭＰ３搜索就是一种倒退，是一种不顾及中国亿万网民利益的行为。百度、搜狐、中搜、雅虎、网易的相关负责人均肯定地表示，不会停止提供ＭＰ３及其他任何搜索业务。
上周，中国搜索ＣＯＯ陈波在接受记者采访时更是旗帜鲜明地表示，封杀ＭＰ３将导致互联网大倒退，而要求搜索引擎公司去核实版权更是灾难性的后果，中搜誓将ＭＰ３搜索进行到底。唱片公司以搜索结果中存在无版权的ＭＰ３链接将搜索引擎公司请上了被告席，显然是不合理的。搜索引擎的目的是方便网民在互联网天文数字般的信息中找到他们自己所需要的，并且在这一过程中，尽可能多地提供符合网民需要的信息链接点。作为搜索工具，搜索引擎不应该也不可能承担核实版权的义务。此外，数据庞大的网页也不可能让搜索引擎公司有时间去核实所提供的链接是否具有版权，如果搜索引擎要核实每一个搜索结果的版权合法性，那么以中搜为例，自己搜索引擎的９亿中文网页需要４００人每分钟一个网页的速度看１６００天。如果唱片公司此次能借势关掉中国搜索引擎公司的ＭＰ３搜索，就会出现多米诺骨牌效应，所有的与链接和搜索有关的中国互联网服务都将迎来一场封杀噩梦，中国互联网将面临一场大倒退。
搜索不是盗贼
在记者的采访中，前述５家网站对于版权的问题除百度不愿表态外，其他几家基本的看法是搜索引擎是搜索引擎，免费下载是免费下载，两者是无关的，真正的被告不应该是搜索引擎。
有业内人士指出，ＭＰ３搜索是搜索引擎专业化的一种，它和新闻搜索、图片搜索、ＢＢＳ搜索等专项搜索一样，是因为搜索目的和排序方法的独特而从网页搜索中分离出来的搜索引擎子集。它既有搜索引擎的通用技术，也有和ＭＰ３相关的专有技术，是互联网音频信息搜索的一个重要工具。网页搜索和其他专项搜索一样，搜索引擎在处理有ＭＰ３文件的网页时，是通过计算机算法来分析可能和它相关的内容，让用户通过关键词来找到这个网页。它是提供互联网服务的技术，是一个提供海量信息的大平台。虽然免费下载一般都是建立在搜索基础之上，但搜索引擎并不等于免费下载。
四方博弈共赢最好
对于经营搜索引擎的企业为免费下载造成的侵权行为“买单”这个问题，陈波认为，ＭＰ３案件是一个四方博弈的过程，即：唱片方、搜索引擎、提供无版权音乐的网站主、网民。在四方博弈过程中间，我们支持版权拥有者的正当权益，但也必须尊重网民和搜索引擎的权益。唱片公司因为无法一个个去起诉数量庞大的提供无版权音乐的网站，转而将枪口对准搜索引擎，这样的结果是ＭＰ３搜索将被封杀，网民再也无法利用搜索下载音乐，唱片公司也将因此失去大量客户。可笑的是，那些真正的盗贼，提供无版权音乐的网站却是逍遥自在。既然对抗和封杀无法解决问题，博弈各方就应该立足合作和发展，真正把精力集中到行业的发展上。唱片公司可以跟搜索引擎合作，借此宣传、促销、推广正版音乐。这方面有很多合作的可能，但是前提必须是共赢。
■相关链接
百度诉讼案
６月初，国际唱片业协会及其成员向百度发出了律师信，随后各公司分别针对百度提起诉讼。
６月２０日，ＥＭＩ在上海的分支机构——上海步升音乐文化传播有限公司对百度提起诉讼。
９月１６日，北京海淀法院一审判决北京百度网讯科技有限公司败诉，其侵权事实成立。并处以赔偿原告经济损失６８０００元?穴按每首歌２０００元计算?雪。该判决一经公布，立刻引起了连锁反应，包括环球唱片、百代唱片、华纳唱片、索尼ＢＭＧ等国际唱片业巨头在内的７家公司已于９月末在北京提起诉讼，指控百度公司的搜索引擎侵犯了它们数百首歌曲的版权。要求法院判令百度公司立即停止提供涉案歌曲的在线播放和下载服务，在百度网站和《法制日报》上公开赔礼道歉，并赔偿经济损失和调查费用共计１６７万元。
2005年10月19日星期三
韩乔生 - 妙语连珠
1.随着守门员一声哨响，比赛结束了。
2.各位观众，中秋节刚过，我给大家拜个晚年。
3.现在由中国队守门员范志毅开任意球
4.可能有的观众刚刚打开电梯，我们再把比分......
5.韩的大哥蔡说：叶钊颖的父亲是原浙江省羽毛球队的守门员.
6.罗纳耳多将球传给因扎吉，因扎吉射门，高了...
7.巴乔在前有追兵，后有堵截的情况下带球冲入禁区...?
8.水晶宫队已经赛了7场,2胜2平4负...
9.这球算进,裁判判进球无效...
11."皮耶罗为什么在国家队表现没有在尤文图斯好呢？因为他在国家队没有身后德约卡夫和齐达内的支援。"
12."托里彻利因伤不能上场，国际米兰防守实力大减。"（此时韩旁边的张慧德老师指，托里彻利正在场上。）
13."上半场尤文图斯对罗纳尔多和因扎吉的防守相当成功。"
14."不管罗纳尔多拿没拿球，国际米兰总有3到4名队员防守他。"
15."罗纳尔多和皮耶罗的配合比上半场好得多。"
16."已经有很多俱乐部表示要购买皮耶罗，拉齐奥出价3000万美圆，曼联（阿森纳）出价更高，2800万美圆。"
17."帕柳卡又一次化解了罗纳尔多极有威胁的射门。"
18.德甲，大嘴道："××队后卫严重犯规，裁判将前锋××罚下场。"
19.德甲，"现在场上火药味很脓，双方教练也争风吃醋。""两队队员在场上你争我抢，两队的教练也在场下争风吃醋。"
20.中国四员小将在欧洲……(范已经30了)
21.佛罗伦萨队中场犯规，不，在禁区前罚球弧顶犯规，..
22.AC米兰就像一台计算机，内存挺大，大到奔腾II代，可是运行不快，可能是感染电脑病毒，看来主教练扎切罗尼需要一张杀毒的硬盘！！！！！！
23.因为李金羽的身高比对方队员矮,因此在拚抢的时候他的肘部碰到了对方的脸上。
24."你看她们的短裤也很有意思，网球运动员的短裤是特制的，里面可以放好几个球不掉出来。奥，她们穿的是裙子。"
25.（亚运会武术比赛）中国运动员出场了，只见她一条枪舞得如蛟龙出水，虎虎生风。不禁让我们想起了我国三国时代的常山赵子龙，猛张飞，关羽关云长...关羽使的是刀...（眼睛离开手中的稿子瞥了一眼赛场）奥，对不起，她使的是棍...
26.守门员将球回传给门将
27.主教练将xx队的裁判罚出场外
28.AC米兰队目前以1:3领先
29.把球一脚射进了大门,...我们来看看慢动作,...哦,...是用头顶进的
30."只见防守队员一个队员两条腿，两个队员四条腿，三个队员...."
31.亚运会,韩大嘴说："....×××以迅雷不及掩耳盗铃之势............"
32.他说，队员在平时的训练中一定要加强体能和对抗性训练，这样才能适应比赛中的激烈程度，否则的话，就会像不倒翁一样一撞就倒。
33.国外的球员都非常敬业，比如马特乌斯，小孩出生3个月后就上场比赛了。在国家对与哥伦比亚的一场比赛中，他也制造了几个经典。
34.范志毅前几天还在发高烧，高烧36度8；守门员区楚良身高1米82，体重28公斤。
35.中国队一脚射门，被区楚良奋勇扑出。
36.韩大嘴解说德甲，说:"我统计了一下前八轮的进球和失球总数，惊奇的发现一个巧合，那就是它们刚好一样多。"
37.XX队员就像桃源三结义的赵云一样勇猛，不愧为长胜将军。
2.各位观众，中秋节刚过，我给大家拜个晚年。
3.现在由中国队守门员范志毅开任意球
4.可能有的观众刚刚打开电梯，我们再把比分......
5.韩的大哥蔡说：叶钊颖的父亲是原浙江省羽毛球队的守门员.
6.罗纳耳多将球传给因扎吉，因扎吉射门，高了...
7.巴乔在前有追兵，后有堵截的情况下带球冲入禁区...?
8.水晶宫队已经赛了7场,2胜2平4负...
9.这球算进,裁判判进球无效...
11."皮耶罗为什么在国家队表现没有在尤文图斯好呢？因为他在国家队没有身后德约卡夫和齐达内的支援。"
12."托里彻利因伤不能上场，国际米兰防守实力大减。"（此时韩旁边的张慧德老师指，托里彻利正在场上。）
13."上半场尤文图斯对罗纳尔多和因扎吉的防守相当成功。"
14."不管罗纳尔多拿没拿球，国际米兰总有3到4名队员防守他。"
15."罗纳尔多和皮耶罗的配合比上半场好得多。"
16."已经有很多俱乐部表示要购买皮耶罗，拉齐奥出价3000万美圆，曼联（阿森纳）出价更高，2800万美圆。"
17."帕柳卡又一次化解了罗纳尔多极有威胁的射门。"
18.德甲，大嘴道："××队后卫严重犯规，裁判将前锋××罚下场。"
19.德甲，"现在场上火药味很脓，双方教练也争风吃醋。""两队队员在场上你争我抢，两队的教练也在场下争风吃醋。"
20.中国四员小将在欧洲……(范已经30了)
21.佛罗伦萨队中场犯规，不，在禁区前罚球弧顶犯规，..
22.AC米兰就像一台计算机，内存挺大，大到奔腾II代，可是运行不快，可能是感染电脑病毒，看来主教练扎切罗尼需要一张杀毒的硬盘！！！！！！
23.因为李金羽的身高比对方队员矮,因此在拚抢的时候他的肘部碰到了对方的脸上。
24."你看她们的短裤也很有意思，网球运动员的短裤是特制的，里面可以放好几个球不掉出来。奥，她们穿的是裙子。"
25.（亚运会武术比赛）中国运动员出场了，只见她一条枪舞得如蛟龙出水，虎虎生风。不禁让我们想起了我国三国时代的常山赵子龙，猛张飞，关羽关云长...关羽使的是刀...（眼睛离开手中的稿子瞥了一眼赛场）奥，对不起，她使的是棍...
26.守门员将球回传给门将
27.主教练将xx队的裁判罚出场外
28.AC米兰队目前以1:3领先
29.把球一脚射进了大门,...我们来看看慢动作,...哦,...是用头顶进的
30."只见防守队员一个队员两条腿，两个队员四条腿，三个队员...."
31.亚运会,韩大嘴说："....×××以迅雷不及掩耳盗铃之势............"
32.他说，队员在平时的训练中一定要加强体能和对抗性训练，这样才能适应比赛中的激烈程度，否则的话，就会像不倒翁一样一撞就倒。
33.国外的球员都非常敬业，比如马特乌斯，小孩出生3个月后就上场比赛了。在国家对与哥伦比亚的一场比赛中，他也制造了几个经典。
34.范志毅前几天还在发高烧，高烧36度8；守门员区楚良身高1米82，体重28公斤。
35.中国队一脚射门，被区楚良奋勇扑出。
36.韩大嘴解说德甲，说:"我统计了一下前八轮的进球和失球总数，惊奇的发现一个巧合，那就是它们刚好一样多。"
37.XX队员就像桃源三结义的赵云一样勇猛，不愧为长胜将军。
2005年10月15日星期六
Twenty Years of Windows
Windows is so ubiquitous that we often take it for granted. It's the operating system used on nearly 95 percent of all the desktops and notebooks sold worldwide, relegating other OSs to niche players. But that wasn't always the case. Indeed, when Windows first shipped, 20 years ago this month, it was considered nothing more than a slow operating environment that had arrived late to the party, well behind the industry leaders, Apple and Xerox PARC. Windows had a lot of growing up to do.
Though it is now the industry standard, Windows is still not everything we—or Microsoft—would like it to be. With its 20th anniversary approaching, I visited Microsoft's headquarters recently to talk with the team behind Windows—to get reflections on the key moments in its evolution, its position in the market today, and what lies in store for its future.
Early Years Microsoft today is a huge company, with thousands of employees in hundreds of buildings all around Redmond, Washington. That was hardly the case in 1983, when I first saw the product that was destined to evolve into Windows. Microsoft's headquarters were merely a small building next to the Burgermaster in Bellevue, another Seattle suburb. Then eight years old, the company had grown to about 400 people. It was primarily known as the maker of BASIC programs for many systems, and of MS-DOS, an operating system it had sold to IBM a few years earlier.
Many different companies during that period made computers that ran MS-DOS, but the problem was that these computers weren't all compatible with one another. IBM's version, called PC-DOS, was one standard, but companies like Digital Equipment Corp., Texas Instruments, and HP all made systems with different graphics devices.
Over the next few years, the industry would move to a world of "IBM compatibility," but many of these systems couldn't run applications designed specifically for the IBM PC.
"We Bet the Entire Company On It"
That was one of the key goals behind the project that was to become Windows. Back then, it was called "Interface Manager," and when I first saw it, I was working for a magazine called Popular Computing. Interface Manager was being developed by a small team that included Rao Remala, who was Interface Manager's first programmer and worked for Microsoft for more than 20 years in various areas of the business.
Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates clearly remembers how much was riding on that project.
"We weren't kidding that we bet the entire company on it," Gates recalls. "The strange thing was we were a much smaller company at the time. We were competing to establish this platform with companies larger than ourselves."When Interface Manager was first announced, Microsoft described it as an option that would work on top of all the company's operating systems, including DOS and Xenix, Microsoft's version of Unix.
The idea was that it would provide a single interface to control the bitmapped screen, graphics hardware, and various other I/O devices. The basic foundations of the future Windows were all there—on-screen windows, easy data transfer between programs, graphic icons, and mouse support. One of the key features was a series of menu commands at the bottom of each window, giving a common way of entering commands for all the programs.Part of the reason this was included was that by the fall of 1983, "integrated software" was the big buzzword in the industry, spurred by the success of Lotus 1-2-3. At this point, a number of new "integrated operating environments" were being developed, including Apple's Lisa, which had shipped earlier that year, and a number of systems that were designed for x86 computers—notably VisiCorp's VisiOn, Quarterdeck's DESQ (which eventually morphed into DESQview), and Digital Research's Concurrent CP/M (notable for enabling multitasking).
Eyeing the Competition
Of course, graphics were a large part of the discussion as well. Apple was working on its Macintosh project at this point, and Digital Research was soon to announce its Graphical Environment Manager (GEM). But everyone was taking cues from work that had been done earlier at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California.
"Certainly the work done at Palo Alto Research Center, among others, influenced the bet we made to say the company would put all of its energy behind the graphical interface," Gates remembers.
Gates adds that Windows wasn't merely a graphical user interface. "It was actually two things," he says. "It was multiple applications running at a time, sharing the screen and exchanging data, and it was the graphical interface."
Charles Simonyi, who had worked at PARC and was a key architect of Microsoft's applications business in the early days, says that everyone at Microsoft was aware of Windows' potential. "We knew the graphical user interface would be the future," he says, adding that the company expected both Xerox and Apple to be in that arena.
Jeff Raikes, now president of Microsoft's business division, joined the company in 1981 and recalls studying the competition closely.
"Three or four offices down the hall from me, we had a Xerox Star so we could go and understand and play with the graphical user interface," says Raikes, who had worked at Apple and was very familiar with Lisa.
Unleashing Windows 1.0In November 1983, Microsoft announced Windows to the world, saying it would be available "late in the first quarter of 1984" and that it was designed for systems with two floppy drives, 192KB of RAM, and a mouse. This certainly wouldn't be the last time Microsoft would miss a Windows deadline or underestimate the amount of hardware needed. The actual boxed software for Windows 1.0 launched during the time of the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas in November 1985. By that point, Microsoft was recommending a minimum of 256KB of RAM, or 512KB of RAM and a hard drive for running multiple applications or when running it on top of DOS 3.0 or higher. PC Magazine's first review, in February 1986, pointed out that "Windows strains the limits of current hardware."
That first version had a large number of utilities and accessories, most of which remain in Windows today, including the Calendar, Notepad, Terminal, Calculator, Clock, Windows Write and Windows Paint, Control Panel, and the Reversi game. The menus had moved to the top of the screen, and the windows couldn't overlap; instead, they could be stacked as tiles, so one was next to another.
The first few versions of Windows were available as an "operating environment" that ran on top of DOS, or, more commonly, as a runtime environment that was included with applications. A few early programs would take advantage of this, notably the Micrografx CAD program called In-A-Vision. Still, most PC users were content to stick with DOS.
Windows 2.0: Overlapping Windows
Microsoft continued to improve Windows over the next few years. The most significant improvements during this period came in December 1987 with the release of Windows 2.0, when icons and overlapping windows were added, and with Windows/386, which took advantage of the abilities of Intel's 80386 processor to run multiple sessions of DOS. This established Windows as a competitor against products like DESQview, which was designed more simply to let you load multiple DOS applications in memory at once, switching among them.
What continued to hold Windows back in the late 1980s was the dearth of applications available for it. Along with In-A-Vision, the most important were Aldus PageMaker, a page layout program, and Microsoft's own Excel spreadsheet. Excel was one of three applications Microsoft had already decided to develop when Charles Simonyi arrived in 1981 and became director of application development. The other two were word processing and database products. But Microsoft focused first on Excel because it had the "best cost-benefit ratio," Simonyi says.
Both PageMaker and Excel had first appeared on the Apple Macintosh, but they were where Microsoft's application strategy really came together. Unlike Lotus, which was focusing on single integrated applications (Symphony on DOS and Jazz on the Macintosh), Microsoft concentrated on large individual applications like Excel and, later, PowerPoint and Word.
Giving Apps "Depth" and "Breadth"
Jeff Raikes says he convinced the company to work with the developers of AppleWorks (an older Apple II integrated suite) to create a low-end suite, which became Microsoft Works, to complement the individual large programs such as Excel.
"I had to explain to Bill how we were going to position Works with the rest of the product line. That's when we came up with 'depth users' and 'breadth users,' that whole positioning," Raikes recalls. "It worked."
Indeed, the depth- and breadth-user concept was the overarching theme of the era for the industry. Each application fell under either low-end or high-end functionality, and integrated or standalone programs. In the low-end standalone category were products like the PFS line; low-end integrated products included AppleWorks and Microsoft Works. There were many high-end integrated packages, such as Symphony, Framework, and Enable; high-end standalone products included Microsoft Word and Excel, along with DOS competitors such as 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.
Though Microsoft had been working on a word processing program for a few years, it was an obvious missing piece of Windows until 1989, when Windows 2.0 and Windows/386 were the versions on the market. That year, first Ami (then from Samna, later acquired by Lotus) and then Word for Windows shipped. As Raikes remembers it, while Excel, which shipped a few years earlier, was mostly ported from the Macintosh version, Word for Windows was a whole new architecture. Simonyi points out that the Mac OS had handled many of the functions Word would need, such as dealing with fonts properly, but they weren't tackled for Windows until Windows 3.0.
Ray Ozzie, now a Microsoft chief technology officer, was starting a company at that time called Iris Associates, which would eventually produce Notes. He recalls how difficult Windows programming was in the early days. Memory management was very tough in 16-bit Windows, but Ozzie decided to stick with it, instead of trying to build a graphics environment of his own. "Because I knew Bill and Steve [Ballmer], after playing with it I talked with them about it," Ozzie says. "I was convinced that they had the will to want to get it right."
Iris Associates eventually signed a development deal with Microsoft and created Notes with Windows in mind; it shipped in December 1989. But memory continued to be an issue. "Of the five years of development time that it took to develop Notes, about a third of it was spent on memory management," Ozzie recalls. "It was just staggering, and it wasn't the app, it was just fitting it in memory."
Windows 3.0
Big changes were to come with Windows 3.0, which arrived in May 1990 and addressed some of the stumbling blocks that plagued earlier versions. It introduced Program Manager and File Manager, which became two significant features of Windows for years to come. And perhaps more important, Windows 3.0 was the first version to allow programs to use memory beyond 640KB.
Indeed, Windows 3 would turn out to be the version of Windows that first truly clicked. But in the meantime, Microsoft's operating-system strategy had gotten much more complicated. Microsoft and IBM had jointly announced work on OS/2 in early 1987, when IBM announced its new PS/2 machines. As part of that deal, both companies were promoting OS/2 as the long-term future for operating systems. They shipped both a character-based version (1.0) and a later version with the graphical presentation manager (1.1).
IBM had announced OS/2 with both a standard edition and an "Extended Edition" that would include database functionality. Microsoft was a partner only on the standard one and was trying to sell it to many hardware companies. The Extended version was sold only by IBM and was designed specifically for IBM hardware.
A Marriage in Disrepair
The joint venture between IBM and Microsoft soured quickly, largely because of a disagreement over graphics. Microsoft wanted OS/2 to have the same graphics as Windows, but IBM wanted it to have a different design, known as GDDM. "We got forced," Gates recalls. "There was this awful episode in '86 when they said 'We want GDDM graphics, not Windows graphics.' And they were basically kicking us out of OS/2. So then Nathan Myhrvold and I said we'd redesign the graphics to be like GDDM, which made it very incompatible with Windows and very big and complicated, and oriented toward this so-called metafile approach that for interactive interfaces isn't what you want."
Gates remembers that he and Steve Ballmer, then Microsoft's vice president of system software and now its CEO, flew down to IBM's headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, weekly to try to keep the team together. Meanwhile, OS/2 was being delayed, and Microsoft was complaining that IBM's software was larger and more complex than it should have been.The key argument was over whether Microsoft should ship a version of Windows that would directly address memory greater than 1MB. Gates says Windows programs did some smart things to let applications directly use that memory, instead of the more complicated "expanded memory" managers that were used by earlier DOS-based programs, which, for the most part, were limited to 640KB of memory.
Gates says IBM pressured Microsoft not to release it, because it would place Windows in direct competition with OS/2. But he adds that OS/2 was growing so big and was so far behind schedule that Microsoft decided to go ahead and release its next version of Windows, which was 3.0. (For IBM's take on the OS/2 conflict, see the Q&A with Jim Cannavino, who oversaw OS/2's development at IBM.)
Microsoft had positioned Windows 3.0 as a lower-end operating system than OS/2. But in fact, while Windows 3.0 theoretically would run on a 286 with 640KB of memory and a hard drive, users really needed a 386 computer with at least 1MB of "extended memory" to take advantage of it. And when they did, they got an operating system that provided much of the graphical underpinning that people wanted, along with decent multitasking capabilities.
Goodbye, Typewriters
With the release of Windows 3.0, both typical computer users and large companies began to adopt Windows as an operating system. "On the client side, it was the proliferation of fairly inexpensive hardware and very cool apps that let people do things more productively," recalls Jim Allchin, who joined Microsoft in 1990 and is now copresident of its Platform Products & Services Division. "Getting rid of typewriters, getting rid of calculators, those were big deals." (See our interview with Allchin.)
Personal computing was beginning to change the way people worked. "The PCs were much simpler and could be tailored faster for business operations by the IT staff than these big mainframes, where you have to wait in a big queue to tweak an application," Allchin recalls. "And I also believe Microsoft was continuing to improve the system such that it was more acceptable in the business space."
Perhaps more important, Windows 3.0 attracted large numbers of developers. "It really took the 386 for Windows to have the underlying hardware platform that could deliver a useful application and developer experience," says Brad Silverberg, who was then at software company Borland but would go on to head the Windows 95 team. "Before that it was just way too difficult and, as a result, people just wrote to DOS." With Windows 3.0 came "a total flood in 1990 of Windows applications," he recalls.
In the next few years, Windows went through minor changes that actually signaled the inclusion of many new features. In October 1991, Windows 3.0a added a number of multimedia features, making Windows a player in a world with sound and CD-ROM drives. Windows 3.1, which followed in April 1992, focused more on stability and ease of use, and added TrueType scalable fonts, which made everything look and read better. And Windows for Workgroups 3.1 came out in October 1992, adding file sharing, printer sharing, and Microsoft Mail, the company's first big mail client.
3.1 Brings Stability
Although it was just a point release, Windows 3.1 ended up as a milestone, because its improved stability made it something more businesses were willing to consider."The Windows 3.0 code was a little rough and ragged, and crashed way more," Silverberg recalls, "which is actually quite understandable, because nobody had ever shipped a product like that. So Windows 3.1 really was trying to take Windows 3.0 and make it a lot more solid, more stable, something that corporations could feel comfortable in deploying and using on a daily basis."
Many hardware manufacturers began preloading Windows 3.1 on their computers. "By having it take off so strongly within corporations, it became obvious for both IBM and Compaq, who were the principal PC manufacturers selling to enterprises, to preload Windows on their machines," Silverberg adds.
Suddenly, after years of skepticism about it, Windows had stepped into the spotlight. But true ubiquity was a little further down the road, Gates says.
"I'm not sure we achieved ultimate mainstream," he says, "until the shipment of Windows 95."
Windows 95
By the time Windows 95 came out in August 1995, the marriage between Microsoft and IBM had not only been severed completely but the two companies were engaged in an indisputable operating-system war.
The companies had parted ways in late 1990. IBM continued to push OS/2 with the Presentation Manager. Microsoft, along with pushing the various versions of Windows 3, was taking the work it had done on what would have been the next version of OS/2 and turning it into what would become Windows NT. That version, called Windows NT 3.1 (the number picked to echo Windows 3.1), was introduced in late 1993. It was the first version of Windows to be a full 32-bit operating system and introduced a lot of the basics of today's Windows.
Now Microsoft was talking up Chicago, the code name for the product that would become Windows 95, and IBM was countering with talk of OS/2 Warp.Though Windows NT 3.1 had had success with the server market, companies shied away from it in client situations because it required more resources than most PCs had. "We outpaced the hardware," Jim Allchin explains. In contrast, the world seemed ready for Windows 95, which required fewer resources and was more backward-compatible with Windows 3.1 and DOS applications.
A 32-bit operating system really designed for client computers, Windows 95 was the first of the regular Windows series to include the operating systems; Windows versions 1 through 3.11 were designed to run on top of DOS. Windows 95 required a 386 or later processor, 4MB of RAM, and at least 40MB of free hard drive space just to start, though as usual, most people wanted more in order to take full advantage of the system. And it introduced much of the user interface features we see in Windows systems today, such as drag-and-drop icons, the famous Start menu, and many of the underlying networking and Internet features.
So Many Apps, So Little Compatibility
Like many Windows releases over the years, Windows 95 shipped far later than it was supposed to. The push for applications compatibility caused most of the delay, according to David Cole, then a Windows program manager and now senior vice president of Microsoft's MSN and Personal Services Group. Up until Windows 3.0, Cole says, compatibility wasn't a big deal, because there were so few applications and users anyway. But with the release of Windows 3.1, that started to change.
It all came to a head during the holiday season of 1994. "We were thinking we were pretty close to being done with Windows 95. But then literally hundreds of these multimedia applications came out for the holiday season and didn't run, and we started testing them," Cole remembers. The multimedia features in Windows 3.0 and 3.1 weren't well documented, he said, so developers had to "hack their way in and use undocumented APIs." As a result, the improved system in Windows 95 ended up breaking a lot of applications.
"We got in my little Toyota pickup that I had at the time, we drove it to Egghead, and we literally bought one of every multimedia application in the store," Cole says. "Picture a small-size Toyota pickup and the back of it is heaped with boxes of applications, games, all kinds of crazy multimedia stuff. We brought them all back, literally backed the truck up to the building, and we handed them out to all the employees and said, 'We've got to get these things tested.'"
"Start Me Up"
Fixing the problem took another eight months, as public anticipation continued to brew. By the time Windows 95 was formally launched in August 1995, the hype that surrounded it was unprecedented—with the first big advertising campaign for Windows (featuring the Rolling Stones singing "Start Me Up"). People stood in line to get the software when it was first available, and over a million copies were sold in the first four days. (In contrast, when Windows 3.1 was shipped, Microsoft was ecstatic that it sold 3 million copies in two months.)Why all the commotion? "It was, in many ways, a perfect storm of all these major driving elements coming together all at once," Brad Silverberg says. "You could get PCs very inexpensively with very nice graphics displays and good-sized hard drives. People were starting to get Internet connections, and so there was the whole Internet element that was really coming together. You had software that was dramatically easier to use."
Yusuf Mehdi, who worked on Windows applications in the earlier years and now runs MSN, agrees that Windows 95 just happened at the right time. "Some of it, I think, we can't take credit for," he says. "We got to ride the phenomenon of the PC's becoming mainstream in the home."
Catering to this much larger and more general group of users required some significant design changes when developing Windows 95, says Joe Belfiore, who worked on the interface and is now general manager of the Windows eHome Division. Files and programs had to be easier to access than they were in previous versions, for example. The changes were time-consuming but necessary, he adds.
Windows 95 was also notable for a big change in applications. While most of the earlier Windows applications ran in it, it was really designed for 32-bit applications. The most successful of these would be a new version of Microsoft Office. Jeff Raikes traces Office's evolution to the emergence of chief information officers at many companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They wanted consistent software, so Microsoft worked on developing a consistent suite.
The applications team, headed by Mike Maples, who had joined Microsoft from IBM, had to rethink the development process, focusing on the suite as a whole and not on the individual applications. As a result, the Office applications started using a lot of shared code, such as dynamic link libraries that represented a lot of the user interface. "That is still the structure we have today," Raikes says.
Other developers followed suit, and soon most applications were being developed for that system, including one that would ignite both excitement and controversy.
The "killer app"
"One of the things that really propelled Windows 95, obviously," recalls Silverberg, "was the consumerization of the Internet, and I would have to say that the killer app for Windows 95 was [Netscape] Navigator."
Netscape had launched Navigator in 1994, and the browser quickly helped turn the Internet from something of academic interest to a mass-market phenomenon.Because Windows 95 was the first version to build in 32-bit networking support and the TCP/IP stack with DHCP and WINS, it made it easier for applications to connect. "One of the key objectives with Windows 95 was to be completely plug-and-play, and not just for hardware but also for software," Silverberg says. "I think we really succeeded with that with the Internet and made it possible for anybody to pick up a computer and be instantly productive."
For the next few years, much of the Windows team was focused on Internet Explorer, which first shipped in Windows 95 in a very weak version. Microsoft's decision to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows, of course, would later become the heart of the U.S. government's highly publicized antitrust case against the company in the late 1990s.
Inside Microsoft, there were debates about the role of the browser. The concept of the browser wasn't new from a technical perspective, but no one was sure how much it should be part of the operating system. One thing they all agreed on, though—they needed to answer Netscape Navigator, and fast.
"We were facing this notion that, hey, there's a new thing going on now with the Internet, where the time to market is much faster, so how do we ship new functionality to customers, and how do we stay competitive on the Internet, when shipping every three to four years is not going to be enough for some customers?" Mehdi recalls.
Several versions of Internet Explorer followed, but it wasn't until IE 3.0 that the Microsoft team felt they really had something to compete against Navigator, Mehdi says. "I think we had superior scripting, superior browser control, superior HTML standards, and I think that's where we took the lead," he observes. "Then we didn't have to pay attention to them as much, because we were pioneering the way."
With IE 4 came the Trident display engine that enabled dynamic HTML. At that point, the race was on between Microsoft and Netscape to add as many features as possible in every new release. Both were investing in "push" content, in which users would subscribe to information that would be pushed to the desktop. Microsoft called this "channels," and it ultimately failed because it was too slow over dial-up connections. It was pulled from IE 5.Eventually, work on the browser slowed down. "I think we ended up having, believe it or not, feature fatigue, where people said, it's almost too much in this thing; can we just go back to some basics?" Mehdi says. "And that's why I think IE 5 was actually a way bigger hit than IE 4, because it just focused on simplicity and performance."
Over the next several years, Internet Explorer would begin to take market share away from Navigator, leading to Netscape's eventual acquisition by AOL and the antitrust case against Microsoft. The court declared Microsoft a monopoly and ordered it to open Windows to different browsers and software from other manufacturers.
Windows 98, ME
Windows 98, which shipped in 1998, included the version of IE that many people would use for years. The listed hardware requirements had grown to include a 486 or faster, 16MB of RAM, and at least 120MB of free hard-drive space. It was followed the next year by Windows 98, Second Edition, and then by Windows Me (Millennium Edition), both relatively minor upgrades.
By that time, though, most of the Windows team was focused on NT. In August 1996, Microsoft shipped Windows NT 4.0, code-named Cairo. The Cairo project was supposed to include an object-oriented file system, but it didn't make the release—and its current iteration, as WinFS, has not shipped to this day; it will not be included in the Vista release, either.Originally, NT was designed to allow for different APIs on top of it—the OS/2 Presentation Manager, Posix (a version of Unix), and of course Windows, which, with the success of Windows 95 and the Win32 API, became the focus of NT 4.0.
Microsoft had tried to get corporate users to move to Windows NT, but that just didn't happen with the earlier versions, Allchin says. "Frankly, where we really made traction, just to be clear on the client, was NT 4, because it's still out there," he says.
XP & Vista
In many respects, the current generation of Windows started with a project called NT 5, which first began to show up in 1997 and eventually shipped as Windows 2000 in February 2000.
Windows 2000 took the NT basics and added a number of reliability improvements, more support for notebook computers, support for Plug and Play, and more. This became the core system for both the desktop and the server products.
In October 2001, Microsoft added the user interface and software compatibility from Windows 98 on top of the basic core of Windows 2000 to create Windows XP, which remains the company's main operating system. Win XP came out in two flavors: XP Home, which was positioned as the follow-up to the Windows 98/Me series, and XP Professional, the follow-up to Windows 2000. Both used the same basic code, but the Pro version had a few more features, mainly aimed at network management and administration.
The challenge with Win XP was to give users new ways to use their systems, while retaining the features they had learned to appreciate from previous versions, says Chris Jones, corporate vice president of Windows Core Operating Systems Development.
"A lot of the value proposition of XP was, it's basically the same, with a new look, a new set of experiences around photos and music, and some new scenarios," Jones says. "But it had the new engine in it, and so it was just way, way more reliable."
The basic details of the user interface may not have changed that much, but UI guru Joe Belfiore points out the different ways it allows people to use Web sites, cameras, and multimedia today. "If you gave somebody a PC running Win 95 today who is used to running XP and doing the stuff you do with XP," he says, "they would think it was something from the Dark Ages."
Variations of Windows XP
Since Win XP's release, Microsoft has taken the XP code and created a few additional variations. In the fall of 2002 it introduced Windows XP Media Center Edition, which added a "10-foot interface" for viewing—from a living-room couch as well as the usual office chair—all kinds of multimedia files. Media Center Edition also included the ability to record television. Times were changing when it came to multimedia, Belfiore says; Microsoft needed to recognize the digitization of content and the ways people wanted to take advantage of it. "The idea was that you could store your content in one room but eventually be able to get to it from other places," he says.
Media Center started slowly but in recent months has started to take a larger share of the retail desktop market in the U.S.
Another Win XP variation, one with a much smaller audience, at least so far, is the Tablet PC Edition. "These types of really significant changes in how people consume technology take time," Belfiore says.
Microsoft also released a 64-bit version of the OS, initially targeting workstations and servers.
Most interesting were a variety of changes that were delivered as part of Windows Update, a new process that was introduced with Win XP. The Windows Media Player evolved to include new codecs and a new user interface. And perhaps most important, Microsoft introduced a service pack last year, called SP2, that addressed many of the security issues that had been plaguing users for the past few years. It included a built-in firewall and many fixes to known security holes. The Internet and all the threats that come with it these days led Microsoft to change its security strategy, Allchin says.
"If all you could do is bring around a floppy or some other USB medium and plug it in, if that's the only time something bad could happen, you still might want to have security in the classical sense of access per control system, which is what NT had," he says. The curveball of the Internet took everyone by surprise, he adds.
What Vista Will Bring
Now, as Microsoft develops Windows Vista, which is scheduled to ship in the second half of 2006, security is a top priority. The company talks about the big push to make Vista more "confident," "clear," and "connected."
Helping people visualize and organize their information better is another goal, which is why the user interface is changing yet again. Certain functions, such as commands, may change too, Chris Jones says, which would force users to learn to type differently. Microsoft's challenge is to change just enough to make the interface more intuitive, without changing so much that users begin to feel lost, he says.
Another highlight of Vista will be its new integrated search. Learning to adapt to the new search function won't be too much of a stretch, Jones believes, because of the full-text search tools people use in Microsoft Outlook, for example, or Google. In Vista, search is built into the OS, and every file is automatically indexed. Applications will be able to open files through a search menu, changing the way you think about where and how you store your files.
Bill Gates says Vista users will also notice the most significant change to the menu structure of applications since Microsoft introduced its early Mac and Windows applications in the 1980s.
"It is interesting that now, 20 years later, is the first time we're really taking that single-level menu structure approach and saying that for the productivity applications, that has run its course," Gates says. "The Office 12 user interface—it's super-interesting what they've done; it's amazing, but there will be people who resist the change. But that menu approach ran out of steam probably four or five years ago."
Behind the surface, Vista will have many new features, including a new graphics engine with new commands for programmers, a new programming model, new drivers, and security features that will make it easier for users to run without having administrator privileges on all the time.
A number of things Microsoft has talked about over the years won't be in Vista, though, including the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, a plan for running secure tasks separately from normal tasks; and WinFS, an object-oriented file system Allchin has been pushing for years. Though WinFS is currently being beta tested, it isn't expected to be included in the initial release of Vista.
New Strategies
As for future operating systems, Microsoft hopes to speed up the time between releases. During the 5-year-period between Microsoft's releases of XP and Vista, Apple has released several end-user upgrades and charged for them, Jones says. The question for Microsoft, he says, is "Where do we charge and where don't we for all these things?"Security updates, for example, should be included as part of the OS licenses people pay for, Jones says, and there are other things added to Windows for free because it's good for developers to have those features deployed. But Microsoft still needs to work out which extras to charge for, he says.
Microsoft is also always exploring ways to make new versions of the operating system interesting and significant enough for people to want to upgrade to them.
"First, we'd better offer a set of compelling capabilities in the software," Allchin says. "Second, we'd better work on the migration and deployment problems that people have today. If I look in the future, we have to do an even better job."
Keys to Windows' Past Successes
Looking back, Gates says the two most important things that led to Windows' success were creating a standard for application developers to write to and creating a standard, intuitive interface for users.
"We've got the developer model that connects to the past but also provides these new services for new classes of applications," Gates says. "We write applications ourselves and exploit that with Office, but it's really the breadth [of applications] that has made Windows such a strong standard. And that you can walk up to any machine and know how to use it, that's the user-model piece."
Both now have to evolve, he adds. "We need a model that is not as single device–centric as Windows originally was but that brings all these richer services, both local and remote, into that developer picture and into that user model," Gates says.
He notes that, in general, the basic UI hasn't changed all that much. "I could take you back to the Windows 2.0 UI and you'd find there wasn't the bar at the bottom and some things, but Windows users today would find it pretty familiar."Now, Gates says, it's time to "take the user interface to a new level." Such changes, he says, are always risky, just as moving from DOS to Windows was. But the goal remains to create a common developer model and a common user model."Those same benefits are as relevant today as they were when this got started."
Though it is now the industry standard, Windows is still not everything we—or Microsoft—would like it to be. With its 20th anniversary approaching, I visited Microsoft's headquarters recently to talk with the team behind Windows—to get reflections on the key moments in its evolution, its position in the market today, and what lies in store for its future.
Early Years Microsoft today is a huge company, with thousands of employees in hundreds of buildings all around Redmond, Washington. That was hardly the case in 1983, when I first saw the product that was destined to evolve into Windows. Microsoft's headquarters were merely a small building next to the Burgermaster in Bellevue, another Seattle suburb. Then eight years old, the company had grown to about 400 people. It was primarily known as the maker of BASIC programs for many systems, and of MS-DOS, an operating system it had sold to IBM a few years earlier.
Many different companies during that period made computers that ran MS-DOS, but the problem was that these computers weren't all compatible with one another. IBM's version, called PC-DOS, was one standard, but companies like Digital Equipment Corp., Texas Instruments, and HP all made systems with different graphics devices.
Over the next few years, the industry would move to a world of "IBM compatibility," but many of these systems couldn't run applications designed specifically for the IBM PC.
"We Bet the Entire Company On It"
That was one of the key goals behind the project that was to become Windows. Back then, it was called "Interface Manager," and when I first saw it, I was working for a magazine called Popular Computing. Interface Manager was being developed by a small team that included Rao Remala, who was Interface Manager's first programmer and worked for Microsoft for more than 20 years in various areas of the business.
Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates clearly remembers how much was riding on that project.
"We weren't kidding that we bet the entire company on it," Gates recalls. "The strange thing was we were a much smaller company at the time. We were competing to establish this platform with companies larger than ourselves."When Interface Manager was first announced, Microsoft described it as an option that would work on top of all the company's operating systems, including DOS and Xenix, Microsoft's version of Unix.
The idea was that it would provide a single interface to control the bitmapped screen, graphics hardware, and various other I/O devices. The basic foundations of the future Windows were all there—on-screen windows, easy data transfer between programs, graphic icons, and mouse support. One of the key features was a series of menu commands at the bottom of each window, giving a common way of entering commands for all the programs.Part of the reason this was included was that by the fall of 1983, "integrated software" was the big buzzword in the industry, spurred by the success of Lotus 1-2-3. At this point, a number of new "integrated operating environments" were being developed, including Apple's Lisa, which had shipped earlier that year, and a number of systems that were designed for x86 computers—notably VisiCorp's VisiOn, Quarterdeck's DESQ (which eventually morphed into DESQview), and Digital Research's Concurrent CP/M (notable for enabling multitasking).
Eyeing the Competition
Of course, graphics were a large part of the discussion as well. Apple was working on its Macintosh project at this point, and Digital Research was soon to announce its Graphical Environment Manager (GEM). But everyone was taking cues from work that had been done earlier at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California.
"Certainly the work done at Palo Alto Research Center, among others, influenced the bet we made to say the company would put all of its energy behind the graphical interface," Gates remembers.
Gates adds that Windows wasn't merely a graphical user interface. "It was actually two things," he says. "It was multiple applications running at a time, sharing the screen and exchanging data, and it was the graphical interface."
Charles Simonyi, who had worked at PARC and was a key architect of Microsoft's applications business in the early days, says that everyone at Microsoft was aware of Windows' potential. "We knew the graphical user interface would be the future," he says, adding that the company expected both Xerox and Apple to be in that arena.
Jeff Raikes, now president of Microsoft's business division, joined the company in 1981 and recalls studying the competition closely.
"Three or four offices down the hall from me, we had a Xerox Star so we could go and understand and play with the graphical user interface," says Raikes, who had worked at Apple and was very familiar with Lisa.
Unleashing Windows 1.0In November 1983, Microsoft announced Windows to the world, saying it would be available "late in the first quarter of 1984" and that it was designed for systems with two floppy drives, 192KB of RAM, and a mouse. This certainly wouldn't be the last time Microsoft would miss a Windows deadline or underestimate the amount of hardware needed. The actual boxed software for Windows 1.0 launched during the time of the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas in November 1985. By that point, Microsoft was recommending a minimum of 256KB of RAM, or 512KB of RAM and a hard drive for running multiple applications or when running it on top of DOS 3.0 or higher. PC Magazine's first review, in February 1986, pointed out that "Windows strains the limits of current hardware."
That first version had a large number of utilities and accessories, most of which remain in Windows today, including the Calendar, Notepad, Terminal, Calculator, Clock, Windows Write and Windows Paint, Control Panel, and the Reversi game. The menus had moved to the top of the screen, and the windows couldn't overlap; instead, they could be stacked as tiles, so one was next to another.
The first few versions of Windows were available as an "operating environment" that ran on top of DOS, or, more commonly, as a runtime environment that was included with applications. A few early programs would take advantage of this, notably the Micrografx CAD program called In-A-Vision. Still, most PC users were content to stick with DOS.
Windows 2.0: Overlapping Windows
Microsoft continued to improve Windows over the next few years. The most significant improvements during this period came in December 1987 with the release of Windows 2.0, when icons and overlapping windows were added, and with Windows/386, which took advantage of the abilities of Intel's 80386 processor to run multiple sessions of DOS. This established Windows as a competitor against products like DESQview, which was designed more simply to let you load multiple DOS applications in memory at once, switching among them.
What continued to hold Windows back in the late 1980s was the dearth of applications available for it. Along with In-A-Vision, the most important were Aldus PageMaker, a page layout program, and Microsoft's own Excel spreadsheet. Excel was one of three applications Microsoft had already decided to develop when Charles Simonyi arrived in 1981 and became director of application development. The other two were word processing and database products. But Microsoft focused first on Excel because it had the "best cost-benefit ratio," Simonyi says.
Both PageMaker and Excel had first appeared on the Apple Macintosh, but they were where Microsoft's application strategy really came together. Unlike Lotus, which was focusing on single integrated applications (Symphony on DOS and Jazz on the Macintosh), Microsoft concentrated on large individual applications like Excel and, later, PowerPoint and Word.
Giving Apps "Depth" and "Breadth"
Jeff Raikes says he convinced the company to work with the developers of AppleWorks (an older Apple II integrated suite) to create a low-end suite, which became Microsoft Works, to complement the individual large programs such as Excel.
"I had to explain to Bill how we were going to position Works with the rest of the product line. That's when we came up with 'depth users' and 'breadth users,' that whole positioning," Raikes recalls. "It worked."
Indeed, the depth- and breadth-user concept was the overarching theme of the era for the industry. Each application fell under either low-end or high-end functionality, and integrated or standalone programs. In the low-end standalone category were products like the PFS line; low-end integrated products included AppleWorks and Microsoft Works. There were many high-end integrated packages, such as Symphony, Framework, and Enable; high-end standalone products included Microsoft Word and Excel, along with DOS competitors such as 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.
Though Microsoft had been working on a word processing program for a few years, it was an obvious missing piece of Windows until 1989, when Windows 2.0 and Windows/386 were the versions on the market. That year, first Ami (then from Samna, later acquired by Lotus) and then Word for Windows shipped. As Raikes remembers it, while Excel, which shipped a few years earlier, was mostly ported from the Macintosh version, Word for Windows was a whole new architecture. Simonyi points out that the Mac OS had handled many of the functions Word would need, such as dealing with fonts properly, but they weren't tackled for Windows until Windows 3.0.
Ray Ozzie, now a Microsoft chief technology officer, was starting a company at that time called Iris Associates, which would eventually produce Notes. He recalls how difficult Windows programming was in the early days. Memory management was very tough in 16-bit Windows, but Ozzie decided to stick with it, instead of trying to build a graphics environment of his own. "Because I knew Bill and Steve [Ballmer], after playing with it I talked with them about it," Ozzie says. "I was convinced that they had the will to want to get it right."
Iris Associates eventually signed a development deal with Microsoft and created Notes with Windows in mind; it shipped in December 1989. But memory continued to be an issue. "Of the five years of development time that it took to develop Notes, about a third of it was spent on memory management," Ozzie recalls. "It was just staggering, and it wasn't the app, it was just fitting it in memory."
Windows 3.0
Big changes were to come with Windows 3.0, which arrived in May 1990 and addressed some of the stumbling blocks that plagued earlier versions. It introduced Program Manager and File Manager, which became two significant features of Windows for years to come. And perhaps more important, Windows 3.0 was the first version to allow programs to use memory beyond 640KB.
Indeed, Windows 3 would turn out to be the version of Windows that first truly clicked. But in the meantime, Microsoft's operating-system strategy had gotten much more complicated. Microsoft and IBM had jointly announced work on OS/2 in early 1987, when IBM announced its new PS/2 machines. As part of that deal, both companies were promoting OS/2 as the long-term future for operating systems. They shipped both a character-based version (1.0) and a later version with the graphical presentation manager (1.1).
IBM had announced OS/2 with both a standard edition and an "Extended Edition" that would include database functionality. Microsoft was a partner only on the standard one and was trying to sell it to many hardware companies. The Extended version was sold only by IBM and was designed specifically for IBM hardware.
A Marriage in Disrepair
The joint venture between IBM and Microsoft soured quickly, largely because of a disagreement over graphics. Microsoft wanted OS/2 to have the same graphics as Windows, but IBM wanted it to have a different design, known as GDDM. "We got forced," Gates recalls. "There was this awful episode in '86 when they said 'We want GDDM graphics, not Windows graphics.' And they were basically kicking us out of OS/2. So then Nathan Myhrvold and I said we'd redesign the graphics to be like GDDM, which made it very incompatible with Windows and very big and complicated, and oriented toward this so-called metafile approach that for interactive interfaces isn't what you want."
Gates remembers that he and Steve Ballmer, then Microsoft's vice president of system software and now its CEO, flew down to IBM's headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, weekly to try to keep the team together. Meanwhile, OS/2 was being delayed, and Microsoft was complaining that IBM's software was larger and more complex than it should have been.The key argument was over whether Microsoft should ship a version of Windows that would directly address memory greater than 1MB. Gates says Windows programs did some smart things to let applications directly use that memory, instead of the more complicated "expanded memory" managers that were used by earlier DOS-based programs, which, for the most part, were limited to 640KB of memory.
Gates says IBM pressured Microsoft not to release it, because it would place Windows in direct competition with OS/2. But he adds that OS/2 was growing so big and was so far behind schedule that Microsoft decided to go ahead and release its next version of Windows, which was 3.0. (For IBM's take on the OS/2 conflict, see the Q&A with Jim Cannavino, who oversaw OS/2's development at IBM.)
Microsoft had positioned Windows 3.0 as a lower-end operating system than OS/2. But in fact, while Windows 3.0 theoretically would run on a 286 with 640KB of memory and a hard drive, users really needed a 386 computer with at least 1MB of "extended memory" to take advantage of it. And when they did, they got an operating system that provided much of the graphical underpinning that people wanted, along with decent multitasking capabilities.
Goodbye, Typewriters
With the release of Windows 3.0, both typical computer users and large companies began to adopt Windows as an operating system. "On the client side, it was the proliferation of fairly inexpensive hardware and very cool apps that let people do things more productively," recalls Jim Allchin, who joined Microsoft in 1990 and is now copresident of its Platform Products & Services Division. "Getting rid of typewriters, getting rid of calculators, those were big deals." (See our interview with Allchin.)
Personal computing was beginning to change the way people worked. "The PCs were much simpler and could be tailored faster for business operations by the IT staff than these big mainframes, where you have to wait in a big queue to tweak an application," Allchin recalls. "And I also believe Microsoft was continuing to improve the system such that it was more acceptable in the business space."
Perhaps more important, Windows 3.0 attracted large numbers of developers. "It really took the 386 for Windows to have the underlying hardware platform that could deliver a useful application and developer experience," says Brad Silverberg, who was then at software company Borland but would go on to head the Windows 95 team. "Before that it was just way too difficult and, as a result, people just wrote to DOS." With Windows 3.0 came "a total flood in 1990 of Windows applications," he recalls.
In the next few years, Windows went through minor changes that actually signaled the inclusion of many new features. In October 1991, Windows 3.0a added a number of multimedia features, making Windows a player in a world with sound and CD-ROM drives. Windows 3.1, which followed in April 1992, focused more on stability and ease of use, and added TrueType scalable fonts, which made everything look and read better. And Windows for Workgroups 3.1 came out in October 1992, adding file sharing, printer sharing, and Microsoft Mail, the company's first big mail client.
3.1 Brings Stability
Although it was just a point release, Windows 3.1 ended up as a milestone, because its improved stability made it something more businesses were willing to consider."The Windows 3.0 code was a little rough and ragged, and crashed way more," Silverberg recalls, "which is actually quite understandable, because nobody had ever shipped a product like that. So Windows 3.1 really was trying to take Windows 3.0 and make it a lot more solid, more stable, something that corporations could feel comfortable in deploying and using on a daily basis."
Many hardware manufacturers began preloading Windows 3.1 on their computers. "By having it take off so strongly within corporations, it became obvious for both IBM and Compaq, who were the principal PC manufacturers selling to enterprises, to preload Windows on their machines," Silverberg adds.
Suddenly, after years of skepticism about it, Windows had stepped into the spotlight. But true ubiquity was a little further down the road, Gates says.
"I'm not sure we achieved ultimate mainstream," he says, "until the shipment of Windows 95."
Windows 95
By the time Windows 95 came out in August 1995, the marriage between Microsoft and IBM had not only been severed completely but the two companies were engaged in an indisputable operating-system war.
The companies had parted ways in late 1990. IBM continued to push OS/2 with the Presentation Manager. Microsoft, along with pushing the various versions of Windows 3, was taking the work it had done on what would have been the next version of OS/2 and turning it into what would become Windows NT. That version, called Windows NT 3.1 (the number picked to echo Windows 3.1), was introduced in late 1993. It was the first version of Windows to be a full 32-bit operating system and introduced a lot of the basics of today's Windows.
Now Microsoft was talking up Chicago, the code name for the product that would become Windows 95, and IBM was countering with talk of OS/2 Warp.Though Windows NT 3.1 had had success with the server market, companies shied away from it in client situations because it required more resources than most PCs had. "We outpaced the hardware," Jim Allchin explains. In contrast, the world seemed ready for Windows 95, which required fewer resources and was more backward-compatible with Windows 3.1 and DOS applications.
A 32-bit operating system really designed for client computers, Windows 95 was the first of the regular Windows series to include the operating systems; Windows versions 1 through 3.11 were designed to run on top of DOS. Windows 95 required a 386 or later processor, 4MB of RAM, and at least 40MB of free hard drive space just to start, though as usual, most people wanted more in order to take full advantage of the system. And it introduced much of the user interface features we see in Windows systems today, such as drag-and-drop icons, the famous Start menu, and many of the underlying networking and Internet features.
So Many Apps, So Little Compatibility
Like many Windows releases over the years, Windows 95 shipped far later than it was supposed to. The push for applications compatibility caused most of the delay, according to David Cole, then a Windows program manager and now senior vice president of Microsoft's MSN and Personal Services Group. Up until Windows 3.0, Cole says, compatibility wasn't a big deal, because there were so few applications and users anyway. But with the release of Windows 3.1, that started to change.
It all came to a head during the holiday season of 1994. "We were thinking we were pretty close to being done with Windows 95. But then literally hundreds of these multimedia applications came out for the holiday season and didn't run, and we started testing them," Cole remembers. The multimedia features in Windows 3.0 and 3.1 weren't well documented, he said, so developers had to "hack their way in and use undocumented APIs." As a result, the improved system in Windows 95 ended up breaking a lot of applications.
"We got in my little Toyota pickup that I had at the time, we drove it to Egghead, and we literally bought one of every multimedia application in the store," Cole says. "Picture a small-size Toyota pickup and the back of it is heaped with boxes of applications, games, all kinds of crazy multimedia stuff. We brought them all back, literally backed the truck up to the building, and we handed them out to all the employees and said, 'We've got to get these things tested.'"
"Start Me Up"
Fixing the problem took another eight months, as public anticipation continued to brew. By the time Windows 95 was formally launched in August 1995, the hype that surrounded it was unprecedented—with the first big advertising campaign for Windows (featuring the Rolling Stones singing "Start Me Up"). People stood in line to get the software when it was first available, and over a million copies were sold in the first four days. (In contrast, when Windows 3.1 was shipped, Microsoft was ecstatic that it sold 3 million copies in two months.)Why all the commotion? "It was, in many ways, a perfect storm of all these major driving elements coming together all at once," Brad Silverberg says. "You could get PCs very inexpensively with very nice graphics displays and good-sized hard drives. People were starting to get Internet connections, and so there was the whole Internet element that was really coming together. You had software that was dramatically easier to use."
Yusuf Mehdi, who worked on Windows applications in the earlier years and now runs MSN, agrees that Windows 95 just happened at the right time. "Some of it, I think, we can't take credit for," he says. "We got to ride the phenomenon of the PC's becoming mainstream in the home."
Catering to this much larger and more general group of users required some significant design changes when developing Windows 95, says Joe Belfiore, who worked on the interface and is now general manager of the Windows eHome Division. Files and programs had to be easier to access than they were in previous versions, for example. The changes were time-consuming but necessary, he adds.
Windows 95 was also notable for a big change in applications. While most of the earlier Windows applications ran in it, it was really designed for 32-bit applications. The most successful of these would be a new version of Microsoft Office. Jeff Raikes traces Office's evolution to the emergence of chief information officers at many companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They wanted consistent software, so Microsoft worked on developing a consistent suite.
The applications team, headed by Mike Maples, who had joined Microsoft from IBM, had to rethink the development process, focusing on the suite as a whole and not on the individual applications. As a result, the Office applications started using a lot of shared code, such as dynamic link libraries that represented a lot of the user interface. "That is still the structure we have today," Raikes says.
Other developers followed suit, and soon most applications were being developed for that system, including one that would ignite both excitement and controversy.
The "killer app"
"One of the things that really propelled Windows 95, obviously," recalls Silverberg, "was the consumerization of the Internet, and I would have to say that the killer app for Windows 95 was [Netscape] Navigator."
Netscape had launched Navigator in 1994, and the browser quickly helped turn the Internet from something of academic interest to a mass-market phenomenon.Because Windows 95 was the first version to build in 32-bit networking support and the TCP/IP stack with DHCP and WINS, it made it easier for applications to connect. "One of the key objectives with Windows 95 was to be completely plug-and-play, and not just for hardware but also for software," Silverberg says. "I think we really succeeded with that with the Internet and made it possible for anybody to pick up a computer and be instantly productive."
For the next few years, much of the Windows team was focused on Internet Explorer, which first shipped in Windows 95 in a very weak version. Microsoft's decision to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows, of course, would later become the heart of the U.S. government's highly publicized antitrust case against the company in the late 1990s.
Inside Microsoft, there were debates about the role of the browser. The concept of the browser wasn't new from a technical perspective, but no one was sure how much it should be part of the operating system. One thing they all agreed on, though—they needed to answer Netscape Navigator, and fast.
"We were facing this notion that, hey, there's a new thing going on now with the Internet, where the time to market is much faster, so how do we ship new functionality to customers, and how do we stay competitive on the Internet, when shipping every three to four years is not going to be enough for some customers?" Mehdi recalls.
Several versions of Internet Explorer followed, but it wasn't until IE 3.0 that the Microsoft team felt they really had something to compete against Navigator, Mehdi says. "I think we had superior scripting, superior browser control, superior HTML standards, and I think that's where we took the lead," he observes. "Then we didn't have to pay attention to them as much, because we were pioneering the way."
With IE 4 came the Trident display engine that enabled dynamic HTML. At that point, the race was on between Microsoft and Netscape to add as many features as possible in every new release. Both were investing in "push" content, in which users would subscribe to information that would be pushed to the desktop. Microsoft called this "channels," and it ultimately failed because it was too slow over dial-up connections. It was pulled from IE 5.Eventually, work on the browser slowed down. "I think we ended up having, believe it or not, feature fatigue, where people said, it's almost too much in this thing; can we just go back to some basics?" Mehdi says. "And that's why I think IE 5 was actually a way bigger hit than IE 4, because it just focused on simplicity and performance."
Over the next several years, Internet Explorer would begin to take market share away from Navigator, leading to Netscape's eventual acquisition by AOL and the antitrust case against Microsoft. The court declared Microsoft a monopoly and ordered it to open Windows to different browsers and software from other manufacturers.
Windows 98, ME
Windows 98, which shipped in 1998, included the version of IE that many people would use for years. The listed hardware requirements had grown to include a 486 or faster, 16MB of RAM, and at least 120MB of free hard-drive space. It was followed the next year by Windows 98, Second Edition, and then by Windows Me (Millennium Edition), both relatively minor upgrades.
By that time, though, most of the Windows team was focused on NT. In August 1996, Microsoft shipped Windows NT 4.0, code-named Cairo. The Cairo project was supposed to include an object-oriented file system, but it didn't make the release—and its current iteration, as WinFS, has not shipped to this day; it will not be included in the Vista release, either.Originally, NT was designed to allow for different APIs on top of it—the OS/2 Presentation Manager, Posix (a version of Unix), and of course Windows, which, with the success of Windows 95 and the Win32 API, became the focus of NT 4.0.
Microsoft had tried to get corporate users to move to Windows NT, but that just didn't happen with the earlier versions, Allchin says. "Frankly, where we really made traction, just to be clear on the client, was NT 4, because it's still out there," he says.
XP & Vista
In many respects, the current generation of Windows started with a project called NT 5, which first began to show up in 1997 and eventually shipped as Windows 2000 in February 2000.
Windows 2000 took the NT basics and added a number of reliability improvements, more support for notebook computers, support for Plug and Play, and more. This became the core system for both the desktop and the server products.
In October 2001, Microsoft added the user interface and software compatibility from Windows 98 on top of the basic core of Windows 2000 to create Windows XP, which remains the company's main operating system. Win XP came out in two flavors: XP Home, which was positioned as the follow-up to the Windows 98/Me series, and XP Professional, the follow-up to Windows 2000. Both used the same basic code, but the Pro version had a few more features, mainly aimed at network management and administration.
The challenge with Win XP was to give users new ways to use their systems, while retaining the features they had learned to appreciate from previous versions, says Chris Jones, corporate vice president of Windows Core Operating Systems Development.
"A lot of the value proposition of XP was, it's basically the same, with a new look, a new set of experiences around photos and music, and some new scenarios," Jones says. "But it had the new engine in it, and so it was just way, way more reliable."
The basic details of the user interface may not have changed that much, but UI guru Joe Belfiore points out the different ways it allows people to use Web sites, cameras, and multimedia today. "If you gave somebody a PC running Win 95 today who is used to running XP and doing the stuff you do with XP," he says, "they would think it was something from the Dark Ages."
Variations of Windows XP
Since Win XP's release, Microsoft has taken the XP code and created a few additional variations. In the fall of 2002 it introduced Windows XP Media Center Edition, which added a "10-foot interface" for viewing—from a living-room couch as well as the usual office chair—all kinds of multimedia files. Media Center Edition also included the ability to record television. Times were changing when it came to multimedia, Belfiore says; Microsoft needed to recognize the digitization of content and the ways people wanted to take advantage of it. "The idea was that you could store your content in one room but eventually be able to get to it from other places," he says.
Media Center started slowly but in recent months has started to take a larger share of the retail desktop market in the U.S.
Another Win XP variation, one with a much smaller audience, at least so far, is the Tablet PC Edition. "These types of really significant changes in how people consume technology take time," Belfiore says.
Microsoft also released a 64-bit version of the OS, initially targeting workstations and servers.
Most interesting were a variety of changes that were delivered as part of Windows Update, a new process that was introduced with Win XP. The Windows Media Player evolved to include new codecs and a new user interface. And perhaps most important, Microsoft introduced a service pack last year, called SP2, that addressed many of the security issues that had been plaguing users for the past few years. It included a built-in firewall and many fixes to known security holes. The Internet and all the threats that come with it these days led Microsoft to change its security strategy, Allchin says.
"If all you could do is bring around a floppy or some other USB medium and plug it in, if that's the only time something bad could happen, you still might want to have security in the classical sense of access per control system, which is what NT had," he says. The curveball of the Internet took everyone by surprise, he adds.
What Vista Will Bring
Now, as Microsoft develops Windows Vista, which is scheduled to ship in the second half of 2006, security is a top priority. The company talks about the big push to make Vista more "confident," "clear," and "connected."
Helping people visualize and organize their information better is another goal, which is why the user interface is changing yet again. Certain functions, such as commands, may change too, Chris Jones says, which would force users to learn to type differently. Microsoft's challenge is to change just enough to make the interface more intuitive, without changing so much that users begin to feel lost, he says.
Another highlight of Vista will be its new integrated search. Learning to adapt to the new search function won't be too much of a stretch, Jones believes, because of the full-text search tools people use in Microsoft Outlook, for example, or Google. In Vista, search is built into the OS, and every file is automatically indexed. Applications will be able to open files through a search menu, changing the way you think about where and how you store your files.
Bill Gates says Vista users will also notice the most significant change to the menu structure of applications since Microsoft introduced its early Mac and Windows applications in the 1980s.
"It is interesting that now, 20 years later, is the first time we're really taking that single-level menu structure approach and saying that for the productivity applications, that has run its course," Gates says. "The Office 12 user interface—it's super-interesting what they've done; it's amazing, but there will be people who resist the change. But that menu approach ran out of steam probably four or five years ago."
Behind the surface, Vista will have many new features, including a new graphics engine with new commands for programmers, a new programming model, new drivers, and security features that will make it easier for users to run without having administrator privileges on all the time.
A number of things Microsoft has talked about over the years won't be in Vista, though, including the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, a plan for running secure tasks separately from normal tasks; and WinFS, an object-oriented file system Allchin has been pushing for years. Though WinFS is currently being beta tested, it isn't expected to be included in the initial release of Vista.
New Strategies
As for future operating systems, Microsoft hopes to speed up the time between releases. During the 5-year-period between Microsoft's releases of XP and Vista, Apple has released several end-user upgrades and charged for them, Jones says. The question for Microsoft, he says, is "Where do we charge and where don't we for all these things?"Security updates, for example, should be included as part of the OS licenses people pay for, Jones says, and there are other things added to Windows for free because it's good for developers to have those features deployed. But Microsoft still needs to work out which extras to charge for, he says.
Microsoft is also always exploring ways to make new versions of the operating system interesting and significant enough for people to want to upgrade to them.
"First, we'd better offer a set of compelling capabilities in the software," Allchin says. "Second, we'd better work on the migration and deployment problems that people have today. If I look in the future, we have to do an even better job."
Keys to Windows' Past Successes
Looking back, Gates says the two most important things that led to Windows' success were creating a standard for application developers to write to and creating a standard, intuitive interface for users.
"We've got the developer model that connects to the past but also provides these new services for new classes of applications," Gates says. "We write applications ourselves and exploit that with Office, but it's really the breadth [of applications] that has made Windows such a strong standard. And that you can walk up to any machine and know how to use it, that's the user-model piece."
Both now have to evolve, he adds. "We need a model that is not as single device–centric as Windows originally was but that brings all these richer services, both local and remote, into that developer picture and into that user model," Gates says.
He notes that, in general, the basic UI hasn't changed all that much. "I could take you back to the Windows 2.0 UI and you'd find there wasn't the bar at the bottom and some things, but Windows users today would find it pretty familiar."Now, Gates says, it's time to "take the user interface to a new level." Such changes, he says, are always risky, just as moving from DOS to Windows was. But the goal remains to create a common developer model and a common user model."Those same benefits are as relevant today as they were when this got started."
2005年10月13日星期四
80万册“哈六”15日全国同步上市
80万册“哈六”15日全国同步上市
书名已确定为《哈利·波特与“混血王子”》，价格RMB58。
我想这应该对哈迷来说是个好消息吧，虽然我没看过哈里波特的印刷版，但我对这个也是有点兴趣的，只是现在高三忙得要命，成绩重要啊……
书名已确定为《哈利·波特与“混血王子”》，价格RMB58。
我想这应该对哈迷来说是个好消息吧，虽然我没看过哈里波特的印刷版，但我对这个也是有点兴趣的，只是现在高三忙得要命，成绩重要啊……
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