Re: [announcement] SYSAPI and SYSSVC for Windows

["Ekkehard Morgenstern" <ekkehard.morgenstern@onlinehome.de>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> wrote:
> : Not in the least. As I said, XP contains all of 2000 and all of NT.
> 
> Hm. So is it not true that they more or less have woven the shell and
> the graphics subsystem into one thing?

Huh?? No.

Graphics on XP is managed by DirectX (various DLLs), GDI+ (GDIPLUS.DLL),
GDI (GDI32.DLL), called by the GUI subsystem (USER32.DLL and UXTHEME.DLL).
The GUI subsystem in XP is themed, and hence drawing of system GUI 
components is done by UXTHEME.DLL. 

The Shell (GUI user environment) is handled by various components,
among which Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. 

The IE component is used for displaying DHTML dialog boxes and applets,
and used by parts of the Windows Explorer and the Help subsystem.
Generally, it's just used as an HTML viewer.

GDI+ is portable to other Windows versions and provides a simple C++
interface for doing graphics with floating-point accuracy. But it's
very, very slow. They fixed some of it in SP1.

DirectX 8 and especially DirectX 9 do all sorts of hardware-based
graphics. DirectX 9 has a better interface and a new concept. 
Generally it unifies 2D and 3D graphics. 

Microsoft seems to work on the next generation of graphical user
interfaces, as it seems, which will keep every GUI component as a
3D object internally.

(that's also why the free OS communities should pay attention to what
Microsoft is doing when they want to stay competetive!)

UxTheme is a nice concept for theming GUIs. There are already some
uncertified versions that permit changing the view of Windows in
rather drastic ways, much like the Enlightenment window manager on
GNU/Linux.

New in XP is also the .NET framework, which permits Java-like
GUI programming, but it's mainly targeted at client/server operation,
as it seems.

It could be that in some years, Windows programming will be only
possible with .NET, but I doubt that it will happen any time soon, 
because lots of applications would have to be rewritten.

> (I know I can sort of replace explorer by cmd.exe, but then ...)

You were able to replace the shell already on Windows 3.1. It's no big
deal really, you can configure the process that is started in the
Windows registry. You can use any application as the user interface 
shell. Some people switch the default shell off and start every program
using the Windows task manager.

You can even use multiple desktops (GUI workspaces), and multiple
monitors. (This is mainly used for applications like info terminals,
etc. on which the user shall not see the system's shell).

Plus, you can serve multiple workstations with virtual terminals
(Windows Terminal Services).

XP can also permit remote maintenance if the user wishes so.

There's plenty more stuff in XP, and that's why it uses a couple
of gigs on the harddrive. ;)

Personally, XP is my all-time favourite version of Windows, and I'm
sure Microsoft will come up with something even better in a couple
of years. "Longhorn" is scheduled for 2006 or 2007, so I guess they
have a big change in mind. ;)

I'm glad that this time they take their time to develop the system.
That's much better than shelling out a new version every other year
that has to be shipped before it's finished and patched up by the
user. If they had implemented a mandatory Windows Update feature,
there'd been rage all around in the press, and so people have to do
it manually, and often don't even know about it, that it can make
their system reliable and stable, and then they bitch that it isn't
working properly. ;)

> Does someone remember the "light" edition of IBM's OS/2 workplace shell
> running on WfW 3.11? I remember a microsoft employee explaining
> (in 1996) that the NT developers would have wished to go on with
> the development of an O-O filesystem, they weren't allowed because
> of the new interface ...

OS/2 was very good. Too bad that Microsoft and IBM parted on the system.
And IBM shouldn't have thrown it away as they did.

I was on an OS/2 developers conference in Colorado in 1997 I think,
for my employer, when the IBM folks said OS/2 was dead. It was sad,
really. I just had bought my copy of Warp 4 with the integrated speech 
recognition (cool stuff btw), and a lot of OS/2 books.

So, Microsoft revived the OO ideas already in Windows 3.1 with OLE,
and later on with COM, DCOM, and COM+. I never programmed for it,
so I don't know if it's really good, but I think it is.

Windows nowadays, especially XP, is all based on component classes.
The whole Windows shell is written with it (COM+ and COM).

The only complaint I can give is that the components that come
with XP aren't documented at all (except the COMCTL32 and COMDLG32
DLLs, which is only a tiny subset of the components). With a COM or
OLE browser you can see what classes exist and which methods they
have but there's no real documentation for all of the components
(since there are literally gigabytes worth of components in XP,
I doubt Microsoft has enough employees to document them all!! ;) ).

> : This panicking in the face of TCPA efforts is not justified.
> 
> (Who is panicking? :-) By trust I meant to refer to honest business.
> (The baker hands me a loaf of bread, I pay. X sends content to me over
> an internet connection, I pay.)
> Now you can't copy bread (except if you employ Jesus' trick), but
> you can copy software (and music and films, no news here).
> If your general attitude towards consumers contains,
> "People are stupid and selfish and have a tendency to be criminals, in
>  particular if they have computers (you know they get all this free stuff
>  how should they have learned to pay), they sure will make illegal copies,
>  everyone knows this, no use explaining that producing media content is
>  work etc",
> then you don't believe in a kind of business where a sufficient number
> of people will see that paying is the right thing to do.
> Or at least you presume it is more profitable to not believe in
> paying customers.
> <rant mode=OT>
> This, IMHO, is what Palladium addresses.

No, Microsoft said it will not restrict the use of the system.
Everything will be as it was before, except that there will be a new
subsystem providing unsecure operation, while the core system will
become secure. Microsoft knows that people don't want to invest in
all-new software. You can still use all of your old software, and
no-one will snoop on your computer about it.

Do you know about the whole NSA Key topic? Someone complained that
there was an NSA key file shipped with Windows, and he suspected that
Microsoft could use it to install NSA specific software silently on
people's computers. But that's not true, it was only named like that
because the government required that Microsoft would keep a copy of
their certification keys, and so they kept the copy on the user's
computers to make sure a backup exists in the case the original key
gets lost, because they otherwise couldn't meet the government
requirements.

Microsoft also knows that many people use pirated software on their
computers. However, that's in the responsibility of those people,
and Microsoft knows sales would drop dramatically if they would
disallow the use of such. It would also hinder the development of
new software, since you would have to certify it during development
to run it in secure mode.

This is btw already true for many Windows component types which have
to be certified to be used, but since Microsoft ships tools for
generating the certificates with the development suites, it's in
the responsibility of the programmer. This might change for the
secure application services in the future, but Microsoft will 
provide a way to register applications.

In any case: No matter what they do, you will always be able to
develop your own software, and then you're free to do what you like.
Like, writing a new MP3 player or video composition tool, or whatever.

> : The user can decide whether they want to run trusted or other apps.
> 
> The users might have an option to decide whether they want to run
> "trusted" applications like media player, real player, and its ilk or not
> see anything at all -- because there is little to be seen without
> "trusted" programs. 

You forget about WinAMP and all the free software on the market.

Even if Micrsoft would provide only a secure Media Player (perhaps as
required by the movie and music industry, don't forget that Microsoft
has to cooperate with those), you could still use independent software.

Although TCPA might seem to be targeted in the DRM direction, and 
certainly will be used for some of it, it will certainly have other
applications as well. 

The TCPA specification has changed a lot in the light of more or less
recent protests from consumers and the press. And hence, Microsoft
will not make the system a closed operation. In that case, no-one
would buy Windows, and that is definitely not in their market interest.

(Microsoft is sitting in the TCPA group along with other big companies)

> What other apps? In a sense, there will be trusted
> programs. But the concept of a trustworthy person is not currently
> preferred.  Why?
> (All there is is threat, contemporary ad: "you know what the other
> prisoners will do to you in jail, movie pirat, do you?"
> addressing a *mass* audience, not professionally copying criminals). 

In a sense the government wants to protect people from themselves.
Software piracy has always been illegal, and copies for your own
personal use aren't. Even if those would be illegal as well, no-one
would really be able to verify this. (AFAIK the new EU laws only
state that you are not allowed to go around a copy protection if
there is one. But you don't need to if you use a setup that provides
a copy without going around the copy protection.)

What's the use of software piracy anyway? All you get is viruses
and programs without support. I prefer buying all the software I
really need to use, and only that, and using free licensed software 
whereever possible. And if I want to have a movie, I wait until it's
out on DVD and then I buy it, and CD's likewise.

There are a lot of unemployed people, and software piracy is simply
endangering jobs everywhere.

Even the current version of Windows Media Player allows you to
copy all your CDs onto your computer and encrypt them. Microsoft
plans to provide the same functionality in Longhorn, so that 
feature will not disappear, because it provides convenience for the
user.

> I'm glad there are some compiler vendors who seem to trust their
> customers and don't use all sorts of electric circuits but a plain
> contract, and payment.  Why? Might they have reason to assume that
> customers aren't necessarily thiefs or fences?

For small companies, developing a compiler is a costly effort, and
hence needs to be copy protected. Imagine you take all your money
and invest into the development of a compiler, and then you go home
and a friend offers you a pirate copy of it. How would YOU feel?

Small companies will always use dongles. 

Big companies like Microsoft don't need dongles. They know they
will have enough money to develop and market the product, and
as long as enough people buy it, all will be ok. 

The only change so far was with Windows XP, in which they 
introduced a strong copy protection (that was cracked soon after,
they had better used some sort of PCI card or dongle) for the
first time. That was a clear sign to me that Windows XP would be
better than any earlier version and that they put a lot of effort
into it.

> Lets see whether the prices for products that cannot be copied
> will adapt or whether Sony Music, Hollywood, et. al. will leave
> the prices at the current level and try to, uhm, "recover".
> (after all there is said to be a huge loss due to copying,
> everyone in the music and films industries (including pornographic
> films industries) seems to be starving, right?).

There are a lot of things people don't think about when they say
what you said. 

Like, record companies have a lot of staff that needs to be paid,
and they need to look good at the stock exchange too, if they're
there or their investors would drop them.

The distribution networks for audio and video products also
have a lot of resellers inbetween that want to make a profit too.
So a CD costs a couple of cent to manufacture but costs a couple
of Euros or Dollars in the shop, all re-sellers, employees and
artists paid.

As soon as the audio/video industry has the facilities to sell
everything directly via the Internet, they can also drop the
prices for their services. There are already some perfectly
legal online music shops that sell songs by professional artists
for a couple of cents each. So it IS possible.

I think it's a matter of personal maturity whether you let 
other people have their share of profits. We're living in a 
cooperative society after all, and although I think that 
capitalism might not be the perfect concept, by far, at least
it keeps a lot of people employed and making a living. So we
don't need to hunt our food ourselves, and we don't need to
build our houses and cars ourselves, we have a standard of living
that allows us to talk about such subjects and not just be 
involved with matters of direct survival.