The Advancement of Windows: Ales Holecek - Windows Shell (Windows Explorer, Desktop Search, UAC, Aer | Charles

Zeo
Channel 9 :)

Interesting Conversation. I'd love to hear more from Tjreed Hoek about his thoughs on Areo in the shell, and his thoughts behind the design.

Great video tho. Big Smile

bbmatt13
ahhhh...

The new mail notification in Outlook gets me every time. Smiley

SecretSoftware
Code to live, but Live to code.

I gather from this video, that MS went to the direction of writing new OS (VISTA), because the current model in XP and 2003, is unupdatable, because the code base is old and is not organized in a way to allow for future improvements. SO when he said that Vista is "a mile stone for us", he meant that Vista will be a new platform OS that will enable them to move to the future without the strings that were in the previous implementations of things in XP and 2003.

So when Windows Vienna comes, its going to be breath-taking. That is why I am not so much excited about vista, but about what is going to come after vista as a progress ontop of the new foundations that were implemented into Vista. That is why I compare this stage as going from DOS to Win95.

Charles
Welcome Change

SecretSoftware wrote:

I gather from this video, that MS went to the direction of writing new OS (VISTA), because the current model in XP and 2003, is unupdatable, because the code base is old and is not organized in a way to allow for future improvements. SO when he said that Vista is "a mile stone for us", he meant that Vista will be a new platform OS that will enable them to move to the future without the strings that were in the previous implementations of things in XP and 2003.

So when Windows Vienna comes, its going to be breath-taking. That is why I am not so much excited about vista, but about what is going to come after vista as a progress ontop of the new foundations that were implemented into Vista. That is why I compare this stage as going from DOS to Win95.

Intersting analysis. The hypothesis(first paragraph) is a compelling one. However, your conclusion, which appears to miss an understandably implicit point: data created as a direct result of your interactions with the system, how you use it and how it is capable of making your intentions achievable in a predictable and reliable way, makes proving or disproving the hypothesis empirically impossible(we think we may be on to something theoretically, but theory is purely abstract).

It's nice to see that people are beginning to realize that Vista is a new OS, one that is also intelligent: composed of subsystems that are capable of not only learning, but also prone to interacting with newly gained knowledge in a cybernetic way.

Vista sows the seeds for a future Windows that becomes not only intelligent, reliable, safe, performant, usable, but also predictable, composable, homeostatic. Evolutionary acceleration of Windows will remain static without high use of the system by real people.

C

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

Charles wrote:

However, your conclusion, which appears to miss an understandably implicit point: data created as a direct result of your interactions with the system, how you use it and how it is capable of making your intentions achievable in a predictable and reliable way, makes proving or disproving the hypothesis empirically impossible(we think we may be on to something theoretically, but theory is purely abstract).

hate to be pedantic here Charles (what am I talking about, I'm a geek - I live for pedantry!) but it's impossible to prove anything empirically.

You can verify your hypothesis, but you cannot prove it, as in order to prove a hypothesis empirically you'd have to observe all possible permutations and outcomes, (and as you're being empirical you wouldn't be allowed to inform your observations from your theory, as you haven't proved your theory yet! So you'd have to literally observe all possible permutations ever ever ever.)

Charles
Welcome Change

Massif wrote:

Charles wrote:
However, your conclusion, which appears to miss an understandably implicit point: data created as a direct result of your interactions with the system, how you use it and how it is capable of making your intentions achievable in a predictable and reliable way, makes proving or disproving the hypothesis empirically impossible(we think we may be on to something theoretically, but theory is purely abstract).

hate to be pedantic here Charles (what am I talking about, I'm a geek - I live for pedantry!) but it's impossible to prove anything empirically.

You can verify your hypothesis, but you cannot prove it, as in order to prove a hypothesis empirically you'd have to observe all possible permutations and outcomes, (and as you're being empirical you wouldn't be allowed to inform your observations from your theory, as you haven't proved your theory yet! So you'd have to literally observe all possible permutations ever ever ever.)

In science, a Theory (with a capital T) is another way of expressing an Hypothesis that has been "proven" due to direct observations, or measurements, that show the conjecture to be factual.

SecretSoftware
Code to live, but Live to code.

Charles wrote:

SecretSoftware wrote:
I gather from this video, that MS went to the direction of writing new OS (VISTA), because the current model in XP and 2003, is unupdatable, because the code base is old and is not organized in a way to allow for future improvements. SO when he said that Vista is "a mile stone for us", he meant that Vista will be a new platform OS that will enable them to move to the future without the strings that were in the previous implementations of things in XP and 2003.

So when Windows Vienna comes, its going to be breath-taking. That is why I am not so much excited about vista, but about what is going to come after vista as a progress ontop of the new foundations that were implemented into Vista. That is why I compare this stage as going from DOS to Win95.

Intersting analysis. The hypothesis(first paragraph) is a compelling one. However, your conclusion, which appears to miss an understandably implicit point: data created as a direct result of your interactions with the system, how you use it and how it is capable of making your intentions achievable in a predictable and reliable way, makes proving or disproving the hypothesis empirically impossible(we think we may be on to something theoretically, but theory is purely abstract).

It's nice to see that people are beginning to realize that Vista is a new OS, one that is also intelligent: composed of subsystems that are capable of not only learning, but also prone to interacting with newly gained knowledge in a cybernetic way.

Vista sows the seeds for a future Windows that becomes not only intelligent, reliable, safe, performant, usable, but also predictable, composable, homeostatic. Evolutionary acceleration of Windows will remain static without high use of the system by real people.

C

I postulated that above, because in my experiance, back in 95 and 98 and then in XP, I found it hard to really have freedom in programming new implementations of things. You feel as if you are trying to write a page with 4 people holding your hand or so. Its kind of hard to think clearly, and hard to implement your ideas. Now once .NET came, some of these hands were lifted and you can move freely, so to speak, and have your own implementation under the new standard. The obvious next step was to get rid of the old OS, and re-write the Windows OS in a new and more innovative way, where I dont have so much hands tying me down (All the useless APIs in the old OS). It brought a new way to think clearly, and to implement cleanly any idea you might have. In that sense computer programming becomes as powerfull as magic, and the sky is the limit as they say.

I only wished that MS made this move back in the 90s , instead of making XP, we could have had Vista, and now Vienna. Having said that, maybe things were not as ready as one would like, but its all for the best I suppose.

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

That's pretty much my understanding of Laws, although I'm a little wooly on Laws.

If memory serves, Laws also have to be consistent under all conditions. i.e. if some set of values (the mass of two bodies, and their seperation for example) then some other effect (the gravitational attraction between them) is always the same.

But you still can't (logically) prove anything empirically. Seriously, in fact it's nigh-on impossible to (logically) prove anything at all, in terms of real world behaviour. (The most "proven" set of laws in Physics is called Quantum-Electro Dynamics, and even then they're only 99.9999999% (can't remember the exact numbers) sure it's true.)

If you want to dispute that, then go and read a really good book called "What is this thing called science?" I think the author is called Alan Chambers, but I could be wrong. It'll show you that in actual fact Theorys are established not by proof, but by everyone failing to disprove them.

SecretSoftware
Code to live, but Live to code.

Charles wrote:

Massif wrote:

Charles wrote:
However, your conclusion, which appears to miss an understandably implicit point: data created as a direct result of your interactions with the system, how you use it and how it is capable of making your intentions achievable in a predictable and reliable way, makes proving or disproving the hypothesis empirically impossible(we think we may be on to something theoretically, but theory is purely abstract).

hate to be pedantic here Charles (what am I talking about, I'm a geek - I live for pedantry!) but it's impossible to prove anything empirically.

You can verify your hypothesis, but you cannot prove it, as in order to prove a hypothesis empirically you'd have to observe all possible permutations and outcomes, (and as you're being empirical you wouldn't be allowed to inform your observations from your theory, as you haven't proved your theory yet! So you'd have to literally observe all possible permutations ever ever ever.)

In science, a Theory (with a capital T) is another way of expressing an Hypothesis that has been "proven" due to direct observations, or measurements, that show the conjecture to be factual.

Well Then what are Laws? I learned that Hypothesis is a postulated explanation of natural phenomena. If the hypothesis explains the phenomenon under varying conditions, it becomes a working theory. If this theory is yet demonstrated to , over time, explain the fundamentals of the phenomenon, and all outcomes are accounted for, then it becomes a Law of nature. Like the Gravetational laws, laws of motion, Newtons laws etc..

So , generally, in science, we never use the word "Proven", we say the hypothesis was not demonstrated to fail, yet or something along those words.