Interesting post. It sounds to me though that Microsoft is trying (yet again) to tell everyone: "The next version of Windows will be better - we promise..." Vista is only a year old and they're already talking about how Windows 7 will feature multi-touch that will be "better" than the iPhone and now multi-core-aware capabilities... Seems like astroturfing to me. Does anyone (other than the TImes) believe them anymore?
Whenever the mainstream media talk about Microsoft, I get this picture of visions of the Future from the 1920's-- flying cars, jet packs. Don't they understand MSFT never delivers?
No smart person should contemplate doing anything high-performance on legacy non-UNIX systems, like Windows. If you don't like OSX, get a LINUX box, for goodness sake.
Windows is for running MS-Office, and frankly, I like MS-Office for Mac better; Redmond can't even do a good job of delivering their own flagship application suite to their own OS.
You are looking at NY Times for a technical article? With NYT's Apple blinders?
You should be looking at the proceedings of this workshop before spouting "stuff".
Interesting points. I would say the limiter to a computer comprehending your email is more of AI being in its infancy than bad marketing. I think your point, however, is that they picked the wrong problem to emphasize. I would agree with that. Parallel processing isn't nearly as much of a limiter as the lack of a good AI like a neural network that has organized to the point of comprehending concepts beyond keywords.
Many-core systems will enable high performance computing for the commercial sector. It will no longer only be the realm of academic organizations or multi-billion dollar corporations. Applications such as fuzzy matching, data quality, data mining, business intelligence and so on will reap the benefits. Seems like a huge market that Microsoft could play into. They show their true stripes by speaking of only the consumer oriented aspects of their software. Too bad for them, lots of opportunity for others.
I also find this very odd. It's almost as if Microsoft has already given up on Vista- trying to get everyone to focus on the vaporware that is "Windows 7".
It reminds me very much of the US auto industry. Nirvana is ALWAYS 20 years down the road- hydrogen, fuel cells etc., so "don't hassle us now with your increased fleet mileage requirements" (or seat belts/airbags/crash standards.... on and on).
What a disaster for Microsoft. It's pathetic, really.
"What a disaster for Microsoft."
Don't shed any tears. They've had plenty of years and billions of dollars to:
1)rebuild on top of UNIX
2)create some competitive developer tools
3)fix their annoying and confounding UI.
The GM analogy is dead on. And where's GM most solid market? Fleet cars. Where's MSFT's most solid market "Fleet" computers- the Enterprise market -- where inertia, turf-watching, and thick-headedness trump other concerns.
Commenting by HaloScan
