Gates Christens 64-bit Windows, Charts Course For Longhorn

Do we need all of this CRAP ? Having to upgrade to a new operating system every two years is getting old. All most of us do is e-mail, surf the net and chat. I could do that with Windows 98. Well here's the story below, tell what you think ? Will you be first in line ?

Gates Christens 64-bit Windows, Charts Course For Longhorn

Mon Apr 25, 5:04 PM ET

Technology - TechWeb

SEATTLE -- Microsoft on Monday steered into its third decade of computing, launching 64-bit Windows XP operating systems and providing a glimpse at the next major revision of Windows, code-named Longhorn.

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The setting was the opening of the 14th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, an industry gathering for component and system manufacturers, core logic, consumer electronics and application vendors. In outlining Microsoft's server and client operating system roadmap, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates not only gave direction to the hardware OEMs but also positioned the vendor against future competitive battles with the likes of Google, Linux and Adobe.

In his keynote address, Gates noted that Windows is about 20 years old, and that DOS and 16-bit computing dominated the first decade, followed by Windows 95 with 32-bit computing. The introduction of 64-bit and multi-core computing will create new inflection points and is the start of the third decade, he said.

"This is the decade where we can have the most impact of all," Gates said. "The pervasiveness of digital approaches. The kind of capabilities that we've finally achieved are things that have been talked about for many decades. It's really common sense now for business to be done in a digital way. Entertainment. Scheduling. Purchasing. The foundation work for the 64-bit addressing and the software runtime that allows you to connect not only a browser to any website but you can connect any piece of software to another piece of software to a website across the Internet. Like those new web services standards that are coming into the platform allowing these news applications. So this is the decade of greatest importance. This is the one of greatest competition, and greatest opportunity. That's why you see us putting in greatest levels of R&D into Windows."

Moving to 64-bit will have many benefits, and it will happen more rapidly than any previous transition, Gates said, noting that 32-bit applications will continue to run on 64-bit Windows machines. There will "dramatic improvement" in Windows Terminal Services with 64-bit, he said. The added memory will make a big difference in Active Directory, in technical computing and gaming, and database applications, he said. Nonetheless, "We will go through a period where Microsoft and others will release both 32- and 64- bit versions of their applications."

A Windows product manager showed a computer animation demonstration, editing on the desktop and rendering on the server, using both 32-bit and 64-bit. The 64-bit significantly had greater color, texture and detail. "The limits of 32-bit have been forcing artists to make compromises," said Microsoft's Jay Kenny.

The specific 64-bit products that Microsoft announced Monday are Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003 x64 for Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions.

"We are very proud of this release," Gates said. "It is the base upon which we will build Longhorn."

Microsoft is promising several 64-bit products this year: SQL Server, Visual Studio 2005, Commerce Server 2006, Host Integration Server 2005, Biztalk 2006, and Services for Unix.

For next year, Gates promised a continuing rapid rollout of 64-bit versions including Windows Longhorn Server, Exchange Server 12, Microsoft Operations Manager, Virtual Server v2, and Windows Server "Complete Cluster Edition."

"We're making it standard for us that everything has to be in 64-bit as we get new releases," Gates said.

Longhorn is the next major revision of Windows and it is clearly the company's next huge area of investment. "It's very broad what we are doing," Gates said. "You have to go back to Windows 95 to see the broad set of things we are doing." He praised the new OS' ability to organize information by using transparency and visualization and said it had a beefed up graphics and display infrastructure.

In a demo of Longhorn, a new file type was shown called "live thumbnail icons." These were live snapshots showing the content of folders. Other folders were called "Virtual Folders" because they were dynamic, not static, and could be compiled based on a search metadata keywords.

"Underneath the covers there's a lot going on with Windows, including the new display driver model that enables some of those things we demonstrated," Gates said.

Gates pledged to turn Longhorn, which is still about 18 months from shipping, into its most widely marketed product ever. Longhorn would be the benefit of "more marketing than anything we've done in the past," Gates said. He said there would be an ambitious "Ready for Longhorn" logo program for Microsoft partners, and he urged developers to "start planning now."

In a nod to the hardcore PC hardware enthusiasts in the audience, Gates showed several prototype portable and Tablet PCs, including models from HP, Toshiba and Acer. One new feature he highlighted was an auxiliary display, a small screen that appears on the outside of a laptop and shows simple entries like calendars or e-mail. It's designed to give quick access so the user doesn't have to open and boot up a laptop to retrieve some information.

Gates also showed a paperback-book sized device he called the "Ultra Mobile 2007." Gates described it as costing less than $1,000, weighing less than 2 pounds, and having a camera, phone, music player, and video player. He said it was "complimentary" to a PC, not a replacement for one.

Sponsors of WinHEC represent a wide section of the hardware industry including ATI, Broadcom, HP, Intel, Lexar, SMSC, and VIA Technologies. The conference, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center about 25 miles West of Microsoft's ever-expanding headquarters in Redmond, Wash., continues through Wednesday and includes scores of technical tracks. Among the high-level sessions are those with titles such as "Redefining the PC Opportunity," "Connectivity and the Future of Computing," Trends and opportunities in for Tomorrow's PCs." There were 2,625 attendees, representing 500 companies and 42 countries.

"Ultimately, these foundation advances will end up helping customers," said Marshall Brumer, director of Microsoft's Windows hardware platform evangelism. "This is our opportunity to work together and partner and look to the future."

Christian Taliban ?

What the HELL (And I do mean HELL) is going on here. This can't be right. Seperation of Church and State ? The story below.

2 Evangelicals Want to Strip Courts' Funds

By Peter Wallsten Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.
The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.
Frist and DeLay have not publicly endorsed the evangelical groups' proposed actions. But the taped discussion among evangelical leaders provides a glimpse of the road map they are drafting as they work with congressional Republicans to achieve a judiciary that sides with them on abortion, same-sex marriage and other elements of their agenda.
"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
DeLay has spoken generally about one of the ideas the leaders discussed in greater detail: using legislative tactics to withhold money from courts.
"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said at an April 13 question-and-answer session with reporters.
The leaders present at the March conference, including Perkins and James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, have been working with Frist to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations, a legislative tool that has allowed Senate Democrats to stall 10 of President Bush's nominations. Frist is scheduled to appear, via a taped statement, during a satellite broadcast to churches nationwide Sunday that the Family Research Council has organized to build support for the Bush nominees.
The March conference featuring Dobson and Perkins showed that the evangelical leaders, in addition to working to place conservative nominees on the bench, have been trying to find ways to remove certain judges.
Perkins said that he had attended a meeting with congressional leaders a week earlier where the strategy of stripping funding from certain courts was "prominently" discussed. "What they're thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them," Perkins said.
He said that instead of undertaking the long process of trying to impeach judges, Congress could use its appropriations authority to "just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do."
These curbs on courts are "on the radar screen, especially of conservatives here in Congress," he said.
Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement's most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson said. "They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."
Robert Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist, said Thursday that the Senate leader does not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, pointing to Frist's comments earlier this month embracing a "fair and independent judiciary." A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment.
The remarks by Perkins and Dobson drew fire from Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who charged that the two leaders were more brazen in such private encounters with supporters than their more genteel public images portray.
"To talk about defunding judges is just about the most bizarre, radical approach to controlling the outcome of court decisions that you can imagine," Lynn said.

Frist is expected to try as early as next week to push the Senate to ban filibusters on judicial nominations — a move so explosive that Democrats are calling it the "nuclear option."
Democrats have been using the filibuster to block 10 of Bush's appeals court nominees who they believe are too extreme in their views, but the skirmishes are considered a preview of a highly anticipated fight over replacing the ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, whose retirement is considered imminent.
"Folks, I am telling you all that it is going to be the mother of all battles," Dobson predicted at the March 17 meeting. "And it's right around the corner. I mean, Justice Rehnquist could resign at any time, and the other side is mobilized to the teeth."
The remarks by Perkins and Dobson reflect the passion felt by Christians who helped fuel Bush's reelection last year with massive turnout in battleground states, and who also spurred Republican gains in the Senate and House.
Claiming a role by the movement in the GOP gains, Dobson concluded: "We've got a right to hold them accountable for what happens here."
Both leaders chastised what Perkins termed "squishy" and "weak" Republican senators who have not wholeheartedly endorsed ending Democrats' power to filibuster judicial nominees. They said these included moderates such as Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. They also grumbled that Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and George Allen of Virginia needed prodding.
"We need to shake these guys up," Perkins said.
Said Dobson: "Sometimes it's just amazing to me that they seem to forget how they got here."
Even Bush was not spared criticism. Dobson and Perkins encouraged their supporters to demand that the president act as aggressively on the judiciary as he has for his Social Security overhaul.
"These are not Bill Frist's nominees; these are President George W. Bush's nominees," Perkins said. "He needs to be out there putting pressure on these senators who are weak on this issue and standing in obstruction to these nominations," he said.
Dobson chided Frist, a likely 2008 presidential contender, for not acting sooner on the filibuster issue, urging "conservatives all over the country" to tell Frist "that he needs to get on with it."
Dobson also said Republicans risked inflicting long-term damage on their party if they failed to seize the moment — a time when Bush still has the momentum of his reelection victory — to transform the courts. He said they had just 18 months to act before Bush becomes a "lame-duck president."
"If we let that 18 months get away from us and then maybe we got Hillary to deal with or who knows what, we absolutely will not recover from that," he said.
Perkins and Dobson laid out a history of court rulings they found offensive, singling out the recent finding by the Supreme Court that executing minors was unconstitutional. They criticized Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion, noting that the Republican appointee had cited the laws of foreign nations that, Dobson said, applied the same standard as "the most liberal countries in Europe."
"What about Latin America, South America, Central America? What about China? What about Africa?" Dobson asked. "They pick and choose the international law that they want and then apply it here as though we're somehow accountable to Europe. I resent that greatly."
DeLay has also criticized Kennedy for citing foreign laws in that opinion, calling the practice "outrageous."
As part of the discussion, Perkins and Dobson referred to remarks by Dobson earlier this year at a congressional dinner in which he singled out the use by one group of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants in a video that Dobson said promoted a homosexual agenda.
Dobson was ridiculed for his comments, which some critics interpreted to mean the evangelist had determined that the cartoon character was gay.
Dobson said the beating he took in the media, coming after his appearance on the cover of newsmagazines hailing his prominence in Bush's reelection, proved that the press will only seek to tear him down.
"This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous," he said.

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The New Pope ?

What's up with the Roman Catholic Church? I feel a little funny waiting everyday for "Smoke Signals". Would it be possible to send me an e-mail or hold a Press Conference when the new Pope is selected ? I mean this is the year 2005. I don't want to cause a trouble or anything. That do you think ?

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