> In practice, we have watched Windows evolve in such a fashion with
> respect to multiuser support, and, in effect, it has never really
> gotten it. Microsoft started by hacking something on top of MS-DOS,
> and by the time enough applications had enough dependancies on the way
> that worked, it has essentially become impossible for them to migrate
> properly to a multiuser model since applications are normally designed
> with the myopic "this is MY computer!" model of the world.
Completely false. NT was a complete rewrite (1993ish) and was
inherently multi-user with even the GDI running as a user level process
(no longer however). The NT kernel was scalable and portable, running
on the Alpha, MIPS, etc.
However, you do have a point with applications...many win32 developers
have a very bad habit about expecting their apps to install and run as
root. However, this is generally not a problem with Microsoft stuff.
In short, the problem is really people, not the technology.
Merlin
