Comments on: Vista - The Wow Does Not Start Now http://www.xxeo.com/archives/2007/03/06/vista-the-wow-does-not-start-now.html 20 minutes into the future... Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:54:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Daniel Lyons http://www.xxeo.com/archives/2007/03/06/vista-the-wow-does-not-start-now.html#comment-19353 Daniel Lyons Wed, 07 Mar 2007 06:07:29 +0000 http://www.xxeo.com/archives/2007/03/06/vista-the-wow-does-not-start-now.html#comment-19353 <p>What I heard from somewhere on the net was that they decided to dump their TCP/IP code, originally from BSD, to rewrite it from scratch. They did this, apparently, in order to achieve a speed improvement. Which they did, the new stack is 10% faster.</p> <p>I think it shows incredible hubris to think that you can write a better stack, whoever you are. That's 30-year-old code, written by some of the masters of programming, having been tweaked and refined continuously the whole time. To attempt a rewrite, at the company with the worst security record in software, in order to achieve a marginal <i>speed improvement</i> is beyond stupidity.</p> <p>I expect it's only a matter of time (and market penetration) before the cracking community decides to put Vista's new stack under the microscope. The results will be an incredible disaster which I'm looking forward to observing from the safety of my MacBook.</p> What I heard from somewhere on the net was that they decided to dump their TCP/IP code, originally from BSD, to rewrite it from scratch. They did this, apparently, in order to achieve a speed improvement. Which they did, the new stack is 10% faster.

I think it shows incredible hubris to think that you can write a better stack, whoever you are. That’s 30-year-old code, written by some of the masters of programming, having been tweaked and refined continuously the whole time. To attempt a rewrite, at the company with the worst security record in software, in order to achieve a marginal speed improvement is beyond stupidity.

I expect it’s only a matter of time (and market penetration) before the cracking community decides to put Vista’s new stack under the microscope. The results will be an incredible disaster which I’m looking forward to observing from the safety of my MacBook.

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