"Longhorn to use UNIX-like User Permissions"
Its really funny to see how things work out in time. I remember the time when there were articles all over asking if Unix was dead. Yet, Unix thrives in one form or another. In fact, the OS that did ultimately die was the old Mac OS, replaced by Mac OS X, which is Apples GUI bolted over a BSD (Unix) kernel. All the Unix command line tools are available for use on OS X. BeOS, which was a very advanced OS and technically ahead for its time, had Unix utilities available. The only system that has not been like Unix is Windows. The NT kernel was based on VMS.
Microsoft has windows as its cash cow, and it would make sense that they could not do something like Apple. They could not take Windows, and put a Unix kernel underneath. However, to keep Windows competitive they have to add utilities and behavior similar to Unix. Hence there is monad. And now this. Windows seems to continue to march towards abilities that Unix already has. The added advantage is that Windows also has the largest application base. Plus, with things like monad, you can manipulate and access things in the .Net Framework.
From what I've seen and know, it does not seem like Java has this close tie-in with Suns own operating system called Solaris. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. I would think monad gives a really rich environment to be able to write scripts in. However, we all know how badly a rich environment can be exploited. I am talking about VBA enabled applications (outlook and such).
