Monad

after so many years, microsoft has suddenly realized that the need for a command prompt will never disappear. throughout the past decade or so, microsoft has been pushing people away from the prompt and into it's gui. people who wanted a shell were given an emulated dos command prompt - a far cry from the real terminal prompt employed by linux operating systems. unfortunately, there really is something about the black screen and gray blinking cursor that is so much better than GUI-enabled system configuration that system administrators cannot explain.

in a few months time (where few is quite relative), microsoft will be releasing a more feature-packed development environment. one of the cool stuff included in the package is Monad - "an interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology." i wouldn't call it a glorified DOS because it is anything but a mere DOS prompt. it's supposedly a place where everything can be administered ala linux-style. it's got database support, .NET programming capability, programmable logic (iteration, selection, repetition), powerful output formatting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

this is turning out to be exciting. i've recently migrated two of my computers into Linux - CentOS and Ubuntu for a Desktop and my Laptop, respectively. i got WinXP dual-booted in both of them - in case of a fragfest emergency. lol. i was thinking of shifting my primary OSes into open-source OSes. but no, microsoft does something that makes me think twice about sparing a 15GB partition for them M$ OS. so there. 15 GB of my HD real estate just for M$ OS. For the meantime, i'll plop a Server 2K3 until i get a hold on to vista. until then, this crazy laboratory of mine will have no rest.