A New Kind of OS 393
trader writes "OSWeekly.com discusses a possibility of futuristic OSes with both negatives and positives. From the article: 'Imagine if you will, a world where your ideas and perhaps, even your own creative works became part of the OS of tomorrow. Consider the obvious advantages to an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around. Not only is there no such OS like this, the very idea goes against much of what we are currently seeing in the current OS options in the market.'"
It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the obvious advantages to an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around. Not only is there no such OS like this, the very idea goes against much of what we are currently seeing in the current OS options in the market.
I don't know about the parent, but when I build a kernel I don't just default to everything. I build for what I'll need. If that changes significantly then I'll do another with different options and settings.
While it may seem novel to "morph" to what's currently needed, it's not really so revolutionary an idea. It once was that operating systems cleared out unused libraries from memory (rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session) and dynamically adjust the amount of processor priority and time (Priority and Run Burst) each task is assigned as needed depending upon system load, etc. Some things appear to have gone backward as we've got more dependent on ooh, shiny! features, whistles and bells.
Maybe like NASA digging up how they once did the Apollo Moon missions, to relearn, it's time for some of the people who do operating systems today to look back at how we did things 20-30 years ago.
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Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, as a programmer, I get really tired of people suggesting ways to program computers "without doing any coding". That's where BAD things come from. That's where "dynamically hiding menu items" come from, so you never know where things are. That's where "visual programming" comes from, so you're staring at a screen full of boxes and lines with little to no organizational structure.
No. If you're gonna program a computer, learn how to program. The CS field as a whole apologizes for the fact that computers are hard. They are complex machines. Unfortunately it is not always easy to get them to work they way they should, or the way you want them to. But that's life. If you're not willing to learn how to program, you should be willing to learn how to use what other people have programmed, or learn how to write specs and make intelligent suggestions to the community. But this bullshit about "intelligently adapting the OS to a user's needs" is just asking for trouble. It's asking for "programming" without actually asking for any "design" or "specifications". It will end up being crap.
The fact is, making something "user friendly" means making the front-end more simple -- and thus making the back-end more complicated. But this complexity always eventually compounds and compounds until the end user can't understand what's happening and gets confused. In the end, we learn that computers are easier to use if you understand the back-end, and that can only happen if you use a minimum of metaphor. That is-- a straight-forward system that is obvious and transparent.
The mistake that Windows and many GUI systems have made is in trying to HIDE the system in metaphor. It always backfires, because although a transparent system may be harder to learn, it is far, far easier to deal with once the learning curve has been climbed. And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training", well.. you may as well train the end user how it actually WORKS instead of trying to hide it from them in a bubble of "interface".
Of course, that's just MHO. Though I believe Neal Stephenson [cryptonomicon.com] agrees with me.
(My apologies to the parent. My comments aren't really directed at you, per se, I just get tired of people suggesting that computer programming should be effortless. Computer using should be easy, but programming is programming, if you know what I mean.)
What hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly did not mean to imply that there's anything wrong with a GUI. But there IS something wrong with dynamically hiding parts of a GUI based on some unspecified learning algorithm.
Do you understand what I mean?
Computers should be transparent and obvious, THAT is what makes them easier to use, not artificially messing with the interface to pretend the "hard parts" don't exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to use the mouse to interact with them. It just has to be designed well -- meaning everything accessible in a logical manner, whether it is through the keyboard or the mouse.
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What, apart from linking to the Stephenson essay about the command line, describing it as agreeing with your stance, you mean?
And saying the GUI hides the system in metaphor implies you prefer direct access to "the system" with a GUI.... meaning... what? Well, unless you intend people to use "the system" by using little electromagnetic tweezers to flip bits inside the hardware I think assuming you meant the CLI was a fair guess.
Anyway your
Re:What hogwash (Score:4, Interesting)
The real problem comes when you take metaphors too far and they impede operation - machines that are short of resources should not be using CPU cycles to animate images of paper being thrown into a wastepaper basket while the user fumes at their unresponsive mouse pointer.
As for alternatives to a GUI that are not the CLI - scripts are one obvious answer. I used a machine with purely a GUI interface in the past, the Atari ST, and found I could do a lot more with it once I had a program that would let me run batch files.
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I wasn't really looking for alernatives to GUI's and CLI's, I was just calling him out on his claim that he wasn't talking about CLI's.
I don't really see scripting as playing the same role as a CLI or GUI unless you can program one without a CLI or GUI. Perhaps paper tape or punched card systems would qualify.
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Not a rule, more of a trend really.
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Fine. A command line interface was what we had "in the begining" because it was all the hardware could support.
But you know what? When you're working that closely with a system, you learn it better! No, typing "mv *.txt ../textDocuments" won't teach you a wit about x86 assembly, but it will get you thinking about directory structure in a way that explorer.exe prevents one from doing. Using a text editor and a typsetting program like LaTeX can help you format well-structured documents with an ease that
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Well, that different way of thinking doesn't provide any additional insights into the directory structure. "../textDocuments" is just a crude way of representing part a tree abstration that tools like explorer make obvious. But the tre
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"mv *.txt
means move all text documents in current folder to the textDocuments folder which is contained within the parent folder of the current folder...
How is it that my GUI windows drag and drop doesnt allow me to understand this? wait that's right....it does.
CLI has it's place but in my experience I've been able to do a great number of things that a Linux Guru can do in CLI with my Windows GUI. Perhaps it's a matter of what technology you grew up using?
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I have seen some of these things come and go. For example, I remember when VB6 came out and there was a lot of talk about it would be the end of C++. For example, why ever write an actual win32 based application, when it is easier to just crank something out in VB in a shorter time.
At the time, I remember some Windows C++ guys who I worked with being all like, "I guess I will have to find another career because I really don't want to be a VB prog
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Things have obviously changed quite a bit; you don't have to be a programmer to get WYSIWYG editing and print output anymore. It may not seem like it from here, but there are probably a lot of functions that most people consider "programming" that will fall into the same category at some unspecified point in the future. All that programming does is simply interface with the machine at a slightly more complex level than the average user. We're just talking about improving the interface to the point where some things, which now require "programming", will simply be "using" instead... and programmers will move on to more complicated arenas.
Macros or mail filters or Netflix's recommendation system are all ways that average users basically program computers today without any hardcore CS education. Ten or twenty years ago, they would have required such a background to accomplish the same tasks, but no one really considers it "programming" today; there is no reason that many other functions that we currently think of as programming won't become similarly easy or transparent.
There will always be the wizards responsible for writing the code that puts those things into place, and so that's where I agree with you--if you want to be a coder, go learn to code. In that sense, programming will always be programming, but I think the common definition of the word is a necessarily moving target.
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Part of the idea of a personal computer is that the average user can "program" the computer to do tasks. If I want to reduce a set of tasks that would typically require me to perform many repetitious things on the computer, to something that the computer can do for me all at once, should I have to A) wait for some company to produce software for me to buy that does this, or B) go to school a
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yeah. ok. if you don't like the fact that people expect programmers to be the people programming, maybe you should be in a different field.
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Most programmers don't think everyone should know how to program, and I don't think this was the point the OP was making.
Many programmers believe that if someone wants to program then they should learn how to program. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The hard part of learning programming is not learning syntax - the hard part is learning to decompose tasks, spot edge-cases,
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I get sick of authors that think everyone should know how to read and write.
Actually, no I don't.. that was sarcasm.
Programming isn't like learning to maintain your own cars. It's a general purpose ability to express particular thoughts in a structured way such that one of the most powerful general purpose tools in the world can be applied to it. It's worth learning for EVERYBODY. You may not realize it, just as 2000 years ago people may not have realized the value of an entire society that could communi
Metaphors aren't all bad (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree completely with
It's really not all that hard (Score:2)
Before I was ten years old I learned a programming language called "logo" which was very easy to use - it is about giving instructions to move a pen about and is really not that far removed in operation from the G-code instructions for milling machines I learned in University. I wasn't a paticularly bright ten year old either and had no exposure to computers before that point.
Learning that a set of instructions in sequence is needed to complete t
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. In fact, Microsoft developed the very feature this article is describing, and they named it 'Clippy'. The rest, as they say, is history
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Put some useful meat on that suggestion and you may become a millionaire. "The computer should adapt to the user, not the other way 'round" is not new, the problem is it's a vague aspiration which has proven difficult to nail down in any useful way. Microsoft's latest products automatically hide menu items unless you use them often, and frankly I hate it.
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Here's How That Works (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux (Score:5, Funny)
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Where's the beef? (Score:5, Informative)
He then goes on for another 5 paragraphs just to tell us that Evil Corporations(TM) could misuse the data about our personal preferences against us. (Shocker, isn't it?) So we might as well forget the whole idea, because the Bad Guys(TM) have it in for us.
*Sigh*
I suppose I could plug my own Linux Desktop Distribution of the Future article to fill space and provide something substantive, but then I'd be accused of shameless self-promotion. So instead, I'm going to bed. 'Night all!
Other users? (Score:3, Interesting)
My major concern with such a system (besides the obvious privacy ones touched on in the article) is what happens when some other user sits at my comptuter uses it for a while. Would the "adaptive engine" or whatever be smart enough to figure out that there was someone else there or would I have to reset my settings and have it relearn everything?
Another interesting aspect would be as a constant check to make sure the allowed user is the one at tthe keyboard. Different enough input stats and the password box pops up.
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I thought it was fairly simple to "identify" a user by their typing patterns (measureing delays between keystrokes, etc).
I'm not so sure about mouse usage, but IIRC, you can definitely tell apart users by their typing.
As an aside, I don't think your idea "Different enough input stats and the password box pops up" is terribly feasible. Unless you're going to bug the normal user constantly, anyone could pop in a cd/diskette and escalat
Re:Other users? (Score:5, Insightful)
sort of how your tivo starts to think you're gay because you're girlfriend keeps recording oprah?
TFA was completely worthless. besides the whole "big brother" strawman the author sets up, there are so many other issues that are simply not addressed. he uses a silly example of having the computer learn that you don't like to be bothered with emails while working on a video editing project except for "critical emails". well, how does the computer "learn" this behavior? if you don't check your mail when you edit video, you're not likely to find the "critical" email. thus, the computer doesn't understand that an email from "bob my client" is somehow more important than an email from "my nigerian ancestor who is also a prince." if you DO check your email during your video editing session, i suppose the computer would think that you like to be bothered with your emails while you're working on video.
then you have to factor in the complexities of whether or not editing video is in the same importance category as photo retouching. and is that also as important was writing a letter? i think i'd rather my computer let me be the judge of whether or not an email is important to me and when. besides, there's no easy way for the computer to know if i'm doing "entertainment work" (in my case, farking a photo) or "work work" (retouching photographs for publication).
also, as anyone who's used any sort of "learning technology" like voice recognition or hwr, we all know there's a long and frustrating process to getting the software to work even passably well. so i guess the first six months or so of your new system you'll have your computer making all sort of bad assumptions about your workflow and deciding to hide or highlight certain functions in your apps. while working within a tradition WIMP methaphor might not be the theoretically most efficient way to get work done, it's at least generally consistent. which, in turn, probably makes it the most efficient.
if i need a tool, i want it to be where i left it. i don't need my full set of hex keys as often as i need my cordless drill, but i sure don't need any magic gnomes running hiding all my hex keys and replacing them with my drill (which i already have a place for).
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Even assuming that a copyright claimed by an AC would be provable and enforceable, you still have to have a system sophisticated enough not to give false positives when the user is , uh, "practicing one-handed t
It's been done (sort of) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Mac user who has to interact with PCs quite often at work, I find this not only not helpful, but completely obnoxious. I realize this is probably due to MS's fairly awful learning algorithm, but I think the lesson here is that it's going to take a long, long, long time before anything like this can make its way to the desktop without pissing off 50% of the users. Or more.
Hate them! Hate them! Hate them! (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the FIRST things I do is go and turn of "Use personalized menues".
Hunting for the widget the FIRST time was annoying enough. Why would I want to hunt for it a SECOND time? I have already learned where it is the first time.
Not to mention that I'm usually doing at least 3 different tasks at once.
If you want to improve the OS "of the future", then START with a reduced set of commands and allow the user to choose what level s/he is comfortable with. Do NOT move items once they've been learned.
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A simple example: the list of recently used applications that appears on KDE's kicker, and the windows start menu. The KDE one is pretty straightforward, but it starts to fail if you use more applications than fit on the list. How about, if you launch an application the computer notes the time. It looks at a week or two of use, and
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Problem is, humans are capable of learning. It's easier to learn something if you can *understand* it (what a concept!). What you are suggesting is having items magically appear or disappear from a menu according to some unspecified, complex algorithm. Invariably the algorithm will be *wrong* and nobody will know how to fix it -- because nobody really understands it.
End result ? People quickly learn that certain programs sometimes magically disappear
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Anything I use with any regularity I know the keystroke for, other stuff I need to see.
And I don't want everythign to move because my habbits change.
Tedious... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, with a couple of major exceptions.
The GUI server WM are not applications; they're APIs.
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Your statement would be better founded if you would bother to look it up [wikipedia.org] first. I'll save you the trouble:
I don't see anything in there about UIs.
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Applications are still applications and filesystems are still filesystems. Applications obviously can require other applications to function - for example a shell is an application. Don't take it from me - but please look at a textbook before you tell people that they are wrong. You may find that common knowlege among a few people you know is actually absolute bull
I'm not sure 'bout that (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to fix someone's computer with an adapted OS would be a real pain, and asking for help via email would be next to impossible, because your options could be in a different place.
Even today's OS adapatability can be unnerving. I get used to using something from the top N programs on the Start Menu (Sorry, no Linux on the work computer), but when it gets bumped off because Windows thinks I used something else more often, I'm confused for a few seconds, just enough to be annoyed.
So my guess is that this "new kind of OS" won't succeed because of support hassles and confusing the user. But it'd be darn cool if those problems could be fixed.
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Yes, I'm looking at you, mac fanboys.
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If you are a Microsoft fanboy, I'll mention the irony that your platform is the one that actually implemented an idea as assinine as this article (menu items that go away and re-arrange themselves).
If you are a Linux fanboy, I'll just assume you think usability is a bug, not a feature.
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I had a helpdesk job when Windows and Office XP first came out. Adaptive menus and the ability to decide whether or not you want the sidebar and stuff like that makes providing tech support an absolute nightmare. I remember it taking me a week to figure out the best order of places to look when trying to get a caller to the network settings window.
In comparison, providing support to the Win98 users was a dream; it was
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So, you are right, it wouldn't be email support, but it would not be impossible to provide remote technical support, but it would have to be designed into the system from the ground up in order to really be w
Futuristic OS? (Score:5, Funny)
I have seen it, and it's called LCARS [lcarscom.net]
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But while I'm waiting, I think I'm going to invent warp drive. After all, what's a computer running LCARS if it's not on the fastest starships in the galaxy?
This is what I want in a future OS (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing about stuff like "all your base are belong to thin clients and remote servers" whenever someone mentions the future of OSes and that deeply disturbs me, especially the part about remote storage of data and subscription based access to remotely hosted apps. Forget morphing; I would prefer changing my OS settings as I please. In fact, give me OS the option where I can save my settings to a profile and then load up a profile to fit what I'm doing.
I'll pay more for having everything on my hard drive, under my control, without any need to phone home to authorize further usage of my media, software or OS. Unfortunately we the sheeple are being herded towards the digital corporate nanny state where the corporations decide what we'll get and these little heuristic tricks the OS of tomorrow will do for us, will give us the illusion that we have control.
Funny how it is that to get the kind of extra value I desire, I need to actually pay [redhat.com] less [debian.org]. Ok, so I'll purchase a support contract, does that count as "paying more"?
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You realize that perfectly good computers can be bought for around $300 new, and much less used? And that the electricity required to run them is a fairly negligible cost as well? Given that computing power is so outragously inexpensive these days, where is the incentive to use it more efficiently?
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See, you think that you'll be "held hostage" by some outside company that holds you at ransom for your data, and if you don't pay up, they string you up and cut you off.
I view the future a bit differently: more like a VM.
Imagine a future where you could (securely) get to "your" computer, from any location on the whole planet.
Imagine a future where you never have to worry about hardware failures, or backups.
Imagine a future where performance is auto
I think we'll see more specialized OSs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think we'll see more specialized OSs (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Users? Aren't those the guys who always need their passwords reset and profiles restored? It already morphed and adapted and became Windows. We have only ourselves to blame. In Soviet Russia OS does not adapt to users; users adapt to... Oh, wait.
The Scary OS? (Score:3, Funny)
Good ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
If those questions had answers, someone would already be writing the "OS of the future." Sadly, at least in present and near-future technological terms, those questions don't have answers, and so they'll remain in the world of hand waving prognostications about some techno-utopia.
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"I'm too lazy to customize my toolbar."
KFG
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Re:Good ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
You may as well talk about the OS of the future which just has a single button in the middle of the screen that says "do what I want". The gap between intention and action is bad enough, trying to model future intention based on past action is just asking for trouble.
Nothing to see here, move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
This article sounds like articles from 1990 about the house of 2015, you know, the ones talking about how saying "light" will turn light on, how you will check and reply to your video e-mails from your living room big screen TV well you know.. just like Back To the Future II.
My point is, I don't think you'll really see or even want a self deciding or modifying OS, even if the idea sounds cool. Mod me down for this if you want, but I think this whole article is just some nearly-worthless futuristic rambling, even if it's got some interesting ideas, don't pay attention.
Adaptation algorithm = boon for Spy agencies (Score:2, Insightful)
Adaptive OSes would be one step better since breaking into your specific "morphing" would reveal more intimate data about the way you think, the importance you place on specific topics based on the way you prioritize your email message accesses,etc. To some degree this is possible by cross referencing cookie data between big corporate sites who just love one another. But adaptation p
Interface, not OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, when people talk about OS X they are often referring to it's interface (Aqua), but an interface does NOT have to be integral to the OS.
Linux / X-Windows are the obvious example on Slashdot.
^BumP (Score:3, Informative)
You can find dozens of good (many bad) shells for Windows or *nix.
GUI != Operating System
Not too exciting. (Score:4, Interesting)
For the lazy, here's the description from the article about how the futuristic OS is going to work:
Now, I don't know about anybody else, but I would kind of expect that the video editing program would make the tools easily accessible the first time I use it, rather than waiting until I've spent a couple hours hunting through menus before doing so. And my e-mail program already has an option controlling whether it notifies me of new messages or not.
In a general sense, the idea of an adaptive OS sounds nice, but the author sure didn't come up with any examples that sound particularly compelling -- or even interesting -- to me. The hard part of coming up with a next-generation OS isn't in programming new features; it's actually inventing or designing something that people will find useful.
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phb shifting around paradigms again... (Score:2)
A next gen OS will probably be a virtualized-modular-scalable-secure-networking-in d exed- piece of software with a modular and stable-yet-clean api. Just look at the past and look at what servers are doing/have done. Its not hard to see the trends. What this means for end users is more capable software, more reliable
You've Got to Be Kidding Me (Score:2)
Not an OS (Score:2)
At best their "popular palette" system across apps is a windowing toolkit, only marginally part of the OS, and also possible in any current desktop OS, or in a shared app library.
What's such a dumb article so wrong about what an OS is doing in _OS Weekly_?
It'll never work (Score:2)
The sci-fi bend is more along the lines of A.I., which disturbs me. Not because I don't want my computer to take over the world, but the feeble-minded author seemed more excited about the prospect of needing to do less than he was about being able to do more.
Turning the computer inside out (Score:5, Interesting)
If some of these concepts sound familiar, it is because they are not new. Apple and IBM once talked about this in their Taliget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent) project which died. Unfortunately while we talk about technologies like OOP, they really haven't moved very much beyond languages. OSs are modular and even object-oriented to a degree, but they haven't quite arrived at the things I describe yet. Having the KDE libraries being object-oriented and manipulatable over RPC and DCOP is a step towards a possible document-centric future.
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what a visionary (Score:2)
It would have been better if the writer had actually analysed some of the things he spoke about and discussed them. I can sum up the article in one sentence using as much depth, research and intelligence as he did:
"In the future computers may be able to predict your work habits, but some people will use it for bad and stuff."
Good on ya mate.
Style over substance? (Score:2)
My OS of the near future will be secure and stable, the likes of which we can only dream about now. It will recover gracefully from hardware errors, it will use high-level APIs to talk to all hardware making drivers a thing of the past, it will put large parts of itself
The Future OS isn't an OS, really... (Score:4, Interesting)
Your applications provide (or are provided with) enough OS foundation to function in the limited virtual machine they live in.
The Hypervisor manages the hardware, inter-application communication, networking for each, and of course picking up the trash and keeping everything polite.
Apps only see the shared resources the Hypervisor permits.
But most important, two features:
- Each app gets the OS features it needs. My word processor may not need the same things the database needs, nor the e-mail app, nor the music player. So the OS for each app is lighter and nimbler.
- Each app is restricted in how it interacts with other apps. No more OLE, DDE, much less opportunity for the backdoor/under the hood shenanigans we call worms, viruses, trojans, and 'badware' (ick, stupid name).
I saw an article describing this and promptly lost any way to find the FRAKKING ARTICLE! Did anyone else, and where the heck is it? I thought it was *here*, on
Grrrrr....
But I love the idea. It ain't really new, but it's clever.
rick
What I would like out of an OS... (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Stable.
3. Efficient.
4. Intuitive.
Some time ago, I worked on a friend's computer that was running Windows 95 on a Pentium 166. I was astounded at how fast and responsive it was. Windows XP on an A64/P4 barely keeps up, yet offers very little more to me in terms of usefulness. Neither Windows, MacOS, nor XWindows particularly fits #4, at least not for me.
I will say, in terms of scalability, XWindows is a *real* screamer on a quad-Opteron with 8 gigs of RAM and a nice, fast SCSI array.
steve
Virtual Machines (Score:2)
If I start working a novel task, one that I've never done before, I'd hate to have to 'teach' my OS how to behave.
Many people I know already customize their OS for the task they are doing.
The easiest way is to just create several user accounts or desktops, each of which runs different 'background' applications. My gaming logon in windows runs very few services, keeping the system as lean as possible , whereas m
A new kind of Girlfriend (Score:4, Funny)
You go to resume your game again after the coke and almost immediately, you find that the your girlfriend seems more quiet and responsive to your needs. Out in the kitchen, she is out there preparing a virtual smorgasboard of all the food and drink you need the most. No longer are you being forced to locate old cheese snacks from some resealable container. No, instead your girlfriend has done the work for you with no interaction on your part whatsoever. Sounds interesting? Just wait, it gets weirder
During the course of your gaming, your girlfriend has already learned from previous experiences that you do not like to be bothered with request for attention when working on specific missions. It's not so much the game being used mind you, rather the type of "work" being done at the time.
An important sms from your brother with his score comes in along with a number of less important family messages. Thanks to Brandy X's new attitide, the only sms you are alerted to is the one your girlfriend knows will be critical. Even though the other less important sms are coming from the same person, your girlfriend understands how to respond for you, just the way you prefer.
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Kai Krause tried this once (Score:4, Interesting)
Kai Krause [wikipedia.org] tried something like that once, in "Kai's Power Tools". The interface started out simple, and as you used it, when the software decided you were good enough, you advanced to the next level and more tools appeared. This was one of the first programs to have really cool functional widgets, like draggable on-screen trackballs and joysticks.
Users hated it. The cool user interface just got in the way of getting work done. At one point, a rumor started that Kai was going to redesign Photoshop's interface, and there were organized protests to Adobe.
But his programs looked so cool.
Part of the problem was that Kai was addressing a very hard problem - the user interface for a drawing program. The MacOS X toolbar looks like a Kai interface. But that tool bar is really just a menu. Serious drawing programs, from AutoCAD to Maya, have to offer so many different yet interacting capabilities to the user that they're terrifyingly hard. A full-scale 3D animation program is about as hard as an interface gets. There before you is the ability to create a synthetic world. Animation programs struggle to provide all the needed tools without overwhelming the user.
There's also the issue in that world that working artists want quite a different set of capabilities than amateurs do. Artists seldom edit freehand-drawn lines. They delete them and sketch new ones; they don't drag spline control points. An experienced animator creating a human head in a 3D animation system won't build it up one polygon at a time, or start pulling on an ellipsoid. They may draw a series of cross-sections and skin them. I've seen this done in less than a minute. So the needed tools may be quire different from what a programmer would imagine.
Dave? (Score:2)
Another fatuous article assuming strong AI (Score:2)
A related problem is that few OS's and applications
The email example is doable today (Score:2)
But, as you say, there is no reason th
My OS will learn from past mistakes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My OS will learn from past mistakes (Score:5, Funny)
A review of your web browsing history reveals a preference towards redheads. For your convinence, the following actions have been completed:
- Your desktop background has changed
- Your password has been changed from "brittany" to "lindsey"
- Your Match.Com Profile has been updated
- Your wife has been alerted
- NetFlix has confirmed shipment of "Porn Wars 3: Revenge of the Angry Redheads"
Thank you,
NewOS
BSD, here and now (Score:2)
Then, it's a-la-carte land where you get to select what apps you wanted, what options of the apps you don't want, what multiple versions of apps you want at the same time, flip around kernel options, and update it all from CVS at anytime while keeping your own modified sources of something.
Build and install without worrying about dependencies. No frozen precompiled distros, no fumbling around RPM hel
Blah blah ... (Score:2)
Hey, I'm Slashdot user 1484. I have a waiver that lets me be a curmudgeon whenever I please, which is pretty much all the time.
voice recognition (Score:2)
English Translation of Article (Score:2)
"We would like an OS that has the following characteristics:
The problems with this (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I'm not saying that this isn't an improvement. However, I am saying that as the number of options pertaining to a particular decision grows it becomes harder fo
clippy (Score:2)
Unless the AI really is that super, how annoying.
If anybody read far enough though, the real point of the article is that if this is ever achieved, it could really be quite scary -
"So before too many of us become overly excited about the prospect of having a PC that totally anticipate our every whim, we ought to consider the consequences of such ability. I don't think there is any question whatsoever that en
What's yours.. (Score:2)
What is your dream operating system?
Personally, I want a computer that can respond to voice commands. Not just through microphone but also through the cellphone from a remote location. I could tell the computer to turn house lights on from block away or download lastest
Voice Activated Computer w/ Remote Control.