A Free XML-Based Operating System 175
Dotnaught writes "For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser and promises radically reduced development time. To provide developers with an incentive to write for the platform, Xcerion's back-end system is designed to route revenue, either from subscription fees or from ads served to users of free programs, to application authors. Think of it as Google AdSense, except for programmers rather than publishers. Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"
Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Let this be the thread for all "So what?" posts, please.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stop posting stories like this damnit, I'm looking at you Zonk!
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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GUI = OS.
They should try text mode unix.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
UNIX shell = OS.
Seriously though, UIs are not OSs. The UNIX text-based command interpreters are not operating systems any more than this is, so I don't really see your point. UNIX is an OS. "M$ windoze", or as I prefer to call it, Microsoft Windows, is an OS. I really don't see how using one over the other will magically educate users about computer science vocabulary.
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He probably wasn't saying that the unix shell is any mo
My Data on someone elses's computer (Score:2)
My documents on someone else's computer.
My documents at the mercy of someone else's employee.
No Physical Security.
Didn't pay your data rent this month? No resume for you!
"Sorry we had an employee who was acting badly, he sold your
'checkbook database' to the highest bidder"
Stupid, but not entirely useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a 'trend' running amock that inflicts people with this odd kind of insanity. Apparently they want a Visio like UI to build networks and virtual farms with.
Anything that gets released that helps keep track of containers with meaningful text descriptors in containers that hav
Not an 'Operating System' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:5, Funny)
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So where does emacs fit in there?
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>> No, it's an OS on top of an OS (your webbrowser) on top of an OS (your uhm OS).
> So where does emacs fit in there?
emacs runs them all?
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If it NEEDS AN OS TO RUN, it is not an OS!
-uso.
Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:5, Informative)
* Is LinuxBIOS an OS?
No, it is a set of routines to configure a machine before handing full hardware control to a real OS (note BIOS is Basic Input/Output System). Also note that in DOS the BIOS formed part of the OS.
* Is OpenFirmware an OS? Mac OS X needs it to run.
Sounds like it is part of the OS then, not an OS in it's own right. An OS can comprise of hardware and software components.
* Is the BIOS in a Lenovo-compatible[1] PC an OS? (Some have alleged that the added complexity compared to 1981 IBM PC BIOS makes it a Built-In Operating System.)
This is the same as your first question.
* Is the microcode in your PC's CPU an OS? BIOS needs it to run.
No. This is firmware for the processor. Of course your OS needs your processor to work in order to run.
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When you have a DOS machine (or even a Commodore 64), there was a clear distinction between the OS (what was resident in memory before the program you really want to use was even loaded), and everything else.
As you start layering things on top of that, and also building programs that critically depend on those higher layers, it becomes impossible to draw a binary line between "OS" a
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Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:4, Interesting)
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
Au Contraire -- Sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, it's not that long ago that Google was just two guys doodling on scrap paper.
A few problems have to be overcome including internet latency and the tendancy of everyone to cache stuff they should not be putting in caches (If your PC's memory cache worked like Internet caches do, you'd be lucky to get a Solitaire hand dealt before the PC crashed.)
And I doubt this is a threat to Google because they will do the same thing it if it works out.
My impression is that what's good about this specific scheme is that only data is sent over the network, so the annoying latency issues many of us have with Google spreadsheets and Writely should be less of a problem.
What's bad is that the data is stored on someone's servers. Security will be an issue. So will availability. And loss of data. And ...
Another problem is that networked "OS"es may not be acceptable for a lot of users because they are just plain too damn slow. A few years ago I slapped together a networked application running on a server here at home for keeping notes together. Worked, sorta. But even though I owned the network and the application was built into server code, not run via CGI, it was too slow to be usable. The problem looked to be latency, not slow processing.
The few serious attempts I've seen at using HTTP/browsers to do real jobs varied from awful to marginal. IMHO even things like SAIL suck. I'd rather update the /etc files directly. Hell, even ed/EDLINE would be faster and more satisfactory.
Maybe the problems can be overcome with brains, technology, and money. Maybe they can't.
Back on topic. Is this stuff a threat to Microsoft? You just bet it is. MS makes most of its money off OK, but overpriced, products that do way more than most customers need (Exception--Xbox which may eventually be a real, money making operation with a bright future). Furthermore, adding more features and charging more for new versions of Windows/Office is probably an unsustainable strategy. We're already seeing geeks and a few organizations walking away from Microsoft. I think that is only going to become more common and some of them may well go to schemes like this.
Re:Au Contraire -- Sort of (Score:4, Informative)
Google is already doing something in this vein... They have Google Apps [google.com], which can tie into your enterprise systems and offers your mobile workforce word processing and spreadsheets, email, IM, a start page with RSS--it isn't an operating system, not remotely, but the idea is that it represents an integrated, comprehensive application environment for our students to embrace from home, campus, or the Australian outback.
XIOS isn't really an OS, I certainly agree. But they're hardly unique. They're presenting an integrated suite of applications with an extensible API, sort of like what Google is doing. And really, it doesn't need to be an OS to make it useful and usable.
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I visited my parents recently. They live in the Australia outback. Their internet connection was 33k dialup, and that's all that was commercially available to them. Believe me, even checking a gmail account was slow and painful, let alone writing replies in an environment where you lose everything if the connection dropped (which it did with annoying regularity).
Re:Firefox offline cache for offline Web app acces (Score:2)
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Don't people use C anymore?
command line (Score:5, Funny)
<command><command-name>grep</command-name><args><
Bad XML (Score:5, Informative)
Still not short enough for me though. XML is OK for interchange, but it sucks as a human-readable markup language, even when used with forethought.
Furthermore, I'm not sure it makes ANY sense to have commands in XML. That's what programming languages are for -- it's the one thing they excel at. What's wrong with cmd(argname="val") or cmd(arg1, { a, b, c="10" })? It's complex to parse, sure, but that's why you make a parser once -- the point is, it IS parseable, without a human correcting the syntax before the computer can understand it.
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XML is OK for interchange ...
I don't agree. I think XML is pretty sucky for interchange. JSON [wikipedia.org] or YAML [wikipedia.org] are much better (and more compact) data encodings than XML.
It's looking like JSON is becoming its own industry [google.com] standard [yahoo.com].
And, of course, JSON and YAML are almost the same thing [hobix.com].
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Still not short enough for me though. [...] Furthermore, I'm not sure it makes ANY sense to have commands in XML.
I bet you'll find this article at least a little bit interesting; http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html [defmacro.org]
Actually, the very first thought I had after the first sentence of the summary was that Lisp would be a much better match than XML for something like this. The moment you try to treat code as data, you can be sure Lisp is what you want, although I believe Rebol (http://www.rebol.com [rebol.com]
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<commandline><command><executable><shellpath>grep<
This way, not only are you prepared for handling commands that are not defined by simple e
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--
Evan
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That's nothing.
Add a requirement for path statements to be defined with a prefixed combination of alphanumerics, colons and escape characters, throw in some voodoo quoting mechanisms, require a regedit for tab command-completion, etc., implement everything (the documentation, included) on an ad hoc basis while dismis
Ahhh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ahhh. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm already developing a XML parser on this new platform.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't see these guys as a threat to anyone except themselves and their investors.
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http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww
Yahoo!'s main page doesn't validate, either:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww
Unexpectedly, MSN's front page is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww
Google has its reasons (Score:2)
It seems to me like the front page is the minimal amount of bytes that will make the page render correctly in all major browsers, without any regard for standards compliance.
...Wow. (Score:2)
I just glanced at their homepage and just about puked. I'm making a list:
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Validation for the website (Score:5, Interesting)
Those guys can't even put down proper HTML, I'm not sure i'd trust them to write a whole web-based "OS" in XML
Re:Validation for the website (Score:4, Informative)
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So maybe this is an "operating system that runs on any computer (that runs Internet Explorer (that runs Microsoft Windows))".
Re:Validation for the website (Score:4, Insightful)
In their defense:
That said, if I were these guys, I'd fix the HTML.
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Not faulting Google. Fact is their web page is minimal and they deliver a usable search page on every browser, I've ever tried which is no small accomplishment. However, I'm not sure whether they understand standards but think other things are more important -- or whether they just h
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I don't care who made the site, if you're writing an "OS" (or if you claim to be even if you're not) then you at least check the most popular browsers on existing operating systems.
Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you wanna do something in this "internet OS" you'll fullscreen your $179 copy of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, and fire up an app which probably uses some Google API internally. World changing? Or just another layer between you and them that serves yet more adverts?
Re:Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and brow (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably becuase that OS could be Ubuntu, and that browser could be Firefox. Or OSX/Safari, or Suse/Konqueror, or.....
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OK, but it's still an OS inside another OS inside...
It all sounds like a spot on a lump on a log in a whole in the bottom of the sea.
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Not until their own webpage fails the validation checks.
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Why require a browser (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why require a browser (Score:5, Insightful)
- Installed on most machines by default (many policies prohibit the installation of new s/w)
- Has the capability to be extended to provided an OS-like environment.
Balls! (Score:1, Insightful)
What a web browser provides is a convenient way to do a GUI. We could hook common layout engines to different software entirely - and this would make more sense than current hacks atop HTTP **cough** AJAX **cough**
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So you go up to the airport kiosk, install these platforms (which takes a few hours since you have to hack in first to get admin access and download speed is molasses slow). Then you're good to go. Easy.
Second, there are work arounds for incompatible browsers. Namely, you create low level libraries for each browser so that everything delivers a base level of functionality. For example, these guys, Team Tibet [technicalpursuit.com] did just that. They created a library that enables smalltalk-style object oriented programming for
system requirements (Score:2)
Why do I need an operating system to run an operating system?
Oh... you mean it's nothing more than an application framework (just like the millions of others around there).
Stack Dump (Score:3, Funny)
XIOS
Would you like to send an error report to Microsoft?
Send Don't Send
Front Page (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, it's like they snuck into Slashdot's secret headquarters and stole the root password... to our hearts!
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And look, they even trademarked "Software should be free". How kind of them.
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Try Creating An Account There...AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (Score:1)
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I've got another idea (Score:4, Funny)
This way we would live in the best of the worlds, would we not?
Moreover, this would threaten Google, Microsoft and the great scientific publishers.
Actually, we could make it work on top of an emacs session. Pity that you need another OS to run emacs, but
**it is emacs**, you know! and TeX, of course.
Anyone joining the project?
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People joke
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XML People are still using that? (Score:2)
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- Beats designing/implementing a custom format/API to manipulate every different type of text based data file
- Easy to extend XML-based schemas in backwards compatible way
- Cross platform
- Cross language
- Extensive tool support
- Supported by browsers (parser, xslt)
I agree that the standard parsers are crap - horrible APIs - so I did write my own, including a higher level table based API for reading/writing C/C++ data structures to/from
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XML People are still using that?
For a while it was this huge buzzword about the wonders of XML. Then when people look into it they realize it is not a programming language or scripting or formatting language....
Oddly enough I have never found an XML Parser that I am happy with either...
XML usage is increasing remarkably.
I myself am very happy with Firefox, which is built on XUL, which is the XML User Interface Language and does a really nice job of parsing XUL. I'm also quite happy with many of the XUL extensions to Firefox. I expect to be writing some frontends for customized web stuff in XUL by the end of the year (currently in the process of migrating from the MS world to Linux (WinXP to Kubuntu— very slick!))
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How To Tell Someone Hasn't Seen Lisp, Lesson #1.
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not an os (Score:2)
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Let's be fair to them. They may have implemented a virtual machine environment and produced an operating system that runs on it.
It doesn't sound likely to me, but if they have, this would count IMO as an operating system.
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AffinityGO (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a link to their freebie one.
http://affinitygofree.com/ [affinitygofree.com]
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XML for OS configuration? (Score:1)
Sorry to be rude - but dictionary time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Parent post and a lot of other comments are taking this "OS" thing much too literally.
When my OS calls a chunk of static ram on a USB port a hard drive, that's a good thing. When I can tell my OS to treat a file as if it were a printing device, that's a good thing. When I can redirect output from a perl filter to either a file or the screen or the printer or a serial output device, then that's a good thing. When I can have my OS host another OS in a virtual machine, that's a good thing.
Virtualization is a good thing. Having a virtual OS running within a browser is conceptually little different from using any of the established VMs.
What's an OS? (Score:1)
This OS is just as much as Windows 3.1 was an OS - a graphical environment maybe, but not an OS as I still need Windows, Linux, MacOS or BeOS installed on my HDD to get on the web or to open a file.
Real OSs have failed... (Score:2)
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Its not a whole OS, but the browser is more an more replacing the whole higher level of an OS, i.e. GUI stuff, file handling, text search, etc.
### What archaic piece of junk are you running anyway? Hard to clone? Setting aside the fact that the "dd" utility has been around for eons,
dd, yeah, great, and that solves the problem of different hardware exactly how, different partition sizes, etc? How can I use it to just copy a single application? Answer: I can't. dd is nothing more t
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The problem is there are only three OSs that are usable, Windows, MacOSX and all that Unix stuff (Linux, BSD, etc.). All the academic OS indeed provide a lot of cool features, they however also lack a ton of stuff that people expect for there daily work. And also trying a new OS is hard, almost impossible for a casual user, whi
Its an OS? (Score:2)
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After the MS court case it's new meaning is anything that could in theory run Netscape Navigator but doesn't.
Violence (Score:3)
don't think so (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, we have an OS-independent XML-based layer, and it's called xulrunner (Firefox, Mozilla, and Thunderbird are popular applications written in it). It's getting a more powerful language with JIT support soon (ECMAScript 2.0).
Microsoft has already caught on an has been trying to develop their own, proprietary alternative, though they aren't as far along.
There are also some other attempts at this with slightly different perspectives on the same problem, like Konfabulator, Dashboard, Java, and
Not even worth mentioning (Score:4, Insightful)
There are some points about RIAs one should learn as fast as possible to avoid wasting everybodys time:
1) JavaScript is nothing new. It's been around for something like 10 years. DTML/Push-Pull JavaScript/Ajax/[Fill in own buzzword of choice] is nothing new. Many people have tried it, many have given up and even the best in 'Ajax' have stepped down again from using it in anything but the most tried and true situations and use cases.
2) RIA is nothing new. Plugins are nothing new. There are entire landfills full of potential competitors to Flash and Java. Most of them failed. A few remain in niches where others can't reach. The only one I would care to mention is curl [curl.com], and they are having a hard time and only manage by patiently working away at their tool for x-plattform RIAs.
3) The big boys Adobemedia / Sun / IBM and some promising others are currently involved in a giant hack & slay fest over the best and most prevailent rich client / server integration. Joining them with some obscure cross-funded project with bad buzzwords, a crappy website and nothing to deliver than something worse than the most half-assed Ajax kit is like showing up on a Knights tournament riding an aged donkey, armed with a cardboard kiddie helmet, a broomstick and a toothpick.
4) 'We will revolutionize
Bottom line:
This isn't news and it's not the bits worth it takes to transmit it. Move on. No one needs yet another bunch of silly goofs who try and tell the users/clients that they've discovered something new and everything will change if only you run with their buzzword ridden half-assed vision of an untested product that apes things others have finished years ago - and people don't know about for a reason.
Irony (Score:4, Funny)
Their tagline is "Software should be free"
Which they've trademarked...
A Shell is Not an OS (Score:2)
This sounds like a shell to me. You can use a browser as a shell. That's essentially what MS did when it incorporated IE into the OS. At least, they re-use a lot of browser components. It's probably trivial to write a shell for Windows that uses IE itself. Haven't Gnome and others done similar browser-based shells?
Anyway, I'm usually not into pedantry, but these people really need to learn the difference between an OS and a shell. An OS, among other things, provides a layer between hardware and soft