Operating Systems Are Irrelevant 811
zincks writes "David Gelernter (Yale Professor of Computer Science, and Unabomber target) has a
story in the NY Times which states, (1) Operating systems are relics of the past, (2) We should be able to access data anytime/anywhere, by (3) seeing a stream of 3D documents(?), so (4) he's written such
software, and (5) that's all you should care about so it doesn't matter that it runs under windows.
This is a fantastic (definition: based on fantasy : not real (?)) vision of the future by a premier technologist."
Sounds kinda like X (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, an interface that is completely independant from the underlying OS, network, etc, etc. I think I may have heard of that before. What's that? In 1986??? Oh yeah.
Re:Sounds kinda like X (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait. That was the World Wide Web. Never mind.
Re:Sounds kinda like X (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds kinda like X (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds kinda like XML (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh... paper. (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, there's almost no smell as comforting to the soul as the smell of an old book.
Re:Oh... paper. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a Miss America Pageant on crack (Score:5, Funny)
Contestant 1: I would make world peace, and we can all frolic like little bunnies and everyone will be happy!
Host:What a great a great answer! Contestant 2, what would you do?
Contestant 2, who looks surprisingly like David Gelernter:I would make an OS, except it's not an OS, it's a magical OS that runs the same everywhere, and can read all data, and somehow convinces asshole companies to do away with proprietary file formats. So it's like Java, and XML all together, and kind of like that browser OS based on Mozilla too. Oh, and it won't be slower than dookie. I promise.
Host:Christ, and I thought "World Peace" was a dipshit answer.
Re:Sounds like a Miss America Pageant on crack (Score:4, Funny)
David(all spaced out): Let me tell you a story, a story about your life and the intangible web that connects you to every part of your life. But first, Sister Moonbeam, would you please serve the stuffed shrooms brother Bill gave to us? When you want to make a call, your soul will astral project into a substream of conciousness containing the number of everyone you've ever met, ever will, and some you won't ever meet. This is not a phone book, but a new pardigim for data recall.
If only the Times asked for full disclosure. Hmmmm.
Re:Sounds kinda like X (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot?
He's proposing a semi-metaphorless UI (Score:3, Insightful)
P.S. Linux rules ya mutha! (sorry, couldn't help myself...)
Re:Sounds kinda like X (Score:3, Interesting)
I call big BS on that one. The limitations of PC hardware and the Windows operating systems ARE relevant, and as long as I can't write to a floppy drive and listen to an MP3 at the same time, or the machine's default network sharing and mail systems leave me ripe for butt rape by script kiddies, I certainly won't be running this vision of the future.
Really irrelevant? (Score:4, Funny)
Even when the OS of the server is taken down by the Slashdot effect?
Re:Really irrelevant? (Score:4, Funny)
Jouster
From the article (Score:5, Funny)
It's a joke, isn't it?
Re:From the article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:From the article (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline for the article does not make sense because the body of the article clearly states that the OS *does* matter and that OS should be Windows! Did we miss that?
His argument is that Microsoft has won. Give them your money and allow them to do what they wish to your PC, just use this guy's document management system to view content -- which, if you did not notice, requires that you run *all* MS software (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.)!
What a crock! Who the hell needs this *individual's* document management system if we are all supposed to use MS software? We would already have a universal system by virtue of *everyone* running the same software!
This guy is just trying to make money the easiest way he can.
Re:From the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Lets look at the story submission text:
* Yale Professor of Computer Science
Yup, Yale sure is CS central
* Unabomber target
This is his selling point for himself?
* Operating systems are relics of the past
subtext: No, I didn't just rip off Gosling's old speeches that failed to come true...
* We should be able to access data anytime/anywhere
This is such a fricking overused and pointless buzzphrase in the tech world that it's ridiculous. It's like a politician's "what about the children".
* seeing a stream of 3D documents
Yeah, everything gets better when it's 3d. Uh, huh. Very 90s.
The man is obviously an ass. Given the "irrelevant OS" and "3D documents" crap, it sounds like he harvested a bunch of random mid 90s research papers.
Re:From the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, your sarcastic comment about Yale being "CS central" is way off mark. It's not a top-tier school (I think they're ranked in the 20s or so for graduate school), but it is a strong program and they have several really good people there.
I don't agree with what he's saying, either, but that doesn't make him an ass. If you want to make a fair analysis of his research, you should maybe check out one of his research papers at citeseer.
Re:From the article (Score:3, Insightful)
> OS" and "3D documents" crap, it sounds like he
> harvested a bunch of random mid 90s research papers.
I agree completely. This is just more "the network is the computer" snake oil, repackaged in a "you're not cool unless you agree with me, if you're cool you'll 'get' what I'm saying" kind of rap. If I remember correctly, Sun tried this line of BS for years, and everyone -- I mean everyone -- basically laughed them back to their senses.
Here are my problems with this Gelertner guy's ideas:
1. First, he pins a large part of his argument on the idea that hierarchial data storage (i.e. directories and files) is somehow antiquated, silly, and inefficient. However, a couple of hundreds of years of information processing using increasingly refined methods (first using paper, pen and ink and then, in this century, increasingly automated means) has demonstrated the power and effectiveness of the paradigm. One could point out that the WIMP interface and the filesystem/directory/file paradigm represent the highest expression of human organization of information. One might also point out that SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO the Sumerians were using a similar system to record transactions using cuneiform and clay tablets. Virtually every single human information processing system since then has incorporated the basic idea of a document (scroll, folio, parchment, clay slab) stored in a bin (basket, crate, locker, book, file cabinet). And, all of these methods were in some way hierarchial.
One can even make a case that the "file cabinet" paradigm duplicates internal, instinctual human methods for organizing ideas. Consider: we think of things in sets and subsets, don't we? A baseball is a type of ball, which is a type of sphere, which is a three dimensional shape, and so on... But you see what I mean.
2. Let's consider his basic idea: organizing documents and files on a timeline rather than a hierarchial system. So, you'll go into his 3-D viewer, and zip backwards and forwards in "time" to see documents and files you've got stored. Now, you have to remember WHEN you've created a document rather than what it's about. How is this supposed to help you locate information? There's no way around it; he is going to HAVE to provide some sort of hierarchial organization or his system will be completely useless.
Again, humans think about information in terms of sets and subsets, and we understand new information in terms of information we already have -- placing it in directories in our heads, in a way. Building a system that works differently will make it unpleasant for humans to use, and eventually, human-type modifications will be made leading back to the current paradigm.
He could incorporate a database which would let us look for related information, but this still wouldn't be as good as a hierarchial structure, because it wouldn't let us get a "top-down" view of our data, drilling down by layer. We'd be limited to the searches we're capable of formulating. See what I mean? If he tried to beat this by creating broad category based searches, he would eventually end up with something very similar to the dreaded directory and file approach, albeit in a virtual, database-ish form. In my view it's inescapable. It keeps coming back to the way in which we think.
3. FINALLY, getting back to the "the network is the computer" problem, people just don't want to have their data on some remote server where they can potentially get locked out of it. NO ONE is going to buy into this sort of thing. People want strong, general-purpose computers which STILL WORK if the cable goes out or they forgot to pay their bill that month. They're just not going to enjoy the dependence on remote data stores Mr. Gelertner thinks they will.
Anyway, this is just my opinion. But I think his ideas are a bunch of hooey.
Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Changed a bit (Score:5, Informative)
Its just like Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Linux has some far fetched idea about completely tossing Windows out of the desktop.
Funny, eh?
Re:Changed a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that files will eventually go the way of punchcards. A file is just a spot on disk you can write to. When it comes to real data, nobody really keeps data in files anymore. It's all in databases. A file doesn't give you transactions, concurrency protection, or easy backup through replication. A database gives all this and more.
One of the things that we can curse microsoft for is giving a bad name to an operating system (Windows) with an integrated database (the Registry). The Registry is a horrid implementation of a rather good idea.
Re:Changed a bit (Score:5, Interesting)
You want to make a centralized database *cache* a la the MacOS desktop file, go for it. I don't like the idea of having a single, nontransferable crucial chunk of data that's a single point of failure. It's idiotic that you can't simply copy an installed application on Windows to another computer.
Re:Changed a bit (Score:3, Informative)
You mean he's invented grep?! Hooray!
I read something by Reiser of ReiserFS on a relational database/keyword search method of organizing files. I liked it more and I think it was more realistic about the actual necessity of keeping the traditional file system intact, if only visible to applications and the OS.
Which you're of course always going to have -- an OS is just the thing that manages access to hardware and provides an abstraction for that hardware.
Re:Changed a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
Think beyond files and cli. Think about having a bunch of things that have relations, ideas and what not that can be search on. Yes, grep might come into play on the lowlevel, but i'm sorry, my mom won't ever know grep.
Re:Changed a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps this can be rephrased. What are files, and how do you interact with them? This is what makes the Reiserfs filesystem [namesys.com] so interesting. They are thinking about these kinds of issues in unconventional ways. Reiserfs is not just another journaling filesystem. Moreover, Hans Reiser is subjecting his ideas to the test of reality by producing tangeable testable results.
Re:Changed a bit (Score:4, Interesting)
I just wish hardlinking had some means of following the reference bidirectionally, so that given a file the system could efficiently tell me all the linked names it has. Right now the only way to do that is to scan the whole filesystem for other filenames pointing at the same inode number, and THAT is horribly inefficient.
Typing with a Power Glove (Score:4, Funny)
Good ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
His views were more geared on less file based, PIM and document stuff, but more idea based. If you have your resume, it's not a document, but your resume. Your phone numbers aren't in an organizer, but are phone numbers belonging to people, which aren't in an organizer either.
If you needed to find stuff, you hprolly would have a very simple interface. Sounds like some sorta OOP OS and Enviroment. Kinda interesting.
Re:Good ideas (Score:3, Informative)
You mean, like OS/2? [ibm.com] What you described is exactly what IBM said users would be able to do with OS/2, and was basically true depending on what applications you used.p>
Re:Good ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
The OS is obsolete/irrelevant?? No, perhaps current OS design is, but an OS will never be. The engine in my car is just as irrelevant. I don't care about cam shafts and camber, I just want to get from point A to point B. But navigation software with GPS is still useless without my car and its motor.
His concept is tired. The Natrifical Brain http://www.thebrain.com has been out forever and sounds better than his 3D narritive and focusing a "beam of information" on pages moving down a timeline. Honestly, when looking for your resume do you say, "Hmmm, I last updated that in 2001, right after I got all of those e-mails about purchasing Viagra." Not me, I look for resume.pdf.
His later points (which seemed a bit OT) about Microsoft has won, they do great stuff, Linux is cool, but we already have Windows(?), is laughable. He comments "There is no technical reason to move to linux." This shows that he really does not understand the pitfalls of the windows platform and does not appreciate how poor OS and application development has created the situation that he now so loudly decries.
Why should I need to read my e-mail one place, my calendar another, and my spreadsheets in yet another?? This is the question he is trying to answer. How does *nix store mail?? Plain text. Log files?? Plain text. My latest novel?? Plain text. And on and on and on. None of my information is in a file format that cannot be read by grep, parsed by perl, etc...
Also, the author says nothing about the CLI. The CLI is going to be sooooo important in the next wave of computing... The CLI is how you issue terse one-off commands to the computer. The over GUI'ed would of Microsoft and Apple are the relics. When we have a shell that can understand structured english, and an input device that makes entering/saying these commmands easy (keyboard is good enough IMHO), well....
Example:
You are looking for a quote from Bobby Kennedy. You know it is on your HDD somewhere. Do you, Click start -> Find -> Files and folders, click the advanced tab, click the radio button that says you would like to search for files containing, click a drop down to say you want to search in the data folder, click a box and tell it the text to search for is "RFK", or type find -d C:\Data -t "RFK".
Microsoft BOB was supposed to be a good idea too. Fast Find was supposed to work (doesn't). Finding text within an open document is still terrible.
Final note:
If his comments "over the decade of Microsoft's hegemony, computing power has grown cheaper and cheaper. Innovation has thrived. Our software is innovative; it has not been suppressed." Wait so the hardware has gotten better and cheaper, Innovation has thrived, but we are still working with "Relics" in the "Mouldy Basement of Computing" with an OS ~2,000 Tech years old. Yep sounds innovative.
"but Longhorn won't be available for two years. We needed one-screen narrative information management yesterday. Our software is up and running today." Yep, sounds innovative. And I do believe that your browser is capable of one screen narritive information management via XML and XSLT.
No our computers should not behave like a steelcase file cabinet, but it shouldn't behave like a FIFO stack of papers and notes strewn all over the floor either. "Where's the 1996 accounting report??" "Hmmm, check about an inch and a half up from the bottom of the stack of papers over there." Mine eyes behold efficiency.
~Hammy
Very Idealistic (Score:5, Insightful)
OR, is it relevant after all? Lets see in Germany I would get a sports car, Switzerland big luxury, Canada SUV because of the snow, Southern France Convertible,
My point is that while we do not make a big deal of the road or conditions, it does influence our buying decisions. And saying that it is irrelevant is just a pipedream...
Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's still good that he's doing it.
Someone has to question how things can be made better. Perhaps the worst thing about Microsoft is that the Windows desktop has pretty much stopped that questioning. This works in two ways, by Microsoft deliberately squashing competition and by people getting too comfortable inside the MS box. (including GNOME and KDE)
Nor is it an adequate argument that the Windows interface (even as embodied by GNOME and KDE alternatives) is "good enough" just like the steering wheels and clutch/brake/gas pedals of a car.
Back in the early-mid 90's there was a company trying to introduce Pen Computing - flat screens operated by a stylus. (I think the company may have been Go, but I'm not sure.) They were put under by a piece of vaporware called, "Pen for Windows" that never materialized, at least not until that Microsoft Innovation in the past month of Tablet-XP. (or whatever it was reported as on
Re:Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I really disagree with that statement. It was the market that decided that pen computing wasn't ready when the Apple Newton was around. Later the smaller and cheaper Palm Pilot took the market by storm.
My point is: the Newton was not unsucessful because Microsoft did anything to kill it. Palm was sucessful without any help from Microsoft. Microsoft is not the technological super-being who dictates who survives and who fails in the market. Some of Microsoft's own "innovations" have failed quite spectacularly, Microsoft Bob anyone?
Addmitedly, Microsoft has the significant advantage of having an awful lot of money and commanding quite a bit of media attention whenever it does anything. Will this be enough to make notebook sized pen computing sucessful? Only time will tell. But blaming the failure of a particular item, this "Pen for Windows" which you lack any details about, on Microsoft, instead of on the people who failed to develop it well, or market it properly is just senseless MS-bashing.
-Spyky
Re:Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:5, Informative)
I do blame them for the failure of Go! (If that was their name) Back at the time, I was in the OS/2 crowd, and the failure of Go! was a well-talked-about 'example' of the Microsoft way of competing. Basically, they were working to bring a pen-based product to market. Microsoft preemptively announced, "Pen for Windows" and Go! lost their funding as a result. Maybe they would have failed inthe market, but they never got the chance.
As for "Microsoft is not the technological super-being..." Back in the 90's when Venture Capital was flowing, the key question for software startups was, "What is your Microsoft strategy?" There were companies started with the goal of eventually being bought out by Microsoft. (This information was from business/trade/news magazines at the time.) So maybe they're not the super-being, but they do have paranormal market powers that may not always be beneficial.
Re:Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:4, Informative)
Startup
by Jerry Kaplan
Kaplan had the idea for pen computing and founded GO to pursue the dream. The book is based on his personal diary and gives a pretty good view of starting a company, seeking capital, expansion, and ultimately failing. (And this was a good idea, not a dot.com) You get to see some nasty moves by a number of the other players, including Microsoft, Apple, and (I believe) Intel, among others.
I highly recommend the book!
Re:Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:3, Funny)
I blame Leibniz.
Re:Maybe it is Re:Very Idealistic (Score:5, Informative)
Go already had shipping product but corporate interest and, more importantly, sales waned rapidly *after* the MS announcements. Go died just as it was releasing its strongest platform yet.
This was MS at its peak "best" during its heyday. With the new "laissez faire" ruling, MS is probably now going to have a revival.
Go had some very interesting technology (OS, multilingual handwriting recognition, hardware) which was eventually lost in a corporate buyout by AT&T (where it then was sold to some Asian (Korean?) firm where it stagnated and died as far as I know).
Go is probably one of the most prominent examples of MS FUD destroying innovation (though there are plenty others).
Contradiction? (Score:5, Funny)
[snip]
(4) he's written such software, and (5) that's all you should care about so it doesn't matter that it runs under windows.
So every operating system but Windows is a relic of the past? I'll second the description of this as 'fantasy'.
(The NY Times site seems rather unresponsive at the moment...)
Misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, that article is just an advertisement. I'm surprised that some editor at the Times let that pass for a column.
Let me summarize for the impatient. "Operating systems are irrelevant, except for Windows, which we should be thankful to Bill for, because it made everything more accessible, and he's oh-so-visionary. Buy my stuff, which is an incarnation of the vision that Bill wants to realize in Longhorn. Also, Linux is irrelevant."
(6).... (Score:4, Funny)
(7) Profit!
Ka-ching!
Re:(6).... (Score:4, Interesting)
Far be it from me to say someone so much more educated than I is a complete idiot that doesn't understand no one WANTS to stop using operating systems because they are what PAYS for the technology.
Yes, even Linux is supported because people are willing to pay for the server space and bandwidth. These people, and universities, are getting something out of their association with Linux.
The immorality of Open Source (Score:4, Funny)
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the lashout.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an über-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
David Gelernter's Bio (Score:4, Informative)
Professor of Computer Science
B.A., Yale University, 1976Ph.D., The State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1982
Joined Yale Faculty 1982
David Gelernter's research interests include information management, parallel programming, software ensembles and artificial intelligence. The coordination language called "Linda" that he developed with Nicholas Carriero (also of Yale) sees fairly widespread use world-wide for parallel programming.
Gelernter's current interests include adaptive parallelism, programming environments for parallelism, realtime data fusion, expert databases and information-management systems (the Lifestreams system in particular). He is co-author of two textbooks (on programming languages and on parallel programming methods), author of Mirror Worlds (Oxford: 1991), the Muse in the Machine (Free Press: 1994 -- about how thinking works), and a forthcoming book in the "Masterclasses" series about aesthetics and computing. He has published cultural-implications-of-computing-type pieces in many newspapers and magazines, is contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, the National Review and is art critic at the Weekly Standard.
Representative Publications
Re:David Gelernter's Bio (Score:3, Informative)
GNU/Linux (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one , can't wait.
"They should be called GNU/3d Documents, because if it wasn't for the GNU/Linux OS to become a relic, no one would have thought to make somehting else. It is obvious that this technology only exists because GNU caused the creator to come up with the idea."
Ok, maybe he won't shut up.
And also... (Score:5, Funny)
No, make that two ponies. No, eight. No, a pony should be available wherever he goes at any hour of the day.
Hummm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess
Why we have operating systems (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps this person should exhalt a new outlook on user interface design (ex: extending Windows, or KDE or Gnome), and not dismiss the O/S.
And for those ready to flame on my inclusion of Windows, Gnome and KDE on the same sentence, realize that these are all essentially window/interface managers, and not operating systems. Yes, MS bundles their manager and O/S in an unpackageable package, but the interface you see in MSWindows is not the MSWindows O/S. That is like saying a BASH shell is the O/S of Linux/UNIX.
Re:Why we have operating systems (Score:4, Insightful)
By reading the article, you would have realized that Dr. Gelernter is stating that we need to distance ourselves a bit farther from the OS than we are now. Current user interfaces are tied too closely to the nature of the operating system. Instead of having a user interface that is centered around the OS (let's see, a tree of files and folders that just mirrors the filesystem directory structure) to access our information, the interface needs to be centered around the information itself. Then, the OS managing the information does become irrelevant. Not useless, just irrelevant... to the user. We won't care what it is or what it's doing as long as we get the information we are interested in.
We shouldn't need to know we need a network connection to do email, IM, whatever... We should be able to just say, "computer, what's the score?" and it would get the information for us. This type of interface IS a radical change from what we've been doing for the last 20+ years. Will people accept it? People fear change so it will probably take a while. But it will happen.
Re:Why we have operating systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like C++ and object oriented frameworks threatened Microsoft/MS Windows in the early 1990's by abstracting the OS API's, OpenDoc threatened them in the mid 1990's by abstracting the OS AND greatly reduced the barrier to entry into the application space. The full force of the FUD machine and purchasing power put the cork on those two ideas. Granted, OOP made a decent comeback with Java and Troltech is making a living at a C++ framework but we still require huge applications with redundant features to read/write documents.
I've seen and used OpenDoc and the concept of data-centric computing is smart and far easier to use. The problem persists as to what to do about Microsoft's continued slowing of progress?
BTW, I've helped a few small business's in the early 1990's in streamlining how they used computers( PC's ) and it was the OO desktop that saved the day. Where OS/2 could be installed, it was or else it was HP's NewWave OO desktop manager. In both cases, I implemented data-centric templates of folders and data objects/icons so the use concentrated on the DATA for the task and not what application needed to be started and where that file needed to be saved to, etc. The Data-Centric method worked and worked well.
The browser is kinda like the OpenDoc container but without the Bento filesystem to hold all the different apps(Parts) data. The Inet becomes the replacement for the Bento filesystem. I don't think plug-ins can use other plug-ins in a standard way so that for instance, one spell-checker plug-in could be used in the text/html editor AND email plug-ins...
LoB
Re:Why we have operating systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Users of course. Developers will always need to know what goes on under the hood. They are the ones trying to make the user's experience better.
Users don't care about the underlying methods. Unfortunately, today, even the end user needs to know a little about the underlying OS to get to the desired information.
Think Star Trek for a moment. Any access to the computer is centered around the information, not the method in which it's stored. With our current interfaces today, we ask the computer, "give me a list of the files on this (drive/storage device)" or "download the files at this (web address that I need to know) so I can read the content."
We are doing things now to get away from things like that. Microsoft has their "My Documents" or "My Pictures" folders that applications default to when opening and saving files. No need to search the hard drive for this stuff. Seem's simple but this is a step away from the underlying OS. On the net we have things like Google. Still not a complete disconnect but our searches are centered around information rather than where it's located.
This is the point of the article. To make the disconnect. Not that Dr. Gelernter's whiz-bang new interface will be the wave of the future but rather it opens the door to new ideas.
Re:Why we have operating systems (Score:3, Informative)
You are also making the common error that Windows always works and supports everything automatically. Why just the other day I plugged my Wife's Win2K box into my 2 year old Brother 1270N printer via USB and Windows detected new hardware. Then it told me it couldn't find a driver, but I could search the CDROM and Windows update. Oops, STILL couldn't find a driver so I ended up having to go to the brother web site, manually download and install the driver.
In contrast, my Debian box just worked. All the drivers were there. Most hardware autodects just fine thankyouverymuch.
It's actually quite rare that I can get a driver for ANYTHING directly from MS. I usually have to go to the vendors web site or dig up an old CDROM and go the manual install route. Lack of Linux support is almost UNIVERALLY because the vendor does not release a linux driver and refuses to release the tech info so that someone else can write a driver. This has NOTHING to do with Linux and ALL to do with the vendors being a bunch of fucking idiots. Most hardware autodects just fine thankyouverymuch. There is nothing wrong with the modular driver model in Linux except for the current historical limits on major/minor device numbering that is being addressed. I can load, unload, and replace device driver modules on the fly without rebooting for most hardware (there are some exceptions like the disk driver you are currently using and such, but this is to be expected.) In contrast, Windows STILL needs to be rebooted several times if you are replacing a driver for example. When things go right in Windows, people are happy and things are easy. When things go wrong, all hell breaks lose. Since only MS really knows what's going on inside, the frequent "fix" is to re-install everything from scratch.
Back to the article, this guy is naive. While Windows is fairly universal in the desktop area, that's the ONLY place that it's mostly universal. In the PDA space, server space, set-top space, embedded space, etc. it's an equal player, a minor player, or a non-player. In non-US markets, Windows is taking a MAJOR hit and its dominance is far from universal.
OK, enough on the OS ranting.
The problem with higher levels of abstration is that it starts to fail when the amount of data increases. Sure it's easy to find your resume on a view of a few documents, but when you have thousands of documents this model starts to fail. You need to start organizing stuff in a logical manor. You need to organize stuff the way YOU think, not the way some programmer at MS or somewhere else thinks.
It's interesting looking at how people organize files on their computers. From a very simplistic and general view, I have noticed that Low-level employees tend to keep all their documents in one folder and high level employees (managers, executives) tend to have things orgnized several levels deep. Again, a very general observation.
Looking at your PDA example, you can organize your contacts in categories. How many people do that? It depends on how many contacts you have. In a small company I may load the phonelist in to one "company" category. In a larger company, I may load the phone list into departmental categories. How would his 3D view handle this? Would it always organize stuff in a very granular manor or would it tend to lump things all together? Who decides? Do I have to do this manually? If so, how is this better than the file / folder mentality?
Re:Why we have operating systems (Score:3, Insightful)
Driver modules are compiled separately from the kernel. This is why you do a "make bzImage" and then a separate "make modules".
So you claim that source drivers are bad. OK, I'll bite.
In Windows, every time the OS revs, you need all new drivers. This is horrible - an example of how NOT to write a driver subsystem. I do admit that the OSX interface is cool, but that still doesn't mean that the Linux interface is bad or undesirable. What if apple decides they need to change the interface for performance / flexability reasons? Same problem with all drivers everywhere on every platform.
An example of how drivers in Linux are done RIGHT, is vmware. It automatically compiles and installs its drivers. When you rev ther kernel, it detects this and lets you know that you need to reinstall. There is nothing really stopping them from just detecting this case and doing it automatically except for the fact that "you just don't do that" in linux. Stopping bootup while something compiles would be impolite, and may not be what the user really wants to do. The system may also not be in a state to allow compilation. Note that once the sysytem completes booting, you can install and run the driver without another reboot.
OK, you say that binary drivers in linux are a problem. I agree. This is still not a Linux problem, it's a vendor problem. It has ZERO to do with the linux driver model. Again, the vendor should release a source driver or specs to allow someone else to write that driver. Many (most?) vendors understand this. Some just don't get it. What is the vendor goes away? What if they discontinue the model and discontinue support? Is your hardware then garbage? If you have specs and / or source, the community can continue to support the hardware without a massive reverse-engineering effort. Sometimes reverse-engineering is not feasable.
The reality of computing is that hardware changes. The OS's change. Nothing is static forever. No device driver interface is universal, or perfect. I seriously doubt that that fact will change in the forseable future. There is no TECHNICAL reason why RedHat (for example) couldn't have a driver database of pre-compiled drivers for automatic detection and download. There is no TECHNICAL reason why vendors couldn't support the many flavors of Windows, OSX, Several flavors of Linux, BeOS, or any other OS, just like there is no TECHNICAL reason that they don't release detailed specs of their hardware. OSX's nice interface is useless if the vendor doesn't support OSX. It's also useless if apple changes the interface.
It's basically not a technical issue at all, and the driver model used by any OS is irrelevent.
OS is _NOT_ irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Every few months some article or "expert" comes out and says that the OS doesn't matter. If that were the case, we'd all be accessing each others data ubiquitously.
Let me list two reasons why Operating Systems DO matter. First, unless someone changes the capitalist society in which we live, market forces dictate that companies do things differently than their competition. This means making changes to improve, speed up, or make more simple the way in which we use computers. Guess what kids? The OS is the gateway to the computer.
Second, all computers follow a set of rules or protocols under which they operate. It's been shown time and time again that even when these rules are created by committee, agreed upon, ratified, and broadly implemented, some company or other decides that their way is better than the standard. For better or for worse, we will never get all the different computers that are out there to follow the same sets of rules. How does this pertain to the OS? Once again, you must know the underlying OS to understand how the rules work.
Now I will cede that there are ways to abstract the OS -- we do this every day. GUIs, Browser-based clients, Java, etc. make universal the experience for everyone who uses a particular application. But saying that the OS doesn't matter is about the same as saying that as long as a structural engineer understands how the pavement works it doesn't matter about the bridge that runs underneath.
Advocating MS plans! (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, if you need to write a Word Document (yeah yeah XDocs in Office11), you would boot up your computer which basically would make a call to a Web Service that will show you what you call the desktop (i.e. presentation layer) of your OS today e.g WinXP, Win2k, etc.
You need to write a Word Doc? Do you subscribe to the Word Web Service? If so the menu item in the program group will be there (Start-Programs-blah blah), you consumed it when your WebServiceOS came up, because you subscribe to it so you can go ahead and make a word doc. Thus, whatever data you need will be accessible when you want it, for a certain price that is.
Theoretically, this may seem like a great idea, software as a service, revenue for MS, you get only what you want i.e no bundled overpriced office products, but then again...oh nevermind.
And oh yeah, you can get your documents anywhere in the world since your profile will be associated with your ".NET my Services" account, so as long as a computer is using this next OS, which will probably come after longhorn, you have what you need everywhere..all you have to do is Consume and Subscribe! Theoretically although the vendor is Microsoft, is XML over HTTP really Microsoft Windows? No! Lets just call it MSWSVOS (Microsoft Web Service Virtual Operating System)...your
Movie crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, there. Was this guy watching Johnny Mnemonic [imdb.com] while drugged up beyond belief? His drivel about being able to "see a stream of 3D documents" reminds me of the virtual surreality user interfaces in that movie. I wouldn't be surprised if he started spouting off unintelligible mutterings about "hacking the Gibson" and "finding the garbage file" [imdb.com], too.
Re:Movie crap (Score:3, Funny)
So I can just seek ahead in time until I find my finished report? This guy's on to something.
Operating systems irrelevant? I don't think so... (Score:5, Insightful)
And...
Each [of linux and Windows] is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software.
This does not indicate a future in which operating systems are really irrelevant. In fact, it would appear to be the opposite. Now, the operating system may appear to be invisible to the end user, but that isn't the same thing. People like Alan Cooper have been pushing for this kind of computing interface for ages.
The underlying operating system must be transparent, and rock-solid, fast, correct, and efficient.
Again, from the article:
nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable.
Why does the OS have to be universal? The operating system may become invisible, but a properly written interface will be portable. No one will have to know how to use the "operating system" that powers their hardware, but they may figure out that some are more reliable at running their Interface Of The Future (TM) than others.
Irrelevant? (Score:3, Funny)
They are? Uh oh..
WIOj23 902*@+++
NO CARRIER
Technical reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . he's more concerned with making this product available to the biggest market share. Not really so much concerned with advancing computer science, as with making money? Maybe?
The New York Times: Free advertising space for anyone with a PhD.
Where to begin (Score:5, Insightful)
THE end of the Microsoft trial is great news whatever you think of the defendant - because the trial was all about the past, and we in the technology world have no more time to waste on that topic.
The past? Idiot. Idiot! Fool. If we don't look at our past and learn from it, we are gonna repeat it, and make the same damn mistakes in the future. What MS did only affects everyone in computerdom out there. Ask Be Inc, or Netscape, OS/2 or Linux companies what they think of about this being something we should forget about? No, it was about our present, and future. XP wouldn't be the POS it is if there was more competition.
Meanwhile, operating systems are lapsing into senile irrelevance. An operating system connects the user (and the user's software) to the ensemble of machines we call a computer. But nowadays users no longer want to be connected to computers. They want to be connected to information, a claim that sounds vague but is clear and specific.
But wasn't that the goal of computers from the beginning? To enable a 'paperless world' where we could input and receive information from a centralized location. Um, mainframe, anyone? And how is the OS irrelevant? Maybe to him it is, and to the home user, but to developers, hardware makers, and administrators, the OS is very much the heart and soul of the computer. It determines whether the software will run- the software that obtains the information you demand.
This kind of information management is simpler, more powerful and more natural than the Steelcase-inspired software we've got today - the files, the folders, the desktops and all those other high-tech office accessories straight out of 1946.
You know, I still use a file cabinet. As far as I know, they are a great resource when the network goes down, or a hdd crashes. I support large companies that still use them. Just because it is old, does not mean it is no longer needed, wanted, or relevant.
We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform....
Well, one out of 3 ain't bad. No comment on what everyone else will point out here.
Of course, another operating system, Linux, is also clamoring for attention. Linux and Windows are both children of the 70's: Linux grew out of Unix, invented by AT Windows is based on the revolutionary work of Xerox research. In technology years, these loyal and devoted operating systems are each approximately 4,820 years old. (Technology years are like dog years, only shorter.)
Anyone know what he is talking about here? So, Windows and Unix are almost 5000 dog years old. How is this little piece of info helping his argument. Can anyone help me out here. I don't see it. I think he is trying to make linux look like the old beast of the ancients, when it is actually newer than Windows is. I mean, Windows the OS didn't happen till 1993 with NT 3.1- linux was 'born' in 1990. Prior to 93, windows was an OE.
Re:Where to begin (Score:3, Interesting)
The MS trial was about business and politics. From a technology standpoint it was, indeed, pointless. One of the key points was whether it's ok to bundle an internet browser in the OS. If that is the thing to do logically from a technology standpoint, somebody should do it and move on. Even the distinction between the two is a pointless one to make, technologically speaking. It ground you in the concepts of "this is an OS, these are the functions of an OS...this is an app, these are the functions of an app...." when in reality, technology should be free to stand all that on its head if it makes sense.
And how is the OS irrelevant? Maybe to him it is, and to the home user
I think that was his point -- that it *should* be irrelevant to the user, but isn't.
Watch Out for Those Jerking Kness (Score:5, Insightful)
As I take it, his basic point seems to be that both Windows and Linux are based on OS concepts developed at least 30 years ago:
Re:Watch Out for Those Jerking Kness (Score:3, Funny)
What is he smoking? (Score:3, Informative)
Sure we should agree that there are much better ways to present higher level abstractions such as presentation and storage of informatio, however in the end it must sit on an OS.
As to which OS, perhaps users shoudn't care if each system was able to provide a similar set of services, however in relity operating systms tend to specialise somewhat. For example the Win speciality is the BSOD!!!!
No seriously, there are two questions to be asked here:
Whith specialised system like the engine management system in a car, I as a user don't give a damn. The only interface is presented by the application (throttle, etc). With a general purpose system like a PC, the user is exposed to the system in a number of ways, indeed Linux (and other Unixes) are slightly better in this respect because at least the GUI and the desktop are not integrated into the OS.
Missing a few points (Score:5, Insightful)
He's comparing apples to oranges...Microsoft is software based, they haven't designed any hardware (joysticks and future DRM technology not-withstanding). If you look at software, it HAS been stifled a bit...there are very few innovations in the OS market over the past decade. Windows has, just recently, incorporated functionality that Unix had 20 years ago.
Hardware has been where innovation has taken place. More transistors on a wafer, faster memory seek times, faster hard drive rotation, larger hard drive capacity. These are the big changes in computers, not the software.
--trb
Re:Missing a few points (Score:3, Interesting)
Once people started buying these 386's and what not en masse, demand for more powerful software increased, which demands more powerful hardware, etc etc etc.
So no, MS's R&D department didn't figure out how to clock chips up to 3GHz, but they did a whole lot to create the demand for that kind of hardware.
Machine Beauty (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about his style is that he seems to believe that the way to get people to listen to him is to say something radical that can be wildly misinterpreted, and then get on the soapbox. He's also well known for saying things like the entire educational system in this country sucks and has to be rebuilt from scratch. So it's no surprise to me that he says the OS is irrelevant. In theory it's his way of getting people to at least look at their assumptions and question them. I mean, come on, how many people do you run into every day that tell you "Yes, I agree, Windows sucks, but why fight it?" WHY FIGHT IT? Because it sucks. Gelernter's point is that you should always be on the quest for the "powerful yet simple" solution to the problem.
In a rather interesting chapter of the book, he offers a variety of drawings for new desks. After all, who said that the traditional setup is the best one? So he creates a variety of stacks, slants, and other combinations that might work better for people.
I think the OS *should* be irrelevant. Awareness of it makes things complicated. Imagine if the rules of a Turing machine were different depending on what computer you ran it on, and on some computers its rules just didn't hold at all. Computers will be simpler when somebody can just say "Email" and not have to worry about Outlook, or POP, or any of that nonsense. That's my two bits.
duane, listening to old dr. dobbs mp3's he found referenced on slashdot last week
complicated != complex (Score:3)
First of all, I don't think you can lump everyone together. If you are talking about the end-user of something, the OS shouldn't be a big deal. Think of PDAs or cell-phones. But to people who work on those things, the OS is very important. You can't just ignore it.
I think a lot of people consider a complex interface to be the same thing as a complicated one. Come on, people are complex creatures. It is a matter of education. 30 years ago, a computer mouse would have been considered complex to most people, as evidenced by some people who still have trouble using them, and have to look down at their hand sometimes. (I have seen several older people do this, who haven't used a computer much at all). But kids can figure out how to use it quickly. Typing is a skill that people didn't used to have, but nowadays kids are learning it young. Saying something is "complicated" is relative. An activity can be complex, but once you learn it it is quite easy. I personally don't think that interfaces to computers should be simple. They are complex machines. Now if you are talking about a single-purpose thing, then the interface can be made simple. For complex machines, I don't think you'll get there. You will still need something to interface to the OS, so you'll need something to translate complex -> simple (or maybe vice-versa).
Imagine if the rules of a Turing machine were different depending on what computer you ran it on, and on some computers its rules just didn't hold at all.
The rules of interfacing to the Turing machine are simple, but the logic behind it is not. I don't think you can just lump and OS and applications that run on it together.
Computers will be simpler when somebody can just say "Email" and not have to worry about Outlook, or POP, or any of that nonsense. That's my two bits.
Nonsense? How do you think email works? What you are describing is the interface to email. Are you suggesting a universal email program? Not everybody wants the same thing in email. I still use Pine for crying out loud. Again, computers are complex machines, and are configurable. There is a reason there are many variations of programs out there, because none of them satisfy everyone's requirements. I think THAT is the beauty of computers, they are so complex and configurable. Why would you want everything to be the same? Utopia? Hardly.
Re:complicated != complex (Score:3, Interesting)
A phone is for talking to someone else. Simple concept, simple operation (with additional features). What does a computer do? You cannot answer that with a single answer. I avoided the computer/phone analogy for that reason.
Simplicity comes when you find opportunity to say "this is the way it works. Always." People can understand that. We geeks have this Utopian vision in mind where everything at our fingertips is infinitely customizable, but where did we get that? I don't have 12 different ways of playing media on my television, but I'm not whining about it. My car's transmission comes in automatic or manual. I'm thankful for that choice, I'm not encouraging people to come up with more choices for me. Sometimes you just settle with what you're given. If it's really *that* bad, another choice will almost always surface. But if the existing choices work for most users in most cases, why keep adding new choices unless you're demonstrating that they're better?
Again, televisions are single-purpose devices. Of course the basic interface is the same. On/off , channel up/down, volume up/down. Again, what is the one thing a computer is used for? Internet appliances failed. Email stations aren't in high use. Typewriters were superceded by word processors, which were superceded by word processing software. Things are getting more and more complex, so you will not be able to come up with a simpler interface. Basic phone service is simple, but you have voicemail, call-waiting, caller-id, etc. I remember when we only had rotary dial phones. Now everything is tone dialing. So the basic operation changed a little. The use of mobile phones and messaging is HUGE it countries outside the US. We are left behind because of our stupid greedy companies who fear change.
Cars used to be manual. Then there was manual and automatic. Now there is manual, automatic, and "steptronic" style, which is a combination of the two. More complex. Records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, Digital. It is getting more complex. But complex is not bad! The learning curve of our populace is what is holding things back. I try to keep up on it, but I know people who cannot. It just isn't in them to learn new things. My point is that computers will never be stable enough for long enough to come up with a single universal interface. Nothing else has, and they have been simple devices. Why would computers, when they are more complex?
Re:Machine Beauty (Score:3, Insightful)
This is for anyone in general who is sympathetic to the Yale crackpot.
"Awareness of it makes things complicated." No, awareness of "it" makes things simple. You can use an OS in a state of Zen, in the same way a swimmer uses the water. Being aware of the flow of cause-and-effect (karma) is enlightenment. The four noble truths are just as relevant in computers as any other breathing activity a person can engage in.
1. Dukkha: There is suffering. 2. Samudaya: You observe how the suffering arises. 3. Nirodha: You know that things that arise, will die with their supporting conditions cease, and so the suffering will end. 4. Magga: Because you are aware of how the suffering will cease, you know what to do to avoid the suffering by becoming aware of how you link to the causes of the suffering.
It is the awareness of how things are that allows you to extinguish the suffering with the most elegant (in)action. It is the dawning of awareness that relieves you from the gravity of the seriousness of your problems. So it is in life, and so it is living with software, and so it is living with software called an OS. It is all just the ebb and flow of causes and effects as the causes of other effects.
People will say a tool is less effective if you are acutely aware of it and that it should be "an extension of yourself." I disagree, and one should struggle to shed identification with tool-things, including your own body, and use the tool without reliance on a connection to your fantasy "self."
Even the most simple things are difficult if you appreciate them fully! Once you decide to stop polluting your own life, you can begin to appreciate the mess you will always be in. Longing for a "transparent system" is the old existential idea of "crystal palace" and will only expose the fact that you have no purpose through which this conduit will conduct you. What's to say you will be able to handle any "email" once the MUA hides the fact that it arrived through disparate and incompatible means? Dude, you're still going to have trouble swallowing that bad news... Let go of your tanha (thirst/lust). If you feel impeded because you aren't sure what to do next, then stop! Don't do anything! Be cool with that! Not everyone should be zooming around through cyberspace the same way.
Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, from one perspective, you could say operating systems are irrelevent.
That's presupposing that whatever operating system is in place provides the needed infrastructure for managing processes and scheduling hardware access in a reasonable way. Doesn't matter whether it's Windows, MacOS, Linux or OS/2.
By the same token, my travels from home to work depend on my car, not on the roads.
And it's true that what my body contacts is the car, not the road (motorcyclists sometimes have it rougher, I suppose).
If the roads are well-maintained, plowed in the winter and other cars obey the traffic laws, I'd almost begin to believe that cars were more important and roads were irrelevant.
But if my super highway developed a large pothole, that illusion would disappear quickly.
Likewise, if the owner of the road decided to erect a toll booth and exact some money from me for use of the road, I'd begin to appreciate the importance of roads.
Operating systems: only when they work right do you not notice them.
An Interface Completely Independant From OS (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML? VRML? PDF? XML? JAVA?
These all seem to be what this guy is calling for.
This same argument keeps coming up (Score:4, Insightful)
then along came the micros like the altair8800. With these there was no operating system per se. Usually you just loaded interpeted basic from a bootloader and then managed your disk or tape using program you wrote in basic. For example PIP was the name of a program for reading files on a floppy. you loaded pip off tape and then you could access the floppy. when you were done you got rid of PIP. there was no OS only indiviual ad hoc programs. You could say the programming envionment was the OS but givine that your programs were doing peek and poke instructions instead of using an API i'd say there was no OS.
then with the rise of more memory and disks, apple, commodor, trs-80, and IBM started to emulate the mini-computers which had those VMS/CPM/DOS operating systems. then we graduated to Windows and macOS with real APIs.
then what, well along came the Browser, and the idea that one could replace the OS and APIs with a new sort of middleware that would be platform independent. Mosiac and netscape could open text files, and even do many operatiung system inteaction functions like telnet. (KDE extends the metafore to launching programs from a browser inteface).
the other fork was java, which combined a programming language with all the high level functions needed to act like an OS. in other words it was both a language and an API rolled into one. Sun began to talk about how JAVA was really a new kind of OS. you no longer needed to worry about what the computer or OS running underneat was. JAVA was you environment.
so now someone is saying OSs are dead. whoopee. I've seen it before.
again, OpenDoc or today KParts (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea behind OpenDoc was that your data was what was important and YOU, the user, could mix and match small lightweight applications to create your own "super" document. The application or "Parts" developers would have to provide a free viewer for their data format so that you could email your "super" document to someone else and they could read it's contents by downloading the viewers.
The concept of document-centric, also called data-centric computing isn't new it's just the one very large monopolist must protect their operating system and make sure the "application" remains relevant. Document-centric computing abstracts the applications, greatly reduces the application size since they are now made of many smaller plug-ins, and most importantly, it reduces the barrier to entry into the market. Two or three coders could whip up a pretty good spell-checker Part or html editor Part as opposed to a full blown application containing the spell-checker, graphics editor, text editor, etc, etc.
This kind of stuff won't show up until Microsoft is gone or irrelevant. IMHO.
LoB
human memory and spatial cues (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr. Gelernter has built a hammer... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a common enough malady among geniuses that have been too long surrounded by people telling them how smart they are.
LifeStreams... rehashed (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a similar article from December 2001 [slashdot.org].
And another from July 2000 [slashdot.org].
And I predict another one will be posted in October 2003.
Thank you.
Narrow view (Score:3, Insightful)
done in Mac v. 0.0 (Canon Cat) (Score:3, Insightful)
Scopeware (from one who's actually seen it) (Score:5, Informative)
Scopeware (the system he built) is actually pretty interesting. The premise (or part of it) is that people aren't good at filing things in a hierarchical filesystem. Instead, the system simply keeps everything in one long hierarchical sequence, and tries to provide more intuitive ways of searching it.
Specifically, it tries to emulate piles of papers on a desk. New stuff is at the top, but you can kinda scan the edges of a lot of the documents at once. If you need to find something specific, youo can "flip through" the pile until you find it. I believe that you can define criteria such that different piles are built automatically from the same set of documents. In a sense, this is similar to Evolution's VFolders - you don't move emails from your inbox to another folder, but set up virtual folders based on predefined searches.
In this sense, the OS and filesystem are irrelevant, just like the OS is irrelevant to (pure) Java programs, and just like the filesystem is irrelevant in most email programs (Evolution, Kmail, Outlook). Of course, the data is stored in files within directories on a disk managed by an OS, but given that there is a completely different method of accessing that data, who cares?
In a sense, this is actually similar to Unix's "everything is a file philosophy", except that here it would be expressed as "everything that's important is a document.
Scopeware itself is a server that stores all documents, emails, etc. for a group of people. It then manages access to them, and sets up these "piles" for everyone who runs a scopeware client.
Re:Scopeware (from one who's actually seen it) (Score:3, Insightful)
However, in the case of the email program, I would argue that the filesystem is irrelevant. The exact same program could be implemented using hierarchical directories/files, a database, or a raw disk. No filesystem is necessary.
In the case of OS, it's difficult to say that an OS is not needed, since an OS is, by definition, an abstraction layer that makes the hardware accessible. Any abstraction layer accomplishing that job can be called an OS. So even if a program is written directly in ASM for a computer, has its own bootloader and never touches a "conventional" OS, chances ar that there's some layer of the program that serves as such.
But even so, on a single-purpose machine, the OS might be considered to be irrelevant - consider the case of Palm/Palm OS.
Lifestreams is very cool (Score:5, Informative)
I never did write that example, but I looked into Lifestreams enough to think that it is a very valid metaphor for accessing information.
Lifestreams orders information by date - imagine that you remember writing a memo just before Easter vacation this year. Then, you would scan documents created around that time period, and hopefully find it in a few seconds.
Obviously, in this example, you could just sort old email, word processing documents, etc. by date using Konquerer, Mac Finder, Windows Explorer, whatever, but Lifestreams understands many file formats and unifies this entire process.
-Mark
Your Ready Made Computer Future is Here! (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch? Why should our customers?
Oh, because Microsoft has a Monopoly and we should just accept that because:
Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable. We need to run the system on as many computers as possible and manage the maximum range of electronic documents.
Ah, gotcha, they already have a monopoly, and we all kinda need one anyways because we all need to run the same software so we should all just stop this pointless flame war complaining about lack of choices because choices break apart our vision of a unified digital playground of knowledge. So everyone run Windows because our new visionary software only runs on Windows because:
Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform
Although we already said that, but we thought we should say it again because its really important. So is everyone ready to stop wanting choices and merely accept the new hand crafted future built just for us so we can stop working on our own visions because this one is the very bestest and is the one true software we all need because we all need the same software for this to work... blah, blah, blah.
Phew. Ok, breathe... and exhale. Good. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
How to get assimilated (Score:5, Insightful)
So everything will be grand if only we put Microsoft between us and our hardware? Please. Making a Microsoft operating system into a 'universal stepladder' will only tempt them to abuse this power further. Let's not turn this guy's vision into an us-against-them issue. This vision (and its implementation) is long overdue.
It's interesting that this guy is flag-waving for Microsoft in the first place. After all, he is competing against Microsoft's own 'window manager', which will become moot if his vision comes to fruition. If what he says is true, in two years he will then compete directly with Longhorn's UI.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch?
What is really needed is a nice OS layer that gives support to these new user interfaces (that replace windows managers). Linux is a nice open solution to this problem. What happens to this guy when Microsoft comes out with their own new-and-improved GUI for Longhorn? Microsoft closes their OS (not window manager) API and its game over.
Who knows, maybe he's just trying to get a job on the Longhorn project. But if he's going to try to compete directly against Microsoft, I don't see how he can possibly win. He'll find out first hand how powerful Microsoft really is. He would be wiser to develop for an open platform, and beat Microsoft from the side instead of from the top.
What a silly idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, let's see
Because your documents are different than your contacts which are in turn fundamentally different than your email which are in turn fundamentally different than your buddy lists. Yes, they are all data. So are books, CD's, audio-tapes, which are all quite different. Both in terms of media and interaction. This is such a silly question. Why on earth would you want a 'Universal' viewer for your data...?! This would necessarily lower it to the common denominator, but then it is the differences that make these kinds of data useful.
Why must computers change? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do we really need a change in the basic desktop format? Why would I want a 3-d desktop? The fact of the matter is what is now available enables 99% of the users to do what they want to get done. The problem with computers is finding problems to solve that fit the computing parigdigm.
Is it OS-Independant or Not? (Score:5, Insightful)
"We built our system on Microsoft Windows because Windows is a reliable, solid, reasonably priced, nearly universal platform - and for the software future, "universal" is nonnegotiable. We need to run the system on as many computers as possible and manage the maximum range of electronic documents.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch? Why should our customers?"
I think it is amusing that David Gelernter, the author, is clamoring for a new paradigm in the way that we look at information yet buttresses his argument for using Windows as a platform by saying Windows is the old paradigm. I guess my best answer to Mr. Gelernter as to why he should port to Linux is "don't." If it is a good idea, we will. And if the information is really entirely removed from the operating system with which it is stored, then this is merely a matter of implementation. If it isn't, and we can't, then you really haven't done what you've set out to do, have you?
Ultimate Coordination of Information (Score:3, Insightful)
Our current society is based upon the capitalistic market forces to solve supply and demand decisions because the socialistic models do not work. (Well, thats debatable. The socialistic models under a massive oppresive soviet system doesnt work, but I believe in some european countries it works?).
Typically, this capitalism vs socialism brings up many fears of the coldwar when one tries to migrate towards socialism. There is inherintly nothing wrong with the socialism paradigm. The fundermental flaw lies in the inability for the human mind to organise and coordinate on such a massively perfect scale the logistics behind a truely utopian socialistic society.
Bringing this into relevance, one must consider the perfectly centralized vs haphazardly distributed nature of information.
It is obvious that if all human information stored by companies, governments, scientific, personel information, etc, were to be stored in a single storage system, then it could be perfectly sorted, arranged and the searching of the information would be maximal and perfect.
This provides two problems:
Who is going to search, store and coordinate said massive volumes of information? (Future AI)
Ethicly, do you want your entire personal details and history to be stored in one accessable place. This opens up abuse by authorities (Q:Why would authorities want to abuse others in utopia?). There is a fundamental loss of freedom in the contiual tracking of every move of individuals within society. How do you know your location is being constantly tracked.
Information is currently decentralized across the many industries. The information revolution started to occur with the internet and search engines. The next information revolution will occur with the perfect coordination of information but will society accept it?
-Tim
I have Beta Version (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a beta tester.
It is kinda cool. Basically it turns your personal computer, or all the computers in an enterprise into a searchable internet. It indexes everything -- documents, powerpoints, email, mp3, jpg, etc etc.
You can search once, and it'll bring up all the results in order of time created, or relevance. So, you can see email that are related to documents and powerpoints -- and they are related by the search term.
HOWEVER, the index file takes up to 1/3 of the original filesize!!!
To index my 300 Gig home network could take up to 100 Gig.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
"no technical reason for us to move to Linux" (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems pretty clear after reading the article that he is talking about a file system (perhaps directory system aware of content formats) that would be interesting if it could work. Want to find a document? Type in some key words and there it is. This is certainly an improvement over Explorer, and a definite improvement over *nix search methods.
Bringing some automagic searching capabilities to my desktop would be a good thing. Trouble is, to get his article published he had to color it with grounded opinions on the anti-trust trial and Linux, which it appears some on
Because of this, his ideas have to be attacked, but they seem worthy of an attempt and relevent.
Looney or not, the guy's right (Score:3, Insightful)
Point being, the OS is *supposed* to be invisible to the user, and nearly irrelevant.
This is why Netscape had to be crushed -- they wanted to make the browser the platform.
This is why Java had to be crushed -- they wanted to implement "write-once-run-anywhere". (There is a whole career-field of experts dedicated to figuring out why a HARDWARE VENDOR like Sun would push this, but that's a different post
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the Be OS idea was right... store everything in a database, potentially allowing any number of front-ends. Let's separate data from the display layer, and let people run their "Windows skin" or "Unix skin". Why not?
I'd like to see an ANSI standard Operating System. Hmm...
Final disclaimer: These are my silly ideas. Please treat them gently, as they are only half-baked.
David Gelertner (Score:5, Insightful)
David Gelertner doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
I had him for a class at Yale (got an A, so I'm not bitter). He was going off about his journaling os or whatever the hell it was (sorry, it's been several years). It was SUCH bullshit. Everybody in the class basically signed up to see this semi-celebrity professor, and everybody more or less had the same impression. The guy is a complete fraud.
Look, I don't mean to sound insensitive, but the Unabomber thing was probably the best thing that happened to his career. I mean, he sits there making pie in the sky os predictions not more complicated than any first year cs student could make and acts like the sun shines out of his ass for it.
I don't dislike the guy personally. He's a bit of a slob, but he's ok. it's his really bad academic work that I take issue with.
Re:new FS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:tech tv thinker? (Score:3, Funny)
His desk was not a disorganized mess. He had simply abandoned 1940's style office organizational technology in favor of a more 21st century style "3-d stream of data".
Re:Based on fantasy? (Score:3, Informative)
The OS is much closer to what one -should- be, though, and is quite unobtrusive.
As for the cell phones and PDA's (the PDA's in particular) -do- have an OS.
I mean, christ. the Palm and Visor run the -PalmOS- for crying out loud!! All those cellphones that have the games and crap on them now? there's an OS there, too.
Just because it's unobtrusive, and does what a good OS should, doesn't mean that it's not there.