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 Forum index » News... » Apple Computers
Apple to preview Leopard
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:

Well, I want to display the OSX applications on my X server that runs on my PC. Actually, I don't - I'll wait until they fix things.


Makes sense to me.

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I hope the $100 Linux laptop project will act as a vitamin shot in the arm for Linux. There needs to be one major software vendor like Abelton, Sonar or Cycle 74 to support Linix and many others would be motivated.


Yeah, I like that one too. If it does work out as planned it should instantly turn statistics on installed user base around. Then one issue is that the target audience isn't economically interesting to companies. Those children can't themselves afford 100 bucks for a laptop and so they probably can't affor 500 for Live either,

However; it will first silence everybody who claimed Linux is hard to use, then 1 to 3% of those kids will have itches to scratch and discover GCC. Then potentially all hell breaks loose.

Did you read "diamond age" by Stephenson?

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mosc
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
Sure; they were mismanaged and so there are no aplications for them but they are superior as operating systems.


An operating system is a program that is used to run programs. What good is an operating system with no programs? I won't argue about OS/2, I know some people who really loved that one. But, I think it was Andy Grove who said, "the best product doesn't not necessarily win in the marketplace."

If you are talking in the abstract, then VMS was a great operating system because of it's outstanding robustness and real-time provisions. It is still used in nuclear power plants.

By the way, most of the computers that control lasers for eye surgery are running Windows. If you are careful, it can be made robust enough for medical applications.

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Did you read "diamond age" by Stephenson?


Unfortunately, no.

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ok. I read that whole article on the diferences between Unix and OSX file systems and it's actually very interesting.

There are some very different additudes going on there. Personally I don't realy see *why* users need to be allowed to rename system folders, then expect everything to keep working and I also see no real advantage to hide the /usr directory. Sure; if you intentionally go su and delete that there will be trouble but that's why you don't delete it. Personally I can't imagine how you deal with anything if you can't express "go open this file using a this program found in /usr/bin" and frankly; I need to occasionally become root and move a executable there becuase we can't have any executables lying around just anwhere, next step would be anarchy!

Basically it comes down to "how Unix works" v.s. "what Mac users are used to" and it blatendly ignores that Mac OS before OSX didn't actually work at all, had a file-system that barely managed to sytemise files and was about as good at multi-tasking as Windows 3.11

It's all deeply baffeling to me. OSX is cool but I would think it could have been better with less efford by not yanking out the bits that work so well.

To get back to the OS quality in relation to compatibility; sure that's true, but in that case Windows XP is vastly superior to anything else which I find a bit of a strech *cough*.

Anyway, Diamond Age deals with a interactive "book" meant to playfully educate a young girl about programing and so on. Near the end of the novel this "book" is produced in large numbers and the implication is that a huge number of indeoendant programers can bring about social reform in technocratic environments. There is also a sub-plot that links social groups to distributed computing. I see links between that and the 100$ laptop.

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paul e.



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:


that Mac OS before OSX didn't actually work at all, had a file-system that barely managed to sytemise files and was about as good at multi-tasking as Windows 3.11



false... and i'll leave it at that

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seraph
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:
that Mac OS before OSX didn't actually work at all

you mean OS9.x Question it seems a not very accurate analysis, to say the least Cool

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brinxmat



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen wrote:

It's very easy to test for yourself how sollid OS/2 is. Check wether you glow in the dark, see wether lots of mutated babies are born around you. If not the OS that runs nuclear reactors is still running fine.

Just ask yourself; would you seriously gamble your life and that of millions others on OSX "not crashing"?


Sorry I was tired. I meant the GUI. Rightly enough, Aqua takes up lots of memory, and it isn't as configurable as anyone would like (getting rid of crappy shadowing, etc.).

The best OS is, and always will be RISC OS. And I am willing to poke you with a stick if you DARE to disagree. Woo!

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brinxmat



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

seraph wrote:
Kassen wrote:
that Mac OS before OSX didn't actually work at all

you mean OS9.x Question it seems a not very accurate analysis, to say the least Cool


It depends on your point of view. It worked as a standalone box, but it was a dog in a network (compare with OS X).

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

seraph wrote:
Kassen wrote:
that Mac OS before OSX didn't actually work at all

you mean OS9.x Question it seems a not very accurate analysis, to say the least Cool


I used various versions of it from about OS 2 to 8 or so.

No real multitasking, no memory protection, a single errant program (mostly the ones I wrote) could bring down the whole machine, etc.

It was always a joy to come back home to a real OS and be able to debug programs while they ran in a sandbox (or multiple paralel sandboxes if need be....). If the progam caught fire you'd just calmly kick out the emulated computer it ran on and there you were, this would never ever affect the main system or interface. I don't think that sort of thing would be such a good idea on pr- OSX Mac's but admittedly I never used 9.

About OSX you can debate... It does throw out some of the good things about Unix abstraction layers but I agree with Stein that they add some new stuff that is great and they cheerfully provide the hooks as well. It's bloated but that's not as bad as having to deal with DirectX (from what I hear) but the earlier Mac OS's to me are just silly if you would like to go beyond typing a text and copying a file.

The network stuff, as Brinxmat corectly points out was downright atrocious, i think up to 7 or 8 you could still bring down a a network by keeping the mouse button pressed; the computer would wait for you to release it and hold all processing untill then. This meant no reacting to network packets, this meant other computers would wait untill yours reacted to their packet.... and do nothing untill it did (in cluding not responding to other packets they themselves might receive) and down it went. Well, I'm terribly sorry but that sort of thing is inexcusable.

It's not like Apple are the only ones back then that did stuff so silly that it has you bashing your head into the monitor; I mean MS build Win98 on top of DOS while they had a perfectly fine model for backwards compatibility that they co-developedwith IBM and BeOS charged developers before they even had a installed user base but..... Well, let's just be happy for OSX.

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memedesigner



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PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I had my first OS X sysadm experience last week spending two evenings getting Common Lisp eval loop to talk MIDI Smile.

They are a bit weird, the looks of OS X below the hood (thanks for the Usenix link, very enlightening article) but then again, each Unix variant has had its peculiarities, managing HP-UX is different from Solaris is different from SunOS. Early on, I earned my living managing VMS systems (recursive DCL scripts, anyone?) and that was smooth sailing all the way, compared to Unix boxes.

So a certain amount of peculiary is allowed and to be expected from a Unix. I find the OS X amalgam of Mach, FreeBSD and NextSTEP with the legacy Mac APIs + all the cool multimedia stuff, to be pretty impressive and enjoyable.

But then again, my (virtual) server runs FreeBSD Shocked
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mosc
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

memedesigner wrote:
Early on, I earned my living managing VMS systems (recursive DCL scripts, anyone?) and that was smooth sailing all the way, compared to Unix boxes.


Me too. VMS was pretty nice, the most solid OS I've ever used. I'm trying to remember the version of Unix someone released that ran on top of VMS - not thinking of Ultrix, which was DEC's Unix - something else.

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memedesigner



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PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

No idea. OpenVMS seems to continue to be very much alive & kicking, though. Quite surprising.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 7:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

memedesigner wrote:
No idea. OpenVMS seems to continue to be very much alive & kicking, though. Quite surprising.


I remember. the Unix under VMS was called Eunice. It was pretty good, actually. It was a port of BSD. I did a lot of Googleing and couldn't find much about Eunice. This post may end up being one for the few references to it. A shame.

I have lost touch with VMS. I looked up OpenVMS and was impressed to see HP is keeping it going. If I was looking for a computer system for realtime control of my nuclear reactor, I'd go with this. Back to file systems, VMS is nice. It

    1. Can have multiple (up to 32k) versions of the same file name (which makes possible the easy introduction of new program executables without a reboot)

    2. Directories are kept sorted (good for directory searches but adds overhead to file creation/deletion)

    3. Built-in RMS (Record Management System) provides native support for stream (non-record), sequential, relative and indexed files. (Indexed files can contain up to 255 keys but you rarely see more than 4 ever used)

    4. Advanced lock queuing via the "Distributed Lock Manager" (works across clusters) ensures every process gets access to shared resources without spin locking

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memedesigner



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PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think the 'file system' notion is getting a bit antiquated, esp the 'file' part of it, right up there with 'punch card' and 'telex'. A lot of the problems with OS X file system seem to derive from the idea of 'file' and what we customly think it is.

'File' really doesnt make it when you have networked systems, distributed processing, and need for versioning (or in a more generalized manner: configuration management), not to mention the crypto properties or processor independent closures (bundles of data and code with state).

Information technology seems to go through the history of ontology with an expedited pace: what took hundreds of years in physical realm (from the panpsychism of the early philosophers to the dualism of Descartes) took only tens of years in digital: from the unity of code & data of assembler and lisp, to the separation of them.

So if we are lucky, the next deep OS revolution will redo the concept behind file systems, among other things...it is funny that the computational concepts, such as computational complexity, are very much today and latest & greatest thinking, but then when a more soft layer of concepts is introduced on top of the computational notions then we end up back in 1700s.

End rant. More coffee. Good morning. Very Happy
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