Slashdot Mirror

remove the target= from the URL to get it to work.
better

BeOS was designed explicitly with this goal in mind. Here is one such recollection.

When I can buy a PC without Windows, without my supplier feeling pressured to include Windows on it, and the machine costs less...

It's not about being pressured, the supplier can put so much crapware on your Windows computer that they can more than make up the cost of a Windows license.

It's more than that. A boutique vendor can pay the $200 or whatever for a 1-shot OEM license of Windows 8.1, and charge it back to the customer, but the large vendors are in a relentless price war. They need the volume discount. I'm not sure about now, but back in the day an OEM wouldn't qualify for the volume discount unless every PC they sold ran only Windows. So, sell every PC for $100 more, or just do Microsoft everything. Your choice. No pressure.

In the final analysis, the Microsoft era was a massive failure of free market capitalism that left us all driving Trabants while thinking they were the best that we could have.

Ah, yes. The government grants copyright monopolies to software companies, and that's a 'failure of free market capitalism'.

It's not the copyright monopoly that makes me especially upset about Microsoft. It's the OEM contracts that forbid alternative operating systems. Those are a failure of free-market capitalism because large OEMs needed Microsoft so they could sell PCs to a majority market, but then Microsoft used the secret contracts to force the OEMs to use Microsoft software for all PCs they sold. Technically, they're free to take Microsoft's contract or leave it, but economically it's suicide for a large PC vendor not to sell Windows. Long after alternative desktops have withered and died, besides MacOS, only now are we seeing timid development of alternatives, such as the Dell Ubuntu Developer Edition laptops and the HP Android desktops.

There are other free-market violations, too. Microsoft abuses the patent system with terrible patents and paid lobbying to prevent reforms. Microsoft abuses the standards system with terrible standards and paid patsies. Microsoft abuses the media with terrible publications and paid shills. Microsoft is fully in support of the DMCA and DRM, of totalitarianism and censorship. Microsoft is an evil company.

'I wonder if I can swap out Chrome from Chrome OS or Mobile Safari in iOS.

The browser bundling argument was always the lamest attack on MS. No other computing vendor has been forced to bend over like MS to provide browser alternatives. Nobody ever complained that Notepad and Wordpad were anti-competetive either.

People latch onto the browser thing because that's the only charge that managed to stick all the way through to a conviction. Microsoft certainly is guilty of much more, but a lot of the actions that generate hate are either not explicitly illegal, or nobody is correctly positioned to sue because of them.

The Windows monopoly was the real problem. I especially hate how Microsoft required OEMs to pay for Windows for every computer, and required computers with Windows not to boot another OS. (Linked Byte.com column is now here.) Gassee tried offering BeOS for free, and nobody would take him up on it, because the Windows monopoly was so complete. Eventually, the BeOS shareholders got a return on their investment, but I would have preferred to have a better operating system in the market.

When Internet Explorer 6 was released, it was a nice browser. Like Safari 7 is a nice browser now. It could have spurred other browser makers in healthy competition. Instead, monopoly secure, Microsoft disbanded the IE team. IE 6 became a curse word.

Other parts of Microsoft are still curses on the industry. This is why we hate Microsoft.

I adored BeOS back in the day. Although I've long since taken refuge with Mac OS X, I'd love to build a box specifically to run Haiku on native hardware. While Haiku is usable in a VM, it loses the snappiness that only bare metal can bring.

I'd love to relegate my Mac for work-only, and build a Haiku box for fun/the rest of life/as a hobby/to hack on/to help the Haiku Project. There's more than enough software out there to get by on, and new stuff hits all the time. I'm just sick of being stuck in a VM!

I wish I could confidently go and buy a motherboard, a CPU and RAM, a graphics card, put it together, and know Haiku will work with them. I don't mind what, I'm happy to build from scratch, but the Haiku Project is totally vague about what hardware works. It's taken a third-party - Haikuware - to put together a hardware database, but it's an out-of-date mess and wildly inaccurate (so many video cards are listed as supported, until you dive a little deeper and see they're all just VESA. That's not really 'support').

So, yes, I wish I could build a Haiku box and know it would work. Otherwise, I love the project and how far it's come!

http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/bible/bos/int_schillings.html
Benoit wrote, what is referred to by Wikipedia, as OFS (Old Be File System) which was then replaced by BFS.

From a quick skim of the beginning of that article it is not quite the same thing.

The BeOS filesystem is still hierarchical but IIRC it had superior metadata handling to most other systems and *applications used that* (in constrast to, say, extended attributes which seem to be neglected a bit by most apps). Moreover, the extended attributes seem to have been indexable and searchable.

Take a look at this for instance:
http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/

This sort of stuff enabled BeOS to push stuff into the OS / filesystem that would normally be handled in an application-specific way.

Don't know how much of this Haiku supports - if they do support it already, that would be awesome!

Here's what Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée had to say in 2001 about what happened:

There is no technical reason why CompUSA customers shouldn't be able to walk out of the shop with a machine that asks "Which OS do you want to use today?" upon boot. And yet, even today [2001], after several years of relentless news about how Linux is ready for the general desktop and business customer, one does not find dual-boot
...
A few years ago, Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée used the phrase "peaceful co-existence with Windows" to describe his company's intended relationship with Microsoft on the consumer's hard drive. Later, when it became clear that Microsoft had no intention of co-existing with a rival OS vendor peacefully, Gassée recanted, saying, "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it."

We could have had close to 10 years of use out of this really good Be OS in schools, products, and businesses, if not for Microserfs and Microsofters. Apple needs to learn from Be Inc. and clean out the nails Microsofters set in its track while there's still an Apple Computer . The time is over for putting up with promoters of M$, especially those inside other businesses.

Eight years the wiser.
So happy together then?
Don't bend down again.

Be OS was a very good OS so we should see good things from Haiku, too. The niche it filled will be different today for Haiku, but still highly relevant. Netbooks are all the rage now. I expect it will be tried there first.

Citation needed.

That monopolies stifle progress? Monopoly and Efficiency, from wikipedia. "It is often argued that monopolies tend to become less efficient and innovative over time, becoming "complacent giants", because they do not have to be efficient or innovative to compete in the marketplace."

Also, I do not think that word means what you think it means, monopoly. Aside from your citation, please also explain how Microsoft is actually a monopoly, and not just some company you love to hate. IMHO dominating the market place is different than running the marketplace.

I know what monopoly means. MS is a de facto monopoly. From Wikipedia, "In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos , alone or single + polein , to sell) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it." MS has sufficient control over the end-user desktop OS market that they are a monopoly. The US DOJ won a court case saying that MS is a monopoly. I'll believe them and my own lying eyes over your opinion.

For a demonstration of MS' monopoly, have a look at the BeOS situation. BeOS was installed as a boot option alongside Windows on certain machines, but MS threatened to withdrawal those manufacturers' ability to license Windows on dual-boot machines. BeOS remained on the hard drive, but the boot option for it was removed from the boot loader. MS forces manufacturers to disable competition on the manufacturers' machines. That's anti-competitive behavior, which they could only do because of their monopoly power.

"A few years ago, Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée used the phrase "peaceful co-existence with Windows" to describe his company's intended relationship with Microsoft on the consumer's hard drive. Later, when it became clear that Microsoft had no intention of co-existing with a rival OS vendor peacefully, Gassée recanted, saying, "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it." "

You're probably thinking of Kibo's .sig.

If Dell could do that, then Microsoft will really have lost their clout with the OEMs. Jean-Louis Gassée tried to do essentially what you're describing with BeOS ten years ago and opened up a whole can of worms. Basically, he found that if an OEM sold multi-boot PCs with Windows and some other operating system, Microsoft would remove the OEM discount on Windows sales to that OEM as part of the contracts they have with these OEMs, so their sales of Windows-based PCs would become significantly higher than their competitors. Hence, all OEMs but Hitachi backed down from Gassée's offer, and Hitachi made the option of booting BeOS practically impossible for anyone to find. I wonder if that's still true today.

(It's quite a long file. Begin at line 317.)

I searched for all of the words and found this

It's dated 2002 and has names.

Where the have you been all these years? Nothing stopping hardware OEMs from selling hardware with non-Windows OSes my ass. Jean-Louis Gassée found that one out when he first began to try pitching BeOS to hardware OEMs. He wrote an article on why PC manufacturers won't sell non-MS products (more info on this here and here). The Windows monopoly is reinforced by anti-competitive agreements that Microsoft has with all of the major hardware OEMs. If one of these OEMs violates the agreement, they lose the OEM discount on all the other Windows PCs they sell, and consequently their Windows-based computers wind up costing much more than those vendors that decided to abide by the agreement. You can guess what that would mean to a major OEM.

In a way, this move by Dell is interesting since it shows to what lengths they've gone to avoid violating the contract. They could have used the same CPU to run the Linux firmware here, but no, they had to include a full ARM SoC to do the same instead. Granted, that has some advantages (given that the x86 CPU is much too overpowered and would eat the battery alive), but perhaps the agreements they have with Microsoft may also have something to do with it.

MS stopped BeOS that way: "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it."

Find a way to make the contracts see the light of day and the problem will get resolved quickly.

"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it."
- Jean-Louis Gassée

http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/h

Until such time as MS comes to the table with full support for Open Standars, such as Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, OpenDocument (to name a few), or for that matter even DNS, there is no point in giving MS pud-pullers the spotlight. MS wants to play? Comply with EU law and banish WMA and WMV formats from the default Windows distros. Or MS can lay off subnotebooks like Asus and even OLPC and let them get back to distributing Linux as the market demands.

He who controls the bootloader determines which systems is used by the general population. Ubuntu is already easier to install and maintain that WIndows, as are most linux distros. The barrier is that they have to be installed, for the most part. That's being beaten by pre-installed Linux. But notice that there are no dual boot machines on the market that also boot to Xp. There are dual boot like the PS3, but no dual boot with Windows. Afraid someone will compare the systems, or what?

"Peaceful Co-Existence? Right."

He Who Controls the Bootloader

Here's a good read on how Microsoft's monopoly of old prevented BeOS from ever becoming a more mainstream OS. If you were to compare BeOS 5 with Windows 98/Me (back in those days mind ya) as far as being considered an overall good software product; BeOS would have won that vote hands down. This is something the DOJ should have focused their efforts on instead of the stupid web browser bundling saga! Of course if Netscape would have been bundled with Windows instead of IE, then Netscape would be enjoying the 80+% browser share today instead of IE!!

http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

If you like big machines, take a look at the Bagger 288. (Search for "Bagger 288" for other pictures. This one gives a good perspective on the incredible size of this thing.)

"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be Ince.

The 1990's called and want their naivite back. Attempts at "peaceful co-existance" with MS is for the gullible. The market place is littered with the husks of those chumps dumb enough to try. A free market is what MS fears most.

Free Software, Open Source Software, and closed source software can all co-exist, with the exception of MS. The basic foundation of MS business model, that of leveraging monopolies not making software, is diametrically opposed.

From He Who Controls the Bootloader : End of an Era :

• "it became clear that Microsoft had no intention of co-existing with a rival OS vendor peacefully, Gassée recanted, saying, "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it.""
• "...the "Windows License" agreed to by hardware vendors who want to include Windows on the computers they sell. This is not the license you pretend to read and click "I Accept" to when installing Windows. This license is not available online. This is a confidential license, seen only by Microsoft and computer vendors. You and I can't read the license because Microsoft classifies it as a "trade secret.""

Be's complaint :

• BE INCORPORATED, Plaintiff, COMPLAINT AND JURY DEMAND vs. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Case No. 02837MEJ Defendant.

From Microsoft's Dirty OEM-Secret :

• "The OEM allegations are supported by the findings in United States vs. Microsoft, specifically the findings regarding the coercion of OEM manufacturers not to change the web-browser. However, the findings regarding the installation of another OS are only vague with regard to "modifications of the boot-up sequence" (which is necessary in order to install another OS), and a lot of relevant material is redacted from the transcripts."

"pity they couldnt make a buisness of it."

The following might have something to do with why they failed ..

01. The OEMs were forbidden to display non-Microsoft systems.
02. Booting to BeOS required the use of a floppy.
03. Microsoft leaned on Hitchai to remove BeOS from its pcs in Japan.
04. BeOS went broke suing Microsoft.

A Crack in the Wall
He Who Controls the Bootloader
Be Inc sues Microsoft

Think of Scot Hacker

Also bear in mind the Windows licensing agreements that OEMs have to agree to. Here's an old but very relevant artice: He Who Controls the Bootloader

In the 1998-1999 timeframe, ready to prime the pump with their desktop offering, Be offered BeOS for free to any major computer manufacturer willing to pre-install BeOS on machines alongside Windows. Although few in the Be community ever knew about the discussions, Gassée says that Be was engaged in enthusiastic discussions with Dell, Compaq, Micron, and Hitachi. Taken together, pre-installation arrangements with vendors of this magnitude could have had a major impact on the future of Be and BeOS. But of the four, only Hitachi actually shipped a machine with BeOS pre-installed. The rest apparently backed off after a closer reading of the fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements. Hitachi did ship a line of machines (the Flora Prius) with BeOS pre-installed, but made changes to the bootloader -- rendering BeOS invisible to the consumer -- before shipping. Apparently, Hitachi received a little visit from Microsoft just before shipping the Flora Prius, and were reminded of the terms of the license.

I agree 100%. And Scott Hacker said it best: "...people in the print industry pay good money for paper opaque enough not to let other pages show through, while OS X spends valuable CPU cycles to enable the opposite effect. Transparency can sometimes make things look cluttered and hard to read."

Reading other posts, it seems that maybe MS is doing something good. I'll reserve judgment until I see for myself. (Yeah, I know, I must be new here. :-) )

I don't know if it still stands, but I remember that in times past, OEM agreements with Microsoft wouldn't allow this. Basically, the terms of the license stated that if you installed a Windows product on your OEM system from the factory, you could not have any method installed for booting anything other than Windows.

I recall this was tested in the past: I think it was Compaq, but they had two partitions on the system: Windows 95 and BeOS. They were both there, but the MBR could only be configured to boot to Windows 95. Essentially, the only way you could boot into BeOS was if you sought out the method to re-enable the bootloader on your own.

You can check out more information about the license deal here:
http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

Essentially, what this works out to is you'd have the same deal with Linux: You could put a Linux partition on there, but not have a bootloader for it, or you'd have to go either completely Windows or completely Linux. What would be neat is if they did dual-boot partitions, and then put a Linux LiveCD in there whose only boot option did something like "Click here to enable Linux boot functionality on your system". I don't think that'd violate the license agreement, but it'd give people the option of dual booting on their own.

Why do courts always ignore the bootloader issue?

The bootloader license between Microsoft and OEMS states that the Microsoft bootloader must be installed as the primary bootloader and also that the MS bootloader must only be used to boot MS OS's.

Microsoft can revoke the vendor's license to include Windows on the machine if the bootloader license is violated. Because the world runs on Windows, no hardware vendor can afford to ship machines that don't include Windows alongside whatever alternative they might want to offer.

When companies are denied the possibility of shipping computers with Windows AND any other OS without losing favor with Microsoft there is no way for any other OS to get a foot in the door.

Great OLD article about the bootloader issue and the demise of BeOS: http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

The interesting thing about the bootloader article you linked, is that Gassée, the guy from BeOS, was virtually ignored by David Boies when Gassée tried to get the bootloader issue addressed in the antitrust trial where Boies represented the DoJ. Boies is now the samelawyer working against the free world representing Microsoft's proxy, SCO. Interesting.

BeOS was an awesome OS, but Microsoft wasn't so eager to welcome it. BeOS is the victim of what other OS's suffer from and that's OEM licensing. Microsoft classifies it as a "trade secret". But in reality, it says that if you want Windows pre-installed, you can't provide the option to boot to a non-Microsoft partition. Scott Hacker wrote an article that details this licensing and it's impact on BeOS. He who controls the boot loader

The problem with immitating Microsoft is it can result in a Microsoft-oriented world without Microsoft. Look at Mozilla's XPI installer. It's not much safer than ActiveX because the amount of power it has. And no one wants to sign XPI packages. Even if they did, signatures could be spoofed. The more you try to immitate Microsoft, the more likely you are to make the same mistakes they've made.

The government is notorious for being both sloppy with its networks and being computer illiterate. The prosecutor in the anti-trust case didn't even have an email address as of late 2000.
There was an article by Scott Hacker called He who controls the boot loader. It mentions how the DOJ missed the real issue entirely.
It wasn't web integration that did the damage. It was Microsoft classifying its boot loader as a trade secret that toppled competition.

Because sending html-formatted email is braindead

I've been a Handspring Treo 180 user for a while now and regularly use iSync and the Hotsync tools to back up my Treo and synchronize my Addressbook and Calendar with the Mac OSX built in apps. I couldn't be happier with the whole configuration and interoperability of the two devices. Personally I think its the best damn thing since slice bread and I pity the masses who still have a separate devices with addresses, numbers and calendars in their mobile phone, PDA, home computer, work computer with out a single button solution to synchronize all that data.

My next purchase of the next generation Treo device will be dependent on the fact it will be able to interchange data as easily as it has my Treo 180 has in the past with my Apple Powerbook running OSX. By only supporting Windows in the future , Palmsource effectively is giving the Microsoft monopoly a distinct advantage, while Palmource loses its advantage of being the only PDA vendor for the OSX platform. I feel that Palmsource is only helping Microsoft establish itself as the only dominate player in the consumer computing arena.

Sincerely,
-Diganta

One can speculate this to be a case of Bad blood or a case of industry karma. I guess the ex-Be OS executives could be getting back at Apple for shutting out Be OS development beyond the 604 processors on the Mac. I'm a huge Be OS admirer and still refer back to Scot Hacker's columns on Byte magazine to understand the way a truly modern OS should run and be responsive under heavy workloads. I think its ironic that Be OS who's microkernel originated to run on the AT&T Hobbit processor (Newton PDA prototypes) will now end up going back into a PDA. Funny how that works right?

I'm also very disappointed with PalmSource decision to stop development for the Mac OSX platform. I've been a Handspring Treo 180 user for a while now and regularly use iSync and the Hotsync tools to back up my Treo and synchronize my Addressbook and Calendar with the Mac OSX built in apps. I couldn't be happier with the whole configuration and interoperability of the two devices. Personally I think its the best damn thing since slice bread and I pity the masses who still have a separate devices with addresses, numbers and calendars in their mobile phone, PDA, home computer, work computer with out a single button solution to synchronize all that data.

Yes it is, but it's not apple's idea. ZeroConf is an open standard invented by the IETF.

Actually, it was "invented" by Stuart Cheshire, when he was working at Apple (I put invented in quotes since this wasn't just pulled out of the air in an afternoon - but he was instrumental in setting up the IETF group that hammered out the standard, and did a lot of the groundwork to get to that point).

BFS supported a very rich metadata system for all files, classified around standard interent MIME types. So for example, email messages would be files of type "message/rfc-822" or something like that (it's been a while), and files of type message/rfc-822 would have metadata properties like To, From, Cc, Subject, Attachment, etc, in addition to the file contents itself -- which would just be the body of the message. When opening up a directory full of these message files, the Tracker would automatically reconfigure itself to reflect that metadata, so that the file list view would add columns for mail-specific metadata fields, double-clicking such a file would open it up in a mail viewer (from which you could send replies right from the shell), etc. Very cool.

Likewise, MP3 files would be kept as files of type audio/mp3, and files of that type would inherit metadata fields like Artist, Song, Album, Year, Track, BitRate, etc. So just as the Tracker would go into email mode when opening a directory full of messages, it would go into an iTunes type view when opening a directory full of mp3 files.

But moreover, you could add or remove fields as you saw fit, so if you wanted to flag emails based on the mailing list they came from, you could add a field for that, or you could add a field to the MP3 file format to keep track of song Composer etc.

But then for the relational database aspect of it, the Tracker allowed you to do queries on these files, much like you can do SQL queries on a database. And like database views, these queries could be saved and their contents could be opened up much like any other folder view -- so I could so something very similar to a SELECT songname FROM /home/cdevers/music/* WHERE COMPOSER = 'miles davis' AND GENRE = 'soundtrack' to pull up a list of soundtracks that had Miles Davis songs. It wasn't really SQL -- it was all pointy-clicky -- but you could get similar results. And because that query could be saved, if I got some new albums later and then re-ran the query (that is, opened up the "folder" with that query label), the current results would reflect what was actually available on the disc.

Scot Hacker wrote a thousand page thick book on BeOS and it's aspects, such as BFS and the Tracker, but it's probably hard to find now and no you cna't have my copy :). You can however read his articles for Byte.com, such as this more or less relevant one. If BFS sounds interesting to you, he was pretty much the main guy writing about it at the time, so his articles are the best place to look.

If BFS does sound interesting, and you're as disappointed as I am that it's gone, the bright side is that the engineer that chiefly developed it for BeOS, Dominic Giampaolo, is now an Apple employee. One of his first things on the job was to introduce the journaling support that has been available since 10.2.2, and supposedly it will only get better in future versions. Although nothing I've read about Panther suggests that Apple is going to try anything as revolutionary as BFS in this version, it seems like they are at least going to keep expanding the journal support. My hope is that Giampaolo will eventually help come up with a new filesystem that uses BFS concepts in a backwards compatible replacement for both HFS+ and UFS, but only time will tell...

BFS supported a very rich metadata system for all files, classified around standard interent MIME types. So for example, email messages would be files of type "message/rfc-822" or something like that (it's been a while), and files of type message/rfc-822 would have metadata properties like To, From, Cc, Subject, Attachment, etc, in addition to the file contents itself -- which would just be the body of the message. When opening up a directory full of these message files, the Tracker would automatically reconfigure itself to reflect that metadata, so that the file list view would add columns for mail-specific metadata fields, double-clicking such a file would open it up in a mail viewer (from which you could send replies right from the shell), etc. Very cool.

Likewise, MP3 files would be kept as files of type audio/mp3, and files of that type would inherit metadata fields like Artist, Song, Album, Year, Track, BitRate, etc. So just as the Tracker would go into email mode when opening a directory full of messages, it would go into an iTunes type view when opening a directory full of mp3 files.

But moreover, you could add or remove fields as you saw fit, so if you wanted to flag emails based on the mailing list they came from, you could add a field for that, or you could add a field to the MP3 file format to keep track of song Composer etc.

But then for the relational database aspect of it, the Tracker allowed you to do queries on these files, much like you can do SQL queries on a database. And like database views, these queries could be saved and their contents could be opened up much like any other folder view -- so I could so something very similar to a SELECT songname FROM /home/cdevers/music/* WHERE COMPOSER = 'miles davis' AND GENRE = 'soundtrack' to pull up a list of soundtracks that had Miles Davis songs. It wasn't really SQL -- it was all pointy-clicky -- but you could get similar results. And because that query could be saved, if I got some new albums later and then re-ran the query (that is, opened up the "folder" with that query label), the current results would reflect what was actually available on the disc.

Scot Hacker wrote a thousand page thick book on BeOS and it's aspects, such as BFS and the Tracker, but it's probably hard to find now and no you cna't have my copy :). You can however read his articles for Byte.com, such as this more or less relevant one. If BFS sounds interesting to you, he was pretty much the main guy writing about it at the time, so his articles are the best place to look.

If BFS does sound interesting, and you're as disappointed as I am that it's gone, the bright side is that the engineer that chiefly developed it for BeOS, Dominic Giampaolo, is now an Apple employee. One of his first things on the job was to introduce the journaling support that has been available since 10.2.2, and supposedly it will only get better in future versions. Although nothing I've read about Panther suggests that Apple is going to try anything as revolutionary as BFS in this version, it seems like they are at least going to keep expanding the journal support. My hope is that Giampaolo will eventually help come up with a new filesystem that uses BFS concepts in a backwards compatible replacement for both HFS+ and UFS, but only time will tell...

BFS supported a very rich metadata system for all files, classified around standard interent MIME types. So for example, email messages would be files of type "message/rfc-822" or something like that (it's been a while), and files of type message/rfc-822 would have metadata properties like To, From, Cc, Subject, Attachment, etc, in addition to the file contents itself -- which would just be the body of the message. When opening up a directory full of these message files, the Tracker would automatically reconfigure itself to reflect that metadata, so that the file list view would add columns for mail-specific metadata fields, double-clicking such a file would open it up in a mail viewer (from which you could send replies right from the shell), etc. Very cool.

Likewise, MP3 files would be kept as files of type audio/mp3, and files of that type would inherit metadata fields like Artist, Song, Album, Year, Track, BitRate, etc. So just as the Tracker would go into email mode when opening a directory full of messages, it would go into an iTunes type view when opening a directory full of mp3 files.

But moreover, you could add or remove fields as you saw fit, so if you wanted to flag emails based on the mailing list they came from, you could add a field for that, or you could add a field to the MP3 file format to keep track of song Composer etc.

But then for the relational database aspect of it, the Tracker allowed you to do queries on these files, much like you can do SQL queries on a database. And like database views, these queries could be saved and their contents could be opened up much like any other folder view -- so I could so something very similar to a SELECT songname FROM /home/cdevers/music/* WHERE COMPOSER = 'miles davis' AND GENRE = 'soundtrack' to pull up a list of soundtracks that had Miles Davis songs. It wasn't really SQL -- it was all pointy-clicky -- but you could get similar results. And because that query could be saved, if I got some new albums later and then re-ran the query (that is, opened up the "folder" with that query label), the current results would reflect what was actually available on the disc.

Scot Hacker wrote a thousand page thick book on BeOS and it's aspects, such as BFS and the Tracker, but it's probably hard to find now and no you cna't have my copy :). You can however read his articles for Byte.com, such as this more or less relevant one. If BFS sounds interesting to you, he was pretty much the main guy writing about it at the time, so his articles are the best place to look.

If BFS does sound interesting, and you're as disappointed as I am that it's gone, the bright side is that the engineer that chiefly developed it for BeOS, Dominic Giampaolo, is now an Apple employee. One of his first things on the job was to introduce the journaling support that has been available since 10.2.2, and supposedly it will only get better in future versions. Although nothing I've read about Panther suggests that Apple is going to try anything as revolutionary as BFS in this version, it seems like they are at least going to keep expanding the journal support. My hope is that Giampaolo will eventually help come up with a new filesystem that uses BFS concepts in a backwards compatible replacement for both HFS+ and UFS, but only time will tell...

Or in other words, it's okay to rob people if they're rich enough to afford it?

Yes.

This video exposes Disney's hypocrisy in enforcing its copyrights.

I still think that 'Scot Hacker' (the BeOS Bible guy) is the best geek name I've come across...

I'm not sure, but isn't this in some ways how the BFS (The Be File System) is organized? I mean a BFS file could be associated with arbitary amounts of metadata, one of which was the "default open with" mentioned in the post I'm responding to.

In his article comparing Mac OS X to Be OS Scott Hacker (author of the Be Bible) even used the MP3 example to demonstrate the flexibility of Be OS metadata. He demonstrated that he could, by only using metadata effectivly mirror the ID3-tags in his MP3 collection and query by artist/genre/year/etc. directly from the Tracker (the Be OS desktop application). How the BFS goes about handling folders I know nothing about.

Here: http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/beos_osx/

They're easy to figure out what their every interest is immediately and then immediately market to appropriately. And also when they're more isolated, they'll be spending less time doing interactive social activities which usually bring a reward of happiness without the neccessity of consumption.

This way, everyone is alone in their computer rooms (of course beliving they're connected to more people than ever...which they are, but these people are just as isolated), easy to advertise to constantly. They can INSANTLY buy products which they'll want to do because they want to reward themselves. They've earned money through dull, mind numbing labor, now they use that to buy happiness, which is about the only way to receive it when your "free time" (that time not spent working) is spent in front of a computer. Text conversations aren't even a fraction as rewarding to a person...although we try to convince ourselves such ways of communication are better and more rewarding (when all actuality it's just easier for us, takes less risks...we give into our fears and laziness). Of course the outside world is increasingly dull anyway. Where just about all areas of socializing are places to buy things (malls, restaurants, isolated stores, "theme" parks, etc.)

Eh, what can you do?

. . . .

that's aristocracy not autocracy. I also don't want you be confused as seeing myself as better, I'm as much stuck in this dull mess as everyone else.

The other options are civilizations that are still in a somewhat primitive nature or are in a constant state of political war (therefore constant economic problems) or just poor politics altogether. At least capitalist libertarians have the option of moving to Hong Kong, but good luck finding a job there right now.

. . . .