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VOS Patents on Virtualizing OSs?
Erik Poupaert writes "I've been following VMWare and plex86 (used to be freemware) for a while now, because I think that virtualization may be a solution to quite a number of problems. It basically allows you to run several operating systems concurrently. IBM uses this approach too, to run a large number of Linux instances on their mainframes. While you can leave the task of managing devices and device drivers to the host operating system, guest operating systems can supply you with the ideosyncracies of their particular versions to run the applications that expect them.
Since VMWare is not free, as in free speech, I thought that plex86 would become the lead open-source project in the field.
Now there seems to be a new player, that I never heard of before, called VOS, who claims the whole field to themselves, and have filed patents to obtain a monopoly on the entire discpline. Have they got any chance in succeeding? Or do you think that the patent office would not grant such patent?"
to me it seems like they're reading /. and wanted to generate some profit you
know banner ads... they just picked a succesful topic, and whoa we're /.-ed,
well clever, i should patent that idea. maybe as an antipatent?
- There is *no* trial download available, despite the "press release" saying that the product was released a *year* ago. I'd think
/. would find it before that.
- If you look at the site structure, everything is flat-file, i.e. it's all page_XX.htm. Highly unprofessional site.
- The "buy now" page is insecure, so I wouldn't try it.
- They say that USA Today, etc. have commented on Flash VOS; I just tried a google search and nothing showed up on the first page.
If I'm wrong, someone please post a clarification. The only thing is that the domain seems legit: a whois lookup shows that it was registered in 1998...--bdj
I wouldn't trust Pearl 9 Design at all. Their "accreditation" is using Netscape and some Adobe programs, but interestingly their website is done in Frontpage (which they aren't accredited to use).
This article gives a good explanation of how patent laws in the US are being used to stifle innovation.
In no way does this article say any such thing.
How does a competitive advantage translate into stifling innovation? Shouldn't the reward for development of an innovation be in fact a competitive advantage? Isn't the very purpose of industrial research and development to create this advantage. If companies are managing their IP portfolios to achieve this, more power to them, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO!!!
Creating a competitive advantage is NOT the same thing as stifling innovation. The entire purpose of a patent is in fact to allow a company to use innovation to gain a competitive advantage. With IP, there would be no reward for the large investments that are often required to develop new technologies. Why would a company like IBM sink a billion dollars per year into it's world class R&D if as soon as they start manufacturing something Ziao-Chin Electronic could copy it and start selling it in competition to IBM??
Blue Light was vaporware
Could be vaporware. If it was real, I'm sure I would have had opportunity to see it.
Supporting this notion, is the fact that I never ever read any reviews of it anywhere.
there has been alot of vaporware emulators for the mac
I didn't think, there had been that many emulators for the Mac, vaporware or otherwise. Other than Blue Light, the only emulators I ever heard of for Mac were all quite real.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Bochs is older than 1998, as is dosemu. If you look at the page it says paten pending since 1998. IF this is a true page, they could get a paten unless those backing Bochs an ddosemu get in touch with the USPTO. Someone needs to verify that this is a true filing. If so then someone needs to contact the USPTO. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I definitely understand the implementation differences between WINE and VMWare. The reason I mentioned that Soft PC was slightly more like WINE is that if you were to treat the two as endpoints on a continum of possible approaches, Soft PC and SoftWindows were not totally emulation of the hardware. They installed special drivers into Windows, such as for network, video, etc.
I like Virtual PC's approach better. Emulate the hardware. Specify in the manual exactly what hardware is emulated. For instance, Virtual PC emulates a Pentium II, some S3 Trio video card, a DEC 21041 Ethernet on IRQ 11, etc. This is all useful information if you're trying to install, say, Linux onto Virtual PC.
I agree (mostly) with your remarks about it's speed. It's not super fast. But it's quite tollerable for short-term use. i.e. to perform the kind of tests I mentioned, or to diddle around with an OS in ways that could screw it up. If I screw up Virtual PC, it is just a simulation of a machine -- I don't have a real piece of hardware out of commission for hours and hours.
Concerning VMWare's implementation, I was reading many months ago about how something like this would have to be implemented. (Don't remember now if it was VMWare or something else.) But since Intel doesn't provide the virtualization capability, a lot of tricks have to be performed by VMWare. They have to actually scan all code before running it. When they run into certian constructs, they have to, so to speak, set a breakpoint there to stop the real host processor and trap back into VMWare's code. Yes, it's fast. But still, they have to advance scan the code. They keep track of what executable code has been scanned so that they don't do it twice. Wish I had a reference handy.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
since the mid to late 70's. If anyone owns a patent on it, it would be them.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
First, why is the advantage "competitive"? Why not call it "uncompetitive" advantage. But to answer the question: Because it stops others building on your work. And if you define "your work" broadly enough, it stops others from doing anything in the whole field. Which stifles inovation.
Filled in a few details on the credit card form, but it gives a 404 not found when you attempt to submit it. High tech stuff indeed. I have serious problems anyways with people writing stuff like "first, by making sure Microsoft is not the only file structure you can support on your computer" (apparently this is the big plus about their 'product') or "Flash Vos(TM) Super O/S is flash memory based so it does not use the Microsoft file structure, and does not need to be upgraded." The thing I'm wondering is - who is behind this tripe ?
What about that DOS emulator for the Amiga?
When would that have come out?
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
From what I read this looks more like a boot manager more than a VM I could be wrong but who knows.
Hey, I just patented the whole idea of coming up with with patents that won't pass, so anyone that comes up with anything must pay me $20,000 in licensing fees.
My journal has hot
you laugh now, but it's stuff like this (not to mention the DeCSS case, Napster vs RIAA, RIP/Carnivore...) that makes me think whether or not leaving the US might be a good idea. It's getting scary. Unfortunately the rest of the world seems to be just as bad, only they've got less bandwidth.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
I would say if you are in a technological industry and don't want to put up a full scale website, then put up a very straightforward 'business card' site.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Since VMWare is not free, as in free speech,(...)
IIRC, VMWare is not even free as in free beer.
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This space left intentionally blank.
How does this work, considering that they're not a publicly traded company? Apparently, like Travelzoo.com, this shows that they will probably never be publicly traded. I also like how they explicitly allow the reseller to pass the stock option on to the consumer. Isn't there a limit on the number of shareholders of a privately-held company in Texas? I thought it was something like 100 or so.
This, however, is a major problem if they are incorporated in Texas, because they are required to set the number of stock shares at time of incorporation. That means, if for some reason their product becomes spectularly popular, they will have to stop honoring the stock option coupons, or start buying back shares that were previously "sold."
Also, IANAL.
This happens to be one of the cases where they aren't considered people. People invent and assign to a corporation. A corporation can not, under current law, be an inventor.
When did the USPTO ever deny a patent for computer concepts? These people are apparently so ignorant of computers and computing technology that any computer-related patent filed by some vulture capitalist usually slides its way through with out a hitch. Unless IBM (which has been using the concept of virtualizing OS's since the Iron Age; long before most /. readership was even born), and the makers of VMWare take appropriate action. All of them--plex86's efforts included--constitute prior art and would be sufficient grounds for denying the patent, if someone managed to educate the USPTO about it. It is to be hoped that this is possible.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
From their Homepage:
This looks like a BIOS-Bootmanager, it just activates the partition the OS you're interested in resides on, then let's you boot from that partition. Magic indeed.
Aah, a BIOS based bootmanager with APM - The state of your work is saved to disk, then you reboot.
Okay, that looks like a VMware done in hardware. Each OS is given a slice of the available RAM in which it can reside and run. You can switch between different Virtual-Machines. Okay, ther is no emulation layer in here, as all OSes are running on the actual hardware. When switching OSes, the OS you're switching from has to release all Hardware - that seems to be interesting. But that is "Phase III", so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Can't wait for that one - does anyone need a nice bridge? I own one I could sell :)
Ralph
Yep, it depends on when.
They patents have been filled - not granted. The company that filled the patents was incoporated in 1998. Thus these patents cannot be older than that.
Nuff said.
but not yet granted.
hopefully the USPO will see prior art all over this and not grant them
This is the patent and trademark office here. Everything from shower nozels to circut boards to flying machines that have never been built are patented. Why would they *not* grant this patent?
Really, does one-click shopping seem like its revolutionary, or just a natural next-step in ecommerce technology? I believe it is the latter, and personally don't see any benifit to Amazon, their competitors or any other organization benifitting from this patent - that is unless Amazon decided to get into the ecommerce software buisiness. At least the technology is obtainable; better than only using it for their own personal benifit.
Virtual machine technology is revolutionary - its new at least, but seeing some of the bizarre patents over at http://www.patents.ibm.com/, I'm really wouldn't be suprised to see this technology accessable to the first organization filing for a patent.
You just have to decide which way to fail during the questionable cases. In this case, emulation is allways safe, so that is how you'd fail.
Another case of heuristic is garbage collection. Reference counting and reference tracing are heuristics. Often objects are provably unusable (if you look at the code, not just the data) even while there are still references to them.
Deciding for certain if a piece of data will be used becomes equivalent to the halting problem. But looking for a lack of references is an easy, fail-safe heuristic. When there is a lack of reference, the heuristic says drop it, and the heuristic is right. No reference implies no future access. But often you could have dropped it earlier - that implication is one way.
When the patent office awards patents for methods and processes that are obvious to any skilled practitioner in the field covered by the patent, competition is stifled. The patent office has been all too willing to allow this, through incompetence and/or ignorance. People can't patent the wheel, because even the patent office knows that there is prior art for that. But it may not be so obvious to them in the case of software and other technology patent applications, that prior art exists. A lot of recent patents in the technology fields are as obvious as the wheel - Amazon's one-click patent is a fine example. This is a patent that was sought solely for the purpose of institgating litigation to stifle competition. Rambus patents on existing memory technology is another example. Toshiba and others have already kow-towed to the legal threat, and will now pay licensing fees to Rambus for products they have been manufacturing since before Rambus was incorporated. Others, like Micron, aren't buying it, and are fighting it in court. There can be no rational argument in favor of allowing Amazon or Rambus to patent the obvious, yet they did it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
hey i'm all for this... someone put something up where we can begin. i know! I'll invent HTML. then i can create 'web pages' to be viewable via a 'web browser' over the 'internet'!. What? Al Gore already invented the Internet? well... damn.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
IBM has one of the strongest Intellectual Property departments in the computer industry. They are extremely agressive about patents. In the 1960s IBM developed the first virtualized OS on the IBM 360 mainframe (360/65 or 360/85??). I learned about in graduate school. At the very least there is much prior art via IBM. Also I would be very suprised if IBM did not patent this in the 1960s.
What if I'm not using VOS? If I see no reason to upgrade my operating system then I wont! If I want to upgrade for a bug fix, or I want a new feature in the new system then I'll upgrade, but what does VOS have to do with any of this?
I'm confused at what they are getting at here, my guess is that they mean you don't have to re-install your operating system to change it, but I think they should be more clear on this, especially if they are trying to sell this! I can just see someone thinking that if they have this they no longer have to upgrade from say Windows 98 to Windows ME because VOS will do it for them.
My copy of Deitel (1st edition) mentions IBM's VM as well. I also remember using MUSIC (McGill University System for Interactive Computing) under VM in 1980 and 1981.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The great thing about VM was that it virtualized the 360 so well that you could even run VM under VM.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Shouldn't Stratus be suing them for trademark violation? Stratus has had an OS called 'VOS' for 10+ years (and boy was it neat).
Actually, when Stratus was first getting started, it was long ago enough that if you weren't IBM, you weren't important in the world of mainframes. So, Stratus signed a deal with IBM to sell their machines as IBM System/88 machines. In essence, System/88 was just the name IBM gave Stratus's machines so that people would buy them. Later, when Stratus had made enough of a name for itself to strike out on their own, they began calling their OS VOS.
In the old days, VOS machines ran on m68k chips. Later, they made versions that ran on the obscure Intel i860 RISC chips. Nowdays, Continuum servers run on PA-RISC chips. (A humorous note is that a common high-volume networking card used in Stratus boxen is the IBM Arctic 960, which uses the i860's descendent, the i960 chip.) There was some effort to work towards moving to IA-64 before the buy-out by Ascend, but Ascend got the rights to that platform. I'm real sure the server half of Stratus that got split off is really crying about that one nowdays.
There was also a short-lived fault-tolerant ultra-redundant Windows NT machine called 'Radio' that won an award at Comdex the year it was debuted. However, no one wanted to pay the price for fault-tolerant hardware when the OS wasn't guaranteed to be nearly as stable. Heh.
Tandem is a whole other ballpark. Ugly, hideous OS. Much, much worse than VOS.
Ah, it feels good to reminisce...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Oh, never mind... FlashVOS cancelled their 1988 VOS trademark. Oh.. and Stratus VOS also was cancelled, in 1991.
Do you think I could get away with patenting something like the mouse trap, if I made up a lot of marketroid language and never mentioned mice or trapping them?
:-)
(If you build a better mousetrap, someone will sue you.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I think you mean MVS - VMS runs on Vaxes and Alpha's.
I couldn't find their patents in the database. Over in the Trademark database I found that they cancelled their "VOS" trademark last year. Their pages have 1998 dates. Maybe they're orphaned pages.
VMware has at least some patents filed for - they mention this on their first press release, at http://www.vmware.com/news/pr1.html.
Also, it's meaningless to say 'countries that laugh at US patent laws' in that they are irrelevant to patents in almost every country.
If you want patents in the UK, Japan, etc, you must file them in each country. There are some short cuts, i.e. you can file European patents and International patents, but these must eventually 'fork' into country-specific patents at later stages of the process. Patents don't automatically cross national boundaries, like trademarks but unlike copyright.
I've been on their page and it seems that they are filling patents just and only for their special implementation of specific tasks connected to virtual machines. In other words - there is NO STORY. They just fill patents on their GUI and OS Loader. Well, I would expect copyright as reasonable protection, but if there is something in these that is specific to them, the patents might be granted as well.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
So write them at their info address, and tell them they're being ridiculous. Thats what I did.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
lets hope their legal team are of the same standard as their web designers.
You lot owe me loadsa cash now ;)
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
it means they can sue you for reading. Long live the US, where something you tell the world is a trade-secret.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
This is clearly a hoax. The page graphics are crap. There are non-existant links. The disclaimer at the bottom says that there is confidential stuff on the site. Who puts confidential info on a web site? Make a judgement call next time. Is it really worth it? Maybe put a disclaimer that you think the site is bogus? That way we know when to flame the poster.
AFAIK, plex 86 and VMWare are Machine emulator,
not OS emulator. It emulates an x86-like computer on which you can add a new OS.
In that sense, it would be rather Wine in full OS emulation mode that would be impacted by this patents.
Since nobody's mentioned Win4Lin by TreLOS, I guess I'd better do it. It's yet another virtual OS system, but it only runs Win9x (the real Redmond beast) on Linux. The advantage compared to WMware is that it does it really fast - the performance is really comparable to native Windows. A truly amazing experience when you boot Windows in an X window with five large apps and it still only takes 30MB of memory and doesn't slow down either itself or Linux. Don't try that with your Windows 98! :) Win4Lin lives in the Linux filesystem which makes transferring files between the OSes a breeze. The major drawback is the poorly documented install, which requires a kernel patch.
I was considering buying it (for $35) until I heard that WINE can finally run Lotus Notes. Win4Lin also freezes my whole system when I try to run my other main Windows app - Deluxe Ski Jump...
Thats exactly it, thanks for refreshing my memory :-)
This will protect the ideas from getting patented before you get around to implementing them. It may help infringement claims even after you have written the code, since a disclosure may be looked on more favorably by the courts than a few thousand lines of code.
As for these specific patents, once their patents are filed, there is really little that can be done. Let's hope that the ample prior art in IBM, Bochs, VMWare, emulators, and Plex86 will be sufficient to strike any claims from the patents that interfere with free software once they are issued.
It doesn't matter whether Flash VOS is vaporware - the fun thing about patents is that you can patent anything without having a working or halfway working model. You just need to be able to draft the machine. Actually, allowing patents like this might be for the good of mankind, since the patent would expire, allowing anyone to make the invention - unfortunately it doesn't work like this, patent offices will grant additional patents for when the invention is actually realized or in their words, improved. The whole business sucks since the practice of patenting is lightyears off the nice-sounding arguments that patents are good for economy and everyone. Anyone with too much money want to patent some of my ideas that I get after 2 beers and a vodka ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Fight Spammers!
I assume you're asking if using some kind of "virtual machine" technology such as VMware degrades performance due to the fact the OS isn't accessing the hardware directly.
This entirely depends, and I have a great example from back in my VM/ESA system programmer days.
Let's say you have an operating system that works very well when it has enough memory to keep everything in storage, but performs poorly when it has to page/swap out tasks.
Now you run it under a virtual machine program that is very, very efficient at paging/swapping.
You can, and often do, get better performance this way than if you were running the virtualized operating system on the bare hardware.
We ran MVS under VM this way. The real machine had 32 megs of storage. (this was a while back.) By running MVS under VM, and giving the MVS machine a virtual storage size of 128 megs, the VM software smoothly paged, the MVS software never entered its paging routines, and we realized a substantial performance improvement. The combined system actually used less CPU and performed less I/O then the MVS system alone.
Another situation is where the virtual machine environment has access to resources that the virtualized operating systems don't. A year or so after we put MVS under VM, we purchased a new mainframe with "expanded storage" -- a chunk of high-speed RAM that is tightly connected to the processor -- you use it for first level paging. i.e. When you page data out to disk, instead of writing it directly to the swap space, instead you find the oldest page in expanded storage and write that page out to disk, then page the block into expanded storage.
Thrashing is typically caused by rapid page out/in combinations. You page something out, then decide you need it again immediately, but you have to wait for the disk to come around again.
Even though our MVS kernel was written before expanded storage hardware was invented, we were able to use it to improve MVS performance; another example of how a well designed, well balanced virtual machine supervisor can improve the performance of the machines it supervises above and beyond their bare-iron performance.
Counterintuitive, but true!
--OS/390 has also been around since the mid 60's starting life as OS/360 and going through several name changes (OS/VS, MFT, MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, and finally OS/390 -- I think I got the right lineup of names :)-- Actually you are pretty close. OS/360, MFT, MVT, OS/VS1 and OS/SVS, MVS, XA, ESA, OS/390. (VS1 and SVS were both 'current' operating systems at the same time, but operated substantially different. MVS was really 'operational' as of MVS 3.x. IMHO, nobody who ever ran MVS 2.x would ever want to admit it )
Does anyone find it ironic that on their page where they list the patents they filed it says "OPENING THE GATES OF DEVELOPMENT"?
It's a complete waste of time to just look at the titles - these describe generally what the patent is about, but the *claims* of the patent, listed at the end, are what is actually protected.
Any details in the title, abstract, description, etc are only there to help a skilled practitioner reproduce the invention (under license), or to invent something new that doesn't infringe the claims.
This slowdown occurs with raw partitions as well as VMware's virtual partitions or whatever they call them. In fact, PS/2 mice sometimes caused a slowdown, though this may have been fixed by now.
Overall it is a great product, but it's not for people who want extremely high performance without providing extra hardware to run it well.
VMware has patents too, see http://www.vmware.com/news/pr1.html where it mentions 'patent-pending'.
And it actually has a product, not that this means anything in patent wars...
I use VMware quite a lot - it generally runs thing at approx half the speed of the real machine. This is not usually a problem, and doesn't apply to CPU-bound work, which runs at nearly full speed, but there is a noticeable slowdown in I/O.
It means NOTHING.
As:
1. Warning was at the end of the page
2. You did not agree to the terms of confidentiality.
3. It has been posted publicly, so it can not be confidential any longer.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Can take two computers and put all their components on a split screen on the same computer. Makes two computer households obsolete.
"Honey, could you press the escape key for me, and stop hogging he 'E'"
Presents key system peripherals to multiple Run Time OS's at the same time, while each OS can totally be satisfied with its virtual device as a complete physical drive
wow, I would love to see my mouse as a complete physical drive
It [Flash VOS] gives the user the capability of running an application without an Operating System running at all. Many applications do not need an Operating System to make them run. With Flash Vos(TM) Super O/S, you can click on the application you wish to use and begin working.
No operating system at all? I am starting to get the idea this is a bad translation.
Management is one of the basic functions included in Flash Vos(TM) Super O/S.
Does one get a PHB for free?
In a bulletted list of advantages:
- protect user data from predatory/monopolistic behavior of traditional OS's
Is that the OS or the company that makes the OS?
Flash Vos, Inc., a Texas Corporation, was incorporated in Highlands, Texas in April 1998. Its business is internal in scope and intended to invent, design, develop and distribute the technology and products associated with the next generation of super operating systems.
Internal in scope? "Invent, design, develop"? Was this written by a bad resume writing program? Why not a Super-Duper OS?
Either they need to hire a better technical writer, or they let the marketting droids lose to develop the techical content of their web site. Or perhaps they don't know what they are talking about.
-josh
Hasn't anyone been paying attention to the patent wars that have been going on? The patent will pass, do not doubt it. The US Patent Office is too stupid to catch it. "Oohh a way to make a computer pretend it's a different kind of computer. No one's ever done THAT before!"
The patent will remain until it is challenged in court and defeated, and it's almost impossible to overthrow a patent in court. The 800 lb gorillas can't start anything unless VOS tries to enforce the patent against them.
The end result? VOS gets the perfect weapon with which to kill off smaller competitors as long as they leave IBM and the like alone. The IBM bean counters won't authorize a legal battle over the patent just to keep a few Open Source projects alive. To them, it's not worth the expense. Plex86 is either killed off or developed only by people who live in countries that laugh at US patent laws. VMWare will probably be safe, but if VOS develops an attitude and gets some venture capital behind their legal department, VMWare will be toast.
Matthew Miller,
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Hm. An obvious Q:
Was this different under prior administrations, or commissioners?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You obviously have no idea what a nazi is. Come back when you have a clue...
However, the patent office is notoriously bad at investigating prior art. They basically just look at existing patents, not "what's out there in the real world". Second problem is that there's no requirement that the patent examiner of record actually be "skilled in the art". The PTO was issuing software patents for 10-15 years before they had any actual examiners with software engineering credentials, and seem to be even further over the edge on business practice patents.
Here's one heinous example I know about. I was a technical consultant to an employer's legal team going up against an IBM suit -- basically, they wanted access to all our technology, so they came after us with a stack of patents. One of these, filed in _1984_!, claimed to patent nothing more or less complex than cut and paste of text between multiple buffers in a text editor. Since our computer shipped with MicroEmacs, we violated this "invention". Never mind that the exact same sequence of keystrokes would have achieved the exact same effect in TECO Emacs, which I was using at CMU back in '79 (derived from earlier versions done at MIT...).
Sure, you can fight a patent with prior art, but the presumption is usually that the patent was researched fully. Clearly an increasingly bad assumption, but that's what you'll find in the system.
So yes, there is some danger here.
-Dave Haynie
oops, i fucked up. it was cambridge, not carnagie mellon...
In particular:
"There are several ways companies can leverage their IP to create a distinct market advantage, Gross said. Companies should not only protect unique parts of their current technologies, but "patent in paths where their technology is headed," he said, thereby creating a competitive advantage."
"Gross also suggested that companies create patents with "an eye on infringement," to make sure that a patent can't be infringed and to make a company aware if one of its patents is being infringed upon. If a company feels it has the best technology or method in its field, it should not only patent that technology or method, but also the second-, third-, and fourth-best methods to ensure a competitive advantage, he said."
Please, America, feel free to screw up your own high-tech industries in the legal equivalent of the "Unix wars", but leave the rest of us out of it (i.e. don't try to push laws on us via WIPO, hoping nobody will notice).
In the United States, the patent office is neither a legal body nor do they have expertise on everything. All the patent office does is gather information and makes sure everything is in order. They will only stop a patent if it is very obvious that it will not stand. Everything passed this is then left up to the courts, a body much more capable of making a decision. In this case there is so much prior art that it is unlikely that it would get passed the patent office, but during the time it takes to file the patents, they may claim that there is a patent pending.
In my opinion the American patent model is very good, leaving as much of the judging to the justice system as posssible. The cost, time and loss of skill that would go into the patent office having a staff that could understand every patent is unreasonable, and dispite what slashdot might say it is a very effective way around that.
Oh, and in response to everyone who has said that the patent office is 'stupid', just because they do not have a staff skilled in computers does not mean they are stupid. It amazes me that so many people believe that just because they are good with them, that computer skill is the final judge of intellegence.
Thank you! I'm so glad someone else on Slashdot is aware of this bizarre and interesting server OS. I actually used to work at a subsidiary of Stratus Inc. as a customer support representative for some networking middleware and transaction processing software. (This was all before the buyout of Stratus by Ascend when all the subsidiaries were sold off to the higher bidders.)
VOS is about the opposite of UNIX in command-line structure. The default command (without abbreviations) for changing a directory is 'change_current_dir'. This is kind of an interesting throwback to the COBOL and PL/I roots of the original OS back in the old days. Compare this to the C-based design of UNIX's command shell.
The really cool thing about VOS is it's utter and complete fault tolerance. The machines they run on have dual motherboards, mirrored drives, etc. so that if one component goes wrong, it immediately switches over to the other one and calls Stratus customer support to log a request for a replacement part. If you don't spend a lot of time in your server room or reading logs, the arrival of a new motherboard in the mail may be the first sign you have that one has failed in your machine.
VOS also lets you virtually partition your whole machine in a variety of ways. Multiple motherboards or even the same motherboard can be host to several 'modules' or virtual machines which can communicate with each other and share resources. Modules on the same machine may even be on seperate server boxes, linked by serial, modem, TCP/IP, or other more obscure networking methods.
Another VOS strength is its support for various ancient networking protocols. The most common service our company's software provided was to set up a fault-tolerant means of data exchange between legacy systems and the modern world. VOS was a bizarre beast, but I really liked it in many ways.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Yourself and a previous poster are quite correct that IBM was the first to fully implement the idea, on System 360 hardware. VM is still around today and is still widely used on big iron. And you're quite right, IBM is very aggressive in protecting their patents. This "Flash Vos Super O/S- Virtual Flash Based Operating System" (this tripe pasted right from their site) doesn't sound like much different (but from what I could gather on their website there are probably some differences that might allow them to secure at least some of the patents) than what VM does on big iron. Just to confirm what I believe someone else posted, VM is the OS that IBM used to run 25,000+ instances of Linux on one S/390 server.
Based on the broken graphics tags and totally amateurish implementation of their website I wouldn't expect much of their product or their ability to defend patents that might conflict with IBM's... but what do I know I'm just an (O)S/390 guy.
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
Um... VM is one operating system, OS/390 is another. OS/390 can run on a host VM system or directly on S/390 hardware, but not the reverse because OS/390 has no virtualizing capabilities. But you are quite right that S/390 hardware is specifically designed to assist OS virtualization and multiple instances of multiple OS'es, at a 'BIOS' level in PC terms.
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
IANAL, but, Patents are always granted to (and filed by) individuals. Corporations receive rights to patents through agreements with the individuals who file them (generally part of the employment contract). Thus, it's quite possible for these patents to have been filed by the individuals responsible for the "innovations" before 1998 (when company was incorporated) and the company can have since acquired the rights to any eventually-granted patents.
-Dan
Maybe its just me. I have geek interests, and yet I have never heard of this company or their product before. The details on their website are very sketchy. There are no downloads, the pages look very second-rate, and their on-line ordering isn't over SSL. There are broken images everywhere, where you would expect pictures of flashy shrink-wrap. The user manual for this 'super o/s' is full of screen-shots of a DOS app running in a Win9x comand window. And although they claim to be a US company, the text gives the feeling it was written by someone who doesn't often use the English language.
OK, I am a constant skeptic. Is it just me, or does this look like a hoax to anyone else? Isn't it the sort of thing one would expect to have seen a feature on at a geek site like Ars Technica? Can anyone present any evidence that this is real?
Basically "unsafe" code in this context is any code that tries to access hardware (should be possible to trap with the MMU), and code that uses some x86 trickery to find out which "ring" they run in, which is impossible to properly virtualize, and has to be emulated.
Since the "unsafe" code cases are fairly uncommon, this delivers a significant performance boost over emulating all instructions...
Even though the Patent Office makes MANY mistakes about software patents in the past, I have faith in them that they'll realize prior art on so many of these patents. Sounds like they're just patenting a couple companies' software from the past two or three years.
Even so we should still forward off a letter to the patent office giving them a heads up about the prior art, just in case.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
So knowing that the name VOS is allready there I really can't take this article serious.
I think VOS has a problem, because this trick dates way back. IBM's mainframes were creating virtual 360's back in the late 1970's to run other OSes hosted under VM.
The idea of virualizing an OS is hardly a new one. IBM tried to do something akin to this with OS2 and Windows 3.1 ...
I suspect VOS would have a hard time claiming prior art to that.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
prolly .n, .calloq
Used by IRC'ers with only one hand free. Always written in lowercase. Example: "all this wankin will prolly make my dick fall off"
"You, Mr. slim, are a Karma Whoooor of the worst kind." ... "the same redundant Karma
Whoring that we see in every Slashdot story."
Now *this* is offtopic, but I felt I had to defend myself ("no score +1 bonus" in effect..)
Sure, what I said was pretty well known stuff, but there will be people reading who don't know it, and when I submitted it, it had not already been said by anyone else, therefore it was not redundant.
Not trolling, just honest
Trolling, but successfully.
If I'm such an appalling Karma Whore, why have I not posted a comment for several weeks?
(sigh... time was I ate personal attacks via the Net for breakfast. Now I'm getting soft and easily upset... )
--
How about someone starts a competition to come up with something the USPO wouldn't allow. The funnier the better. If the word got out to the mainstream media as a filler item, it might even make a useful point to the masses and their masters on The Hill.
Of course, we'd have to have a prize worth noting, so it would need some rich sponsor with an interest in the topic (Hello, RedHat; VA Linux?).
Rational debate isn't working with the PO, so maybe it's time to make fun of them in public.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Oh geez, that Star Bridge systems is funny :D
Just a small clear up.. IBM's VM operating system is not the same as OS/390. They are two very different systems. VM has been around since the mid 60's having been first released outside of IBM as CP/67, then it grew into VM/370 -> VM/SP (VM/HPO) -> VM/XA -> VM/ESA (the current product). OS/390 has also been around since the mid 60's starting life as OS/360 and going through several name changes (OS/VS, MFT, MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, and finally OS/390 -- I think I got the right lineup of names :)
...that was used on Stratus boxen, also known as the IBM System/88
The patent office will grant almost any patent, as evidenced by the fact that they have actually allowed the wheel to be patented.
They simply just let the courts decide if it is valid.. In the case of the wheel uhm.. look around
But you get the point they will patent damn near anything....Literally
Jeremy
Folks, hate to throw a damper on your anti-patnet fest here, but the fact of the matter is that anyone with a few bucks in their pocket can file a patent. It's totally different from being granted a patent. When VOS has some granted patents THEN we can start to complain with some real justification.
Also, where does all this stuff about patents hindering innovation come from? Innovation is all about hte development of new ideas, NOT the copying of stuff that has already been done (patented or not). It seems to me that patents in fact encourage innovation by forcing people wanting to compete to develop new original technologies rather than just copying work that has already been done (and paid for in terms of support for R&D and a lot of hard work). Whithout patents all you would have is endless copying as soon as a new idea hit the market, with the inventors getting nothing for their original work.
We still use a Stratus where I work, it is our POS network switch. From what I understand, VOS is on it's way out and will be replaced by some other OS that Stratus doesn't have to maintain. Yes, it does support many 'obscure' networking protocols, many of which are still in use on POS networks in North America (among other networks). If I'm not mistaken, IBM's version (which the previous poster mentioned) is S/88 (the hardware), I'm not sure what OS this hardware runs. I think Tandem is another hardware manufacturer of these types of redundant, highly-available systems (or perhaps that's another name for the IBM machines?) And that's what we use the Stratus/VOS combo for: submitting transactions to our OS/390 systems for authorization or switching them to another authorization provider.
  When I see the guys that work on our Stratus I just shake my head looking at the bizarre commands that they're typing in.
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
Which is NOT good, since big corporations can afford lawyers, and I can't. Nowadays the mere threat of legal action is sufficient to get a small developer to back down, even if the company's claim is unwarranted.
Oh, and in response to everyone who has said that the patent office is 'stupid', just because they do not have a staff skilled in computers does not mean they are stupid. It amazes me that so many people believe that just because they are good with them, that computer skill is the final judge of intellegence.
Computer skills, no. Common sense, yes. The patent office grants patents for such drivel as faster than light communication and extracting energy from other dimensions to increase plant-growth. All you need to do is to make a trivial invention seem very complex. The patent office lacks common sense and time. Anybody with a highschool-diploma and 15 minutes of time could have dismissed the above patent. The USPO did not.
Well then what do you propose as a better way to do it. Random 'experts' in the field deciding the fait of companies and individuals. Like it or not the legal system in the most fair and least biased way to deal with issues such as this.
Computer skills, no. Common sense, yes. The patent office grants patents for such drivel as faster than light communication and extracting energy from other dimensions to increase plant-growth. All you need to do is to make a trivial invention seem very complex. The patent office lacks common sense and time. Anybody with a highschool-diploma and 15 minutes of time could have dismissed the above patent. The USPO did not.OTOH the entire world finds it strange that that sort of thing is permitted in the US. Nazis are scum, they should all be shot (you've got guns enough, after all). While you're at it, shoot the KKK too.
As far as freedom is concerned, other parts of the world simply have different ideas about what is and what isn't "proper behaviour". In the US you tolerate nazis and the KKK, in Europe we tolerate topless sunbathing on public beaches and saying "fuck" on prime time TV. I know I'd rather see a nice pair of boobs than some hitler-wanabee. Which do you prefer?
This particular one isn't, I merely used it to illustrate that you can get anything past the patent office, no matter how ridiculous or trivial it is. Once you've got the patent all you need is to have just a little bit more money than the guy you're sueing, and you're golden.
The goal of the patent was to further innovation by making sure that inventors can profit from their (non-trivial) inventions. These days the patent system is abused by sneaking trivial broad patents through the patent system, then making money by sueing others. Unfortunately the american legal system is such that in most cases the party with the most expensive lawyers wins.
It is look me just a simple hoax, no program, no any useful info. No need to worry.
-- crown
My favorite site of this nature remains Star Bridge Systems, who should be shipping their pentaflop computer any day now ...
Buy FlashVos Super O/S Pro (RRP $199.95) now and pay only $29.95! That's a saving of 85%!
:)
Purchase now using the state of the art non-encrypted credit card form here!
I haven't laughed so hard in ages
Such ignorance drives me nuts, as do all caps posts.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
All right, I give up. You've obviously got me out-lawyered. So you get ten percent of the profits I make on this and all subsequent /. posts. If that's not good enough I'll even let you have twenty percent. But not one penny more!
Have fun cavorting with all them super-duper-models on your new yacht!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Get this!(still laughing)
"Star Bridge projects that within five years a host of products will be running on the company's Pensa(TM) processors - home appliances, consumer electronics, automobile systems, Internet interfaces, PCs, graphics work stations, supercomputers, servers, switches, routers, signal processors and every other tool for processing information."
[blank stare]
The opening page is at http://www.flashvos.com/page_1.htm. Their site is fairly amateurish and incomplete, however, you can get a feel for what they are doing. They should really get some design consultants if they are actually serious.
Incidentally www.vos.com links to an adult resource, which can't chuff the company for its professional looking prospects.
That page gives no specifics on the patents they refer to. Hopefully, it's implementation specific, and if not, there's plenty of very well documented prior art (not to mention prior patents). Don't take seriously any patent claim with the word "Super" as a standalone modifier. Maybe as a prefix in scientific context, but this is just BS for the sake of PR.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
From the blurb down the bottom:
... looks like even posting a link to the super secret site is violating their site copyright. Naughty! you are in big trouble now!!
CONFIDENTIAL: The information disclosed herein regarding the Flash Vos(TM) includes confidential, proprietary information of Flash Vos Inc. This document, and the contents thereof, may not be used, reproduced, transmitted, transferred to other documents, or disclosed to any person or entity, in whole or in part, without the prior express written consent of Flash Vos Inc. The Flash Vos(TM) is covered by a United States Pending Patent Application. All rights are reserved to Flash Vos Inc.
So
Sometimes it helps to be an old fart. I read about IBM VM operating systems while in school. I actually used it in 1976. I worked for a company that was in the midst of a conversion form DOS/VS to OS/VS1 on a System/370 158. The idea was to run production and convert apps on the same machine. I would guess that this technology existed before some of the folk at VOS were born!
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
You really only need to understand one thing to comprehend US patent law. The people who grant patents (especially software patents) have the intelligence of cauliflower. Therefore, you can patent anything that hasn't already been patented. I could apply for a patent on the process of rubbing two sticks together to make fire, and it would probably be granted. (Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have said that, because now someone will actually do it. I think I should just go ahead and flee the country now.)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Anyway, if they're trying for anything else, well, tough. I think documentation goes back to show that most of what they're coming up with isn't very original, and besides, they look like a low-budget, low-tech outfit.
I think VMWare or Plex86 will be far more useful anyway.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Doesn't this depend on when the patents were actually filed?
I say this because if VOS filed the patents after VMware or plex86 were released, then VMware or plex86 would have created the technology before VOS even existed, giving them the rights (I thought it was called "prior creation" or something like that, but I don't recall exactly).
Can anyone verify this for me? When the patent was issued and if VMware and plex86 were created before VOX?
I don't see how they could get those patents passed, but the US patent laws seems pretty strange to me as a swede.
On a side note, though, I have to say that VMWare is one of the finest pieces of software I have ever seen.
It helps me a great lot atwork, even though some things, as using the parallell port and running my OpenTV development stuff (digital tv development) doesn't work.
:wq!
It seems to me that IBM have the first virtualized is hardware with th VM (Virtual Machine) OS serie. I have worked on a ES9000 (Hardware) with the OS370 (OS) and OS390 (OS) at the same time during school.
Yes, you too can contribute to the world, by preventing this patent from being issued. How? It's easy.
/rant on
All of you who think that this patent is obvious should stop your belly aching and act! It's easy. The patent has not yet issued. In the U.S. there is a rule (37 C.F.R. 1.56) which obliges a patentee to disclose ALL prior art of which he or she is aware. So, find some prior art, and mail it to the company. They will then be obliged to disclose this prior art to the Patent Office. If they fail to do so, the patent may be invalidated under Rule 56. How's that for an easy solution?
/rant off
Of course, it's nice if you can prove that you sent it, so registered mail is preferred.
Btw, if you actually look at the IBM patent site (www.patents.ibm.com) you will find old IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletins which disclose very similar things. Imagine that...
Thalia
When faced with a set of patents like this, you have to hope that there is an 800lb gorilla out there who might take exception. Given that IBM's S/390 machines are just about as good as you can get in Virtual Machines either through VMs or LPIs, anything which seriously treads on the toes of IBMs patents in this field is likely to get short shrift in the legal arena. That said, this is already a heavily patented area - a quick search of the patent database pulls up 245 patents on this issue. Which is pretty scary given that these patents, as with so many patent applications, aim to be as broad as possible in their presentation.
So much for propelling innovation forward...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
There are types of patents that the USPTO will categorically deny, like if it's explicitly a perpetual motion machine or a mere force of nature. So, you'd have to narrow it down a little to the really offensive patents and have the focus be on taking an existing and well established idea, taking it to the next logical step with the word "internet", and see whether the USPTO would refuse that.
I don't believe these patents in any way cover "the whole discipline"... and if they do there is plenty of prior art to see the patents off.
IBM's VM (AKA OS/390) has been doing virtual machines for longer than most Slashdot readers have had a computer. Emulators (and I was playing with XZX as long ago as 1995 -- it probably was around a while before then) are essentially no different.
All VMware did that was clever was to virtualise an x86. Virtualise (as opposed to emulate) because it does not need to emulate CPU operations, merely pass them on to to the real CPU. An S/390 is designed to facilitate this. For reasons I don't understand personally, apparently a PC isn't particularly friendly to this approach, so VMware did a great job in pulling it off.
I really like VMware, I use it every day (to run Lotus Notes. Bah.) - a Free equivalent would be lovely.
--
If I remember correctly, Blue Light was vaporware. Supposedly could do things at speeds like that of a real PC (*cough* bullshit *cough*). I could be thinking of something else (since there has been alot of vaporware emulators for the mac).
Brielle
Wow, that website was good for a laugh, the text looks like it was writen by people who don't use english very often, and are stupid as well.
It dosn't look like these people have a dollar to their name, they can't hire a decent web designer, or even a good copywriter!
As far as their patents go, yeh right. IBM has been doing this for decades, at least, and MS even does it with DOS applications in win9x, not to mention those DOS emulators for Mac0S and VM ware on linux.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, if anyone is going to Comdex 2000, they're supposed to be there, so maybe someone could do a little detective work..
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
OK, you asked, so you got it ...
A patent the patent office would not grant:
Method for Calculation through Graphite Scratches on Dead Trees (also known as pencil-and-paper calculations)
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
The notion of a virtual OS layered on another OS is not new. Virtualizing RSX11M was proposed in public at the Miami DECUS meeting by Ralph Stamerjohn; I believe this was in 1980 but it could have been as late as 1982. I published the MSX-11 OS which had a mode in which it ran as a virtual OS under RSX11M. That was written in 1979. Full source was published. Virtual disks were an implementation of restrictive partitioning. Mine for RSX11D and Ralph's for RSX11M were published initially in the late 1970s. The concept of virtualizing the device on something completely invented existed in publications by the mid 1970s (gave me the idea about the RSX11D virtual disk). The patent office may never have heard of DECUS, let alone looked at its publications, but they were and are open to the public. (DECUS membership has been free of charge also). This is different from a virtual machine. Incidentally, the RT11 under RSX implementations first surfaced, doing a complete OS under another OS on the same machine, by 1979. I had a copy of RT11 V2C running under RSX11D in 1979 and there had been earlier ones. (Had to slow down or stop the clock though; the host machine and os couldn't keep up.) The virtual RSX11M was intended however to virtualize at system service level optionally, not just at driver level. While it was never wholly implemented (we had day jobs) it was discussed in detail and some bits like virtual debuggers did get implemented. I am sure there were many others.
Atleast on WinNT VMWare would go
Application -> Kernel -> VMware -> Kernel -> hardware
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
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[Science] is one of the very few things that raises human life a little above farce and gives it the grace of tragedy.
To print, you crease a virtual printer, to read cards, yoou create a virtual card reader, if you needed memory, you create a new virtual machine with more virtual memory.
I used VMS under VM370 in 1981. I think that is before 2000, but maybe I made a Y2k error on my math.
Fight Spammers!
I have an old used Mac IIci, which came with some old version of this SoftPC on it. I just booted it up, and the "About SoftPC" from the "Apple Menu", says "Version 1.4: (EGA/AT) © 1986-1990 Insignia Solutions" I'm not sure if they really sold a product before 1988, but anyone who's going to try and claim a patent on the invention of a virtual machine is going to have a lot of prior art to deal with.
Of course, there are a number of well written, and well moderated (up) posts suggesting that their patents might not be as broad as Rod hinted, and maybe the whole thing is a hoax.... but if anyone's looking for some prior art, I've got an ancient mac that's in danger of being completely replaced with ARDI's Mac Emulator, also some nice Prior Art, perhaps even as old as Insignia's SoftPC, but was only released commercially a couple years ago.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
To paraphase a patent lawyer friend: Whenever there is a question of reasonableness or prior art, this administration is happy to have the patent office grant the patent and let the courts (read trial lawyers) sort it out.
Seems like the information is confidential.
If you take a look at the bottom of the page reffered to in the story you find this:
"CONFIDENTIAL: The information disclosed herein regarding the Flash Vos(TM) includes confidential, proprietary information of Flash Vos Inc. This document, and the contents thereof, may not be used, reproduced, transmitted, transferred to other documents, or disclosed to any person or entity, in whole or in part, without the prior express written consent of Flash Vos Inc. The Flash Vos(TM) is covered by a United States Pending Patent Application. All rights are reserved to Flash Vos Inc."
What does this mean?
I'd rather have a real OS interacting with my system first, and then maybe something on top. I wonder what the security implications are of running their 'OS' first, and then running OpenBSD on top... Um... Any takers?
With a web design background, and site that has page 22, page 23, etc., as it's page names, scares the crap out of me. If they can't do a real web site, what's the customer support like. (Anyone remember which program spits pages out like that by default?)
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Granted, I don't know everything about Virtualizing OS's, but from the sounds of it they aren't patenting the concept itself - just certain aspects of their particular implementation. For example, all the stuff regarding the "SuperOS" is just baloney regarding their particular kernel. Restrictive partitioning of storage devices just sounds to me like the particular way they've chosen to do this, not the only way - software disk quotas, for example, could be used to achieve the same effect. As for "system virualization and virtual table of contents", the first term they use their sounds like they are trying to patent the whole concept of the virtual machine, but given the second, it sounds like something specific to their particular implementation, again. I don't think this is really a ploy to charge IBM or VMware licensing fees.
In fact, if it was, it would surely fail, and if it wasn't who cares? The amount of information on that site is so small anyway it hardly warrants an article.
And the point of troll dung is????
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Unfortunately I cannot see the patents themselves. But there is so much prior art in this area that even if the USPTO will do its usual thing they do not stand a chance in court.
IBM, Intel, Miscrosoft and Digital(now compaq) have enough prior art, IP and even patents as well as financial resources to simply roast them and eat at their leasure.
IMHO: They have taken laisurely pace towards Vmware and Plex86 because they have not attempted to file IP and bite them. This is different story. The patents have been filed. The IP war tomahawks have been dug out.
Plex86 and Vmware should simply wait until the legal ICBMs will hit on target and the legal fallout has finished.
That is if any of the patents that make any impact will actually succeed. As of now patent search return not found on all of them.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
My decade-plus old copy of Tannenbaum (Operating Systems: Principles and Pracice -- old enough to describe the PDP11 and System 370) describes this in some detail, and it sounds a bit like what they're trying to patent.
Patent office screw-up: film at eleven ...
See its a Super OS, not a regular one! With a Super GUI as well. Obviously their GUI must be great since they didn't have any artistic cabablity left to do their website (do check out the site).
The super OS can do anything!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Sounds like there might be some holes in the virtualization then. Some really tricky self-modifying code might be able to "realize" it is running under VMware. Anyone know if VMware is smart enough to catch 100% of the cases? That sounds way too close to those undecidable problems (such as the halting problem) we learned about in CS class. Is determining whether code is "safe" to allow to run on the CPU a decidable problem?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
At least as far back as about 1991 or thereabouts, a company called Insignia Solutions made a Macintosh product called Soft PC. It was a software emulator that ran Windows on a Mac, albeit slowly.
:-) ]
It pre-dates the PowerMacintosh which appeared in 1994. (That is, Soft PC ran on the Motorola 68000 processor.) When the PowerMac version came out, it was named SoftWindows.
IIRC, SoftPC goes back at least a couple if not more years than the PowerMac (1994).
Later Connectix came out with Virtual PC, which IMHO is a much more useful product (see below). Whereas SoftPC/SoftWindows take a lot of shortcuts and install specialized Windows drivers to enhance performance, Connectix's Virtual PC tries to truly emulate the PC hardware -- upon which you can install any OS. Virtual PC is more like VMWare, while Soft PC is slightly closer to WINE. I would date Virtual PC to be at least 5 years old.
There was another emulator product for Mac about the 1995 timeframe called Blue Light. I've never seen it, so I can't say much. But all this taken together should provide some prior art.
I've successfully installed SuSE 5.2, 6.x, Win NT 4 Server Enterprise Edition, Win NT 4 Workstation, Win 95 osr2, Win 98, 98SE, Win 2000 on Virtual PC. Haven't had time to try WinME.
[Why? Because it is the most wonderful testing environment you can imagine. I can fsck with the registry or other windows internals with total impunity. I can copy a previously backed up Drive C image from a CDROM in 4 minutes and have a totally virgin install of the OS back again. Wonderful QA tool. QA dept. can have a disk wallet full of CD's containing Virtual PC drive images with virgin installs of all your un-favorite OS's with various permutations of service packs, etc., all properly licensed. What OS do you want to fsck with today? Plus, I can install some screwball game, and do a before and after comparison of the entire hard drive image (using Mac tools outside the PC environment, to avoid Hiesenbug-type problems). I've even got drive snapshots of NT inbetween all the zillion reboots you have to perform during it's installation. Now if only Connectix would release a debug version that would allow me to stop the emulated processor in between instructions -- this would be the equivalent of hardware debugging from the perspective of the Guest OS. But I digress.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
A link: search on Alta-Vista turns up Pearl 9 Design which lists Flash VOS as a client. Pearl 9 Design has a mission statement that states, "Endeavor to bear standards beyond the ordinary." And looking at their site and the FlashVOS site, their concept of ordinary must be really low.
Secondly, the other clients Pearl 9 List, don't exist (or at least the links don't work). Looking at who FlashVOS lists as business partners and the list on Pearl 9 clients...I see a large amount of overlap.
Seeing that this looks like a big ol' hoax, and the fact that they are taking credit card orders, I suspect something malicious. From the broken links, the lack of anything to download, the lack of a user guide, the lack of screenshots, one can oly conclude that this is a pure vaporware site, or something criminal. I've written to the President of Flash VOS to have him contact Slashdot to verify his company's product (which is selling for just $30!).
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Why wouldn't they grant this patent?
Crazier patents have been filed...
I think they should have all their skin peeled off and dressed in a vinegar and lemon dressing as a punishment.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
If they really get them and manage to drive
VMWare (and plex86) out of business in the US,
then this would be a really good example of
patents hindering innovation. So, while this
would be pretty bad (at least for US citizens,
not me, I'm living in a free country (Germany)),
it would hopefully spark a public discussion
of recent patent practice and help to get it
in the right direction, so it could be very
good in the long run.
"We won't use guns, we won't use bombs, we'll use the one thing we've got more of and that's our minds" - Pulp
As others have pointed out, this patent will face a very tough legal battle, thanks to all of IBM's work in this area. I was a developer on IBM's VM operating system, which includes the CP "hypervisor" layer, and goes back to before most /. readers were born. If there's even an iota of sanity left in the patent process (an admittedly open question), this new application will go down in flames.
Or do you think that the patent office would not grant such patent?
Let's see: one click shopping, international e-commerce... It's difficult to imagine a patent that the patent office wouldn't grant...
Michael
Do you have ESP?
However, here's the list of the patents they claim to have filed. So, if they are overbroad, they may be caught by the patent offic and not be granted [0].
The flash based part here I think is critical. Rembeber that patents are very specific. A flip down mouthpeice on a phone is not the same as a flip up ear piece. Thus, this seems to restrict it to using flash only. Precisly what innovation it has (other than standard viruliasation and journalling) I'm not certain of, but I don't belive that this will be a problem.
Um, lost on the techincal bits of virtualisation on this one. It sounds fairly over broad.
Not certain what they mean by restrictive partioning, as apposed to 'ordinary' partioning. Google is confused on it too.
These say they are OS specific. Shouldn't be a problem.
[0] Yeah, right.
I assume you're asking if using some kind of "virtual machine" technology such as VMware degrades performance due to the fact the OS isn't accessing the hardware directly.
The answer, is yes. As for the level of performance degredation, that I couldn't tell you exactly, and would think it would vary between applications and OSes. You're correct, the more levels of software between a process (the kernel, an application, a daemon, etc), the slower that process is due to having to move through the layers to get the to actual hardware. Rather than go Application -> Kernel -> Hardware, a machine with VMware would go Application -> Kernel -> VMware -> hardware. One extra step, and thus a loss of performance, no matter how small.
Unless the software package (the VMware-esque program) is poorly written, the performance loss is usually not noticable to the end user based on experiences I've heard about. The large exception to this rule is games, where speed and direct hardware access are everything.