Slashdot Mirror
Inferno Plugin for IE - An OS In Your Browser
anothy writes: "Vita Nuova has released a preliminary version of their Inferno plug-in for Internet Explorer (other browsers and OSs pending). this embeds Inferno, a small OS built around good security, a virtual machine, and an extention of the Unix "everything is a file" model, right into your browser. The plugin itself is 719Kb (smaller than Flash or RealPlayer) and provides most general OS services, including I/O, text manipulation, floating point functions, and graphics, including a Tk (no, it's not Tcl/Tk) implementation. These are the exact same Dis files that run on native Inferno (on raw hardware) or emulated on various other OSs. They also provide additional info on the plugin, including a little info on writing Inferno applications. Inferno's originally from the same lab at Bell Labs that gave us Unix, C, and Plan 9." See our previous article.
The point is perfectly valid, and your stupid kneejerk respons perfectly annoying.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
think it's not really an OS, just a shell. Whoever said "OS" was simply slightly misguided
Inferno is an OS which can be gleaned by checking the Overview papers on Inferno, Limbo is the scripting/programming language for the inferno OS. The plugin merely allows you to run Limbo programs in a browser which is exactly what Java plugins enable one to do with applets.
Grabel's Law
Thanks to Moore's Law, there will be room for more for some time to come. Actually, you may be on to something there... Ever asked yourself what anyone would need the laterst GHz and TB monsters for when most of them are doing the same tasks with them that the hardware of 5 years ago, a tenth as powerful, was already adequate for? Well, here's your answers: layers upon layers of abstraction, emulation and embedding that do hardly anything useful and make the system all that much more complex and difficult to debug... creating more work for programmers and technical support people. And whoosh! you got yourself a "new economy" out of nothing!
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Am I the only one wondering WHY this is cool? First off, it's just plainly sick to build an OS to run inside of Internet Exploiter, and secondly, exactly what are the features of this plugin? In other words, besides it's capabilities process-wise, what is it good for, and why would the average user give a damn 6 months from now?
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"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
Java, Inferno. It seems such a waste to design, construct, and optimize virtual machines, then only support a *single* language on that VM. Image the same model for real processors: "The NEW Intel Crapanium!!! Executes C++!". What a joke.
I repeat Inferno started out as a Java competitor. Dennis Ritchie and co were pulled out of Plan 9 to immediately work on Inferno.
1. Everytime you hit backspace, it sends you back to the last page. I don't think I really want to train my fingers to forget what backspace does in a normal shell.
2. It looks like a good flash alternative except... The traditional flash developer uses flash because it has decent development tools that a graphic arts person can understand. Are these people going to drop everything to learn Tk?
3. Number 2 might not be a problem if it ran on Linux and was under an OSI certified license. At least the geeks who like programming, graphics, and Linux might use it. But NO, they targeted IE, and the license has some issues. Aren't the X fonts free?
My recommendations: 1. come out with a Linux version. 2. work out the license issues to the point where it is MPL / LGPL compatable so that it can be plugged into Mozilla. 3. Offer secured EiC as an alternative to that other funky language.
Shoot! If they followed my recommendations, it'd be Scrubbed C (I wrote that before I knew what a VM was. If I were to write that today, I would forget about preprocessing the language and propose a sandbox instead)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Inferno and Java comparison from your favorite Bell labs.
A news item that I got by just searching for inferno and java on google. I suggest you do the same.
How about this link? That URL comes incorrect when I post with Dec 7 nightly build of Mozilla. Remove the garbase after .html.
Rather than being interpreted, as Java applets normally are, Juice always compiles each applet into the native code of the target machine before it begins execution.
Java hasn't been "normally interpreted" for several years now.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Limbo offers a different approach to programming than Java. The intrinsics are immediately useful rather than just providing faciltiies to allow the construction of useful facilities. You save a layer immediately. Also Limbo's syntax, once you get accustomed to it, is refreshing. It took me, a long time C (and everything else) programmer only a few hours to feel quite comfortable. The implicit typing saves so much...typing :) You get a lot of the ease of use of dynamically or un-typed languages whilst retaining strong type checking. And then there's the CSP support which is handy for today's more complex interactive programs and may be simpler to use than the Java concurrency model (I've done a lot of occam, I'm biased, and yeah I know there's channel classes for Java).
Duh,, if you follow da links duh... Can you say anything useful, probably not.
Oh, someone's going to Hell for this one. (That infinte inferno.)
How do you know, were you there?
I work with someone who was there. Someone who has been closely involved with the Labs from the earliest days of Plan9 and Inferno. Your version of events certainly doesn't correlate with his!
Othello and connect four come stock with inferno. Granted it takes a little work to get them working, but they are just plain cool to play. Also, we've just completed checkers for inferno here at SUNY Geneseo for our distributed systems class.
The VM does not just support a single language. It executes Dis code, much as the Java virtual machine executes Java byte code. There's nothing to stop other languages using the VM.
Hey if you would follow those links you would see that it's authentication, and not authentification. Jeez take the time to read.
In college, we used to spy on the other lab using this sort of audio trick on some SunOS sparcstations. Until someone got pissed and pulled all the microphones.
rsh otherlab "/bin/catThanks to the "everything is a file" philosophy, it was amazingly simple to do. But the problems start to crop up. Security is workable (set the file permissions on /dev/audio to only read/write for the console user like Solaris later did). But if I wanted to change the sample rate, I had to go use a non-file interface.
I'm inclined to believe that you're talking out your ass, unless VMware has made some amazing leap that lets you run multiple layers of emulation without instructions being caught by the wrong layer... Could you show me where they announced this feature?
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Well, for one, you could install the real thing, but this is a very convenient way to try it out. 700k? C'mon, some web home pages have more graphics content than that... But also, as a plug-in, it occupies the same niche as Java, whilst being a whole lot smaller.
> a small OS built around good security, a virtual machine, and an extention of the Unix "everything is a file" model, right into your browser
So now instead of mailing you a click-to-run Virus Bearing Script, the 44x0r k1ddi35 will mail you an entire click-to-run operating system to work their evil wills on you.
Could you sucker someone into launching this and hide the fact that it was running? Might make it easy for your team to move to the front of the pack at distributed.net, if honesty wasn't one of your big priorities.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
From what I am getting out of this, I am guessing that maybe for a specific client/server app the server may decide that the best way to present information is via an app written for the embedded platform Inferno and therefore they write the application. Then, the clients, via this plugin can view the info the server presents via a standard web server.
:-)
I am saying this because it's not nearly as general purpose a solution as Java since it is a IE plugin and, well, why should we all learn another web language...
So, anyway, I'm seeing a cross between java and ssl only it only works on IE >5.0. Sound right? Oh well, who knows, it's late and I haven't slept for days. Damn college finals.
Justin Dubs
Maybe it sounds like JAVA. But I've tried the examples and it is very fast executed. I've never seen a JAVA-Applet this fast.
My oh my aren't we in a bad mood today.. I did read the article but I was commenting on how a "os environment hosted in a browser" sounds exactly like the idea that Java has, with a sandbox etc.. You know how Sun wants you to think of it as a PLATFORM and not a language. The basic idea is the same.
Maybe you should lighten up a little. This is just Slashdot; a web site. It's not worth getting a heart attack over.
And why does your dis file need to be signed in order for you to do communication back to the originating server? Even the Java sandbox allows you this luxury.
We've already got the wheel, folks. Haven't you worked out what color to paint it yet?
I don't know what the poster (or slashdot crew) were thinking. If you even read the first few lines at the website it becomes clear that this plugin allows you to emulate the behaviour of limbo machines.
This is not complicated. Running Limbo binaries under x86 is called emulation. There is no "limbo os" its a language. The source doesn't (to my knowledge) compile under x86 (yet?). However it does compile on limbo machines (obviously).
This is not neat, new or very interesting. Its something that has been done many many times.
mmm hmm... (sarcasm) yeah, ALL it does is authentification and encryption. I guess you're right.
(not sarcasm) Fool.
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
Does not work neither in IE nor in Mozilla 0.6.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Just invoking the word "bytecode" or compiling a language to bytecode doesn't suddenly make the virtual machine language independent.
Java bytecode, for instance, is significantly tied to the Java language specification. Go browse The Java VM Specification if you like -- classes fields, members, construction, interfaces, and garbage collection are built into the VM.
Admittedly, I am ignorant of Dis code, but when I see "Inferno applications are written in Limbo" in the Inferno FAQ, my confidence in a language independent Inferno VM is shaken.
I can write a config and script for plugger to run vmware from in inside Netscape/Mozilla/..., and boot in it from downloaded image for any OS that runs on x86. With all secuity and whatnot -- will I get a slashdot story for that?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I think we ran out of memory at an OS
you like to configure a lucent pathstar for voice over ip and such.
When you get the plug-in you are essentially downloading the Inferno kernel. I know it's hard to understand in the Windows age, where the definition of "OS" for some reason now includes a media player, but it's certainly an OS. (I actually think the Widow Manager (WM) is evenincluded in the plug-in as well.) And incredibly small and portable one, which is great. Run the "shell" program, and look around. Inferno's real "power point" is that it can run practically anywhere, either native or emulated- and does a very efficient and good job at both. Plus, Limbo is a REALLY cool language. Forget talking into a mic and making the sound come out of your computer's speakers- with Limbo you just need a few lines of code to talk into a mic and make the sound come out of _another_ computer's speakers. Neat stuff- in fact if they'd let Inferno out of the secure no-networking box this plug-in puts it in, you could play with stuff like that.
Maybe it's just me but that sounds like a Java virtual machine, with the exception of the small size and the "everything is a file" of course. :)
See also info about Lucent VPN Firewall products, which also run on top of Inferno: Google-search
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Maybe I'm confused by this whole concept, but, the only thing that springs to mind to say is "Why?". I mean really, a browser in your OS. This has to be more of a hack than any sort of useful product. Someone please prove me wrong...
Justin Dubs
btw, fp?
The Styx Architecture for Distributed Systems
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
in IE? that's not exactly anywhere...
unless you believe the browser war is over and ie won, hm...
but there has to be an easier way than to run an os in your browser, right?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
On inferno...
echo rate 22050 > /dev/audioctl
changing volume, encoding and all the usual audio parameters is done in the same way.
As for security. Inferno allows you to authenticate connections to your machine. You can choose the namespace (and hence devices) visibile to clients on a per connection basis, optionally authenticated, digested and/or encrypted.
With it you can mount the file server from Inferno and read and write to ODBC databases. The file server presents a name space that looks like this:
Each open of the `new' file results in a new conversation with the server. You can send management commands to the `ctl' file, SQL commands to the `cmd' file, read the format of results from the `format' file and the actual result data from the `data' file. You can manipulate the database through the namespace, from a Limbo program, or even from the shell like so:
mount -A tcp!localhost!6700 /n/remote
{
d=/n/remote/db/`{cat}
echo 'connect cellar' >$d/ctl
echo 'select name from wine' >$d/cmd
cat $d/data
}</n/remote/db/new
Through the namespace you can control the format of the returned results, control transactions, connect to new databases, execute commands, and of course read the results.
The server runs under Windows on a remote machine and connects to its local ODBC service. In common with all Inferno servers it then exports those services over a network (not just TCP/IP) to other Inferno systems using the Styx protocol.
Its easy to write servers for other databases, and indeed other kinds of service. One of the nice things about such servers is that they can be explored using common commands like: ls, cat, awk, pwd, cp, echo, acme and even perl, i.e. without specialised interfaces in each program.
I don't really understand half of what you're saying here. Some of it seems to switch meaning in midsentance. Rephrase the core of the post for me please?
Now i can run Inferno on top of ie/win98 on top of linux.
"dis" files on "inferno". I love it! :)
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
Point taken, but in this case it's quite obvious.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I never got past the Apple ][ emulator in Java.
I bet Inferno doesn't have any games, either.
Damn you, AT&T, and your Unix heritage. MacOS X will never have any good games. You're not going to take away my web browser too!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
If you actually have a point in implying that Inferno can do oh so much more, come forth and tell us about it instead of attacking people for failing to do something you apparently haven't done yourself.
Moron.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
the usual moaners saying "what's the point of that" bore me
.oO0Oo.
The point really is that you get the write once use anywhere philosophy. Ok so java has been there before but surely that fact doesn'e preclude someone else trying it out.
The plan9, Inferno system of distributed computing through namespace binding is the true gift of this project. Although I did notice some of the Styx functionality has been removed for security (Styx is the network).
You implement services by mounting your service as a file system. You can then execute all of your machines capabilities through echo & cat!!
"So what!" I here the unimaginative cry well you can bind services from remote computers and use their capabilities in exactly the same way.
want to play audio on MY computer
roughly
bind MyComputer\audio \hisaudio
cat music.pcm \hisaudio
and the audio plays out on my machine
You imagination should take you from there.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Oh dearie me.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
It's very simple. They created the 578th "OS specialized for embedded applications" project, like every other software company without a sound business plan seems to be doing today. They want their project to get more exposure, excuse me, "mindshare". They figured "how much more mindshare can you get than with a plugin for the single most used application on the face of the planet?". And that's why we were blessed with this wonderful piece of ones and zeroes. A market penetration piggy back ride.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
You know, an assumption you have here really bothers me. Who is the "we" in the "do we need this"? Lots of different people need lots of different things. Even if you are speaking just as an advocate for a software distribution model, or an OS, or whatever cause- there isn't a distinct "we" that either needs this or doesn't. Of course, Im being harsher on you that I should be, since your explanations takes the sting out of the way the "issue" is phrased. But I'm a nasty guy.
I seriously doubt you've seen this, unless it was one of the earliest betas (before build 134, when I got into it). VMWare specifically checks this at boot, and won't run if it finds it's started within another virtual machine - so no recursion is possible.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
I like it, it is very small, and even if it is
only a preliminary version while java enabled
web browsers have been around for YEARS, it
still seems both faster and more stable than
any java solution I've ever seen in a web browser.
Way to go... now we only need to get all those horrible java applets out of the web and replace them with limbo equivalents.
I just installed the plug-in here at my work. And the samples are keeping me extremely entertained. It's pretty neat, a little better than javascript i'd say.
"Authentification"? Is this some sort of subliminible message?
Great, we get a new programming language. At least this one is optimized for parallel programming and process syncronization.
:)
One thing I am missing is support for their target devices, like the Palm
BTW: It is not Open Soruce, it is $300 for a source license.
One could regard a virtual machine as an OS, either running directly on the hardware (such as Inferno OS or JavaOS) or running on some software layers (such as another OS).
Indeed Java and Inferno are similar in concept. You could call the Java VM also an OS.
What many folks may not realise is that Inferno was in fact written in answer to Java. Development started more than 6 years back when the first Netscape browsers were released with Java support. Java uses a stack based VM, Inferno used a register based VM.
I remember me and my friends being pretty excited about Inferno (we were doing our post graduation). We thought Java really sucked. At that time everything was touted up as a Java alternative, including Perl (someone wrote a sandbox for Perl and was quite vociferous about it).
Now six years later, I use the web with Java completely disabled and I really don't want a client side execution environment on my browser. Maybe javascript has it's uses (which was originally Livescript and Netscape changed it's name to hook on to the Java hype), but all these "execution environments" are simply browser bloat that I can live without.
That is not to say Inferno is useless. I still think it's great stuff, just that I see no point in having it as a browser plugin.
I knew that! With the plug-in model of the IE, sooner or later it would allow for Inferno to be released out on the Internet.
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
I think this is a great idea!
Seeing as IE hardly runs in anything that can be called an OS, you'd have to put an OS *somewhere*, so why not in IE?
Kinda makes sense, doesn't it?
mindslip
Also, this GREATLY simplifies communicating with Internet Appliances. As someone previously mentioned, Inferno is an embedded OS. Having the same OS embedded within your browser as you do in your appliances permits seemless interaction and communication with all Internet Appliances you may have in the home.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The point is not that it adds another character to the Java, ActiveX,etc. stable. The point is that it implements a really neat OS in yet another location, in this case allowing you to run any of the applications you've written or others have written for that OS- without having to download and install the whole thing. And to boot, it's not just "another"- it's really good.
Limbo is a truly elegant and wonderfully concieved language. It would be silly to start arguing right now whether it's better or worse than your favorite language- as I'm sure many people are prone to fall into. Who knows? It's just really neat.
It's not a supported feature, and in fact there is a check in VMWare to prevent you from booting vmware in a guest OS... As always, there are people that found a way around it "because they could". The early betas didn't have the check, but you could barely get VMWare installed in the guest, much less run it. It *is* amazing what one can do given the right tools, though...
There's certainly no reason to do such a thing, but I did see it running... The person who did it has since graduated from college (a couple years ago along with myself), so he no longer has the screenshots up on his campus-connected box. I'll see what I can do about getting him to show that, or have him send me the shots and I'll host them myself...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
if anyone ever read _A Deepness in the Sky_ by Vernor Vinge, that is exactly what happened. it was easier to kruft on to the existing computer systems than redesign them from scratch (some people tried, they ended up being just as bloated and kludgy) so they ended up having people known as programmer-archeologists, who looked at thousand-year-old code and figured out how to integrate it into their systems.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
so instead of integrating a browser into the os now, we're integrating an os into the browser?
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
I don't know enough about IE plugin design but is it possible to capture the Backspace event?
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
They seem to be using Limbo as a programming language. Somehow, I don't think YACSPL (yet another client side programming language) is the way to go here.
Moz.
see a Text Widget
I wonder when Mozilla will be porter to Inferno!
1) Operating Systems provide services to applications.
2) Inferno is an OS
3) Limbo apps run on Inferno
If, indeed, Limbo apps need services from Inferno to run, and the Browser Plug-in can do this as well, then it would follow that....
4) The web browser plug-in is an OS for the same reasons that Inferno is.
Apparently those required services are called "Dis". I catch the reference, but it's been a while since I read up on Inferno.
In any case, it's definitely blurring the line for what an OS is and isn't. It's pretty far away from the hardware, in any case.
But wasn't that what people were predicting? Wasn't that why Microsoft was afraid of Netscape, and then Java? "The browser is the OS"?
That's right, folks. It's not just emacs anymore.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
it's funny you should say that. i just had a look at the Linux ICQ client, and the compressed source is 370K, more than half the size of the Inferno plugin...
one of the nicest things about inferno is that it's not bloatware. given that it has Styx protocol support built in to its core, that has already solved many of the hardest problems that people seem to reinvent badly with each custom protocol, such as the one ICQ presumably uses.
This looks to me as though it attempts to be a solution to a problem that hasn't really been defined yet. Java, Internet C, Inferno, whatever, they are all trying to address the same problem of portable code that is quick to write that can be embedded onto a user's desktop without an installation routine.
The concept is pretty powerful, but nobody has actually turned around and asked why we would want to do this. In fact, nobody has really defined what it is we want to do. Because of that, we end up with a mish-mash of solutions, none of which quite hit the spot. At the moment Java is taking the lead because it has the largest user and developer base out of all of them. But I'm sat here, still thinking to myself whatever happened to "push" technology that was being touted 4 or 5 years ago?
I can see the "point" to Inferno, as I can see the point to many projects like it, however I just don't think it will succeed. Looking at the page, it appears to be designed to handle embedded systems programs in a distributed manner. I'm kind of curious as to why I would want to do this in a browser. Nice idea, but as many people have pointed out, wrong application of the priniciple IMHO.
The same emulator is available for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. The plug-in enables another mode of distribution. It is a small download that enables people who would rather not download the entire Inferno system, including compilers and source code, to run Inferno applications
The plug-in download and installation is much smaller and more seamless because it is more specifically targeted.
When wanting to demo your apps, what is a suit more likely to use, a web browser and a small plug-in or a separate, much larger, download that still requires you to fetch the files you wish to run from somewhere off the net - for which you will probably use your web browser!!!
The plugin allows you to run applications written in a specific language(Limbo) for the Inferno OS on your browser but isn't an OS in your browser from what I can see.
depends what you want to call an OS! of course, from the host OS point of view, it's just another user-level program (or plug-in, for IE), but...
the environment provided to programs running inside Inferno is indistinguishable from the environment that they'd see if Inferno was running as a genuine OS on bare hardware (as it does, on several architectures, in as little as 512K of RAM).
moreover, at the OS source code level, the great majority of the code is identical from platform to platform (no ifdefs - this is genuinely portable C written by gurus of the language)
so, given that programs inside it can't tell the difference, i'd say there was a very strong case for saying it's an OS inside a browser. (even if the entire OS is booted just to run one program - boot time in 0.5 seconds, not too bad...)
This plugin is pretty neat!
I'm a game developer, do you reckon I could adapt this plugin and use Inferno as a scripting language in my (commercial) game? (I'm worried about the licensing though).
It looks the business.
To develop limbo applications you will need to download the free version of Inferno. This comes with compilers, source code for all the standard applications and libraries, the Acme development environment and full documentation. More than enough to get you started.
There is even a paper on writting limbo applications for distribution using the plug-in
No offense, but why is it that this sort of obvious joke is modded up the highest, while all the serious discussion is squished downwards.
We have identified the Goatsex/Crash bug and have released a patch. Please point your browser to http://windowsupdate.micosoft.com.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
(This post is ©2001 Microsoft(TM) Corporation.)
Oh I get it. You get modded +3 automatically when you write something against MS.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Java itself offers several levels of tradeoff between functionality and size. To me, the most logical choice for a browser plugin wouldn't be an entirely new language and runtime, something that requires a lot of retraining and retooling, it would be a version of Personal Java, something that could easily fit into a few hundred kbytes.
No wait...I could always install VMware on my system, use 1000MB of the space on my harddrive to install Windoze and additional 250MB to install IE...This new lightweight OS rocks! :-)
Why would I bother, you heard them all anyway...
Imagine...
you have just implemented a really cool application for your next generation (Inferno) web phone or PDA and you want your investors, or potential customers to have a look at it.
How do you go about it? Screen shots? PAH! Put it on your web site and let them play with the real thing. No recompilation is required. The same app runs on your phone, your pda, your fridge, Windows desktop, Linux desktop, Solaris desktop, and now - Internet browser!
That's pretty damn cool if you ask me.
I've done it!
There isn't much point until the networking security model is established - the current plug-in has networking disabled until the security model is mature enough to enable it.
We could enable networking right now, but that would be irresponsible.
I have a version of the plug-in with networking enabled which Charon runs in without a hitch. Pretty strange using one web browser inside another one!
Put it this way, back when I met you off the train to introduce you, yadda yadda yadda (remember the red jacket?:), if JSP and Servlets were around, you'd have been writing Java instead of Cold Fusion code for that thing you did.
No, I don't. Have we met? What thing?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
I don't think that this is the issue here. You don't need valid reasons simply because there are so many of them allready defined. The question here would be 'do we need another?'. I agree with Wiggy here; we've seen so much allready, one even better then the other, but none ever seem to succeeded in becoming a commonly known (and used) standard. Sure; they all made their promisses. Your speech about running everywhere for example can easily be attached to Java. Java can do some great things, heck I even tried a complete office suite written in Java once (on OS/2, later I also tried it on Windows) which ran pretty smooth. OS/2 even had Java support completely implemented so I could run those applets as look alike native applications. In OS/2 I ran the suite like every other program while I needed a browser in Windows. Now I own a Psion 5mx which also has Java capabilities yet it seems no one is taking advantage of them which is a shame IMHO.
So what makes you thing this plugin will do the trick? Java evolved to a point where you could use it for office tasks, yet MS is trying something like this with their .NET strategy using a complete different setup (not even using their stolen^H^H^H^Hdeveloped Java clone). IMHO the concept is nice but don't expect too much just because it can do some nice tricks.
A paper on the shell is available here
Given Inferno's namespace approach to devices and resources, the shell becomes very powerful. For example, network connections can be established with simple shell commands such as cat and echo. This makes it possible to write things like Chat servers and clients using shell scripts - indeed this has already been done!
Info on licensing...
The license for the plug-in is exactly the same as that for the free Inferno download
The developers need to sit down for a minute so that they realize what they did: they built an OS into IE. Do you know how incredibly wrong that is?
For those who didn't think that IE was bloatware already......
Wow, maybe they're trying to get it to compete with emacs?
So what? How many other OSs can be plugged-into Internet Explorer? Will whole computers be able to run on Inferno bypassing windows all together? A computer that does the internet, just the internet, and nothing else? I'm confused. If this isn't the goal, what is the point of having a whole OS in IE?
Several issues arise here:
Do we need this?
Well why not? There are hundres of programs doing the same thing around the world. Why not for the internet? Yes, it sounds like the Java virtual machine and nobody is really sure if it adds something new. But the same can be said to hundreds of programs being released around the world.
The usage.
It will probably be used for something usefull. People will create powerful applications with it that will increase our experience on the internet. I am sure of it. I just wonder when a program similar to ICQ will be released.
--- Anyway, here's Aniway!
An OS.
A browser in an OS.
An OS in a browser in an OS.
A browser in an OS in a browser in an OS.
An OS in a browser in an OS in a browser in an OS.
How many recursion before we run out of memory and CPU cycles?
Just wondering.
if you get bored, see if you can get that bad boy going on BeOS =)
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
this sux....the Inferno tetris game is to close to real time speed --- After playing those Java tetris games, I thought I was a pretty good tetris player....But all along the only reason I was doing any good was because I was running at 1/2 speed (because of Java)...
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
eight megs and continuously swapping.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What would happen if we told it that it was running inside a web browser?
Would it go insane with the knowledge that it's just a computer simulation on a computer simulation of a computer? Would it lose all compassion and kill a bunch of processes just for the fun of it, knowing that nothing was "real?"
An application running in an OS on top of a virtual MIPS R3000 on top of a Java VM?
Aaaaaaaaaagh!
Still, sounds quite impressive.
So I can let people try out my latest IPAQ application without having to download onto their IPAQ. They can play with it using IE (and other browsers coming soon) and then download it onto the IPAQ if they like it.
This is just one example of why this is exciting.
> How do you go about it?
With a normal, standard win32 inferno emulator (similar to appletviever). This emulator would execute '.whatever' files, which could be downloaded from the web site in a single click. For the use you describe, having a web browser plugin in is (IMHO) pretty weak.
But sure, it is cool. Strangely, it make more sense as a mozilla-plugin, as mozilla appliances will probably appear in a not so far future...
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
It provides most of the services to the Limbo app that the full Inferno OS provides (or at least it will eventually). I suppose calling it an OS is pushing it a bit, but these definitions get more blurred every day.
The Flash 5 plugin is *way* smaller than 700K, its around 2-300K. The author was probably thinking about Shockwave, a *much* larger plugin used to play Director files on the web. Gotta love irrisponsible jouralism... misrepresenting products will get Slashdot in trouble sooner or later.
A|Q|U|A
Whenever new features or functionality are added to any program new lines of programming code have to be written that will result in a larger executable binary (or .so file). If the extra features added are excellent, and just what everyone needs, that is fine. Otherwise, it just becomes bloatware. Something that makes the program slower without helping the user. Unfortunately many programs are full of bloat.
Inferno however is a plugin. It is not directly part of the IE browser but rather something IE can run and pass data to. So it is not fair to comment on how IE is already bloated so Inferno will only make it worse. It is irrelevant.
The important question then is Does inferno offer us any new and useful functionality? Well, on the face of it it doesn't really appear so. I can't really see that it will offer any practical use that can not be done in Java. Java can be embedded in browsers to do just about any type of application (if signed) and inferno stands to be the same in that respect. However, what might be different is the licensing. Java isn't always the best thing to use for Licensing reasons. Inferno might be a different. However, I can't see anywhere on their site what the licensing issues are. Does anyone know what the licensing issues of writing a Tk application in Limbo are? If we can write free embedded applications then this really is something good and not just bloat.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
I guess we all know what Corel will be doing next...Inferno!
Oh, wait...Corel will only latch or not latch onto it after it's usefulness has already been determined...woo!
Oh wait, is it Open Source, or is it Free? Do we know? Do we care? Will it make Bill Gates's loomies wet with sweat from his fear of impending cometition?
Will this make Sun run and point fingers at them all the while touting Java! Java! Java!
Will it make clueless lawyers misrepresent their clients' cases in front of a 90 year-old judge who is still struggling with the concept of an A: drive and a C: drive, all the while trying to discern between a single-click, a double-click, or variations of right and left clickage under duress and one-click shopping? Define a click! Is that right, or left? Are there click chads? Pregnant click chads? What about a prematurely clicked chad if that chad was run on a republican operating system deployed in a presumably democratic-leaning minority precinct? Would the pregnant click chads and dimpled cross click chads and partially flamboyant click chads be counted fairly across all iterations of this software, or will it merely reside within the domain of proprietary operating systems, or would it be passed mightly down to the realm of the free, the brave and the hopelessly fragmented? What would happen if your ChadOS had only one mouse button?
Good thing Florida got no programmers. Would be hard for them to discern between a right click and a left click, or the actual intent of the end-user's presumed intent of a possible decision about a highly probable distinction between that which is a click, is not a click, a right or left click, or the variations thereof.
I guess all we have left is the operating system's determination of various states of clickage vs. the end-user's original intent to click.
You laugh now...
Well, I've seen VMWare run from within itself - e.g. Linux running in VMWare on NT on VMWare on Linux... as well as NT on NT on NT... theoretically, if you have enough memory and drive space, you could keep doing this.
I've yet to see anything as complicated as VMWare run on VPC...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
it isn't a horrible mistake. it's an extremely well informed design decision.
There's nothing "universal" about a one-dimensional stream of 8 bit characters
no? apart from the fact that all computer data can be represented as bits... that sounds fairly universal to me!
representing resources as files provides an extremely useful abstraction layer and hierarchical naming scheme. in the inferno/plan9 scheme, it also means that resources can be transparently exported through the network (a network being anything that provides a bidirectional stream of bits); no application knowledge or intervention is required.
it means that some simple tools become useful for an incredible range of tasks. compare to CORBA or Java for example, where you need a specialised piece of code for everything, giving you more bugs, less maintainability and lower productivity.
BTW, neither plan 9 or inferno have ioctl, one of unix's nastiest system calls.
I didn't say I wasn't getting sleep because I was studying. I never study. I never get any sleep due to all the drunken card games and counter-strike and helping the proverbial baffoons with their studying. How dare you insinuate that I study! :-)
Justin Dubs
Well, let's see. If you had actually FOLLOWED a link, you'd have read:
The plug-in enables a web page to utilise the full range of Inferno authentication and security mechanisms to provide mutual authentication, message authentication and message encryption when connecting to any kind of service on the Internet, not just to other web pages.
It's for security, foolio. Of course, that was just ONE of the mentioned uses. Try actually following the links next time.
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
-CoG
"And with HIS stripes we are healed"
Handel's "Messiah"
hmm, Inferno...so is this telling IE users to go to hell? ;)
OK, so I could run Inferno in IE in Windows in VPC in my Mac?
But wait, what about OS X? Then I could run Inferno in IE in Windows in VPC in the Classic environment in my Mac.
I wonder if any of the PC emulators could handle VPC itself. Then you could run Inferno in IE in Windows in Mac in Windows in Mac in Windows in Mac in Windows...
After reading the information on the plugin, I fail to see how this is an OS in a browser.
The plugin allows you to run applications written in a specific language(Limbo) for the Inferno OS on your browser but isn't an OS in your browser from what I can see.
This is more akin to being able to run Java applets in your browser via the Java Virtual Machine than any OS in the browser crap.
From the Inferno plugin page
The Inferno Internet Explorer plug-in allows a Limbo program to run inside a web page when displayed by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or 5. The plug-in executes Dis within a sandbox in the Inferno Dis virtual machine which provides the execution environment for all programs running under the Inferno Operating System
Grabel's Law
http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/binary_licence.ht ml
You can write and compile applications with the download and then distribute them on the Internet. You don't need to pay any licence fee for doing that - they're your applications!
Whats more there is nothing in the licence to stop you from making money from applications that you develop in this way - you can sell them.
A fellow I knew used this (and some other things) to get access to the "CP DIRECTORY", which contained all the passwords to the system (in plaintext!). You out there somewhere Bert?
(All of the above is from memory, the facts may have eroded with time.)
Milalwi
Just remember, Linux is not an OS... so it'd be:
..."
"GNU's not Unix's not Unix's not Unix... Unix's/Not an OS running in a browser on
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
How do you go about it? Screen shots? PAH! Put it on your web site and let them play with the real thing.
Ummn, this seems like a bit of a fantasy.
If the Web phone or the PDA isn't actually built yet, you'll be probably faking up the interface in Flash (pick your tool), for marketing and practical reasons. After all, all of the rest of the system probably isn't built either - the hardware, the server if it uses on-line resources, etc. You probably built a nice demo for the program to sell the program to management and do early user testing - that's probably a lot better suited to this kind of application than is getting the application itself running like a fish out of water on a PC screen.
If the hardware does exist, and the potential customer exists, why not give people a demo version, or let them play with the device in a store? That way they can actually experience the whole interface experience, not a simulation of what it would look like to fetch movie times on a tiny, unreadable screen for more than the cost of a newspaper in connect time (or whatever people are doing with next-gen web phones these days).
when I can use it to connect to a database and display the results. Until then it is just eye candy.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
as an intense flash fan, i'd like to emphasize too that the flash plug-in is around 2-300k. it's been said a little above but as the comment read, irresponsible journalism sucks. it is one of the very important assets of flash and saying frontpage that's it's bigger than 719k is plain irresponsible and shocking!
/// evilloop.com
Need to manage your widows? Polygamy thing or something?
Poking at a typo...
--
I wonder if eventually it can be set up to do some collabrative peer to peer stuff. Maybe something like Groove, but much more flexible. What do you think?