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Microsoft's Vision For Future Operating Systems
Bender writes: "The Systems and Networking group at Microsoft Research has a fascinating article that details what sorts of things they believe may be important in Operating Systems of the 21st century."
They left out the most important thing in an operating system... no microsoft code.
the most important thing when it comes to new OS's will be ease of use. for all the idiots out there. thats for it to be succesful anyways, not neccesarily good.
"The Network Is The Computer"?
with their record for security and backwards compat I'm supposed to give them this amount of control over anything that I care about. I'd just as soon off myself and all my clients.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Would this fall under horror as the genre if it were in a library?
(I haven't read the whole article, but just the subject seems scary)
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
the most important thing will be that the OS isn't allowed to be used to bash micrsoft or any of its products.
Go ahead and waste your life with your inhibitions, just don't ruin other people's lives with your intolerances.
It still TOTAL DOMINATION of all computers. They won't rest until even your wrist watch runs Windows for Watches XP..
Scary!
Now, is it me, or do the words "Millennium" and "distributed" together send chills down your spine too, especially coming from MS?
(and also)
How bout a beowulf cluster of...aw screw it.
Sorry, I can't keep that off my mind.
I just glanced through, and skimmed the main points, but it didn't seem like stability was a key issue. Has it become some commonplace that we don't care anymore?
Did they mention "certified security technologies" a lot of times?
It seems MS forgot this bullet in the *Goals* section:
Remove our third leg from the lemmings... err customer's ass.
Worldwide scalability - Every town has a garbage dump and it gets bigger everytime you dump on it
Fault-tolerance - We've tolerated enough faults
Self-tuning - Everyone needs an MTU of 1500 on dialup
Self-configuration - Icons for every desktop
Security [sic] - we'll try it just once
Resource controls - we've reduced the number of easter eggs in this one
I don't get it - they open with:
... and in the next breath they say:
???
figure out how much money the customer is going to make in their lifetime and have them send it to us. . . annually.
KFG
Just had to point out a special milestone today for all long-time Slashdot readers. Since the price of VA Linux's stock closed at 78 cents today, Eric Raymond's original $41 million that he boasted to everyone here about has now fallen below $100,000. It now stands at $99,937.50.
The article actually says that one of the goals is "Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
Translated: "Microsoft will take over every machine you put your filthy little hands on. Nyah!"
And it gets worse... "The administrator inserts a Millennium installation DVD disk into one of the machines and the system propagates across the network. After evaluating the network topology and hardware resources, Millennium might suggest that one of the more powerful machines (a "server") be moved to a different network location for best performance."
Translated: "Windows Millenium will infest your entire network whether you like it or not. Then, it will hunt out the Linux machines and demand that it be installed on those as well."
Now if those aren't goals of a company that plans on taking over the universe, I don't know what are....
1) I wonder what a distributed blue screen looks like?
2)Will we have to reboot the internet once a day or so?
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
You guys are fucking fags. These are the lamest jokes ever.
This is quite an old article. It originally appeared in the "Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VI)".3 40106abs.htm
RE: http://www.computer.org/proceedings/hotos/7834/78
If you would like to find out more articles related to this one check out this page at ResearchIndex:
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/21325.html
Cheers,
-ben
That article is so old the project is over already. Still interesting to think about, though.
... so that individual computers, file systems, and networks become unimportant to most computations in the same way that processor registers, disk sectors, and physical pages are today.
... MS must get sick and tired of "borg" references, but this appears a tad too close to the mark.
... (simple if everyone was using a microsoft computer and held a microsoft job).
so they want to turn their entire user-base into an application? (bear with me)
it seems the only way you could have this level of hands-off "use-ability" would be to have complete control of all aspects of the hardware and enviroments your software is running under
this seems like a huge step in the wrong direction. if we move to a level of abstraction devoid of details, how can we possibly innovate and improve?
_f
Tonight's masturbation material can be found here.
They don't really know what's gonna happen. They will wait until new innovative technologies come along and will first try to buy the company responsible for this new development. If the company is not for sale, they will create a similar solution and bundle it into the (then) current version of Windows, taking the innovator off the market.
The Linux kernal
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
geee that sounds soooo inavitive, its almost like the diskless workstations/dumb terminals that were replaced by the inovative Xerox ripoff
Anyone taken a close look at that address, in light of recent behavior by MS?
Microsoft [Unit]
One Microsoft Way
Redmond WA
("My way or the highway"-reminiscent)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
There are some sound ideas here for future directions in Linux development - and they've already been thought up for you here.
One big problem Linux development will face is the notion that devs are playing catch-up with MS with projects like Mono. (We blast Microsoft for its claim that it is an innovator, but has there been much innovation in Linux kernel devlelopment lately?) Instead of trying to build a Windows clone, we should build up a system that addresses computing in a way that MS system's dont.
this is a crazy, scary statement:
Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
my ass ill hand my machine over to them, what, so they can abuse my spare computer cycles for compiling their crap? THE WORLD IS NOT YOURS, NEVER WILL BE...go away MS, just go away.
________________________________________________
There are some good ideas here, but they seem to disregard the problem of latency. The speed of light, unfortunately, isn't likely to be overcome any time soon, and people notice when there is a 50ms delay every time they press a key, move their mouse, etc.
Some applications can be distributed, sure, but there will always be a need for interactive applications to run locally, on local data.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
As this is described in the article, you don't need to write a worm program to tie up the worlds resources - just fake world administrator access and run an RC5 type client.
Presto, the millenium system replicates it across all systems!
And every time you change a component on your system, you automatically get a new Bill bill.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
Think you could do that for me, Chachi?
Self configuring computers, self tuning, etc.? I won't allow that to happen. Me and Belinda (my sweet computer) have a very close relationship and won't let anything get between us, especially an OS. Together we enjoyed the good times and lived through the bad times. We're united and communication is an important part of our relationship.
This new generation of OS's have no idea what love means, they should be ashamed of themselves.
From the article:
.NET's future. Not to mention they really do seem to be thinking like the borg, as is also evidenced here:
Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system,....
Welcome to
Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
Although, their thoughts on distributing web site hits sounds intriguing:
A little-known web site suddenly achieves popularity, perhaps with a link from Cool Site of the DaySM or a mention in a prominent news story. Word of mouth spreads, and soon the web site's servers are overwhelmed. Or rather, would have been overwhelmed except that heuristics in the Millennium system had noticed the new link and already started replicating the site for increased availability. Monitored traffic increases confirm the situation and soon the site's data has been "pre-cached" across the Internet. As the site's usage drops over the following weeks, Millennium reallocates resources to meet new demands.
Unfortunately, this is scary stuff to hear coming from the mouths of Microsoft. *sigh* "All your OS are belong to us".
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
There is absolutely NO reason for this to be a story or a post. There are no technical content in the paper. There are no real-life examples given for any of the concepts in the paper. There is nothing but the same pie-in-the-sky fluff that is banged out to justify some research.
BORING! Christ, what a waste.
Ehm....I haven't been moderator in ages... Not that I mind too much, but I didn't find the checkbox "willing to moderate" in my user prefs. Where is it, and what am I doing wrong? I post regularly (under my account name). Is this a known bug in slashcode or so?
Please use html tags more liberally. I just can't read for all the text.
From the top of the article:
The users, operators, and programmers of distributed systems face many problems. Users of the World Wide Web are subjected to random performance and service disruptions. Replacing or upgrading a personal computer, workstation, or server is very difficult. Even a moderate size computer network requires significant expertise to configure and maintain. The principal programming abstractions available today?processes, threads, files, and sockets?do not adequately address the problems of managing locality, availability, or fault tolerance.
And if it is true can they provide some evidence, a link to an example or something?
Just seems like they're "reaching" for a justification for distributed (subscription based) computing. The writer provides no evidence of the problems addressed, and does not give evidence that distributed computing will solve any of them.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Let me guess. Microsoft OS running Microsoft software, that interacts with the Microsoft Network, and gets you news from MSNBC, and is wireless, so they can monitor everything you're doing (anonymously, of course, oh of course, yes, indeedy). Oooh, that was tricky.
AC's cheerfully ignored
a lot of the ideas in the mircosoft paper reminded me of plan9, the research OS that was developed at Bell Labs by th likes of Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Sean Dorward, Bob Flandrena, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, and Phil Winterbottom. I would imagine that anyone interested in concrete examples of some of the ideas (specifically aggressive abstraction and location-irrelevance) should take a look at plan 9 (and its sister OS, inferno). In addition to analogs to the features mentioned in the Microsoft article, plan 9 has other very nice features to boot. The most interesting to me is treating EVERYTHING like a file handle. Resources from other machines, processes, com ports: everything is all available as a part of one tree structure. You can treat the I/O of a com port like the input and output of a file. A device driver can be written in a shell script (in plain text). Check it out: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/.
"Like the Internet, the system should allow non-hierarchical trust domains with no central authority necessary."
... which kind-of goes against all this 'Hailstorm' .NET rubbish that MicroSoft has been talking about lately (Passport will be an institutionalized form of central authority for a hierarchical trust system...).
James F.
So reading between the lines here, I could buy cheap hardware, because the 'system' would detect my lack of precessing power, and use the more expensive, better resourced kit that others had bought instead, and dimply deliver the ther results.
Oh hang on, everyone else has the same idea too. Who would pay for the expenive machaines that were to do everyone elses work? Maybe we could call those big expsnive systems mainframes
Thus you'd need to bring in some sort of charging structure, with a rebate scehem if you provided processing power to others. Presumably run by a centraised authority. I wonder who that might be?
RG
NOT necessarily a future Windows. Just because Microsoft's lab guys have written these things down doesn't mean that they're bad concepts. Indeed, many of the things stated here are simply the logical conclusions of movements that are beginning now; not just on the Microsoft front, but in the computing industry as a whole. One thing is for certain, though...
Word of mouth spreads, and soon the web site's servers are overwhelmed. Or rather, would have been overwhelmed except that heuristics in the Millennium system had noticed the new link and already started replicating the site for increased availability.
This kind of intelligent system is not going to be possible, legally, under today's copyright law. And laws like the DMCA just place more stumbling blocks in the path of technological progress.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
We are microsoft.
Encryption is useless.
Your intelectual property will added to our own.
Prepare to be assimilated.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
- Security: Yes, sounds all very nice, but the level needed here is probably not feasible today and in the near future. Building such a system without the required security level would be a deaster waiting to happen.
- Fault tolerance: Especially with the abandonment of hierachical storage this becomes a major problem. Multiple copies would have to be kept of everything. Long term storage is either unfeasible or increases overall system memory load extremely or breaks the abstraction.
- Fault behaviour: If not very carefully planned this sounds like an infrastructure that runs without much problems untils some level of faults is reached and then fails catastrophically in a global way. We _have_ seen major network outages.
And what if such a system becomes fragmented?
- Load balancing: We all know that it is easy to burn arbitrarily much CPU power and large amounths of storage. With this system nobody will need/want/be able to use resources carefully. My impession is that this system will grind to a halt from overload very soon, unless there are billing mechanisms that acurately charge any user what was consumed. This is diametral to the intended abstraction, of course.
- Other severe problems. I am sure there are plenty.
Having great visions is easy. Realizing them is hard. And if you are not careful, you might do considerable damage trying. However as experiment I like this kind of stuff. Just, please, not for any production system!Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
It seems odd that they haven't noticed the trend for computing devices to change size, shape, and function. Postulating a single universal "Millenium" system seems exactly backward to me. I'd rather see the research done more on the Jini model, where many disparate devices intercommunicate. Surely that is more open to scaling and fault tolerance than the idea of one monolithic OS to meet all needs.
Microsoft appears to be becoming like the old Soviet union, where everyone has to buy in to the official ideology rather than venture out in new directions.
to describe an OS better than MS's existing one.
... what sorts of things they believe may be important in Operating Systems of the 21st century.
How about an operating system that works well?
OS research has been pursueing these goals for years. There's nothing there that's really very interesting or new. It sounds like they've just browsed the web for a little while and summarized what the various projects are striving for.
One project that's come pretty far is Mosix (I think they're planning to integrate bits into Linux 2.5, but I'm not sure). Then of course there's Plan 9 and Inferno from the fine folks who brought you Unix. And lets not forget Tanenbaum's Amoeba.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
And of course, it would be scalable and secure.
Next.
Several current projects share some of our goals or directions.
So they too must be assimilated! Embrace, extend, extinguish baby!!
"The Systems and Networking group at Microsoft Research has a fascinating article that details what sorts of things they believe may be important in Operating Systems of the 21st century."
Isn't that just a little like reading a dissertation on high fashion written by my garbage man?
Hey, at least they recognized the possibility of more than one operating system. Isn't that a first from the people doing business from a place called "One Microsoft Way"?
..resources .. will be assimilated.
It says so in the document.
What version of Windows are you running? All of these BSOD jokes flying around... Win2k rarely ever blue screens, if ever on correctly configured systems (ie, systems that don't have garbage for components). I will admit, however, the required rebooting still needs to be worked on...
See - they're nice people
That and:
Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system...
Is it just me or does this sound strangely similar to Plan 9.
I just find it funny that not only is Microsoft Research doing something that they think is new but was really done by bell labs back in the 80s, but back in the 80s every one looked at it and said "who cares".
I wonder how much money MS would have to spread around to combine the last /. story with this one? Everything controlled by MS and it being illegal to not use it.
It seems to me this article seemed to illustrate many keypoints of what Citrix Metaframe can do, minus the fault tolerance.
Someone has been taking that Borg Bill G. icon rather seriously...
- Tempestdata
Manage memory
Manage CPU time (schedule processes)
Manage access to hardware
And that's what an operating system *kernel* does.
Operating systems do not need to:
provide compilers, web browsers, colossal text editors (MS Word and emacs included)
inform users of the *really* important reasons they need to upgrade *now*
do GUI shit.
If you use a computer, you want it to do what you want. Most of the time, you want it to help you manage information. Most users don't even know that their computer *has* an operating system. Most users know that it's a really useful typewriter with an 'undo' facility.
What OS does your fridge run? your car? your microwave oven? your alarm system?
Those are all von Neumann machines, running operating systems.
A computer in a home/business environment should be useful, usable and reliable.
Get this. It's important. The people who buy computers couldn't give a flying fuck about the OS. Some want 'applications'. Those people are called 'IT managers'. Most want information. They are called 'people'.
I do *not* want my dishwasher to stop with a message of "Oops in module handle_detergent. Please run ksymoops and report to lkml". I don't want my television to go blue with advice to 'set CRASHDEBUG' for some purpose.
If you know that you are running an operating system, you are either an OS hacker, or the OS hackers have failed to protect you from their work.
I have used Microsoft products for longer than I can remember. I use Win2k and like it, it comes in very useful for school and for gaming.
./ crew by refreshing every 10 minutes. ;-)
However, with the subscription fees in XP, and no doubt whatever they will do in the future, I will be making Win2K my last Microsoft OS. When they kill support of it, I kill support of Microsoft. If they invoke software via a patch in Win2K that forces me to 'subscribe' I will no longer support Microsoft.
I applaud their 'creativity', however I will not be using their software. I am pretty much switched over to Linux, with a slight dabble in Solaris(x86), and FreeBSD.
I have a bit of a problem when it comes to assimilation. I like to do what I want with what is mine. I do not like to have what I work for and buy to be under someone elses control. I like to be able to look at the source, even if I do not understand it all yet.
I like the openness and comraderie of the open source world.
Sorry, too much soapbox talk for one day....I will retreat back into my dark room and annoy the
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
From the "what would such a system be like" section:
Web Service
A little-known web site suddenly achieves popularity, perhaps with a link from Cool Site of the DaySM or a mention in a prominent news story. Word of mouth spreads, and soon the web site?s servers are overwhelmed. Or rather, would have been overwhelmed except that heuristics in the Millennium system had noticed the new link and already started replicating the site for increased availability. Monitored traffic increases confirm the situation and soon the site?s data has been "pre-cached" across the Internet. As the site?s usage drops over the following weeks, Millennium reallocates resources to meet new demands.
I just can't seem to understand WHY they didn't mention the slashdot effect in this paper!! I can remember CSOTD back in 94-95, but I must admit that I haven't looked at it in years - do they still get a lot of traffic?
For instance, if a Microsoft Developer just built the totally untested Millenium ServicePack 729 for the first time, and the rest of the world "assimilated" ServicePack 728, will the next PC say: "Cool, a new patch" and start propagating it around? Until it reaches a room where a BlueTooth equipped cell phone was inadvertently left on. And spreads the good news over the air outside of the Microsoft campus...
Seriously, there is so much in this nice project description that is not even solved on local systems. Like introspection. Like replicating computations.
I especially liked the tiny three lines example of pseudo C code. Generally, I get a very bad feeling when people say "The compiler should be able to..." Because it generally means that it's obvious (for humans) on the small toy test case, but that this is a non-computable problem in the general case. So this will result in a dog-slow crap-generating compiler, with comments from its authors like "The virtual machine should be able to..."
Early Optimization is the Root of All Evil (Knuth)
Belated Pessimization is the Leaf of No Good (Len)
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
It seems again like although the research dept. may be doing some cool things, the business side is already locked into to something else and won't take a look.
hghThat's the only way you could shuffle data (I'm thinking large files you may want that don't reside locally, and chances are, they wouldn't) fast enough to be useful...
And honestly, I don't see gigabit to the home any time in the near future. Do you?
"I thought I had an Appetite for Destruction, when all I really wanted was a club sandwich."
"Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system...."
Of course it would be owned by Mirosoft.
It's called "Java".
Well, not quite.. but if Java had more clustering
capability it would be there.
From the article:
"New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
Assimilated.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Logically there should be only one system,
I wonder if this phrase will have a different meaning if the MS monopoly continues for the next few years?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Who cares?
They can't even write an OS, what difference does it make what they think?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For me at least the value of a computer increases with a network connection. I have had some type of connectivity for years, either BBS or Internet. Without some sort of way to communicate with the rest of the world a computer looses a lot of its value to me. Lets see, what do I use my computer for.
;).
1) Direct communication to others via email, instant messaging, IRC.
2) Software development, work
3) Information gathering, as in research
4) Leasure, as in games
5) Electronic publishing, as in my web pages
Not having a network connection either A) greatly reduces the value of the computer by making it more difficult to accomplish these tasks or B) makes it impossible.
As I see it for the most part the network *is* the important thing for many people. I do not want to go back to the days of having only a terminal connected to big iron however... I still want to have local storage, local processing power and the greater security having my own PC provides....I beleive for a lot of non-techies though a diskless box might be easier to cope with.... I dont know, now I am just rambling
Just for instance, let me give an example. Two years ago my family had 1 computer and I had several (I was living at home and was in high school) because of this my sister/mom/dad shared one computer... to make it easier I set up an xterminal that was served off of one of my computers out of an old p166 i had laying around... it was wonderful, especially for my little sister who only ran AIM, surfed the web and sent email.
I really dont know how to say it other than the value of a PC declines sharply without the network connection of some kind.
--Necrosis
I know a fellow who used to work in MS Research, and he keeps in touch with his old buddies. He has been talking about this project for some time now, and assures me that the intent is not to have a single monolithic system, but rather to have many disparate devices appear as a monolithic system.
Differences of hardware cease to matter to the user. Need more power? Buy another box and plug it into the network; you're done. Hire another employee? Plug a relatively wampy box in; if they need to do anything heavy, their code can snag some cycles from the guy who's at lunch, or the big box o' processors in the basement. No problem.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Somehow I think that some of the nerds over at Microsoft's R&D have been watching Serial Experiements: Lain a bit too much. ;-)
Lain: Navi, connect to the Wired.
(scratch that...)
Joe User: PC, connect to the MS.
Why bother.
Software automatically propagates across the network, installing itself on new machines as neccesary. Nice idea for making sure patches and updates are applied.
But can we say "designed from the ground up to propagate malicious worms", kids? I knew we could. You think NIMBA was bad, this system'll make that look like a walk in the park on a sunny day.
This is many years old.
I know people who worked on pieces of it, such
as Coign (it would automatically partition COM applications so that they could run different
pieces on different computers, with no user interaction whatsoever).
In fact, if you look at the Systems and Networking homepage for MSR, it's listed under "Previous projects"
And sort of hint on an idea that I mention in this post regarding P2P not too long ago.
Does Microsoft possess even a single creative/original soul in their entire organization?
Why bother.
Anyone remember that technology? Anyone using it?
I told you! MS is the Borg!!
I really do hope that people read the entire paper before posting their thoughts about it. I hate Microsoft with a passion -- my first thought upon hearing about the WTC attack was, "Those poor people! I sure hope Bill Gates was in there." -- but the points they've raised here are valid ones and deserve analysis. The topic is an important one and I hope people will not malign it because of the source, namely, Microsoft.
That said, I'll comment on the paper itself. They have a point, somewhat understated, which is basically, "Yeah, this may be crazy, but it's worth looking into, isn't it?" One obvious response is that it sure seems to be What Microsoft Wants in terms of a homogenized global system that Microsoft controls. Though such a thing is never specifically said, it is called the "Millennium" system, and the ME in Windows ME stands for "Millennium Edition" (side note, it just occurred to me that "Windows ME" could be said with the same tone, inflection, and connotation as "Fuck me!" as an expression of dismay -- "Go Windows yourself!").
Well, who knows, but their idea of a transparent large-scale network that is self-managing as they've described is an interesting one, and there are some things that would be appropriate in such a system. That said, here's several reasons why I think such a system will not happen in the near future:
1. Too much resistance. This *is* a crazy idea, and even if it could be made to work, most people are used to the idea of "my" computer, "my" data, and everything happening physically *here*, inside this little box under my desk. This will take a long time to get over. Perhaps a gentle transition would help, with more and more things gradually shifting to the Big Network.
2. Games. Games require zero latency - nobody enjoys playing Quake with network lag, let alone system lag. All computations for games and other time-sensitive applications would have to be done pretty much within the physical computer you are using, otherwise the latencies are too great and the game would be unplayable and chunky. Imagine if your 50ms ping time also figured into the video processing!
3. Security. It seems silly to assume people would *want* to walk up to a random machine somewhere and have all their documents streamed to it over the Big Network. For one thing, who knows whether the terminal is secure, or if it's got secret programs installed in it to capture your keystrokes? Using a publicly accessible terminal to get to your private data is a bad idea. Also, critical machines (computers that run public infrastructure, banking systems, military systems, etc.) should obviously not be any part of this kind of transparent system, for the obvious security reasons.
4. Where we work. Telecommuting is, for all the cheerleading, not very common at all. When people do regular business-like work (i.e. office workers writing reports, having meetings, doing whatever) they will want to have everything in the same place, and do it in big chunks at a time. Face-to-face communication with people is also very important to the way business is usually done, though this may change as people get more used to the idea of telecommunicating for business. Being able to "walk up to a computer anywhere" and do work is pointless, because the vast majority of people are not going to WANT to be walking through the mall, window shopping, and decide they need to do some work, so go sit down at a public terminal and start doing work. (Nevermind the security issues, mentioned above.)
5. Monoculture. If we think a Windows monoculture is bad now (and we do -- at least, I do), imagine what happens when every computer in the world is now running this system! On the other hand, if such a system was designed so that anyone could implement their own version of it, then you avoid some monoculture issues, but because you have to have interoperability between the systems, you essentially end up with what we have now -- the Internet, made of multiple differing systems that can still communicate using a common protocol, except the protocol would extend beyond data transfer and into things like distributed processing.
If you've managed to read this far, congratulations! I can recommend a decent novel that incidentally covers this topic (it is not the main focus of the plot, but does figure into it): Permutation City, by Greg Egan. A very good novel with lots of interesting ideas, but it does feature a worldwide network in which you can basically bid on processing power to draw from the global network, so your programs might be running anywhere in the world, but are running securely so that a computer doesn't really know what it's doing, it just executes commands. It doesn't go into much technical detail (like how they manage to have computers execute encrypted code without decrypting it), but it's relevant nonetheless.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Oh boy... Windows 2050 is going to have problems with the SSSCA... ;)
I think this team is missing a couple key points - for example data security. One of the principal developments in computing in the past 3 years has been the level of damage cause by viruses and worms. It's not just that I don't want a system delivered only by Microsoft - I don't want a system that I can't see into.
Privacy is a great example. As I see it, there's a polemic approach to privacy right now - either computers can track everything you do, or they can track none. I don't really want either - I want a balance between different concerns.
While I would love distributed filesystem now,
I don't think the social, legal and technical frameworks could support this in a way that balanced technical concerns with the many other concerns that go with entrusting your life to a computer.
Looks like more than a few of them read Slashdot ;-)
Is your company running tools written by ma
Did any of you guys see that South Park episodes where Cartman's Trapper Keeper runs wild, assimilating anything? Sort of sounds like Millenium...
Am I the only one that sees the true significance. Of course what they are speaking of is a self thinking AI system to rule us all. Hopefully he will be a kind ruler before he decides we are vermin and exterminates us... Seriously, this type of thinking is just asking for extinction. GAIA was written about in many different SCI-FI novels, but not one with a universal "computer GAIA" suggested from "them" and some TERMINATOR movies. It is funny how in all of their descriptions they don't actually mention how people should feel, or what type of user interaction there should be other than mentioning us as just some fucking node on the internet that needs to stay operational or ... what...
Right now at home, if my computer crashes I stop playing my game and go back to work on my Linux workstation or just go for a walk on the beach or god forbid watch TV.
As somebody already pointed out this article is dated by 1997. As far as I know freenet was not available at that time.
- Seamless distribution. The system should determine where computations execute or data resides, moving them dynamically as necessary.
- Worldwide scalability. Logically there should be only one system, although at any one time it may be partitioned into many pieces.
- Fault-tolerance. The system should transparently handle failures or removal of machines, network links, and other resources without loss of data or functionality.
- Self-tuning. The system should be able to reason about its computations and resources, allocating, replicating, and moving computations and data to optimize its own performance, resource usage, and fault-tolerance.
- Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
- Security. Although a single system image is presented, data and computations may be in many different trust domains, with different rights and capabilities available to different security principals.
- Resource controls. Both providers and consumers may explicitly manage the use of resources belonging to different trust domains. For instance, while some people might be content to allow their data and computations to use any resources available anywhere, some companies might choose, for instance, not to store or compute their year-end financial statement on their competitor?s machines.
Yep, this'll be fun. Where do I buy the popcorn?What!? You thought I could come up with a witty way to make fun of that statement?! I'm not a magician!
>|<*:=
- What's you're e-mail address?
- Tertiary adjunt of unimatrix five seven two.
We need to introduce the world to the concept of Corporate terrorism, half as violent twice as annoying.
Leave it to gorillas to invent a super-gorilla, when what nature (the client) wanted was a human.
Emulation of the past in bigger and better methods is not the shining future I had hoped, for, folks. After all, I don't really want a computer, I want machinery that does my work and makes my life more comfortable, preferably without my having to train or tell it. I don't want robot slaves that act like human, I want a thermostat. I want an operating ystem that helps my computers be devices that help me in my life, not the other way around.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
jm
Oink, Oink!!
...intresting...not anywhere in that article did i find anything about better memory management. In my mind thats one of microsoft's larger flaw(s).
Yes, it's truly, truly fascinating, because it's very interesting from a theorical point of view, and yet so characteristic of the somewhat unrealistic way Microsoft seems to think when they design things.
/. editors, it's really thought-provoking.
- They seem to completely overlook practical problems such driver issues, concentrating on application development. While driver issues are a good chunk of what made NT (and other Windows flavours) so crashy.
- They also completely overlook interoperability problems. The article is placed in an imaginary world where every computer on the Net runs MS Millenium. That's just so, so typical. And the worst is, I'm about certain those guys didn't think wrong when writing that. It's just the way they seem to think (we get to do whatever we see fit, and fsck the competitors).
- More interestingly, they also overlook the problem of revenue sources. I mean, if the OS is 'everywhere', how does MS earns money off it? The underlying assumption that computer users owe money to Microsoft no matter how, kind of disturbs me. Though I admit it could be me overreacting, too, with them being the Microsoft we all know and love and everything.
- And, of course, they once again assume that there are exactly two types of developpers and nothing else: Microsoft developpers, who get to write system-level things, and the rest of the world, who get to write applications using the tools provided by MS (note how the 'high-level' languages they mention are all available as MS products -- completely overlooking such wonderful abstraction tools as the Python programming language, among others).
Yes, this is truly fascinating, because, on a theorical point of view, they got it right, and yet their vision is certainly not something anyone is their right mind would like to see becoming real. Thanks for posting that article,
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Now that's what I would call a monopoly!
While I realize they never say one OS, I am sure
that is what they mean. Could this be used in
court?
JUDGE: How would you justify that M$ soul reason
for operation is to drive your business
out of operation.
plaintiff: Well there website says: "there should
be only one system." and I am pretty sure they do not mean mine.
JUDGE: And what is your goal?
plaintiff: To drive M$ out of business
JUDGE: So its ok for you but not for them?
plaintiff: Yea, but I have no chance in hell.
M$: What makes the PLANTIF so sure we can?
BALIF: Your honor your shipment of MS WORLD
DOMINATION boxs have been delivered.
I am a republican not by choice, but rather by lack there of.
Microsoft is only about 5 years too late on this, if in fact this is the direction personal computing heads. It seems that a lot of the things proposed in the article have already been put into production by Sun and Apple.
Apple is far ahead of the game with its hardware. Everything is plug and play, using USB and Firewire. I think they are also on the right path with OS X - a core OS built with a solid foundation, topped with Java.
Sun has also done a good thing with Java. EJBs provide the redundant, distributed web-services mentioned. Jini takes care of the plug and play network configuration.
Perhaps the next generation of Mac OS X will be a step even closer to the model of an OS Microsoft presents as the future. I find that very ironic.
47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
A little-known web site suddenly achieves popularity, perhaps with a link from Cool Site of the DaySM
Hello Microsoft. Welcome to the year 2001. Those type of sites died back in 1997. CSotD was the first and best, but the copy cats ruined the genre. I even had a web site selected back in 1995 for CSotD. Really ticked off my ISP (tyrell.net - gone now).
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Why are Microsoft even releasign this stupid article? It's B F-ing S. The day Micro$oft releases a good product is the day shit flies.
Its quite rare for the people at Microsoft Research to come up with insightful papers such as this. The authors do address a number of issues on what challenges next generation OSs have to face.
The authors however have conveniently omitted the question of whether the future OSs should be cross-compatible. Since so much fuss is being made about having a distributed OS across heterogeneous networks and heterogeneous machines, wouldn't it be worth an effort to also try incorporating some kind of support for other OSs. For instance, Millennium could implement support for ext2fs by itself to make Linux partitions visible either on the same machine, or across a network. The linux kernel team has already done its bit about compatibility with co-existing operating systems.
What is of need is to have some set of common services that all operating system developers, irrespective of what gods they worship, can pledge to provide.
Is this too much to ask from the M$ guys?
Logically there should be only one system.
(and by golly its ours. yours can't be logical...)
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
This article is certainly fascinating, if by fascinating you mean repulsive & disgusting...
These are conclusions drawn from user demands. Most people aren't particularly fond of sitting around answering questions during an OS install, or having to produce a CD and a key for that matter. If I could trust an OS to configure itself automatically (and correctly) then I would love this network install.
And most people aren't too fond of running out of memory or disk space. Wouldn't it be easier to let the computer handle it? I agree that the legal and moral implications of shared storage are an issue, but most people don't really care if it means that their programs don't crash and they can store as many pRon movies, warez and MP3s as they like (or can pay for).
If a company like Microsoft didn't own it wouldn't it be cool to plug in a computing device, walk away for a while, come back and write code? Or resume your favorite MAME game? I am definitely in favor of less hassle with computers.
But not if it means I have to pay Microsoft monthly.
You will be added to the Microsoft Collective.
Today I ran Emacs and xterm on a Digital Unix box over ssh while running pine on a SunOS mainframe in a local Eterm while using konqueror (locally) to view a postcript file stored on the SunOS mainframe (I think it was the same one; I'm not sure).
Now, that's three OSs, three (at least) computers, and fvwm ignored all this complexity. We've *got* what M$ is talking about here. Now see who's innovative.
All hail X! (You could hardly do this in anything else.)
Hey, how's this for things that might be important in OS'es in the 21st century: operating systems that don't spread viruses thru use of retarded end users; and that don't have any security holes in them?
I support publik eduscatation!
The main linux innovation is that it lets me work the way I want to work, not the way someone else thinks I should work. Ok, so that's really a UNIX thing, but it is by far the feature I value most in Linux. And I have my computer set up to do quite a bit of the stuff I want to do, although I still would like to SNMP manage my apartment's lights and appliances...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Let's see
Agreed. Computers and networks should be designed to make decisions for the user, since the computer is smarter than the user anyway.
Agreed. Us developers and system administrators are really stupid, so Microsoft should out-think us ignorant folks to provide a better experience for themselves on the way to their bank.
Oh, I get it now! Microsoft is simply passing around ideas for the free software community to implement! (The way that sentence is written, starting with "And of course" makes it sound as if even the writer doesn't believe it.)
Note the one in italics--the emphasis is theirs. I wonder who intends to own and license this one system? I'd bet a reputable company like Microsoft will encourage the free software community to do it.
I'm sure the complete lack of bugs in these functions will ensure that applications operate flawlessly under even the heaviest loads.
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. (Hmmm... an important feature they should add in this area would be to detect computers running non-Microsoft operating systems and to automatically uninstall those systems and place a copy of Windows on them instead. They could then lobby for new laws that would force the owner of the computer system to accept and pay for the license(s). An additional fine and "finder's fee" should be imposed on those owners for failing to run Microsoft operating systems in the first place.)
Wait a minute! Didn't you guys just say, "Logically there should be only one system?"
However, an important feature in this area called Bug#65535 will allow certain trade secrets to pass beyond the corporate boundaries and get stored on a competitor's machine. Microsoft's unbreakable encryption (plaintext (r)) will however prevent the competitor from accessing the information.
In other words, 1,000 more layers will be built upon the existing operating system. Installation will be from a 16-DVD set and will take up 1,200 GB. Microsoft Notepad will require 1 GB of RAM to run (however, the critical portion of the application--the talking paperclip--will require an additional gig).
In other words, once created, information will be inaccessible because you don't know where it is, so it's no longer referenced, so it's no longer needed, and is therefore discarded.
Microsoft's new BSOD will read: "This application might perform an illegal operation in two days. You must shut down the entire network, losing all work, saved and unsaved, and restart your network. Contact your Microsoft representative for a new software key." (Oh yeah, I forgot--their new licensing scheme will require you to call Microsoft's 900 number every time you start windows. And you have to pay a fine for not pushing Shut Down before turning the power off.)
I'm getting tired of this. See ya later!
Ignore the name "Microsoft", and keep your Borg references to yourselves. Now take another look.
Here are some people who are trying out some new ideas. Give them some credit for original thinking. You complain about lack of inovation, but all the Linux camp is doing is trying to clone a decades old OS and a set of desktop apps that they claim to hate.
Many projects in Microsoft Research are totally disconnected from Microsoft marketing. Give these guys some respect. This idea may not go anywhere, but you can bet your ass that the next big paradigm will come from a corporate research group, not some Open Source weekend code-recyclers.
Borg
Well, that's very nice. However, the way that Micro$oft operating systems are going, they are expanding faster than hardware. So when they finally get an OS to do all this "worldwide distributiion computing," it will be so big that it hogs all the resources for itself. Plus, there will be a BSOD every 5 seconds.
A little-known web site suddenly achieves popularity, perhaps with a link from Cool Site of the DaySM or a mention in a prominent news story. Word of mouth spreads, and soon the web site's servers are overwhelmed. Or rather, would have been overwhelmed except that heuristics in the Millennium system had noticed the new link and already started replicating the site for increased availability. Monitored traffic increases confirm the situation and soon the site's data has been "pre-cached" across the Internet. As the site's usage drops over the following weeks, Millennium reallocates resources to meet new demands.
It's a trick! They're out to undermine the very /. effect on which we thrive!
-- MarkusQ
I read an article about a similar idea to extend Linux functionality to this level. The project seemed really interesting - about as major a change as the RTLinux project. Basically, the idea is really that computers on a network exist as one giant entity with resources totally abstracted... your RAM is someone else's RAM. Only meant for super fast LAN's tho (gigabit). It's still in early development, but check it out!
More to the point, do you? The Microsoft article is ancient history, pre-dating your work. Perhaps you're the thief!
[Ooooh! Or maybe Bill went back in time and rewrote parts of the article, just as he did for that godawful book of his! What a bastard!]
Unfortunately coming from Microsoft most /.'ers will prefer to scream and whine about it, attempt to twist it to demonstrate their own particular MS issue or make more jokes that are usually weak at best.
Pity, because if this had appeared elsewhere without any MS connection folks would be talking about it in a positive way, taking the discussion someplace interesting. Instead most are just blinded by the name MS and have once again congregated for the ritual stoning.
Anyway, /.-correctness aside there are a couple of points that the paper glosses over (amongst many) that I find particularly interesting:
The first is the concept of stateless storage - files are there as long as you need them then eventually wither away when no longer referenced or required. This seems to me a particularly utopian view as I'm regularly realizing that I'm either missing a note I want from long ago (too aggressive purging) or that I've got so much material on something that it's becoming burdensome. I entirely fail to imagine how this sort of winnowing could be automated. Agents to help me organize, tag, and prioritize yes, but without my interaction it strikes me as likely reliable as a computer consistently recognizing pr0n images from others.
The next is the internal intelligence of a system. This has been an area of much research for many years. The current-state information should be almost all available from within the system and with a few supplied metrics (costs, resources, constraints, priorities) "intelligent" decisions should be possible to make. Surprisingly there seems to be little of this actually available on the market already, at least not much available for general server/desktop management (that I've heard of.)
Finally the lack of references to directory services and the role PKI/encryption would play in this future scenario is interesting. Clearly these will be key elements in the ubiquitous seamless environment the authors are talking about yet their mention is notably absent. Is this a reflection of MS's appreciation of these as areas of strategic importance in which is hasn't yet a firm foundation and doesn't wish to draw attention to or is it something that the authors think will be so established by the time they're envisioning explicit reference isn't necessary? Either way it's an interesting omission.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
From the Millenium project homepage:
The Microsoft Research Millennium Project investigated new ways to build distributed systems.
Notice it does not say "the Millenium Project is Microsoft's vision for future operating systems." Please do not read this paper as though it is some kind of blueprint for the next version of Windows. Take it for what it is--a research project investigating one aspect of operating system design.
I still don't understand why Slashdot feels the need to occasionally sensationalize stories with ridiculous topic headlines. We don't need that--if the story is interesting, it will speak for itself.
Well, since MS Windows is quite obviously the pinnacle of OS perfection, they're just the guys to step up to a more challenging problem: a distributed, self-healing, self-tuning, self-configuring, self-monitoring, secure, world-scalable, seamless, fault-tolerant, load-balancing, highly abstracted, non-hierarchical, introspective (self-aware?) & self-optimizing global OS.
Hey, my Hotmail just crashed...
shut up man
...is that I have no control over my resources. If the OS wants to give them away, I have no choice. It's like stealing my resources from me! I also noticed the fact that the computers are bought from a vendor... no mention of DIY comps. Maybe they're going to stop selling retail and only release OEM? Of course, add that to the fact that MS all ready restricts large OEM dealers from giving real copies of Windows with their comps. No more DIY computers, and no more upgrading bought computers (or if you do, you can't reinstall without reverting to the original setup). Good for MS, good for OEM dealers, bad for everyone else.
~Drakhan
Sounds like Linux Terminal Server Project in 10 years.
At least we know they can read the LTSP web site.
(blinks) Didn't this become an outdated view in the 70's when the first PCs came out? This reads like an old science fiction story - the researchers build the world's ultimate computer and ask it if there is a God. The answer - "There is now."
...
So, what's next? Closet nuclear reactors to power our aircars and furnaces? Jobs where we push one button all day? Treadmills to walk our antenna wired dogs on? What are they going to call this thing anyway - the Jetson OS? Sheesh
never was the essential unimportance of the /. community better described than by the above fore-skin dance...
flame away little fire flys...winter beckons.
After reading over the article, I got thinking. Linux can pretty much do all that this says already! Another one of my points that more people should switch to Linux for that. You could setup the network to boot a computer, from the network, which is stated in the getting a new system part. Other then a few things, this already can be done, which a few addons that is.
Come on guys, you've all seen Star Trek. Do you think the Enterprises computer system is much different? You don't see anyone in there with a PC.
These guys were really looking forward to the future. And I don't think the standard MS bashing applies. Not everyone who works in Redmond behaves like MS's business unit.
I'm sure for the most part, the coders are great people. Its the business men upstairs who we should really have beef with.
Seriously folks, can't you see that indicriminate MS hatred is d no different from other forms of bigotry like racism and homophobia? MS does put out some quality products. I'm told their games group is very good (Age of Empires) and their input devices are top notch.
Captain_Frisk... wishing everyone would think before flaming.
Strange as it sounds, this vision of MS is just what is lacking Linux nowadays. Linux is based on some strong principles, but face it, the ideas behind *nix where formulated in the sixties and seventies and there is not a lot that has been added since. They where great, but we need to move on.
MS used to be a company copying ideas and having the better marketing, but over the years they have come to the point where they have some software that really can compete and now they seem to have even develope a sort of coherent vision. It is worrying. DotNet is not just a rip off of something that java has always been, it contains some real original ideas. This article is insightfull to. What if the people at MS finally have discovered a way to do new things?
your technological and individual distinctiveness will be added to our own
Sig you!
First, let me say that it's disappointing to see so many people nitpick and try to come up with reasons that this won't work. I'll try to point out some reasonable goals that do not have to be dependant on one proprietary software vendor - but would benefit from open protocols.
The abstraction of data and computational location is cool. They're not saying that we should blindly start distributing our data across network devices without any attention to latency, reliability of links, security, etc. Ever heard of 'quality of service'? Or authentication? Or authorization? Or resource limits? In the case of computation, sometimes you can break a program up into blocks that take a long time to execute; if it takes much longer to execute the code than it does to move the code across the network to a faster/less loaded CPU, then it makes sense to do it. On the other hand, if the computation will take only a little time, or if the result is required ASAP, you wouldn't want to move it. If it's unknown, let the user pick a default or let the system make a good guess based on what the code looks like. And, they're not saying that we should send our data to MS to be worked on, or even someone down the block - maybe you have some of your own computers laying around that don't get used much. The goal here is to turn your private LAN into a cluster, that only acts as a cluster when it makes sense to do so. In the case of storage distribution, they're not saying that others on the net should be able to use your storage space without your permission or that you should have to store anything on anyone elses storage space. Let's first consider three cases; a swap file, a master thesis document, and an mp3 file. You would want to keep your swap file on your local drive; the swap manager would request this type of low latency storage from the file system. You'd want your thesis document copied to every available storage device that you could (maybe encrypted and signed to ensure that it's secure); you'd tell your word processor to save it with this quality of service. You wouldn't likely care to encrypt your mp3 files, but you don't need to keep them on your drive when there's lots of space available elsewhere on the network (think next generation storage area network). You wouldn't want to store the mp3 too far from your network, but as long as it came back at more than the bit rate that the song plays at, you likely wouldn't care too much (unless your friends often download mp3s from you). If some device on the network runs out of space, it could shuffle stuff around. It might make sense to elect a storage manager system on your network, replicate your file allocation table/inode table/whatever around to each box on the network, so that if the distributed file system server (really just something that keeps track of locations) goes down, something else could come up in it's place. I mean, I havn't really thought about this for too long - I'm sure that there'd be some problems but nothing that can't be fixed during the design stage.
Self tuning is also cool. It'd be great for all of those sites that get slashdotted. It makes sense to do expensive things on a website (server side) to provide more features when there's light load; when there's heavy load, it makes better sense to hold off on those expensive features and concentrate on the content instead. This might mean auto-tuning apache's caching and stuff, or automatically re-indexing a database to better serve the kind of requests that are popular. Some of this means lots of application programmer work - like what features to sacrifice under heavy load, but others like automatically indexing can be done with varying degrees of administration.
It's not all evil, and some of it is really cool. The idea is that we should be ABLE to make the most use of the resources available, and not be limited by things like physical location.
If I'm able to get to my purchased DVD anywhere anywhen, isn't this in direct violation of the will of the entertainment companies that want me to buy it over and over again?
How would something like a DVD player, which needs to have low level access to the drive, even work in such an environment?
Or is this effort parallel to a world full of closed, consumer electronic computing devices?
Taking just one of your points out of context...
If people just wanted to browse the web and do email, WebTV would have gone over better.
Damn straight. A *huge* proportion of people just want to surf the web, do email. Occasionally, they want to write a letter. They don't *want* to know about the fun and pleasure you can get from hacking on a complex system. They *certainly* don't want to be bothered by an operating system.
And I do *not* want my car to stop working and start spitting out smoke. But you know what? It happens.
Sure. It happens. That's why we have roadside recovery organizations. *All* engineered systems can fail. The user of the system doesn't want to know how or why it failed. They want to be taken home. Then, they start complaining.
Just because we know how to balance carburettors, tune exhaust systems, goof around with suspension settings, compile kernels, write device drivers and generally geek out does not mean that *everybody* should have to know how to.
In fact, the roadside recovery industry thrives on the fact that people *know* that cars fail. So, they pay to protect themselves.
If you want flexibility and fun, you get a computer. If you want clean socks, you get a washing machine. They are both von Neumann architecure machines. You expect different things from them. Most people don't care about their washing machine until it breaks. Then, they hire someone to fix it. They don't want a prolonged diatribe about how "It wouldn't have broken if the QuuxBar 9.3.4 patch had been installed..."
see http://research.microsoft.com/msrnews/msrnewsrh.as p
The research list is impressive and growing.
Or should they instead cater to the arrogant, egotistical, moronic ubergeeks who hate them anyway?
Funny... I think we can use anti borg tactics against this thing. Think TNG: data hacked into the collective and started handing out orders. think Voyager, endgame, janeway poisened herself and let herself be assimilated. Why not do that??? and finally, this simple app deployed @ multiple places will destroy a lot of shit. main(){ fork(); }
Sig you!
This would be a dream come true!
No more endless waiting for people to open Outlook or install IIS for your viruses to spread across the world. Now a single stupid OS infesting the everywhere world that can automatically allocate the resources needed for propagation.
Seriously, biological systems figured this out a billion years ago.
Heterogeny = suvival
Homogeny = extinction
We are al so quick to jump in and bash Microsoft for what they do. However, I have rarely if ever have seen anyone in the linux camp doing much in the way of forward thinking research. Mostly, it is just re-inventing the wheel in an open source way, following, Be's Microsoft's, Apple's or Sun's lead. I'm sure someone has said this in the comments already, but I'm running out the door and only skimmed the reponses.
Just today I noticed an old Byte magazine. I've thrown most of them out, but I especially try to keep technical magazines that attempt to predict the future.
This one has articles on Cairo and Copeland, so I'm glad I kept it.
But it's at work now, and I'm not. I didn't realize when I noticed the magazine today under my box of microwave popcorn that re-reading the article would be timely until seeing this thread.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
From the article:
Security. Although a single system image is presented, data and computations may be in many different trust domains, with different rights and capabilities available to different security principals. Like the Internet, the system should allow non-hierarchical trust domains with no central authority necessary. My emphasis.
Doesn't this say that the whole Hailstorm concept is not needed. And with good reason!
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Sorry. I am a sad old hacker. An OS *is* the kernel.
Filesystems? There is *no reason whatsoever* why a filesystem can't exist in userland (except performance). In fact, most computers have no concept of a filesystem. Engine managaement systems, Elevator control systems, Dishwashers, Televisions, mobile phones. All contain computers. Very few have filesystems.
Networking? How much networking does your digital wristwatch do? (no, don't answer that). OK. Your toaster?
If you are talking about the all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza that costs $1000 from Dell, then, yes. I'd be pretty pissed off it shipped without a usable shell. But the shell isn't part of the operating system. It's an application.
For 50 extra credits, write a userland FS for Linux....
Any of you guys ever heard of Multics? The article rips off most of the concepts that Multics was trying to achieve.
If the past is a good indicator of the future...
...DOS, Windows, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP...
... Multics won't do any better this time around.
These researchers have some very interesting ideas that could very well be the "next generation" (or a few generations down the line) in computing. The system they describe has a few problems that come to mind (mainly related to security), but the overall idea is sound.
However, I fail to see why a new operating system is needed for this, when a software layer would do just fine. Maybe they want to break backward compatibility. Maybe it's just Microsoft's compulsion to integrate everything with the OS. But this distributed system could be realized just fine as a layer on top of existing operating systems.
Reading this article makes me think of the Lisp programming language. The authors talk about creating a new level of abstraction where programmers concern themselves with the data they're working with instead of having to worry about the number of bits in an int or the amount of space they've allocated for a string. That's exactly what Lisp does. Now, this "distributed system" goes a bit beyond that and actually abstracts the entire Internet into a single computing environment, but that's very similar to what CORBA does.
Higher levels of abstraction have always built on lower ones; basic functions in a C library are written in assembly, and a Lisp interpreter uses the facilities of the language it's written in (likely C or something comparable) to create a new environment for the programmer. All we really need for a "distributed system" to exist is a new language and an interpreter that transparently does networking and data replication and all. Not a whole new OS.
Here's another angle. Given the diversity of hardware that exists, an OS that links every type of computer in the world would have to provide a whole new set of drivers for every piece of hardware, and those drivers and the interfaces to them would pretty much constitute an OS in themselves. Why not just leverage existing code?
I can imagine a Linux system that boots up in the usual way except that instead of starting gettys, it starts GnuMilennium and bingo, you're connected. Meanwhile all the other usual services run as separate processes. Meanwhile a Windows2010 system boots up and starts MSmilennium instead of Explorer. (Now, maybe when Microsoft talks about a "new OS" they really just mean a new frontend.) In both cases, you have a new software system running on the foundation of an existing kernel and set of services. No new OS.
If the open-source/academic community wants to get a head-start on Microsoft with this, a good place to start might be by thinking about how to combine the concepts behind Lisp with the concepts behind CORBA. And I don't mean writing a CORBA binding for Lisp - those already exist. I mean combining the data-centrism of Lisp with the network-transparency of CORBA. That would give you pretty much everything these Microsoft researchers are proposing.
Overall, I like these ideas. If such a system comes along, as long as it isn't proprietary and the security issues can be worked out, I'd love to give it a try.
Does anyone remember the Phalanx story line from a few years back?
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
What the fuck is this fucking telethon on TV?
SPARE ME!
This shit fucking blows.
A bunch of washed up celebrities milking the terrorism cow for some publicity.
yick.
LOL hehehhehehe that was awsome
wtf has been 20 seconds yet, the slashdot censorware is really fucking annoying lately.
..why Microsoft's Acquisitions department is making technical decisions about the future of Operating Systems?
Very Interesting,
.
If Microsoft has it's way, this vision will be the only choice available to anyone in the near future.
I know there are brilliant, creative, and well meaning people that work for MS. They are our brothers.
In light of recent tragic events in NYC I think the US DOJ will most back-off of the case against MS in order promote US economic stability. Unfortunately, I agree it's the only choice at this point.
Just my opinion.
Egommer
We Will Rebuild
We are Ready
Tribute
[Insert Diety Here] Bless America.
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
Isnt it nice that microsoft is creating one single point of entry for ANYONE to break the entire system. Guess why there are multiple religions.
So, what they're saying is, "The Network is the Computer".
http://plan9.bell-labs.com
let's examine the facts.
IIS had a flaw with malicious directory traversing. The fix was available last week.
The problem isn't with Microsoft or IIS, it's with people running software they have no business running, with no knowledge of the underlying setup. Microsoft is a popular target to bash, but a clueless windows 2000 user running an unpatched IIS with Administrator priveledges is no less dangerous than a clueless redhat user running XWindows or Apache as root. The only difference between the 2 is that redhat/Linux is a fringe OS.
Windows NT's ACL allows it to be secured as good (if not better) than the standard Unix model (of which linux is just a inferior copy), and allows more fine grained control.
A Genius among geniuses, a true freedom fighter for slashdot is the true garden of Eden, bithplace of the revolution.
Long live Linux.
All hail Torvalds.
Me he prosper and rise above us mere mortals.
For Linux is the one true faith, The OS of Os's the one true light in this dark dark world.
Truly,
A friend
There is absolutely nothing being said in this paper that hasn't already been discussed countless times in universities and research labs around the country. This paper is little more than a vision statement along the lines of the phrase that Microsoft has used for much of its lifespan: "a computer on every desk and in every home". It doesn't say anything that people haven't already thought of.
What's more relevant and interesting about this paper is that there are probably no organizations on the planet capable of developing a system like this on their own. It's going to have to be collaborative. Despite the me-tooism of Microsoft researchers in acknowledging the directions being taken by others, the Microsoft coders in the trenches won't be capable of developing something like this to be stable, reliable, and secure.
This may mean it won't happen in the way envisioned in this paper. Microsoft will have to wait until someone comes along and figures out how to actually do something new, and viable - not just talk about it - just as Tim Berners Lee et al created the web. Then they'll try to embrace and extend it, if they can.
They also draw heavily on work that predates widespread internet usage, like the stuff this guy wrote. Your post and Freenet both owe him quite a bit. Besides, no "creative/original" idea will work if improperly implemented, which is, like, the hard part. And the implementation would seem to be what they are addressing.
The abstract sounds like an endorsement for a Forth based OS, with networking words.
Introducing Microsoft Wheel 3.66, now with PackAnimal support.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
This article should be read as a Vision for Future Coorperate Operating Systems, where people are under a 'central' control already.
:-)
I've once (as part of a team) developed such a semi-automatic system, for our intranet-servers, not for the desktops. There was one central machine with a software-repository and one configuration file.
If we added a new webproxy, just add the details to the config-file, compile it and boot the new machine. It would automaticly install the OS and the required software. During nighttime other webproxies in that region found out there was a new configuration for them (because there was a new sibling for them) and fetched it. Same with mail-servers, DNS-servers, NNTP-servers et al.
Desktop software is a waaaaay different story. I can imagine it works (I've seen it working on department level, never on full-company level).
Edwin, building scalable software rules
bash$
Just a few counter points to consider:
1. Resistance? Look at how many people downloaded SETI. Many people will jump at the chance to join such a system. Only, of course, if the network is trusted [do you know SETI isn't spying on you?].
2. Games needing real-time response... One of the foundations of this thesis is that you have a massively powerful machine, and the system delegates tasks as appropriate. Of course real time operations will have to be executed locally, but imagine if the AI on your strategy game could tap into the resources of computers around it...
3. Trusting publicly networked machines. People do this today: it's called an ATM. Although not on the same scope as all your documents on fine French cuisine, and the porn you downloaded last night; no one, but no one wants anyone tampering with their money. Yet most of us patently trust these networks to be secure. It is, as always, a matter of coming up with a way of doing this that is reasonable.
4. A valid point, but think of the many people who do jobs that are far less peer-interaction oriented, such as technical support. Most people would like to think that the person who is supposed to be helping them isn't ironing their clothes whilst solving our problem, but as with any telecommuting scenario: as long as it doesn't interfere with their normal operation, there is no reason to resist it.
5. Creeping Communism: in such a system, if properly designed, there is a fundamental shift in the way the OS operates. The machine has resources that are shared not only among its hosting user(s), but among other machines on the network. This could be well done with a minimalist core operating system that only handles delegating CPU/Memory/hard disk resources. Something more like a microkernel. Of course, as with communism, it sounds great on paper. The reality is that very few processes really benefit from this distributed nature. In these cases, specifically designed programs are generally more than adequate, and very effective at solving these problems [SETI, et al].
Don't get me wrong, I have as much contempt for Microsoft as any self respecting geek. I firmly believe that Microsoft is the wrong company to have in charge of such a system, because they do not pass the trust test that I heavily lean on with the ATM analogy.
But such a system, where all the resources are shared among the participating machines, could be very useful for corporations with large datastores. By having the computers working together, it may be possible to remove the need for a single massive server to house all the company's data. Of course, if it wasn't done right, it would massively complicate the offline storage issue.
>the standard Unix model (of which linux is just a inferior copy)
Dunno if you're trying to troll here, but you might want to know Linus is not interested in making Linux Unix compatible. His goal is 100% posix compatibility.
There's a big difference. And the difference is that Linux isn't a copy because it was never designed to be. Hell, it wasn't really designed to be so server oriented. It's designed for people to learn and enjoy building their own OS.
That Mandrake or any other of the WiMP (tm) distributions exists is nothing more than an aberration of the true direction of Linux.
The most complete realization of the goals of the MS white paper, currently in existence, is Mozart.
Seastead this.
but it's from fscking MICROSOFT.
You're right there is a great deal of similarity. When I read their goals I immideately thought of Plan9. Many of the things they mention exist in Unix today. Plan9 takes them to another level. (But I guess it's true what they say: it's not invented until Microsoft invents it).
We haven't had any news about Plan9 in quite a while. Could someone in the know shed some light as to what's happening with it now?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
This is exactly what Amiga Inc. tries to achieve with their Amiverse and AmigaDE. A short summary is here.
How will the following code be run in a distributed environment:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $blah = "Hello, World!";
print $blah . "\n";
Will the Hello and World be run in parallel? What about error handling? I think I need another crack hit to figure this one out.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
They still have 997+ years to make it work. Of course keep in mind they never DID get Win 3.1 to work properly.
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
They wish a scalable OS with location
transparency, which implies small and bounded
times independant of location. This little
problem was satirized by a physicist friend[1],
who once explained to an overenthusiastic
customer that "the system will perform as you
desire only if we can increase the speed
of light".
--dave
[1. Russel Crook]
davecb@spamcop.net
3. Security. It seems silly to assume people would *want* to walk up to a random machine somewhere and have all their documents streamed to it over the Big Network. For one thing, who knows whether the terminal is secure, or if it's got secret programs installed in it to capture your keystrokes? Using a publicly accessible terminal to get to your private data is a bad idea.
If you'll forgive some idle speculation.. You've certainly expressed how I feel about my data, but perhaps a generation raised under the scrutiny of face-recognizing surveillance cameras may come to have different feelings about privacy.
In any case, it's not such a strange leap - I share personal financial data with white-label bank machines several times a month without worrying overmuch about the potential for the various intermediaries to make use of it.
Having personalized access to a pervasive computer network makes some neat things possible, and the potential for data collection gives companies huge incentives to support it.
Your implied point is how easy it is to abuse an infrastructure such as this. If the applications are useful enough, people will use them despite the fact that we know better, and before you know it, they'll be a vital part of society.
At that point, if current trends are anything to go by, the response I'd expect from society facing a wave of 'rogue terminal' activity would be harsher criminal penalties for the perpetrators, not a mass societal "oops, guess we should have thought of more secure infrastructure".
Next thing you know, it's illegal to distribute tools that could be used to create rogue terminals. Unfortunately, the Mitnicks of two decades from now won't even be able to use a vending machine, but nobody will care, because their favourite song is playing everywhere they go..
I hate Microsoft with a passion -- my first thought upon hearing about the WTC attack was, "Those poor people! I sure hope Bill Gates was in there."
Umm... ya, you got psychological problems. Wishing physical harm on someone just because he's ruthless and successful in his business practice? I think you should follow this link.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Distributed Filesystem (NFS, CODA, etc)
Mosix for transparent process migration
X11/GLX for remote display (OpenGL too!)
apt-get for self updates/upgrade/repair
unix security model
Alright, so people are hard at work on different security models for Linux (NSA!). Mosix doesn't handle shared memory programs very well yet. And the world is obsessed with binary run anywhere, even though I have had cross platform programs that work for 20 years (source code!) Really though, you could set up a little test system for this today for the price of a stack of PCs.
I know I know! Look at all the computers out there, we could make a huge BEOWULF out of these!
Someone should tell the micro$ofties that security and hand-waving don't mix.
I believe we have seen this in Star Trek... it's the borg.
Resistance is futile, you will be assimalated.
Abstraction is great. For me to poop on.
Has anyone been following the trends of viruses over the past decade? As computers become more user-friendly, we allow more dumb people onto the internet. Each new, more abstract version of windows brings teeming waves of imbeciles onto the internet's sandy shore. Beached, they lay idle in the bile-soaked sand, stinking up the coast. We can clean up the mess by requiring that people take a simple test before they are allowed to use thier computers. It could be part of the liscense agreement. We could call it the Garbage Prohibited Liscense.
The dumb people can have a seperate dumb internet using a proprietary protocol developed by Micrsoft.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
So the evil goons at the evil company are trying to extend their evil methods to innocent computers.
But wait--are they? The question that comes to mind for me is WHY are they experimenting here? On the one hand, there's the standard MS approach--anything to make a buck, and gain market share. The Borg approach, in other words: Rewrite the definition of the OS or the internet, until you own it all.
But then you see this statement:
"We do not harbor the conceit that it will be possible to be fully successful in such an endeavor, but we do feel that the time is right for radical experimentation."
The first part sounds like honest programmers, and the second part sounds like geeks. Could it be that (gasp!) MS has some good people working for them? Some people who really _do_ want to push the envelope a bit, regardless of the corporation's intent?
At any rate, I find it interesting and slightly ironic that this is coming from the company who first made >90% of the population aware of (or care about) what their OS actually was.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Man, could I cause trouble on a network like that. A hackers dream!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Do you mod people with whom you disagree as trolls/flamebait/offtopic? You will be meta-modded accordingly.
.sig is not only arrogant, but it describes a double-edged sword.
And those who mod up things I disagree with shall also be meta-modded accordingly.
Your
MS insist on building software that is one big complex lump that tries to be everything and is less flexible for it.
Everyone else builds systems from lots of simple parts that work together.
Kids lego wouldn't be any fun/use if it came ready assembled and glued solid, no matter how cool the design.
You can't have total control to manipulate the pieces unless you can see all the pieces. If they're hidden under the hood of 'auto everything' and a compiled binary you lose the advantage.
They still don't get it.
I really do hope that people read the entire paper before posting their thoughts about it. I hate Microsoft with a passion -- my first thought upon hearing about the WTC attack was, "Those poor people! I sure hope Bill Gates was in there."
Then you are a poor excuse for a human being
In many ways, this is Yet Another Thin Client Model (YATCM). Five years from now, we'll move away from it again, and then five years after that we'll be back to the thin client du jour/.
I can see it now: "Microsoft: The fattest thin client ever created!"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I think that there is a lot of MS "copying" going on in the Linux community. There are a very few number of people who actually come up with brand new ideas and try and flesh them out.
We (I couldn't do this personally) need to come up with some place where O.S. advocate/programmers/people can just offer ideas and brainstorm new stuff. Open Source Brainstorming would be so cool. Some place that could resemble a huge, online research center with thousands of "researchers" from around the world coming up with new and great ideas of our own. I know I've struggled with the question "What can I program/do that's original", and I'm not quite sure where to turn to get that question answered.
-- Breaking Windows: Not just for kids anymore KDE
It's gotta be a hoax. "Assimilated"? "One Microsoft Way"?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Weird, my vision of my future operating systems has nothing to do with Microsoft. Wonder how we missed each other?
Let's just think about this for a moment...there is nothing about the post above that adds value or offers a new perspective to the discussion. Posts like this have been posted for years on Slashdot. And yet, it got modded up.
Shouldn't your main goals be security and stablity, especially with stuff like they are proposing here? Security is next to last and stability is not even listed. Instead the first goal is easy distribution.
This reminds me of MS Press' book Code Complete. All the way through it they harp about stability and design and useablity, then they go off and release some of the buggiest code this side of my first ZX81 programs.
MS is doomed folks.
Microsoft is seeming more and more like the borg.
"New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
*shudder*
At least now people will recognize windows for the virus it is.
This proposed system seems like it would make using any non-MS operating system impossible or very hard.
Distributed computing? Automatically deciding if a program should run locally or on a remote machine? Fault-tolerance? Dynamic load-balancing? Resource controls? Near-infinite scalability?
Sorry Microsoft, but you're the one playing catch-up here. Linux already has, working, today, 98% of your vision.
It's called MOSIX.
Frankly it's the most jaw-dropping bit of Linux development I've ever seen. On a local network, create your own supercomputer out of idle workstations. Across the internet - well, .NET should go hang its head in shame. As a programmer, all you have to do is write ordinary, threaded applications, and magically benefit from the processing power of tens, hundreds, even thousands of machines. MOSIX does all the hard stuff.
Truly an amazing piece of work.
What corporation doesn't think of something as their data (its called proprietary information). Just because they have internet access will a company want there data accessible throught the internet, just because a user posted the correct username and password? Add in some biometrics and really haus encryption and maybe they'll let you see a picture, but they'd never what the actual document to be sent.
Whats with this doing away of heirachal filing systems. Do I file all my mail in on big container? It's ludicrous. I would never find anything. You would still end up with so heirarchal naming conventions. (Amex Bill Jan 01, or First draft of my resume, etc.) Just to have some mnemonic device for identifying something or even to ask for something. (have you ever tried searching email for a phone number, you either find 2 that you don't want or 500. Either way it takes forever to sort through the mess and unless computers become sentient, they can't sort it for you).
"Well, who knows, but their idea of a transparent large-scale network that is self-managing as they've described is an interesting one"
I'm sorry, but I this idea is as much Microsofts idea as the GUI (3rd hand stolen from Xerox Parc). Do you see the number of references? Do you see that this 2 page research paper pulls all of its idea(s) from other sources!
I think the biggest idea in the paper is the runtime binding. Much like the ideas presented by Corba. As easy as replacing a class file in Java. This is what .NET is trying to provide for C/C++/COBOL/PASCAL/Ada/FORTRAN and any other language it supports. Linking against specific libraries is an old and tired idea. We can spare a few clock cycles to dynamically look up a function in a library by it's signature, then we can remember it, or optimize the lookup or something. But we shouldn't have to relink our application when we add a function to a library. And someday we won't have to recompile a class when someone adds a method (Java does this now, but the class loader is so much cooler than most other pieces of software).
Lets please beat Microsoft to this one, surely all of the free University thought could be put to good use.
---- Smokin' another sig.
my first thought upon hearing about the WTC attack was, "Those poor people! I sure hope Bill Gates was in there."
good freaking god... you are such a god damned loser for even saying that in jest.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
As for the automated network administration thing, AppleTalk networks did that from day one. That approach didn't scale (too much broadcasting), and the security was lousy (a more fundamental problem with plug-in and go).
Can you remember the quote about how the world only needs five computers? This seems to be a relapse to those days, where all the computers work together to form one great big computer.
But someone had dang well better not swipe my processing power for Seti@Home when I'm playing Team Fortress, or I'll be hopping mad!
The other thing I note is they have considered the Slashdot effect and designed a way around it. Have a read of the paper, it describes the /. effect in great detail, and a method of evading it.
they sound like Borg when they say:
"New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
heh!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Basicly: 1) Intuitive to use.
2) Secure
3) Powerful (in terms of built in facilities for network admin and file manegment, ect.)
4)Reliable (no blue screens, good exception handling)
Now we would all love to have an operation system like this, but it's never gonna happen! No large piece of software is perfect, and operating systems have to do soo much bugs are always there, and with people constantly trying to break OSes they appear fast. So the question you are left with is of these 4 what are the most important and what are the least. Linux users would probably say, "Intuitive whats that?" Windows is kind of in the middle of all of these, if you want powerful take Win NT or Win 2000, you want intuitive take Win 98SE, ME, or XP. Arguable the 5th point would be Free.
So I'll say this to both Windows and Linux communities, you can both do things better.
I think it's unlikely that Microsoft will do better with Millenium than an open source operating system that already exists: Plan9 from Bell Labs. Plan9 already supports location independence, aggressive abstraction, introspection, and all the other stuff that is in Microsoft's vision (Inferno, which the paper cites, is somewhat based on Plan9). The limitations Plan9 has (and it has many) are, I think, intrinsic to this vision, and I doubt traditional operating system designers are equipped to deal with it--otherwise, they would have already done so over the last few decades. And nothing in Microsoft's paper suggests that Microsoft is straying outside this well-grazed field.
Altogether, it looks like Microsoft is going to do what they always do: they are 10-20 years behind the curve, and they are working on another unimaginative, outdated operating system.
First, FIX the PRESENT OS so that it will be immune to
I_LOVE_U => NIMDA virus
Then think about FUTURE OS
Yes, you are correct -- just about every word in this paper is stolen from others. I don't think Microsoft will ever be able to come up with a single original idea. Plan9 is a shining example of an OS that does exactly what this paper proposes, and is actually deployed and used for day-to-day computing.
*sigh*
I just wish good ideas that were thought of by the best and the brightest (meaning the researchers over at bell labs) weren't largely ignored by the geek masses. Why is it that only after microsoft acknowledges something as relevant, somehow IT departments and people all over the world then begin to take it seriously?
Big deal. So microsoft steals some ideas, takes them for their own, and predicts they will be relevant. It's old news to anyone who has ever even had a cursory interest in OS's, and is downright insulting actually in that Microsoft makes it all sound like they were the first to think of it.
Also, if microsoft manages to implement such an OS as what they propose, who wants to bet that it will be nowhere near as elegant, efficient, consistent, or stable as PLan 9?
... because when microsoft reinvents the wheel they make it EVEN ROUNDER.
... port some ultra popular language to plan9 if you need to (perl python java haha) and then uhh what's the point of MS's less mature experimental distributed OS?
:-P
Seriously though
Err oh yeah I just remembered it will be a "better plan9 than plan9"
Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
LOL, Microsoft is definitely becoming the Borg. Maybe in the new Star-trek series they'll cover how Microsoft eventually evolved into the Borg.
i have perl ported to p9, others have python.. what, you can't port something like that yourself? :P
heck, somebody is even working on java (kaffe) ported... IMHO, they're not needed -- not once have i had to use perl on my p9 machines. my port was just an exercise in futility.
Both MS' gaming software and their hardware divisions are composed of companies they swallowed up.
The Millenium project is old. It was a hot topic when I was on the interviewing circuit---back in 1997!
Just check Rich Drave's homepage.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
It is apparent that during its history, Microsoft has invented or developed several good ideas. Such are Exchange-based networking, aggresive support for PnP (which, inspite of all its clumsiness is still much better than doing the jumper work), COM as an application design strategy and so on.
However, while conceptually very sound and attractive (and for being so they've gotten consumer support), all these technologies were designed and written inadequately. Exchange is unsafe and unstable. PnP doesn't worry about resource conflicts at all. COM became better after several upgrades, but it still suffers from problems such as binary incompatibility.
In this case, it seems to me that Microsoft is dreaming about a Plan9 kind of system. Well, that's nice. Theoretically. However many of us could not boast with infinite bandwith, fault-tolerant hardware (if your audio board fries, your system should stay up) or rationally-written software (including Microsoft's own). In conclusion, Microsoft has overcome itself in its fantasies this time, and only a little part of them will make it to the real world.
As far as I know, "Star Trek" is just a TV series and some movies. So I'm thinking that the computer that you see on Star Trek is NOT REAL.
I used to watch 'The Jetsons' all the time, but I knew that we were not going to have flying cars in my lifetime.
*sigh*
- "The problem with teenagers in that they think they know more about life then people who have already been down that road." -Morgan Freeman
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Don't they know the Borg are the bad guys? Or do they see themselves as the Borg chick with the big boobs and heart of gold?
I quote from their article "Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated. " - Empathsis added
"Resistance is futial, you with be assimilated!!!" - The Borg, Star Trek First Contact
-Jasa -- Linux - The SOURCE will be with you, ALWAYS
I don't see what's the real innovative idea behind this.
:)
Looking back behind 1980 when there was no windows and not even a DOS, what ruled the computers world? Big unix core's, connected to them a lot of terminals. You could walk to any terminal any time, login and having you home account. The -personal computer- was then coming a big movement, and from this time on the trend seemed to go more and more to -distributed- computing. The computing loads balance point shifted more and more to the client side. Today clients calculate as much as possible, while the server provides at least data as the client requires, saving him from the load.
In later history there were some efforts to walk back to server focused computing, but in my eyes they all failed. ThinClients? Remember the net pc? And the software downloaded online by use, etc.
In my eyes this networking talk has in priority one thing in mind, again. Flaten the path to soft-leasing.
Microsoft has a major problem, that a majority of personals computers run their software doesn't actually help them. They sell their software -once-, and then never again. They always have come up with new variations 98, ME, XP, Advanced *, to resell an upgrade at full price. So they wanted already in the past to move to subscription based software so they've a ensured income. People refused, there are a lot of points and a story itself worth talking about. I just say why did they move away from the classic versioning system, NT 4.0, NT 5.0 -> 2000, NT 6.0 -> XP and moved to put first year numbers and then even moved further from an obvious line to letter acronyms. So people buy upgrades at full price, thinking they buy a new product.
It's all about money baby
I agree about the GPL/Linux people stop complaning and go and -do- something. I agree to another comment i heared once, looking honestly is there anything really innovative on linux? Actually linux is a rather conservative approach. Thats not bad per-se, it first ensures stability, and secondly also important saves it's users from beeing "guinea pigs". All of it's techs have been there before. A free unix system on the pc? BSD and Minix had this. Torvalds managed well to collect ideas amoung the unix world and to create a fast stable production ready OS. However it is not innovative in my eyses, I personally believe that actually innovative and production ready in the same time is difficult, and requires at least quite an amount of time to move from innovative to production with new ideas.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Security. Although a single system image is presented, data and computations may be in many different trust domains, with different rights and capabilities available to different security principals. Like the Internet, the system should allow non-hierarchical trust domains with no central authority necessary.
Of course, it's up to you how much you trust MS to put out a product that requires no central authority...
... or maybe he used a +1 bonus on an account with high karma...
Does Microsoft possess even a single creative/original soul in their entire organization?
There's Dave Cutler, who wrote WNT and later disciplined his wayward child back into Win2k. There's also Charles Simonyi who has some really interesting ideas. The fact that Bill "BASIC" Gates now has Simonyi's job title is, however, not encouraging. (and the "hot news" on that page used to mention something about IP going into a production mode, now it does not, that is also not encouraging).
So they do have some real innovators, but rest assured, they do deal with them as soon as they find them.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
the Master Control Program from Tron!
can you imagine writing some new software snippet that might run independantly of the 'Millenium' System?
"Get me Dillinger!"
If you look at what has been happening in distributed systems and OS research over the last few decades, I think you'll agree that there isn't really innovation in any of Windows, Linux, C#, or Java. But what Linux and Java have going for them is that the implement tried-and-true approaches quite well. Windows, on the other hand, is much more of a mess, and C# isn't really here yet.
Why does this remind me of NeXT step, combined with Linux, and some other niche OS's ? - autoconfiguring in the network ... NeXT did this early 90's
- easy deployment .. see any Unix that's worth its penny ( Solaris jumpstart, HPUX install server, IRIX roboinst... Linux is coming too)
- automated distributed resource management ... VMS anyone.. ? Mosix, cc-NUMA NumaFlex
The distributed computing paradigm has been here since the 80'ies...
in short ... get a life Microsoft... anybody with a little sense in his head can see Yer trailing technology... (which is good for the not propriatary OS's ... )
Indeed.
It's not clear what kind of "research" paper this is, but with "compelling applications" in the abstract, it's a bit too marketish to take seriously. Peer-reviewed it ain't.
Noticeably lacking in the references is mention of Linda/Jini, which implements much of what they describe.
Having read so often how Microsoft is not technologically innovative, it's amusing to see it first hand...
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
But it's too late... Microsoft have already assimilated the Borg.
#exclude <ms/windows.h>
Treat the enitirety of the WWW and computing at large as a single database. Then, normalize it.
There, you have the future of computing.
How long will it take? Depends on how many glasses of wine the engineers the world over drink between now and then.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It looks to me as though Microsoft is designing one great big virus.
Aren't they refering to Windows ME? ;-)
Sounds to me like they are about to ripoff the concepts behind Jabber!
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
"Wishing physical harm on someone just because he's ruthless and successful in his business practice?"
He is not just ruthless he is also a criminal. His organization is criminal, he has perjured himself, his underlings have perjured themselves and tampered with evidence. He and his cohorts have also intimidated witnesses in a federal trial. All of these acts are criminal and by all rights he should be jail right now.
Please do not try to minimize the criminal acts commited by MS and their top brass bringing their success up. Of course they are successful they resorted to crimes when everybody else was playing within the bounds of the law. It's an unfair advantage and one that our legal system ought to rectify.
BTW. Although it's not a crime I have not read one interview or statement from any MS executive which did not contain at least one lie. These people are pathological liars.
Is it right to with criminals death? Well maybe not but I do wish they would serve their time in jail.
War is necrophilia.
something I started thinking about c. 1993, and emailed Usenix about in 1997 - a distributed OS, fault tolerant, etc. Except I took the liberty of suggesting Fibre Channel as the medium and splitting up the OS devices according to the objects they controlled, embedding the OS components in the devices. A la Unix - everything is a file - and SCSI - everything is an intelligent device.
(Fibre Channel would probably wind up as a test bed for the wider world web, which shares many of the features of Fibre Channel - several different classes of service and operation. I don't see Microsoft as being any further ahead than anybody else, and believe you me, I've stopped worrying about it.)
And of course the interfaces would have to be independent of the devices, or we'd wind up back in the clutches of some superborg like IBM was in the 1960s and Microsoft is in the present time.
Needless to say, I found out it'd all been done before. Read Partridge's "Gigabit Networking"... (And anyway, the Kardassians are doing damage to the Federation, and I have to lend my moral support ...
It already exists and is free:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/
Ok, it's designed for computations, not for
word processing. For interactive distributed
apps you need a web interface of course.
- Seamless distribution. The entire application server itself, as well as applications written within it, can be distributed automatically. Very cool.
- Worldwide scalability. Leveraging Java application servers' focus on scalability, this thing scales to the biggest hardware and to clusters
- Fault-tolerance. The clustering abilities provide high availability to JBoss (something JBoss lacked in pre-v3.0 releases).
- Self-tuning. Hmmm....no quick answer here. It can all be configured by way of JMX (Java Management eXtensions). I assume that, in the future, people will add self-tuning features.
- Self-configuration. Same as self-tuning.
- Security. Java has a very nicely developed security model already. JBoss uses this pervasively, as does any Java application server.
- Resource controls. Gee, this sounds to me like declaritive security. That, again, is offered by J2EE.
This sounds to me like MS is actually playing catch-up with open source software.For those of you unfamiliar with JBoss, check it out. It's really nice. For those of you who doubt Java as a platform for application development, go talk to IBM or BEA. They both have tremendous businesses built upon Java application server technology. It's fast, stable, robust, flexible, scalable, and is buzzword-compliant with about anything else I can think of. Besides, I can write applications far quicker with Java than I can with other platforms.
--Be human.
Well, reading the goal of the new "vision" of M$ guys in a new OS, I think that is called Java (and the attemps to create an OS in Java). Well, this vision was a reality already for about 6 or 7 years or so, by a guy named James Gosling, wasn't it!
Bill, just go f*** yourself before thinking some things new. I remembered reading "Proudly serving my corporate masters..." and the author pretty much condemed Java as boring and ill-fated "middleware". Let'see M$ is trying to create a new middleware instead.
So should we expect these features to be incorporated no sooner than Windows 3000 Professional?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You seem to be making several different and to my mind, unrelated points here. In other words you've lumped everything you hate about operating systems into one rant.
:-)
Yup. My excuse is that I was drunk when I posted
If you hadn't realised, abstraction is the _key_ to computing. They're asking for more of it.
This _can't_ be a bad thing.
Signed.
Disappointed.
"enfoncer des portes ouvertes"
This sounds a little like Progeny's Linux NOW project (unfortunately put on hold), it seems like MS is playing catch up now.
Note the bibliography... All the citations reference UNIX technologies and Java.
We are building systems based on faith and hope. We have to admit we live in a world where people try to hurt each other, perhaps you might have seen a certain event last week?
I want my information, my software, my system on my computer. If I need it available for someone else I will make it available for them. A certain amount of paranoia is healthy.
In a perfect world this might be great but we have to be realistic.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
billgatesisawiener
Wiener is either a synonym for Viennese, meaning from Vienna, Austria, or a word for a Viennese sausage. Bill Gates is not Viennese, and call me stupid but I don't see any connection between Gates and sausage.
Seeing there is no WTC there is no need to put the WTC is the game.
If Microsoft were to use four-dimensional coordinates, MS Flight Simulator could represent the world historically. For instance, the Empire State Building could be represented as a trapezoid whose bottom base begins at March 17, 1930, and whose top base begins sometime in October 1930 (source:). The WTC could be stored having time coordinates spanning from 1973 to Sept. 11, 2001. (Yes, I know time as a dimension is an abstraction of the inverse of change, but it's a very useful one.)
However, there are still tons of other landmarks that a fellow can practice flying into.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First.. these are not all 'microsofts' ideas.. they are very common things that, if most of us think about it, make sense.
As for the distributed web-site thing... sounds a lot like freenet, actually.. information is cached near where it is requested, so others in the area can obtain the information faster, and it becomes more widespread.
I loved that line. I was wondering whether they had been reading slashdot, noticed that we consider M$ the borg, and included "assimilated" in the paper as a subtle joke. Alas, I think I am reading too much into it, but just maybe....
HI!! How is the beard rash on the dick going? Maybe next time you should get your gay lover to shave before he goes down on you.
HAND.
You are logged in, evidenced by the fact that you can even read sigs, yet you posted anon. That is what I call a coward. I on the other hand are not logged in, and so I am proudly anonymous, not anonymous coward.
I got it from you. Don't you remember? Shucks, I'm hurt.
I am feeling lonely tonight though, want to get reaqanited? (Fuck I can't speel.)
Dude, if you want people to start buying in to your whole superior race...um...excuse me...one system thing, there are some things you may want to change.
- stop threatening people with "if you don't cough up the geedus right now, you'll be paying out the ass later"
Oh, and dude! A good move might be sticking a crowbar in your personal portfolio and forking over $1B or so for a country that is about to hit the skids financially. It might help you in your quest to take over the world...um..excuse me...assimilate.stop saying "this is the ultimate OS" when you've already got two other systems in the pipe
stop producing worm hosts
SFNative
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nothing exceeds like excess
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Better to be a fucking fag than a single fag. Oh, and the lame jokes, they are just idle chit chat as a brief introduction before we get jiggy with it.
-matt
Sounds like many ideas from the Amoeba and Sprite research operating systems. These were developed in the 80's.
I suspect the guys who wrote this paper might actually have a sense of humor. "automatically assimilated" indeed.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
all they are doing is adding the wormlike features of self replication across the net...great idea...bet it'll put a stop to all you linux lackeys..
* Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
"Users of the World Wide Web are subjected to random performance and service disruptions."
;)
Guess I will downgrade to my trusty old 28Kbaud modem, since it makes no difference
Carbon based humanoid in training.
I wish Slashdot people would be more agnostically skeptical. There's nothing new in that paper. It just boggles the mind that it took that many Microsoft Researchers to type it all out in a paper. The Ferranti Atlas (from the 1960's!) had transparent hierarchical storage (you didn't have to know or care whether data was in (core) memory or on disk). Many experimental systems with support for ubiquitous transparent networking have existed, including support for auto-replication of operating system modifications.
The only thing new here is the "Microsoft Research" name being plastered onto these thirty-year-old ideas.
Maybe they did think up all this stuff themselves, but if so, they're very stupid not to have built on the work previously done in this area. Think of what they might have done had they known! They could have copied some other, grander ideas to build on top of the "Millennium" architecture....
I've really have given MS the benefit of the doubt here. I think you are falling into the trap of assuming that because you haven't heard of it before, it must be new and therefore MS is "innovating" and coming up with "new" ideas. Be more skeptical, not less, when confronted with MS "ideas" or "research." Your doubts are valid, linux lovers. Skepticism is a good thing, don't abandon it!
The kind of distributed system discussed was built on a smaller scale circa 1979 (see DECUS 11-SP-6, the MSX-11 component) providing location independence, storage independence, Bell-LaPadula type security modelling, and more. That was my
work but there were probably many other systems doing roughly the same kinds of things at the time.
Moderation Totals: Thoughtless=2, Tasteless=3, Total=-5.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I actually spent some time about a year ago designing a system much like this. It was actually a message passing microkernel type OS for the Java Virtual Machine. We called it VD(Virtual Domain). At any rate I jsut couldn't afford to do it, but on eof the advatages was that people could use it without entirely sacrificing the current OS's applications, although they generaly would not have inter-operated. Some of this stuff isn't around today, but many of the ideas are not new.
"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale . .
New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
Looks like Microsoft has been practicing this for years.I think i speak for us all when i say:
"Thank you Master Control program..."
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
* Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated.
jeremiah cornelius
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
>most people are used to the idea of "my" computer, "my" data, and everything happening physically
;-)
>*here*, inside this little box under my desk. This will take a long time to get over.
Well, get over it. Now!
Where I work we run Unix of various flavours. We run as dataless clients over NFS. This means that my home directory is on the server, and Unix is on the machines local disk. Latency is a non issue- ping times of about 1ms; throughput isn't quite so high though, as we only use a 10 megabit lan, so if we load across the network it isn't as fast as loading off a local disk, but there's not a lot in it. (Extra 2 minutes on a 150 megabyte link that takes 6 minutes is the worst case; we often use local diskspace for that, but everything else there's no point).
It works pretty well. And if I have a problem with my workstation I get up, sit down at a different workstation, and log in there, same account, same files.
It also means that my home directory is backed up each and every night by the backup fairy. (We have only 1 system admin for 80-100 people!)
As to security, it's not a real issue. You either access your account from a company machine, which is as secure as anything, or from home, where you keep your system safe (hopefully) there.
Games? Games don't require zero latency! If they did, noone would be able to play them because zero latency doesn't exist.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"This sounds alot like JINI. There are some differences, but for the most part, it's JINI from a Microsoft angle. Interesting to read but largely irrelevant until they can make money on it.
This is actually an olde paper originally listed under the Microsoft Research section of their web presense as the Millenium Project. I ran across it 3 or 4 yrs ago, printed out a copy and shoved it under my friends noses at our local coffee shop, and they were intrigued and it sparked off many wonderful conversations about the evolution of operating systems and we imagined living in such a worlde.
When I first heard about Oxygen, I remembered Millenium and during subsequent talks on the floor with my naieve co-workers, all I got was skepticism. Oxygen was too pie in the sky for them but had I been able to show them this paper I would have had a more compelling argument, but I could not find it anymore on their site.
I have viewed every major release from Microsoft to be in direct support of this, and the first widespread use of PDAs (other than palm) where synching with the mother computer was the lynchpin of its existance, to be a significant shift in how we view our computers... a necessary one for this to work in the new e-conomy. With Microsoft's recent move to make Passport play nice with other similar technolgies, we have the first indications of how they expect to pull this off...
...now if we figure in wireless networks access nodes, so that our handheld or tablet is able to pull our data we begin to see how viable this concept really is.
No kidding. I've been saying that ever since I got a PC. Ever used an Amiga? The pointer *never* froze in place or even jumped unless the machine locked hard.
Some concepts are similar to Novell's NDS. Allow access to many servers from one central point. Login to the Directory Services Tree and you can get on any server or any printer in your organization.
I think it's interesting they actually use the word "assimilation".
-m
http://www.invisik.com
If I remember the story correctly, creating Univac gave terrorism a focus, a target with which to upset the entire world. Heck, that doesn't even sound good on a company level: why can't I access the files I need to work? There was a back-hoe the tore up our fiber-optic and our company has to shut down until March.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
Which means that once a worm got into the system it would automatically be everywhere. And it could reconfigure and tune things so that you couldn't get rid of it. And it could turn off monitoring of its activities so you wouldn't know it was there. Great. Just what I need after a whole week of fighting the Nimda worm.
Looks like you're a prophet--Windows XP Collectible Watch
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I agree with everything you say - but I still don't wish the man harm. Especially the kind of harm that would be suffered by victims of the WTC attack.
I do wish he would be brought to justice, and kept in a nice secure cell where he can't harm society anymore.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You don't even speak for yourself, TWAT!...
not more -- nore less ... just creepy PROPAGANDA
So, in other words, Microsofts vision for the future is an operating system that's even MORE susceptable to virii and worms?!?
All your C drives are belong to us.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
Does this mean that if one person installs webshots and gator on their PC that I will have to deal with it on mine? I don't like that idea...
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
I hate Microsoft with a passion -- my first thought upon hearing about the WTC attack was, "Those poor people! I sure hope Bill Gates was in there."
I hope no one reads your post. You are a horrible person, who barely deserves to have his own opinion. You use a national tragedy as a focus for your hatred of an individual whom you have never met. He has never done anything to personally offend you or to profit from your pain, and he does not glorify in your unhappiness. Your anger at Bill Gates is unreasonable and unfounded. It is bad enough that people automatically hate Osama bin Laden, because no one who bad-mouths him has ever met him. Bin Laden has killed thousands of people and does glorify in the pain and suffering of others, but he shouldn't be singularly hated by everyone.
I think it's very interesting that Osama hates us and America for the exact same reason that you typical Slashdot stereotypes hate Bill Gates and Microsoft. Success. Don't whine about Microsoft, and don't bitch about Bill Gates. Perhaps you should get back to the code you allegedly write but actually don't and try to beat him, not in the courts, but in the industry.
You make me sick.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
So what should computing be like this millenium?
The researchers should be applauded for thinking about it and discussing it. CmdrTaco is right, Lunix has lost the desktop, and if the enlightened don't start behalving like such they will loose it all. Where are the deep thinkers in this crowd? The article proposed a number of interesting requirements, and described a fictious OS (the Millienium System) that meets the requirements. Who says this future OS can't be a descendant of Linux? Instead of a real discussion we had another flatulence party by a bunch of anti-MS zealots.
FreeBSD makes a decent attempt at "self analysis" WTO memory usage; it tries to "balance" swap usage with userland requirements. Why should this bother anyone?
As to the notion of "the network is the computer", has anyone here ever heard of QNX? A Unix-ish OS that actually pulls this off, and more elegantly than anything else I've ever seen.
Users need to be more restricted in what they can do, something all OSs have yet to learn, so that they can't mix apps with files willy-nilly over start menus, desktops and quicklaunch bars. They should find it harder to do stupid things, and easier to do sensible things.
Windows should be auto arranged exactly how the user would want them if they were to do it themselves. Scrolling through hierarchical lists could be speed up by showing micro to macro levels in columns.
On a different and unfashionable final note, I don't want my computer on the network, and I don't want the network to be my computer. I might stretch to allowing it partial control over my house, but since I use a pirate version of Windows for moral reasons, I'd rather MS didn't auto-update/spy-on-me thanks very much - I don't remember voting to allow them to become a passport authority.
(`._ SiD _.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Under the psycho marketroid bable there are some interesting ideas, but all of them have mature and functional counterparts in the Linux/Unix world. DEC had many of the work sharing concepts built into their clusters back in the late 80s. X and Kerberos have all of the app sharing and security goodies without all of the privacy invasion. Any boob could have picked all of the interesting promises from these projects and put together that strange article.
Instead of trying to build a Windows clone, we should build up a system that addresses computing in a way that MS system's dont. I'm sorry, that's already been done. MS dont do much more than prommise to deliver what others already do and then treat their users like mushrooms.
MS will never be able to deliver on these ideas using their current market model. The "assimilation" of new machines would be a nightmare. Imagine not being able to tell the BSA thugs what computers had the new OS, or relying on their print out to know. "Got a cert for that copy of Solitare? Oh, I'm sorry, but your global network is now in default."
Someone complained that the article was old. They obviously overlooked the copyright 2001 notice at the bottom of the article. I wonder if MS considers linking a violation of their IP.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Fundamentalist muslims like bin Laden hate the United States because we (pretty much, so far) let our citizens choose how to go about their lives. We hate Microsoft because they don't. Their business model is finding ways to leave unwilling customers with no option but to keep buying and then limiting how they can use the software and who they can interoperate with. Far from success (which would be outcompeting their peers), they continue to cause and capitalize on one of the largest failures of our free market.
Don't be ridiculous. He's a sociopath who demonstrably can't safely coexist with any free society on this planet.
This is really not about the main subject, but I cannot resist.
The reason to why Bin Laden and others don't like or even hate the United States is without a doubt the US foreign policy. It has _nothing_ to do with how people live in the United States or how successful the United States way of life is.
Looking at politics and diplomatics throughout the world in recent decades it is overwhelming how little the US has made for people, particularly in the third world which are the of majority, to like them. For most people in the world, the first thing they learn about the United States is not about Coca-Cola, Hollywood movies or McDonalds, because those things don't exist for them. They have a hard time just getting enough to eat for the day! What really exist in their lives is US weapons. Bombs, hand-guns, grenades, airplanes, helicopters, you name it, which are manufactured in the United States, and sold or given without scrutiny to regimes throughout the world. These days weapons are mostly used on civilians so every time someone is killed with US weapons, anger and frustration is created and fostered around the world. Bombing Bin Laden out of Afghanistan will only make things worse.
The United States have also, through the years to a lesser extent than most other countries paid attention to international agreements and treaties. To start with, the US have always been in debt to the UN, they have _never_ paid attention to the environmental efforts of the rest of the world.
The United States government should hire one, or maybe a dozen or so, Public Relations experts to figure out how to make the rest of the world like them. If the US way of life is going to prevale, all people of the world must be treated like potential customers. And remember, the customer is always right!
I have heard Coca-Cola spend 25% of their revenue on PR. How much is the United States spending???
You leave out one very important point that is missed. Computers that attempt to manage themselves generally fuck it up VERY badly. Hell, I can't even get PlugNPray to work most of the time. All it takes is one error condition that the designer didn't account for to kill the whole house of cards. Error conditions are finite in a design spec, but infinite in real life.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba