MIT To Release Next-Generation OS "Cesium"

snowphoton writes: "Slant-Six magazine has an article about Cesium, a fascinating (and soon public) operating system from the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. A virtual machine, an object-oriented database-driven filesystem, and a 3D GUI mean that this isn't your father's operating system." This article doesn't address licensing, except to say that it "is due to be released by the end of the year for free," so it will be interesting to see just what "free" means here. Update: Yep, it's a hoax. Fun! Tricks are neat!

Comments

Interesting, but how will it talk to everyone else

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, from the details in the article, it certainly sounds promising. I'm glad someone's finally going "very public" with ideas to replace the underpowered filing systems we're using now, for a start. It'll be interesting to see how their OODBMS system works out.

That does raise an obvious question, though. Given that we're all used to filing systems where you have a lump of data in some form and you give it a name, and beyond that, it's just a hierarchical arrangement, how does that translate to/from their world? Converting from PC <-> Mac <-> Linux is no big deal (although even then we have details that may get "lost in translation") but they all follow a similar paradigm. How do you map from such a system onto an OO set-up? Given that they mention supporting an office suite, clearly a necessity for any mainstream OS today, they must surely have considered this issue in some detail.

Next-gen OS? Sure...

[meta-monkey]

How come there are no pictures at the slant-six story, and no mention of this project on the website at http://www.lcs.mit.edu/ ? How come a search on google reveals...nothing? Do you really think MIT could develop the most fantastical OS ever for and keep it a giant secret? They said version 1.0 came out in 1993...so where is that?

Also, why would a university bother to write an office suite for this project? How exactly does that qualify as new research, worthy of publication leading to a master's or Ph.D.? I don't think any grad student actually interested in graduating would waste his time on such a thing.

hey, timothy, next time do some fact-checking before you post this stuff...

The famous AOSG

[srichman]

The Advanced Operating Systems Group, a branch of the Lab for Computer Science at MIT...

Besides, doesn't anyone else think it's weird that a lab that has supposed been around for a decade isn't mentioned anywhere on a .mit.edu website?

Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X

[HiggsBoson]

And how long ago would someone have said "I don't know about variable fonts and font sizes for all human readable text. And what good is a GUI?"

There are, of course, a fair number of people who *still* feel that any GUI is a bad GUI, but even the most hardened CLI zealot has to admit that the GUI revolutionized the computer industry. If it were all CLI, computers would be nowhere near as widely used as they are now.

Not to say that Cesium's 3d gui is going to do what those first gui's did (epsecially since I've not even seen so much as a screenshot), but maybe a 3d gui is what we need. Traditional point-and-click has reached something of a standstill. Whether it's KDE, Gnome, Windows, BeOS, or Aqua, it's all still the same basic principles. I've yet to see a really useful 3d gui, but from the (admittedly very sketchy details) it looks like a lot of thought went into Cesium. Maybe someone's finally come up with something that actually adds value.

Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project...

[Zeinfeld]

The email address for the article was hdunkirk@mit.edu which still doesn't exist when trying a finger. Also executing "vrfy hdunkirk@mit.edu" directly on their email server returns unknown user.

That means nothing, I never bothered to get an Athena account when I was at MIT except for a brief period when I had a student who I could not give a lab account to. LCS and AI accounts frequently have bizare names.

However an assistant to the lab director should be able to name him, there are only two labs in the building after all and both labs have only one director. The position of 'assistant' to the director is secretarial.

There was no such project when I was at the lab. Some of the project bears a passing resemblance to Oxygen, however that has long since been public.

There have been several O/S developed in the building. None was developed in secret. A secret project could not get students to work on it.

There have been non-public projects going on in the building. However those are effectively long term consulting for various (military) agencies.

An O/S is simply too large a project to be performed as a secret project. It is a packaging job, there is absolutely no value in an O/S developed in absolute secrecy.

There is no-one on the faculty who comes to mind as a specialist in O/S research. There are plenty who have made significant contributions to specific areas of O/S design. ITS, Multics, Genera were all open collaborative efforts.

Another point that leads me to doubt the story is the absence of any mention of security which has been the principle O/S related interest for the building in recent years.

Finally, LCS is not in the habit of announcing its projects in obscurantist web journals.

The whole thing smells bad. It is just not the way the lab has ever worked. The idea is to get your ideas 'stolen', that is another word for 'used'. If you don't want to share your ideas then join the NSA