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MIT To Release Next-Generation OS "Cesium"

Posted by timothy on from the call-the-next-one-nitrogen dept.

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!

91 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Timmy.... by keepper · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    Ever heard of the MIT license....?

    It's a BSD derived license...

    http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.h tm l

  2. Re:free probably means.. by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    And that's, (imnsho) real freedom, not gpl freedom, as in "free as in speech so long as your opinion agrees with mine."

    Why is it continually necessary to provide a GPL dig in every context, even where it's completely off-topic and irrelevant?

    One would think the supporters of non-GPL free software licenses are a bit too defensive for their own good. RMS certainly never takes this many opportunities to berate the MIT and BSD licenses (in fact he considers them "free software").

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  3. OMG... No more crappy DX8 overlays by Talez · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cesium's architecture and abilities are enough to make even the most jaded computer enthusiast start frothing at the mouth. *starts frothing at the mouth* I've tried out "3D" Windows desktops to little satisfaction. Most of them are just crap, buggy, DirectX8 overlays. If this does what it says it does, I dont think I'll ever need another operating system for hobby use. Heh... should be fun when this little sucker is released... I hope it can run on plain old x86 hardware :) Talez

  4. Clock by TalShiar00 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I bet the system clock is always off

    Cesium...get it....cesium...as in the atomic clock..

    You are right that was not funny.

  5. Cesium employs RadioActive-X by EccentricAnomaly · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The elimination of the directory/file paradigm seems like a good one as well as the virtual machine... but I don't know about the HTML and XML for all human readable text... and what good is a 3D GUI?

    Can anyone think of a good reason to have a 3D GUI? It seems like a waste of compute power.

    --
    There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
    1. Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X by HiggsBoson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
    2. Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X by javaman235 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, I think a 3D GUI is a great idea. Consider your existing desktop as it is, but it is being rendered on a flat 3d, plane, exactly in front of you. If the 3d engine is written intelligently, this won't take a whole lot more resouces than you existing desktop does, because it is outputting the same thing to your monitor...the BEAUTY of this system however, is that a programmer has the ability to do incredible things with the GUI, because that 3d functionality is there, at such a low level...things like taking a window and zooming out to infinity on minimalize, or renering it partially transparent when it loses focus...the possibilities are limitless.

      OF COURSE things like this would take resources, but you can bet that the MIT guys will think of this, and give you options to balance your GUI kewlness factor against your system resources, like any OS from Windows to Linux does.

      --
      -The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
    3. Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X by MasonMcD · · Score: 2, Funny

      How about a *four* dimensional GUI! That way, when you perform a search, you don't just get measly 2-D directory information, you get "file found: /root/etc/west 10 feet/last Tuesday"

    4. Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X by babbage · · Score: 2
      "[....] And what good is a GUI?"

      ...right, and people came up with good reasons to use a WIMP [windows, icons, menus, pointer] interface, and that answered the question. We're still waiting for an answer to the original poster's question.

      Parroting Jakob Nielsen & Edward Tufte here, it's worth noting that conceptually, most problems we deal with are N-dimensional, where N is a very large number with probably several trailing zeroes. Going from a crude, vaguely 1-D interface like the command line to a somewhat less crude 2-D interface like the WIMP interface is a good aid & worth doing. Going from that 2-D interface to 3-D isn't as helpful.

      For one thing, it doesn't really do much to flesh out a rendering of that huge N-D problem space. For another, it's bloody confusing in pretty much every implementation yet conceived. Even if we could get a decent visualization of a 3-D space on a flat monitor plane [hint: we can't, and no video games don't count], the input devices aren't suitable for interacting with a three dimensional space anyway. A mouse has no concept of elevation, and devices that do, like those silly VR gloves, don't work well enough to be useful.

      It's my firm belief that a 3-D interface will never really be viable on contemporary hardware, because both the input & output devices are not designed for or capable of rendering such a visualization acceptably. Even if it were possible, or [more likely] if people were to migrate to say holographic displays and some sort of "tri-axial" mouse, you hit an even bigger problem: it's hard for people to conceptualize what's going on as the number of dimensions goes up [one is easy, two is common, three takes work, and four & higher we just can't do] and i've yet to see any argument or sample implementation that makes the marginally better mapping onto N-D problem sets worth the tradeoff of all the extra conceptualization effort required to understand such a scheme.

      If contemporary 2D guis seem to be stagnating, it's probably because they're approaching a kind of maturity. That isn't a bad thing. After 20 years or so of mainstream deployment, we're getting a pretty good idea of what works well and what doesn't. I like that I was able to sit down in front of BeOS for the first time and realize that everything I'd learned with the Win & Mac interfaces was going to help me here. I don't want some kind of radical shift in how the display works, unless I know that in return for the considerable effort that learning it will require (including unlearning much of what I've gotten used to thus far) I'm going to get at least an order of magnitude more productivity out of the new interface.

      And that just ain't gonna happen.

      It's a nice pipe dream, but we don't even have anything good enough on the drawing board, and that's not by accident. And this article, in case you didn't realize it by now, is troll fodder. Your leg has been pulled... :)

      --
      DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
    5. Re:Cesium employs RadioActive-X by babbage · · Score: 2
      By hardware, I'm referring specifically to the I/O devices attached to a typical desktop computer. I think the computer itself has great capacity for novel interface schemes, but the ools we use to interact with that display -- a 2D monitor, a 2D mouse, and a keyboard -- are fundamentally not well suited to 3D work. Fundamentally. If we replace those devices, the computer itself could go farther, but there is so much currently invested in the existing scheme and it has so much momentum behind it, that I really think change will come very, very slowly. That's not to say that an alternative couldn't emerge on the fringe, and move to the mainstream if it does well, but keep in mind that doing so would mean that all that I/O hardware would need to be replaced, the Windows & Macintosh would need to be at least partially subjected to a fundamental rewrite, etc.

      The gaming audience is an interesting one. Quake is *not* 3D, just as my television is not 3D. It is a crude, but vaguely convincing rendering of a 3D space on a 2D plane. For some uses -- games, movies -- that's okay. But if I'm trying to find a file on my computer, I don't want to have to rummage through some sort of silly Quake inspired labyrinth to do it. If I have a rogue proceess thrashing my system, I don't want to have to fire up the Sysadmin version of Doom to go frag it. The way forward is *not* to relentlessly flog out the 3D space on a 2D plane metaphor, but to come up with better abstractions that allow us to better interact with that N-D space through hardware that we either have currently or could viably have in the relative near term.

      The fundamental point you're missing is that 2D is only marginally farther away from ND than 3D is, so both 2D and 3D have to take on abstraction layers to cope with that, and 3D additionally has to tackle conceptual boundaries and hardware shortcomings. In other words, to go from 2D to 3D you have to do a lot of work, but you're not addressing the core problem: abstraction of the ND problem space, which is still substantially as complex as before.

      I have yet to come across a 3D interface proposal that begins to address this problem, and until it does the scheme isn't worth the trouble, IMO.

      --
      DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
  6. Coooooool.... by krmt · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Well, here it finally is. We've been waiting for how long now for a big clean sweep of the PC? Throwing out everything from the file/folder/desktop heirarchy to plain-text formatting is a fascinating move, one that I'm sure we've all thought about at least one time or another, but had no way of going about it. I really hope this pans out.

    The immediate problems that I see are
    1. The UI will scare people. Unfamiliar == Scary.
    2. Hardware support. Hopefully drivers will get out there fast.
    3. Very new programming model. People can't build off of years of UNIX experience as with linux.
    4. People like what they've got, be it windows, linux, mac, or both. Change is scary.
    5. Is the VM slow? Probably not, but we won't know until it's out.
    That said, I really hope these hurdles can be overcome. I'm betting ideas from this will be incorporated in to the more traditional OS's in the long run, but who knows? I'm certaintly going to check it out and maybe give it a spin on a spare partition (if that's even possible yet). A 3d GUI! I can't wait.
    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

    1. Re:Coooooool.... by the_quark · · Score: 2

      Dagum it. Where's "-1, Gullible" when you need it?

    2. Re:Coooooool.... by krmt · · Score: 2

      No shit. Mod my ass down. I got suckered like a lot of people. I don't happen to work at MIT, and I never bothered with a search (of course, the /. editors didn't either, so I'm in good company). The whole thing should have sounded too good to be true, and I should have realized it from my own post, talking about everyone having thought about this but no one having any idea as to how to do it.

      Ah well, fuck it. I can still dream that someone will come up with a good 3d GUI one day...

      --

      "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  7. Slashdotted by Knunov · · Score: 5, Informative

    The story has been Slashdotted already. I am posting it here for the benfit of fellow /.ers and EZ Karma points:

    The Advanced Operating Systems Group, a branch of the Lab for Computer Science at MIT, has begun planning for a public release of their formerly unknown operating system known as Cesium.
    Currently at version 4.2 (version 1.0 was finished in 1993), Cesium's architecture and abilities are enough to make even the most jaded computer enthusiast start frothing at the mouth. As an assistant to one of the lab's directors, I was invited to a private presentation given last week to some MIT staff members as part of the planning process for its eventual public release. I was given permission to write this sneak preview.

    The primary goal of Cesium's creators was to fully abandon the "historic principles" that have shaped most contemporary operating systems. Concepts like "desktop", "folders", "files", etc., have all been thrown out the window. The results, while unusual when compared against the de facto standard of Microsoft Windows, are nevertheless fascinating and potentially very useful.

    Cesium comprises five main parts, or "Overmodules". These overmodules are made up of semi-independent modules, which can be replaced or updated at will in order to add, remove or modify system functionality.

    The Platform overmodule is the only platform-specific part of Cesium. It serves as a virtual machine, allowing the OS to run almost identically on a variety of platforms. The AOSG Lab has a distributed Cesium system made up of a seemingly random batch of Mac and PC machines, and Cesium has also been successfully tested on some handheld devices.

    The Storage overmodule is one of the more unique ideas behind Cesium. Instead of using a traditional filesystem, all data is stored in an object-oriented database (OODBMS) that is written through the Platform overmodule directly to a hard drive. This allows for queries and operations that would not normally be possible within a traditional filesystem. In addition, it eliminates the concepts of files and folders, opting instead for child-parent relationships between any data stores.

    The Program overmodule serves as interpreter, compiler, and API for Cesium software. After translating code into an intermediate language called "Cilantro" (which is cached for future use), it passes the code to the Platform overmodule, which then executes it. Cesium currently supports C, C++, Java, Perl, Fortran, Lisp, COBOL, and numerous smaller languages.

    The Presentation overmodule works with the Platform overmodule to give programs access to a powerful and platform-independent visual interface that can present the output of programs as anything from terminal text to a 3-dimensional Hollywood-style GUI called "Tripwire" (which does shadows, transparencies, textures and light rendering better than most video game engines) depending on what the user chooses to see and what the hardware can handle.

    Finally, the Security overmodule handles access issues, providing administrators with user maintenance and permissions functionality that rivals anything offered by mainstream operating systems.

    The most interesting parts of Cesium, however, are often the little things. For example, all human-readable text is assumed to be HTML or XML, instead of Notepad-style plain text, and formatting can be customized with cascading style sheets. The default text editor that comes with Cesium, therefore, handles such things as bold, italics, tables, graphics, colors, etc., without trouble.

    Another interesting little tidbit is that Cesium was intended to be well documented from the very start. Error messages are dynamically generated and context sensitive, meaning that almost any error comes with a plain English description of exactly what happened, how it probably happened, and how to fix it.

    Cesium is due to be released by the end of the year for free, bundled with approximately 200 software applications including HTTP, FTP, NNTP and SMTP servers; a fully functional office application suite; graphics and audio software; and four video games including CesiumQuake.

    For further information, stay tuned to The MIT Laboratory for Computer Science website.

    --
    Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
    1. Re:Slashdotted by Luyon · · Score: 2, Funny
      Cesium is due to be released by the end of the year for free, bundled with approximately 200 software applications including HTTP, FTP, NNTP and SMTP servers; a fully functional office application suite; graphics and audio software; and four video games including CesiumQuake.

      This is by far my favorite part of this troll: while most people would consider, say, NetHack a noble effort for game porting on a unreleased-brand-spanking-new OS, we're going to release it with QUAKE.

  8. Mirror by redhotchil · · Score: 2, Informative

    Site seems slow, heres a mirror:
    here

  9. Never heard of any such Cesium project... by plam · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... which is fishy, because I'm sitting here in my office on the sixth floor of the Laboratory for Computer Science, and the operating systems dudes are on the fifth floor. There is also no mention of Cesium on the projects page.

    I couldn't actually read the original page, slant-six being slashdotted and all, but it sure doesn't sound like an LCS initiative. In fact I don't see any mention of any such operating system on the web.

    1. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I second that. I'm not sitting in the building, but I know several folks who work there. None of them have mentioned any work covered in the article. I also don't understand what the purpose of keeping an OS project secret would be in an academic enviroment. Remember publish or perish? I think this a hoax.

    2. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Cato+the+Elder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I didn't find anything on the web either, although of course project names get changed a whole bunch.

      But the article was supposedly written by a
      "Harvey M. Dunkirk" who says he's an assistant to one of the lab's directors.

      However, no such person appears in the LCS directory--and "Support Staff" is listed for some of the people there.

      Mighty fishy--I welcome a clarifying comment from anyone with more first-hand knowledge.

    3. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by RubberDuckie · · Score: 3, Redundant

      Interesting that there seems to be no other mention of this Cesium OS elsewhere on the web. Anyone see a quick way to inflate web site hits going on here?

    4. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Tim+Macinta · · Score: 5, Funny
      However, no such person appears in the LCS directory--and "Support Staff" is listed for some of the people there.

      Also noteworthy is that running "finger dunkirk@mit.edu" turns up nothing (you can look up a person's info by fingering their last name at mit.edu). MIT's finger database is usually very reliable and thorough.

      --

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    5. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by plam · · Score: 3, Informative

      I also don't understand what the purpose of keeping an OS project secret would be in an academic enviroment. Remember publish or perish?


      Actually there's a whole bunch of reasons which make it hard to deal with a large system in an academic environment. Publish or perish is certainly a major contributor. But large systems just have so much icky overhead to make them work that, in terms of work-to-reward ratio, it's almost never worth it to do a complete system. Or feasible; we don't have enough people to write large quantities of production code. Successful systems projects (wrt an academic metric for 'successful'), for instance, the self-certifying file system use parts of other systems that people have built. It's a lot easier that way, and it's really useful when those other systems are free software.

      Of course, there are major minuses to not having a system you can actually use day-to-day. A lot of the microkernel research, I'm told, was done by people who didn't 'eat their own dogfood'. They would boot up the system, run their benchmarks, then shut it off. This didn't capture problems which occur only after a few days of uptime.

      By the way, you can check out what the operating systems dudes are actually doing at their website: Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems Group.
    6. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Hal_9000@!!!@ · · Score: 5, Flamebait

      I would also have to agree with that.

      First of all, I don't think MIT is known for keeping people a floor up in the same building in the dark for 8 YEARS on an OS. Why would they?

      Second, there are no references to Harvey Dunkirk on G except for someone who died in the civil war.

      Finally, a test message to hdunkirk@mit.edu, the email address given on the story page, doesn't exist. In the words of MIT:
      ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
      hdunkirk@mit.edu
      (reason: 550 ... User unknown)

      ----- Transcript of session follows -----
      ... while talking to pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu.:
      >>> RCPT To:
      ... User unknown
      550 5.1.1 hdunkirk@mit.edu... User unknown
      -

      So, I think we have a hoax on our hands.

      --
      My email is real.
    7. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Thagg · · Score: 2

      Plam sez: > ... which is fishy, because I'm
      sitting here in my office on the sixth floor of
      the Laboratory for Computer Science...

      Perhaps this is fiscal April Fools Day? Those fiscal holidays are so hard to keep track of.

      thad

      --
      I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
    8. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      heh, pretty creative way to troll slashdot. Use a little-known website that allows story submissions and trick them into posting it. After they do that, turn around and submit a 'story' to slashdot and use the story that got submitted on slantsix to get the slashdot editors to put your submission on the main page.

    9. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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

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    10. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Salamander · · Score: 2
      There is no-one on the faculty who comes to mind as a specialist in O/S research.

      Frans Kaashoek might be pretty annoyed to hear you say that.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    11. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      Frans Kaashoek might be pretty annoyed to hear you say that.

      Last I heard they were doing bespoke kernel design. There are plenty of faculty who work on O/S related research, but there is a huge difference between designing a component and designing a complete O/S

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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    12. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Salamander · · Score: 2

      Look at the original statement you made:

      There is no-one on the faculty who comes to mind as a specialist in O/S research.

      FK and others might not have written a complete OS from interrupt handlers through office suites, but it's utterly absurd to say that they don't qualify as "specialists in OS research". Stop being a typical Slashdotter, admit the error, and move on.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    13. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2

      Don't be a typical slashdotter, read the whole of my original statement, not just the portion you selectively quote.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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    14. Re:Never heard of any such Cesium project... by Salamander · · Score: 2

      I did read the whole thing, asshole. Why would you think otherwise? Because I didn't respond to every other point you made? Ridiculous! Don't try to act all aggrieved, as though your comment was taken out of context; it was absurd regardless of context - even in a context where I agreed with the rest of what you were saying. Context is not the issue here. The issue here is the way that you, in your classic "I teach at MIT" arrogance, have refused to accept that anything you say could have been in error even when the error is waved in front of your face. I pity your students.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
  10. The coolest thing ever to happen on an OS by Uttles · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Another interesting little tidbit is that Cesium was intended to be well documented from the very start. Error messages are dynamically generated and context sensitive, meaning that almost any error comes with a plain English description of exactly what happened, how it probably happened, and how to fix it.

    I have nothing else to say, that in istelf is all I ever wanted from my OS.

    --

    ~ now you know
    1. Re:The coolest thing ever to happen on an OS by unformed · · Score: 2

      But OS's already tell you to how to fix it: "Contact your software vendor."

    2. Re:The coolest thing ever to happen on an OS by the_quark · · Score: 4, Funny

      What I really hate is when I'm writing some software, and working with something I've never used before, and the error message I get is "contact the software developer."

      I'm left sitting there staring at the screen at 3 AM blankly thinking, "Heck, I *am* the software developer, and I have absolutely no idea what to do myself, much less if some helpless user contacted me..."

      Oh well, at least I can't be in much closer contact with the developer...we're sitting in the same chair...:)

  11. Actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It =is= your father's operating system!

    It's called OS/400. Other than the 3d GUI, those are the base features of the AS/400 software. The virtual machine and OO database file system have been there from the beginning.

    1. Re:Actually... by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      I've tried it. It has perhaps the worst learning curve of any system I know. You have to learn about 300 pages worth of concepts to write 'hello, world'.

      Of course once you do that, there are a lot of really neat things about it, but sadly I just didn't have the time to learn it :-(.

      D

  12. Interesting, but how will it talk to everyone else by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
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  13. Re:Interesting, but... by ChannelX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    depends. 1.0 was finished 8 years ago. Was ReiserFS out then? How about 3dwm? virtual machines have been around forever. i think you are looking at it just a tad too simplistic.

    --
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  14. Next-gen OS? Sure... by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  15. OO / child-parent relationships by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 2

    In addition, it eliminates the concepts of files and folders, opting instead for child-parent relationships between any data stores.

    Doesn't sound too hard to make up a traditional ftp repository.

    --
    Infuriate left and right
  16. Re:Interesting, but... by Oztun · · Score: 2

    This allows for queries and operations that would not normally be possible within a traditional filesystem. In addition, it eliminates the concepts of files and folders, opting instead for child-parent relationships between any data stores.

    Maybe I'm uninformed but this doesn't seem to describe things already found within ReiserFS to me. I thought ReiserFS was just another JFS.

  17. Is this for real? by David+Ziegler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This sounds great and all, but like someone else pointed out, there's absolutely no mention of this anywhere on the MIT website, and a quick scan of the MIT website and directory for Harvey Dunkirk (the author, and supposedly an assistant to one of the lab directors) turned up absolutely no hits. I'd love to be wrong, this sounds cool, but this sounds really fishy.

    --
    -David Ziegler
    -
  18. hoax? features? by matman · · Score: 2

    I have a feeling that this is a hoax. Even if it is, there's some hope for the proposed features.

    DBMS filesystem: A filesystem is a database... there are two major things that most filesystems today lack (so far as I can think of), that more modern database systems could provide. One, is that databases can be indexed fairly easily, providing for fast searching. Unfortunatly, indexing on many columns (in RDBMS) can actually take a lot of disk space... maybe more than many people would be willing to accept. I also wish that filesystems could hold much more meta-data. What I envision, is a filesystem which provides meta-data fields dynamically, based on mime-type (stored seperately - not in filename). Imagine meta-data for image/jpeg to include compression level, height, width, or even a thumbnail version of the image, or meta-data for audio/mpeg to include the info that's now stored in ID3. This shouldn't necessarily mean slowness, or excessive disk useage - especially if you can turn extended meta-data off for particular parts of the filesystem.

    Visual interface: While 3D sounds cool, I'm not convinced. A monitor (currently) is a 2D object, and merging a 3D environment into a 2D display is going to cause as much - if not more - metaphore 'clash' as the 'desktop' metaphore. I think that some of the best/most interesting display technologies can be found in things like Aqua which uses display PDF and Berlin which uses 'fresco' to provide similar features like resolution independance, good printer output, vector based stuff, etc. Until we get holographic display, or maybe even good VR stuff, I'm not betting much on 3D interfaces except for very specific applications.

    Security: They didn't really go into this much, unfortunately. Unix security is nice and simple (which is a mixed blessing); sometimes you need more control. It's also nice to have things NOT run with excess privilige (this is hard in some situations - like SSHD for example). Projects like RSBAC (rsbac.org) address some of these issues.

    Current projects like Linux already have lots of hardware support, and people support; any new OS, no matter how revolutionary is not likely to take over too quickly. This Cesium project, should it exist, will have had to create all drivers internally without help; the Linux community hasn't even been able to support enough hardware to make everyone happy - I don't know how Cesium would. (not that wide hw support would have been a goal necessarily)

  19. Evidence that this is a hoax by yerdaddie · · Score: 2, Redundant


    finger hdunkirk@mit.edu
    [mit.edu]
    Student data loaded as of Oct 29, Staff data loaded as of Oct 27.
    URL data loaded once a month.

    Notify Personnel or use WebSIS as appropriate to change your information.

    Our on-line help system describes
    How to change data, how the directory works, where to get more info.
    For a listing of help topics, enter finger help@mit.edu. Try finger
    help_about@mit.edu to read about how the directory works. Please see
    help_url@mit.edu for questions about the new URL field.

    No matches to your query.
    carsonr@arsenal:~/notes$


    The penultimate line says it all. The email address for the author is bogus, as is the article. Additionally, the LCS folks I know haven't heard about this. Smells like BS to me.

    1. Re:Evidence that this is a hoax by zerocool^ · · Score: 3, Funny


      Where did you get that?
      I got this:

      finger hdunkirk@mit.edu
      [mit.edu]
      Student data loaded as of Oct 29, Staff data loaded as of Oct 27.
      URL data loaded once a month.

      Notify Personnel or use WebSIS as appropriate to change your information.

      Our on-line help system describes
      How to change data, how the directory works, where to get more info.
      For a listing of help topics, enter finger help@mit.edu. Try finger
      help_about@mit.edu to read about how the directory works. Please see
      help_url@mit.edu for questions about the new URL field.

      All your base are belong to us.
      carsonr@arsenal:~/notes$

      ~z

      --
      sig?
  20. Sounds like a major hoax. by Airneil · · Score: 2, Informative

    No mention of this on any MIT website I've looked at...

    Cesium? Come on...

    Uses "Tripwire" as a name for a GUI?

    "Hollywood style"?

    Looks like someone took some computer terms, sprinkled heavily with jargon and made something up.

  21. Comments from LCS by angio · · Score: 5, Informative
    OS research at MIT happens primarily in the PDOS (Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems) research group these days.

    I'm a grad student in the PDOS group; I certainly haven't heard of this project, nor have my colleagues with whom I've checked. This story could use a bit more background checking; I strongly suspect that it's completely bogus. If you want to see the real research going on in operating systems at MIT, check out the PDOS web page, the Networks and Mobile Systems page, and the Advanced Network Architectures sites.

    1. Re:Comments from LCS by hey! · · Score: 2

      Sure, but "Cesium" is a much cooler name than "PDOS", which sounds like some kind of Pathetic Disk Operating System.

      You can think of some cool taglines too -- "Cesium: Just Add Water And Watch The Flames". Or the fun you'd have explaining to your British colleagues that it is c-e-s-i-u-m not c-a-e-s-i-u-m. Or the late night BS sessions where you dream up acronyms that spell C.E.S.I.U.M. ("Cooperative Environment for Serving Information something something").

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  22. Re:Interesting, but... by Milican · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I hear ya... I thought RiserFS was just some gimmicky marketing tactic too cuz PalmOS was out with dB file system some time last century.

    JOhn

    --
    Campaign for Liberty
  23. interesting anagrams of ... by jaiteend · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Harvey M Dunkirk...

    HARVEY DRUNK KIM
    HEAVY DRINK MURK
    MY VERA HURD KINK
    HA DRUNK VERY KIM

    Sorry, but since this one is sounding more and more of a hoax, someone had to do it.

    --
    and the Irishman took the fly in his hands and yelled, "spit it out!"
  24. Re:hoax? features? by Arandir · · Score: 2

    A filesystem is a database...

    Which makes me wonder, what filesystem does the database reside on? Inquiring minds want to know.

    Unfortunatly, indexing on many columns (in RDBMS) can actually take a lot of disk space...

    So there actually IS a traditional filesytem underneath it all? Or are all the index files stored in the same database they index?

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  25. halloween scare by Alien54 · · Score: 2
    I think this a hoax.

    I can see this being a scare, an april fools joke in reverse, just in time to give certain Microsoft execs a heart attack.

    sort of like a halloween scare. Trick or treat, like earlier memos from earlier years.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  26. Re:Interesting, but... by curunir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Virtual machines may have been around a while, but no one's ever implemented them below (or as a part of) the OS layer. They've always been an application running on top of an existing OS.

    Moving the VM to below the OS level would truly allow the "write once, run everywhere" claim that Sun made about Java. The current problem with Java code running everywhere is not incompatability with the underlying machine, it is incompatability with the underlying OS.

    It also significantly lowers the bar to writing your own OS. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but assembly and low-level c code make my head hurt...OO code doesn't. Very similar to what the Linux Kernel + X windows allows. Do you think we'd see so many WM's if they had to implement the entire OS themselves? I'm looking forward to playing around with the Platform module to see how hard it is to write my own OS on top of that!

    --
    "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
  27. The famous AOSG by srichman · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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?
  28. Re:hoax? features? by mclearn · · Score: 2

    Why do you think the database would require an underlying filesystem? Many DBMSs use raw disk access in order to maximize speed. I know, because I've inadvertantly crushed a few partitions because they appeared to have no underlying filesystem on them.

  29. Re:hoax? features? by matman · · Score: 2

    Oh, one other nice thing for filesystems would be transaction logging for consistency.

  30. I think we should need a new license by Ghoser777 · · Score: 2

    We could call it the sex license (SL). You can do whatever you want, as long as you play by the rules. Of course, you don't know the rules are, and you'll probably get screwed over in court anyway (as opposed to where you would prefer to get screwed over).

    F-bacher

    --
    James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
  31. This is an obvious hoax by KidSock · · Score: 2

    I don't know for sure and I hope I'm wrong but this is likely a hoax. Remember the light emmitting diode CPU thing? This is one of those concept articles of the ideal operating system. Sounds great and it's good for inspiration but I doubt such a Utopian OS exists. I wish it did but we would have heard about it already. I just hope MIT doesn't get pissed off at these guys.

  32. folder / file analogy by SixTwelve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Throwing out everything from the file/folder/desktop heirarchy

    Is it just me? I really can't see a distinction between the folder/file relatoinship and the parent/child data relationship.

  33. Re:OMG! No more crappy DX8 "3D" desktops! by cloudmaster · · Score: 2

    Until I have a 3-D *display* and an intuitive way to navigate 3 dimensions, 3D "environments" are just another waste of time (IMHO). I can already have windows in front of, behind, below, above, left, and right of other frames, so my present "2D" setup is a fine way to not waste otherwise useful resources.

    That said, more OS's with more OS developers that are free to collaborate with other OS people is generally a good thing for everyone, so I hope this goes somewhere. It'd sure be nice if the article was somewhere I could read it, though, as the page linked to just comes up with a worthless entry page... :)

  34. secret research? by Tom7 · · Score: 2


    OK, what kind of academic research institute does research in *secret*? I think I have to go with others here in thinking that this is a hoax...

  35. PAY ATTENTION EVERYONE by Migelikor1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    THIS IS A COMPLETE CROCK.
    The man doesn't exist
    The department doesn't exist
    The project doesn't exist

    It's pretty sad that there are still new comments appearing talking about this system as a reality. In the last few days, we've had the completely wrong iPod slashback, now this. Come on editors AND readers, do a little research before posting. More readers should have caught the fake, and it shouldn't have been here in the first place.

    --
    My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
  36. Maybe this is a lesson by q-soe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Look, as someone who likes slashdot and comes here several times a day i dont like to be seem as critical, but this story is an indication of whats happening on /.

    A few minutes web work would have shown that this group doesnt exist, the person mentioned doesnt exist and the email address doesnt exist, thus this is a hoax which worked very well i would think.

    The most depressing part of this is that is see posts with people arguing authoritatively about what is wrong with this OS etc etc when discussing an OS that doesnt exist ?

    All im asking is that the editors actually check out stories they post before they do so - its a matter of respect for the people who come here.

    NOTE - im posting this under my user name in the full awerness that someone brave and wise (enter sarcasm mode)will likely mark me down for being offtopic etc etc - but as this topic is a load of bull how can anything be off topic ?

    --
    I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
  37. Re:Next-gen OS? Sure... by RevAaron · · Score: 2

    Fact-checking? On slashdot? Surely, you jest! And timmy seems to be the best at just posting before he even looks at the link!

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  38. *cough* SUCKERS *cough* by baptiste · · Score: 2
    LOL - Unreal. First, Slant-six has an open submission queue. And Mr Harvey?
    Harvey M. Dunkirk
    Website: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
    E-Mail: hdunkirk@mit.edu
    Member since: 10/29/2001 3:09:40 PM

    LOL - A posting member < 24 hours old - ROFLMAO!

    HOAX

    --
    Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
  39. Re:OMG! No more crappy DX8 "3D" desktops! by Andrewkov · · Score: 2

    Yeah, when I want a 3D deskop I just turn off my computer and look at my desk.

  40. Re:Interesting, but... by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 2
    but no one's ever implemented them below (or as a part of) the OS layer.

    Quick! Somebody better tell IBM's AS/400 people that they're selling a machine that doesn't exist. Horizontal microcode indeed!

  41. So its a hoax... Doesn't mean it can't be Real by hooded1 · · Score: 2

    I think we can all be sure that this is a hoax. But so what. This cesium actually sounds like a good operating system idea. I think it's the responsibility of MIT to start developing it. :)

    .

    --
    A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
  42. Learning from kerberos by supabeast! · · Score: 2

    "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."

    Hopefully MIT learned from Microsoft's "embrace and extend proprietarily" approach to kerberos, and will release it under a license that keeps Microsoft from doing so again. On that note, anyone who is involved in the politics that play on MIT's dean and directors should keep an eye out for the handiwork of the devil, ie Microsoft sending in the clowns to stop them from releasing software under a "proprietary" license.

  43. Re:Interesting, but... by Detritus · · Score: 2

    How about the UCSD p-System? It ran on the Apple II, IBM PC and directly on a mutant version of the LSI-11, among others. Most of the system was written in Pascal, compiled into p-code, and interpreted by a p-machine. That work was done over twenty years ago.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  44. anyone notice...? by Technodummy · · Score: 2

    the first hit on "Cesium" in Google is: Songs of Cesium

    on this page is a mention of Cesium Chloride... which (correct me if I'm wrong, I never did chemistry) I think is salt...

    maybe we should take this article with a pinch of it...

    the only software called Cesium that I could find is: clock and timing software for the Palm

    1. Re:anyone notice...? by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 2

      OK, here's the geek take:

      Cesium: melts in your hands, not in your mouth

      Rick

      Were you saying "Boo" or "Boo-urns"?

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  45. Reader corrections shouldn't lessen responsibility by ToastyKen · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'm thinking that perhaps the /. staff posts stuff more cavalierly without fact-checking precisely because its comment structure allows for easy reader corrections. I know that whenever I see an iffy story, I go to the comments to see if there have been any corrections, and there usually are. Because of this, I can't really say "I'm not going to read /. any more!"

    Fact is, for people like me who read the score 4/5 comments, /. remains a pretty reliable news source, if you take those comments into account. This, as I've said, probably contributes to editor slacking, since they feel that fact-checking isn't necessary. However, there is a significant portion (majority?) of /.'s audience that does not read the comments. You can say, "This is their own fault," all you want, but some people just choose not to spend more time than is necessary to get a brief glimpse of the news. For these people, /. is spreading uncorrected misinformation, and it is doing a disservice to its readership.

    I think that, if the editors don't want to spend the time to fact-check, they should at least post immediate update/corrections to the article, visible on the front page, when a glaring error has been made as in this case. That way, the people who don't read comments can at least be informed of mistakes.

  46. Another indication of Hoaxiness: by Bonker · · Score: 2

    all human-readable text is assumed to be HTML or XML, instead of Notepad-style plain text, and formatting can be customized with cascading style sheets.

    Chicken and egg problem that no real MIT OS guru would allow himself to be caught in. If every document is considered to already be HTML or XML by the OS, how do you create HTML or XML above the OS layer? Use a text editor? Ah, but all text is considered to be HTML or XML at the OS level.

    Sorry guys. There are some really great ideas here, but the article is really just a troll. It's just an interesting wishlist of OS feature desires.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
  47. Re:Even if it is false... by javaman235 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've thought about it too...I assume your a programmer:

    What do you think about a file system abstraction layer (FSAL) that allows for the treatment of all files as objects? I found the Object oriented FileSystem an inspiring bit of the hoax.

    An object oriented FileSystem would mean files that have methods, and properies as metadata, and implementing it as an abtraction layer would mean not limiting existing functionality, but extending it, particularly if it can reference physical files and hold metadata.

    Can you imagine that when GIMP is installed, instead of defining internal functions for, say, resizing a jpeg, you simply associated the functions with the object that corresponds to a JPEG itself , with a reference to the particular module that contained the functions. From here, ANY program the needed image processing capabilities could call ANY method that the GIMP has DIRECTLY on the file object without ever digging through the thousands of lines of code that the Gimp has and copying it!!! (provided that the GIMP module with the given method is in the FSAL's DB.)

    Hoax or not, that is simply one of the most powerful things I could imagine happening to open source...Every new piece of code being instantly available to new programmers as an instatly accessable, ever growing API, accessible just through reading what methods are registered with a given file type.

    --
    -The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
  48. Well.... by mindstrm · · Score: 2

    Reiserfs does not use an RDBMS based filesystem.

    3D desktops are a novelty still. There have been projects long before 3dwm.org

    An virtual machines were done a LONG time ago by IBM.. .sun is new.

    And the guys at MIT have done nothing; this is a hoax.

  49. Step Three: by Tekgno · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Step One:
    We wet out pants over it (I know I did :P)

    Step Two:
    We realised it was a hoax

    Step Three:
    Are we going to do something about it?

    This sounds very cool, the OODBMS for starters is cool, it saves so much wasted space; the practicalities of the 3dGUI are a bit suspect but
    all the other details are good.

    Personally, I think it would be good to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch every so often. It is about time that somebody created a new OS FROM SCRATCH. It would be a mammoth undertaking but in the end we would have something beautiful, the next generation of OS.

    (If I don't stop in a minute I'll cream my pants again :P)

  50. database by zephc · · Score: 2

    you just described BeFS, whch can have arbitary new metadata tagged on to any file/directory (like artist name, song name, song length, and stuff that doesnt exist normally on BeFS filesystem entities (node, date stuff, etc., are all the base/required file metadata)

    a 3D GUI ala seen in Lain sitting on BeOS, with a fast VM (java, or whatever) would be a good catharsis for the ppl disappointed by this hoax =\

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  51. Very efficient hoax. by David+Hume · · Score: 2, Interesting



    This was also a very efficient hoax. "Harvey M. Dunkirk" has been a member of Slant-Six since "10/29/2001 3:09:40 PM." See: Slant-Six Information for Harvey M. Dunkirk. The Slashdot story was posted by Timothy on October 29, @06:58PM. Four hours from start to successful completion.

    --
    Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
  52. Re:Interesting, but... by nomadic · · Score: 2


    But it's worth noting that most of what they offer is already available under Linux. As far as I'm concerned, they're re-inventing the wheel.

    Hell, Linux is the king of wheel reinvention...

  53. Re:free probably means.. by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    Clearly that wasn't intended to be a pro-GPL and anti-MIT-license dig, but a comment wondering out loud whether this would be free in the free software way (regardless of which particular free software license) or "free" in the "source is available free of charge, but it's not free software" way that is becoming so common lately. Presumably the author was not aware of MIT's habit of using the MIT license for their software.

    Which is what I mean when I say that the supporters of non-GPL free software licenses are a bit too defensive for their own good.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  54. Re:free probably means.. by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    I don't see how RMS has ever advocated forced labor. There is no forcing anywhere - you have a choice to labor or not. If you choose in your labors to use my code which I chose to license under the GPL, then you must follow my conditions. If these conditions are onerous or otherwise unacceptable to you, you are free to not use my code at all in your labors. There is no forcing, merely a quid pro quo offer of code in return for modifications.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  55. 71 to 20416 by Knunov · · Score: 2

    At the bottom of the story on Slant Six there is a hit counter. When I first read the story it stated:

    This story has been read 71 times.

    After the Slashdotting, I went back and just a few hours later the counter read:

    This story has been read 20416 times.

    Behold the power of /.

    --
    Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
  56. Hoax, but... by dasmegabyte · · Score: 2

    HTML for all text? 3d built into the subsystem? Virtual Machines and OODMBS?

    Sounds to me like a beefy version of Java3d, which while not an OS, I've always thought should be the basis for one. Who doesn't want a natively multi threaded high security OS with the "metal" LaF and true object oriented design? Plus, by devoting all system reources to the VM, we might actually get Java that could respond on an older system...

    --
    Hey freaks: now you're ju
  57. remember MULTICS? by peter303 · · Score: 2

    MIT LCS other "big" operating system? OS by committee that did everything and nothing well. Used by Honeywell. Was a negative inspiration for the bare-bones OS from Bell labs wil parody name UNIX.

  58. Seize by srichman · · Score: 2
    You can think of some cool taglines too -- "Cesium: Just Add Water And Watch The Flames". ... Or the late night BS sessions where you dream up acronyms that spell C.E.S.I.U.M. ("Cooperative Environment for Serving Information something something").
    I don't know about that... Making people say "seize" ("To come to a halt") every time they mention your OS has to have some bad subconscious effects...
    1. Re:Seize by hey! · · Score: 2

      That reminds me of the poet Andrei Codrescu, who when learning to drive had problems selecting a car. The Chevy "Citation" seemed like tempting fate. The Dodge Dynasty (break it down to Die-Nasty) was even worse.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  59. So it's a hoax... by sqlrob · · Score: 2

    So What? Wasn't Parrot (the Python / Perl merger)a hoax last year? IIRC, it went into alpha or beta recently.

    How long before someone thinks this is cool and starts implementation?

    1. Re:So it's a hoax... by cmowire · · Score: 2

      The story of the whole Parrot thing was:
      1) April Fools Day hoax from the Perl and Python people creates a merged Perl / Python language called Parrot.
      2) Perl 6 wanted to abstract the interpreter for bytecode from the rest of the system.
      3) Perl 6 decided to name the bytecode interpreter "Parrot", in reference to the afformentioned joke.

      --
      Gentoo Sucks
  60. Attention: Hoax by DaveWood · · Score: 2

    Even Slant-Six has acknowledged it. Check their front page.

    http://www.slant-six.org/default.asp

    --
    We're on the road to Tycho.
  61. Re:haox, so he says in a replay by zephc · · Score: 2

    actually that was a different (second?) account ... http://www.slant-six.org/display.asp?type=u&id=har vey vs. http://www.slant-six.org/display.asp?type=u&id=Dun kirkH

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.