Slashdot Mirror
Operating Systems of the Future
An anonymous reader writes: "'Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration.' Computerworld is predicting that over the next 10 years, operating systems will become highly distributed and 'self-healing,' and they'll collaborate with applications, making application programmers' jobs easier."
Oh, wait...
sysadmins everywhere kill themselves. This just sounds like trouble waiting to happen.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
What happens when some user click on a VBS script ?
I image great horrors as the whole cluster goes down in a mass emailing.
/satterth
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
Tanenbaums Amoeba is way ahead of the game then.
I'm so sick and tired of what the next 10 years will bring us. Howabout OSes that dont crash? How about hardware that won't lock up your computer? How about open standards, a generally more cautious approach to computing that will allow us to stabilize the developments that occur? Nah .. of course not. Lets take this overly complicated not-so-realiable thing and throw a transparent layer of 'self-healing' autonomy to it. I know thats what I've been looking for ... yet another reason why I have to explain to my boss that computers ain't perfect. I can hear him now: "But they're supposed to heal themselves! Why didn't the OS dial up our energy provider and ask why the power went out?!"
"Old man yells at systemd"
...we slashdotters see this as complete worthless bullshit because MS Research is spearheading this effort? This is actually quite a novel idea, but the due to the general 3771ism of /., it will be made fun of and dismissed out the wazoo.
anything that has claimed to make programmer's lives easier, has had little to no positive effect. if anything it has made it worse. remember dll's anyone. registries?, etc.
You heard it here first. That's where the smart money is: Linux.
IMHO, future operating systems will tend to something like the ErOS operating system . This OS is based on multiple tiny extremely reliable components, within a strong capability model to provide a high level of security.
It's definitely a good approach, although ErOS is still quite experimental yet.
{{.sig}}
Grumble, grumble...
Is it just me or does "such as fault tolerance, self-tuning and robust security" just not sound like a Microsoft product to me...
r ds /images/story/Farsite.gif
And...
http://www.computerworld.com/computerworld/reco
Was it just me or does the notion of a "Centralized file server" NOT sound like distributed computing to you?
Leave it to Microsoft to translate distributed into centralized
Am I the only one disappointed that we have an article about computers starting with the word Imagine that isn't immediatly followed by "a beowulf cluster of these"?
If I wasn't aware of better operating sytems
available I'd be whining about how Windows XP
made a mess of my harddrive while trying to
upgrade from 98se, or how the Win2k drivers
for my soundcard are fidgity and lamenting that
this is still the future.
Hell, if I hadn't gotten hosed by the operating
system blues this would have been "FIRST POST!!!"
because I wouldn't have had to look up my
randomly generated password for slashdot.
Oh woe is me. Someday I will be free of these
infernal machines.
...this won't fly well at all in systems that are required to be audited and validated, for things like pharmaceuticals, where a certain degree of determinism is required...
Your digital "rights" managed TrustedPCs will connect to a giant virtual disk array via the network, where what you store will be subject to government and corporate monitoring and removal.
Think this is nuts? Where are the 200GB drives? Why is Intuit pushing us to store tax and financial information on their site? Why does Microsoft want to give us an authentication token that's good for retrieving our information "anywhere, anytime."
Why would anyone (other than a legitimate large corporation) have a need for local storage, once the Internet storage product is fast and cheap? I can only imagine one use for local storage--copyright infringement.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sounds kind of like the model of the old original Sun workstations in the early 80's...
(regarding Farsite)
Granted, Lotus Notes is not strictly an OS and has its own limitations, but the idea of encryption, replication and assymmetrical trust relationships is something that Notes can do already.
-- D.
I've heard about things like this in the past. It's not a bad idea except that it pushes for one OS only and networking protocals are not foolproof. Sniffing, injection, resurection of vampire taps, etc..., can chang the home cumputer from personal PC to global war ground.
The target environment for [Microsoft's] Farsite is an organization in 2006 with 100,000 computers, 10 billion files and 10 petabytes (10,000TB) of data.
Surely there will be major scalability problems with something like this, a la Gnutella?
The potential pitfalls of 100,000 computers trying to access each other across the same network gives me headaches just thinking about it.
'Self Healing' scares me. I'm not entirely sure why, but I want to be in control of my computer. I'm afraid that with 'self healing' my computer can install things I don't want installed, uninstall things I do want and send all my information to Big Brother.
Now if it was open source, distributed OS with self healing I might be ok, I guess I just object to giving that much control to a large coorporation whos main concern is profits and not my privacy.
So there is something behind .Net, a giant global filestore ran by taa daa, Bill "G money" Gates and the M$FT hustlers. I gamble that the next thing we'll hear is "An XTC (X-box thin client) in every home, and a chicken in every pot"
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Im stil waiting for the flying car promised in the 50's
....futurists have NO clue what so ever !
....
Or the atomic car promised by ford in the 60's
Or the Artificial intelligence android promised me in the 70's
Or......I get it
All this technolgy only makes it easier to kill each other, steal each other land and money, and pretty much lead more misearble meaningless existences than life was 50 years ago....
Predicting what an OS is going to be like now is hilarious. The systems architecture, may, be the exact same basis the PC has been for 20 years no. I got my first IBM PC in 81, they havent changed as much as you think, open up one of the antiques , youll see
So what is a computer going to be like in 10 years ? If you can predict this one way or another. Same or Radically different you could be the next BG....
Horseshit all of it...
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
So, Bill is finally going to release a version of windows that will automatically simulate pressing ctrl-alt-delete when it blue screens.
Many people would say it's MS's customers that have been fault tolerant.<rimshot!>
VAX Clusters.
Mango software already does this. The file part anyways.
They said the same thing when I was in college 10 years ago.
Most technological improvements don't make a techies job easier. Because as soon as new technology becomes available to make something easier or less time consuming the entity that employs the techie thinks the techie should be able to accomplish more then the same time frame. So while certain technologies make jobs less mundane I don't think any innovation will make somebodys job easier. Unless of course it replaces the techie's function.
Does everything have to be on topic around here? The beowulf thing is a standing Slashdot.org joke and I find it humorous.
Please mod parent up.
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
I predict that there will never be a revolutionary new operating system until we break free of the chains imposed by Posix compliance. Until then, we're stuck with files that have to be streams of bytes, ugo-style permissions, non-wandering processes, incompatable RPC calls, &c.
And the real pain is there have been OS'es that have had simple & elegant solutions to problems that are hard under unix (Aegis, Multics, VMS, TOPS, ...) that were pushed aside by the steamroller that is Unix.
But to be fair, many of the forgotten O/S's are now forgotten because they weren't as general purpose as Unix. Unix is the great compromise. But it's hard to strive for the best when you've already accepted compromise.
And get all these ideas implemented in the Linux kernel! Now that we know the future, we can be the first ones there!
But seriously, somehow I don't see this in 10 years.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
MS Notice:t in /MS02-002.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulle
And a thread talking about it on macintouch:
http://www.macintouch.com/officevx3.html#feb08
Farsite, while ingenious, looks more like a fantastic file storage system than anything else. Is it possible that they've tweaked the UI that most of us are accostomed to the point where any more upgrades are aesthetic, feature or reliability driven, and aren't fundamental improvements on the current desktop analogy?
Will the majority of the computer using populace still be double clicking, dragging and dropping, and 'opening' folders and hard drives 10, 15 years from now?
Could be. Could be.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Looking at the diagram at the bottom of the article, I was reminded of how Freenet works... so at least in that area it looks a bit redundant. The article seems to describe more of a grouping of many ideas which have been out for a while and adding in a bit of marketing hype. Nothing to impressive, but intresting none the less.
It does to me
Oh great. It's already impossible to find a job with my measly bachelor's degree and now I have self-healing computers to look forward to. I should studied accounting...
And they'll make me breakfast too.
"Is there no place in this world for a man with a 105 IQ?" -- Homer Jay Simpson
I don't need a self-healing computer nearly as much as I need a self-painting house and a self-mowing lawn. And my wife could sure as heck use a self-fueling car.
Don'cha just love it when people "predict" what's already nearly available? And without even mentioning its existence in the article.
And don'cha just love it when MS "predicts" that they'll "inovate" by duplicating it under the MS banner?
Anybody care to "predict" the havoc that might insue when such OS's gain wide public use? I'd be leery of using such even in my isolated from the internet home network until it was proven to be absolutely secure, something today's less interactive computer nets can't even manage.
I'm happy that people are looking forward to, and researching, the future.
Would it hurt if a few people spent a bit more time making the present work worth a shit?
KFG
http://www.tricord.com
isnt this similar to what plan9 is trying to accomplish?
plan 9 from bell labs
-- john
The bad side, which is closer to reality, is that a computer company working in an "extend our existing market" mode will find find it irresistable to tie new things tightly to the innards of what already been deployed. That's a great way to ensure that you inherit security flaws from whatever old model you had, however good the theory of your new system is.
The evolution cycle of operating systems is well over 20 years. So in ten years, things will be just as they are. As the persistence of Unix, including its MacOS X and Linux derivatives, te demise of BeOS show, nobody is interested in revolutionnary OS architectures. They're just useless. Wasted time. Better hardware, network protocols that are universally supported, and more specialized software is wht makes computer do more things than they used to. Nobody wants a new OS architecture.
Imagine a whole world of distributed termimals running WindowsXP with the Fischer-Price Blue and Green Plastic Desktop Theme!! The mind reels, and Martha Stewart drops dead of a massive coronary!
Yawn.
The Apollo workstations did this in the 80's on a Unix variant. On that system, it was hard to tell where the computer left off and the network and began. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that my user directory and applications were actually on another machine in another building. What was missing however was the self healing aspect, although I think that could have been dealt with.
I remember when the Mac went from 24bit to 32bit. Microsoft was at Windows 3.1 16 bit. Microsoft spent a bunch of time trying to convince people that 32bit was overhyped and that 32 bit didn't matter. Once Windows 95 came out, they completely reversed course and told everyone that your word processors will no longer work as well because they weren't 32 bit.
Microsoft has downplayed the value of Unix for years. They suggest the value of some of Unix'es virtues as irrelevant. Then as they add the feature, it become the greatest thing since sliced bread. I.E. terminal services...
I'm certain that in 10 years when Microsoft "invents" and patents this, there will be a concerted effort to convert us all. Maybe Passport is the first step.
Michael
In the future, ENTIRE CITIES will be built around these things!
Let me see if I've got this straight:
/. story about Microsoft getting legal permission to take over your computer, as part of a EULA.
1.
2. ComputerWorld story that includes a line about how Microsft sees the computer of the future as one giant logical system with many small partitions.
Is anyone else joining the dots like I am?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
'cause I remember stuff like this when I *started* doing IT, in 1990. I'm too young to be crabby and cynical!
Display some adaptability.
Guaranteed. They've been predicting this kind of distributed computing is 10 years away for 20 years, at least, and guess what? Still 10 years away!
Time to give up and focus on writing easy-to-use secure systems that DON'T CRASH!
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Does everything have to be on topic around here? The beowulf thing is a standing Slashdot.org joke and I find it humorous.
... and above all, about as original as Microsoft "innovation".
It was humorous the first time. Moderately amusing the next 100 times perhaps. Now it is merely tired, trite, cliched, and asinine
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
My predictions:
Computers of the future will suck more than they do now because computer hardware will be so ubiquitous and so commodified that no company will be able to afford to manufacture it without bundling it with services.
These services will be delivered to you, dear consumer (you are not a person, sorry) in the form of compulsory surveys and opt-in spam, which will be used to develop detailed dossier (er i mean anonymous profile) of your entertainment viewing habits, cross referenced with your purchasing habits and a detailed inventory of all of your possessions.
embrace your future.
I live my life one quarter pounder at a time -Vinh Diesel
I assume Microsoft will be releasing the source code and freely distributing Farsite so I support this project.
How about getting rid of IRQ's on the PC platform!
How about getting rid of drive letters in Windows/Dos and having mount points!
How about a better drive interface than the stupid IDE interface. (Macs did it right with SCSI, but now to be "cheap" they do it too [sigh])
And for self healing? If Windows is still around and the predominant OS, I'll pass on the "self healing" - it'll be more like "death-without-dignity." Remember NT 4 SP 6? [Shivver] I don't want MS "self-healing" my machine!
In fact, I don't think I want anyone self healing my machine until software is lots more robust than it is now. At least when I apply patches to my machine and notice that something isn't working right, I know I _just_ patched it, so it might be the patch. With someone else applying patches without my knowing, I would be screwed!
Yeah, all those "wonderful things are just around the corner" articles are neat, but I would truly be happy with some "incremental" changes.
Lets forget "visionary" for a while and just fix the crap that's broken right now! Pleeeeease!
Cheers!
Farsite
Butler Lampson, for papers on Byzantine reliability, mostly based on the work of
Leslie Lamport
tiny reliable components are the basic philosophy of Unix.
Isn't that what HURD is all about? Also, I think Plan 9 would be a good OS for this as well.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I can just see it now. Windows will obviously have to communicate with you while it "fixes" things. How you ask? Though the paperclip.
You delete the paperclip, windows thinks it's user error it undeletes it. Then it turns it back on so that you know it's okay. Welcome the everlasting PaperClip. What we really need is the shotgun OS
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
For the purposes of mind expansion you could do much worse :-) than lurking on the EROS and E language mailing lists. Decentralization is another good one, though much less focused.
to something like "vast monolithic program containing device drivers and all other sorts of shit".
The market for alternative operating systems has completely dried up, so you should really be asking what will be in future versions of Windows and Linux, because unless there is a huge surge in OS research, these are going to be all thats left in ten years.
will be the MCP! It will have built in Digital Rights Management, and an FBI keystroke logger.
No thank you. I'll keep my computer and my OS local and under my direct, physical control, thank you very much.
BlackGriffen
...operating systems...and they'll collaborate with applications...
Windows Inheritance: "Psst. You crouch behind j.user's legs and I'll give him a push."
Clippy 5000: "OK"
*SHOVE*-splat!
Software: "Have a nice trip? See you next Fall! Muahaha!"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
vay. per. ware.
Gosh, how about Assembly? All the opcodes used by a microprocessor are extremely reliable components. The problem with any language, and any program, is when everything starts to interact. Components begin to be used in conditions the original author didn't intend, people try to hack the system, it all gets more complex...
So while it is certainly a good approach to have very stable base components, it isn't an all-solving approach.
"Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration."
Whoever thought up this pipe dream apparently doesn't understand the Zeroth Law of Network Security: If you want information to be secure, DON'T PUT IT ON THE FUCKING NETWORK!
Seriously! As if most business OSes don't default to the least-secure settings already! Why would you want to run important apps on a system where the default is to share anything and everything with any computer in listening distance?
Weren't there predictions just like this ten years ago?
Lots of small utilites, each with only one function, which it does very well , and can have its output piped to other such utilities or vice versa. Sounds like Unix to me.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
This OS is based on multiple tiny extremely reliable components
Unfortunately that doesn't necessarily make the OS itself reliable. The emergent behaviour of a system is different from the behaviours of its components.
After all, all software is based on multiple tiny extremely reliable components (F00F and FDIV bugs aside)-- the processors op-codes -- and look how flakey most software is.
Sure, you've got to start with reliable components, but you have to combine them in just the right way, too.
-- Alastair
...there won't be much drastic change from now till the next 18 years. For evidence of this, look at the Apple Lisa. The Lisa had windows, icons, a menubar, a WYSIWYG interface, and a mouse. Today's computers are little more than a glorified Lisa interface, whether they are running Mac OS X or Windows XP (I know because I run both.) Like the Lisa, todays computers still crash and still corrupt themselves. I doubt that this could be easilly changed in the next five, ten, or even fifteen years.
I'll believe the distributed file-storage myth when I see it. To me, it sounds as if it would hog bandwidth, just like gnutella does. I don't see any change coming in the way I store files on my computer. It's fast, effecient, and hasn't needed a change.
SysAdmins need not quit their day-jobs. As long as Microsoft is providing this technology, you can be sure that it will run into snags and security vulnerabilities. Increased complexity = increased vulnerability.
...and that's all I've got to say about that
And what could be better than an OS named after a goddess of Love, especially with Valentine's Day coming up.
From what I understand, EROS' key feature is not being built of "tiny reliable components" but fine-grained robust security known as the capability model. You can build a distributed system out of tiny reliable components, but it'd be nice if those components weren't burdended with bad security genes, so to speak.
The target environment for Farsite is an organization in 2006 with 100,000 computers, 10 billion files and 10 petabytes (10,000TB) of data.
...the Farsite project at Microsoft Corp...embodies several characteristics--such as...robust security...
Hmmm...my first thought..."ScanDisk is checking harddrive C..."
Farsite is a serverless, distributed system that doesn't assume mutual trust among its client computers. Although there's no central server machine, the system as a whole looks to users like a single file server.
Cool...Microsoft invents the cluster. I'm sure the folks who created Beowulf clusters stole the idea from them...come to think of it, those Gnutella folks blatantly ripped them off too...
I'd say something mean, but I assume this was meant as a joke...
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
They still think about files!? Files are evil, better think into object oriented OSes that hold everything in database-like places. They are much more flexible and Viva OS-400 and OS PICK!
self healing? That's easily done with tripwire, and a local backup of known working configs (and occasional remote backups), a bunch of bash scripts, crontab, etc. I'm a fulltime student, work fulltime and also have my own web hosting business. My server pretty much takes care of itself and i collect the money. The only thing i ever do is stuff the envelopes and lick the stamps ;)
It totally blew the minds of all my M$ liscence thumper co-workers when i showed them my server setups.
p r m t h s
Farsite is a serverless, distributed system that doesn't assume mutual trust among its client computers. Although there's no central server machine, the system as a whole looks to users like a single file server. High reliability and security are ensured because each file has one or more encrypted and digitally signed replicas elsewhere in the cluster.
It sounds to me like MS is worried about the future of the file server market. Perhaps they see the writing on the wall... it says LINUX. Who's likely to implement linux servers? Those that can't afford to pay for a Win2K Server license. "But wait, if you upgrade to the new Farsite OS, you don't need a server! So you don't need to use Linux at all! Think of the cost savings when you don't need to buy or maintain a separate server! Think of the savings in administration costs!" Or some hype along those lines. With large corporations, with all that spare hard drive space and idle processors, how many servers could they replace? Have they done the math and come up with figures that spell doom for the file server market?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Maybe it's just me, but the Farsite diagram at the bottom of the article really reminded me of how I understand Freenet to work...Is MS attempting to create a DRM-enabled variation of this same idea?
I don't imagine that Farsite has the same goals as the Freenet project, but there is enough similar in the underlying technology that I was struck by it. Maybe MS is recognizing the value of the architecture, if not some of it's potential uses?
No.
Bashing microsoft doesn't make me cool. Being man enough to post with my 'real' nick does.
:)
I find that part about a "self-healing" OS in a fantastically complicated distributed system rather unbelievable. Microsoft has actually been attempting to edge Windows towards self-healing. But that depends on the OS actually being able to identify problems and find the fixes. So far, "self-damaging" seems to be a more accurate assessment of the results -- and this is for an OS residing on a single box. In a distributed system...
Hmm... sounds like a micro-kernel :)
I like the Hurd's principal, but all the good ideas die because they aren't mainstream as quick as the mediocre ones. It's quite hard to edge out the market once a standard has been set. (Evidence: Windows, Monolithic Kernels, X86, X11, 2 Party system in America, Saddam Hussain, Communism) Microkernels are great at security, scalability, ease of programming, backwards compatibility, and portability. Come on, does the small added speed of one less context switch really matter that much? Certainly not anymore. Besides, hardware isn't really optimized for context switches yet (no real demand). If it were, perhaps microkernels could outperform monolithic.
The point is, for this fairytale view of magical computers fixing themselves to come true, there is a huge barrier that would have to be crossed, and I don't think Linus is willing to cross it. Thus my question is, will the open source community ever really accept such a fundamental change in the kernel, or will it be MS, Sun, and IBM that pioneer the future yet again? It just seems to me that Linux will be playing catch up if it doesn't. If Microsoft is really serious about security and really does do a good job, then what is linux going to have that Windows doesn't other than price?
I guess the issue that concerns me is if open source can make large transitions as easily as a company. One might say yes, but you have to think of the coordination issues involved with so many developers. It's important to know if large scale open source systems can keep up or surpass their commercial equivalents. It's relevant because sometimes the technically superior still can't get enough support amongst open source communities in some cases pertaining to the OS. (Think about Rieser's plite. He had to turn to MP3.com for funding for a great product.) Can Linux move quick enough? Does it have too much inertia?
Karma Clown
That's fine, but what does it look like?
More than anything else, the user cares about the OS interface. How does it work?
The user doesn't give a damn about where a file is stored. He just wants to launch his programs quickly and locate his files fast. Why can't we do some thinking on this basic issue (and not have the end result be some bulky goofy 3-D environment)?
UNIX (or Linux) can be as transparent as you want it, if you want to put lots of intelligence in a storage driver. It wouldn't matter in principle where the data was on tape or disk. You could have just one monster file storage device. In practice large applications want some control to increase efficiency.
Mainframes got very sophisticated in automating this. It was also somewhat difficult to program commands in IBMs or DECs data-definition languages. Much of this was lost in downsizing to personal workstations and is being rediscovered again.
We'll still be running Linux, which will still
be reimplementing basic OS concepts which have
already being implemented in BSD. Linux will
hold back the state of computing just as it has
for the past 10 years.
It's called Novell Netware!
We have it at my school.
IBM believes that we are at just such a threshold right now in computing. The millions of businesses, billions of humans that compose them, and trillions of devices that they will depend upon all require the services of the I/T industry to keep them running. And it's not just a matter of numbers. It's the complexity of these systems and the way they work together that is creating a shortage of skilled I/T workers to manage all of the systems. It's a problem that's not going away, but will grow exponentially, just as our dependence on technology has.
From my understanding, autonomic computing and other projects like are going for something much bigger than "lets make our OS smarter." I seriously doubt this is targeted at the consumer, since there are too many privacy issues. The real benefit of "self healing" is in the corporate environment where up time is critical. Autonomic's goal as I read it is about making systems work together seamlessly to improve reliability and scalability. Say a server has some hardware problem or a switch is dying. Things like these could cause real financial losses, so having smart systems that reconfigure/heal itself could reduce the cost of hardware and software failures. How many times have admins had to get up at 3 am to fix the webserver because some log ran amuck and ate up all the HD space. Having a standard system for handling these problems would help make systems more reliable.
Too many reporters are getting way too lazy.
lol, accounting. Is that partnership in Antiquia or the Bahamas?
This is what Office 2000 was supposed to usher in - a new age of "self healing" apps, running on W2K a "self healing" OS. Now, a couple of years into this "self healing" stage, experienced sys admins can recognize it as yet another crock of crap that was simply promoted to justify the upgrade tax. W2K and Office 2K certainly offer improvements over predecessors, but didn't deliver where it counted - try keeping up with the security patches to see what I mean. File with BOB, OLE, DNS and any other hyped up crud sold to magazines as news "articles".
Plus, as these are fortune 1000 companies, what is the bet that they won't even look at this technology for another 10+ years.
Maybe, just maybe, it will be possible (well, it already is, but...) what is the chance of it being really deployed?
Plus, where are the offsite backups going to be done? Does this mean that every workstation has to be left on at all times. How much retraining does this require. Yes, we know that you used to get fired for leaving your machine on, but if you don't from now on, you will be fired!
Methinks that the dream will not match the reality....
How long has it taken for Microsoft to make an OS that simply DOES NOT CRASH?!
With around 15 years of work and refinement, they may just about have gotten to that point with Win2000 and WinXP. How much effort did it take them to do long file names, for heaven's sake? Let's not even get into issues about the quality of multitasking.
I simply can't take a prediction seriously that a (real) Borg Operating System will be a reality in 10 years. Especially coming from Microsoft. Heck, I wouldn't believe such a prediction from an OS company I respect. But from Microsoft??? Consider the source.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
In general, there aren't problems. You see them if you install on many machines, even if they are identical. I had SP5 trash 30 machines in one go, yet the previous 30 test machines, same hardware, model, apps etc. worked fine. it's the law of averages - windows works "most" of the time, so you think it's not as bad as it really is.
I only wish I could predict the kinds of computers we'll have in the year 2000.
All we need are multiple terminals all "blue screen"'ing at the same time.
blah blah blah...
.com" articles out there already... the IT world is like a cross between bad local news and a giant infomercial sometimes... Now where's my remote...
What a load of crap that not only has already been said 1,000,000 times, but is even present in products that already out there... The clustering of resources such as services (I.E., SQL using multicasting) and disk space has been (I.E., Novell) is nothing new (these are just two examples). "Self-healing", a/k/a, fault tolerance in networks and OS's, has been around even longer... Shit, even WindowsME cliamed to be self-healing.
I swear, as if there aren't enough "future technologies" and "death of the
Sounds like the Freenet Project to me, except not opensource. Most likely an outgrowth of .NET, where Microsoft owns the network and the info you store on it.
Ok, so in ten years the OS is going to be replicating files across many users desktops... Typically we have a File Server/Client setup these days with clients typically on a 100mb pipe... (10 years ago what was everyone using... about 10mb, so network speed hasn't increased that much), then compare the size of files today versus files 10 years ago. I bet you the size of the files has grown faster than the speed of the network. An now you want to multiply the size of the file and send it across a already loaded net? Nice idea, but there are some other improvements that need to be made first.
"Times may change, but standards must remain the same." - George Carlin.
Multic.
Computers will become easier to use.
And as they get easier to use, the number of people who really understand computers will also decrease.
As less and less people need to understand how a computer ticks in order to use it, the current class of knowledgable computer users will become a smaller and smaller subgroup of computer users.
This elite class of computer 'brains' will be increasingly in demand for those cases where VB Programming 101 is not sufficient.
This elite class will be paid vast sums to keep the rest of the computer-using world happy (I can dream can't I? :-) )
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I bet that, over the next ten years, operating systems from Microsoft will become bigger, slower, more invasive, and less secure than ever before. Anyone want to take me up on that bet? :-p
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Every so often some article appears telling us of a promising new OS developement and what we end up with is OSX, XP, and the assortment of linux endeavors. None of them much different that what has been around for the last 10 years. I have just become totally disinterested in OS developements of any kind because there are none of any interest.
What was they hype ten years ago? Twenty?? Then, why am I still using UNIX??? And why is UNIX still the most powerful OS commonly used????
I think there hasn't been a new idea widely used in computing since the '70s! What gives?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Originally, some thought that most people would have computers as a service, a la television or electricity. The idea would be that you have centralized servers that provide access for everybody (possibly via dumb terminals). The problem with this is that it ignores the fact that it doesn't really fit well with our current economic system. Think of the benefits to a computer company for selling full fledges PCs as compared to selling general computer services.
Futurists are full of crap. They've been predicting a techno utopia where technology actually breaks ahead of itself and solves problems that it created.
Instead what we end up with a distopia that looks more like "Blade Runner" and less like "The Jetsons".
Where are the flying cars already?
Personally I see it in several of the applications I use regularly. Acdsee Classic? Eudora Mail? Forte Agent? Opera? mIRC? WinAmp? They're almost never updated, the application layer is getting "done". Ok you can add the latest wiz-bang features, and I'd upgrade to it too if it's free but it's not providing any real add-on value.
The only thing left to compete on when the consumer don't need any new features, is cost. Windows apps are getting there, Windows itself isn't there yet, nor is Linux and their apps, but they're getting there and there's no competing with something that's free (BSD free or GNU free, doesn't matter much to the enduser). Look at Win2k (Pro) vs. WinXP Pro. What *good* corporate features are there? Damn close to none, and a whole lot of crap and eyecandy from the home edition that doesn't provide any business value whatsoever.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In 10 years time, unless something is DONE about the dual monopolies of Microsoft and Intel, operating system design will be in the exact same place it is now---wallowing in a pathetic morass.
Why are we still waiting for a crash proof operating system? It's been in the textbooks for decades, for crying out loud. This is still a selling point?! Insane.
The Monopoly will make sure that, at least in the consumer realm, operating system technology in 10 years time will be as backwards as it was almost 10 years ago--Win-whatever, running on the latest Intel Frankenstein chip.
not only that, but the mouse and click interface has been around since 83, though if you count the star workstation then that was the 70's too
Let's look at the facts. The fact that a dying OS is pirated by a company that's been going out of business for twenty-five years is no basis for a computing paradygm. If I ran around saying that I was the richest man in the world because some acidhead had sold me some fruity UI, they'd put me away!!! !
... and history repeats itsself...
Isn't that where we were 15, 20 years ago? A small educated class of High Priests who maintained the altars of the Mainframe Gods and handled the supplication of the users?
I've always wanted a job where I got to wear a white robe and sacrifice things.
...operating systems will become highly distributed and 'self-healing'...
...expect a distributed BSOD.
It may be relatively recent technology, but I wonder if this will happen or not.
Mosix does a pretty good job of balancing processing time, but won't split tasks that require shared memory, sockets, and is not fine grained enough to put threads on different machines. It also requires a simular kernel to run on all of the machines. But I run it now because it is the closest we have. I think it may catch on.
For distributed disk sharing, the closest we could find was Coda, although it has a few disadvantages also. You can't have very large volumes, its difficult to configure, it takes painfuly earned experience to use efficiently.
Mosix has its MFS, which gives everyone a shot at everyone's disk drive. This is an interesting possibility also, however it is not configurable. You can't lay the volumes down where you want them to be. It could be used.
But then, we could partitian available disk space to large network raids with network devices. GFS I believe works along this principle. Lower layered than Coda, but without the caching that I think lets the system work efficiently over the network.
I guess the funny thing is that I use and consider them them inspite of the challenges. Kind of like Linux in the 1.2.13 days. Ahh the good ol' days when "Hey we finaly got X working" would bring a round of congradulations from lab. "Oh no, the mouse doesn't work" would only mean we'd be happy to fumble around for another few hours with faith that it would eventually work, if we changed something somewhere.
Hey wait a minute. You know, maybe linux isn't dead like some have said. Maybe there is still software frontier to cover and being covered that we can download/compile and enjoy....
(Although I have yet to get a workable EROS kernel doing anything useful...)
This kind of thing was being done in 1968 - check out the UC Irvine "Distributed Computing System". If I remember right it went well beyond things like file sharing among relatively autonomous machines, it even had the memory allocator running on different machines than those holding the memory being allocated.
I believe that it also used an intresting mechanism in which resource requests were allocated using an auction like mechanism - if one of the boxes needed to spawn a process it would put out an RFP and machines willing to undertake the job would offer bids with costs. A second committment phase bound the offer to the bid.
All this in the late 1960's.
"self healing software" = delusions of grandeur meet Norton System Works OS, so not going to happen, sorry, unless AI ever becomes as or smarter than humans (which will NOT happen in 10 yrs) this idea wont work.
VMS has been doing all of those things for years. Now can anyone tell me where it is right now?
My strong belief is that the best "predictions" occur when you find something in use today - only too expensive for the home user - and "predict" it will be ubiquitous within a few years. So here are my completely predictable predictions.
Notice how all of my predictions sort-of exist already. This is what makes predictions so easy.
And what is it exactly that this paradise is supposed to do for us and what exactly is "healing"? We've been hearing this sort of crap for years esp from Microsoft and what has happened in the meanwhile? The operating system has become larger and relatively slower (given the increase in computational power) with no increase in functionality that I can see over something from 15 years ago. I'm talking OS now- not applications.
Microsoft should have had to pay for advertising space to have this article printed.
If this is anything like the Byzantine Generals Problem (in Networking/AI) we are doomed!
Other computer, Are you ok?
I'm ok.
Did I hear you say you were ok?
I said that I heard you say that I was ok.
Did you say you were ok, or was that a mistake?
I said that I said that I said that I was ok.
Did I hear you say that you said you were ok or was that a mistake?
I said, I said, I said, I said, I was OK!!!
Did hear that you said that I said that...
How about an OS that isn't self wounding? Then we wouldnt need the self healing feature!
And if you believe this piece of dross, read their predictions from ten years ago.
'Nuff said.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Maybe it will help Amoeba's take off
:-)
...and it will happen one week after we have paperless offices, or the sun burns out. Pick one.
My vision is of a client/server network built out of workstations. Take a Beowulf cluster, build it on top of a distributed filesystem, and make each node usable locally. Obviously, you'd want local processes to have priority on local resources, and you'd want a lot of redundancy in your storage, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. Of course, I don't have the knowledge to do it myself (yet), so I could easily be missing something important.
Would it be useful? That's another question. I can certainly envision an environment where it could be. Maybe an engineer or artist or researcher would find it useful to tap into the receptionists spare CPU cycles to give their own apps a little boost. It could probably reduce computing costs for companies doing computationally intensive stuff.
Anyway, the concept is interesting to me, but I personally wouldn't trust MS to do it right. For something like this to be truely useful, I think it would have to be more flexible than MS is inclined to allow.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
EROS is not about the components. EROS is about a solid design model, large parts of which that are mathematically proven secure.
EROS is about the principle of least privelege, performance and simplicity.
Compared with the *nix model, the EROS model is simpler, more flexible (You can have many more types of systems built around it), more powerful (It can do a lot more with a lot less code), more secure (Process-grained capability system security, rather than a lot of cumbersome ACL's attached to thousands and thousands of objects), easier: The system implements a high-performance reliable orthogonal persistency scheme. This means that the system restarts to the last reliable checkpoint (shut it down, restart it, and the cursor is at the same position in your window), and achieves much higher disk performance and greatly simplifies applications that no longer have to persist themselves explicitly.
I've been amazed of the many advantages offered by EROS, it truly seems like it could correct a lot of today's OS problems, if not all of them.
Shawn should have patented the Napster model. *Grin*
Worldwide scalability. Logically, there's just one system, but it's partitioned into many pieces in many places.
Seamless distribution. The operating system decides where data resides and where computation occurs.
Fault tolerance. The system transparently handles failures and the removal of resources, without loss of data or functionality.
Self-configuration and self-tuning. New resources are automatically assimilated, and the system optimizes its own performance and resource use.
All developed by Microsoft of course. Resistance is futile.
It's like "looking busy" at your employment - it's actually easier to do real work than to fake it. - bmo
tiny reliable components are the basic philosophy of Unix.
On a big, bloated kernel.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I had bought a few copies from a reseller after it was dropped, just to fool around with it, but never got time.
Link below is from 1997, but the last I saw of it was 1999.
Check Google for more specs on it.
http://www.mangosoft.com/news/pr/19970617.asp
Where do these "predictors" live and where can I get some of what they are smoking.
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
Computerworld is predicting that over the next 10 years, operating systems will become highly distributed and 'self-healing,' and they'll collaborate with applications, making application programmers' jobs easier."
What a load of BULL-S-H-I-T-E
Don't you know that Business Management is the only secure job. I mean think about it, if you had the choice would you ever choose to lay yourself off?
I'm ready. Ready to take advantage of distributed computing in ways we only imagine. Forward your addresses and any netapp hooks I might need to take advantage of this new age and I will dutifully report on my progress (when I get around to it).
Come on Boys. Yee Haaaah.
Eros components arent just small and work exactly as documented like your assembly example- that would be enough if every programmer were an anal retentive computer scientist maybe.
in eros everything is orthogonally persistant meaning that every object, without doing anything on its own, has it's state saved by the system.
the other neat feature that makes it more reliable even in the face of bad application level code is that instead of access list based security ala unix, there are fine grained permissions called capabilites that govern what any object may do to any other.
these features coupled with transparent distribution could guarantee that even if the terminal in front of you is struck by lightning you'll be able to move to the nearest working one and pick up *exactly* where you left off!
check it out- there are a lot of kewl os level ideas that could make life better if adopted by more mainstream oses.
So we build a nuclear strike proof network, cluster the nodes on it, make some of those nodes control robots and we end up terraforming the surface of the planet into a mainboard for a giant computer with many sharp/flailing appendages which we can never turn off.
Why is it that every time we get closer to the classic scifi doomsday plot of a giant computer which controls everything with humanity powerless to stop it that we think it's cool?
I think it's foolish.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Hmmm... so, if I don't like you running something like "Outlook", I could shut off your battery power...? interesting...
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Wow, I sure want one of those 'self-healing' OS.. perhaps it would:
* remove stupid 'product activation' features
* let me play any DVDs from any region as I should be able to
* erase the Microsoft logo from itself
* uhm.. not crash? And before you say.. XP! I have managed to crash XP several times already.
mogorific carpentry experiments
maybe they were, but i still think that umberto boccioni made some great sculptures.
yeah, i guess even their predictions were pretty misguided, too. here we are 100 years later and technology hasn't solved our problems yet.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
The Byzantine fault tolerance described in the article sounds much like a paper
we read in an MIT systems course, from OSDI, 1999.
Linked Here
The causes vary, often it's due to politics, or too much market control by one organisation (read, microsoft usually).
For instance, take OpenDoc. OpenDoc was cool stuff, really ahead of its time, true componenet programming and computing. The idea of the application was made almost obsolete, instead you made up the software you needed from reusable parts. Something called Stationary was the closest you got to application, Stationary was basically part templates.
OpenDoc was IMHO great stuff, and should have revolutionised computing. Problem is, it was invented by Apple before Jobs came and sorted them out. There was a Win32 version out there somewhere, but Apple did their best to keep it hidden, the "official" OpenDoc website didn't mention Windows at all. There were many other companies involved besides Apple, but they were in control, and through their arrogance in believing that OpenDoc could give a boost to the Mac platform they killed it's potential. I spent ages trying to learn how to write Parts, but without being able to find the elusive Windows version I was stufffed.
So there's one answer to your question. Very few good ideas ever reach the light of day, and fewer still get generally accepted in the way UNIX/the GUI/the web did.
thanks -mike
High reliability and security are ensured because each file has one or more encrypted and digitally signed replicas elsewhere in the cluster.
we can't have it all. we want unbloated, secure software and data. at least MS can now offer us something that might be secure because we have at least 2 copies of everything.
so now that the data might be safe, what are they doing for the OS to make sure i will be able to read my encrypted and digitally signed files?
you probably shouldn't have read this.
The Geezer remembers a presentation at IBM when it decided to make FS ("Future System)... about 1980...
We were shown slides of how the OS would link multiple machines and faults could be automatically tolerated and hardware hot-swapped for repairs. Plasma panels would provide fully bitmapped presentations. A new language (PLAS) would make bugs a thing of the past. We thought it was pretty cool.
THEN, we were told that this is EXACTLY THE SAME SHOW (slides and all... except for PLAS) as was presented for the System/360... and THAT WAS EXACTLY THE SAME show as presented for the 7090... and THAT WAS EXACTLY THE SAME SHOW... Dumb as we were, we did realize that we hadn't done crap and that all the plans had come to naught.
So... now that it's 2002, where're the flying cars I was promised would be here by 2000!?!?
This kind of thinking always reminds me of an LCD induced haze of the 60s..
"Hey man.. I can see it all now.. Imagine there's no buglists, it's easy if you try.. Oh look, the sky, it's GREEN!"
The largest problem is the lack of practicality and common sense functionality in some of these dreams. Some of the most innovative and venturesome ideas never actually take off, becouse the end user doesn't CARE. They turn it on, type in www.freepornostuff.com, and WHAM, theres the stuff. They dont have the time, patience, nor interest for the computer to do anything but that.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
EROS needs a new name. At least, no one should search for it at google:
Eros Magazine - A youthful slant on urban gay living
Not that "windows" is a unique identifier either!
> The target environment for Farsite is an
> organization in 2006 with 100,000 computers,
> 10 billion files and 10 petabytes (10,000TB)
> of data.
10.000.000.000 / 100.000 = 100.000
I have much more files on by Debian box _today_.
circa mid '80's - if only Olsen had embraced the PC and UNIX while opening up VMS from the h/w perspective...
And by the year 2000, we're going to have flying cars! They told me so!
Hey... wait a minute...
Milalwi
... bad thing?
Hey, anyone remember the famous USENET bout between our beloved Linus and Mr T? Funny that the first sentence describing Amoeba is "Amoeba is a powerful microkernel-based system..."
I'm tired of things that make application programmer's lives "easier". Such initiatives usually only result in the degradation of code quality. By making the overtly difficult stuff easy, you lower the bar and make "programming" accessible to everyone (read: the Complete Idiots all those books are written for). This does nothing to address the real problem areas in software.
This kind of thing will result in a lot of gee-whizz "You mean I can make my program distributed by turning on this option when I compile? Wow!" comments while cratering software quality.
It's a good thing hardware is advancing at the rate that it is, because otherwise, I wouldn't even be able to create a spreadsheet today.
Imminent death of UNIX predicted. News at 11.
Never happen until the year 2038 problem.
I'm pretty confident that they have no idea what they are talking about. In this article they make it sound like in the next 10 years that OSes will be a beautiful utopia. Yeah right, when hell freezes over. The reason for this, is because all OSes (Windows, UNIX, etc.) are pretty much warzones. You got piracy, reverse engineering, floods, malicious attacks, viruses, data damage, corruption, and so on. Sounds like real life, huh? And this "let's trust our software" is not the solution. Because the last thing we need is for software (artificial) intelligence to take over human (real) intelligence.
And I'll like to add on how stupid does a "'collaborative relationship' between an application and the OS" sounds. The last thing we need is for the application to be tied around with the OS. An example is when Internet Explorer 4.0+ crashes, it takes down Windows (maybe not 100%, but sometimes 100%) as well. It's pretty funny that MS couldn't tell the difference between the application and the operating system.
In a closing sentence, I think the article should've been: "10 Years Later: Microsoft, where are they now?"
So, then, would a 1-petabyte file be called a petafile? I can only imagine the number of jokes this would create:
Q: What do admins and small children have in common?
A: They're both scared of petafiles.
My life's goal is to get a score of +3!
10 years is not long enough anymore, no matter what anyone says (but, in this case, I'd like to be wrong), think about where we have been in the last 10 years, the only difference is that hollywood effects have made it to _most_ desktops.
What I predict is Linux kernel version 4.4, multiple cpu's on the one chip, maybe a quantum co-processor, and a smart program running under the OS that does what you tell it too, in an extreemly simplified way, so that you give it a description, and it will build a program as a solution, aka lcars system on star trek, maybe not as intuitive, but enough to make everything on you computer to work very closely together.
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Sure, you've got to start with reliable components, but you have to combine them in just the right way, too.
First off, we should learn a lesson from biology. The bee, for example, has about a million interconnected neurons. Yet the bee's highly sophisticated behavior is extremely robust and efficient. How does nature do it? The answer has to do with parallelism and expectations.
1. Parallel processing insures that signals are not delayed, i.e., their relative arrival times are guaranteed to be consistent.
2. Expectations are assumptions that neurons make about the relative order of signal arrival times.
We can emulate the robustness of nature by first realizing that computing is really a genus of a species known as signal processing. We can obtain very high reliability by emulating the parallelism of nature and enforcing a program's expectations about the temporal order of messages: no signal/message should arrive before its time. The use of stringent timing constraints will ensure that interactions between multiple tiny modules remains consistently robust. Enforcement should be fully automated and an integral part of the OS.
Of course, this is only part of it. The other constraints (e.g., the use of plug-compatible links, strong typing, etc...) are known already. No message should be sent between objects unless first establishing that plugs are connected to compatible sockets, i.e., that they must be of the same type.
The most problematic aspect of computing, IMO, is that it is currently based on the algorithm. Problem is that algorithms wreak havoc in process timing and the end result is unreliability. The algorithm should not be the basis of computing. To ensure reliability, computing should be based on signal processing. Algorithms should only be part of application design, not process design. Just one man's opinion.
The Plan 9 operating system already supports a lot of the concepts quoted in the Slashdot story summary.
Wow 10 Petabytes!!
That is one big D:\ drive.
No thats what windows 2000/xp is based on, tiny parts, or microkernels. This is partly why it is much more reliable than in the past. (No snickering linux monkeys cause i said windows was reliable, windows is getting more reliable and as always, very functional)
Unix and Linux on the other hand have these small parts put into a nice big kernel still. Maybe people will make them a bit more modular one day. Im sure they will be as good as they are now if not more reliable with a microkernel implementation.
But i do have to admit loadable modules in Linux a huge advantage over any other os for personalizing it.
Which is why we're still using Unix of one flavour or another after 30 years...
there will still be BOSDs, but its self healing right? After you reboot...
I can see it now... M$ would implant an X-Box and all I would have to do is renounce my citizenship, identity, etc... and be assigned an OEM number.
On top of that, on our "one giant logical system" what are the chances that there would be a huge security hole that I could manipulate other "members" of this system.
I could see it now... I'd locate an attrative woman on my subnet, gain access to her system, and add an administrative service to constantly request my (computational) LOAD.
Man... that would suck!
Though I must say, the conversations on the cap-talk list have been pretty cool lately -- Eric Raymond, Alan Cox, Mark Miller, John Randolph, and I have been trying to figure out how far we can go to rescue UNIX apps in a fundamentally secure environment. Succeed or fail, the process of thinking things out is turning out to be pretty interesting.
Jonathan S. Shapiro (The EROS Guy)
Unfortunately the power of an OS is only as big as the hardware platform is. It is not per se impossible to change an OS, but it isn't necessary.
The strange thing is not what MS is saying, but that they release this after the memo from Bill stating that EVERYONE at MS should stop whatever the f*ck they where doing and focus in security issues (ie: drop features and anything new).
Gosh, masive distributed computing and everyone sharing everything...
unfinished: (adj.)
These guys could do almost all of what is described... Apollo... pity HP killed them.
So as far as concepts go, this is really old news.
And switching from the one-person-one-cpu approach to a really distributed OS will take more than just a distributed scheduler and a sandbox to run foreign code in.
Loadable modules give linux most of the advantages of a microkernel, but without the speed hit.
:-)
Of course, QNX/Neutrino gives you all the advantages of a microkernel, but without the speed hit.
If one were to implement some form of rudimentary memory protection between kernel space threads, one could well call linux a microkernel.
This article looks strangely familiar... IBM wrote a paper on 'autonomic computing', which has been mentioned in a previous slashdot article. Although a bit 'manager talk', the paper is an interesting read.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I predict that the more code microsoft assimilates, the more shit will happen...
.NET
I'm designing Kaos in Java 2 (JDK 1.4) for that very reason, I want to handle the unexpected with ease and skill that you won't get with
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
This Eros appears to be a simpler version of doing things the Kaos way.
My system is an exokernel running dozens of tiny reliable components which cn be replaced if you can do better than me.
Security is the main goal of the project, the core encryption is used to ensure a reliable grid of data runs anywhere you can logon.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
It's a simple strategy. First MS targeted developers, creating an environment that is easy to setup and run without sys admins then putting an easy to use "development environment". That's what's getting them more and more space in the corporation. Of course, such systems don't scale at all and at some point people realise they need sys admins more than ever, only there just aren't many good sys admins for Windows environments - and the few there are cost even more than Unix sys admins. So Linux starts creeping back into the server farms. The next step seems obvious: make sys admins unnecessary! Let's go one more step before sys admins are required. Make the environment self-healing, space self-allocating, generaly automate the sys admin job. Why all this? Because sys admins are the people knowleadgeable enough to actually test features before implementing and spotting the ugly marketing plot behind the shiny pretty color interface. Fellow sys admins, beware: MS has decided we should be extinct and is working towards this end.
I have a solution I came up with for Kaos using agents, if you are interested we can discuss it in detail.
(too long and technical for slashdot)
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
We still have a paradigm from old times which IMHO won't live too long anymore - the distinction between RAM and Harddrives. Already now, the virtual memory abilities or file caching blurs the distinction. Database-driven filesystems will blur it even more. Namespace integration (see Hans Reiser) should allow us to worry about data, and not where is stored - dummy users often refer to programs or services instead of devices anyway (I have this document in Word but I can't find it anymore, or: My browser does not work! When the network or server is down). Java applets are stored on a server, but by starting it I get my local copy... What if we get persistent RAM in huge amounts? Will we use it as RAM disk just to still be able to reboot?
I wish for a machine where installation will be a netboot from somewhere while I'm connected, and it will continue to work when I take it on the move (I may still be connected, who knows?). The concept of saving a file to a HD (or tape) is artificial, invented on the first, slow, restricted computers. Instead of building on old technologies with phony 'distributed computing' ideas I hope the next ten years will allow me to care about contents, not where it is stored.
You mean that things like FDIV bugs can't happen, don't you?
Kaos may well be interesting someday, but right now there isn't enough on the website to understand what it is trying to do. I'm skeptical, for several reasons:
Crypto isn't the solution. Crypto isn't the problem. Crypto is only as good as the OS it runs on. Information flow and resource denial are the problems.
When you can show a formal model (hell, even a credible argument) for how you can utterly prevent one program from tampering with another, you are ready to begin building a secure OS. Until then, don't cut code -- you aren't ready yet.
Similarly, you need a solution and a compelling design that deals with resource denial of service.
BSD (and other UNIX derivatives) aren't a viable starting point. See (2,3).
So far, the website has lots of buzzwords, but neither design docs nor code. I really encourage you to persue Kaos, but what you are trying is a long hard haul. Lots of people have tried to do what we are doing. Mostly, their gone and we're still here. I would welcome competition in the secure system space -- it would benefit all of us by raising overall credibility.
Hmm. As I reread, this note seems harsh, even though I don't mean it to be. Still, I think the points are valid. Good luck with Kaos.
Jonathan S. Shapiro (The EROS Guy)
sorry, got that covered with a PATENT ;-)
Promised in the 80's. Lauded in the 90's. Still not a reality in the 21st century. People never seem to be looking in the direction of the growth of technology... I could tell you that flying cars will come soon, but you and i both know that though people have been promising them for years, every auto company out there is still trying to figure out how to get a 10% fuel-to-power increase out of the main driveshaft. The computers of the future will be surprisingly un-intuitive... basic, even. Remember X-parc... go back to basics.
1. crypto is an essential feature as the system use is better than anything NSA can read.
2. the formal model states that an exokernel works by using the operating system as an API. This is a proven model at MIT.
3. Resource DoS is handled by agent management at the core of any app.
4. BSD is used for compatibility only, I'm coding an exokernel system and the GUI from scratch.
5. Buzzwords are useful to get the attention of MBAs, my friends in local companies have looked over the design docs and found it a viable model.
6. the crypto system is not allowed in the USA, China, Russia, etc. So I am keeping that secret design here in New Zealand offline.
7. The special predictive multitasking uses some special maths I developed for another project a few years ago.
It's too sensitive to publish, so it's documented offline too.
8. I have been in the middle of a rural forest and have yet to change the website to include new information I dreamed up there.
Your notes are always welcome regardless of how harsh they are.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer