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Leo Laporte On UNIX As the Future
TractorJector writes "In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin, techmeister Leo Laporte (formerly of G4/TechTV fame) discusses his vision of the future of proprietary and open platforms: 'I think there's a lot of hope for Linux, although I don't think that Linux is the answer. I think that UNIX is the answer, in some form or fashion. It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing. But UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.'"
"In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin..."
;-)
"'But UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.'"
Yep, seems pretty well-written to me
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Playstation, XBoxes, Mobile Phones, DVDplayers type of operating system are the future. The OS has been developped far ahead of most people abilities. The future is going towards less and less user control on this OS. Quite the opposite of UNIX.
\u262D = \u5350
PC as a thin client browser?
I don't know about you, but that doesn't satisfy me and I think there will always be room for people who want a traditional desktop.
As a gamer and just fan of controlling the computer in front of me completely without all this abstractness, I don't think that everyone is going to bite on this kind of stuff.
I'm sure it has its place, but for everyone?
Talk about ignoring the elephant in the lounge room.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
the future is the HURD. Even in the future, the future will still be the HURD.
And I think having a model where the OS has to approve code before it runs opens the door to monopoly leveraging, unfair treatment, unauthorized runtime limitations, and a whole host of other undesired behavior.
.Net, and LISP that eliminate direct hardware access, thus preventing system bugs like buffer overflows. Java is a particularly good example, because it has a very flexible built-in Security system that could be leveraged to ensure that a given program ONLY has access to the resources it was given at install time. :-)
That's not what managed code is. Managed code is systems like Java,
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...is that back in the day when really only technically savvy types owned or operated computers, is when MS gained their stranglehold on the market.
We would like to think MS somehow bamboozeled the teeming masses, but that is BS. It was us they bamboozled with MS-DOS of all things.
We did this to ourselves.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Merely because something is old does NOT mean it should be replaced. We're still building houses out of wood after thousands of years. Our cars run on internal combustion engines. And after all these years we're still carbon based life forms.
You admit it's "fine," that it "works," and that there is "good stuff" in it. If all of that is true, then why replace it merely because it's old?! That kind of mentally makes no sense.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Perhaps the Network Stations were ahead of their time (i.e. like OS/2)?
;-)
That was certainly part of the problem. But as an admin who ran Citrix, I can tell you that the other half of the problem was Microsoft. After Citrix gained some initial momentum from their NT 3.51 product, Microsoft took notice and refused to license 4.0. Instead, Microsoft worked out a technology transfer deal where they would produce NT Terminal Server. Citrix was "allowed" to install their superior ICA protocol on top.
The result was that you had the initial price of Terminal Server, plus the price of each "Seat" (which was in number of users, not concurrent connections like Citrix), then the price of a full copy of Windows NT for each thin client that would access the system. If you wanted Citrix ICA, you then had to pay Citrix even more.
The result was that Thin Clients ended up costing *more* than a set of PCs, effectively killing the market.
Fast Forward to today, and we find that Windows now has the RDP client integrated and that Sun has been having reasonable success with their SunRay product. People are starting to become conditioned to the idea of thin clients. Wait a few more years for the WebApp revolution to shift all power away from windows and the time will be perfect to wretch the market away.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Microsoft's platform is the standard because they focused on the business of the software products market. They promised something to independent software vendors and delivered it-- a single platform that any developer no matter how big or small can target. At the same time they pushed hard to get this platform on as many PCs as possible, breaking kneecaps along the way when necessary.
They achieved a form of write once run anywhere. In 1985.
It does not matter what's under the hood, it mattered that the ISV only had to write one binary and not have to spend the money supporting two dozen incompatible platforms. Even Java cannot match this (I know, because I have to deal with it).
Today there must be half a billion PCs that the ISV can generate one single binary for, and with that you've covered what, 90% of the market?
Linux needs to offer big marketshare (doesn't have) and good developer support (has, sorta) for ISVs to care about it, because Microsoft proved that most ISVs won't bother targetting more than one major platform.
One need only look over this book and do six months of desktop end-user support on Windows to see how insane an idea it is that Unix of any kind is going to win in the market over Windows as long as the Unix community remains ruled by sadomasochistic techie dweebs who love things based on how hard they are which is the exact opposite of the attitude that has allowed Microsoft and AOL to prosper and thrive in the common end-user market.
I love my FC3, but once again, don't mistake my technical abilities and the chance to flex them each day on it for meaning that everyone is going to take to it like a fish to water.
Apple's OSX most definitely is the best Unix-ish distribution ever conceived, built, and sold to end-users without any doubt in my mind. But do the Linux geeks get it as to why? No, they try mightily to avoid the BSD-ish ancestry of it and sit there wishing this beautiful *nix-style OS with such wonderful design and construction were a Linux distro.
Won't happen. Linux is dominated by the sort of people on whom it is still lost that ease of use, administration, and support are paramount over everything else for end-users. Windows XP and Mac OSX give them what Linux never will as long as the current crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the Linux scene.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Do people buy Xserves so that they can use the OS X command line?
Yes, powerful Command lines are more than 'just' for end use, they open up the entire core functionality of the OS to non-interactive scripting. By having a powerful, flexible shell you can have powerful scripts that run fast, do everything you want, and can be quickly edited, they run as fast as compliled code, but since they're just a text file that gives comands to a precomplied binary you can modify them much more easily than a full fledged program.
System administrators need a powerful command line interface, and while standard 'unix' tools sometimes have areas that need improvment. for instance chroot on BSD require the setting of a shell variable to change shell, but linux chroot which accepts it on command line, but can't change the user or group(s) that you're chrooting them to. That means you can't create a chroot jail to disable (remote) root access on linux (that allows remote logins)... but you can on FreeBSD/MacOSX
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I wonder why MS is working on a new command line at all. Do people buy Xserves so that they can use the OS X command line?
They buy Xserves so they have a choice -- use the nifty OS X Server GUI admin tools (which are really good, I have to say) if they fit the task, and use the command line if that fits the task. Choice is a Good Thing.
Do people run linux because they love staring at those grey characters on a black screen?
Very often, yes; (usually multicolored, these days) characters on a black (or whatever) screen may seem primitive to you, but to many people they represent an extraordinarily efficient way to get things done.
No one really likes the command line...
*falls over laughing*
plenty of people get by with it, but it's obviously the most primitive computer interface.
No, manually unplugging and plugging in vacuum tubes is the most primitive computer interface. It may not be obvious to you -- or to Neal Stephenson, for that matter -- but today's Unix shells represent an extraordinary level of abstraction from the underlying bare metal.
So why is Microsoft developing it? Do they really believe that *NIX users like their OS because of the command line?
In a word: yes.
Look, not everything is best done on the command line. GUI's are wonderful things, if they're done right. (Which pretty puts any flavor of Windows out of the running, but that's a whole 'nother argument.) But as I said above, they are not the right tool for every task. For power users, especially admins and developers, the command line is very often a better tool. And the best of both worlds, as in Apple's current OS, which Microsoft is again trying (and no doubt failing) to emulate, is being able to switch seamlessly between them as the task at hand demands.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That's not a problem with managed code, that's a problem with the APIs offered by the managed code. There's nothing stopping a managed code environment from allowing you low-level control.
:-)
For example, JNode is a complete OS written in Java. It's still Work In Progress, but I'd imagine that you would have no trouble writing a simple text driver for your printer.
Don't confuse what you're currently allowed to do with what is possible.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing
So, its either option A, or option B, or an option C which can be anything.
He has given himself quite a bit of leeway there.
If Marshmallows evolve into the dominant lifeform on this planet, his dying breath will be, I was right I tell ya!!! Its the third thing!!
(yes I RTFA and yes he really says that)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I urge anyone who's not read it to take a look at Practical Common Lisp, which is an excellent introduction to an excellent language.