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Europe Funds Secure Operating System Research
narramissic writes "A Dutch university has received a $3.3 million grant from the European Research Council to fund 5 more years of work on a Unix-type operating system, called Minix, that aims to be more reliable and secure than either Linux or Windows. The latest grant will enable the three researchers and two programmers on the project to further their research into a making Minix capable of fixing itself when a bug is detected, said Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit. 'It irritates me to no end when software doesn't work,' Tanenbaum said. 'Having to reboot your computer is just a pain. The question is, can you make a system that actually works very well?'"
I had this thing called an Amiga. While the upper echelons could muster the folding for an '030 or an '040 (hence task-protection and memory management), the rest of us had to make do with the occasional guru-meditation. Either way, a massive hard-disk partition was not necessary (I agree, however, it was helpful). Don't dismiss minix. If AmigaDos could boot to a fully-functional desktop from a floppy, why can't minix?
C:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
I would listen to Bill; Windows is a success (nefarious means aside). I would listen to Jobs. I would listen to Torvalds. But I would not listen to someone who is only well-known for being wrong. His stance on where operating systems and kernels are heading hasn't proven to be correct in the past and as he hasn't made any remarkable breakthroughs since then so I see no reason why that would change.
I shudder to think what the outcome would have been if Linus *was* his student. Would there still be Linux?
What projects-with-potential *has* he stifled through his ignorance? We will never know.
>In a non-related story A.T. is renaming himself to Jesus.
In a non-related story RMS is renaming himself to Jesus.
There, fixed that for you.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
No, but dividing things into smaller pieces makes it easier to fix those pieces in isolation.
The nice thing with computer software, is that you can keep subdividing until you reach a collection of single bits. Repairing a single bit is very easy, so there you go.