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The Future Might Be BIOS and Browsers
An anonymous reader writes "Few in the open source community have welcomed online applications like Google Docs with open arms, but Keir Thomas claims he's found a way forward — and it's one that involves exclusively open source. He reckons BIOS-based operating systems are the future, because they will alter the way users think about their computers. FTA: 'The key breakthrough is ideological: BIOS-based operating systems demote the operating system to just another function of the hardware. It breaks the old mindset of the operating system being a distinct platform, or an end in itself. The operating system becomes part of the overall computing appliance. This allows the spotlight to focus on online applications.'"
Future might be me winning lottery, and retiring with lots hookers and blackjack.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
computer users, but when the network is down all bets are off. No matter how good the experience normally is, one lightning storm is all it will take to send johnny user off to computers are us to buy a full functioning pc.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If someone produces a practical Windows XP compatible O/S, then Microsoft might end up like a BIOS vendor.
Just like Phoenix BIOS vs IBM PC BIOS.
Then Microsoft will lose it's hold over the market, and people might just concentrate more on what runs on top.
I knew I'd kept my old 3270 hanging around for a reason!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Why not just store the BIOS on the hard disk? That way it has plenty of space to grow and can be updated easily!
Oh wait...
Does he think an average user can tell the weather his OS is stored in on-board flash, solid state drive, or iron oxide? Right, I didn't think so.
Depends on how they implement it. I'd imagine for at least 80% of the unwashed hordes who just want something to boot in seconds, and then to surf the web and check their gmail, this would be great.
I've wanted it for a long time for PC gaming, but it's certainly a lot of work. A bios-based browser framework would be much simpler, and frankly it would fulfil the needs of a great many PC users. I know I'd like it for those times when all I want to do is get on the web. Boot should only be a few seconds before you're browsing slashdot. ;)
Think about it though, for gaming (if someone would ever do it). Basic OS + gaming specific API = leanest gaming OS possible. Consoles basically use this concept, and get a lot more out of less hardware than PC games can, because PC games have much greater overhead.
My thoughts, anyway.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Doesn't it also give a better attack vector via a hardware-focused rootkit?
Bark less. Wag more.
I would hate to have the BIOS as the OS especially if I could not replace it.
If all applications are on a server -- someone else's server -- it doesn't bode too well for my freedom. This is a fine model for a lightweight system, such as a thin client or terminal, but I think these will complement the personal computer rather than supplant it, and will only do so to the extent that bandwidth and ubiquity permit. Emerging devices like netbooks and smartphones do seem to point toward this model gaining in popularity in coming yearss, but I think a lot of people will still find having code that executes locally, and which they can own and control, to be valuable -- too valuable to discard entirely.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
is in chip-design or network communications...great...thanks alot for this dead-end career GNU/LINUX!!
Good people go to bed earlier.
The first part of the article is regurgitation (flash OS) and the second part Linux trolling (FOSS > proprietary). Next!
Isn't BIOS + Browser just a modern interpretation of the thin client? Sure, there's always going to be a small market for them, but I don't see how it can grab a huge share of the market.
Of course a business can run the Web apps from an internal server so it's definitely viable, but it never took off before - I doubt it would now.
On the home front, such a business model turns your computer into a subscription service. It works as long as you pay your internet bill (and whatever other costs are needed to access the actual web applications). This wasn't very popular for music when the customer was presented with other options (iTunes).
And this doesn't even address network reliability.
No thanks, I would actually like to be able to execute native code. Javascript or ECMAscript or whatever they call it nowadays is a pretty poor substitute for any of the dozens of much better programming languages in the universe. Plus it's write once debug everywhere to a much greater extent than even Java.
Why do you think there was such a kerfluffle over iPhone application development? Apple initially said you could just roll a Web 2.0 app that looked native to the iPhone, and exactly nobody was satisfied with that.
I have no doubt that browser devices will become more popular over the course of the next few years, but they're never ever going to replace native code.
Anyone else ever wonder if eventually all high performance applications are just going to sit in their own VM/OS?
I mean if the "desktop/OS" paradigm is relegated to part of the hardware.
I'm fairly certain that made no sense to anyone but me.
You mad
DO NOT WANT!
It's bad enough I have to deal with Windows being installed on a new machine, the last thing we need is to have to rip the case apart to get rid of it!
I honestly don't even know if the article mentions Windows being on it, but everyone here knows good and well that the MOMENT M$ gets wind of this they will force it upon the manufacturers.
Force might be to strong of a word there, how about "bribe"?
Also, how is this any different (in the end) than running / on solid state media?
Geeks like you guys are stupid! If we do some black box magic, you'll all accept it!
Cause, y'know, it's totally not a philosophical difference between you having control over your data and a third party having control over your data. Not at all. It's all perspective!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This new BIOS of the future will actually be stored on a hard disk and will also rely on on-board flash to boot it. This new OS^H^HBIOS will also have a lot of built-in features that allow for the efficient use of the applications...
But it is going to be a looong time before BIOS chips are big enough to store all the code for asking you if you really want to take this action.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The solution to slow booting is not to put MORE stuff in the bios, the solution is a move adaptive startup process, if a user only uses firefox then boot up the system to the point it can browse the web ASAP and load the rest of the crap in the background (at a low priority so not to affect browsing) /etc,/usr & /home (or windows equivilents)
1.mount
2.load sandboxing software (UAC/selinux/etc)
3.start networking
4.put a webbrowser in fullscreen
5.profit and eventually load the rest of the OS
It's quick booting, customizable, gives a full featured OS eventually, i doubt many people want to sacrifice the last 2 for the 1st.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Old news
So, no OS. Browser becomes OS. Then browser adds features to do things that BIOS doesn't do.
So congratulations, you've taken "OS", moved it up and now call it "BIOS", the you've taken "browser" and now call it "OS". You've taken "applications" and called them unnecessary. Then you've taken "online applications" and called them "applications".
So all you've done is to throw the OS into the hardware, and you've changed the programming language into an internet-delivered language. Oh yeah, and you've put the browser into the position of controlling the system.
And now you're going to say that internet explorer isn't a fundamental part of windows? No, you're going to say that windows isn't a fundamental part of online applications. except windows doesn't exist anymore, and all applications are online applications, and internet explorer is now the entire operating system.
So you've said notihng but juggled around terms.
And then, in five years, when firefox decides to support downloadable fonts, stateful connections, when "cookies" become "files" and there's access to a "file system" for these online applications to use, and some kind of "active control" to interface with other hardware like printers and scanners and cameras, then you'll simply have virtualized an operating system again.
Congratulations for saying nothing. I can do it to. Watch this:
"Computers are relying more and more on the Internet these days. Someday, more applications will begin online, instead of client-side. Oh, and your hardware will do more work than it used to." -- me, 2009
Client Server/Cloud architectures. Remote/shared computing is great for some things, but not others, the load per user is just too high. Modern FPS & MMORPG gaming, video, audio processing, are examples that would be "challenging" to move into the cloud. I suppose you could download plugin's & applets etc, but the data sets for some things just seem to require local processing & storage.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
It's going to be at least 10 years before this is feasible to the masses. We're not streaming live high def content in real-time. If we were, then a central gaming server could stream your screen to you and your computer would just have to be strong enough to play it.
However, until that happens, gamers won't move to it. Until gamers make it usable, the general public won't move to it. By time this is possible, won't storage and processing power be so compact and powerful that it'll just be a silly argument anyways?
I can see virtual systems with the drives stored online and cached locally, so you can take your computer to any terminal and immediately pickup. But pure bios machines, no. This just isn't feasible for the masses currently, nor will it even be the best choice once it is.
The idea of the OS being part of the hardware seems to be a loop back to the "old days", when you got an application on a disk, and the "os" was build into the hardware.. or am I missing something?
As a long-time Gmail user, I genuinely find it astonishing that people still use email clients, and store their e-mail on one computer. Itâ(TM)s unimaginable for me not being able to access my email on my desktop and laptop computers, or even my cellphone or Nokia N800 handheld.
Wow online email services! Thank god Google came along and provided a service that no one else had every done in the previous 9 years before it came out. Oh wait...
Didn't Ellison and McNealy try to sell us this pig in a poke years ago? They got nowhere with their initiative, and the current "cloud computing" nonsense won't replace local apps and data any time soon, either. What stopped this tired old notion before was lack of bandwidth - lots of people were on dialup, and it would have been painfully slow for them. Nowadays most are on broadband, but how much bandwidth do we REALLY have to play with? Not all that much, according to the Comcasts, Rogers, Bell Canadas and Verizons of this world. Do we really want to rely on online access going through an ISP which is counting every kilobyte of traffic and choking it off as it sees fit? Not to mention spyong on its customers on behalf of various shadowy government agencies.
Also, isn't the browser itself becoming another big choke point in all this? Security vulnerabilities, remote exploits, memory hogging, reliance on add-on technologies like Flash and Java with their own security problems - and of course, all this is built on the shaky foundations of browser scripting, which can never be made completely secure.
Forget it, boys. This turkey STILL won't fly.
Here's a sort of corollary idea... HyperSpace or ESXi with DSL or similar runs on the machine (from flash, of course) and if you want to run something more complicated you load it in a virtual machine. One possible virtual machine would be a LAMP appliance that would make the browser in your machine more useful by hosting web applications; another one would be a storage appliance...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The OLPC isolates "3rd party" apps like Firefox in a sandbox. The BIOS OS could virtualize a minimal Windows or Linux OS, modified to do its actual window rendering through a server process in the "User Browser/UI" VM.
.. I know that aren't power users or in the computer field couldn't tell you the difference between their computer and the OS. Just like Mac's. You're buying a mac, not Windows computer.
Bye!
The Future May Involve Blood, Watermelons, and Hookers.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Well, I suppose if browsers evolve to the point that they're providing full OS level functionality.
I could see something like this happening a few years after browsers start commonly running in hypervisors.
I don't really see the point. The parts of browsers tha are good for an OS migrate to the OS anyway. Something like the Palm Pre is more about basing the UX rendering layer on browser techology. And yes, presentation is an important part of the OS, but hardly the major part of it.
Operating systems do the things browsers do well a lot better than browsers do the things that operating systems do well. A browser that did those things too would be much, much more like today's operating systems than today's browsers.
My video compression blog
Apart from the issues of control over your data, access times etc:
One of the nice things about today's OSes is that they've forced applications to become reasonably consistent and interoperable. All my applications have similar UI, and the services offered by the OS mean that the apps can talk to each other.
Degrading the OS to just a host for the browser means you give up these services, and once again every application is a kingdom unto itself. The state of online apps today is similar to the less-functional, less visible OSes from 25 years ago, including the horrible and inconsistent UI, the lack of flexibility (no scripting, for instance), and the total lack of communication between apps hosted on different sites.
And this time, because the apps are hosted on different sites, there's no OS vendor that can enforce consistecy and interoperability.
OK, maybe OS's are bloated, but lets not get bulemic trying to go thin client.
It's certainly possible that upgradeable BIOS-like OS's may be where the OS market is going, but it will mostly depend on the implementation and the requirement that it be upgradeable be present.
If they try to do the BIOS OS without any ability to upgrade it, then there will be no way to fix the problems of the OS, and enthusiasts won't buy them. So being able to upgrade the BIOS OS would be necessary.
Secondly, why limit the BIOS OS to just being a thin-client? The user could have a hard drive of some sort (external, internal, USB stick, etc.). Why not provide the ability to store and load apps from there? Let there be thick-clients too.
This would be nice from the aspect that the hardware vendor would have to ensure the BIOS OS could work with all the hardware present. So out-of-the-box support by Linux would be the norm (since nearly all the present BIOS OS-like solutions are Linux-based).
Vendors like MS would have a more difficult time playing in the market since they require more space/power/memory/etc to function, and they won't likely go for letting WinCE be put on every computer when they could be selling Vista or Win7 instead.
So there is a lot of promise, but only if vendors do it right. Otherwise, it'll fail quite badly.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
it's starting to sound like it's going back to the Amiga's Kickstart 2.x+, where the core OS is stored on ROM.
Back when I got my first 0.8Mhz Z80 DataDax computer on a 150 baud modem. I had to hook up my computer to a teleboot phone line where instead of tapes or floppies all my applications ran on the teleboot system.
When I upgraded to a 750 baud modem they even let me boot in to a mac allowing me to run a macintosh on a Z80. When a hacked netscape for old macs came out I was telebooting for 15 years.
Too bad telebootcorporation went bust in 1997 when they couldn't keep up with 28.8k modems.
I could see this possibly becoming reality in some industries, especially those that are heavily oriental to working with documents/text (low bandwidth). But I think I can safely say that at least where I work in film editorial, this won't happen for a very long time. Online apps are just too slow for this kind of bandwidth intense medium. Even if a service was established, like I understand is already happening for games, where you would essentially connect to a VNC server where the 'real' computer was to do your work, there is just no possible way you could do 1080p and especially not RED 4K without massive bottlenecks and latency. Yes you could down convert, and/or compress, but then it would be much inferior to just using a 'real' computer in the first place wouldn't it? When I sit down and start cutting on the Avid, or with FCP, and I scrub the playhead through my timeline, I need to see (and hear) everything as it happens. I can only imagine how horrible and frusterating it would be to try to cut a show through VNC, there's no room for latency.
I could perhaps seeing this happen in 50 years where everybody's connection is 1000MB+/sec, but even then we'll be cutting uncompressed UHDV (4320p) video which roughly 20GB a SECOND. I don't think the "your computer is a browser" idea is going to happen here, maybe it will work for some people, but certainly not everyone.
"This allows the spotlight to focus on online applications."
Who has been asking for all these online applications? I keep reading about the freakin' "CLOUD!!!" and am just not impressed. I wouldn't trust anyone's Cloud platform with my company's data.
As many people have mentioned, once the network goes down, no more online anything. I want my apps, my data and my work all under my control on my local machine/network. There are uses for online applications but to rely on them for business, private data or to store anything that lack of access to would cause a work stoppage is a bad idea.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but to me, the "online" is just the communication channel, not the content arena.
When it comes to content I create, I want to create it and store it on my computer, not on someone else's computer.
Yes, I love the internet and the ability it gives me to send and receive content (which I then, again, store on my computer). And yes, the utility of my computer is greatly compromised when I can't access the internet.
But I don't want to rely on someone else's computer to run applications like Office, or Email, or games, or...anything I can think of right now.
I don't want to rely on someone else's computer to store my data.
The reason why I don't want these things is
1) There might come a reason at some point where I can't access the data (they go out of business, internet is down, I can't afford internet access anymore, etc.)
but mostly:
2) I don't trust that the people who so graciously store my things online won't use them or cripple them in some manner not in my best interest, but is instead in someone else's money-making interest.
Having been involved with computers since the days of the TI99/4A, what seems clear to me is the future of computing is about CONTROL OF DATA. So the fundamental question becomes, do YOU want the control over your data and applications, or are you going to give that control to someone else?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'll NEVER have a computer that depends on the Internet. Hell with that! Now a *simple* operating system is OK but one that drives only a browser and forces all applications to be online is ridiculous.
What needs to happen is that the interface to hardware devices becomes so simplified and standardized that drivers will not be necessary and anybody can write an operating system. Simple O/S's would be cool. But, you should definitely have everything you need right on your own computer and not depend on the Web, or the Internet in general.
This is one more attempt to come up with a way to get people to rent their software. Software companies have been looking for a way to force customers to pay them a steady stream of money since the PC came out. Early on someone realized that once a customer has software that does what he needs, he no longer has a reason to give the software company more money. There is a limit to how many features any given person needs/will use in a word processor. What that limit is varies from individual to individual but at some point it will be reached. That is one of the reasons MS changed the document format from Office 2003 to Office 2007--the average user has no reason to update from Office 2003. Except with the new .docx format people can tell that you have an old version of Word if you use .doc formatted documents, and nobody wants to seem out of date.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I can see this catching on a little bit, particularly with people like my parents. The whole idea reminds me of WebTV (MSN TV), but better. With wider availability of high speed internet and an appreciable offering of "cloud" services, e.g. Google Docs, this might not be half bad for a certain market segment.
...so lets destroy the OS so that they look good by comparison!" -Paraphrased from the article.
Mobile handsets, because they are resource constrained, will be the first to implement this simplification:
The OS runs the hardware
There is a small non-application userland with utilities, daemons, etc.
The part of the userland the user uses is implemented using a JavaScript managed language runtime, with enough local access to enable offline operation for applications unrelated to communication.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Remember how DOS was just a glorified bootloader? So this is where the PC revolution took us? 20 years and we're full circle back to running single applications in something like real mode? Well, I guess people are still using UNIX so there's clearly no depth to the retardedly regressive prospects of the modern computer user.
Here's an eletric blender... you can use it to beat antelope to death.
My data on someone else's computer? Encrypted? How do I know for sure when I did not write the client. Even if it's encrypted on the wire if the client knows my password/passphrase it's not encrypted.
Who wants to see my data? I don't care! My data is mine to share or not as I choose.
If I PGP it locally then I am no longer cloud computing, just cloud storing.
Welcome to the 80's :)
So my future computer will resemble an 80's pac man machine with a browser?
My thoughts exactly, I have been using Splashtop on my PC for some time now and it is wonderful. Is this the new route PC's are going... We will see...
M3A78 Pro, Quad AMD processor... Works great but there are limitations to the browser...
Commodore 64 rides again!
Few in the dead tree community have welcomed paperless applications like Google Docs with open arms, but Anonymous Coward claims he's found a way forward â" and it's one that involves exclusively dead trees. He reckons Book-based operating systems are the future, because they will alter the way users think about their computers. FTA: 'The key breakthrough is ideological: Book-based operating systems demote the operating system to just another function of the index. It breaks the old mindset of the operating system being a distinct platform, or an end in itself. The operating system becomes part of the overall imaginative experience. This allows the spotlight to focus on information that can be read, on dead trees, without eye strain.'"
With dead trees, you don't even need the internet!
This stuff just does not let up.. Big vendors want us to put our stuff in the cloud. I've heard this stuff for almost 10 years. They feed news stories like "It's coming". "It's the future." The industry is heading this way". BULLSH*T. You know why it hasn't happened yet ? Because it really does not benefit small businesses and consumers. When it does that.... then it will happen fast as lightning. You can only muscle your way so far, at some point people have to want it. The speed at which it happens will be proportional to the value it adds to business. It ain't adding value right now... and that's why it ain't happening.
How is this any different from the SplashTop (or ExpressGate) interface used by companies like ASUS? It boots in seconds (usually less than 10 sec on my machine) and runs only a few apps, most of them web-based.
If this already exists, then why are we making a big deal about it? Furthermore, if it already exists and nobody seems to give a shit, then why SHOULD we be excited? I've only used it once or twice as a "hey, neat" kind of exercise.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202603163
Phoenix rolls environment for PC apps
Rick Merritt
EE Times
(11/05/2007 12:00 AM EST)
SAN JOSE, Calif. â" Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is using virtualization technology to carve out a new market in PC software beyond its traditional BIOS code. The company is working with notebook makers to roll out HyperSpace, a basic application environment for mobile systems intended to be a kind of complement to Windows.
HyperSpace aims to provide access to simplified versions of applications at times when Windows is not available because the system is booting, in a deep sleep mode or stalled. It will include a simplified Web browser, media player and e-mail client as well as systems management and security utilities.
While Windows can take as long as 45 seconds to boot, the HyperSpace environment should be ready in as little as 5-10 seconds. "No matter what Windows is doing you can access programs in HyperSpace," said Gaurav Banga, chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering at Phoenix
The Phoenix moves comes on the heels of the launch of FlashMate from competitor Insyde Software. FlashMate aims to provide similar functions, however it rides a new flash module from Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
Phoenix believes users will be able to switch between HyperSpace and Windows more quickly than they can toggle between Windows and FlashMate environments, said Banga. That's because, unlike its competition, Hyperspace is based on creating a single environment that hosts both Windows and the Phoenix software.
The trade off in that approach is that some Windows applications could take a performance hit of as much as ten percent. However, the degradation is so small users should not notice it, Banga said.
Phoenix is now working with OEMs to customize Hyperspace and expects initial systems using the software could ship in about nine months. However, so far the company has not garnered any public support from any PC makers or third party software companies supporting HyperSpace.
The new direction emerges as Phoenix completes its transition to BIOS based on the Extensible Firmware Interface promoted by Intel Corp. EFI moves BIOS from its heritage in the 1980's as assembly language code running in real mode to a more high-level and open environment developed in C.
With EFI, BIOS also updates its table of hardware system resources. Today BIOS, operating systems and even applications sometimes each build their own separate tables of available hardware on a system.
"With EFI, that will go away. There will only need to be hardware discovery done once," said Banga.
Support for HyperSpace is embedded in the latest EFI-based BIOS code from Phoenix. The company will also make HyperSpace available on its legacy BIOS.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Hummm Operative System in Bios ... it reminded me of the ancient IBM PS/1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/1#.22DOS_in_ROM.22_models
He touts the greatness of Gmail and Google Docs, describes how he can't understand someone using a local email application, and then spurns proprietary technologies?
I run an open source email client that downloads my email into a format I can easily access directly and convert to whatever format I need.
The future he is describing, if it ends up powered by Google Docs-style web services, will be far more locked in to proprietary technologies than even a Windows based desktop is now.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I want the most obscure operating system possible, that still allows me to get my work done. That is the only way to minimize virus attacks, etc. Getting it all (bios/os/software) from a "cloud" is not a direction I would want to take.
Once Windows and Macintosh (or whatever hardware-based proprietary operating systems come along to replace them in this new framework) are permanently embedded in the hardware, making dual-booting nigh impossible (if not completely impossible), and making replacement of the operating system with a new one into a task so arduous that even a good many of today's Linux junkies would just opt to stick with what came with it... I doubt we'll see any more crossover to the free alternatives.
Oh, and did we mention the upgrade cycle on these things? That's right, for the average user who has no idea how to flash a piece of hardware, they have to order a whole new replacement every time the slightest security upgrade comes along on the operating system level! That sounds like wonderful fun for Gramma, don't you agree?
If a light BIOS/OS sits on the system, then you could easily task switch between operating systems. Better yet, developers could write applications directly for the BIOS/OS. That would be very good for single purpose workstations, wouldn't it, because the overhead would be really minimal?
Turns out that exchanging one technology for the other is absurd; the situation is a ying-yang of sorts. The key is always to find the balance and harmony between things, including technology.
Browser based OS? Maybe. Monolithic OS? Not really. Finding a balance between wired and wireless, flash memory and cloud computing, social and isolation, the power of independence AND the power of the collective is the best solution.
Someday we will embrace value through innovative technology - until then we'll watch "Ow, my Balls!"
Congratulations, Mr. Thomas! You have re-invented the concept of the embedded operating system.
*hands Keir Thomas his "Innovative Transportation Concept: The WHEEL!" Award *
Too bad industry has been using embedded OSs for about 40 years now...
---dragoness
This is already out there see, CoreBoot
CoreBoot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.
CoreBoot
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
You know, I never bought that idea that most people don't do more than email and browsing with their computer. It seems to me more like a mixture of arrogance (we're the savvier ones, see?) and wishful thinking.
From my experince, for example, image processing is a _lot_ more widespread than you seem to think. There's a reason for all those cameras sold even in phones nowadays, and for all those photo printers sold, you know? Even your average grandma nowadays occasionally gets ideas like even just changing the contrast of those photos she took of her grandchildren before printing. Some get even more complicated ideas.
So that's one thing where if he/she depends just on some online thing, he/she's going to be very annoyed occasionally.
DVD ripping is not exactly niche either nowadays. At least here a lot of people took notice of "rent 3 pay 2" deals and the like, and some got the idea that they can rip them instead of staying up all night to see all 3 in a day. And even when the network _isn't_ down, trying to use the average throttled ISP's service to rip via some online service... well, let's just say it would involve uploading a DVD. With the A in ADSL being what it is, it would take bloody ages for most people.
Movie (as opposed to photo) cameras are also becoming gradually more common.
I suppose someone could offer some service which uploads your holiday directly from your camera to YouTube, so you have no more need for a local hard drive or a DVD writer. But not all of us are that much of an exhibitionist as to want every single such movie online. E.g., let's just say that if you filmed yourself making love to your girlfriend, you might rediscover masturbation soon if that goes directly online.
E.g., more people play games than you'd think. A lot of those Johnny User will actually enjoy playing some game now and then. There's a reason why the average gamer is in the 30's nowadays, and even the retired senior citizen segment is rising fast for the last years. A lot more will have children.
And I really don't think you want to play most video games in a browser.
Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I know this is Slashdot, and that we don't like to RTFA, but please give it at least a glance before replying.
The guy says that he doesn't necessarily think BIOS-based OS is for everybody, and that some people (including him!) will go with a standard setup in this future scenario.
Slashdot people may think they're ordinary users, but that just ain't true. This guy is talking about a whole different class of users in the article.
Plus, bear in mind that Slashdot has a habit of trashing new and interesting technology. It was probably the only site to trash the iPod when it was released. And whatever happened to that?
No I'm serious. Have you looked at the size of the JVM, Java Runtime Library, and all those other Javish standards? They approach and OS of their own. Sounds like somebody just wants to do that again but this time put it on real hardware instead of virtual hardware.
The idea is that there is only one massive machine where each computer is merely a computing element. There are many "windows" looking into the one machine showing aspects of it. Ultimately, there is one computing cloud, one massive machine, made up of various elements that come online or go offline. The web is the OS of this massive machine and each "actual" OS serves the function of emulating the real OS of the web. ... well ... something like that I'm sure.
[signature]
In the end, an "operating system" is just a set of applications, and some glue to allow applications to share code/processor(s)/memory/IO. Anything that can be done by a "operating system" can be done by code within an application...
VMWare, anyone?
Besides, we have had multi-boot systems for years and years. The hardware has always allowed us to pick our poison and go. With ever more powerful hardware, why not allow us to run several "operating systems" at the same time?
What we really need is a configuration management system for our computer systems. Something that allows us to track configuration changes, and to deploy and "un-deploy" configuration changes dynamically. Then....
If all you need is a bios and a browser, so configure the hardware. If something comes in and installs a rootkit to hyjack your system, detect that and reconfigure the system back the way it was. Need to install an application? Do that configuration change. Want to persist documents and such to the "cloud"? configure the system thusly.
The bottom line is that we have the processing power and disk space to build a system that can stand apart and watch and manage the configuration of our computers. That is to say, look at the disk and the bios and insure it matches what we expect it to. The running state of the system can do what it wants, but if the persisted image of a system is preserved, at worse one needs to reboot to get back to a known and understood configuration.
Especially on servers, I don't quite understand why we trust what we call "operating systems" to protect themselves. I don't understand why we think these things are "platforms". I don't know why the author thinks a "BIOS operating system" is any different than what we use now. (smaller, but nothing new about a smaller OS installed in ROM, PROM, EPROM, or EEPROM, or Static Ram, or any other static tech).
What might be different is a separate system in hardware that watches over your system in real time to manage one's configuration. As I said, especially in a server (where a secure interface to said system can be used to manage what should or should not be allowed in the configuration) makes so much more sense.
The Amiga was essentially a Bios based OS on a Chip or more directly an EEPROM, with a small footprint OS of maybe 3MB on the Hard Drive.
Schematics
http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/schematics/schematics.html
Who else just thought "Wait, didn't the C64 have this?"
But the C64 had one benefit over this: You could actually automate things with little scripts. Try this in the retard-GUI du jour...
Oh, and as other users mentioned: How do I update that system? You know, when the exploits and rootkits start to pop up. :P
I think this is why hard drives were invented.
But I must say that I second the motion, to remove as many inner platforms as possible.
It's sad that Transmeta did not take off. I would have loved to combine this with virtualization, and basically have every tab in a browser be its own VM, with the JavaScript or other code interpreted directly by the loadable microcode in the CPU. This would make JS, and every other language extremely fast. There would be no need for software compilers. Just load an interpreter as microcode. Combine this with GPGPU technology, and the same hardware as today would run many things between 10 and 100 times faster, *and* more secure.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is great! The BIOS can run enough to get us on the network and then everything is on the interweb! But then I bet some company will, in an effort to be the #1 BIOS PC Maker include a really cool ability to actually do oh I don't know... text editing right on your box while the network is down! And then maybe we can throw in a dvd watching program, or maybe a simple card game to play while waiting for the network to come up.
I bet then they'll come up with the idea of seperating these "offline components" from the BIOS so it's easier to update. Maybe we can store it on some sort of internal storage device?
Hmmm this sounds so familiar just can't..quite..place...it...
No it won't.EOF
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"That genie will be more than willing to go back in that bottle!"
We repeat the same lessons every generation, don't we?
We have our own terrible business languages, our own non-relational databases*, our own stupid development fads, our own overwrought RPC protocol, our own profoundly ignorant ways to "disable" things for the user, our own wasteful incompatibilities, our own locked-down propretiary platforms, and the same casual disregard for proper security.
This industry has no sense of its own history. Instead of benefiting from the innumerable hours past programmers spent solving universal problems, we ignore and reject their work, and with only a few exceptions, we spend countless hours solving solved problems.
By the time we work through the mess, another generation of programmers will have rejected our work, and will be well on the way to repeating the cycle. It's depressing as hell.
(Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever written a post that offended so many software developers simultaneously.)
* RDBMs systems didn't come first; people started using them over navigational databases for good reasons that still apply today.
Which basically isn't far off from dual-booting, as inconvenience goes. Boot the browser when you know you'll _only_ want to surf, boot your OS for when you think you might also want to listen to your MP3s, encode a video, play a game, or any of the other gazillion activities that a real OS can do. I don't know about you, but I'll take another 15 seconds to boot XP once, instead of booting several times between BIOS-OS and real OS.
I'm suspecting that most people will do the same. They'll try the cute BIOS thing a couple of times, then discover that they just end up booting XP later anyway, so they end up just booting XP and using IE or Mozilla or whatever in the first place.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What would an OS be that is simple enough as to be without the 'complexity' that differentiates it from the 'basic, input/output system'?
Would be like an early Mac, where the foundation code existed in 'hardware' (nevermind that it is locally housed, accessible code, though RO), and manipulated via 'Toolbox' calls, as could be affected like that Windows=only API for IE-housed apps?
A Super-cloud of diskless, pocket-sized Macintosh SE's?
ATARI TOS on my STaci booted from ROM.
Acorn, Amiga, etc, seems that I remember that software OS(s) were (supposed to be) a step up.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
A true geek will be happy. He use it to connect to his PVS.
I know old stuff sometimes get put on the main page but I think slashdot has out done itself. 1993 called and it wants you to give it's ideas back http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client
Bill Gates has a yellow stain down his pants leg right about now.
Bah. If your OS doesn't fit on a 32K ROM chip, don't bother me.
who the frack comes up with these retard ideas ?
This is nothing but an attempt to revive the ASP model under the name 'cloud computing' ooohhh.
Given the growth of the individual PC's computing power vs the average server the whole strategy makes zero sense. I expect to see more apps take advantage of a universal runtime - something other than java I guess.
>Do you play WoW?
>Have you ever tried to play it offline?
No, I have never played WoW. I do, however, play Call of Duty, which, while lots more fun when COMMUNICATING over the internet with other players, is still an application I own on my computer and on physical media, and is quite fun to play stand-alone also.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
This is a nice idea but they'll never get it secure enough. I think the future is VPN and cloud computing- each with his own cloud. I want a home server that I can access from a remote dumb terminal/thin client. Browsers aren't reliable enough, and web apps are secondary and weak, a step backward. The OS is irrelevant, just a matter of taste. Plus the infrastructure will never support wandering from the current trend as long as there's money to be made.
all bets are off too. A lighting storm is all it takes to send cmdrtaco off to buy power generator.
Watch for Microsoft to come out with a Netbook. I just occurred to me that this is just the kind of thing they would try. I'm sure they die of envy every time they think of Apple's profit margins. They have experience with hardware now - and even contemplated creating their own OLPC. Watch them try to scoop Apple on this. They will come out with a touch screen interface, and it will run a fully functional Windows 7, IE, Silverlight, and tie into Windows Live and Microsoft's Cloud. They will have their own app store, and they will figure they can completely bypass anti-trust challenges on such a device. Now if they do this, I wish them all the success they had with Zune.
Informal conversations, such as internet BBS postings, do not constitute valuable data to me. I don't care what happens to my post.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
What will Johnny do when hackers r00t his BIOS?
If the BIOS is the operating system, you have nowhere else to go. This is pretty much like the iPhone- once hackers compromise your OS, they have the keys to the entire kingdom.
Step forward? Definitely not.
Yeah right. I can only imagine a browser with the familiar look and feel of your BIOS.
Primary Browser [Firefox]
Slave Browser [IE8]
First Web Page [Slashdot]
Second Web Page [CNN]
Third Web Page [Google]
Video [Youtube/Hulu]
Try Other Web Page [Enabled]
Browser Tab1 & Tab2 [Enabled]
Javascript [Fast]
Cookies [Disabled]
Cache [Enabled]
Adult content 12M-18M [Disabled]
Moving functionality from the OS to the BIOS isn't going to accomplish anything. If the BIOS doesn't implement Windows compatibility it will still be DOA.
If in the future, so much functionality is available online that a majority of users don't care about Windows compatibility, than it will open the door to a lot of other OS's, but it still won't matter if it's implemented in a BIOS or not.
Yes, it's like the prediction that computers will replace TV's.
.......except if the network goes down, you have no internet connection and can't do any of those things to begin with!
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Ummm. Haven't we already done this, and it all failed miserably? There has yet to be a successful "internet appliance". Think of the Audrey, the nIC (later called ThinkNIC), and a host of other cheap, but ultimately useless web-boxes that could not update the browser. So they all died, mostly because they companies couldn't sustain enough "internet rent" by providing a proprietary dial-in to the internet.
Even client-server mostly died, but now they are pushing client-cloud, which is even worse, because once you put everything on a cloud, one little storm and nothing is accessible.
Even the most basic appliances included some built-in games and a text editor for when you weren't online. Now they want to stuff an OS into some flash, leave you 4 megs of free space for cookies, and then impose a non-upgradeable browser (and probably tons of DRM), to force us to use the web like it's TV, and if you do want to use a computer for what it is actually for, you have to rent time on cloud apps.
Except anyone who buys these pieces of garbage will find after a year they have to throw it away because the company they are renting cloud-time on went out of business because not enough people rented cloud-time.
And when they shut down, ooops, there goes all your data. Remember that a cloud can also be a puff of smoke, and blow away just as easily.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I have an old Microbee cira 1982. It had the (very very basic) OS, word processor etc in ROM chips so pretty close to BIOS level. From power on to being useful it is still the fastest computer I ever owned.
Another case of look to the past for answers to the future it seems ;-)
John C. Dvorak stated in 1996:
The AmigaOS "remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years, incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capabilities the likes of which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT. The biggest difference is that the AmigaOS could operate fully and multitask in as little as 250 K of address space. Even today, the OS is only about 1MB in size. And to this day, there is very little a memory-hogging CD-ROM-loading OS can do the Amiga can't. Tight code -- there's nothing like it.
I've had an Amiga for maybe a decade. It's the single most reliable piece of equipment I've ever owned. It's amazing! You can easily understand why so many fanatics are out there wondering why they are alone in their love of the thing. The Amiga continues to inspire a vibrant -- albeit cultlike -- community, not unlike that which you have with Linux, the Unix clone."[7]
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
...are willing to provide real bandwidth to their customers, this ain't happenin'.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Maybe they could call the browser, I don't know, mosaic? And why do I get this strange feeling of deja vu?
No matter how much lipstick people try to put on this pig it still squeals like a pig, smells like a pig and probably has Swine Flu to boot. over the past 20 years various people have tried to reinvent this dumb idea over and over, It doesn't work as this is not something people want. They want control over there data, they don't want to be 100% reliant on an internet connection to even be able to see there data and many want to do a crap load more than what can be provided for in a browser experience. On top of all that Browsers are still immature, insecure (yes even Firefox and Opera), they are based on poorly thought out technologies and plugins that really are not a good basis for an OS (which is what it becomes once the socalled OS moves to the BIOS)
Just like the $HOME_COMPUTER of your childhood, instant on! Only with faster processor(s), better display resolution and sound, richer applications, and ...connectable to the rest of the world. Oh, yeah, no more program printouts in magazines. Saves some typing, I got to admit.
I speak England very best
I'm not against ROM-based OS's, hell, most home computers I owned in the past before I started messing with PeeCee's, Macs, Sun and DEC gear had the OS in ROM.
My Atari 400/800/800XL/130XE (ROM Basic and a simple OS... I went through several Atari 8-bits as a kid)
My Atari ST (TOS and GEM GUI in ROM)
My Mac Classic (System 6 in ROM)
Early PC's had a BASIC interpreter in ROM. At least the old IBM PC 5150 I use as an exhibit at the school has one.
Manufacturers may even start trying to get it right the first time instead of relying on automatic updates to allow them to push beta-quality software as production ready.
An embedded OS with nothing but an IP stack and a browser would suck however. Cloud computing is a fad that I hope dies the horrible death it deserves. What happens when Cox or Time Warner starts throttling RPC and whatever protocol is used for message passing between processes?
What about rural customers that can't get decent net access beyond a cell modem or dialup?
I'm not going to put my business or personal life in the hands of anybody but myself. Nor will I pay recurring fees just to run an app.
Hell, I won't even buy an iPhone because of the App Store.
B***S**t. There's just so many things wrong with this article. Firstly - the very basic function of the OS is to manage the hardware, so to "demote the OS to just another function of HW" doesn't make sense at all! And just to run a decent browser a lot of underlying systems need to be there just to make it all work - a windowing system, a file management system to store your downloadable stuff (if you want that.. which I think YOU DO want!), printing subsystem. Remote Procedure Calls need to exist for the browser to open up your favorite document, writable store for cookies, message passing such as signals and semaphores if you want the tab functionality of browsers need to be present. Just because you have your browser full-screen doesn't make your OS dispensable! To achieve the same level of functionality as today's browsers, a lot of subsystems underneath should work properly. In most respects your browser is JUST ANOTHER function on top of your OS. Analogically, this article is akin to saying that hey you can see scenery passing by in your car (browser) and you have wheels (BIOS) so the engine (OS) can be completely discarded. The wheels (BIOS) by themselves innately have the capability of traveling on roads!
This poses a potentially HUGE problem with regards to supporting an OS. As soon as any old company can take a distro and alter it to handle the way it wants to then you're going to get exceptions that will cause tech support issues beyond the, "Are you running Linux, Mac or Windows". Kewl idea, potentially huge side-effects!
http://www.gibby.net.au
This model worked well on my Commodore 64
Remember we here at slashdot are all people interested in technology, and with some criteria about the subject.
But ask the masses, they will say "oh cool!! computers will be cheaper and with all the power of the services in the web!"
We already have office on-line apps, music services, movie services and (good) gaming services are comming soon. So John D., a guy that is NOT thinking about his rights, will definitively like the idea. And he'll feel connected to the future!! cool!!
And there are way more Johns than slashdotters...
I see no reason for that, there are two reasons games need to connect to the Internet: Multiplayer and DRM. I wouldn't rule out every piece of commercial software in the future being so DRM-ridden that it's constantly communicating with a "license server," (like the WGA notification client) or maybe video editing software constantly checking to make sure there are no copyright violations going on, but from a technical standpoint there's no need for that sort of thing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So - when you need to change functionality, you simply stick a new cartridge in your PC? My how far we've come.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Here are some reasons why computer users should not buy computers using this thin-client next-generation dumb terminal hardware:
Number one: This really is a way for manufacturers to force all computer users to pay for every occurrence that computer users actually use it. This argument is reaching a point where they want to convince us that everything we do cannot be done on a standalone PC. Don't believe this. This seems to be a ploy to take away our Digital Freedoms and it seems to be a great way to stop computer users from "DIY"(do-it-yourself) changes to the hardware. Not everything is a web-browser plugin. Not everything should be either. Media-content providers love the web-browser Flash plugin because it is their best effort to enforce DRM. By default, FLASH does not permit downloading and saving media content for DRM's sake. The safer "digital-freedom"-friendlier way would be to allow for saving downloads and then have the user OPEN ANY APPLICATION locally and open the downloaded file to with as they wish. Wikipedia media standards use ogg/vorbis/theora NOT FLASH. Wikipedia allows users to download and save the media. Wikipedia are the role model to follow.
Number two: to be on the network all the time for every use is not justified. Flooding the network with unnecessary traffic is actually irresponsible engineering. The "Network is the computer" philosophy is actually the worst case scenario for personal privacy. For every action you make with the computer another computer is logging your actions because that's part of the agreement to using the "network as a computer" cloud. If you don't agree to this, odds are the cloud network providers won't let you use the network. You're better off not using it. You're better off using peer-to-peer standalone applications WHEN YOU WANT TO USE A "CLOUD".
Most important of all, we currently CHOOSE WHEN to use the network. Why by hardware that takes away what we already have a choice for? There is no justification.
Thin-clients might have a place somewhere, but they certainly won't have a place in my life and I won't encourage the use of thin-clients to anyone I know.
Plus, who says just because there is a browser on the BIOS that you can't boot into a regular OS if you want to? TBH, the browser OS will probably be the optional OS on a PC, not the primary (though it could be!).
I am not sure that the article is speaking of a machine that can run a general OS as well as the BIOS OS.
A small BIOS based optional OS would also be real nice for backing up the Main OS of your machine.
And I would love to see a BIOS based OS that provided a virtual box type program where you ran your main OS (or multiple OSs) in a virtual PC.
But the only cloud my data will be in is a cloud I own myself. (I might put copies of data in the cloud for sharing purposes though)
...embedded.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
What i really die for is a BIOS with some sort of Oberon_OS... (if BlackBox Oberon framework based would be beatifull) really tiny, efficient and powerfull oop based system
For (my laboratory) development its a pleasure to work with... really clean and its open source http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html
Can you say Sinclair ZX81?