If you think about efficiency in the roads around where you live, it's pretty clear that most of them arn't particularly designed well. An ideal road system would minimize the number of stops neeeded to go somewhere, as this would both reduce waste of fuel (F=MA), wear on the brakes, and reduce time spent behind stoplights (or otherwise waiting for other cars to act). IMO, tossing a supercomputer at the problem is a bit silly when the problems are obvious.
Everything we'd need in a potential replacement
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Is X The Future?
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1) Better network transparency -- something akin to ssh should be built-in, except modified so a single channel can transparently have new applications connected through without needing to do it via the shell on the other end. This would eliminate the need to ssh multiple times. Ideally, the connection would be handled by a library instead of a terminal application. Also, ideally sound would be handled by the same mechanism. 2) Window Manager agnosticism -- We've all gotten too used to our favorite window managers to move to a single one, no matter how wonderful it might be. 3) Ideally, more of the frontend of applications would be run on the client, to minimize communication. This could be accomplished a number of ways, but a simple way would be to have multiple application modes, one of which would tell the client (I'm using traditional, rather than X notions of client and server) where widgets are and only generate events when the mouse is over the widget. Several other modes for different kinds of programs would be needed (consider Xeyes) 3) Automatic dithering and a single color API that acts like truecolor. 4) A way to nicely disconnect a running program's GUI from one client and then resume it elsewhere (to some degree this relies on #3)
Re:PM would be a good replacement.
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PM had numerous technical problems, the SIQ being most notable. Most of the good parts of PM were very high level, and could be done by a well-written window manager.
If there is a slight silver lining in this dark cloud, it'll be that once encryption software is banned, there'll be no disincentive for people to use really really strong encryption instead of weak (and currently legal) encryption.
Hi, I've used NeXTStep quite a bit. Windowmaker acts closer to NeXTStep than any other X WM I've seen, but it's still not *very* true to the original. However, many of the differences are based on the way that Workspace.app was integrated into NeXTStep, integration that would be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve under X on a Linux system without modifications to both.
One thing I really miss is the built-in file-manager present in NeXTStep -- FSViewer.app kind of reminds me of it, but it's not nearly close enough at this point.
I think that they're really looking out for what they see as our good. It makes sense, I've talked with many of them at length, and they really do seem to believe in heaven, hell, god, angels, yaddayadda. I happen to think they're wrong, and as such I still am bothered when they come and bother me, but I really can't blame their motives.
If you consider pamphlets in my physical mailbox, probably about a week ago. OTOH, I get less spam from bible thumpers than I do from porn sites... Hmm...
This is meant as mostly humor, but the people I know who spend a lot of time with porn generally tend to be a lot more pleasant than people who spend a lot of time with the bible. Certainly not all bible thumpers are like this, but I've never heard porn drive people to go door-to-door and irritate people, advocate execution for violation of the 10 commandments (or sexual 'deviancy'), etc. As Tom Lehrer says "I do have a cause, it's obscenity. I'm for it"
The company, unless your contract says otherwise, doesn't have any more obligation to keep you on than you have an obligation to quit. Gee, if someone who they don't want to quit quits, sometimes the company just has to hold their ground and force the person not to quit. Heh.
I'm not claiming that, although some people might. But on a practical level, things submitted by people from outside with ill intent or lack of a clue could cause security issues, and it seems that even with a reviewer, some bad code will quite possibly get in.
Some code is obscure even being in clear sight. Consider Linux or Mozilla -- their source trees are huge, and if one were particularly untrusting, one might think that it would be easy for such groups to accidentally or purposefully stick code in that could be problematic WRT security. The trust that can be applied to small projects WRT security can't neccesarily be given to larger projects, as the chance of someone, or even everyone collectively, looking at the problematic section(s) and knowing enough to recognize a security problem isn't particularly inspiring. OTOH, it certainly beats binary distributions:)
It would be interesting and useful to make an OSS verification group which would audit open source projects for security problems (intentional or no), determine what platforms the source compiles on, look for bugs, and ideally submit patches back to authors and possibly sell support and/or legal liability for program failings.
QNX probably wouldn't have been a good choice for an OS foundation for the Amiga. I took a quick browse to the QNX website, and they make a lot of neat stuff. The relevant products to the decision probably were QNX and QNX/Neutrino. Each has serious problems as a foundation. QNX is tied to x86. This alone is a serious problem, as presumably Amiga would want to go with a high-performance, clean CPU (e.g. Alpha, PPC, MIPS, ARM). QNX also lists very few choices as to what hardware you can use. This may or may not be a concern in a relatively closed system (in the sense that the system would be sold mostly complete), but considering the really keen hardware Amigas had when they were new, their target market would probably want something like a Voodoo3 videocard (for instance), something not supported by QNX, as most of their hardware supported looks fairly old.
QNX/Neutrino, unlike QNX, is portable, and it looks like it supports at least the x86, some PPC, some MIPS, and a few obscure CPUs. As such, it probably would be a better choice than QNX for an AmigaOS, but as stated on the webpage, most of its components are very minimal.
QNX and QNX/N both look like they'd take a lot of work to make a consumer product. Is Linux a better choice? Maybe. What does Amiga need to do? Here are some ideas:
Select a set of hardware peripherals that are relatively inexpensive, are made by a vendor friendly to third-party OS's, and ideally are close to best-of-breed, and offer their vendor an exclusive contract where all Amiga-branded machines come with said hardware in exchange for price cuts and input into design of said products. Hardware worth considering: Voodoo3 Graphics Alpha CPUs
Ensure that Linux/glibc binaries can run
Write an X server that will talk to the AmigaOS graqphical layer to allow X programs to run (within a window?)
Write a really good emulator for the 68k-based Amigas, ideally capable of running dirty programs
In the end, I imagine we'll probably see something that doesn't look much like a Linux system as we know it (i.e. non-X GUI, not Unixy), probably making extensive use of kernel modules to avoid GPL issues and keep things closed source.
Oh. Wow. PC-DOS 2000. For almost all intents and purposes, it's the same thing as PC-DOS 7. Let's see. They add euro symbol to their keymaps, and make it y2k compliant. That's just about the complete summary of changes.
I remember using an old OS/2 program years ago that did this kind of thing really well, using color in both documents to show common, and divergent parts. It then had a bar in the middle that used color to represent the same thing, and had nice lines going between the windows showing what matched with what......
What I can't understand is how all these little Linux companies can create nice installers that are easy to use (from as spiffy as this Caldera installer to something as barebones as the Slackware installer), and *all* of them are much nicer than *ANYTHING* you can use to install a commercial Unix. I've installed Ultrix, Digital Unix, Solaris, NeXTStep, etc., and none of their installers (some of therm have multiple installers ) rate up to even Slackware's installer. With all the engineers and money they have, one would think that those vendors could put a little effort into making a nice installer for their Unix..
It might be worthy of note that most of us geeks probably don't scorn those 486/33s or MacSEs too much -- given a nice machine for them to connect to, and networking cards, they can be made useful with NetBSD or Linux (Not sure if the SEs can run Linux, but if not they could telnet into another system that was and thus be just about as useful)
Slashdot Mirror
If you think about efficiency in the roads
around where you live, it's pretty clear that
most of them arn't particularly designed well.
An ideal road system would minimize the number
of stops neeeded to go somewhere, as this would
both reduce waste of fuel (F=MA), wear on
the brakes, and reduce time spent behind
stoplights (or otherwise waiting for other cars
to act). IMO, tossing a supercomputer at the
problem is a bit silly when the problems are
obvious.
1) Better network transparency -- something akin
to ssh should be built-in, except modified
so a single channel can transparently
have new applications connected through
without needing to do it via the shell
on the other end. This would eliminate
the need to ssh multiple times. Ideally,
the connection would be handled by a
library instead of a terminal application.
Also, ideally sound would be handled by
the same mechanism.
2) Window Manager agnosticism -- We've all gotten
too used to our favorite window managers
to move to a single one, no matter how
wonderful it might be.
3) Ideally, more of the frontend of applications
would be run on the client, to minimize
communication. This could be accomplished
a number of ways, but a simple way would
be to have multiple application modes, one
of which would tell the client (I'm using
traditional, rather than X notions of
client and server) where widgets are and
only generate events when the mouse is
over the widget. Several other modes for
different kinds of programs would be
needed (consider Xeyes)
3) Automatic dithering and a single color API that
acts like truecolor.
4) A way to nicely disconnect a running
program's GUI from one client and then
resume it elsewhere (to some degree this
relies on #3)
PM had numerous technical problems, the SIQ
being most notable. Most of the good parts
of PM were very high level, and could be
done by a well-written window manager.
So it's bound to be ugly and clumsy :)
They're pretty smart not to include screenshots.
If there is a slight silver lining in this dark
cloud, it'll be that once encryption software is
banned, there'll be no disincentive for people
to use really really strong encryption instead of
weak (and currently legal) encryption.
Hi, I've used NeXTStep quite a bit. Windowmaker
acts closer to NeXTStep than any other X WM I've
seen, but it's still not *very* true to the
original. However, many of the differences are
based on the way that Workspace.app was
integrated into NeXTStep, integration that would
be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve
under X on a Linux system without modifications
to both.
One thing I really miss is the built-in
file-manager present in NeXTStep --
FSViewer.app kind of reminds me of it, but
it's not nearly close enough at this point.
I think that they're really looking out for what
they see as our good. It makes sense, I've talked
with many of them at length, and they really do
seem to believe in heaven, hell, god, angels,
yaddayadda. I happen to think they're wrong, and
as such I still am bothered when they come and
bother me, but I really can't blame their motives.
It certainly seems to advocate this kind of
thing.
The problem is catching them -- these people must
either be invisible or very fast, because I've
never seen them.
If you consider pamphlets in my physical
mailbox, probably about a week ago. OTOH, I
get less spam from bible thumpers than I do
from porn sites... Hmm...
This is meant as mostly humor, but the people I
know who spend a lot of time with porn generally
tend to be a lot more pleasant than people who
spend a lot of time with the bible. Certainly not
all bible thumpers are like this, but I've never
heard porn drive people to go door-to-door and
irritate people, advocate execution for violation
of the 10 commandments (or sexual 'deviancy'),
etc.
As Tom Lehrer says "I do have a cause, it's
obscenity. I'm for it"
The company, unless your contract says otherwise,
doesn't have any more obligation to keep you on
than you have an obligation to quit.
Gee, if someone who they don't want to quit
quits, sometimes the company just has to hold
their ground and force the person not to quit. Heh.
I'm not claiming that, although some people might.
But on a practical level, things submitted by
people from outside with ill intent or lack of
a clue could cause security issues, and it seems
that even with a reviewer, some bad code will
quite possibly get in.
Some code is obscure even being in clear sight. :)
Consider Linux or Mozilla -- their source trees
are huge, and if one were particularly untrusting,
one might think that it would be easy for such
groups to accidentally or purposefully stick code
in that could be problematic WRT security. The
trust that can be applied to small projects WRT
security can't neccesarily be given to larger
projects, as the chance of someone, or even everyone collectively,
looking at the problematic section(s) and knowing
enough to recognize a security problem isn't
particularly inspiring. OTOH, it certainly beats
binary distributions
It would be interesting and useful to make an OSS
verification group which would audit open source
projects for security problems (intentional or no),
determine what platforms the source compiles on,
look for bugs, and ideally submit patches back to
authors and possibly sell support and/or legal
liability for program failings.
What makes you think that x86 CPUs are performance
leaders?
QNX/neutrino is the one that runs on MIPS
and PPC. QNX doesn't.
QNX probably wouldn't have been a good choice
for an OS foundation for the Amiga. I took a
quick browse to the QNX website, and they make
a lot of neat stuff. The relevant products to
the decision probably were QNX and QNX/Neutrino.
Each has serious problems as a foundation.
QNX is tied to x86. This alone is a serious
problem, as presumably Amiga would want to go with
a high-performance, clean CPU (e.g. Alpha, PPC,
MIPS, ARM). QNX also lists very few choices as to
what hardware you can use. This may or may not be
a concern in a relatively closed system (in the
sense that the system would be sold mostly
complete), but considering the really keen
hardware Amigas had when they were new, their
target market would probably want something like
a Voodoo3 videocard (for instance), something
not supported by QNX, as most of their hardware
supported looks fairly old.
QNX/Neutrino, unlike QNX, is portable, and it
looks like it supports at least the x86, some
PPC, some MIPS, and a few obscure CPUs. As such,
it probably would be a better choice than QNX
for an AmigaOS, but as stated on the webpage,
most of its components are very minimal.
QNX and QNX/N both look like they'd take a lot of
work to make a consumer product. Is Linux a better
choice? Maybe. What does Amiga need to do? Here
are some ideas:
Select a set of hardware peripherals that are
relatively inexpensive, are made by a vendor
friendly to third-party OS's, and ideally are
close to best-of-breed, and offer their vendor
an exclusive contract where all Amiga-branded
machines come with said hardware in exchange for
price cuts and input into design of said products.
Hardware worth considering:
Voodoo3 Graphics
Alpha CPUs
Ensure that Linux/glibc binaries can run
Write an X server that will talk to the
AmigaOS graqphical layer to allow
X programs to run (within a window?)
Write a really good emulator for the 68k-based
Amigas, ideally capable of running dirty programs
In the end, I imagine we'll probably see something
that doesn't look much like a Linux system as
we know it (i.e. non-X GUI, not Unixy), probably
making extensive use of kernel modules to avoid
GPL issues and keep things closed source.
Oh. Wow. PC-DOS 2000. For almost all intents and
purposes, it's the same thing as PC-DOS 7.
Let's see. They add euro symbol to their keymaps,
and make it y2k compliant. That's just about the
complete summary of changes.
I remember using an old OS/2 program years ago
that did this kind of thing really well, using
color in both documents to show common, and
divergent parts. It then had a bar in the middle
that used color to represent the same thing, and
had nice lines going between the windows showing
what matched with what......
If you use undump on a brain dump, do you get :P
a working brain? Can I do a backtrace on people's
brain dumps?
What I can't understand is how all these little
Linux companies can create nice installers that
are easy to use (from as spiffy as this Caldera
installer to something as barebones as the
Slackware installer), and *all* of them are much
nicer than *ANYTHING* you can use to install a
commercial Unix. I've installed Ultrix, Digital
Unix, Solaris, NeXTStep, etc., and none of their
installers (some of therm have multiple installers
) rate up to even Slackware's installer. With all
the engineers and money they have, one would think
that those vendors could put a little effort into
making a nice installer for their Unix..
It might be worthy of note that most of us geeks
probably don't scorn those 486/33s or MacSEs too
much -- given a nice machine for them to connect
to, and networking cards, they can be made useful
with NetBSD or Linux (Not sure if the SEs can run
Linux, but if not they could telnet into another
system that was and thus be just about as useful)
Yup. Specifically HP's workstations. HP does :)
some things pretty well, like make printers,
and some weird people like their calculators
I think SGI's strategy, in the long run, will
make it the next HP. The decision to go Intel
seems evidence of an eventual nasty end..