Hmmm...not that I'm any sized fan of Microsoft (bleh), but yeah, while it's not as much outlay of cash for Microsoft, a 34" HDTV and even the Xbox 360, accessories and games definitely cost them something. Drop in the bucket, but still, I'd be pretty happy to get a $1500+ TV, a $300+ game system and a bunch of games.
Probably hardware costs and software base, just shooting from the hip. Corporation decisions are made by bean counters, not technology folks.
Generally not true. I work in IT for a Fortune 500 company and I can tell you that technology folks make most of the strategic IT decisions, (like platform, architecture, and overall IT direction), while bean counters tend to pick the actual vendors. Usually there is some back and forth between IT and the bean counters, and in some cases IT gets what it wants, in other cases purchasing gets what it wants, but usually it's some level of compromise.
However, hardware costs *are* a huge issue whether you're talking from the IT perspective *or* the bean counter perspective. No one goes out and says "well, let's just pick something, it doesn't matter how much it costs." Cost is most definitely a factor.
Software base is an issue as well, but I suspect much of the reasoning that Windows is chosen for most corporate desktops goes along the lines of "Well, it's what everyone else does. It's what everyone knows and we know that all the applications we want will run on it." It's the "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality, s/IBM/Microsoft.
ClamAV is an on-demand scanner. Do not despair: with WinPooch, you can make it a resident scanner. Alas, I only read about it here on slashdot and didn't try it myself. Anyone here knows how good it is?
I use it on my virtualized Windows 2000 Server box running inside Qemu on top of Ubuntu.
Not sure if it's a result of running under Qemu (and I use kqemu acceleration, BTW) or if it's just the code itself, but WinPooch seems to take a long time to start up, but once it does the performance hit doesn't seem too bad.
The only thing is that it seems to turn up a bunch of false positives. I think it might be due to ClamWin returning some result code, but a lot of times WinPooch will popup even when ClamWin hasn't detected anything (and it says right in the report window that 1 file(s) were scanned and 0 viruses were dectected.)
TFA also states that "People who distribute networking vulnerability scanning tools such as Nmap or Nessus could also be caught up in part (b), Clayton warned.". A quick reading of section 41 seems to bear that out. As author and maintainer of the Nmap Security Scanner, I am more than a little concerned.
I think that was the plan...but the really stupid thing and obvious thing that people seem to be missing is that tools like nmap, nessus and ethereal serve legimate and necessary purposes.
I have no idea how I would be able to harden the security of networks I maintain without these tools. Nmap shows me what ports are open, for instance. Without that tool, I have no idea and I'm just guessing that the firewall rules, etc., I have set are correct or are even actually being enforced by the firewall. It would be like writing a program without being able to compile it or writing HTML without passing it through a validator or even having the ability for an HTML preview.
That's patently ridiculous. Network security is a very complicated thing and it would be even more complicated without tools to test it's strength. Thanks for the vote of confidence -- nmap is one of the many essential tools in my network security toolbox and I've been using it forever.
Does anyone really think that these PCs are "domestic?" They may not be made in mainland China, but they are certainly not made in the United states either.
Similarly other posts say that the advantage of apt is the Debian repositories. That's an advantage of Debian, not of apt. Ubuntu uses apt and dpkg, yet Ubuntu's package repository != Debian's package repository.
Actually, Debian universe and multiverse are in the/etc/apt.d/sources.list by default, they're just commented out by default. You can enable them in synaptic or Ubuntu's default package manager (based on synaptic) with a couple of mouse clicks.
if you want to watch something "live" the you have to see them anyway. I would think this is how most people with tivo use their TVs; with tivo just as a video-recorder if there is 2 things on at the same time which they want to watch or if they are going to be out... it might seem like a lot of people will never see ads but I would bet that they do
Sure they do. People watch lots of "live" TV; however, I think it's getting less and less common. As people are all very busy, they still want to watch shows, they just want to watch them when they want to and have time to.
I think about my own situation: I've been considering building a MythTV DVR for a little while now. One of the reasons is that I don't always get a chance to watch what I want because of all the things I do -- I have a full-time 40+ hr/week job, I have a very part-time side business that I work on occasionally, I volunteer for a 501(c)(3) non-profit that I'm involved with -- which usually ties up at least 3 nights of my week, and I'm writing a book.
I don't have time to watch TV "live" all the time, and as a result, I end up missing some of my favorite shows....
I think this is how most people are using it -- to time shift their favorite shows so that they can watch them when they have time -- and I don't think I'm unique at all in not having very much time on my hands to watch TV.
I've had a Gmail account for well over a year, and while Gmail's spam filter is very good, I wouldn't say it's perfect. I've seen much fewer pieces of spam get through as compared to other spam filters I've used with far less required work on my part, but the occasional piece of spam still gets through.
No spam filter can be perfect, IMHO.
We could debate on the best ways to kill spam 'til the cows come home, but no one has found a 100% foolproof way to combat spam as of yet that doesn't require a complete reconstruction of the Internet's e-mail infrastructure and I doubt that we'll see anything much in the near future.
It's "too difficult and time consuming" to rollover a link to see if it's real link or an IP address or bogus URL? I dunno about you, but if I get an e-mail from my bank telling me to click a link, it better have the same domain as the URL I'm accustomed to going to do my online banking or I won't go there.
It's "too difficult and time consuming" to ask yourself, "Gee, would my [ISP/bank/telco/cellular provider/etc] really ask me to provide [credit card #/password/personal information/etc] via an e-mail, especially when I've already provided them with this information in the past? Gee, why wouldn't they contact me in person if there were really a problem?" And think about it: especially if it's a credit card #, they really really want to get paid and not very likely to use an insecure and unreliable channel such as e-mail to get such information from you. They're far more likely to call you on the phone or send you some snail mail.
C'mon. Do we really expect that people are that dumb? Is this what it's come to?
I suggest everyone read Atlas Shrugged. Really. Right now. Go do it.
When a user compiles the glue code and links it with the binary-only component to produce a kernel module, the result is a derived work of the GPL'd Linux kernel. Note that I didn't say "and loads it into a running kernel". That's not really relevant. Technically, it's somewhat unclear whether the GPL gives users the right to create otherwise unauthorized derived works, but the general interpretation (including by the FSF) is that people can do whatever they like, and it's only when they start distributing that the question of whether or not the GPL has granted them permission becomes important.
Exactly -- sort of. This is what makes the difference. The binary-only code, by itself, is not a violation of GPL. The glue code is not a violation of GPL. And, actually, compiling and linking the glue code to link the binary driver to the GPL kernel is also not a violation of GPL.
The GPL is a permission to distribute and/or modify the copyrighted work. But, it limits that distribution and/or modification to set of specific restrictions. In general, the FSF has taken the position that GPL doesn't kick in until you distribute a work or a derived work -- and this jives with copyright law, which is literally the right to copy. Courts have held time and time again that copying for personal use is and falls under fair use exemptions (see the Sony Betamax case). So using an nVIDIA or ATI closed-source driver with the a GPL Linux kernel falls under fair use exemption, IMHO. (IANAL) But if you distribute the driver and loadable kernel module, now you're falling out of the fair use exemption and violating GPL.
If you have a hand-build Intel or AMD box, what chip do you have the most access to? The chip that's in your box! If you're building and trying out exploits that use fuzzing techniques, the best way to do that is with your own equipment. It gives you a playground with which you can run the target OS and/or app in a debugger and watch what happens in realtime when you send different types of data.
So in that respect, you gained a little bit of security through obscurity by running on PPC. Now that Macs are running Intel, all bets are off -- these same crackers can now just run Mac OS X on their own box and they've got they're own playground even without having a Mac.
...more specifically the entertainment value of being tazered, when you get caught trying to board a flight with it.;-)
Actually, believe it or not, as scary as this sounds, it's more like if, not when.
Sure, the TSA has sensors that can check for certain high-order explosives (including RDX, aka cyclonite, the main explosive ingredient of Composition C4) but it's not whether or not the sensors detect it, it's whether or not the TSA employees bother to check.
My wife once worked as an undercover security employee -- her job was to smuggle anything through airport security, including drugs, weapons, explosives, etc. If she made it through, the screening employees got written up. And you know what? More often than not, she got the stuff through.
This isn't a business where you can just walk in off the street, pick up a hammer, and get to work. You have to study, you have to work, you have to be skilled.
You could say the exact same thing about millwrights and it would be 100% true. Yet, most millwrights are card-carrying union members.
I agree. The problem is, the Democrats are equally foul, corrupt, and incompetent. So who am I supposed to vote for?
D. None of the above.
Convince enough people to vote for a third-party candidate. Third-party candidates do win elections, there are today third-party office holders (the Libertarians, for example, have been staples of local-level positions for decades) and we have even had a third-party President. It's important to note that the Republicans were, at one time, a "third party"!
Yeah, the scripts functionality is cool! I found this the other day quite by accident. Found the 'nautilus-scripts' folder and saw it was empty. While I was moving some other things around, I accidentally moved a script in there and lo and behold -- a 'Scripts' submenu appeared on my right-click menu! And underneath it was the script I just threw in there. To steal a line from Keaunu Reeves, "Whoa!"
I thought about some of things I wished Nautilus could do, and one of those was being able to edit files under/etc as root without having to launch a whole root Nautilus session. So I threw together a simple script something like this:
#!/bin/bash gksudo "gvim $*"
and was it just like "cool!" when it worked.
I've been thinking of a gazillion more uses for this functionality.... maybe I'll try submitting some of the really cool ones to that g-scripts project on Sourceforge you mentioned.
Exactly. I run Ubuntu, and between the Debian patches and the Ubuntu patches, I've got a very stable kernel because they're constantly backporting the bugfixes from newer kernels and releasing them into the apt repositories.
Stability and polish are up to the distro maintainers -- on everything. Not just the desktop, not just the apps, but on the kernel, too.
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed...
And you're not alone. Most people I know (including myself) have only one choice when it comes to highspeed Internet access. The community I live has an exclusive agreement with Comcast. DSL is not an option in my area due to distance to the CO.
So if Comcast says "Oh, well, we're throttling back Gmail and throttling up Hotmail because Google doesn't pay us and Microsoft does", I'm pretty screwed as well. My choices are 1) move, 2) get dialup, 3) use Hotmail.
Maybe if they pull that crap, I'll have to sue them for loss of access to my data...hmmm...
If you open a Sun E10000, you'll find that it looks a lot like a mainframe on the inside.
Yeah, I've seen 'em. Sun E10Ks are practically mainframes. And they cost about as much, too.
Of course, when it comes to raw transactional throughput, your average E10K running Solaris and Oracle just doesn't hold a candle to, say, an IBM z9 Enterprise Class running z/OS and DB2.
Does anyone know of any (non VENDOR) studies & comparisons vs traditional computer architectures?
Mainframes are traditional computer architecture! Unix is 'new' compared to mainframe technology.
The modern mainframe is, in general, vastly more reliable than even the best of the best of 'big servers.' Mainframes are generally redundant to the point that you can change out thefr CPUs, memory, drives, etc. without turning the power off or rebooting the machine. Linux and Unix servers might boast about a couple of years of uptime, but many mainframe systems have been up for decades.
Many mainframe systems can process orders of magnitude more transactions than your typical *nix system running Oracle -- even when compared to systems with SMP, gigabytes of memory and the latest in high-speed storage. In fact, the stuff that people use nowadays for high-speed, high-reliability storage -- storage area networks (SANs) -- have their roots in mainframe technology. EMC, one of the market leaders in SANs was formerly part of Data General. In fact, so does most of the rest of your high availability 'enterprise-class' technologies -- SMP, NUMA, clustering, etc. Where do you think Linux's current SMP technologies came from? IBM. Who developed them on mainframes, ported them to AIX and then eventually ported them to Linux.
Massively-clustered systems like Google's are quickly become the norm for high-end stuff. But there are certain things that will probably always run on Big Iron. Whenever tasks are mission-critical and need to 24x7 and 'three 9's' doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg in what you need in reliability -- you'll see mainframes running those tasks more often than not.
You make the assumption that MS-DOS was an operating system. MS-DOS was a program loader. Operating systems actually handle things like memory and process management, task scheduling, handling devices, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm...not that I'm any sized fan of Microsoft (bleh), but yeah, while it's not as much outlay of cash for Microsoft, a 34" HDTV and even the Xbox 360, accessories and games definitely cost them something. Drop in the bucket, but still, I'd be pretty happy to get a $1500+ TV, a $300+ game system and a bunch of games.
Probably hardware costs and software base, just shooting from the hip.
Corporation decisions are made by bean counters, not technology folks.
Generally not true. I work in IT for a Fortune 500 company and I can tell you that technology folks make most of the strategic IT decisions, (like platform, architecture, and overall IT direction), while bean counters tend to pick the actual vendors. Usually there is some back and forth between IT and the bean counters, and in some cases IT gets what it wants, in other cases purchasing gets what it wants, but usually it's some level of compromise.
However, hardware costs *are* a huge issue whether you're talking from the IT perspective *or* the bean counter perspective. No one goes out and says "well, let's just pick something, it doesn't matter how much it costs." Cost is most definitely a factor.
Software base is an issue as well, but I suspect much of the reasoning that Windows is chosen for most corporate desktops goes along the lines of "Well, it's what everyone else does. It's what everyone knows and we know that all the applications we want will run on it." It's the "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality, s/IBM/Microsoft.
ClamAV is an on-demand scanner. Do not despair: with WinPooch, you can make it a resident scanner. Alas, I only read about it here on slashdot and didn't try it myself. Anyone here knows how good it is?
I use it on my virtualized Windows 2000 Server box running inside Qemu on top of Ubuntu.
Not sure if it's a result of running under Qemu (and I use kqemu acceleration, BTW) or if it's just the code itself, but WinPooch seems to take a long time to start up, but once it does the performance hit doesn't seem too bad.
The only thing is that it seems to turn up a bunch of false positives. I think it might be due to ClamWin returning some result code, but a lot of times WinPooch will popup even when ClamWin hasn't detected anything (and it says right in the report window that 1 file(s) were scanned and 0 viruses were dectected.)
Finding one extra virus doesn't necessarily mean it's the better scanner, of course.
Maybe you just never got one that AVG could detect that Avast! couldn't.
I think the approach of running multiple virus scanners is the best choice because you're less likely to let one slip through.
TFA also states that "People who distribute networking vulnerability scanning tools such as Nmap or Nessus could also be caught up in part (b), Clayton warned.". A quick reading of section 41 seems to bear that out. As author and maintainer of the Nmap Security Scanner, I am more than a little concerned.
I think that was the plan...but the really stupid thing and obvious thing that people seem to be missing is that tools like nmap, nessus and ethereal serve legimate and necessary purposes.
I have no idea how I would be able to harden the security of networks I maintain without these tools. Nmap shows me what ports are open, for instance. Without that tool, I have no idea and I'm just guessing that the firewall rules, etc., I have set are correct or are even actually being enforced by the firewall. It would be like writing a program without being able to compile it or writing HTML without passing it through a validator or even having the ability for an HTML preview.
That's patently ridiculous. Network security is a very complicated thing and it would be even more complicated without tools to test it's strength. Thanks for the vote of confidence -- nmap is one of the many essential tools in my network security toolbox and I've been using it forever.
Robin Meade. w00t!
Well, let's see.
According to this report, Dell has manufacturing operations in:
Hey, there's China!
And according to HPs most recent annual report, they have operations in Shanghai, China.
So are HP and Dell communists as well?
I should again point out that Lenovo's sales headquarters are in Purchase, NY and that their executive headquarters are in Raleigh, N.C.
Make it 4,096-bit encryption, and make in xxd format. Then mail it out them as snail mail.
Good luck, government!
Similarly other posts say that the advantage of apt is the Debian repositories. That's an advantage of Debian, not of apt. Ubuntu uses apt and dpkg, yet Ubuntu's package repository != Debian's package repository.
/etc/apt.d/sources.list by default, they're just commented out by default. You can enable them in synaptic or Ubuntu's default package manager (based on synaptic) with a couple of mouse clicks.
Actually, Debian universe and multiverse are in the
if you want to watch something "live" the you have to see them anyway. I would think this is how most people with tivo use their TVs; with tivo just as a video-recorder if there is 2 things on at the same time which they want to watch or if they are going to be out... it might seem like a lot of people will never see ads but I would bet that they do
Sure they do. People watch lots of "live" TV; however, I think it's getting less and less common. As people are all very busy, they still want to watch shows, they just want to watch them when they want to and have time to.
I think about my own situation: I've been considering building a MythTV DVR for a little while now. One of the reasons is that I don't always get a chance to watch what I want because of all the things I do -- I have a full-time 40+ hr/week job, I have a very part-time side business that I work on occasionally, I volunteer for a 501(c)(3) non-profit that I'm involved with -- which usually ties up at least 3 nights of my week, and I'm writing a book.
I don't have time to watch TV "live" all the time, and as a result, I end up missing some of my favorite shows....
I think this is how most people are using it -- to time shift their favorite shows so that they can watch them when they have time -- and I don't think I'm unique at all in not having very much time on my hands to watch TV.
I've had a Gmail account for well over a year, and while Gmail's spam filter is very good, I wouldn't say it's perfect. I've seen much fewer pieces of spam get through as compared to other spam filters I've used with far less required work on my part, but the occasional piece of spam still gets through.
No spam filter can be perfect, IMHO.
We could debate on the best ways to kill spam 'til the cows come home, but no one has found a 100% foolproof way to combat spam as of yet that doesn't require a complete reconstruction of the Internet's e-mail infrastructure and I doubt that we'll see anything much in the near future.
It's "too difficult and time consuming" to rollover a link to see if it's real link or an IP address or bogus URL? I dunno about you, but if I get an e-mail from my bank telling me to click a link, it better have the same domain as the URL I'm accustomed to going to do my online banking or I won't go there.
It's "too difficult and time consuming" to ask yourself, "Gee, would my [ISP/bank/telco/cellular provider/etc] really ask me to provide [credit card #/password/personal information/etc] via an e-mail, especially when I've already provided them with this information in the past? Gee, why wouldn't they contact me in person if there were really a problem?" And think about it: especially if it's a credit card #, they really really want to get paid and not very likely to use an insecure and unreliable channel such as e-mail to get such information from you. They're far more likely to call you on the phone or send you some snail mail.
C'mon. Do we really expect that people are that dumb? Is this what it's come to?
I suggest everyone read Atlas Shrugged. Really. Right now. Go do it.
When a user compiles the glue code and links it with the binary-only component to produce a kernel module, the result is a derived work of the GPL'd Linux kernel. Note that I didn't say "and loads it into a running kernel". That's not really relevant. Technically, it's somewhat unclear whether the GPL gives users the right to create otherwise unauthorized derived works, but the general interpretation (including by the FSF) is that people can do whatever they like, and it's only when they start distributing that the question of whether or not the GPL has granted them permission becomes important.
Exactly -- sort of. This is what makes the difference. The binary-only code, by itself, is not a violation of GPL. The glue code is not a violation of GPL. And, actually, compiling and linking the glue code to link the binary driver to the GPL kernel is also not a violation of GPL.
The GPL is a permission to distribute and/or modify the copyrighted work. But, it limits that distribution and/or modification to set of specific restrictions. In general, the FSF has taken the position that GPL doesn't kick in until you distribute a work or a derived work -- and this jives with copyright law, which is literally the right to copy. Courts have held time and time again that copying for personal use is and falls under fair use exemptions (see the Sony Betamax case). So using an nVIDIA or ATI closed-source driver with the a GPL Linux kernel falls under fair use exemption, IMHO. (IANAL) But if you distribute the driver and loadable kernel module, now you're falling out of the fair use exemption and violating GPL.
What the parent poster is trying to say is this:
If you have a hand-build Intel or AMD box, what chip do you have the most access to? The chip that's in your box! If you're building and trying out exploits that use fuzzing techniques, the best way to do that is with your own equipment. It gives you a playground with which you can run the target OS and/or app in a debugger and watch what happens in realtime when you send different types of data.
So in that respect, you gained a little bit of security through obscurity by running on PPC. Now that Macs are running Intel, all bets are off -- these same crackers can now just run Mac OS X on their own box and they've got they're own playground even without having a Mac.
...more specifically the entertainment value of being tazered, when you get caught trying to board a flight with it. ;-)
Actually, believe it or not, as scary as this sounds, it's more like if, not when.
Sure, the TSA has sensors that can check for certain high-order explosives (including RDX, aka cyclonite, the main explosive ingredient of Composition C4) but it's not whether or not the sensors detect it, it's whether or not the TSA employees bother to check.
My wife once worked as an undercover security employee -- her job was to smuggle anything through airport security, including drugs, weapons, explosives, etc. If she made it through, the screening employees got written up. And you know what? More often than not, she got the stuff through.
This isn't a business where you can just walk in off the street, pick up a hammer, and get to work. You have to study, you have to work, you have to be skilled.
You could say the exact same thing about millwrights and it would be 100% true. Yet, most millwrights are card-carrying union members.
The Borg.
I agree. The problem is, the Democrats are equally foul, corrupt, and incompetent. So who am I supposed to vote for?
D. None of the above.
Convince enough people to vote for a third-party candidate. Third-party candidates do win elections, there are today third-party office holders (the Libertarians, for example, have been staples of local-level positions for decades) and we have even had a third-party President. It's important to note that the Republicans were, at one time, a "third party"!
Yeah, the scripts functionality is cool! I found this the other day quite by accident. Found the 'nautilus-scripts' folder and saw it was empty. While I was moving some other things around, I accidentally moved a script in there and lo and behold -- a 'Scripts' submenu appeared on my right-click menu! And underneath it was the script I just threw in there. To steal a line from Keaunu Reeves, "Whoa!"
/etc as root without having to launch a whole root Nautilus session. So I threw together a simple script something like this:
I thought about some of things I wished Nautilus could do, and one of those was being able to edit files under
#!/bin/bash
gksudo "gvim $*"
and was it just like "cool!" when it worked.
I've been thinking of a gazillion more uses for this functionality.... maybe I'll try submitting some of the really cool ones to that g-scripts project on Sourceforge you mentioned.
Not just bulletin boards. Think Instant Messenger in 3D.
... getting your butt out of the chair and meeting people in real life?
;)
Like, say
Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
Mod parent up!
Exactly. I run Ubuntu, and between the Debian patches and the Ubuntu patches, I've got a very stable kernel because they're constantly backporting the bugfixes from newer kernels and releasing them into the apt repositories.
Stability and polish are up to the distro maintainers -- on everything. Not just the desktop, not just the apps, but on the kernel, too.
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed...
And you're not alone. Most people I know (including myself) have only one choice when it comes to highspeed Internet access. The community I live has an exclusive agreement with Comcast. DSL is not an option in my area due to distance to the CO.
So if Comcast says "Oh, well, we're throttling back Gmail and throttling up Hotmail because Google doesn't pay us and Microsoft does", I'm pretty screwed as well. My choices are 1) move, 2) get dialup, 3) use Hotmail.
Maybe if they pull that crap, I'll have to sue them for loss of access to my data...hmmm...
If you open a Sun E10000, you'll find that it looks a lot like a mainframe on the inside.
Yeah, I've seen 'em. Sun E10Ks are practically mainframes. And they cost about as much, too.
Of course, when it comes to raw transactional throughput, your average E10K running Solaris and Oracle just doesn't hold a candle to, say, an IBM z9 Enterprise Class running z/OS and DB2.
Does anyone know of any (non VENDOR) studies & comparisons vs traditional computer architectures?
Mainframes are traditional computer architecture! Unix is 'new' compared to mainframe technology.
The modern mainframe is, in general, vastly more reliable than even the best of the best of 'big servers.' Mainframes are generally redundant to the point that you can change out thefr CPUs, memory, drives, etc. without turning the power off or rebooting the machine. Linux and Unix servers might boast about a couple of years of uptime, but many mainframe systems have been up for decades.
Many mainframe systems can process orders of magnitude more transactions than your typical *nix system running Oracle -- even when compared to systems with SMP, gigabytes of memory and the latest in high-speed storage. In fact, the stuff that people use nowadays for high-speed, high-reliability storage -- storage area networks (SANs) -- have their roots in mainframe technology. EMC, one of the market leaders in SANs was formerly part of Data General. In fact, so does most of the rest of your high availability 'enterprise-class' technologies -- SMP, NUMA, clustering, etc. Where do you think Linux's current SMP technologies came from? IBM. Who developed them on mainframes, ported them to AIX and then eventually ported them to Linux.
Massively-clustered systems like Google's are quickly become the norm for high-end stuff. But there are certain things that will probably always run on Big Iron. Whenever tasks are mission-critical and need to 24x7 and 'three 9's' doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg in what you need in reliability -- you'll see mainframes running those tasks more often than not.
You make the assumption that MS-DOS was an operating system. MS-DOS was a program loader. Operating systems actually handle things like memory and process management, task scheduling, handling devices, etc.