I fear this, too. It's a legitimate risk. Except that really good musicians will continue doing what they always have, which is make a complete work and a complete experience. The folks who've been releasing one song and a bunch of crap (IOW, pretending to be good musicians), are the ones who should worry.
Oops, I forgot this point. Artists who make 1-2 good songs are the ones who will succeed in online music. Nobody is interested in 10 catchy singles of the same artist, so they won't succeed. There will be absolutely to room at all for a new interpretation of a symphony, some exploratory tenor sax work, or cora music from West Africa because all music will be consumed in downloadable three minute sound bytes on demand -- the artists who write the catchiest tunes now will also continue to and succeed -- at the expense of more serious musics.
Where have you been? The music industry as such has _always_ been "destroyed" in this sense.
In the current system, as a music lover, I buy 200-300 CD's every year, and feed money to the system. My "vote" counts much more than that of teenbopper's, and that's why serious music is still produced. Us music lovers drive the music economy much more than teenybopers who buy a couple of Ani DiFranco or Moby albums every year. Thus, the music that we demand -- jazz, classical, folk, world, and misc -- continues to be produced. In the new system, there are no serious music fans, because all fans are reduced to Moby downloading automatons. There will be no money to drive into the system, and the teenyboppers who listen to Moby are just as important as serious music lovers who enjoy serious music.
I'm not sure anyone should. But that's not for me to say; the question is, did you? Because that's all that separates the music lovers (who trade music to _share_ what they enjoy with others) from the leeches (who are just looking for some free crap) in this debate.
I don't offer music I like on Napster, because I don't have authorization from the artists, and I believe that they should be paid. People who download -- but also share -- music on Napster are just as much leeches as those who share nothing. I don't download anything from Napster, but I have logged on in order to browse their crappy music selection. Lots and lots of Limp Bizkit, Ani DiFranco, Moby, Rage Against the Machine -- but no serious music. Only the weakest, most banal top 40 pop music.
There is NO obscure music on Napster - only teenybopper music. If you are new to music, or somewhat casual about music, it may seem obscure to you, but it is not obscure for more serious music fans. Open up a copy of a respectable music magazine, look at the reviews, and then search for the artists on Napster. You won't find them. Napster is a haven for top 40 fans, people who watch MTV, listen to Techno music, and watch music awards shows on teevee, but serious music fans have no interest.
My #1 biggest fear by far about Napster is the fact that music will be reduced to songs. Albums will no longer be produced because they will be too expensive to download, and because everybody will demand catchy three minute jewels of pop.
Most serious music lovers know that albums are complete works, to be listened to and ejnoyed in full. Today music lovers dictate the music industry; they spend much more money on music than casual fans. When casual music fans (e.g. Napster users) begin to dictate the music industry, it will be destroyed. And we will have nothing but catchy songs - not albums.
Today musicians are incredibly free; they have 75 minutes to do whatever they want on a CD. When online distribution becomes the norm, the artistsic goal of every musician will be to make a jewel of pop which sounds good and catchy on a $400 Compaq over a 56k modem. Is this where you want your music headed?
You hear many casual fans say "why pay $18 when there are only 1 or 2 good songs". Obviously, they are listening to radio backed top 40 music, and nothing serious. All of the best music contains no filler on the albums. In fact, most albums end up leave me wanting more.
I have logged on to Napster, and I found music of _none_ of my favorite artists, who are slightly or very off the beaten path. The only artists available on Napster are the top 40 hitmakers. I had literally hundreds of choices of where to download the latest Ani DiFranco and Dixie Chicks hits, but nobody was offering any Lucy Kaplansky or Rebecca Pearcy.
My fear that online distribution will homogenize the music industry has already come true; the average Tower records has infinitely more selection than the meager lot available on Napster: the ONLY music available on Naspter in quatity is stuff like top 40 hits, techno, and other related teeny-bop genres.
What you need to understand is that most slashdot readers are extremely liberal and want the government to get much bigger and much more powerful. Instead of the free market deciding what technology gets made, most slashdot readers would rather that the government interfere and make design decisions, e.g. you can't integrate this product with that. If you want a libertarian view of the case check out http://www.moraldefense.com, which asserts that the government is breaking fundamental rights by persecuting Microsoft. Since most slahdotters are trendy and fashionable liberals, they want the government to get bigger and bigger and bigger to help stamp out all of the Big Bad Evil Corporations. It's pathetic, really.
It wasn't TOPS-10, it was TECO, a text editor which ran under TOPS-10, as well as all other DEC operating systems. The command "make" was a way of invoking TECO, but has nothing at all to do with the "make" command under Unix.
The latest and greatest version of OpenVMS still ships with TECO with this easter egg.
Ah, so you've seen Amadeus. Mozart did not die in a pauper's grave - in fact, he amassed quite a but of wealth in his lifetime. Don't believe the movies. He was also 35, not 33.
7) Microsoft becomes irrelevant, everybody realizes that open source is just a fad and can't make good software, Apple and the Unix companies go out of business because the clueful realize it's too insecure/unstable, Compaq makes a 2.4 GHz 21464 Alpha, for cheap, and everybody switches to VMS.
The key is that you start and exit IE much more than you reboot. My Windows machines at work has been up just under six months without a reboot, and I start IE at least five or six times per day. It takes about 1 second. Now netscape takes about 10 seconds to start. Suppose, the overhead of IE is 15 extra seconds for the computer to boot. The cost of starting IE 5 times per day, on a computer booted once every six months is 915 seconds. The cost of starting Netscape 5 times per day on a computer booted once every six months is 9000 seconds. Case closed. This does not count rendering time either, which IE is also much faster at than Netscape.
Re:Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
The fall of DEC is typically accounted to their failure to account for the emerging Unix and workstation market. The systems Sun had out in the mid-1980's were something like triple the speed of a MicroVAX II, but at less than a third of the price. Sun cleaned up of course. DEC didn't understand why people would want to use anything but a VAX and terminals in people's office.
I am an ex-DECcie also, but I think the Compaq move is an excellent step. You can have the best engineers and the best products in the worlds (as DEC has since at least VAX/VMS) but if you can't sell them, they're worthless. DEC's demise is living proof of that. You have to strike a balance between excellent engineering and excellent marketing (I think Intel is the best example, or possibly IBM) - Compaq has a potential to do this now and be extremely successful.
Keep in mind, though, that the DOJ isn't beating up Microsoft because Microsoft took unfair advantage of the general public. We mere citizens don't count shit to the government. Microsoft is being punished for screwing over a number of other multi-billion dollar corporations.
And if you had bothered to read my message before ignorantly blathering a reply to it, this was precisely a point. The point of antitrust law (which is on shaky ground, anyways) is to protect consumers not competitors, that's the point. This suit is about protecting competitors, not consumers. That's why this case is wrong, and why MS will win on appeal
Er, I said that they never _bought_ any technology, not that they never borrowedany ideas. All of the code in this case was developed in house.
Additionally, the Windows scroll bar is now proportional and is NOT like the Mac's so this point is entirely irrelevant to idea borrowing, unless you are using Windows 3.1.
If stealing ideas was illegal, Linux would be outlawed. It is much more blatant a ripoff of a commercial product (Unix, and it even steals a lot from Windows, c.f. Wine and even KDE) than Windows is of any product. Strange that nobody picks on Red Hat for (a) shipping a product without writing almost any of the code (b) not even buying the code (like Microsoft does) and (c) using code which itself is a ripoff of commercial products. If you are judging on percentage of original ideas/code Red Hat is considerably more evil than Microsoft.
The point of anti-trust law is not that large successful companies are bad, but that large successful companies can use their size bully their competitors, throw up barriers to entry, stifle innovation, and generally be not very nice.
But none of this happens. I run over 10 operating systems at home. There is no barrier to entry, and no barrier to competition. You may have heard of an operating system known as "Linux" which would not exist if there was a barrier to entry since it was developed with almot no capital.
The ruling recognizes the fact that Microsoft was acting to the detriment of consumers and of market forces. To violate anti-trust law you have to be hurting consumers (killing Dr. Dos, trying to kill Netscape, price fixing, compelling OEMs to exclucively carry their product, forced product bundling, etc.).
The only thing in the findings of fact that the judge said hurt consumers was the fact that Microsoft tried to get rid of technology such as Java. There is no evidence that trying to compete against DR-DOS, Netscape, etc. hurt consumers.
The whole irony of netscape is that netscape themselves were a monopoly before IE. Before IE, Netscape was like 95% of the market, MS enters, and it drops down to 50%, and netscape goes crying to the to police. It sounds more like netscape was trying to kill MS to me.
So driving Dr. Dos into the ground wasn't persecution? Burying DESCView was lauding innovation? Blocking startups from entering the playing field increases innovation? Hell's frozen over as well then?
MS drove DEQSview into the ground because it has a superior product (Windows). This is good for consumers because they get a better product. You want to use a text-based multitasker? You think it is bad for consumers that one company innovates (golly-gee!), creates a graphical multitasker (Windows), and puts the textbased one out of business? I suppose you also think that the introduction of the lightbulb was unfair and a detriment to consumers because all of the candlemakers went out of business.
Other way around. Now technology may (finally) be guided by the marketplace, rather than on the whims of Microsoft.
Nope... technology is owned by the government now. With this precedent they get to decided what's in the consumer's best interest, the consumers don't get to decide any more.
Microsoft'sflagship product, Windows, was developed completely in-house. Windows NT, while derived from VMS, has mostly Windows add-on's (i.e. it is completely recognizable as VMS). Microsoft's Internet Explorer, while very early versions were derived from NCSA Mosaic, newer versions are completely unrecongizable as that and contain almost totally new code. Microsoft's Office products were completely developed in-house.
Let's take a look a Microsoft's competitors.
Sun's flagship product was derived mainly from AT&T and Berkeley (and many other companies, including Microsoft!) It hasn't changed enough from the original source to be considered non-derived.
Red Hat writes less than 2% of the code in their flag ship product. Ditto for all other distributions.
Corel never developed a word processor (e.g. Word Perfect). They merely bought one. They write less than 2% of the code in their Linux distribution.
HP, IBM, and DEC all ship operating systems which are also based on AT&T/Berkeley.
It appears to me that Microsoft is doing much more of their own work than their competitors. How can you claim they just bought it? Why are you not complaining about their competitiors which do much less innovation?
Commander Taco uses Linux, a very primitive operating system which places an arbitraty limit of 8 characters on a user name. Thus, DarthTaco would not be acceptable. However, he can switch to DarthT~1.
Which of these systems do view as being non-Unix, and which of them are the most interesting which have potential to bring new innovation?
As for your sig, I still think it is a Unix bigoted quote because (a) it does not read "Those who do not understand (some other system) are condemned to reinvent poorly", and (b) it asserts that Unix is the be-all and end-all of OS'es (i.e. that all OS'es will end up wanting to be like Unix).
I'd say that Unix is extremely well understood by the OS development community. Considering every successful OS is Unix based, it seems the problem is too much understanding of Unix, and too little understanding (or even exposure to) anything else.
Unfortunately, Pike's points flew competely over you. The issue is not the actual drivers which control devices (the low, low level stuff) but the intermediate interfaces, particularly the API and language.
It is part of the Unix design philosophy, for example, that every device is a file. Since this idea has existed for over 30 years with no innovation, its stagnant. Whether or not this is the correct way to do it is up for debate.
Applications do not rely on what device drivers, but they device drivers do rely on the OS API. Linux still does not have proper asynch I/O support, even thouse VMS did over 20 years ago, and Windows does today also. This is something which fundametally affects the way applications are implementes.
Different paradigm's in computing will lead to tremendous advance. The linguist Whorf put forward the hyopthesis that one's language tremendously influences the way one thinks. You can look at software development like this; language and API, put together, shapes how programmers think. There haven't been many new ineteresting programs written on Unix in C for a long time, but C++ gave everything a good kick in the side and bigger and better applications could be built. If the research continues to be stangant (as it appears to be) nothing new will ever come. A different type of OS has the potential to revolutionize software because it will enable programs which weren't before possible to be written. As long as anything that's non-Linux is a bad word, that will never happen.
It is interesting that while the masses claim that Microsoft has done no innovation, the darlings of the media, Linux, have directly ripped off much of their stuff from Windows (c.f. KDE), and the rest of the stuff was based on even earlier technology.
Something like the Windows desktop, which was the first truly object oriented desktop, was extremely innovative. If you were using computers prior to 1995, you would know that before this everything lived in a separate hierarchy, and had an inconsistent interface. Microsoft put everything under one umbrella and succeeded, trememendously. And when you keep in mind that not only did their software have to work on every PC of every conceivable configuration, but that it also had to be completely backwards compatible with everything else done in the past 20 years, you will realize what an achievement this was. Linux, while it has a clean slate and none of the legacy Microsoft had in 1995, it still playing constant catch-up and mostly merely imitating Microsoft's ideas.
Er, Plan 9 is not an old system. The fundamentals used in Linux were done over 30 years, but Plan 9 is completely different and was designed 10-15 years ago. COnsidering VMS is 20 years old and is substantially different as well as considerably more technically advanced than Unix/Linux, I would expect Plan 9 to have good ideas also Of course, it will be DOA because it doesn't have the word "Linux" in it, because everybody will say no to any non-Linux system - not because of technical issues, but because of orthodoxy.
Name one fundamental _technical_ innovation made by open source in the last 20 years. (and, no, KDE is not an innovation, it's just a rip-off of Windows)
This is what people who advocate standard do not "get". If you build a new OS, the entire point is to be able to develop new types of applications. Nobody wants to runs the same old applications - that is the point. The reason to build a new OS is to present new ideas for application development. People run applications, not OS'es, and then run the OS which has the applications. When you advocate standards, you are basically saying, any program which will ever be created must run on current machines, and any machine which will ever exist in the future must be able to run current applications.
Standards, particularly POSIX, are _the_ biggest barrier to real software innovation.
As long as POSIX exists, software will not innovate. It will just develop. Sure, a Unix implementation is better than one from 1980, but it's still the same thing: it's just been tweaked. As long as Unix orthodoxy continues - it will be the only choice, along with all of its problems. I started using Unix 10 years ago, and I've been saying "been there, done that" for the past 3. The whole Unix world is incredibly stagnant. The only thing new is incremental changes or copies of other stuff. Nothing revolutionary. It hasn't even caught up to what VMS had 20 years ago, not to mention all of the changes which would have occurred if Unix hadn't halted all OS development.
Last year, Ken Thomspon made his vehemently anti-Linux thoughts known to the public, and now Rob Pike, the ultimate advocate of the Unix philosophy, calls Linux and Unix stagnant. Dennis Ritchie is known to post to Usenet from a Windows machine, though he hasn't officially denounced Unix yet. Heck, Bill Joy has publically stated that he doesn't understand why people think VI is a good program.
This speaks volumes to me.
The originators have done their thing, and went on and did more new interesting things (e.g. Plan 9) while the masses continue to worship them and their legacy. It is virtual proof that Unix succeeded only because it was in the right place at the right time (the start of the workstation revolution), and that its technical quality was so weak, that not even the originators are proud of the work.
Pike is 100% correct in stating that Unix (and, moreover Linux) has greatly marginalized and made stagnant systems development. As I've said before, you can create the best OS in the world which does everything right, but the first thing anybody will ask is "Is it POSIX compliant?" and they won't use it otherwise. The whole article echoes the thoughts I've had about this issue for some time.
Ironically, Christopher, your very signature perpetuates his biggest point: orthodoxy. Unix/C/Emacs are orthodox and the only fundamental change in Unix in the last 10 years in Netscape. It is this sort of orthodox -- the fundamental resistance to anything non-Unix -- which makes this such a powerful point. Linux is now orthodox and anything which tries to resist Linux is considered blasphemy (just look at the posts in this group). By promoting orthodoxy you are perpetuating lack of diversity, but ultimately lack of innovation.
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I fear this, too. It's a legitimate risk. Except that really good musicians will continue doing what they always have, which is make a complete work and a complete experience. The folks who've been releasing one song and a bunch of crap (IOW, pretending to be good musicians), are the ones who should worry.
Oops, I forgot this point. Artists who make 1-2 good songs are the ones who will succeed in online music. Nobody is interested in 10 catchy singles of the same artist, so they won't succeed. There will be absolutely to room at all for a new interpretation of a symphony, some exploratory tenor sax work, or cora music from West Africa because all music will be consumed in downloadable three minute sound bytes on demand -- the artists who write the catchiest tunes now will also continue to and succeed -- at the expense of more serious musics.
Where have you been? The music industry as such has _always_ been "destroyed" in this sense.
In the current system, as a music lover, I buy 200-300 CD's every year, and feed money to the system. My "vote" counts much more than that of teenbopper's, and that's why serious music is still produced. Us music lovers drive the music economy much more than teenybopers who buy a couple of Ani DiFranco or Moby albums every year. Thus, the music that we demand -- jazz, classical, folk, world, and misc -- continues to be produced. In the new system, there are no serious music fans, because all fans are reduced to Moby downloading automatons. There will be no money to drive into the system, and the teenyboppers who listen to Moby are just as important as serious music lovers who enjoy serious music.
I'm not sure anyone should. But that's not for me to say; the question is, did you? Because that's all that separates the music lovers (who trade music to _share_ what they enjoy with others) from the leeches (who are just looking for some free crap) in this debate.
I don't offer music I like on Napster, because I don't have authorization from the artists, and I believe that they should be paid. People who download -- but also share -- music on Napster are just as much leeches as those who share nothing. I don't download anything from Napster, but I have logged on in order to browse their crappy music selection. Lots and lots of Limp Bizkit, Ani DiFranco, Moby, Rage Against the Machine -- but no serious music. Only the weakest, most banal top 40 pop music.
There is NO obscure music on Napster - only teenybopper music. If you are new to music, or somewhat casual about music, it may seem obscure to you, but it is not obscure for more serious music fans. Open up a copy of a respectable music magazine, look at the reviews, and then search for the artists on Napster. You won't find them. Napster is a haven for top 40 fans, people who watch MTV, listen to Techno music, and watch music awards shows on teevee, but serious music fans have no interest.
A slashdot reader who gets it!! Finally!!
My #1 biggest fear by far about Napster is the fact that music will be reduced to songs. Albums will no longer be produced because they will be too expensive to download, and because everybody will demand catchy three minute jewels of pop.
Most serious music lovers know that albums are complete works, to be listened to and ejnoyed in full. Today music lovers dictate the music industry; they spend much more money on music than casual fans. When casual music fans (e.g. Napster users) begin to dictate the music industry, it will be destroyed. And we will have nothing but catchy songs - not albums.
Today musicians are incredibly free; they have 75 minutes to do whatever they want on a CD. When online distribution becomes the norm, the artistsic goal of every musician will be to make a jewel of pop which sounds good and catchy on a $400 Compaq over a 56k modem. Is this where you want your music headed?
You hear many casual fans say "why pay $18 when there are only 1 or 2 good songs". Obviously, they are listening to radio backed top 40 music, and nothing serious. All of the best music contains no filler on the albums. In fact, most albums end up leave me wanting more.
I have logged on to Napster, and I found music of _none_ of my favorite artists, who are slightly or very off the beaten path. The only artists available on Napster are the top 40 hitmakers. I had literally hundreds of choices of where to download the latest Ani DiFranco and Dixie Chicks hits, but nobody was offering any Lucy Kaplansky or Rebecca Pearcy.
My fear that online distribution will homogenize the music industry has already come true; the average Tower records has infinitely more selection than the meager lot available on Napster: the ONLY music available on Naspter in quatity is stuff like top 40 hits, techno, and other related teeny-bop genres.
What you need to understand is that most slashdot readers are extremely liberal and want the government to get much bigger and much more powerful. Instead of the free market deciding what technology gets made, most slashdot readers would rather that the government interfere and make design decisions, e.g. you can't integrate this product with that. If you want a libertarian view of the case check out http://www.moraldefense.com, which asserts that the government is breaking fundamental rights by persecuting Microsoft. Since most slahdotters are trendy and fashionable liberals, they want the government to get bigger and bigger and bigger to help stamp out all of the Big Bad Evil Corporations. It's pathetic, really.
It wasn't TOPS-10, it was TECO, a text editor which ran under TOPS-10, as well as all other DEC operating systems. The command "make" was a way of invoking TECO, but has nothing at all to do with the "make" command under Unix.
The latest and greatest version of OpenVMS still ships with TECO with this easter egg.
Ah, so you've seen Amadeus. Mozart did not die in a pauper's grave - in fact, he amassed quite a but of wealth in his lifetime. Don't believe the movies. He was also 35, not 33.
Most bands only get 25 - 35 per CD that is sold.
Proof please?
The other $15 - $20 goes to the store, distributor, record label, etc.
Proof please?
With the exception of the handful of mega-bands like U2 & Pearl Jam, most bands make the bulk of their money from playing live.
Proof please?
7) Microsoft becomes irrelevant, everybody realizes that open source is just a fad and can't make good software, Apple and the Unix companies go out of business because the clueful realize it's too insecure/unstable, Compaq makes a 2.4 GHz 21464 Alpha, for cheap, and everybody switches to VMS.
Software makers are liable for his software? So I can sue Torvalds when his crap pukes all over my hard drive and over writes all of my files?
The key is that you start and exit IE much more than you reboot. My Windows machines at work has been up just under six months without a reboot, and I start IE at least five or six times per day. It takes about 1 second. Now netscape takes about 10 seconds to start. Suppose, the overhead of IE is 15 extra seconds for the computer to boot. The cost of starting IE 5 times per day, on a computer booted once every six months is 915 seconds. The cost of starting Netscape 5 times per day on a computer booted once every six months is 9000 seconds. Case closed. This does not count rendering time either, which IE is also much faster at than Netscape.
The fall of DEC is typically accounted to their failure to account for the emerging Unix and workstation market. The systems Sun had out in the mid-1980's were something like triple the speed of a MicroVAX II, but at less than a third of the price. Sun cleaned up of course. DEC didn't understand why people would want to use anything but a VAX and terminals in people's office.
I am an ex-DECcie also, but I think the Compaq move is an excellent step. You can have the best engineers and the best products in the worlds (as DEC has since at least VAX/VMS) but if you can't sell them, they're worthless. DEC's demise is living proof of that. You have to strike a balance between excellent engineering and excellent marketing (I think Intel is the best example, or possibly IBM) - Compaq has a potential to do this now and be extremely successful.
Keep in mind, though, that the DOJ isn't beating up Microsoft because Microsoft took unfair advantage of the general public. We mere citizens don't count shit to the government. Microsoft is being punished for screwing over a number of other multi-billion dollar corporations.
And if you had bothered to read my message before ignorantly blathering a reply to it, this was precisely a point. The point of antitrust law (which is on shaky ground, anyways) is to protect consumers not competitors, that's the point. This suit is about protecting competitors, not consumers. That's why this case is wrong, and why MS will win on appeal
Er, I said that they never _bought_ any technology, not that they never borrowedany ideas. All of the code in this case was developed in house.
Additionally, the Windows scroll bar is now proportional and is NOT like the Mac's so this point is entirely irrelevant to idea borrowing, unless you are using Windows 3.1.
If stealing ideas was illegal, Linux would be outlawed. It is much more blatant a ripoff of a commercial product (Unix, and it even steals a lot from Windows, c.f. Wine and even KDE) than Windows is of any product. Strange that nobody picks on Red Hat for (a) shipping a product without writing almost any of the code (b) not even buying the code (like Microsoft does) and (c) using code which itself is a ripoff of commercial products. If you are judging on percentage of original ideas/code Red Hat is considerably more evil than Microsoft.
The point of anti-trust law is not that large successful companies are bad, but that large successful companies can use their size bully their competitors, throw up barriers to entry, stifle innovation, and generally be not very nice.
But none of this happens. I run over 10 operating systems at home. There is no barrier to entry, and no barrier to competition. You may have heard of an operating system known as "Linux" which would not exist if there was a barrier to entry since it was developed with almot no capital.
The ruling recognizes the fact that Microsoft was acting to the detriment of consumers and of market forces. To violate anti-trust law you have to be hurting consumers (killing Dr. Dos, trying to kill Netscape, price fixing, compelling OEMs to exclucively carry their product, forced product bundling, etc.).
The only thing in the findings of fact that the judge said hurt consumers was the fact that Microsoft tried to get rid of technology such as Java. There is no evidence that trying to compete against DR-DOS, Netscape, etc. hurt consumers.
The whole irony of netscape is that netscape themselves were a monopoly before IE. Before IE, Netscape was like 95% of the market, MS enters, and it drops down to 50%, and netscape goes crying to the to police. It sounds more like netscape was trying to kill MS to me.
So driving Dr. Dos into the ground wasn't persecution? Burying DESCView was lauding innovation? Blocking startups from entering the playing field increases innovation? Hell's frozen over as well then?
MS drove DEQSview into the ground because it has a superior product (Windows). This is good for consumers because they get a better product. You want to use a text-based multitasker? You think it is bad for consumers that one company innovates (golly-gee!), creates a graphical multitasker (Windows), and puts the textbased one out of business? I suppose you also think that the introduction of the lightbulb was unfair and a detriment to consumers because all of the candlemakers went out of business.
Other way around. Now technology may (finally) be guided by the marketplace, rather than on the whims of Microsoft.
Nope ... technology is owned by the government now. With this precedent they get to decided what's in the consumer's best interest, the consumers don't get to decide any more.
Microsoft'sflagship product, Windows, was developed completely in-house. Windows NT, while derived from VMS, has mostly Windows add-on's (i.e. it is completely recognizable as VMS). Microsoft's Internet Explorer, while very early versions were derived from NCSA Mosaic, newer versions are completely unrecongizable as that and contain almost totally new code. Microsoft's Office products were completely developed in-house.
Let's take a look a Microsoft's competitors.
Sun's flagship product was derived mainly from AT&T and Berkeley (and many other companies, including Microsoft!) It hasn't changed enough from the original source to be considered non-derived.
Red Hat writes less than 2% of the code in their flag ship product. Ditto for all other distributions.
Corel never developed a word processor (e.g. Word Perfect). They merely bought one. They write less than 2% of the code in their Linux distribution.
HP, IBM, and DEC all ship operating systems which are also based on AT&T/Berkeley.
It appears to me that Microsoft is doing much more of their own work than their competitors. How can you claim they just bought it? Why are you not complaining about their competitiors which do much less innovation?
Commander Taco uses Linux, a very primitive operating system which places an arbitraty limit of 8 characters on a user name. Thus, DarthTaco would not be acceptable. However, he can switch to DarthT~1.
Christopher -
Which of these systems do view as being non-Unix, and which of them are the most interesting which have potential to bring new innovation?
As for your sig, I still think it is a Unix bigoted quote because (a) it does not read "Those who do not understand (some other system) are condemned to reinvent poorly", and (b) it asserts that Unix is the be-all and end-all of OS'es (i.e. that all OS'es will end up wanting to be like Unix).
I'd say that Unix is extremely well understood by the OS development community. Considering every successful OS is Unix based, it seems the problem is too much understanding of Unix, and too little understanding (or even exposure to) anything else.
Unfortunately, Pike's points flew competely over you. The issue is not the actual drivers which control devices (the low, low level stuff) but the intermediate interfaces, particularly the API and language.
It is part of the Unix design philosophy, for example, that every device is a file. Since this idea has existed for over 30 years with no innovation, its stagnant. Whether or not this is the correct way to do it is up for debate.
Applications do not rely on what device drivers, but they device drivers do rely on the OS API. Linux still does not have proper asynch I/O support, even thouse VMS did over 20 years ago, and Windows does today also. This is something which fundametally affects the way applications are implementes.
Different paradigm's in computing will lead to tremendous advance. The linguist Whorf put forward the hyopthesis that one's language tremendously influences the way one thinks. You can look at software development like this; language and API, put together, shapes how programmers think. There haven't been many new ineteresting programs written on Unix in C for a long time, but C++ gave everything a good kick in the side and bigger and better applications could be built. If the research continues to be stangant (as it appears to be) nothing new will ever come. A different type of OS has the potential to revolutionize software because it will enable programs which weren't before possible to be written. As long as anything that's non-Linux is a bad word, that will never happen.
It is interesting that while the masses claim that Microsoft has done no innovation, the darlings of the media, Linux, have directly ripped off much of their stuff from Windows (c.f. KDE), and the rest of the stuff was based on even earlier technology.
Something like the Windows desktop, which was the first truly object oriented desktop, was extremely innovative. If you were using computers prior to 1995, you would know that before this everything lived in a separate hierarchy, and had an inconsistent interface. Microsoft put everything under one umbrella and succeeded, trememendously. And when you keep in mind that not only did their software have to work on every PC of every conceivable configuration, but that it also had to be completely backwards compatible with everything else done in the past 20 years, you will realize what an achievement this was. Linux, while it has a clean slate and none of the legacy Microsoft had in 1995, it still playing constant catch-up and mostly merely imitating Microsoft's ideas.
Er, Plan 9 is not an old system. The fundamentals used in Linux were done over 30 years, but Plan 9 is completely different and was designed 10-15 years ago. COnsidering VMS is 20 years old and is substantially different as well as considerably more technically advanced than Unix/Linux, I would expect Plan 9 to have good ideas also Of course, it will be DOA because it doesn't have the word "Linux" in it, because everybody will say no to any non-Linux system - not because of technical issues, but because of orthodoxy.
Name one fundamental _technical_ innovation made by open source in the last 20 years. (and, no, KDE is not an innovation, it's just a rip-off of Windows)
This is what people who advocate standard do not "get". If you build a new OS, the entire point is to be able to develop new types of applications. Nobody wants to runs the same old applications - that is the point. The reason to build a new OS is to present new ideas for application development. People run applications, not OS'es, and then run the OS which has the applications. When you advocate standards, you are basically saying, any program which will ever be created must run on current machines, and any machine which will ever exist in the future must be able to run current applications.
Standards, particularly POSIX, are _the_ biggest barrier to real software innovation.
As long as POSIX exists, software will not innovate. It will just develop. Sure, a Unix implementation is better than one from 1980, but it's still the same thing: it's just been tweaked. As long as Unix orthodoxy continues - it will be the only choice, along with all of its problems. I started using Unix 10 years ago, and I've been saying "been there, done that" for the past 3. The whole Unix world is incredibly stagnant. The only thing new is incremental changes or copies of other stuff. Nothing revolutionary. It hasn't even caught up to what VMS had 20 years ago, not to mention all of the changes which would have occurred if Unix hadn't halted all OS development.
Last year, Ken Thomspon made his vehemently anti-Linux thoughts known to the public, and now Rob Pike, the ultimate advocate of the Unix philosophy, calls Linux and Unix stagnant. Dennis Ritchie is known to post to Usenet from a Windows machine, though he hasn't officially denounced Unix yet. Heck, Bill Joy has publically stated that he doesn't understand why people think VI is a good program.
This speaks volumes to me.
The originators have done their thing, and went on and did more new interesting things (e.g. Plan 9) while the masses continue to worship them and their legacy. It is virtual proof that Unix succeeded only because it was in the right place at the right time (the start of the workstation revolution), and that its technical quality was so weak, that not even the originators are proud of the work.
Pike is 100% correct in stating that Unix (and, moreover Linux) has greatly marginalized and made stagnant systems development. As I've said before, you can create the best OS in the world which does everything right, but the first thing anybody will ask is "Is it POSIX compliant?" and they won't use it otherwise. The whole article echoes the thoughts I've had about this issue for some time.
Ironically, Christopher, your very signature perpetuates his biggest point: orthodoxy. Unix/C/Emacs are orthodox and the only fundamental change in Unix in the last 10 years in Netscape. It is this sort of orthodox -- the fundamental resistance to anything non-Unix -- which makes this such a powerful point. Linux is now orthodox and anything which tries to resist Linux is considered blasphemy (just look at the posts in this group). By promoting orthodoxy you are perpetuating lack of diversity, but ultimately lack of innovation.