Re: [9fans] MS Research reinvents Inferno?

[Wes Kussmaul <wes@village.com>]

Ronald G Minnich wrote:

> There are no real new ideas in CS popping around at this point, so we 
> are reduced to recycling each other's socks. So it goes. We're in an 
> evolutionary, not a revoluationary, business. This may be permanent, it 
> is hard to tell.

Minutes ago I got a message from a journalist friend with just the 
subject _New OS Announced_ and a link:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/12/prweb321987.htm

So ok, you needn't bother following that, it points to a press release 
by a white box pc vendor announcing that you can buy their computers 
with the new AX5 operating system that looks and works like Windows and 
opens MS Office files and runs this long list of Windows programs.

In other words it's some flavor of Linux with WINE and probably Open 
Office 2.0 and some hastily gimped graphics.

But to my friend it's a NEW OS!

Here's the thing. If someone has found a way to educate him to the fact 
that he can have these things and finds a way to get him using it, then 
indeed it IS a new OS.

So Ron, you say there's nothing new in CS, that we're just recycling 
each others' socks. How about combining socks with shirt and pants and 
offering a whole wardrobe? If that doesn't qualify as CS then so what? 
It's making computers more useful to people who don't know a lot about 
how they work.

With some effort and especially some imagination, someone could deliver 
something to my friend that not only emulates Windows but delivers much 
more than he ever knew he could have. How about a bounded online space 
where he can share files with his friends around the world with a fair 
degree of security? How about keeping DLL-land in its outdoor space, 
leaving it to its buffer overflows etc. but having an InDoor space a few 
keystrokes away?

I once read an article about companies selling specialized vehicles 
complaining about how their competitor had just put some special purpose 
equipment on a plain vanilla truck chassis and called it a specialized 
vehicle. A customer was then quoted saying how he preferred the latter 
not only because it was cheaper but that maintenance of the truck part 
was a commodity skill, parts were readily available etc. and it was just 
fine with him that someone found a way to quickly cobble something new 
out of readily available pieces. That, it seems to me, qualifies as 
truck science. But even if it doesn't it was probably a very fun thing 
to do. Sort of like finding a way to put Linux in ROM and replacing the 
stupid BIOS with it.


-- 
Wes Kussmaul
CIO
The Village Group
738 Main Street
Waltham, MA 02451

781-647-7178


My uncle likes to say that the world’s biggest troubles started when the 
serpent said, “Try this fruit, and by the way if a bunch of people 
collectively calling themselves Arthur Andersen signs something it’s the 
same as if a person named Arthur Andersen signed it.” I don’t get the 
serpent and fruit part. Must be some Swiss mythology thing. He can be a 
bit obscure.

                          P.K. Iggy
                          _How I Like Fixed The Internet_
                            (Tales from the Great Infodepression of 2009
                            and the prosperity that followed)