Aw Joe cut him some slack - he's a newbie, and hasn't been
through rounds of behavior modification drug analyses from
you yet:)
Jeff - you've been warned. We don't take kindly to mockery
of the Really Serious Subjects around here. ):-(
(That's meant to be a frown emoticon).
And, before getting into this miserably tedious & predictable
discussion, may I kindly ask that posters *at least* show
some courtesy by simply sending their gems to FoRk only;
I've been getting double cc's on most of these, and they're
barely worth scanning once, let alone twice. Thx :)
Ron
Jeff Bone wrote:
> MOST ESPECIALLY
> they should be laughed at and then firmly spanked for this recent
> sophomoric dodge that says the browser is a part of the operating
> system. GMAFB. Somebody ought to go hand BillyBoy any undergrad OS
> text and make him write the definition of "operating system"
I agree and disagree with bits & pieces of what Jeff's written
over the last few days, but I pretty certainly disagree with the
above. Both in specifics and in intent (tactics & strategy).
If there's one thing I think MS is absolutely correct about,
and in many ways ahead of the market on, it's this issue
that OS=the network. Sun's been saying it for years -
'the network is the computer'. Java is their attempt
to combine node-access and network-access into one framework.
MS is simply doing the same with the integration of OS functions,
and application level network access which increasingly means
making every identifiable component on a desktop, or buried
below it, be web accessible.
All the Ted Nelson lovers
out there on this list love talking about the exponential
effects of networks. What's wrong with making our machines
inherently network machines, and not having the network
as merely an afterthought?
Browser+OS is as obvious an emerging trend as embedding
IP stacks into Berkeley Unix was 20 years ago. Demanding
that MS not do that is, well, it's plainly ridiculous.
As to the "textbook" defn of an OS - sorry Jeff, I don't
buy that for an instant. Your "textbook" will be found
to have varied vastly over the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
As we layer more and more complexity in our "apps", they
merely migrate down to our "infrastructure". That's normal,
that's good.
Besides, those of us who are of a mindframe that nothing
in computing (or heck,anywhere) is sacrosanct, and all
is subject to critical review & even revolution, would
answer your claim with "WHO CARES what the textbooks
call an 'OS'- it's not what OSes of the future will be!"
Change doesn't happen by rigidly insisting on sticking
to old classifications & labels. An OS by any other
name is a network-OS-browser-server-whathaveyou.
Hence, I'm against calls for MS chinese walls and breakups and all
taht stuff. If MS is actually trying to build what we
actually want in a technology future (and I think they
are, damn'em), I'm quite against anything that would
bust that. What I AM interested in are other technologies
that take MS on squarely and try to do the same thing,
and sway the market a bit their way! I still think it
can be done.
Frankly, I remain more interested in the Sun/Java lawsuit
than the DOJ one. I believe that the only way to have
a viable competitive platform to MS is for the industry
to create one, not for Washington lawyers to file suit.
And the industry has tried, and failed -- there was Unix/Posix, there
has been Apple. Some of you think Apple is the future,
some think Linux is. You may be right. But there
are a lot of good reasons to think that the best hope
left is an industry standardization on Java as a *machine*
spec (ie, with standard class libs and all), not just a language.
And MS, in sensing that threat to Windows and sabotaging Java, I think
is a bigger challenge to what we want than all the DoJ issues.
Sun are far from saints, but they seem to at least be
fighting the right battle in this case.
Well, now my useless & boring opinions are there for
all to see too.
Frankly, I'd much rather have read responses to
my VOID/FADD post than to this. DOn't we all get
enough MS commentary elsewhere?