The Issue 34 of OpenBeOS’ newsletter is out. Topics discussed is VM2, is a newly designed virtual memory system designed specifically for OpenBeOS. It is completely object oriented and designed for easier maintenance. Another topic is “Beatrice: Coordinates, Views and Messages” and the commentary “The Fate of Microsoft“.
Virtual Memory Design for OpenBeOS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I guess it took more than 50 engineers to support an OS like the size/install base of Windows
I recentley read in one of Eugenia comments that OpenBEOS developers were hardly coding anything. I remember, because she even mentioned that she and her friends use to laugh on the OBOS developers a lot. And now I read this. I just find it a bit confussing. So, how is OpenBEOS doing? Are they progressing or not?
Cheers.
> laugh on the OBOS developers
Wrong. We had a giggle on the *progress* of the project, NOT on the developers. BE CAREFUL what you write here.
If you are going to use my name, make sure you don’t create the wrong impression about my beliefs. There are developers WHO DO work for OBOS, problem is that the large majority is not, and there are many kits which haven’t seen a single line of code yet.
>And now I read this.
What you read is a *document* on the design of a new VM. The report is not about the VM being actually written.
Eugenia,
The new VM2 HAS been written. It is in testing and the newsletter gives an overview of what it does.
Cheers
David
Good to know. I know that Michael does some real work there, Axel and 5-6 more people as well. But that doesn’t change my statement that other kits and sub-projects had literally 0 progress in 1.5 years. The kernel until a month ago didn’t have any real progress either since it got forked from NewOS. It seems that slowly new things are happening in the kernel, and this is of course good.
Sorry Eugenia, you are right. You were not laughing on the developers but on the project progress. Which is close but not the same.
Your words were exactly:
“Maybe I should have recorded the laughs we have over dinner, each time we talk about OpenBeOS’ progress, goals and more over the PROMISES.”
in: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2604&offset=45&rows=60
So, again, I apologise.
Regarding the VM, I guess I got confussed because of the sentence: “Topics discussed is VM2, is a newly designed virtual memory system designed specifically for OpenBeOS”.
I confussed designed with written. My fault.
I didn´t want to bother anyone, but I am still wondering how is the project doing?
I’m looking forward to seeing OpenBeOS in action, I wish them all the best of luck in implementing and designing a topnotch desktop OS.
Um, yeah, whatever. This guy gives a host of reasons why Microsoft’s stock is losing value, which is true, and sounds rational enough. He then goes on to say Microsoft reminds him of “Rome in the 200’s” and “The computing world is hungry for a better desktop. That is the niche that OpenBeOS can fit into, if we can be ready”. Ha! Ha! Ha! Label me a troll if you will, but this is just plain delusional. OpenBeos is nowhere near to being a usable system. Even Linux, which has a long head start, is going to have a tough time replacing Microsoft on the desktop. It could happen, maybe in ten years. A lot can change in that amount of time. But OpenBeos will never replace Windows. Ever. That’s just a fact. However, in five years maybe they will have a nice, usable hobbyist or sound geek’s operating system.
why laugh at someone elses toil, hardwork, and dedication…
instead of laughing why not contribute, code, support, compliments to what they have accomplished… at least they’r making an effort..
i applaude them
~J
If you’re referring to my comment, I’m not having a laugh at anyone’s hard work or dedication. I’m having a laugh at someone’s absurd editorial.
i’m not refering to one person in particular…
a generalization
~J
>>>This guy gives a host of reasons why Microsoft’s stock is losing value, which is true, and sounds rational enough.
Holding microsoft stock options are still pretty good when you compare with all those who are holding linux stocks which are all down 99%.
Why do you write in bold, CAPS and italic whenever you need to say something that has been said over and over several hundred times?
Furthermore, why do you feel like you need to justify your point of view to the hundreds of morons that visit OSNews and write comments? They are just that – a bunch of morons.
If you get all angry and act like a snotty schoolgirl, people will think badly of you. Hell, I’m not going to count all the times people have made fun of you because of this. Why do you insist on feeding their imaginations?
As for the topic, it’s good to have progress. I remember when they promised an alpha version for last Christmas. Obviously that didnt happen. Similar hint from YellowTAB. Didnt happen either. I’ve been in the OpenBeOS kernel code though and I liked what I saw – it’s clean, easy to understand even for a newbie and it looks simple, yet powerful. Great things await OpenBeOS. It just needs a little reality check occasionally.
I like the newsletters on the OBOS site, they are well written, and thought provoking. They should just check out spellcheck.net
I for one am glad to see the Axel Dörfler project starting to make some progress.
Office is a huge, bloated mess. It is hard to use, hard to integrate, and, in trying to suit everyone, it suits no one.
Ok, look, Michael’s done some nice things with OpenBeOS (in concept), but this statement is beyond absurd. Office probably has more than 100 million users–obviously, it’s doing something right. I personally know over a hundred people who use it constantly in a productive work environment; clearly it can’t be that “hard to use.” Sure, it has its faults and things that annoy me, but there are a ton of competitors out there, and believe me, there are many reasons to choose Office besides just the file format. Making such blanket negative statements about a product that millions of people seem to be able to use productively–without any data or other arguments, no less–just makes him sound unintelligent.
I don’t know almost anyone who really likes Microsoft or most of their products.
This alone demonstrates that he’s basing his opinions on geeks rather than on real users (which brings up many questions regarding his ability to know what real people want). Sure, it might be chic to dislike Microsoft, but how many real people don’t like IE, Office, and Windows? I know at IBM we bought thousands of copies of both Windows and Office (even though we obviously got OS/2 and SmartSuite for free) because people liked them better. Have you ever seen a review site where Office came out behind its competitors (and no, contrary to popular disaffected-geek belief, Microsoft does not pay thousands of sites and companies a year just to rank Office better)?
Mozilla may finally be catching up, but IE was a great browser years ago! And even John Carmack went on Slashdot of all places and said that Visual Studio was the best development environment out there. So please dispense with the narrow-viewed belief that everyone hates Microsoft and all of their products. If you truly believe this, you are simply not fit to manage a project targetting end-users. The intelligent study their competitors to see what they are doing right rather than delude themselves into believing that Microsoft can do no right.
One of the key ways that Microsoft has motivated its employees is with stock options.
Of course, this is simplistic and ignores the fact that Microsoft is largely regarded as a wonderful place to work. How many Microsoft employees do you know that hate their jobs? By contrast, how many college graduates each year eagerly make that plane flight out for an interview?
I can not believe that there are not 50 competent people at Microsoft who could write a quality operating system.
In fact, there are many more. If you cannot see Windows 2000 and XP as quality operating systems–not without their faults, of course, but quality nonetheless–then you are hopelessly blinding yourself.
The computing world is hungry for a better desktop. That is the niche that OpenBeOS can fit into, if we can be ready.
Yep. It’s so hungry that two years ago, when Windows was less good than it is today (XP wasn’t out and 2000 hadn’t really caught on yet), Be couldn’t succeed even by giving the BeOS away. Oh, and of course, they were giving away an OS that is more complete than OpenBeOS will be for years.
It’s one thing to make something as a hobby, and I think that’s great. It’s quite another to propogate inept beliefs about competing products.
Holding microsoft stock options are still pretty good when you compare with all those who are holding linux stocks which are all down 99%.
Yeah, I wasn’t saying their stock is worthless by any means. I was only agreeing that it has indeed lost value, which makes Mr. Phipps’ editorial sound rational at first. No one will strike it rich by buying Microsoft stock. It will probably continue to grow over time, but slowly.
“There are developers WHO DO work for OBOS, problem is that the large majority is not, and there are many kits which haven’t seen a single line of code yet.” – eugenia
too true. however, a classic example of a good developer doing good work to a neglected kit is probably best stated if one looks at the midi kit. since the project’s inception, that particular kit did nothing and went nowhere fast really. since matthijs took over, things have got off the ground. having keen coders clearly makes all the difference than a multitude of disinterested part-timers.
i’ve seen this asked before, and people supposedly in the know claim the status screen is out of date, but can someone from the team update it to represent the current position? all this talk of vm2, and app_server code fests is great and encouraging, but it would be brilliant to see the dials moving.
anyway, good work. keep it up
>>>>Yeah, I wasn’t saying their stock is worthless by any means. I was only agreeing that it has indeed lost value, which makes Mr. Phipps’ editorial sound rational at first. No one will strike it rich by buying Microsoft stock. It will probably continue to grow over time, but slowly.
The so-called editorial was a complete non-sense with this issue. He claimed that Microsoft employees no longer have much of a incentive. The problem is that the only reasonable analysis on employee incentives are to compare employee incentives of other firms — i.e. would you switch jobs to work for another firm who offers you better incentives.
Well, employees nowadays, the incentive is not to get fired because of poor job prospects in silicon valley in general. That’s incentive #1.
Second of all, even if you can find a job elsewhere, would you accept stock options from a start-up when chances are the start-up will go belly-up before they IPO’ed. So all your stock options are worthless. That’s incentive #2.
And if you got hired by a non-start up. What are the chances that your company’s stock would drop like a stone when compared with Microsoft’s recent “minor” stock drop. Every silicon company have their stock drop more than Microsoft. That’s incentive #3.
Microsoft just declare a dividend and stock split. How many silicon valley firm declares a dividend — none. That’s incentive #4. How many silicon valley firm is doing REVERSE stock split — a lot of companies — that’s incentive #5.
Michael is largely correct in his analysis of Microsoft, its products, and the customer, going by conventional wisdoms. Those wisdoms that were so easily sneared at by the dot com generation, only to be proved right when the gloss wore off. Unless Microsoft manages to break into new markets before the reality distoprtion field wears off, I can see their terminal decline starting very soon, if it hasn’t started already.
The editorial also claims companies that “can not define itself or its customers in one sentence.” The most successful companies in the world are GE, Microsoft and Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway — all of them are conglomerates.
Arguments about spreading too thin and all the other divisions losing money. Problem with that argument is that most of those division’s competitors are losing money too. For instance, WebTV (or whatever that’s called) vs. Liberate. Liberate posted “profits” earlier and now they restated their results for the last 2-3 years. Corporate officers were sacked and investigations are everywhere. MSN a basketcase — so as AOL as well.
And the argument with the 40 billion (and he claims it’s 2 years of operating funds) is truely incorrect. Go and look at RedHat and all the other linux companies — when sales and profits are bad, RedHat (and Mandrake last week with their bankruptcy thing) talks about positive cash flow — they always talked about how they achieved positive cash flow. Microsoft has close to 10 billion dollars of positive cash flow a year.
The Rome argument is idiotic too. All the major anti-MSFT competitors are the ones “fiddling while Rome burns”. SUN is fiddling with java lawsuits while IBM/BEA controlled 70% of the enterprise java market. Oracle lost database market share to IBM when Larry went on a ant-MSFT crusade. Oracle gained some market share back last year against IBM when Larry went to New Zealand to participate for the challenger series of the America’s Cup. Last week, Larry’s sailing team lost and he’s back fiddling with Lindows “while Rome burns”.
I am currently studying this in school and I am curriouse as to the algorithum.
RJW: you point out that Linux is having a hard time at getting to the desktop and then draw a line to why OBOS will not make it either….the problem is that OBOS and infact the other BEOS clones out there are being built to have a desktop API, a fully integrated and consistent environmnet and are much more cohesive than Linux in terms of architecture of the entire platform….OBOS is aiming for the desktop and as long as they are Free (as is freedom) they will persist long enough for people to make applications for their platform with a nice API. I think that the BEOS Clones will have a much better chance at winning a large portion of the desktop market.
bkakes: your comments about why office is good are not valid in Logic (opinion is diffent). if everyone in my neighborhood bought space alien repelant and used it, does that mean that since everyone is using it and there are no aliens around that it must be doing something right?
people use Office for one reason….everyone else does…..people started useing office for one reason…..MS offered steep discounts on office to businesses who licenced Windows and that under cut the other tools in the market, got Office 1.0 out there and began the cycle that we are in now.
>>>I think that the BEOS Clones will have a much better chance at winning a large portion of the desktop market.
Linux already has 1-2% of the desktop market. Even in the wildest dreams, BeOS clones won’t get 1-2% of that 1-2%.
@Eugenia – There is no kit that has seen no work. There are a few that have seen little work. There are many that are > 50 % done. Yes, the document is a design, but it is the (typical for engineers) post-completion design. 😉 The kernel fork happened in May. Much work happened between May and now. Including a complete reorg of the source to more fit the direction we are going in.
@KJW – I don’t think that you are a troll, but you aren’t giving enough emphasis to my last sentence – IF WE CAN BE READY. I really think that many users want something better than XP.
@sam – I can’t argue with the devaluation of Linux stocks. Of course, I thought that they were overvalued in 2000. I begged friends to get out of the stock market when it went over 11,000… Sadly, they did not.
@Elver Logo – I don’t think that I *EVER* promised a release. I said, very specifically, that I would be disappointed if we didn’t have one by the end of 2002. And I was very disappointed. I really wanted one. But the support from the community hasn’t shown up as I would have hoped. There are just not enough people who want to code to get done that quickly.
@bkakes – I am actually basing the stuff about Office on my friends here in Rochester who are professional writers (tech doc) who *HATE* Word and the rest. Word has tons of features. Many not useful to any given individual, hence the comment. While one could certainly do a whole paper or collection of papers on the faults of Office, I don’t think that you would take them any more seriously than an editorial. As far as people who don’t like MS, let’s see… The last person I had that comment from is an MSCE and a trainer for MS. Other people include artists, developers, secretaries, and so on. I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that only geeks don’t like MS products. AFA IE vs Mozilla, IE was an inferior product first. Netscape was the best. IE surpassed it for a while, but I think that Mozilla has some key features today that make it a better tool for me. I personally couldn’t care less what John Carmack uses. I have used Dev Studio, C++ Builder, Forte and Vi. And I use Vi everywhere, today. Because that is what works best for me. If I wanted to play troll, I could argue that John works on closed source apps for (almost exclusively) close source OSs, so he is biased. But I won’t. The stock option comment was from a Forbes article, IIRC, a couple of years ago. AFA the quality of Win2K, I use it daily. And reboot about once a week. My boss at work had to reinstall 2K today because it was a lost cause. Not that anything else is perfect, but it is ironic that I read this today. Finally, don’t confuse what people want with companies resistance to install R5. You know the legal issues, not to mention that R5 has warts. And OBOS R1 will, too. And so will R2. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is a market for something better.
@expensivelesbian – The “dials” are very course granularity. It is really hard to judge when to bump them up. If we go too fast, we run out of room to bump them up. If we do not move them quick enough, people complain. If we brag too much, we overpromise.
@sam – I didn’t “claim that Microsoft emloyees no longer have much of an incentive”. The wording was “One of the key ways that Microsoft has motivated its employees is with stock options.” Big difference. My only point was that MS will have to start paying people more. And that means an increase in salary budget, already MS’ largest budget item. Something that will slow growth and profitability. Comparing GM and Berkshire-Hathaway to MS is a little bit of a mistake. MS is still run like a single company. GE is not – it is run with real divisions and seperation of powers. I am not sure about B-H. Sure, MS’ competitors are losing money. That could be a sign of a few things. One is a bad business model – that would be my suspicion WRT AOL. My arguement was that if MS started to lose money suddenly, they could continue on for 2 years. Yes, they could cut people, borrow money, or whatever. The point wasn’t that there was a 2 year time bomb in Redmond, but that MS burns money fast (although not as fast as they make it, today) and that 40 billion, to a company that big, isn’t as much money as it seems like. Finally, Sun is a disaster, yes. No question. They make OK hardware for WAY more than it is worth. Oracle is gouging its customers as if it has a monopoly when it doesn’t.
>>>My only point was that MS will have to start paying people more.
Why? Employees get paid by the market rate. Job market is weak (SUN and everybody else cutting massive headcount), no need to raise salary for Microsoft. No prospect of hitting it big time with getting stock options at a pre-IPO start-up, no need to raise salary for Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft can cut salary if they want to because there are no other place for Microsoft workers in silicon valley that will offer them a better salary and a safer job position.
>>>My arguement was that if MS started to lose money suddenly, they could continue on for 2 years.
Go and read every press release by RedHat and Amazon.com when they were actually losing money — they kept on pointing out their positive cash flow. As long RedHat and SuSE keep on having positive cash flow, they argue that they can keep on forever. Not my argument, it’s RedHat and the rest of the linux industry who are not reporting any profits but stress POSITIVE cash flow.
And Microsoft has a positive cash flow of 10 billion dollars EACH year. Using the dubious RedHat/Amazon standard — when you lose money, you pay less taxes (or none at all) — as long as you have +ve cash flow, you can go on forever. There is no magic 2 year thing, doesn’t exist.
Speaking from a business point of view – a standard installation is Windows OS with Office. Why ? Because that’s what everyone says you should have.
Office XP was a joke of an upgrade and really only fixed PowerPoint – it did not fix any of the issues our 45 employees have with Outlook and Word.
We have just started to trial OpenOffice. Unfortunately, one of our programs written by a third party is tied to Word (ie. COM) so I don’t think we can use OO for them (10 users). But for the other users, we’re trialling Mandrake Linux with “rdesktop” connecting to a Win2K server.
We have the potential to save a lot of money. Office is $800 and XP Pro is $600 (with a Terminal Server License costing $150).
Usually people say the high price of a product is for the support. Well, MS charge for support – which we pay extra for and the other day they told me I would have to wait over an hour on hold (phone).
In case you’re curious – I work as the IT Manager for a multi-million dollar Insurance agency.
I don’t understand people who say Windows is crap. If Windows is crap, not up to your standards, I don’t know any OS which is. All the operating systems, linux, mac os, be os have serious shortcomings.
Remember when Windows 95 were there, people were saying the same thing, pointing out Mac OS 9 and others as a good alternative. However, Mac OS 9 is an Os which crashes more often than Windows 95. So the real point was always that people don’t want you to use Windows. But there is really nothing more than that. People tell you all the disadvantages of Windows, but they never tell you anything meaningful.
But if you just think calmly without any rush into conclusion, you see that the natural outcome of a development of Oses is actually one single Os. You won’t have multiple desktop Oses which is incompatible with each other. People will incline with only one such Os. Apple lost this war, because of their own business mistakes. Note that, Apple lost not only to Microsoft, but also Compaq, Dell, IBM and so on. These companies all beat down Apple. Apple paid the price of being closed, and doing everything by themselves. Some people try to point to Microsoft as the competitor of Apple. That’s not true at all. That’s very stupid. Apple competes with Compaq, Gateway, IBM … and Microsoft. So stop looking for alternative Oses, that’s stupid. We are not going to have new Oses that will support applications that already written for Windows.
The only real solution for people who are looking for alternatives is people like wine project, who work on support for the necessary APIs. But what they fail to see is that, if that was possible or something that was really good, Sun would pure lots of money into it. But that’s not the case, so I think that’s not a possible solution either.
“actually one single Os. You won’t have multiple desktop Oses which is incompatible with each other.”
isn’t that what standards are for ?
actually, i use to think like that when I owned an Amiga 500 and a 286.
I love this standards thing. Actually while I was writing the post I thought one guy may talk about standards, but then I concluded that probably everybody is aware of why and how standards are used.
Standards are not relavent for everything. For example, do you know any standard on the layout of web designs. Whenever you go to a web site, you have to learn its own navigation rules. Are there any standards for navigation links, link colors, background color and so on. No. You think, obviously there shouldn’t be any standards for it.
Why should we spend time to make standards for Oses so that they will run any application that is written according to the standards? Is that practical now, after so many years? While Oses were developing, while there was no clear winner, did anybody tried to make a standard for operating systems. No. Are there any company now, who tries to do that? No. You may falsely think that Mac OS X and Linux variants are all standard compliant, which is pretty much Unix. That’s also wrong, since you have to think the OS with the GUI, and none of the programs will run on the other. We have KDE and Gnome on Linux, we have Aqua on Mac Os X. None of them will work together. Java was a platform that tried to address that, but there are lots of problems with that. So if most of the applications are written in Java, or .net, yes we will solve the problem. That’s I think another solution for people who wants to move to alternative Oses.
Anyway, I couldn’t hold myself and laughed when I read your “standards” post. Hehehe. Poor standards, one of the mostly abused words these days. We also need a standard for using the word standard, since it is randomly used.
“Web development with .Net is a disaster, to put it kindly. Their pricing is outrageous. ”
Dude…you are kind of f*****d up. Have you done some dev with .NET Framework ? Would you tell us the reasons why you say it’s a “disaster” ??
Also…the pricing is outrageous !!!!? NET Framework is FREE. Also some ppl from MS wrote Web Matrix, a ASP.NET IDE. This one is also FREE.
F*** off.
If it wasn’t for standards TCP/IP would not be a protocol on every single modern and most OS platforms in existance. the 3.5″ Floppy drive or the Compact Disc would not be the same size or shape it is.
Expansion slots would be different for every hardware vendor.
other then AGP, ISA, PCI and rarely NuBus, BeOS people files would not be BeOS people files across different platforms. why are drive bays 3.5 and 5.25?
Without standards computing would be hell, Developers in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s realized this, because it was exactly that. the need to reaffirm computing standards, is more important, since Open Source is gaining popularity
Travis are you trying to make fun of yourself. From your post I couldn’t see any sign of intelligence.
I specifically explained that standards may not always make sense, don’t use the standard randomly as if it is something that should have been done always.
It is unbelievable that, an OsNews reader can write such a post. Travis, what you are practically saying is that, everything should have a standard. Maybe you are a troll, or an ignorant person, or I don’t know maybe something more serious. But standards that you are talking about are needed and implemented.
Just think about this. Oppsss sory, forget about it.
For others though, even Unix systems doesn’t have a standard. When you write a software for one of them, making it run on another one is a problem. Sometimes you can’t even compile on another platform. Hardware is not compatible, os itself is not compatible. Also there was no standard. The only standard that we had were Posix, which was good, but still didn’t solve all the problems.
There are even problems among Linux distributions. I get a sofware that says it should compile well under redhat, but I am having a problem when I try to compile it under debian.
So Travis and all others are only talking, and actually I think they make fool of themselves. If anything they say make sense, then all these operating system developers, distributors are idiots, since all do things differently and none of them try to do it according to standards so that anything can work on any other machine without any problem. So it is either those technical guys, or Travis and others.
Well, despite what Travis say, ofcourse we wish every OS could run other’s applications, but that’s only a wishful thinking, which is not possible and will never be possible.
Hei KLAMATH, vad dupa IP ca esti roman. BeOS fan? Contact me.
4 hours ago I finally got around to performing a major upgrade (nForce motherboard, AMD CPU etc). After spending almost 2 hours assembling the box, the first thing I did was boot from my BeOS hard disk. BeOS came up without a hickup, even picked up a few new devices on my new MB (Firewire, USB etc). Only networking and sound didn’t work (yet). Then I spend the next 2 hours fiddling with a Win2K installation, and I will have to spend most of tomorrow downloading service packs, patches, essential apps etc.
Ease of use – 100:1 for BeOS. This OS must not die.
What hasn’t been mentioned much but was explained at the last Begeistert was that the reason the kits are not progressing that fast is that they all depend on one huge library (libbe.so) and this is taking up a great deal of effort.
Once this is done things should accelerate greatly in the kits.
Sergio if someone makes fun of himslf it’s only You. Acting like that only makes me think about You as a total jacka$$. If You don’t agree with someone just write it, there’s no need for being rude.
And standards ARE good, and i don;t agree with You that there should be only one OS. I think companies should try to work on new standards (POSIX is old, and was ment for “commanline” times), unfortunetly most decision making people there has to be like You, without any interpersonal skills.
Java is not an option IMHO. Better way would be something like AmigaDE, and best some standard like POSIX only for GUI (most GUIS are very similar anyway – so it wouldn’t be too limiting). Organization like w3c for GUI would be kewl.
As for OBOS progress i’m very happy to see so much news about it in last few days
Yes, we’ll not have it tomorrow, but we’ll have it. And making something super fast doesn’t mean it will be good. Often it’s better to think about organization/architecture/structures… first, instead of just writing (and than rewriting whole thing hundred times).
dude … he’s talking about Visual Studio.
As a VB developer, it cost $300 for VB3 Pro, $90 upgrade to VB4, we skipped V5 and VB6 Pro cost $600.
Now we can’t get a VB.net as there is no such thing. They are all incorporated into Visual Studio and that costs $2,500.
The idea of a single OS might look good, and has some pros, but there is a major con:
SECURITY.
whichever OS will dominate the world in the future, being the only one will lead to lots of security problems. Just for the same reason having a single crop used in the whole US makes all the corn gets destructed by a virus at once, a computer virus could then bring the whole world down because we put our eggs in the same box.
IT isn’t as much different as nature.
Biodiversity is necessary to human survival, so is technodiversity to computers.
It’s interesting to see more work being done on replacement BeOS. BeOS my big hope for a Windows replacement when it was first ported to Intel, as a desktop OS it’s obviously far superior to Windows or Linux. But BeOS failed to get many users despite it’s speed, stability and features. There was some decent software available, but not enough for me to use it as a Windows replacement.
I just don’t see how OpenBeOS or other projects like Zeta are going to get developers porting software or users switching from Windows.
Even with all the horrible, crippling problems Linux has as a desktop OS, I still think it’s more likely to compete with Windows than a new BeOS.
quote:
dude … he’s talking about Visual Studio.
As a VB developer, it cost $300 for VB3 Pro, $90 upgrade to VB4, we skipped V5 and VB6 Pro cost $600.
Now we can’t get a VB.net as there is no such thing. They are all incorporated into Visual Studio and that costs $2,500.
umm…. no, there is such a beast, i have a copy right here
*picks up disk pack labeled microsoft visual basic.net*
i dont know where it was purchased at (it was given to me by a friend who didnt want it), but it most certainly DOES exist
>>>>Just for the same reason having a single crop used in the whole US makes all the corn gets destructed by a virus at once, a computer virus could then bring the whole world down because we put our eggs in the same box.
First thing is that this analogy only works not with crops but with animal vs. fish vs. bird. Computer OS’es live in totally separate environments.
Second thing is that if you go to CERT, all the major security problems are cross-platform anyway. For example, everybody uses the same bsd tcp-ip code, so everybody will get wipe out at the same time.
Microsoft’s profitability is not assured.
Tell me a quarter in the past decade where Microsoft didn’t report a increase in profits.
The press has recently been most harsh to Microsoft.
The press is like that. They have a issue to hype on, they do it. They don’t care who’s right or wrong, imagine the amount of money that wouldn’t be made by the press without a such law called antitrust.
But Microsoft’s stock price has fallen over the last few years, from $120 per share in Jan 2000 to under $60, now.
This is mostly due to antitrust litigation. Why? nobody wants to be caught having Microsoft shares when the the courts say split Microsoft and the appeals court agrees.
If I were a Microsoft employee, those stock options would no longer be much of an incentive to me.
Well, thank god you aren’t a stock broker. You don’t make money per se from selling and buying stock. Microsoft investors make a lot of money from the profit Microsoft makes. If you are a employee, I see no reason not to accept the stock options. After all, you would be in the gutters anyway if the courts does something harsh to Microsoft.
If the 50 people at Be could write a slick OS, I can not believe that there are not 50 competent people at Microsoft who could write a quality operating system.
You can make something as good as BeOS, perhaps much better than it. But is there any reason why? Once business and marketing enters, the reason for a rewrite becomes next to none. For example, there would have to be continuity of binary compatibility with the drivers, software. They also have to court their developers yet another time.
Making a slick OS is a great idea. But not so once business comes in view. If Microsoft would to dump it all and try again, that would be their most stupid mistake.
Office is a huge, bloated mess. It is hard to use, hard to integrate, and, in trying to suit everyone, it suits no one.
Well, guess what? You aren’t in Microsoft’s target market. Have you ever seen how a secretary or a clerk work? They type 120 words per minute, they use extenstively of macros, etc.
If they were to focus on a small distinc market, they would loose their market power and ultimately they would loose much of their profit. guess what? You are a developer. Microsoft is run by smart businessmen, not engineers.
As I wrote last time, Windows has been an insufferable pain.
Certainly not to me. BeOS have been a bigger pain to me, IMHO. While yes, it may have a fast boot speed and a responsive UI and can play 6 Quicktime movies at one time, so?
Everyone that I know curses it but sort of shrugs their shoulders as if Bill Gates has a divine right to make The One True Operating System.
Every product have its faults. Some have more than others. If there is one product that is perfect, than really, it must be the work of God.
The computing world is hungry for a better desktop.
Surveys? Statistics? Anything? Just a guess?
That is the niche that OpenBeOS can fit into, if we can be ready.
If there is a niche.
Now, let’s go through on Phillips’ business knowlegde
Microsoft has ignored and/or discarded most of the conventional business wisdom.
Conventional business wisdom is to spread yourself to different markets, but not too thin that you aren’t able to compete anymore.
Coke, for example, sells to soda drinkers.
Yes. But what happens if there is a huge crash in the soda market, Coke would be in deep shit. Besides, Coke also owns a lot of other businesses, and also makes different types of soda besides plain Coke. If Microsoft were to sell one variaty of software, that’s stupid.
software, hardware, phones, support, consulting, services and more.
Actually, Microsoft makes no phones. They make software for it thought. They also make accesories that can be considered as hardware, as well as the XBOX. But all in one, I don’t see how Microsoft is in a disadvantage because of this.
Most companies that try to extend a successful product line into a different market fail.
Not really. Amazon is becoming more and more successful, as well as potentially being profitable, from expanding from books.
Microsoft also doesn’t listen to the people who really get things done – geeks.
Most geeks aren’t businessmen. They don’t think business. They think what’s most ideal. Businessmen thinks what it best for the company. What gets them fastest to the market. What brings in most profit. Stuff like that.
I don’t know almost anyone who really likes Microsoft or most of their products.
Well, meet me. My name is Rajan, what’s yours?
Web development with .Net is a disaster, to put it kindly.
Yes, I can see you are soooo into web development, right?
…the god believing M$ apologist or the ignorant standard abolisher?
>>>>But Microsoft’s stock price has fallen over the last few years, from $120 per share in Jan 2000 to under $60, now.
>>>>If I were a Microsoft employee, those stock options would no longer be much of an incentive to me.
So what! SUN and Oracle share lost 75% of their value. RedHat shares losts 99% of their value. If I were a SUN, Oracle or RedHat employee (or the rest of silicon valley), I am in even worst shape than a microsoft employee holding microsoft stock options.
So when Microsoft employees demand more cash and less stock options, the rest of the employees at every other silicon valley company (like SUN, Oracle and RedHat) will demand even more cash and accept even less stock options.
So instead of a bad thing for Microsoft, it will be the BEST thing ever happen to Microsoft.
Also, Microsoft stated that they have no problem with expensing stock options in their annual earnings reports because it won’t affect them one bit. They said that they want to expense stock options but sided with the rest of silicon valley for respect.
The rest of the silicon valley would have a hard time expensing their own stock options, and will push them into the red immediately.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/catalog/default.aspx?subid=22&xslt…
If the link does not work, just go to the Windows Catalog site, choose Software, then Development Tools from the menu, Rapid Application Development, and finally scroll down to Visual Basic .NET.
Good Programers can get there apps to compile on multiple platforms.
But your missing the point. Standards are more basic then makeing
a binary run on Linux, and on Windows, If i want to make a e-mail
client on SkyOS I can because there is a standard for that.
And you do have a good point about html, it is a very polluted
standard, and that comes from the Netscape, IE wars.
But there are plenty of vital set Standards out there, ANSI, TCP/IP, POSIX, Kermit, yes even standard e-mail, USENET News groups, RIP Script, Ogg Vorbis , SDL to name a few. Standards are common well documented platform neutral, some are newer then others, and some are obsolete by this day and age. But they do there intended job.
Hardware standards are there to allow hundreds of Hardware vendors venders to make hardware that works and fits with other hardware from other vendors.
Lets Recap.
Standards were made to bring Computing to the Mass Market, allowing
documents, data and to be exchanged and read and write, and work between Platforms.
If i have somehow missed the point of standards please enlighten me
Carmack may not have written software expressly to be open sourced but the source for several of the ID game engines are currently available under the GPL. Not relevent but possibly interesting.
IE’s HTML isn’t all that poluted. They do have extensions to JavaScript (most of them now part of the EMCAScript), DHTML, CSS, ActiveX etc., but if you are writing a page in pure 100% HTML, you wouldn’t find IE-specific extensions. Unlike Netscape back then :-).
i hated doing websites during the NS4.x era just because making it look right under NS took soo much more work than under IE