[ColorForth] OS is Not a Dirty Word

["Arthur W. Green" <goshawk@xxxxxxx>]

> 
> Ten years ago I started in again.  We all
> had micros much bigger than our old mainframes
> that were BIG dinos.  I thought someone might 
> have learned a lesson in twenty years. ZOOM!  
> Thirty years? ZOOM!
> 
This is sort of off topic from what you are referring to, but one of the things
sort of annoys me is that they have this sense that the little $1000 computer on
their desk is an *absolute* functional replacement for many of those large
scale, very embellished and very large budget machines.

My personal experience with even stuff ten or twenty years "out of date" geared
towards the "professional" and more obviously, the "elite", is that a lot of the
real cool functionality gets lost along the way in sizing down all that
"functionality" into a nice little box that sits on your desk.

To say they 'cut a few corners' is a terrible understatement.

On another side note, it goes without saying that a lot of this compacting and
redesigning stuff to fit into smaller spaces and cost less neglects a lot of the
cooling aspects found in many of these larger scale machines. I am often
appauled when reaching into some of my modern hardware to check a hardware
revision or EPROM update to find that they are running exceptionally hot as a
"matter of course".


> Well some people do get it.  It is fun reading
> what the people in this list say.  And
> very thought provoking to me.  I hope people
> don't mind my rants.  I won't be doing too
> many unless you think I already have. ;-)
> 
I think it is essential input, rather than rants. It injects instant "interest"
and energy into this list that I simply don't find elsewhere. Regardless of what
one's opinions of this input may be. (I personally like it very much.)

> > But if traffic builds enough, and it makes sense to 
> > build our own network
> > backbones which don't support TCP/IP, and that will 
> > _look_ like a cataclysmic event in hindsight =)
> 
First, I say we design a small wearable computer that uses a one-handed variant
of Dvorak key layout. Each machine should have intercomputer and interdevice
connectivity using something to USB and a small VHF or UHF "packet radio" to
facilitate radio networking.

Then, I saw we rally up enough cash to "buy out" some surplus rockets from
Russia (hey, didn't that "rich guy" who paid 20M for the priviledge of a space
walk tell us anything at all?) to blast our own communications satellite (or
two) into a nice fair orbit around the Earth. 

Voila. Our own network. At least for part the day, if we could only afford one.
=)

Best regards,
-- Art
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