[ColorForth] OS is Not a Dirty Word

[Jeff Fox <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Kurt B. Kaiser" wrote: 
> finishes booting." This concept has spread to the point 
> where even a geek can say to me, "Well, I wouldn't want 
> an operating system without a browser."

Microsoft announce long long ago that their vision
was the new internet. They wanted to take the high
ground, naturally.  The strategy that they announced
was to very smartly recognize that the user interface
on the Web SHOULD be the on your desktop too!
This simplifies things!  It makes good technical sense!

But it also makes more sense if you consider that
if MS does that, they own the web.  90% of users
will be locked into their OS and all their software
as soon as they want the web, so the web is 90%
theirs and the rest is split a dozen ways between
Apple, Linux, workstations and appliances. Those
are the next targets.

Look at the hit statistics at you website to
see what browers your visiter use.  Most don't
lie.  Athough iTV claimed to Netscape as I
recall to get predictable behavior.

I wince when programmers say that the microsoft
monopoly is a monopoly because they have the
best products and the proof is that they are
the only ones who's development tools stay
in sync with the OS that everyone uses!

DUH. That's why it is terrible. That is why
it is awful.  That is why it is unlawful.
That is why they are a monopoly.  That is
why they can lock in all problems that
they make and lock other companies out of
solving those problems.  They have inside
information, we don't.  If we hit the
mark better than them anyway, they just
break our code with a few changes in the
next version and engulf and devour
another remaining small bit of the market
that they do not already own.

They are so good at it, that programmers
think their making everyone's jobs 1000
times more difficult with clearly unlawful
behavoir is a good thing, that their products
are better because MS has the power because
it is a monopoly to and that it does intentionally 
break everything for eveyone else as much as they 
can.  They even break their own stuff as much as 
possible for upgrade strategies.  The more
they own the less threat, the more they can
break, the higher the profit margins for them.

As they gain more and more of the market they
can break things more and more because there
cannot be competition in that kind of marketplace.

The federal goverment steps it and shows which
is actually more powerful.  First the feds lose
in the court.  Then in a wonderfully deceptive
way MS apologizes and makes up for it by
donating billions of dollars of hardware and
software to SCHOOLS!  OH MY GOD!

And people say, "how generous of them!"

The old "Why is C and Unix so widespread and
Forth so obscure?" question always has one answer.
Because it got a foothold in the schools.  This
has not escaped MS.  They have the best marketing
people in the world there no doubt.

How kind of them to give their ideas away to
kids... ;-)

> So
> now an "OS" is a bloated hairball with a bazillion services: 
> web browsers, audiovisual capability, editors, GUI desktops 
> and file managers, wallpaper, icons, ad naseum.

And we have a two party system, don't forget.  They
hate each other and have everything except for the
reason and strategy to be intentionally wasteful
exactly the same.  Just like the two party political
system in the US.  Anything else, like Forth is
a "wasted vote."  People hate to vote, those who
do say it was just the lesser of the two evils.
What a system!

The next thing you know voting will become
obsolete and we can have one party, and
one branch of government.  (my politics
are showing, stick to Forth Jeff, but we
know you mean just like in computing!)

They have sold the "User Illusion."  People think
it is good.  Chuck wants to "Dispell the User Illusion."
He says OS is a dirty word, an obsolete concept,
sold by marketing to GET you.  I agree. But...

> The
> The traditional definition of an OS is an entity which 
> manages processes and access to the physical resources 
> of the system. If you haven't got many
> resources, and/or you don't use processes, then the 
> OS can be tiny.

Well the way I see it 10x for the extra layers of
required abstraction needed because there are
1000 differernt version of any actual part, the
10x needed for 1000 drivers to meet all the 
new layers of abstraction, the 10x resulting
from the decrease in performance by aiming for
abstraction instead of hardware, the 10x
resulting from not being able to take full
advantage of new hardware features because
they don't have universal abstraction yet,
the 10x needed to deal with the insanity of
backwards compatibilty, the 10x needed to
deal with the intentional insanity in MS
Windows, the 10x in the job of board designers
who's jobs are made nearly impossible because
of trying to meet their realtime requirements
via Windows software and you have a good start.  
You have added a 1000000000% overhead to 
your REAL computation problem.  Talk about
marketing genius!
 
> But over the years knowledgeable people have 
> recognized the need for uniform
> access to resources.

And every detail of the problem is locked in.
The REAL problem that was X has been turned
quite literally into 10000000X for you.
 
> Let's say Chuck implements TCP/IP. I surely would 
> expect others to use this code to access the net, 
> and not to reimplement it in every application. In this
> way the core colorForth is providing net access as 
> a _service_ to the rest of the software.

Yes. Like an OS which Chuck complains about.
He also says that we have to have standards in things
like commincations, but not everywhere multiplying
any work by huge numbers.
 
> If resource access code is duplicated all over the system, 
> it is unlikely to be stable, and a maintenance nightmare. 
> ("@$%@ Who screwed up the removable
> storage?")

NO kidding!  People think Chuck's approach is to let
each user write their own file system since Chuck
doesn't usually put one in his apps.  If you copy
his OS you must write you own.  We must all be
lone wolves like Chuck!

Picture what would happen to disk! ;-) Instant
garbage.  And that is exactly what the world
thinks sounds like a good idea to us too!

These are very hard ideas to get because we are
so used to soundbytes that we are conditioned
to react to connotations instead of fully
enclosed ideas.
 
> In addition, if the system is multiprogrammed (e.g. 
> The user has a mailer and a browser running at the 
> same time) there will be resource conflicts unless there
> is a locking strategy, possibly enforced by hardware.

Like we had at iTV.  Our tiny bit of code and the
approach enabled not just well behavied multitasking
with fast task switches but lots of resource ownership
by tasks.  All the locking and releasing and allocating
and garbage collection and all the stuff that is needed.  
It also covered multi-processing. After all that's a few 
words of code if you want nano-second task switches etc.

But people are happy with a task switch taking
8,000,000,000 cycles occasionally under Windows.
 
> The colorForth core, with services like TCP/IP, USB, 
> and keyboard/screen
> access, is a (simple) OS, IMHO.

I agree. And Chuck's idea is NOT that it is JUST
for him and everyone should copy him and write
an incompatible version with everything else!

The "lone wolf" soundbyte is one I hate.
I hate wolves.  They are big, ugly, hairy, stinky,
cowardly things that have to travel in packs just
to try to gang up on things like Foxes which
they will eat.  No sir, I don't like wolves.
But I like Chuck.

"lone wolf" is almost a non-idea anyway, wolves
are not loners.  They need a pack like some ...  
 
> Of course you could have the policy that the video 
> buffer was not controlled by
> the OS, and anybody could write to it at any time.

I can't PrtSc images from my video player into
anything else because of that under this MS
software.  It would be handy when composing the
html transcripts and adding static images.
 
> Solution? Start over again with hindsight.

Sure.  And systems have things that lock out 
changes.  Everything is so dependent on everything
else that events in punctuated equalibrium are
very rare.  

I used to think evolution, erosion, depostion,
etc. mold the planet very slowly.  After millions
of years you see change.  I didn't conisider
how every few million years POW something comes
down from the sky, punches a hole in the crust and
breaks it, the skin peals back, the crust moves
all around and instantly you have a whole new
planet that soon locks into another "stable"
phase where nothing much can change.

We have the potential for POW with a technology
this radical.  We have the opportunity to
start over right if the key locks can be broken.
And it scares the hell out of a lot of people.
It also excites us.

But we also face the soundbyte, "You can't start
over, you must make evolutionary changes."

Too bad that most people don't understand
evolution at all.  But these problems have
a way of getting locked in.  The problem
that people don't get evolution either
is not unrelated to THIS problem IMHO.
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