Re &quot;technology that is over twenty<div>years old,&quot; yes, way over.  I think the</div><div>seconds clock started for Unix on </div><div>January 1, 1969.  It was already being</div><div>test driven at Bell Labs by that time,</div>
<div>so it is somewhat older.  In about </div><div>1965 MIT and Bell Labs were trying</div><div>to develop Multics, but it bogged down</div><div>in complexity, and the &quot;camel is a </div><div>horse designed by a committee&quot;</div>
<div>syndrome.  Ken Thompson took the</div><div>basic Multics goals and wrote &quot;Unix&quot;</div><div>by himself, in assembly language.</div><div>Brian Kernighan came up with name</div><div>Unix, as some kind of play on Multics.</div>
<div>Ritchie then develops &quot;C&quot;,  Unix is</div><div>mostly re-written in C, and in terms</div><div>of concepts, not much has really</div><div>changed since then.</div><div><br></div><div>AT&amp;T handled Unix very badly in</div>
<div>terms of capitalizing on its potential.</div><div>Bigshots and bureaucrats took over</div><div>control of it&#39;s use, and the opportunity</div><div>was basically squandered.  Had AT&amp;T</div><div>sold Unix at a low price, even with the</div>
<div>hardware costs of the time, Microsoft</div><div>might never have happened.  Too, </div><div>Unix would have run well on the </div><div>Motorola 68,000 chip family, and </div><div>the world might not have had to deal</div>
<div>with the silly 80X86 chip family.</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway,  what could have been.</div><div><br></div><div>What could make Unix obsolete?</div><div><br></div><div>No idea.</div><div><br></div><div>   -- Bob</div>
<div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 1:37 PM,  <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:peyeps@iserv.net">peyeps@iserv.net</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
&quot;Well I apologize this has turned into an X-bashing rant...&quot;<br>
<br>
Not knowing the ins and outs of X, I can&#39;t agree or disagree with you.<br>
However, there is something that has tickled my mind a bit lately.<br>
<br>
Our current technology is built on the backs of those who have gone<br>
before.  The idea behind open source is that people are free to<br>
incorporate the work of others going forward.  This is fantastic, in that<br>
we don&#39;t have to keep re-inventing the wheel.<br>
<br>
But I&#39;ve noticed, there are three operating systems, Mac, Windows and<br>
Linux.  Further Mac uses BSD for the nuts and bolts.  So what we have here<br>
is technology over twenty years old.<br>
<br>
Now Microsoft has claimed they threw the baby out with the bathwater when<br>
they developed their new Windows 7 Mobile or whatever they call it.<br>
<br>
But I can&#39;t help wondering if it just might be time to start over.<br>
Gigabyte memory and terabyte storage was inconceivable decades ago when<br>
Unix was developed.  Given the amount of time it will take to develop a<br>
new set of standards, one might start out by creating a conceptual<br>
standards document based on what will probably be available in five or ten<br>
years, and some idea of what kind of communications infrastructure will be<br>
available.<br>
<br>
I have yet to see what I think of as a personal computer, something that<br>
can carry on a verbal conversation, possibly through a blue tooth headset,<br>
and when necessary projecting images, and is small enough to fit in a<br>
pocket.  What is the operating system that will support that?   Years ago,<br>
when Next was being developed, one of the problems the developers were<br>
experiencing was fitting an objected oriented operating system on a Unix<br>
based file system.<br>
<br>
Just speculating.  Wonder if I will see anything like this in my lifetime.<br>
 Haven&#39;t seen my flying car yet.<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>