[GRLUG] Thinking of App Servers

[Bob Kline]

Re "technology that is over twenty
years old," yes, way over.  I think the
seconds clock started for Unix on
January 1, 1969.  It was already being
test driven at Bell Labs by that time,
so it is somewhat older.  In about
1965 MIT and Bell Labs were trying
to develop Multics, but it bogged down
in complexity, and the "camel is a
horse designed by a committee"
syndrome.  Ken Thompson took the
basic Multics goals and wrote "Unix"
by himself, in assembly language.
Brian Kernighan came up with name
Unix, as some kind of play on Multics.
Ritchie then develops "C",  Unix is
mostly re-written in C, and in terms
of concepts, not much has really
changed since then.

AT&T handled Unix very badly in
terms of capitalizing on its potential.
Bigshots and bureaucrats took over
control of it's use, and the opportunity
was basically squandered.  Had AT&T
sold Unix at a low price, even with the
hardware costs of the time, Microsoft
might never have happened.  Too,
Unix would have run well on the
Motorola 68,000 chip family, and
the world might not have had to deal
with the silly 80X86 chip family.

Anyway,  what could have been.

What could make Unix obsolete?

No idea.

   -- Bob


On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 1:37 PM, <peyeps at iserv.net> wrote:

> "Well I apologize this has turned into an X-bashing rant..."
>
> Not knowing the ins and outs of X, I can't agree or disagree with you.
> However, there is something that has tickled my mind a bit lately.
>
> Our current technology is built on the backs of those who have gone
> before.  The idea behind open source is that people are free to
> incorporate the work of others going forward.  This is fantastic, in that
> we don't have to keep re-inventing the wheel.
>
> But I've noticed, there are three operating systems, Mac, Windows and
> Linux.  Further Mac uses BSD for the nuts and bolts.  So what we have here
> is technology over twenty years old.
>
> Now Microsoft has claimed they threw the baby out with the bathwater when
> they developed their new Windows 7 Mobile or whatever they call it.
>
> But I can't help wondering if it just might be time to start over.
> Gigabyte memory and terabyte storage was inconceivable decades ago when
> Unix was developed.  Given the amount of time it will take to develop a
> new set of standards, one might start out by creating a conceptual
> standards document based on what will probably be available in five or ten
> years, and some idea of what kind of communications infrastructure will be
> available.
>
> I have yet to see what I think of as a personal computer, something that
> can carry on a verbal conversation, possibly through a blue tooth headset,
> and when necessary projecting images, and is small enough to fit in a
> pocket.  What is the operating system that will support that?   Years ago,
> when Next was being developed, one of the problems the developers were
> experiencing was fitting an objected oriented operating system on a Unix
> based file system.
>
> Just speculating.  Wonder if I will see anything like this in my lifetime.
>  Haven't seen my flying car yet.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/defanged-6511
Size: 4212 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20100312/b5cdb48f/attachment-0001.bin