Windows Vs Other Operarting Systems

[Sri Anand]

Windows Vs Other Operarting Systems

[marc weber]

Is that going to be a pay-per-view?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

And pay, and pay, and pay...

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by Raghunandan Mamidala:
Windows Vs Other Operarting Systems

The "other" presupposes that Windows is an Operarting [sic] System...

[marc weber]

I think this was meant to read, "Windows vs. Other Malware."

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by Bear Bibeault:
The "other" presupposes that Windows is an Operarting [sic] System...

That old whine? Anything NT or later generations is most clearly an operating system.

I was in grad school when Win 3.0 was making noise, taking a course in Operating Systems from Dr Peter Denning. One of the wise guy students asked Professor Denning if DOS was an operating system, or did you have to have something good like OS/2 (he worked for IBM). Professor Denning clearly had heard this one before. He stopped, did a short lecture on the taxonomy of how you could classify things that might be an O/S, Proposed a structure, and then proceeded to show how DOS met or did not meet the definition.

In short, even as limited as MS DOS was (not IBM's DOS for mainframes) was an operating system. You could argue that OS/2 was a better O/S than DOS/Windows 3.0, but that is a different discussion.

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by marc weber:
I think this was meant to read, "Windows vs. Other Malware."

I always considered Windows a carrier. Like Typhoid Mary of folklore, Windows is a malware/virus/spyware transfer vector.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
I always considered Windows a carrier. Like Typhoid Mary of folklore, Windows is a malware/virus/spyware transfer vector.

I consider Windows itself a virus that people willingly install on their PCs.

[Nicholas Jordan]

This issue/debate/question comes up so often, and is so clearly not gaining anyone any ground would not it be easier to begin The Orderly World Transition by making a Moose Head Operating System? There has been actual, serious discussion of writing a Java Centric Operating System, ... some work has likely already been accomplished. It would be a great chalkboard for doing this discussion like Pat does it. Many, very legitimate issues, that have been the focuse of Intra-Mural warfare could become the common ground by which moosefly.gif could afford some needed cosmetic work.
[ June 05, 2008: Message edited by: Nicholas Jordan ]

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by Nicholas Jordan:
There has been actual, serious discussion of writing a Java Centric Operating System, ... some work has likely already been accomplished.

Oh No!. Java is so last century. I think there was even an effort to make hardware that would execute Java byte code.

I don't know what is the proper new language. Candidates could include things that generate byte-code, like Scala, or something completely new. Or oldies like smalltalk or lisp

[Bert Bates]

Perhaps it's hard to know where to draw the line, and perhaps it's not. I had a mentor years back who's method of categorization went something like this:

"Operating systems... should"

[siva kumar]

I am waiting waiting and still waiting... for a long time for a byte code aware Microprocessors... but it is yet to come out of sun micro system.

I don't see any difficulty in such a processor design, byte code interpreter can either be realised using micro-programming or even hard-wired into the processor chip. At least a Java co-processor can be designed and added to the mother board (I still remember Intel 8087).

A java processor is first step towards pervasive computing where one can find java based operating system from Mainframe to kid sister watch.

[Ulf Dittmer]

I am waiting waiting and still waiting... for a long time for a byte code aware Microprocessors... but it is yet to come out of sun micro system.

Sun did produce a specification that Fujitsu (amongst others) implemented. Check out WikiPedia: PicoJava, WikiPedia: MAJC, byte.com: PicoJava and EETimes: MAJC.
[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]

[Sai Surya]

Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Sai Surya ]

[Arvind Mahendra]

People are generally jealous of MS's success but don't think about how the IT industry would be decades behind what it is now had it not been for. Hundreds of millions of people put their trust in MS so they must be doing something good. Other companies like Sun, Apple etc. dont have significant market share because they just aren't that good(About the only thing they are good at is banding together and trying to bleed this giant into submission). Unfortunately MS has to pay the price for their competitor's inability to make something that could compete.

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
People are generally jealous of MS's success but don't think about how the IT industry would be decades behind what it is now had it not been for...

The IT industry would be decades behind if it weren't for Microsoft? What exactly did Microsoft offer that was so unique and extraordinary to enable such a leap?

[marc weber]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
...Hundreds of millions of people put their trust in MS so they must be doing something good. Other companies like Sun, Apple etc. dont have significant market share because they just aren't that good...

That's logical. :roll:

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
Hundreds of millions of people put their trust in MS so they must be doing something good.

And McDonalds has served untold billions of hamburgers. What's your point exactly?

[Nicholas Jordan]

Originally posted by Pat Farrell:
I don't know what is the proper new language. Candidates could include things that generate byte-code, like Scala, or something completely new. Or oldies like smalltalk or lisp

I had in mind a study platform geared toward the field-tech, Java has done that for me providing a rich set of libraries, has built-in solution to the array bounds and lends to the design of parallel dispatching. Maybe compiler design, main processor board architecture and so on have to be brought in to the design for fast vectored dispatching, but that is a personal pref and intrinsic in my work. We have another area, very common, that has a sort of Office Flavored Molasses which sweet twinkle toes everything and is commercially very appealing. One idea I am working on is an intrinsic AI capability, new languages are routine study in undergrad cs and I assume teaching of such begins by identifiying a problem domain. I have chosen as my design paradigm a grocery supply chain of moderate minimum size, electing to take the raw feed from the checkout lanes and do the back-propogation that Information Technology can do.

All manner of cs challenges can be found in that model. Java has met every challenge I can think of so far using that as the problem domain.

[PF:]I think there was even an effort to make hardware that would execute Java byte code.

Project Sun Spot: Small Programmable Object Technology.

[PF:]Oh No!. Java is so last century. They won't be able to grasp this, BeesWax - a Bold Wide Electronic Enhancment System Action-X .... ( let'em squirm )
[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Nicholas Jordan ]

[fred rosenberger]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
People are generally jealous of MS's success but don't think about how the IT industry would be decades behind what it is now had it not been for. Hundreds of millions of people put their trust in MS so they must be doing something good.

are you saying that no other company could have done what MS did if they weren't here?

also, hundreds of millions of people don't have a CHOICE but to use MS - that doesn't mean they TRUST them.

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:People are generally jealous of MS's success

I'm not, I invested in MS stock when Win 3.0 came out. Their success included me.

But I think its naive to think that their success was all because of their superiority. They have been found guilty of monopolistic business practices on two continents. More recently, Vista is a disaster. The virus vector karma is no laughing matter.

Ask what have you done for me lately? and the answer is not very much.

Its normal, big organizations have a primary directive: keep self alive. This is not going to cause a lot of innovation.

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by Bert Bates:
"Operating systems... should"

allocate scarce resources.

All the rest flows from that.

[Sri Anand]

Well then why is some one not able to make a nice operating system as per defination and get that in .., we saw Java as programing language suceed pushing the microsoft products.
Well am i making some point here ? there are so many technolgoes emerging why arent they able to compete and challenge microsoft's technical and marketing strategies, I am not against or for microsoft

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Sai Surya:
Will Install Needless Data On Whole System

[ June 04, 2008: Message edited by: Sai Surya ]

Yea, cause no linux distros ever do that. :roll:

[Nicholas Jordan]

Originally posted by Raghunandan Mamidala:
(...snip...)Well am i making some point here ?(..snip...)

Yes, very good point. Minnows Operating System ~ Lost in an internet sea of information? Try the Minnows Operati.....

If anybody gets the dreaded Three A.M. call on this, try to keep a straight face.

[Pat Farrell]

Originally posted by Raghunandan Mamidala:
Well then why is some one not able to make a nice operating system as per defination

There have been many nice O/S, but they tend to be niche O/S. Being good is not enough. BeOS was fairly interesting, and the Amiga OS from the late 1980s was far ahead of the rest of the personal computer O/S.

NextStep was a nice niche until Jobs came back to Apple and brought it with him. That probably was the most important influence of popular operating systems in the past 15 years. OS-X made people realise that there was something better than Windows. That allowed folks to look seriously at Linux and that begat Ununtu...

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by marc weber:

What exactly did Microsoft offer that was so unique and extraordinary to enable such a leap?

GUI.

[Jesper de Jong]

GUIs were not invented by Microsoft and existed long before Windows.

I had an Amiga with a nice graphical OS, for example, years before Windows was released.

[Ulf Dittmer]

The Xerox Alto and Xerox Star are generally credited with having had the first real GUIs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface

[abhishek pendkay]

fred

also, hundreds of millions of people don't have a CHOICE but to use MS - that doesn't mean they TRUST them.

Agreed that hundreds of millions of people don't really trust MS, but why didn't these people have a choice... MS did not stop others from making an OS...
other companies just couldn't stand the competetion from MS and I feel we should give MS the credit for it... personally I dont really support MS either, but I do have respect for Gates and his efforts

[Jelle Klap]

Personally - as a user - I prefer Windows XP Pro over every other OS I have worked with. Ever.


Please, don't hurt me...

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by Jesper Young:
GUIs were not invented by Microsoft and existed long before Windows.

I had an Amiga with a nice graphical OS, for example, years before Windows was released.

I did not say invented, I replied to marc's query regarding what did MS offer?

GUI were present before windows and maybe a much better offering but they were not mass marketed. Others took the path of perfection while MS sold to a wider audience.

It may seem monopolistic but then business is monopolistic, why do you assume business is about social service. What is google doing now, is it not also trying for monopoly the same way. Do you think Apple or for that matter any other company would not have done the same thing if they had the capability to be in MS shoes (remember Ipod and support for sound formats).

Anti MS is more a branding strategy than any effort to provide valuable service, make a bad product and sell it on "!LikeMSThingie" bandwagon(remember netscape).

Why cannot the competing companies compete solely based on their competancy(example mozilla) and not negative branding?.

And the consumers are suckers falling into this trap about two companies trying to sell us stuff jumping onto camps. How should we be bothered about MS or any other company as long as we know what to pick and chose from both camps.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Just to nitpick, marc's question was "What exactly did Microsoft offer that was so unique and extraordinary to enable such a leap?" - to which "GUI" is not a correct answer. At the time it came out, Windows was neither unique nor extraordinary. But I think I'm feeding a troll here.

[Satish Chilukuri]

Originally posted by Raghunandan Mamidala:
Well then why is some one not able to make a nice operating system as per defination and get that in ..,

There are better OSs out there. I use Ubuntu and find it much more easy to use and maintain than windows (I'm talking about only the OS related tasks - securing the OS, extracting the best performance out of the hardware)

Well am i making some point here ? there are so many technolgoes emerging why arent they able to compete and challenge microsoft's technical and marketing strategies, I am not against or for microsoft

When you buy a computer, OS is not the only factor to be taken into account. You also need to consider which applications you want to run on it. Right now, there are lot of applications which are windows only (for ex: PC Games) and these are caught up in a catch22 situation which goes like this:

Why doesn't application A run on a Linux/OS X? Because there aren't enough users to justify the cost of porting it that OS. Why doesn't that particular OS have large no. of users? Because application A doesn't run on it.

Another reason is that there is a lot of inertia in the PC world, especially so in corporate sector, which is the biggest user of PCs. To give an example of the inertia, just consider Firefox/Opera which came on to the market years ago. Both are miles ahead of IE in terms of features. Yet IE is still the dominant browser.

[Devesh H Rao]

Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
Windows was neither unique nor extraordinary.

GUI were present before windows and maybe a much better offering but they were not mass marketed. Others took the path of perfection while MS sold to a wider audience

By the way

Love Java != Hate MS
[ June 05, 2008: Message edited by: Devesh H Rao ]

[Joe Ess]

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:
GUI were present before windows and maybe a much better offering but they were not mass marketed.

1984's mass marked called and wanted to introduce itself

[fred rosenberger]

Originally posted by abhishek pendkay:
Agreed that hundreds of millions of people don't really trust MS, but why didn't these people have a choice...

I don't have a choice on what OS i use at work.

Originally posted by abhishek pendkay:
MS did not stop others from making an OS...

agreed, but MS has been know to use it's market share to force retail outlets to install windows, and thus charge the customers for it. Go into a big box store and TRY to buy a PC WITHOUT windows.

Originally posted by abhishek pendkay:
other companies just couldn't stand the competetion from MS

MS has also been known to push the competition aside. For a while, when you bought a PC, Microsoft messenger came pre-installed. Microsoft forced other IM services, such as Yahoo's or AOL's, to pay Microsoft a FEE to have their IM client pre-installed on the desktop.
[ June 05, 2008: Message edited by: fred rosenberger ]

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

I have no vested interest either way. I like Windows XP, hate Vista, and would love to see Linux dominate, but until Linux can be used by my Mom without a problem, like Windows can, I'll have to wait.

My impression was always that when Windows came out, they allowed anyone to write programs for their OS. Apple said "nobody but apple," much in the same way they have said "our music format an nothing else" with their iPod.

While they're a monopoly now, wasn't it their original openness that allowed them to prosper?

What do I know? I was only 12 in 1984.

-Cameron McKenzie

[Arvind Mahendra]

Originally posted by marc weber:

The IT industry would be decades behind if it weren't for Microsoft? What exactly did Microsoft offer that was so unique and extraordinary to enable such a leap?

uhhh...Windows? It bought down the cost of ownership of a PC manifold. It made it accessible to the masses. Something all OS vendors failed in doing. Just the tech centric ecosystem put in place by Microsoft may have raised entire nations out of poverty. I' not even getting into their innovativeness here with regards to GUI, TCP/IP etc. I'm convinced had it not been for Microsoft, the internet wouldn't even exist as we know it today.

[fred rosenberger]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
I'm convinced had it not been for Microsoft, the internet wouldn't even exist as we know it today.

you are probably correct. but how do you know that it wouldn't be BETTER without Microsoft?