Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] A Search Engine That's Becoming an Inventor

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Microsoft HAS harmed the OS market but I disagree with your feelings 
about Unix. Unix has changed quite a bit over the years so it's not 
exactly as if Unix today is the same as Unix in 1971. Also I think 
you're wrong if you think Unix is fundamentally flawed. One of the 
biggest problems software today has is that it has strayed from the Unix 
way. Concepts such as small pluggable, easy to use, components and 
everything as a file worked amazingly well and we've yet to find better 
replacements. Software has gotten ever more complex and harder to use 
largely because programmers look for more and more complicated means of 
making useful abstractions. Unix components use simple streams to pass 
data using standard interfaces that are simple to learn and use. Compare 
that with the world of complex linked libraries, remote procedure calls, 
undocumented file formats, huge monolithic applications, etc. In general 
it's all the wrong way to go I think and is why we have such huge 
bloated software today. Yes, Unix can be improved on but I don't think 
what we need is so much a revolution as evolution. Take the concepts 
that make Unix so good and build on them.

Most changes to Unix over the years that've been aimed at making it more 
modern tend to just make it crappy and closer to Windows. MacOS and 
Linux both suffer from this corruption as do every other Unix variant 
I've seen. The desktop is largely to blame for this as Windowisms have 
crept over and in general these methods and concepts just don't work as 
well. MacOS is especially at fault at having given up the power of 
XWindow without replacing it with something of comparable power. Just as 
we're entering the network age they strip their Unix variant of it's 
desktop networking abilities and replace it with a few weak imitations 
and lots of eye candy. X needs a lot of work but it has some real gem 
concepts that need to be kept.
> On the subject of Microdoft in general - I happened to watch an 
> advertisment for Dell, an ad that was clearly aimed at the business 
> consumer.  As part of their message on how cutting edge their 
> technology was, they talked about how it could use Linux.  It shocks 
> me how Linux, which is based upon the decades old Unix, could still be 
> the choice of big business when they want reliability.  I guess that 
> Microsoft's abuse of their monopoly power really has harmed consumers, 
> because by now their should be operating systems on the market that 
> clearly outshine any derivative of Unix.  But sadly, that seems not to 
> be the case.


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