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Windows, Linux 25 Year Old "Clunkers"? 461

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
Phil817 writes to tell us that Bob Metcalfe recently gave a TV interview in which he stated that current operating systems (Windows and Linux) are outdated clunkers that wont be able to adequately handle the coming of "video internet" and suggests that new operating systems need to be developed to take hold in a few years. Also, when asked if current deals in the works like eBay's purchase of Skype were an indication of more investment hype he replied with "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun.". Let us at least hope we learned a few things from the last bubble.
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Windows, Linux 25 Year Old "Clunkers"? More

Windows, Linux 25 Year Old "Clunkers"?

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  • Wait, who said (Score:5, Funny)

    by zegebbers ( 751020 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:36AM (#14390937) Homepage
    I couldn't watch video [asciimation.co.nz] ?

  • Where are the links? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Werrismys ( 764601 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:36AM (#14390940)
    To say that the post was lacking substance would be an understatement.

    • Re:Where are the links? (Score:5, Funny)

      by CortoMaltese ( 828267 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:43AM (#14391154)
      To say that the post was lacking substance would be an understatement.
      You see, Bob said all this and more in a TV interview, which, according to the interview, can't be viewed because your favourite OS is an outdated clunker that won't be able to adequately handle the coming of "video internet".

      Maybe the interview is available for download in a few years when the new video oriented operating systems he mentions have taken hold.

      • Re:Where are the links? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PapaZit ( 33585 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:34AM (#14391511)
        Maybe the interview is available for download in a few years when the new video oriented operating systems he mentions have taken hold.

        Operating systems like... BeOS?

        On the OS front, we have a situation where "good" is the enemy of "great". Windows has succeeded because it's good enough and it's a stable, constant platform. For people who care (i.e. many slashdot readers), it's not quite good enough, so they turn to a unix variant. More stable, but less of a consistent platform (Do you write for Linux or Solaris or AIX or NetBSD or...?). Fortunately, the variants are close enough that, so long as you have the source, you can probably port your app (or find somebody else who has already ported the app) to your OS.

        There have been (and still are) some really great alternative operating systems out there (AtheOS, Archy, Plan 9, Inferno, 2K... the list goes on and on), but nobody uses 'em because they don't have all of the essential apps. We use applications, not operating systems. The "right" OS is the one that runs the programs that you want to run. Until a killer app comes out that ONLY runs on a Video-based OS, nobody'll switch.

        • Re:Where are the links? (Score:4, Funny)

          by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @10:08AM (#14392071) Homepage Journal
          Until a killer app comes out that ONLY runs on a Video-based OS, nobody'll switch. One word: pr0n.

        • More stable, but less of a consistent platform (Do you write for Linux or Solaris or AIX or NetBSD or...?).

          GNU/Autoconf/Automake have provided a great *nix portability solution since the early 1990's. Almost all GNU/Linux packages use it to great effect even on Cywin/Win32 systems. Writing for Windows only nowadays is truly inexplicable.

        • Let's think about portability and functionality for a second.

          The Unix variants make an attractive development target in part because they deliberately embody many common concepts and interfaces. The effect is not perfect, but it's far and away the best thing going.

          Why is this important? Because it takes extra effort to write portable code, you want to target an environment that will minimize that effort and maximize the various benefits, all of which happen to be indirect. You will have to design and

        • I'm not even sure what the f*** he's talking about. Unix was developed in the olden days when teletypes and dumb terminals ruled the world, and yet X was developed to run on top of it. Windows and *nix have both adapted to the new ways in which computers are used; embedded systems, graphics workstations, video game systems, and so on, often running variants of long-standing operating systems. What counts is the hardware and a driver/kernel model that makes communication between various parts of the syste

    • Re:Where are the links? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mr. Moose ( 124255 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:56AM (#14391197)
      Take it easy, hopefully the /. editors will include a link, next time they post the story.

    • Re:Where are the links? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Karma Farmer ( 595141 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:07AM (#14391430)
      Well, just check the "related links" section. That's where the editors put the links related to the story that don't belong in the body text itself. There's plenty for this story:
      • Download Apache Geronimo Software
      • Compare Prices on Windows Software
      • Compare Prices on Linux Software
      • Compare Prices
      • HP Sponsered Solutions
      • IBM Sponsored Solutions
      That box is there for a reason. If you study those links, you'll know everything you need to know about this story, including why Slashdot chose to post it.

  • I find the lack of hosts to /. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Polarism ( 736984 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:40AM (#14390952)
    disturbing...

  • The coming of "video internet?" (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phariom ( 941580 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:40AM (#14390954)
    So...this article is basically stating is that we need to build an entirely new O/S to streamline our viewing of pr0n?

    Cool.

    I, for one, welcome our new video internet overvixens.
    • And how!

      My future-viewing terminal informs me that that the Video Internet will be deployed just a few years after the widespread availablility of wall-mounted Video Telephones, but just before Honda release their premiere Flying Automobile.

      I can only hope that our spinlock model is flexible enough for these paradigm-shattering technological earthquakes!

  • fun? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LiquidMind ( 150126 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:40AM (#14390955)
    "The last bubble was lots of fun"

    tell that to the people that have lost their jobs.

    • Re:fun? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ceribia ( 865793 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:44AM (#14390980)
      "tell that to the people that have lost their jobs." Jobs that wouldn't have exsisted with out the bubble. Welcome to the boom bust market.

    • Re:fun? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      No, not the people who lost their jobs, but the people who lost their investments. The people who payed for all the fun the jobs were and got nothing back out of it.

      KFG

      • Re:fun? .. Video Internet = Mandatory DRM (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Savage650 ( 654684 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:48AM (#14391171)
        ... commiserating with The people who payed for all the fun the jobs were and got nothing back out of it.

        No Sympathy here. Whoever buys into a scheme that is supposed to double/tripe/quadruple their money overnight deserves the "Experience" they get. Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.

        And by the way: this wonderful "Video Internet" Mr. Metcalfe is fantasizing about ... Who needs it? the consumers? Or could it be ... Who else would be interested in a broad roll-out of DRM-locked viewers?

        Expect a flurry of new, draconian laws protecting "Content Ownership" to be written and enacted during the boom phase. And we'll be stuck with these laws, even after this particular bubble bursts.

        • Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.


              I do not believe that I have seen such a completely misleading and or misinformed statement in a very long time. If you have no idea what you are doing, yeah, you could get burned. If you are smart, do your research and invest wisely, such as by diversifying, you can come out pretty darn well.

          • Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.

            I do not believe that I have seen such a completely misleading and or misinformed statement in a very long time. If you have no idea what you are doing, yeah, you could get burned. If you are smart, do your research and invest wisely, such as by diversifying, you can come out pretty darn well.

            Investing is entirely different than "playing the stock market". You guys are both right. You can use your brokerage acco

        • No Sympathy here. Whoever buys into a scheme where you get offered an overpaid, underworked job and expects it to last forever deserves the "Experience" they get.

          I'll agree with you on the "video-internet". Mr. Metcalf seems to have confused the computer with consumer electronics. Sure, the former can do the latter, but that's not it's strong suit. Computational efficiency for doing work just happens to work well with compressed digital video. Coincidence, not purpose.

  • And Sara McDonald didn't like DOS either (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gtoomey ( 528943 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:40AM (#14390957)
    Talk about a story with no content.

  • An OS is an OS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:41AM (#14390960)
    Apart from the "no link" stuff, I don't see what the fuss is all about. An OS is an OS, its role is to provide user applications with an access to the underlying hardware.

    In that sense, I don't see anywhere that Linux/Windows/*BSD/whatever will not be up to the task.
    • Here is what Wikipedia has to say about this guy:

      Neophilia is defined as a love of novelty and new things. A neophile is an individual who is unusually accepting of new things and excited by novelty.
      The word has particular significance in Internet and hacker culture. The New Hacker's Dictionary gave the following definition to neophilia -

      The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge subcultures, including t

  • Wrong end of stick (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:42AM (#14390963)
    Video internet, whatever that is, is bandwidth limited. The OS of the systems on each end of the cable makes virtually no difference to the deliverable bandwidth.
    • Its funny that so many people are saying we need new OS's, and avoiding the issue of the lack of broadband speed in the US(and canada, i supposed) compared to EVERYWHERE else besides maybe australia and third world countries.

  • OS - Video - WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anne Thwacks ( 531696 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:42AM (#14390969)
    If Linux and WIndows are "old clunkers" then presumably the *BSDs are not just dead, but rotting in hell with all those demons!

    What does this guy know? If you want an OS to stream video, then what does it better than a *BSD? If you want to watch streaming video then surely that is an application issue?

    I'd rather serve or recieve anything using an OS with 20 years debugging than an untried untested product of an Internet bubble.

    However, if anyone wants to buy shares in my new dot-com, then email me at "mailto:investments@pop.rip-off.scam"

    • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:09AM (#14391058) Homepage
      The main problem is that today's mainstream operating systems are not 'stream' OSes ;). They don't think of data as a stream with certain properties. They just have input and output devices, and what happens inbetween is just a matter of how to couple them together.

      Networks like ATM and TENET have special layers to define the properties of a data stream independently from the source and the sink. There is no equivalence in Windows or UNIX for those. There are some tacked on QoS-parameters for certain network devices (to handle the QoS of the networks connected), but this is not a design principle for all the not networked devices.

      Current OSes thus have a simple solution to QoS: Throw enough resources at the problem, and it will work for the lower bandwidths. For higher bandwidths just wait for the next generation. But in theory the hardware today should handle the higher bandwidths today fine, if the schedulers and the definitions of what has to be scheduled were better supported inside the operating systems. So you can have at maximum one data stream with QoS-warranties on your computer at any given moment.

      Computers used for data stream switching often have a subsystem that runs at highest priority on the host operating system and provides those streaming facilities without the host OS getting in the way too much. Futural operating systems should be able to handle the scheduling problems of several datastreams at the same time natively.

      • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tacocat ( 527354 ) <`tallison1' `at' `twmi.rr.com'> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:25AM (#14391098)

        Yes, this is a picture of what you are doing with streaming data and a possible approach to handling the stream, by reprioritizing everything on the system to deal with it. But I don't necessarily agree that this is the best approach or the realistic approach.

        If we have to address the video streaming capabilities of a high bandwidth internet then that's fine. I'm really not worried about the current OSes. As a benchmark I have routinely watched full screen (21-inch) video over NFS mounted hard drives across my fast ethernet home network. This has proved to be good enough bandwidth that the movies are clean and the network can still do other functions (macromedia flash gaming is one high bandwidth example). Granted this is pretty much one user, but it's a benchmark.

        Now it is arguable that NFS is not the best solution to video streaming, but it's one that I have readily available.

        I would have assumed the best approach would be a two part application; the first part caching the stream and buffering the data so that latency interruptions can be handled more gracefully, and the second part to read off the buffer (memory or disk) and present the video.

        I don't know of any one who believes that even a terabit network can do realtime streaming of hi definition video with zero risk of latency interruptions so I just can imagine anything with that model in mind as being anything less than marketing hype.

      • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TallMatthew ( 919136 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:33AM (#14391119)
        Networks like ATM and TENET have special layers to define the properties of a data stream independently from the source and the sink. There is no equivalence in Windows or UNIX for those. There are some tacked on QoS-parameters for certain network devices (to handle the QoS of the networks connected), but this is not a design principle for all the not networked devices.

        Beh. ATM was a dog. It was supposed to be this voice/data/video panacea but all it ended up being was an incredibly inefficient way to pass data around. Defining class of service on a cell/packet is one of those ideas that makes sense, but is ultimately meaningless based on the nature of data transmission.

        QOS prioritizes packets, that's it. It has no effect except during congestion. It will not "create" bandwidth. If you're a carrier and your backbone is clogged, QOS isn't going to help you very much because the buffers on your routers can only store so much. You're going to start dropping packets all over the place and your customers will be most displeased. That's why carriers overprovision backbones.

        If you're a customer and you don't have enough pipe to your house to really support a video stream (which with modern-day streaming technology isn't very much), Linux/Windows won't be the problem. You won't be able to prevent your downloads from interrupting your video stream with prioritization, as that would have to occur at the carrier side before the packets crossed the wire. And why would the carrier do that for you? Buy a fat pipe, they'll suggest. After all that's what they had to do.

        Cable companies and telecoms have been grappling with this for years. Ultimately they've found the only tenable solution is capacity.

        • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Sique ( 173459 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @07:01AM (#14391208) Homepage
          Your argumentation holds very well as long as it is only one datastream we are talking about, or only one pipe it can go through. As soon as you have several of them, starting and ending at different times and going different ways, you should be able to schedule streaming resources: Postpone one that doesn't fit into the sum of all bandwith you get for instance, or reroute it through different pipes that are not fully used.

          Currently we still use benchmarks to tell us, how much bandwidth we can really muster for different tasks on a computer. A streaming OS would have to have an operating system function, where you can actually ask it, how much bandwidth you get if you want to pipe a data stream from point A to point B at a predefined time, and then you should be able to reserve the bandwidth, so no other application starting later can eat into this bandwidth, the same way today it can't write into the memory an other application is using.

          Currently you can separate application only in a way that they don't use the same resources at the same time, which is a very discrete schedule. For actually switching data streams (which is different from having one datastream uninterupted), you should also schedule the access continously. Imagine it like a big railway station. Today's operating systems are able to make sure that every single track and railswitch is protected and can only be used by a single train at a time. For actual operation of the railway station you need the full way from the starting rail across the station to the leaving rail protected (and freed after the train went through). With todays operating systems you just hold all trains and have only a single one moving. With actuall streaming operating systems you should be able to let several trains run at the same time as long as their ways don't cross. (The analogy doesn't hold completely, because on a railway only one train can use one rail at a time. Streaming data of different streams could use the same path through the operating system at the same time as long as they don't exceed the bandwidth limit).
      • Current OSes thus have a simple solution to QoS: Throw enough resources at the problem, and it will work for the lower bandwidths.

        Yes. And that is working remarkably well. It's sort of like the "TCP-offload" network-cards. For most applications they are total non-starters, because you pay such a high price for special-purpose chips, relative to general-purpose chips that it is cheaper to use a overpowered general-purpose for the job than it is to use an adequately powered special-purpose chip. Additinall

        • For home use today you are right. But we are not only talking of home computers streaming data from a single DSL right now. We are talking about operating systems in general. Let's say you are a Video On Demand provider reselling capacity to smaller Video On Demand providers. So you have several sources of data streams (you own library and the streams from the other VODPs) and several sinks for data streams (your and the other VODPs' customers). And the streams going across your system in a (for you) indete
    • If you want an OS to stream video, then what does it better than a *BSD?

      Clearly the linked article was just a hits generator, totally lacking in substance.

      In any case, it made the very dumb assumption that operating systems are somehow set in stone. They're not, and while we cannot predict MS's plans for the future, we can certainly guarantee that Linux and the BSDs will evolve in whatever way their communities want.

      And that includes handling the streaming world with max efficiency.
    • BeOS did/does video better than anything else around, and is more modern than windows or linux. Maybe he thinks there'll be a beos revival?
    • Wow, that must by a huge operation you have going on. You have your own TLD .scam. Where can I register my companies so I can loose a bit more money to the maintainers of the TLDs?

    • What does this guy know?

      He had a lot to do with the development of ethernet - but at some point several years ago it appears a linux user killed his puppy with Mao's red book or something similar so he has been incoherently ranting about linux and it's connections to communism for a while.

      He does have a point that *nix is old and DOS still lurks somewhere at the heart of MS Server2003 causing a variety of headaches - but both can handle gigabit networking with ease so video bandwidth isn't going to clobber

    • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      If Linux and WIndows are "old clunkers" then presumably the *BSDs are not just dead, but rotting in hell with all those demons!

      Have you tried to get a newbie up to speed on an OS recently? Windows and Linux are old clunkers. Specifically about video, I've sent people video and had to iterate through several different codec downloads and lots of software installs before they hit something that worked. And that's on Windows. How is downloading streaming video from arbitrary sites like CNN going on Linux?

      • Re:OS - Video - WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:06AM (#14391427) Homepage
        And beyond that, the interface in both is terrible. Is the data I'm looking for in /usr/bin/run? C:/documents and settings/Default User/Application Data/? Or one of a million other places? Is my dependency tree resolved properly?

        First off, you seem upset with user interfaces, lack of video standards, and lack of quality applications, not the OS itself. We could build a new OS and still have all these problems. Fixing the OS we have would seem to be a more efficient solution. Also, just because something is complex doesn't mean it won't stick around. I don't think people consider Tivo complicated because the UI hides everything under the covers.

        And on the flip side, you don't hear a lot of people complaining about what a PITA it was to change the water pump in their car, because they get a mechanic to do that. And yet cars are still around despite the fact that you need to learn how to drive and get a license before you're allowed to use one. There's probably more than one thing the computer industry could learn from the automotive industry, they've been doing it for longer. OS's are still a ways away from needing to make our own gas to electric conversion.

  • It's true! (Score:3, Funny)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:43AM (#14390974) Homepage
    My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Linux and Windows pass out at 31 Flavors last night! So I guess it must be pretty serious...

  • Netcraft confirms it...er... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Polarism ( 736984 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:44AM (#14390977)
    http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=nothing&positi on=limited [netcraft.com]

    Educated guess anyway.

  • A link, for those who read articles. (Score:5, Informative)

    by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:44AM (#14390981) Homepage
    Obviously, the editors don't care, but for those of us who actually try to read the article, I found the following, so others don't have to waste their time, as well:
    (and it's probably redundant by now, but this would be the creator of Ethernet, for those who didn't know who Bob Metcalfe is)

  • Weird, they work for me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:47AM (#14390989) Homepage Journal

    Weird, Windows and Linux seem to handle pretty much any task I need handled. Not bad for a couple of clunkers.

    Who knows? Maybe he's right. Personally, I think the concept of television networks is a clunker of an idea waaay past its time. I suggest that in this age of the Internet, we should all be watching on-demand content provided directly by the content makers that's financed by micropayments paid by the consumers, and we receive our "signal" via high-speed Internet connections to the content providers.

    Boy, it sure is easy for me to sit back and say that. But where the rubber meets the road—actually making these brave new ideas come to pass... Well, that's the challenge, isn't it? Until someone can cough up the resources to invest into creating, distributing, and marketing BobOS and my IP television studios, I guess we'll just have to keep talking about how nice it would be, and make the best of the clunkers that I suppose are working well enough for now.

    But seriously, if you want to invest in my IP television studio, let me know...

    • Well, I'm an MIT engineer, and although it turns out that I have degrees from Harvard, the reason I never mention them is that I hated Harvard. And one of the reasons I hated Harvard is that I was one of the few people in the history of the world who's had their PhD dissertation rejected in their last year

      This has to be the most mind-boggling articles I've seen on Slashdot.

      This link as well didn't help [harvardsucks.org].
    • Talking of the rubber meeting the road, aren't cars a bit obsolete by now?? Where the hell's my personal flying machine or teleporter?? And Star-Trek-style food synthesizers would be *really* useful...

    • Re:Weird, they work for me... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:29AM (#14391502) Journal
      Weird, Windows and Linux seem to handle pretty much any task I need handled. Not bad for a couple of clunkers.


      While this may be true, not to long ago there was an article about load times. It seems the time it takes to load a particular class of program (say a word process, spreadsheet,etc) has stayed the same for the last 20 or so years. It actually takes longer to load the OS now than it did 20 years ago. Yet, look at the increase in processesing power between then and now.

      Why is it that the capabilities of the machine have increased by 4 (or more) orders of magnitude, yet the software still takes as long to load and doesn't really do more except look pretty? And, no I am not talking about the high end 3D games. I am talking about the average business programs.

  • Below the threshold (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:48AM (#14390993)
    There really should be a threshold to what kind of articles one could see, like there is for replies.

    So here we have yet another article about somebody's narrowminded concept of what the future is going to be like. Who bloody cares about 'video internet'? Yes, the big Hollywood factories that produce entertainment on assembly lines are keen to have all that on the internet so they can roll out their anal-retentive DRM and pay=per-view schemes, and that's all. We on the consumer side will get no real benefits from this 'video internet', on the contrary.

  • The last bubble squandered a fortune (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun."

    What an idiot. Look at the carnage afterwards. Nevermind the few people that lost their jobs, tragic as that is, the real damage is the money from pension and investment funds that was squandered. That is people having their entire retirement thrown away.

    • Re:The last bubble squandered a fortune (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @07:45AM (#14391358) Homepage
      What an idiot. Look at the carnage afterwards. Nevermind the few people that lost their jobs, tragic as that is, the real damage is the money from pension and investment funds that was squandered. That is people having their entire retirement thrown away.

      That's just how The Market works. It runs in cycles of boom and bust. It uses the irrational activity of the investment market to tear down old economic structures so that they can be replaced with more efficient ones.

      Which is of course why those who hold The Market up as if were the sacrosanct invisible hand of God ought to be taken out and shot. It demotes human society to barbarism, with no regard for the better aspects of human nature: the capacity for compassion, cooperation, and reason. I'm not advocating communism, because that has its own problems, but deifying The Market to justify whatever it does is definitely not the answer.

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by demon_2k ( 586844 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @05:50AM (#14390998) Journal
    What's wrong with the internet as it is now?
    Video, for what reqason? Do they mean more like flash?
    With interactive animations, or something different?

    What i can see happening is animated or even worse, video adds.
    And I'll tell all of you, i'm not looking foreward to that.
    I think that's a reason enough to be negative.
    Wasting bandwidth for damn stupids adds.

    I guess it wouldn't bother me so much if we still had unlimited cable. This "unlimited" cable shits me, all because internet service providers want to promote their own content delivery.

  • More like Ethernet is the clunker! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "There'll be new operating systems required; the clunkers we have, you know Windows and Linux, are 25 years old -- they're going to need updating to adequately carry video," Metcalfe says. "What they're doing now is lame."


    If video is the future, then I'm afraid that it's Ethernet that's going to be the clunker - not our operating systems. We need the mass deployment of protocols that give us QoS guarantees (e.g. ATM).

  • Will someone think of the kittens?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:00AM (#14391028) Homepage Journal
    Everytime someone talks about video internet, God kills a kitten.
    See?!?! You made me make God kill a kitten just now by talking about video interne... damn!

    And you know what? By the time this thread is done with, tens of thousands of kittens will have died. How many at the hands of "In Soviet Russia" jokes alone, I do not know, but I shudder to think.

    Frankly, I am saddend at the massive loss of furry lifeforms about to take place, all for the sake of a mental circlejerk about "all porn all the time all online". You're all just sick.

  • If Windows and Linux are outdated, then what about x86 microchip architectures?

  • 25 years? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dabadab ( 126782 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:10AM (#14391059)
    The only specific thing he mentions is that both Windows and Linux are 25 year old... let me see:
    Windows NT (which is the base for all the current Windowses) was first released in 1993. (Windows 1.0 was released in 1985, but that was not 25 years ago and has little to do with current ones (like, a copletely different codebase and technology))
    Linux began in 1991, but if you really want to dig to the roots, UNIX was created in 1969.
    and, of course, the problems "video internet" has (though these are not critical, as demonstrated by porn sites) these are related to the network, not to the OSes.

    So, Metcalfe is talking BS as usually.
    • Windows NT was based on DEC VMS, which was released in 1980 with version 2.0 VAX/VMS, so Windows NT is based on 25 year old technology.

      • Windows NT was based on DEC VMS
        No, some of the same people were involved but unfortuately they are very different things. If MS had bought VMS then Windows NT would most likely be a much better thing - some decent documentaion like VMS was famous for would have been good for a start.

  • I think... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by isecore ( 132059 )
    "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun."

    Possibly he's of this opinion since he was one of the very few who didn't get burned by it? I know several people who got really badly burnt when the bubble popped.

  • Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by oneandoneis2 ( 777721 ) * on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:32AM (#14391114) Homepage
    The actual quote is Windows and Linux, are 25 years old -- they're going to need updating to adequately carry video - so he's not really implying "They're dinosaurs and need to die out & be replaced", more "They're not yet ready for future demands" - which is pretty much a given: How can you create functionality for something that doesn't exist yet?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Video Internet? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The NPS ( 899303 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:41AM (#14391142)
    I thought we already had video internet, and it was called TV. Honestly, video content is worthless. Sure, it'd be kind of fun to watch the numa numa kid in high definition with no buffering, but does it really matter? No. Is there any substance to that? Hell no. If TV is even a tiny implication of what more video content would mean, then the last thing I want is more video content in the net.

  • In january 1995 Bob Metcalfe predicted (Score:5, Informative)

    by lord_rob the only on ( 859100 ) <shiva3003 AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:46AM (#14391163)
    "The internet will soon go spectaculary supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse"
    He promised to "eat his words" if he was wrong
    So, in early 1997, at a technical conference he ate
    (from "Computer Networks" by Tanenbaum)

  • Clunkers. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SoupIsGood Food ( 1179 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:50AM (#14391177)
    Well, he's right. Windows is based, more or less, on the old VAX/VMS model. Linux is a modern OS kernel, but it's designed to run a variant of the Unix operating system, which was shiny and new before the Star Trek with Captain Kirk went into syndication.

    The same can be said for MacOS X and the BSD's... hell, for pretty much every OS under the sun. BeOS and Plan 9 were the last attempts at someone trying something new with any technical success, and their lessons were largely lost on the industry.

    Innovation in operating systems is pretty much at a standstill outside the academic environment. Current operating systems cannot leverage parralelism very well for anything but hyper-specialized applications. Current operating systems have user environments that are crummy at managing massive amounts of data crammed into cavernous storage systems. Current operating systems are rotten at deploying your data across networked devices like cell phones and MP3 players and DVRs without a crapload of work.

    There are acres of room for improvement, but the current paradigms aren't keeping up. Part of the problem is the PC architecture... it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited. It's shackling the industry to a very limiting hardware model, trading innovation in effciency and effectiveness for better benchmarks at the same old stuff.

    Someone's going to need to design and market a new platform... OS and Hardware, that manages your data better with less effort across more devices, before we can get things moving again.

    Otherwise I foresee more of the same... computers completing benchmarks faster, but not doing anything new and innovative.

    Linux is a very nice unix, perhaps the pinnacle of achievement for the Unix Way, but the Unix Way isn't all that special anymore, and is really showing its age. Windows is an order of magnitude in worse shape. It's just that no-one with an industry presence is willing to try anything new anymore, and companies like SGI and HP are going broke sticking to the old model long after it's stopped working for them.

    SoupIsGood Food

    • Re:Clunkers. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SirCyn ( 694031 )
      Architecture has less to do with the ease of movement than DRM, and the general stigma that has penetrated the media industry. We'll need an intellectual revolution before any of this technological revolution can take place.

    • Re:Clunkers. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joshv ( 13017 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:41AM (#14391555)
      Innovation in operating systems is pretty much at a standstill outside the academic environment. Current operating systems cannot leverage parralelism very well for anything but hyper-specialized applications. Current operating systems have user environments that are crummy at managing massive amounts of data crammed into cavernous storage systems. Current operating systems are rotten at deploying your data across networked devices like cell phones and MP3 players and DVRs without a crapload of work.

      You going into marketing? You seem to have the lingo down. That being said, you freaking don't know what you are talking about. Windows and Linux are both multi-threaded operating systems. My copy of Windows XP 'leverages' paralellism just fine, as my CPU is dual core. The OS gets both CPUs working, all the time. You want to see some real improvements, talk to the application coders and try to get them to 'leverage paralellism' in their applications by making them multi-threaded.


      There are acres of room for improvement, but the current paradigms aren't keeping up. Part of the problem is the PC architecture... it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited. It's shackling the industry to a very limiting hardware model, trading innovation in effciency and effectiveness for better benchmarks at the same old stuff.

      What the hell are you talking about? Care to offer some specifics? "it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited" - what exactly does that little gem mean? My latest motherboard has an extremely high bandwidth I/O architecture, built in from the ground up. I have memory bandwidth that was unheard of just 3 years ago. The damned thing burns through just about every task I throw at it.

      Someone's going to need to design and market a new platform... OS and Hardware, that manages your data better with less effort across more devices, before we can get things moving again.

      Wait, I thought the problem was with the PC architecture - now it's data management? Moving data between various devices is the job of applications. If the applications aren't written to interoperate and share data intelligently, there's nothing the OS can do to fix that.

      • Re:Clunkers. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SoupIsGood Food ( 1179 )
        You want to see some real improvements, talk to the application coders and try to get them to 'leverage paralellism' in their applications by making them multi-threaded.

        Dumping the problem into the lap of the application programmers isn't leveraging anything very effectively.

        My latest motherboard has an extremely high bandwidth I/O architecture, built in from the ground up. I have memory bandwidth that was unheard of just 3 years ago. The damned thing burns through just about every task I throw at it.

        Congra

    • Re:Clunkers. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Hosiah ( 849792 )
      Unfortunately, your insight has a devolved reciprocal capability to impact the paradigm metaphor. A compatible maximized GUI would be dependent on synchronised discrete middleware and a business-focused mobile protocol. Focused human-resource groupware isn't up to proactive uniform superstructure in a networked clear-thinking inheritance capacity situation.

      A multi-phase strategic alliance would be required to address the market maximization retail potential of Generation D. And the syngergistic coherent i

  • -1 Troll (Score:5, Insightful)

    by obender ( 546976 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @06:51AM (#14391183)
    I think we should be allowed to mod the stories as well as the comments. This way we could get rid of both the dupes and the trolls like the current story.
  • "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun."

    Translation: I made lots of money in the late 1990s, didn't YOU?
  • I vaguely remember him saying something about Windows 2000 putting the nail in the coffin for Linux way back in 99.

    I believe it was also posted on Slashdot then as well but I am too lazy to look.

  • WTF is the video internet? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @10:01AM (#14392019) Journal
    Don't please tell me that slashdot is going to be a video blog. This sounds as wrong as voice communication in games. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU and I am sure the feeling is mutual.

    Sure current OS'es are crap at handling large data files that essentlially just have to be passed through, I got a linux machine that seems to love eating up all the available memory and my windows machine can never seem to grasp the concept of giving the video app priority to the HD.

    So when I recently downloaded my first high def video clip (interlaced) I had a severe problem playing it. The dual P3 Linux had problems as it was an offbeat codec and could not handle it at full speed.

    Windows P4 HT 2.8ghz didn't fare much better. Despite that fact that it had double the memory, less crap in the background and fewer active filters and had a cpu 3-4 times faster it could barely keep up. As soon as I tried to deinterlace it it started to get choppy with random freezing as MS could apperantly not supply the data fast enough.

    No I don't have virusses or trojans and the hardware on both platforms is pretty decent.

    The answer is really simple both OS'es at the core were never designed for this task. For that matter the hardware isn't either. Almost everything in the design is geared towards multitasking.

    It reminds me of the days when side scrolling games were still available and how badly the PC would always struggle with them even when it was clear that in pure crunching power the PC beat the pants of the consoles. Wich was very clear when consoles tried to do 3D (ala doom1) wich was the strong horse of the PC.

    I don't think there is any clear mechanism at the moment where you can easily dictate wich application gets priority access to the resources available. This would be far more then "nice". After all video device that gets super high priority would then falter because "system" wich does the reading from HD does not get enough cpu time.

    Perhaps the move to multicore pc's will solve some of this. My P3 despite being only 800mhz can still keep up aminzgly well considering a p4 2.8 fails as well.

    What I don't see however is how a new OS is going to solve this. Sure it is easy to make a new OS that does just video. They already exist, inside your stand alone dvd player. For that matter inside the iPod and similar devices. The consoles are an other example. Yes they do a lot better performance wise in displaying video then their PC counterparts. So?

    One of the things I noticed is that USB is a bitch for cpu whoring. Joysticks especially can cost you more frames then switching all the options on. Perhaps I just got the wrong sticks but I have noticed this for several years with different makes.

    A PC can do a dozen tasks, that makes it slow but it also is what makes it so fucking usefull. Most users do not want to watch just 1 video. They want their RSS streams and check their email and be safe from virusses and be chatting with their mates etc etc etc.

    Saying the Windows/Linux are old clunkers and that you could make a faster video OS is like saying that Volvo's are clunkers and you could make a faster race car. Well yeah. F1 cars are very very fast. I just wouldn't like to take one on a trip. A recent promo in Amsterdam had a F1 car driving through the city streets. Very exciting but it was very clear the car was barely under control and totally useless as a form of transport.

    The device that does it all will never be able to compete directly with a single purpose device. The PC is as multi purpose as it can be and for the last few decades has defeated all new comers. I don't see this going to change.

    Oh and didn't we have this whole video internet before? The constant dream that people will next year have fat pipes to their doorsteps at cheap prices? I have heard that dream for over a decade and still download at a trickle. Current internet would be hardpushed to saturate a iPod. My half a decade old machine can easily deal with internet streaming. It ain't the OS, it is the net, fix that and the OS will follow.

  • Todays O/S for Tomorrow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @10:55AM (#14392443) Journal
    Windows and Linux are today's operating systems. Who knows what will come along tomorrow. Look at the differences in Windows and Linux from five or ten years ago. They are entirely different than when they first cam on market! The trouble is that they are added on to and asked to do things that were not originally envisioned when they were first developed. The fact that they are doing what they are doing today is a testament to their versatility (and, their good foundation).

    There will come a time when something else will come along - the evolution will happen like it has happened in every other industry. Ford quit making Model T's a long time ago and some day, Windows and Linux will be seen as out-dated operating systems that was loaded into primitive personal computers. In my mind's eye, I can see a computing future where computers interact with us in everyday life helping us with almost every task we do. Do any of us doubt that this marriage of technology and life won't continue to grow?

    Look how far we have gone in the past few years and think of what could be done in the next ten or twenty and you can start to understand why someone would think that these operating systems may begin to sag under the weight of new and additional features. In a sense, the operating system is middleware. It sits between hardware and applications. Both sides aren't remaining static, the hardware gets new features and is faster and more powerful, the applications do more, do new and sometimes unthought of things. The o/s is in a tug-of-war between these two entities and tries very hard to make everything work. When the current part of the operating system that handles say video is being stretched to its limit by the demands of either the hardware or the software it is either patched or replaced. Over time, these fixes make the operating system like a house that has been remodeled too many times. It may become inefficient although it remains functional - when this happens, it may be best to tear the whole thing down and start all over again.

    Please note that I am not saying that either Windows or Linux have reached the point where they ought to be scrapped but a realistic look forward has to consider that as a possibility. Tomorrow's hardware and tomorrow's applications are bound to place heavy demands on whatever operating system there is. We live in interesting times and it is hard to predict what the future will look like ten years from now. Are we going to have windowed interfaces or is something else going to come along? Where will speech recognition be? Will the keyboard continue to exist? Part of me wants to think that at some point we will communicate with our digital servants almost like we communicate with our human counterparts, through speech, body movements, and eye contact. But like the rocket-cars envisioned in the fifties, that may be a long way off track because I do not have a crystal ball that works.

  • We DO need a new OS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sweetnjguy29 ( 880256 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @11:47AM (#14392846) Journal
    IMHO, we do need a new OS paradigm. Linux, BSD, Windows....they all suck. They are useful, sure, but god-damn, they all do have problems. I'm not going to even list examples....I am sure you can all think of at least 10 problems with each OS. We need to fundementally change the way in which we interact with computers. Like Scotty said, "a keyboard...how quaint". I mean, good grief, I haven't even seen a consumer level touch screen for a computer.

  • oh... and one more thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smash ( 1351 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @12:18PM (#14393105) Homepage Journal
    ... to those who are crapping on about needing new ways of interacting with computers, etc - fine.

    That's still not going to make current operating systems obsolete. You're in the Microsoft way of thinking that a new shell and a few drivers is a new O/S (eg, windows 2000 vs XP). At the end of the day, it's still basic I/O once you write a driver for it.

    I'd even wager that it's quite probable that any new input method you care to name (or invent) could simply be added as a kernel module to kernel 2.6 (or 2.4, 2.0, etc) - and that's only if it couldn't be done in user-space :)

    smash.

  • Finally! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheQuantumShift ( 175338 ) <monkeyknifefight@internationalwaters.com> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:22PM (#14394389) Homepage
    "the clunkers we have, you know Windows and Linux, are 25 years old "

    Finally, I woke up this morning, mysteriously transported to the year 2016. Does this mean I can start wearing my jeans inside out? Or was that so last year?

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