Why LispOS?

[Rodrigo Ventura]

>>>>> "cosc" == "cosc19z5@bayou uh edu" <cosc19z5@bayou.uh.edu> writes:

    >> > Unix has improved somewhat.  Most Unix machines will happily run for a
    >> > week or two without rebooting; Linux machines will happily run for a
    >> > year or two without rebooting.
    >> > 

    cosc> I don't know what Unix machines you are using, but at work I
    cosc> use SunOS and SGI machines, and they require frequent rebooting,
    cosc> more rebooting than DOS or Win95 ever required.  As a matter of
    cosc> fact, I will go as far as to say that the most unreliable systems
    cosc> I have had the misfortune of using were Unix systems.

        ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!! REALLY??? More rebooting than UNIX? You've
got to be kidding. Unless of course, no one ever uses the Windows
boxes, and you always work as root under UNIX, and have little
knowledge of it. The only scenario of a Windows more reliable than
UNIX is that one. Ro are you working at Microsoft? I gather that a
Windows95 would have extreme difficulty to work with a UNIX box. And a
Windows designer as root, would probably trash the UNIX OS in seconds...

    cosc> Ever see a system forget its own terminal emulation in the
    cosc> MIDDLE of a session?  Only in Unix (SunOS in particular, a
    cosc> particularly nasty strain of the Unix virus).

        That's called a BUG, not a virus!

    cosc> Ever see a double right mouse click consistently take an O/S
    cosc> down to its knees?  Only in Unix (SunOS, SGI Irix 6.2 (Indigo^2)).

        That's also called a BUG, not a virus!

        Now I understand! You are indeed a Microsoft employee! Oly a
Microsoft employee would not know what a bug is (they call it a
"feature" instead! Marketing dept. orders!).

    cosc> Contrary to popular belief, Unix is NOT reliable.  It is flaky
    cosc> and badly designed.  It may be ok for batch operations, but
    cosc> when it comes to user interface, it is completly worthless.

-- Flames ahead! --

        Really??? Oops, you probably mispelled MICROSOFT withhh UNIX.

        Badly designed? Well, tell me that X is badly designed, and
what GUI is well designed in your opinion! Windows? Oops, can't do a
xemacs -display somewhere.else:0 on a windows machine... tough break!
Tell me that the UNIX memory system design is flaky, and what OS has a
good VM design? Windows? Oops, windows swap to a ordinary file
(usually fragmented) and usually gives protection failures... tough
break!

        Let's not start a Windows vs UNIX war, for your own sake, at
least in the above points (system design). Note that the people that
usually reads this mailing list have technical expertise enough to
know how Windows sucks... If we want a LispOS, and are aware why that
would be great, don't call us stupid by saying that Windows is more
reliable than UNIX. Ok?

-- End of flames --

    cosc> As far as I'm concerned, all O/S'es stink.  LispOS is the chance
    cosc> to design a decent O/S for a change.

        I hope you are not proposing us to use the Windows kernel
instead of a UNIX one...

        Regards,

-- 
--

*** Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura, alias <Yoda>
***  yoda@isr.ist.utl.pt, http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~yoda
***   Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Polo de Lisboa
***    Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, Portugal
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