Timecapsule to the past...

[Srstanek@aol.com]

>  1. I would have stuffed a million dollars in the time capsule and sent it 
to 
> IBM
>  and told them: DO NOT USE THE X86 CHIP!!!!!!

Why? The x86 chip is very good. It is crappy programmers that make crappy 
programs.

>  4. No assumptions about the video hardware at all eccept the INT 10 
> interface
>  should be made. Additional video cards would be possible because they would
>  simply reconfigure themselves to use the next int number up. =) ( Goodbye 
> 640 k
>  barrier!)

The 640k barrier has been gone since ~1984 or so (286), and has been easy to 
bypass since 1986/1987 (386).

>  most programs of that era were written in ASM, Today they are written in 
C, 
> In
>  the future we can't tell yet but our software must use interfaces that are
>  generic enough to use them... Instead of a call based system that uses a C
>  calling convention we should use a generic message passing system that 
would
>  give a textual message that would then be interprited by the server.

That's incredibly slow. The C calling convention is quite fast and very 
simple. In fact, to switch over to text would make for very hard-to-make 
programs. Why switch when all the effects are negative?

>  Instructions should be simple and generic so that there is less baggage 
down 
> the
>  road...

They already are.

>  anyway this is more of a flame against the shortsighted decisions twenty 
> years
>  ago..

As I already noticed.. but most of the things you appear to not like are 
perfectly fine and have evolved over the past 20 years into good things 
(except M$ and all compilers, which are still bad).

  - vulture a.k.a. Sean Stanek