[118997] in Cypherpunks
Re: An article from Microsoft
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mlist@theory.org)
Tue Oct 12 12:53:17 1999
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:09:24 -0700
From: mlist@theory.org
To: AMP <amp@pobox.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message-ID: <19991012090924.A25045@prion.theory.org>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
In-Reply-To: <3802FFD3.B9190E30@pobox.com>; from AMP on Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 04:30:59AM -0500
Reply-To: mlist@theory.org
On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 04:30:59AM -0500, AMP wrote:
|"J.A. Terranson" belched forth the following:
[snip]
|> Novell has a place. *nix has a place. Even Windblow$ has a place... A
|> "skilled" administrator will not be any
|> more interested in putting a M$ box in a mission-critical server application
|> that s/he will be in putting a *nix
|> box on a newbies desk...
|
|Absolutely. One of the things that I have found really amusing over the
|years is a statement similar to the following "Mainframes are dead", or
|"minicomputers are dead".
I think one of the best reasons for a multi-OS world I have heard is related
to virii. If the planet was one species, it would be dead from a virus that
swept through taking advantage of the weaknesses inherent to it. The fact
that there are various species around means that virii can not just take over
because there will always be a species which does not contain the weakness
involved.
This idea was brought forth heavily after the melissa virus went around. I
remember someone talking about how the U.S. government should have three
main OS flavors in 1/3 proportions so that virii and the like would not so
easily be able to take down too much of their system at once.
bio-diversity / os-diversity
if you think about it, new species of OS will crop up as ideas are melded
through each, sort of OS sex happening in the brains of humans I guess. Okay,
that part is a little out there. :)
