Comments on: The Operating System is Disappearing

By: ariadacapo

ariadacapo — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:37:05 +0000

@Anonymous:
It’s just that daunting (repelling?) impression that learned UNIX gurus behave like jerks, you know what I mean?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:59:44 +0000

tl;dr
Stop spreading memetic bullshit and learn UNIX, newfag.

By: ariadacapo

ariadacapo — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:42:23 +0000

Thanks everyone for all your comments — I apologize for the late reply.

I agree that the term “OS” is perhaps a bit strong (indeed we’ll always need software to run our chips) — what I meant was “the really significant part of the OS” is disappearing. A driver does not affect society in same way as an office suite, for example.
The gOS website, as pointed out by Taco, is perhaps the best example of this slipping away.

I tried to edit the article very slightly according to the comments.

By: libervisco

libervisco — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:00:05 +0000

Well to them using these online services means not using their proprietary counterparts. They don’t think about these services being powered by software which is non-free too and their data being on servers which aren’t under their control.

It’s just a case of being shortsighted, even a bit naive, albeit innocent due to ignorance.

By: Taco Buitenhuis

Taco Buitenhuis — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:42:30 +0000

Would you like to see something really misguided? Look at this: http://www.thinkgos.com/about.html

I quote:

We recommend Google for just about everything… Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar, Maps, Docs and Spreadsheets, and more. We’d like to welcome you to the idea that Google already is your “operating system.”

And a bit further on, in the section “Open source and other values”…

To get ahead of ourselves, we’re saying goodbye to closed software and the digital divide.

Goodbye closed local software, hello closed remote services. What a joke.