From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-12 17:45:39 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!nnx.oleane.net!oleane!freenix!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: "Alexander E. Kopilovich" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:36:50 +0400 (MSD) Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1081816967 8345 212.85.156.195 (13 Apr 2004 00:42:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:42:47 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: ; from "Dmitry A. Kazakov" at Mon, 12 Apr 2004 12:29:29 +0200 X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p7 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7023 Date: 2004-04-13T04:36:50+04:00 Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > In a classical UNIX you would create a pipe file first and then > fork, the descriptor is copied and here you are. A pretty idiotic way, IMO. When you use pipes within a shell you may know nothing about "fork". And that (and similar cases) is what I meant in first place. > there was ULTRIX for VAX, guess who wished to use it? I had no close contacts with VAX community, but I have heard not once that Ultrix had some popularity, In one time it was even regarded by some people as the best Unix of that time. > There was microVAX. As for costs, that was management choice, Not purely management choice, though. There was a range to choose within it, but that range certainly did not start from zero. > 3) VMS was not portable in any sense. > It is not a property of OS. VMS could be implemented on any platform and if > they wrote it in Ada... (:-)) Well, Cutler once publicly regretted that VMS was written in assembly language and not in a portable language (perhaps he meant C, but I dont't know). As for your statement that VMS could be implemented on any platform, this is simply false. For example, do you really think that VMS could be implemented on early IBM PC (with 8086, 640 Kb memory and 5-10 Mb disk)? Or, 20 years later, on Palm handhelds? > DEC had the best operating system, Your previous statements imply that you mean VMS here. But some people those times liked TOPS-10/20 (also DEC's) much better. And Multics users most probably would not agree with you. > the best hardware, It is disputable. Good doesn't mean the best. My own impression after reading VAX hardware handbook was that the instruction set (as well as some particular instructions) is overcomplicated. That gorgeous instruction set was perhaps justified by the targetted application domain, which I thought was CADs, but nevertheless I don't see a reason to call this hardware architecture "the best". > the best compilers I can't agree with this claim. Their COBOL was probably weaker then IBM COBOL, their PL/I was probably (I didn't try it, but I have read some docs) weaker than IBM's PL/I Optimizer/Checkout pair, their Fortan IV was not better than IBM Fortran H (although for Fortran 77 the situation possibly was in favor of DEC). Although I agree that DEC had quite good collection of compilers for VAX/VMS, and some of them probably were be among the best. > The system worked first for > UNIX and then Microsoft, because latter were even worse than UNIX. You continue to ignore the fact that the population of users was radically changed. It is your beloved market, with which aristocracy/nobility naturally faded as the market widened. > And MS in its early days was heavyweight? MS in its early days was fully backed by IBM, didn't you know? > >> we would have one global distributed OO networking system with nodes > >> in PCs. One would need no ftp to get a file. One would even have no > >> files, but persistent objects of different types... > > > > Besides that this is a hardcore idealistic dream, > > It is not a dream. It is pretty doable, but not sellable. The dream is that that was doable decades ago. Whether it is doable now - we shall see relatively soon: development of more or less serious grids is in progress. > >> Which features of UNIX and Windows gave that extension? > > > > Availability of these OSes and accessability of the features, which > > are/were important for general/mass end-users and corresponding > > applications. A quality in strictly software engineering sense was not > > among those features simply because it was not among the most important > > things for that audience. > > See, technical ussues are irrelevant. A technical issue doesn't become relevant automatically, just as a consequence of its technical status. Perhaps you knew that it was considered not important for Soviet tanks to have the motor resource more than a few dozens hours. > >> What makes you think > >> that LSI-11 under RSX would be worse than IBM PC under CP/M? > > > > At the same price and quantities? > > Is that a technical problem? Surely it is. Do you think that materials, components and production work and production equipment naturally cost nothing, and it is entirely management's plays that determine the prices? > The Internet was *shaped* by UNIX and later Windows. But why it was not shaped by IBM mainframe OSes, PDP-11 RSX, VAX/VMS and other noble systems? Do you think that this is just bad luck? > >> If the OSes and their services were developed at a minimal level > >> of responsibility there were no way to produce spam in its current > >> volume. There are elementary ways from prevent that. > > > > I don't know which elementary ways you mean, but I'm sure that at least at > > the current stage, any elementary way of that kind that will not broke the > > service to the end, will be immediately circumvented. > > There are thousands of ways. Just attach an ID to any mail source and limit > the amount of mail generated by a source by some limit per day. The IDs can > be made unique, provider-local, untrackable. If a provider refuses to > conform then instead of being mail "relayer" it becomes a "source". Good for China. Perhaps will more or less work for few European countries (for other reasons). But that's all - it can't work for the whole world and many individual countries without many additional rules and devices, which have to be supported not just by end-user OSes (which is trivial addition to any OS), but by real nation-scale and world-scale forces, which is problematic. > >> > And anyway, software is still much more effectively controlled than > >> > light weapons, explosives and car traffic (perhaps you know that the > >> > latter kills huge number of people every year... software can't come > >> > near that number of victims in near future). > >> > >> You are joking. > > > > Strange. How can I be joking about million of car accident victims > > (worldwide) every year? > > Because human fault /= software fault. When you make a car accident you are > liable. Who is, when a program crashes? Right, the program, and nobody > else. I can't get you here: do you think that a car itself (that is, by its own failures - mechanical and other) can't cause an accident without a crucial participation of a human (driver) or (in the future) of the car's internal software? By the way, don't you think (according to the logic you applied the Internet) that the construction of a car shaped driver's behaviour and traffic patterns? > > There are much more important issues in the case. For > > example, will be car vendors required to publish full sources of the > > software used in their cars? > > What for? To laugh at? There are enough people in the world who know cars and at the same have some programmer skills. Some of them may become interested in studying those sources (of their own car's software, for example). It may constitute very significant resource for finding remaining bugs and glitches. Alexander Kopilovich aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia