smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Joyent's David Young has a conviction that the days of the operating system are numbered, as part of his Joyent Manifesto - Quo vadis, Computing he writes:

“The operating system is dead. Long live the operating system. If the future is network applications, the past is the operating system.”

I think David has oversimplified the concept of an OS-less and server-less environment just a tad. Hardware and software will still need basic building blocks able to run the software of the future, be it server-client or de-centralised. He also notes:

A Web operating system will not emerge. I’m sure this point will be argued vigorously. But I’m right.

That is a give-in. Because the web isn't defined by being an "operating system", rather it is an increasingly interactive environment. So it's hardly breaking new ground to suggest "the internet" won't be an operating system, as it were. David also states:

Because the operating system is pushed down the stack, doesn’t mean what replaces it is an operating system.

To suggest a less complex OS isn't really an OS at all, side-steps the reality than an Operating System is defined primarily by it's function, not how big, or small it is. Or which parts of it reside where. This, again, is a questions of semantics.

A duck doesn't suddenly become an elk the moment it gains a slightly more efficient plumage and flies faster. It is still a duck. Just because many operating systems are moving towards a decentralised nirvana, doesn't suddenly mean they stop existing entirely.

As an example, the software that allows the iPhone to surf the web, access email and receive calls all hinges on a base install of OS X. It may be hidden, indeed one may potentially never actually see it, but it's still there.

Joyent rely heavily on Solaris and large server farms. Without either they would be little more than an idea looking for some way to find fruition. Indeed without that standardised, documented operating system they would never have been able to build their various products to begin with. It seems at odds with sense to be so quick to claim the imminent death of the very thing that helps gives one’s business life.

Further reading, however, illustrates that David contradicts and concedes some points:

This doesn’t mean a client edge device won’t have an operating system. It just won’t matter. Changes have been afoot to usher in this new era. The web is one.

So we’ve gone from no operating system, web or local, to an invisible one that doesn’t matter. I don’t typically “see” oxygen, but I still require it to live. Future technologies will be just the same, in that they too will require a basic operating system or environment to function. That may be entirely built into the device itself, or may be some kind of downloaded “intelligent code”. It may be a very different beast, but it will still be there.

This is really so much more about de-decentralised, portable and application focused computing and evolution of technology, both at the user and producer levels, not the death of the operating system itself. Smart devices are cropping up everywhere and David is right, computing as we know it will change massively in the future. But in order that those new devices can pass information and work in a semi-predictable way, they will still require a common tongue and portable code to co-exist.

How they will be constructed, where they will reside and what remnants of the current model will remain is something that will challenge us for many years to come.

As many of you may be aware, at least those who have read this somewhat poor attempt at writing for some time, would know that I pull the links list
via del.icio.us using some (heavily) re-purposed RSS import code. It’s a pretty ugly hack and has been tweaked some to ensure it plays nice with […]

After some hackery and general pondering over just what sort of feed options are best, the feed options have, err.. grown.
Being as people like choice.. and choice is indeed a good thing, here’s the low-down on the new XML order, in (ironically) no particular order:

I want it all - this is the full give-me-everything deal.. […]

After quite some experimentation, much of it fruitless, that has resulted in a mass tug-of-war with Wordpress and it’s infernal re-write rules, the structure of the ‘foo has changed. This has primarily been driven by a fundamental flaw in Wordpress that will likely never be addressed, as it’s simply not considered a “problem” to begin with..

Whilst I am not at all pleased with the final result, it’s the closest I can come to a workable solution, that scales well and will be as ‘fluff’ free as I can make it.

It means I have to go back to using pages for semi-static content, rather than using a fluid rewrite rule set that blurs the lines to make pages and posts interchangeable.

Today did not start off that well.
Running late as I was, I discovered to my dismay a certain undergarment I had intended to wear, was still yet to fully dry.
This, was a bit of a conundrum, given I had little more than a few minutes to brew a coffee and head out to work.
A desperate […]

Ed asks three questions about their new feature -
recent activity. Option three is in use here, with the post title linking to the post, the comment count linking to the comments and finally the author’s name links directly to the comment - this helps orientate visitors and regular readers alike to the desired navigational […]

Greetings,
Welcome to the new face of Incoherently Surreal.
Based on Fernando’s
magazine, the new layout features much of the old design, indeed apon visting this site I’m sure you will see some old friends, such as the ‘this news, just in’ asides and the ever-growing list of irreverent, oddball or just plain surreal
del.icio.us links, which […]

So, here I am.
It’s been around a month or so since the last post and.. life’s been quite, well.. different.
I’ve updated the theme, although that’s not particularly the primary reason for the post (even if the theme is both functional and at least a little pertty) rather I’m posting again because, well, fuck it, because […]

So far so good.

I must confess that the move to dreamhost has been quite the excellent adventure [insert gratuitous guitar noise, here]…

It’s time for a theme change, and a major shift in design philosophy. Thus, I present in all it’s glory (not to mention failing and weaknesses) elementum - latin for the term ‘element’, meaning “the basic parts that are the foundations of something”.
This theme represents around 4 days of coding, design, debugging and is close […]

.. can you please look at providing a more balanced service to your non-US bound users.

Lately I’ve found the performance of
feedburner to be slowly yet inexorably heading towards time-out hell. It seems unless I am willing to view stats and feed performance during US business hours, which in Australia is generally between 12 midnight […]