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On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 10:40 -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > > about OS X, and that hate is all the more pertinent for me since it > > could have been based on the most modern OS out there (BeOS) > > *choke* Glad I could help. :) > I've used BeOS. I've even been excited about BeOS. I used to be pissed > off about Apple giving BeOS the cold shoulder. But as I got more familiar > with it, and watched Palm floundering around not releasing the BeOS-based > Palm OS 6 long after they should have... I've been more and more glad > Apple stayed the hell away from it. Well, Palm's inability to release an OS is not really indicative of the worth of BeOS, I would think. BeOS still had some significant work to do (especially in terms of manageability and built-in networking support for things like remote filesystems), but at least it's not Unix. > I don't have time to begin to address my BeOS hate, I'm not sure that > much time exists. Interesting; you would be the first person I've communicated with who actually expresses specific hate about BeOS (I'm obviously ignoring all of the "but it's not free" trolls out there). > I'll just say that I can understand them reinventing the wheel, but they > should have actually looked at some of the *round* ones available before > deciding that a triangle made a better wheel than a pentagon. Examples? > Oh, and putting necessary metadata in the file system, outside the file, > where it is GUARANTEED to get lost as son as you have to deal with the > fact that nobody else in the whole world does it the same way as you even > if they're daft enough to think it's a good idea, is hateful in so many > ways... So I assume that you hate that Unix metadata is in the inode, too? Should vi be managing the contents of text files to include owner and permissions? That seems just daft. Metadata is exactly that: data about the data. It's a meeting point between the OS, the app, and the data, and it doesn't make sense to make the exclusive domain of any of them. Sticking it in the filesystem works just dandily, as long as you provide good, simple tools for converting. And the old "but it's not compatible" excuse is just bull -- if we used that for everything, we'd never get anything done. I love incompatible shit, especially when it's both incompatible and better. > > toning down their lickability, and they still haven't fucking figured > > out filetyping. Filename extensions? Seriously? No, seriously? > > Really? *faints* > > Directories, dude. All the advantages of file types and resource > forks, and they don't go BOOM when you back them up. So now all of my files are directories? I mean, I understand the value of an abstraction, but I just don't think this whole "files are actually just abstractions and don't really exist" thing is a good idea. "No, that's not an app, it's a directory that functions as an abstraction for an app." I think abstractions are powerful tools for encapsulating concepts, but it just doesn't seem right to make core ideas into abstractions, especially when the abstraction isn't normally an abstraction -- a file is normally a file, but on OS X a file is going to become a directory of files? Are those files inside the directory also a directory of files? It's just silly. Metadata in the inode is simple to understand, simple to maintain, incredibly powerful, really fast (because it's in the inode), and pays a legacy compatibility cost. So be it. > > At least Linux is so far from the mark that it doesn't offend me; OS X > > could have been a contender (and who knows, maybe they'll go back and > > reassess some of the other great features in BeOS, now that Spotlight is > > copying BFS), > > Um, no, it's not, and that's a GOOD thing. So Spotlight is not copying BFS to some extent? Curious; it sure seems like they are, with the saved live queries, the live-indexed metadata-based querying system, and the fact that the guy who wrote BFS is working for Apple on that project. What's better about Spotlight, other than the fact that they obviously took the next step and started indexing the internals of the apps (although it's only kind of the next step -- if they were really thinking, they would have written an API for all of those file types, so that anyone could use the same system to get access to the data, instead of using their own internal system for scrying for data). -- There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. -- Guy Almes --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://config.sage.orgThere's stuff above here
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