[Long] [OT] That Big Shadow Over Your Shoulder, Part 2, was Re: [Coco] Re: OS Vulnerabilities

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

I think we really disagree about what constitutes the most important aspect
of an OS. Mac taught us it was the GUI. That they seamlessly moved from
their own to Unix expresses that. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows does
the same. Software is made effective by the interface, and so that makes
Alex correct -- these are all technically modern operating systems.

At 07:46 PM 2/28/04 -1000, Alex wrote:
>Some of the features you mentioned don't ship with any OS.

Features do, but not software. My original questions were an improvisation,
freely commingling the two because of my belief that an OS that doesn't
have wide software support (and the structure to accept them) isn't really
much of an OS. (Remember Be?) Maybe you can think of my improvised
questions as those of a general buyer who's gonna invest in 50-100 machines
for a small company with no IT department that will run the whole operation
in house, from reception desk to publication department to personnel to
advertising to manufacturing to FedEx scheduling. (Remember that I knew
nothing about OpenVMS when John brought it up in the discussion of
vulnerabilities, so I was thinking it was a comparison to Windows.)

>Almost all of the support that ships with windows for the tasks you are 
>talking about are at the "toy" level if at all.

That's a little extreme, but I'll give it to you (except for IE and WMP).
No, I don't use WordPad. But even the commercial, over-the-counter software
for Linux (the best example of an also-ran OS) is largely at the toy level.
For Windows and Mac, it isn't. It's at the pro level.

>Pagestream (the Linux port having just shipped) has Type 1, and I 
>believe if you use OpenStep for you windowing manager you will have 
>Type 1 support.  Since you were talking about this in reference to DTP 
>(which is supported out of the box by no OS that I know of), then this 
>is more than sufficient to cover your question.

Desktop publishing is supported by, but doesn't ship with, Windows or Mac
operating systems -- though most Windows systems from the big box stores
and huge mailorder places are preconfigured with MSWord, which has become
an effective, if imperfect, DTP system; yes, I edited and designed a
biography for a publisher who only used MSWord from start to finish.
Tossing in MSWord on a $499 system is as close to OS reality as you're
gonna see!

But the point was not the DTP software. It was support for Type 1 and
OpenType, which is indeed built into the OS -- Mac for much longer, of
course, since it originated on the platform. So you tell me at least one
version of Linux is *finally* up to Windows and Mac in having support for
the 15-plus-year-old standard type (Type 1) built in now.  Can you hear me
cheering? ;) Okay, it's not modern yet, but trying real hard! I'll give it
that!

>X is only part of a GUI.  You need a windowing manager which runs on 
>it.  Strictly speaking the phrase "ships with" hardly applies to either 
>Linux or FreeBSD as it is related to the distro that you are talking 
>about.

Which one is sold by Wal-Mart? If Linux is gonna have a standard, that'll
be the one if Wal-Mart succeeds in selling them.

>Documents for publication are still occasionally exchanged as PDF or PS 
>files.  It is _still_ a sleazy question.  It isn't a standard.  In any 
>case it is widely supported by non-MS software.

Sorry, Alex, I can't help you with your sleaze problem. As I mentioned in
my other post, PDF documents are typical for final product presentation,
and PS is (decreasingly) used in the print shop, which has gone to PDF --
especially as Macs fade and Windows PCs rise there. The last book I worked
on (Robert Allen's "Marching On!" -- Civil War book, very cool, go buy it!)
was written in an old Tandy program the author had bought with the computer
at a yard sale, converted and then edited for the next three years in
MSWord, the book designed in Pagemaker (Windows version), exported to PDF,
sent online, printed in its first edition at an on-demand publisher (also
Windows-based), and shipped back here flawlessly finished.

MSWord just simply is the standard editor from which the PDF and other
presentation documents are created -- and the working tool that businesses
use and exchange as their folks work day to day. Let me say that again: It
is the standard. Just because the standard was commercially set doesn't
make it any less of a standard (nor help you with your sleaze issue).

>TeX based stuff is hardly toy stuff.  It doesn't do GUI, but it is very 
>well implemented for serious use.

TeX is nowhere. I included it in my hobbyist or failed software paragraph,
but that I was wrong. Rather, it's niche software, and that niche will
continue to get smaller because the TeX stuff is hateful to work with.

Here's the TeX community attitude, as summed up in their Wikipedia entry
for LilyPond, TeX-based software: "Unlike programs such as Finale and
Sibelius, which feature a graphical user interface for entering notes,
LilyPond focuses on producing beautiful output, comparable to
professionally engraved scores."

That is, of course, smoke and mirrors, cleverly retold to anyone who'll
listen. (Stronger words come to mind.) I can output score as beautifully
engraved in Finale as LilyPond -- as can Sibelius ... oh, and Graphire,
which they conveniently forget to mention and which blasted LilyPond off
the map for engraving beauty some 10 years ago.

Why is it that these LilyPond zealots are wrong, and whence the
misperception? Because, horror of horrors, Finale and Sibelius and
Graphire, with their GUIs, actually made music engraving available to the
average musician who wasn't a computer programmer. How offensive is that,
right? Okay, so in the hands of a working musician with a life to live and
gigs to play, the scores were adequate but not very far along on the
Glorious March to Engraving Perfection -- that is, no match for the
LilyPond geekwork.

But in the hands of a good engraver like me, Finale can walk all over
LilyPond in simple production time (=money) as well as playback (which
LilyPond can't do, and which is very important for effective proofreading,
and for demos which publishers often provide for audition), *and* produce
final score with no compromises in beauty or capacity. I just finished a
score for Larry Polansky that the LilyPond devotees would have considered
impossible to do at all in Finale, much less do so beautifully.

You see what's happened? Being stuck two generations back, these are not
'modern', but their claims tend not to be refuted because almost nobody
really cares about them except their devotees (going back to the original
topic = vulnerability, and "nobody cares", which is why Microsoft gets
hammered harder than anyone else). Can these minor programs do the task
they set out to do? Sure they can. There are good tools and better ones,
general tools and special ones. I was chopping ice in front of the barn
with an adz last week, the first time I had to use such a tool. But how
many people have ice in front of the barn? And in 25 years, this is the
first winter I've needed to chop ice in front of the barn. And if I had a
score in front of me that required the staves make a perfect circle rather
than be straight lines, I'd use LilyPond, my adz for this job. There are
only three such scores that I know of, and they were all hand-inked by the
publisher. Oh, and then I'd import it as EPS and place it into Finale for
the rest of the work. :)

Back to it, then: I wouldn't expect at OS to have every special tool, but I
would expect it to support the wide array of contemporary expectations as
well as provide openings for every special tool. I think that's really it
-- expectations. You and John appear to think of a 'modern OS' (my words, I
think) in terms of technical achievement. I think of a 'modern OS' as one
that meets and exceeds most expectations for modern computers uses (not
'computing').

The areas where Microsoft fails are well known, though it hates to
publicize them. But the proponents of other OSes are no more likely to
admit their failures. Whose sleaze factor is worse? There's pond scum in
every pond, lily or otherwise.

>You said digital camera interfaces.  The natural assumption was that 
>you meant digital _still_ cameras, most of which currently use USB.  If 
>you meant video you should have said so, and whether it has firewire or 
>not is pretty much immaterial as to wether it has the software or not.

Sorry to have confused you. There's a great project going on right now
called "the intention/reception project," which proposes that both sides in
a discussion are inevitably misunderstood. As I said at the very outset,
"here's my random questionnaire for whether it is truly a modern
multi-purpose OS." I gave you random, you expected precision.
Intention/reception.

Dennis