A Free XML-Based Operating System 175
Dotnaught writes "For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser and promises radically reduced development time. To provide developers with an incentive to write for the platform, Xcerion's back-end system is designed to route revenue, either from subscription fees or from ads served to users of free programs, to application authors. Think of it as Google AdSense, except for programmers rather than publishers. Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"
Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Let this be the thread for all "So what?" posts, please.
Not an 'Operating System' (Score:5, Insightful)
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't see these guys as a threat to anyone except themselves and their investors.
Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you wanna do something in this "internet OS" you'll fullscreen your $179 copy of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, and fire up an app which probably uses some Google API internally. World changing? Or just another layer between you and them that serves yet more adverts?
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stop posting stories like this damnit, I'm looking at you Zonk!
Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:2, Insightful)
If it NEEDS AN OS TO RUN, it is not an OS!
-uso.
Re:Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and brow (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably becuase that OS could be Ubuntu, and that browser could be Firefox. Or OSX/Safari, or Suse/Konqueror, or.....
Re:Why require a browser (Score:5, Insightful)
- Installed on most machines by default (many policies prohibit the installation of new s/w)
- Has the capability to be extended to provided an OS-like environment.
Au Contraire -- Sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, it's not that long ago that Google was just two guys doodling on scrap paper.
A few problems have to be overcome including internet latency and the tendancy of everyone to cache stuff they should not be putting in caches (If your PC's memory cache worked like Internet caches do, you'd be lucky to get a Solitaire hand dealt before the PC crashed.)
And I doubt this is a threat to Google because they will do the same thing it if it works out.
My impression is that what's good about this specific scheme is that only data is sent over the network, so the annoying latency issues many of us have with Google spreadsheets and Writely should be less of a problem.
What's bad is that the data is stored on someone's servers. Security will be an issue. So will availability. And loss of data. And ...
Another problem is that networked "OS"es may not be acceptable for a lot of users because they are just plain too damn slow. A few years ago I slapped together a networked application running on a server here at home for keeping notes together. Worked, sorta. But even though I owned the network and the application was built into server code, not run via CGI, it was too slow to be usable. The problem looked to be latency, not slow processing.
The few serious attempts I've seen at using HTTP/browsers to do real jobs varied from awful to marginal. IMHO even things like SAIL suck. I'd rather update the /etc files directly. Hell, even ed/EDLINE would be faster and more satisfactory.
Maybe the problems can be overcome with brains, technology, and money. Maybe they can't.
Back on topic. Is this stuff a threat to Microsoft? You just bet it is. MS makes most of its money off OK, but overpriced, products that do way more than most customers need (Exception--Xbox which may eventually be a real, money making operation with a bright future). Furthermore, adding more features and charging more for new versions of Windows/Office is probably an unsustainable strategy. We're already seeing geeks and a few organizations walking away from Microsoft. I think that is only going to become more common and some of them may well go to schemes like this.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Validation for the website (Score:4, Insightful)
In their defense:
That said, if I were these guys, I'd fix the HTML.
Balls! (Score:1, Insightful)
What a web browser provides is a convenient way to do a GUI. We could hook common layout engines to different software entirely - and this would make more sense than current hacks atop HTTP **cough** AJAX **cough**
Sorry to be rude - but dictionary time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww
Yahoo!'s main page doesn't validate, either:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww
Unexpectedly, MSN's front page is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fww
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
UNIX shell = OS.
Seriously though, UIs are not OSs. The UNIX text-based command interpreters are not operating systems any more than this is, so I don't really see your point. UNIX is an OS. "M$ windoze", or as I prefer to call it, Microsoft Windows, is an OS. I really don't see how using one over the other will magically educate users about computer science vocabulary.
Not even worth mentioning (Score:4, Insightful)
There are some points about RIAs one should learn as fast as possible to avoid wasting everybodys time:
1) JavaScript is nothing new. It's been around for something like 10 years. DTML/Push-Pull JavaScript/Ajax/[Fill in own buzzword of choice] is nothing new. Many people have tried it, many have given up and even the best in 'Ajax' have stepped down again from using it in anything but the most tried and true situations and use cases.
2) RIA is nothing new. Plugins are nothing new. There are entire landfills full of potential competitors to Flash and Java. Most of them failed. A few remain in niches where others can't reach. The only one I would care to mention is curl [curl.com], and they are having a hard time and only manage by patiently working away at their tool for x-plattform RIAs.
3) The big boys Adobemedia / Sun / IBM and some promising others are currently involved in a giant hack & slay fest over the best and most prevailent rich client / server integration. Joining them with some obscure cross-funded project with bad buzzwords, a crappy website and nothing to deliver than something worse than the most half-assed Ajax kit is like showing up on a Knights tournament riding an aged donkey, armed with a cardboard kiddie helmet, a broomstick and a toothpick.
4) 'We will revolutionize
Bottom line:
This isn't news and it's not the bits worth it takes to transmit it. Move on. No one needs yet another bunch of silly goofs who try and tell the users/clients that they've discovered something new and everything will change if only you run with their buzzword ridden half-assed vision of an untested product that apes things others have finished years ago - and people don't know about for a reason.
Re:Not an 'Operating System' (Score:3, Insightful)
When you have a DOS machine (or even a Commodore 64), there was a clear distinction between the OS (what was resident in memory before the program you really want to use was even loaded), and everything else.
As you start layering things on top of that, and also building programs that critically depend on those higher layers, it becomes impossible to draw a binary line between "OS" and "Not OS".
Is KDE my OS? By almost any standard definition, no. On the other hand, the services provided by KDE look an awful lot like OS services to KDE-based programs, like knotify and the unification of remote and local file access that the program doesn't have to implement.
You can't even get away with claiming everything in the kernel is an "OS". There's a webserver that goes in the Linux kernel itself. Some versions of Windows had a disturbing amount of graphics handling in the inner kernel running in the most privileged processor mode (another possible OS definition which doesn't really work out).
There's almost, but not quite, no meaningful line to be drawn between "OS" and "programming framework" anymore. Probably the best definition of "OS" is "the set of frameworks that you can not bypass for some task", which in passing encompasses everything traditionally considered an OS. If you want to write a Windows program, you pretty much have to use the Windows Messaging framework. If you want to write a Linux program that uses the network as a normal user, you'll be using the socket framework the kernel provides. You can layer things on top of that, but you can't bypass it, and often there's no way around fundamental limitations in the OS.
(Note that Linux the OS is therefore much smaller than Windows the OS, because many more pieces of the Linux stack can be ripped out and replaced, like the Windowing system, than you can in Windows.)
The advantage of this definition is that it's actually somewhat usable and concrete. The disadvantage is, I don't know of anyone else who uses it; most people are still trying to jam the 1970s definition somehow onto our 2007 stack of technology.
Stupid, but not entirely useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a 'trend' running amock that inflicts people with this odd kind of insanity. Apparently they want a Visio like UI to build networks and virtual farms with.
Anything that gets released that helps keep track of containers with meaningful text descriptors in containers that have very complex parent / child / dependent relationships, I'm all for. That's just less boring stuff one has to muck with to satisfy a client's web 2.0 fetish.
I don't see this as very novel at all, nor really useful as a whole as its intended. What I do see is a bunch of possible cool parts I can throw in something else. Will withold official judgement until they actually release something.
Could just be vaporware too.