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Programming Operating Systems

Creator of TempleOS, Terry Davis, Has Passed Away (osnews.com) 174

Posted by EditorDavid from the talking-to-God dept.
OSNews reports: Terrence Andrew Davis, sole creator and developer of TempleOS (née LoseThos), has passed away at age 48. Davis suffered from mental illness -- schizophrenia -- which had a severe impact on his life. He claimed he created his operating system after having spoken with and receiving instructions from god, and he was a controversial figure, also here on OSNews, for his incomprehensible rants and abrasive style towards OSNews readers and staff. We eventually had to ban him, but our then-editor Kroc Kamen worked with him in 2010 to publish an article about his operating system despite his ban.... I hope he found peace -- wherever he may be.
Davis spent 10 years building "an operating system to talk to God," according to a 2014 profile in Motherboard, which described its welcome screen as "a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text" resembling early DOS-based GUIs. (Wikipedia describes its interface as "a mixture of DOS and Turbo C.") To build his operating system, Terry wrote 121,176 lines of code.

An anonymous reader writes: Davis learned assembly language on a Commodore 64 before he'd graduated from high school. He eventually got a master's degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, and as an undergrad he worked briefly at Ticketmaster, programming operating systems. His later life included time in mental hospitals and some homelessness, as well as living at home with his parents after his schizophrenia was diagnosed and treated.

In 2014 Motherboard pieced together his lifestyle from emailed updates Terry sent from his Ubuntu desktop. They concluded he was living on disability, and spent most of his time coding, surfing the web, "or using the output from the National Institute of Standards and Technology randomness beacon to talk to God -- he posts the results on his webpage as 'Terry Davis' Rants.'" Their article describes him as "God's lonely programmer," saying Davis "offered the world a temple to a God who speaks only to him, and is still waiting for everyone else to listen."
Terry's death was confirmed by a local Oregon newspaper, and the official web site for TempleOS now also includes this death notice:

In the wake of Terry A. Davis' passing his family has requested supporters of his donate to "organizations working to ease the pain and suffering caused by mental illness" such as
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Creator of TempleOS, Terry Davis, Has Passed Away More

Creator of TempleOS, Terry Davis, Has Passed Away

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  • He didn't "pass away". He *died* due to negligence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2018 @10:54AM (#57275258)

    Because people stop treating ill people like ill people, as soon as that illness contains some not nice behavior. Even if it clearly is caused by the illness.
    And so they ice him out and stop giving him the help he needs, until he dies.

    Even though that dynamic is understandable, in my book, it is denial of assistance. A crime nearly as great as doing the killing oneself.

    Religious people, from suicide bombers in the middle east to child rapists in the Vatican to the average superstitious schizophrenic like this guy, need treatment! Not even more hate. Hate is what caused their illness to begin with.

    But hey... we're the kind of people who murder murderers, and then act surprised if other people learn form us, that murder is all-right, if you got an excuse the public thinks is valid. Ditto for hate, torture, etc.

    We're still in the deepest depths of the dark ages. At least, until the ravaging religious epidemics are cured (without hurting even a single person), and we can cure and re-integrate even mass-murdering child rapists. Or even ... *gasp* ... prevent them from becoming that way.
    I mean the idea of acting that way, is the fundament of pretty much every religion I know of. For a reason.

    • While there are many problems with religion, I wonder if modern secularism really offers anything better. Sure, these idiots believe in god, but we believe in 60 genders and in infinite growth. They burn innocent women and rape children, but we cause global warming that will kill much more people in the end, not to mention all the shit we enabled in africa and china just to get cheaper products. They repsect community and friendships, while we... sit alone behind our screen, drenching ourselves in consumeri

      • > Sure, these idiots believe in god

        Oh look, an ignorant and arrogant Atheist unable to respect another Theist's beliefs and truths. So much for modern secularism offering anything better...

        > Hell, even Newton and Einstein were partially religious

        Newton _also_ wrote *more* about Alchemy then Physics. Funny how _that_ gets overlooked.

        So its OK to be crazy as long as you produce OTHER stuff that works? =P

        • So its OK to be crazy as long as you produce OTHER stuff that works? =P

          As long one can easily isolate the crazy from the non-crazy and use the non-crazy to better society, and as long as the crazy doesn't violently hurt one, yes. Hell, even if the crazy contributes nothing, but does not hurt anyone, it is ok to be crazy.

      • Are you sure that the secular west managed to do something better? Hell, even Newton and Einstein were partially religious, and not rabid hateful atheists.

        I would argue that it has on the whole done better, but that doesn't mean it will be perfect. I suspect that in another few years, the current idiocy surrounding 60 genders will largely die off. Meanwhile religions will continue to believe as they have for centuries or millennia because if you start to pull at the threads of the central tenants of the faith, the whole thing will unravel.

        I also think there's a difference between secularism and the rabid atheists that were as hateful of religious folks as

      • Religion is not the root of all evil

        Sure it is. Before religion, was there even a concept of 'evil'? I bet you that religion was what invented the concept of evil when creation myths were being concocted ten thousand years ago.

        • When people lived in tribes or whatever, didn't they have rules? Can't you say that these rules defined good and evil?

          • When people lived in tribes or whatever, didn't they have rules? Can't you say that these rules defined good and evil?

            I think I see the parent's point: Tribes developed rules about things that were desirable, or undesirable (constructive v. destructive). The polarized concepts of "Good" and "Evil" may well have been purely non-secular in origin i.e., religious, spiritual, or generally non-entity supernatural. Ultimately - short of building a time machine - the answer may always be a guessing game.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Prien715 ( 251944 )

        Many atheists cannot tell the difference between the fiction bin and the rubbish bin.

        Admiring and emulating the fidelity of the Three Musketeers, the deduction ability of Sherlock Holmes or any character other fictional character is the same as how one should read the wisdom of Solomon or the compassion of Jesus. Much better than say, admiring a character from an Ayn Rand novel who are amazing at justifying to themselves and their reader about being an douchbag.

        • Isn't what you are making a typical "no true scotsman" argument? Just as you can select intelligent atheists, I can select intelligent religious people.

      • Uh no. It's the religious who are fucking up the planet. Dominion, remember? The Republicans who keep jerking off big oil and the like are always telling us how they're motivated by their religion. They are the ones who believe in infinite growth. They're also the ones who raped Africa in the name of saving it with Jesus. You have it ass-backwards.

        • Regarding the conquering of Africa, you are correct, Christianity has a major part in this. Regarding our ecological problems, I think that capitalism (or maybe, if you insist on religion, Protestantism) is more responsible than religion in general. Don't get me wrong, religion has plenty of problems, but I honestly don't think that it it just disappeared things would be better. I guess what I'm wondering is: what will replace it? Would you really prefer a world where SJW/alt-right wars are the new crusades

          • Don't get me wrong, religion has plenty of problems, but I honestly don't think that it it just disappeared things would be better.

            There aren't enough people who love capitalism to support conservative parties, they have to fall back on people who love Jesus (or whatever.) They would die off (and thus stop supporting capitalism) without religious people to manipulate.

            I guess what I'm wondering is: what will replace it? Would you really prefer a world where SJW/alt-right wars are the new crusades?

            I'd prefer a world where the alt-right are educated in racial issues, but we can't have everything we want. SJWs are often annoying, but since their focus is on letting people do what they want with themselves, I'm pretty much on their side.

    • Do you know the cause of death because I'm not seeing it. For all we know, he died of a heart attack

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tsolias ( 2813011 )

      At the time terry was wondering around in 'murica, 'murica didn't have time to take care of Terries, they focused on dreamers, blacks, feminists, gays and hilary.

      A guy has thousands of people documenting his condition, reporting in where he is(which he did also by himself), and so on... yet the public services never gave a shit.

      when did 'murica stopped caring about Americans?

      • iirc, mental health centers were cut back significantly under Reagan and no one's bothered to do much about it since then. that's one possible answer, though i'd say that a more accurate answer would be that we never really did.

        • to elaborate slightly, i don't know how great those mental health centers were on average even when they did exist. there have certainly been horror stories; i just don't know whether they are representative. it's quite possible that they were just places to send humans to rot like garbage out of sight, and we decided not to waste the money on that since they could rot on the street just as well. i don't know.

          • Reagan closed them instead of reforming them because the goal was to abandon the insane for monetary reasons, and certainly not for the purpose of helping anyone but the wealthy.

        • Negative. The ACLU sued to have the asylums shut down on the basis that incarcerating people who committed no crime was immoral. They won. Reagan closed the doors on the now-empty facilities. And somehow got the blame for setting people free who were innocent. As long as they could lift spoon to mouth to feed themselves, they were good to go according to the ACLU.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        How did this bigoted shit get marked as insightful?

        Mental health services were cut back in the 80s and everyone suffered. Minorities with mental health issues got screwed just as much as white people with mental health issues.

        • One guy carries generations of taxes on his back, can't have even the basic health care for his condition and is treated like a criminal,
          vs some random person jumping from country to country and ending up in the one that offers him the best conditions.
          Terry didn't do country-shopping. He stayed home, yet he lived like an exiled.

          If you want to call it bigotry, call it that way, if you want to call me racist, please do... I am.
          This doesn't negate the fact that nobody fucking cared about terry, because terry d

      • yet the public services never gave a shit.

        The summary stated that he was living on disability, which I'm assuming is funded from Social Security.

    • He didn't "pass away". He *died* due to negligence

      How do you know what he died of?

      According to Wikipedia, he hit by a train in an accident.

  • Iâ(TM)m not anywhere near my laptop so I canâ(TM)t load it into a VM, so for now I just want to ask if any of you have tried loading it up and what your experience was? I see itâ(TM)s only 16MB, so Iâ(TM)m guessing it wasnâ(TM)t all that far along or perhaps talking to god can be done efficiently. Anybody?

  • An interesting experiment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:16AM (#57275344) Homepage

    If I remember correctly, his OS was written completely from scratch and had a few interesting ideas:

    1) All code is compiled JIT, this means that C looks just like a scripting language and you can always break into a debugger.
    2) He made his own dialect of C called HolyC, which was a version of C with small fixes to make it more low-level and accurate.
    3) If I remember correctly symbol tables were global, so that processes could access each other's variables by names, thus allowing libraries to simply work by changing global variables.

    I am sure that somewhere, in his code, there's something to learn from.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dcollins ( 135727 )

      "If I remember correctly symbol tables were global, so that processes could access each other's variables by names, thus allowing libraries to simply work by changing global variables."

      This is a surprisingly poignant statement on how crazy people really want global entities to exist.

      • Perhaps the Von Neumann architecture is how it is because it's modeled somewhat after how we think--external storage (books, paper, and now computers) I/O (eyes, ears, mouth) and memory are distinct systems. So when a schizophrenic sets about the task of creating a system, maybe he models it after his own brain or world view. Maybe part of being "crazy" is that parts of the brain access eachother in unconventional ways. Sometimes it's for the better (creative) but often for the worse (paranoid, hallucina

  • It was suicide (Score:4, Informative)

    by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:29AM (#57275394) Homepage

    According to wikipedia:

    On the evening of 11th of August 2018, Terry was walking alongside some railroad tracks in the city of The Dalles, when he was accidentally struck by a Union Pacific train coming from behind.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      Accident != suicide

  • He will be missed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by UWM ( 1162951 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:50AM (#57275506) Homepage
    We used to prank call Terry Davis sometimes, he used to have some good insights and he could carry on a conversation for a while until he would suddenly "switch gears" and hang up the phone. One time, we even had him and Richard Stallman speak to eachother for a moment.

    And he thought Linus Torvalds was a noob because he never wrote his own compiler.

  • Sad news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ( 4475953 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:07PM (#57275578)

    I followed him from time to time. Some of his rants during his schizophrenic periods were weird, to say the least. Then again, not many people develop a programming language on their own and then use it to program a complete graphical operating system that runs on bare metal with it. It's sad that his schizophrenia wasn't treated earlier and more effectively.

    • Even the most chaotic mind seeks out stability and order. In this case it would appear that the afflicted person had enough skill and/or talent to express that urge in the form of software. Based on his own statements in the article that was indeed its purpose.

  • I ran a copy up in a virtual machine and it worked without an issue. I went through some of the programs and tried to get used to the cli it uses IIRC. One of my colleagues gave it a go as well a few weeks ago.

    I might go back and look at it again, you never know what jewels lie in there from such dedicated creation.

    R.I.P Terry, thank you for something interesting.

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