Because consoles don't keep up with gaming PCs, and the games on PCs have the ability to be far more complex while allowing for better interaction. First-person shooters or real-time strategy games suck with a game pad.

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A console is a computer. How does an OS and a lot of threading help "the ability to be more complex"? The only thing your Microsoft OS is buying you is the ability for the paperclip to pop up while you're playing and ruin your game. You may not like the hardware specs on a console compared to some crazy video card you can stick into your motherboard, but the base technology there will only get better. You're already seeing the effects of the "console computer" where the new consoles have web browsers and media interfaces.

Are you just talking about the particular device you use to interact (keyboard versus pad)? You can already use a wireless or USB keypad with the Nintendo Wii, for instance.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I did't say that consoles aren't computers. My calculator is a computer. That doesn't make it equivalent to my PC, which I can use for a variety of tasks, including gaming.

The lag time between versions of consoles means that while their technology may be equal to or slightly above a PC for gaming at their release, they will be completely obsolete by the time the next version is released years later.

There are those who prefer the console for their gaming, and those that prefer their PC. I wouldn't say that one is necessarily superior to the other, but I think that it's unfortunate to discount PC gaming because of the fact that it runs an OS. For me, personally, I find the interface of the PC far more intuitive for the gaming that I do, and the graphics and sound performance that I get are far beyond anything that any console can produce, even if I had shelled out a couple grand for an HDTV.

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It doesn't matter to me what people buy. I'm not much into consoles either - I'm surrounded by computers because of what I do, so I'm more apt to use a PC for any gaming that I do. However, I'm predicting what the market is going to shape up to look like over the course of time.

From my understand, you're a lot more savvy than the average computer user, who would basically be most pleased by having a button to click for internet, one to click for printer, and one to click for games. With consoles getting browsers and faster processors/more VRam and much, much cheaper than PC's, this user is going to have little interest in buying a PC that does word processing, Quicken, Excel, etc, etc when all he wants is games and a browser. I'm seeing this firsthand with "broke" people my age who couldn't afford PC's and used to "do internet" in an internet cafe or whatever, but now do it all through their Nintendo Wii's.

You're already seeing Microsoft put the brakes on its monolithic OS development. In the 90's, they brought you a new OS for the PC every year or so. Then they brought you XP and didn't release another one for years. I'd imagine Vista is the last of its dying breed and is already an anachronism. Microsoft's entire paradigm is shifting - they're making all their development tools free, some of them open source, and they're gunning for inter-operational web technologies ala Java (but better, IMHO - they're really getting this right with .NET). This is allowing mix and match computing overall, where you get drivers and whatnot on an as-needed basis with a focus on distributed/browser interface. Windows is making mini OS for devices like phones, and they're offering developers accessibility to a pared own kernel so they can distribute "lite" version of Windows as OEM.

My point here is that I'm predicting a shift in the way computing on the whole is done to a much more lightweight and distributed environment with working interactions. I think you're going to see the one-stop-shop PC fazed out in favor of devices with minimized, simpler interfaces that all work together in conjunction. I can imagine (and I'm going to be doing this over the next two years myself) homes in the future having a "media computer" that interfaces with non-PC devices (stereos, DVD players, console gaming devices, speakers, hell - even thermostats and shit) and just provides the user with a pared down, minimal interface that is easy to understand and use. The laptop will be relegated to a lightweight portal to all manner of web services (word processing, excel spreadsheets, internet browsing, etc). That is, device interaction and management in the OS is going to be split off from actual software based needs and interests.

If you really think about it, the whole existing approach is sort of bizarre and arose haphazardly. If you were a time-traveler and planning it out, would you really want a gigantic OS? Would you want the same thing switching the interface between AIM and Weatherbug that was also controlling hardware interrupts from a whole bevy of devices that inexplicably hook up to it? Or would you separate this and have the interface be separate and obtain information from a machine dedicated to processing and queuing hardware interrupts on an as-needed basis?

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Some fair points.

Unfortunately (for me) I've lost touch with a lot of the cutting edge technology world, so I'm less able to intelligently respond than usual.


Maybe it's my age and increasing inflexibility. I like my PC. I like to tweak it to push it to the highest levels of performance. My PC, all assembled by me, is a bit of a source of pride. An Xbox? Not so much. It's just a box that hooks up to a TV (to me).

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Well, I'm assuming that anyone with the technical chops to assemble a PC isn't going to be representative of the average user. I'm actually planning a long-term project at my home to make everything controllable through a "house computer". Basically, when all is said and done, I plan to have some sort of interface in each room that allows me to control music, television, temperature, lighting, etc throughout the house. And, taking on tasks like that require going above and beyond what the average user requires or wants. That sort of capability will still be available to us.

With a more "ala carte" OS functionality, you'll still be able to assemble the monolith if that's what you choose to do. And, for some people that may make sense for an indefinite period of time. Just going from my experience dealing with computer users, the large OS has been standard, but it's really overkill for the vast majority of them, and it's becoming moreso with "package" software becoming decreasingly relevant (remember some years ago when you might buy a program like "mah-jong" as an executable on several floppies ).

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Gentoo for you, and Ubuntu for your grandmother.

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Its so much more with Windows Media Center, or Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate edition (Of course technically, you don't even need a TV anymore. Though TV tuners haven't gotten there quiet last time I checked). Only real problem with the Xbox 360 is that you could treat it perfectly, make sure it gets enough air and etc while you beat the crap out of your PS2 due to them tripping cords and if you just have bad odds the thing will die on you. Of course it isn't about the hardware, its about the games after all which is why you might seriously want to buy a 360 over a PS3 with its nonexistence failure rate as so far.

Anyway, point is, consoles are a pain in the ass. Especially when all you really want is to play the games (not that anyone has any time for that. Beh). I'd love to see them try to put Crysis for example on a console. Hah. Of course consoles are so much easier for game makers to control, and make a profit off of. As people would have to buy the game (unless your up for some risky hardware modification that may brick your system sometime in the future with a new update), while with a PC its really easy to pirate the game it self which is why for example Crytek games is suffering at the moment despite offering a great game (or so I'm told, damn old ass computer).

I dunno, obviously the internet is a big part of what a computer is used for these days, but I don't see consoles being any real threat to PC's at all. Personally I don't like the idea of being without the flexibility of a PC. Granted, I'd say my folks (who are entering their early 50's), use the computer for maybe two things for the most part. Surf the internet, and check mail but even they want the ability to do all the things you say they don't need even if they'll never do anything. So no, I don't see people going for a simpler platform with limited capabilities when they can have it all.



Sounds interesting, but how does it work exactly? I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around that idea to be honest. I mean I get it more or less, but I don't see how it would work.

I'm not really setting up an either-or proposition or saying that the OS based computer will go away. What I'm saying is that the "Personal Computer" PC (as opposed to the relative misnomer of a personal computer running a Microsoft OS) is going to see a decline in popularity for casual users, in contrast to the late nineties when men at barbecues admired each others PC's in a car-like suburban pissing match to see who had the most RAM and whose monitor was the biggest.

The computer with the OS won't go anywhere, mostly because of businesses but also because of users such as yourself, that like it. But, the majority of people who "caved in" and bought computers over the last ten years don't like them the way you do. They want them for one or two specific things (printing pictures of the grand kids, "doing email", looking at websites, playing video games etc). It happens that a lot of what I'll call "power users" - a term for non-programmers/IT people that are savvy - also like gaming. I'm guessing that you and pram fit into this category (though I have no way of knowing if you're IT/programmer, so forgive the presumption). Power users will continue to buy OS based computers for personal use because of the flexibility that you mention. But other people, not so much. If they can pay a few hundred bucks for a console that connects to the internet and a few hundred bucks for an "email machine", why pay more for a computer that you don't understand and that can get something called "viruses" and cause you problems?

You're seeing this already. I know people who have not bothered purchasing computers and opt instead to buy phones with internet functionality. I know people who have bought Nintendo Wii because they like the gaming and it gives them internet/email access. This is already a reality. It won't drive the OS computer out of business, but it will make Microsoft and other OS providers less interested in producing a monolithic operating system that purports to be powerful and flexible while at the same time allowing computer illiterate individuals to access everything with a point and click and no maintenance (i.e. their excessive wizards and things of this nature will probably go away).


I'm going to try to explain myself without launching into gobbledygook, which isn't easy since I've spent my spare time in the last month making a website that evaluates database platforms targeted to programmers and DBA's....

An OS has certain "basic" functions that it simply must do. These include managing internal functions (processor, memory, disk swapping), divvying up time between running programs, "talking" to hardware connected to the machine externally or internally, loading itself into memory, etc. The other tasks that are not strictly required (but for all intents and purposes are commercially) are application management and user interaction.

A simple OS (think of what might be in early cell phones) is mainly centered around managing its hardware and the user interface is almost an afterthought about which no one much cares. On the other extreme, you have Microsoft's stuff. With each OS, not only has the user interface grown (to be expected with expanding memory capacities), but the ratio of interface to hardware management has grown. With each OS, Microsoft is forcing the OS to act more and more like an application suite in addition to an OS. If not done well (and Microsoft does not do it well), this leads to a degradation in the actual performance of the OS (i.e. printing a document gets screwed up because the OS scheduler decides its time to check for RealPlayer updates and the OS starts thrashing).

Now imagine if we had separate modules for this kind of thing. That is, you had a computer that was solely dedicated to interacting with various devices and it provided some interface to a computer that was solely dedicated to interacting with you. The down side is that it might take slightly longer to print something or scan photos, but the upside is that you won't have hardware level stuff conflicting with the applications that you're trying to run. There's no reason for the OS to be pinging the print spooler while you're playing some first person shooter game. And, where this wasn't feasible before, the increasing availability of distributed technologies and increasing standardization of networking protocols (things like CORBA) is making it possible.

What I'm talking about here is essentially taking a lot of this application level fluff out of the OS. This isn't a brand thing. I'm a techie through and through, but I'm a whore - I'll happily program away in .NET on XP or Vista if it pays well and likewise for NIX. Microsoft is getting on board with this idea and you can see it by virtue of them starting to offer pared down OS for companies to give employees and whatnot.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Pirating games would be easy enough to stop. I've never understood why game vendors don't do it. Ship each software version with a unique USB key that contains an encrypted string allowing the game to run. The executable for the game reads the USB port and if it doesn't see the key or it sees the wrong key, it doesn't start. No registry hacking, no man-in-the-middle schemes, no fuss, no muss. In fact, my company is an OEM that sells expensive hardware/software setups, and this is what we use to enable/disable software features. If it didn't work, we'd potentially lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Edit: Well, I guess I do see it. It might put people off of buying the game in the first place. But, I wouldn't think it would put off as many users as it would save them in piracy.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Sounds simple enough, and not too very complicated to be a problem. Hmm, why haven't game developers come up with any real anti-piracy measures? I'm not sure, I'm sure they don't like loosing lots and lots of money.

Well it depends, there is a very fine line between serving your customer and keeping the bean counters happy. Take Windows XP for example, for the longest time I stayed away from the OS simply because of its activation crap. Oh sure it's really not that much of a hassle, but the fact that it has the potential to be a pain in the arse and effectively treat those who spend money as suspicious characters of interest was enough to keep with Windows 2000 for a few years. Of course I eventually caved in, but the point is I don't have a problem with anti-piracy measures I just have a problem when its terribly intrusive. Well, hopefully that makes sense.

What the doctor describes here isn't new. We used to call them dongles; they attached to the parallel port and were a real pain in the arse to support. Especially when stacked with other dongles and a printer or some other parallel port device. Plus they'd die in the arse regulary and have to be replaced - gee I wish we had USB when I had to support 3000 of those buggers! Anyway, I digress ...

Any software locking scheme can be cracked whether it uses an external hardware device or not. Most use hardware anyway by taking machine identification from places such as MAC address from ethernet controller. I just read that researchers have cracked audio CAPTCHA schemes with 80% success.

Dongles work well within a commercial environment (in my case engineering design software) not because they cant be cracked but because they represent a very expensive investment of the company enabling them to control their asset. (The same as any other encryption key scheme). The illegal dongle free software was always available through Asia but it was very rarely used by people in our target market. At one point we saw counterfeit dongles reaching our shores. We knew our market well and knew when a potential customer was doing the wrong thing. A bit of diplomacy and we soon had a sale out of them in those rare cases.

However if I went the dongle path for gaming software I'd be no better off (probably worse because of the support headache) as the pirates and their friends are the very people who would use the software.

So if your company sells a product to the demographic that likes to crack then sure you are probably losing money. If not then you are usually wasting your time. At one point we decided to try using no hardware referenced encryption and the sales chart continued to climb at the same satisfying steady pace. In the end we went MAC addresses and online registration for the very low support overhead.

If you sell a hardware/software combo then put the value in the hardware and open source the software. You'll find your customers discovering more uses for your hardware thus expanding the market for you.

If you were to build a computer out of these I suspect operating systems will become redundant or perhaps trivial?

EETimes.com - 'Missing link' memristor created: Rewrite the textbooks?

Way to go. You had it all right up until that point. "Getting this right with .NET" ?! omg

Microsoft's obsession w/proprietary technologies and/or ones built around its own OS will eventually lead to its downfall.

Tis a good thing Bill skipped out on time. The captain should not go down w/his old ship.

Ballmer: Yeah well I'm gonna bublrpgrplbb . . .erp. . .bubble. .

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