Computer Software Problem. Any Wizards?

[Salty19]

When the time comes to get a laptop I may go the MAC route and use a virtual copy of Windows.  I've seen it in action as you have...very impressed.

[curtisv]

CurtisV
I have never been a Mac guy so I couldn't say this as a fact but I understand the new Mac OS is derived from Linux.  I'd say that would be a smart move by Apple.

Ron

The kernel of the OS is closer in heritage to FreeBSD than any of the other BSD distribution.  BSD is Berkeley Software Distribution from University of California at Berkeley (UCB) which dates back to 1981 when it was a varient of AT&T's Unix.  Since then all of the AT&T code was replaced, as of BSD4.4.  The three major varients are NetBSD, which aims for portability across many platforms, FreeBSD, which initially aimed for a highly stable BSD on commodity Intel hardware (PCs) but has branched out to Sun, PowerPC, and other platforms, and OpenBSD, which focused on a very hight level of security.

The Linux kernel has an entirely different lineage.

Both BSD and Linux use "open source" utilities where the base utilities are derived from the Free Software Foundation GNU project at MIT, which dates back to the 1970s and is still alive and well.  This is probably what your MAC guy (and many MAC and PC people) mistook MAC OSX to be derived from Linux.  MAC OSX shares a lot in common with Linux and BSD, but to the extent it is derived from either, it is much closer to being a strain of BSD.  The biggest difference is Apple wrote their own windowing system which supports X-Windows applications where both Linux and BSD today use X-Windows as distributed by Xorg.  X-Windows originated at MIT and was long supported by MIT through an affiliated non-profit foundation (X Foundation I think).

Despite what the popular press would have you believe, neither Microsoft or Apple have contributed much in the way of innovation to the world of computer operating systems or networking.  In terms of kernel features such as virtual memory, demand page allocation, a modern fast, robust, and journaling file system, distributed file systems, security, windowing systems, Microsoft is still catching up to where the research world was with Unix and BSD more than a decade ago.  It is no secret that the Internet was exclusively a Unix and BSD network for almost a decade until Microsoft first supported TCP/IP.  MAC was also behind but not by as much.  A Xerox windowing system, a few research windowing systems including MIT X-Windows, and Sun Microsystem's commercial SunWindows all preceeded Apples first use of a windowing system on the first Macintosh computers.  When Apple tried to copyright it, a judge concluded that nothing about Apples windowing system was unique except the shape of the trash container and in a slap in the face to Apple awarded them copyright protection to nothing more than the trash can with a round lid for deleted files.  Audio and video conferencing was on the Internet via the mbone (Multicast Backbone) before Microsoft supported sound or video or networking at all.

The modern Internet was "we" know it, where "we" is the computer science research community officially dates back to 1986 when the NSFnet (National Science Foundation) replaced the ARPAnet (run by Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Adminstration) for most university research use.  The WWW along with embedded multimedia dates back to at least 1992 and came from CERN in Geneva Switzerland and was originally used by the high energe physics research community but even then they knew it would be more generally useful.  The first web browser to support Windows (3.11) and MAC OSX was Mosaic, written at UIUC (University of Illinious, Urbain Champaign [spelling?]) and neither wrote a web browser for many years to follow.

Back in the 1980s a common analogy was Unix was like a motorcycle, MSDOS a kids bicycle with training wheels and Apple a tricycle.  You needed more skill to operate the motorcycle and some people found them all out scary but you weren't going to go very fast or very far on the other two.

I'm way off topic again.  :-)

Curtis

[Salty19]

Hey Bill Gates stole DOS, why can't Apple steal BSD? 

[curtisv]

Hey Bill Gates stole DOS, why can't Apple steal BSD? 

BSD users are delighted that Apple went from their own OS in OS9 to a BSD based OS in OSX.

In the very late 1990s a bug was found (not by Microsoft) in NT.  The bug was in a timer used by all of the drivers that counted time in msec since boot up in a 32 bit integer and caused drivers to hang or crash when it rolled over.  The timer rolled over in 49 days (I think).  It was determined that that bug was in all versions of NT for nearly a decade.  The joke was that no NT system had ever stayed up for more than 7 days so no one ever noticed.

This too belongs in "off topic".

[Salty19]

A bug in Microsoft NT...Blasphemy!   Heck, I had a copy installed 8 days straight once.  Then the power was restored and she ran a whole 3 days before the famous BSOD. Truly the worst piece of software garbage since...well...ever!

So I take it you're in IT? I'm in telecom engineering myself...used to work for UUNET too..

[curtisv]

So I take it you're in IT? I'm in telecom engineering myself...used to work for UUNET too..

Not really IT, but I did work for UUNET.  Been more on the software side of making routers work though for a time I was in network architecture.

Curtis

[Salty19]

And the UUNET legacy continues....odd how most people have no clue who they are/were yet their influence changed the face of the internet as business and the consumer knows it today.     Were you working out of VA?

[Craig Weis]

OK after my neighbor got my machine up and running again, by taking out one of the two hard drives, all my favorites are still listed but usually I need to re find the page on the web and re add the page to my favorites. The message reads:

Innernet Shortcut Problem.
The Target "" of this Internet Shortcut is not valid. Go to the Internet Shortcut property sheet and make sure the target is correct.

So? Any ideas? I have been looking up Internet Shortcut on Goggle and still find no answers. " Internet Shortcut property sheet ".
What and where is it. What do you do with it providing I actually find it.

Thank You. skip.

[curtisv]

And the UUNET legacy continues....odd how most people have no clue who they are/were yet their influence changed the face of the internet as business and the consumer knows it today.     Were you working out of VA?

ANS was bought from AOL and merged with UUNET and that's how I ended up in UUNET.  ANS had at least as much if not more influence on the early Internet having run the T1-NSFNET in its later years and run the T3-NSFNET for the duration of its existance (1992-1995).  I lived in CT and worked from home and only went to VA for meetings now and then.

Did you work for UUNET out of VA?

Curtis

[Salty19]

Curt-  No I've always worked in OH, but like you have been to the VA campus a few times.   I came from the Compuserve Network Services side of the house back in '98.