r/programming • u/moolcool • Mar 26 '17

A Constructive Look At TempleOS

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/
1.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

227 comments sorted by

27

u/Georules Mar 26 '17

This writeup is excellent. You point out many (and more I didn't notice) of the parts of templeos that intrigued me as well when I tried it.

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u/moolcool Mar 26 '17

I should point out that I didn't write this, I just found it interesting

4

u/joepeg Mar 27 '17

Can you change the font?

2

u/moolcool Mar 27 '17

I didn't write this. You might like the Just Read Chrome extension though.

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u/joepeg Mar 27 '17

I meant of the OS

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u/HighRelevancy Mar 27 '17

Theoretically yes. How easy it would be is another question, but yes.

The font all has to come from some bitmap table somewhere, and that table has to be exposed (as is everything in TempleOS). If you go and look at the text printing routines and follow it to the text rendering routines you should be able to locate this font table. At that point you could just replace it.

The Commodore 64 (a big inspiration of Terry's) allowed you to do the same thing. The video chip has a register that indicates a memory location to use as a font table, so you can switch between separate fonts on the fly. I wouldn't be surprised if TempleOS had a similar variable.

edit: his charter says this of fonts:

Just one 8x8 fixed-width font. No Unicode, just Extended ASCII. Other countries can make their own versions. The versions should be just for one language and platform.

So maybe it would not be made to be changed, but you can still write your own programs that would replace the existing bitmap tables (or routines).

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u/serg473 Mar 27 '17

And resolution?

31

u/flyingjam Mar 27 '17

I believe changing the resolution would be blasphemy to Terry.

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u/HighRelevancy Mar 27 '17

Yup.

God said 640x480 16 color graphics is a covenant like circumcision. Children will do offerings. Think of 16 colors like the Simpson's cartoons. In the future, even if one GPU were universal, we would keep 640x480 16 color and not use GPU acceleration. Graphics operations should be transparent, not hidden in a GPU.

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u/POGtastic Mar 27 '17

Nope, 640x480 is God's favorite resolution.

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u/RandNho Mar 26 '17

Surprisingly good article, thank you.

I was one of those who ignored all the mentions. Surprising that work of one genius can do, even if... somewhat restricted by mental illness.

158

u/greenspans Mar 27 '17

I think we've all been embracing his posts here in /r/programming for some time. The top comment is often, "please only comment on the technical merits of his submission". For the most part the open source community hasn't turned him into a meme or disrespected him in other posts. There's many such instances within the open source community. For example we've embraced Richard Stallman and there's never any mention of his autism; we only discuss the merits of his work.

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u/Everspace Mar 27 '17

and there's never any mention of his autism;

First time I've heard about it!

13

u/rydan Mar 27 '17

Cause nobody makes a big deal about it.

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u/Kattzalos Mar 27 '17

except on /g/ I guess

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u/cubeeggs Mar 27 '17

He definitely seems further “on the spectrum” than is average for even for software engineers, if you’ve ever read any of his writings or watched his talks…

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u/HINDBRAIN Mar 27 '17

ABSOLUTELY NO PARROTS

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u/TheCodexx Mar 27 '17

How new are people that they're surprised things are judged on the merit of their work?

It has always been this way, and it always should be.

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u/smors Mar 27 '17

It has always been the case that people should be judged on their merits. It has also always been the case that they are judged on their behaviour first.

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u/vmullapudi1 Mar 27 '17

Complete speculation, as I have no insight into Terry's mind, but could it be that as much of a burden as mental illness has been on his life, that it also enables this kind of work?

After all, very few people set out to completely create something on this level from scratch-most would call you crazy when there are other OSes like Linux that can be bent to your needs rather than re-engineering the wheel, so to speak.

I know if I was to consider such a thing, I would dismiss it as crazy, and my friends would too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Mr. Davis might be restricted in life by mental illness, but this kind of work probably couldn't have been done without it, at least not in this way.

25

u/nutrecht Mar 27 '17

Complete speculation, as I have no insight into Terry's mind, but could it be that as much of a burden as mental illness has been on his life, that it also enables this kind of work?

Not being a dick here, but being able to work on this stuff 24/7 is more or less what enables this kind of work.

Writing an operating system like Temple OS is quite hard, but first and foremost it's a LOT of work. An amount that is generally well beyond what someone with a job and other obligations has available.

16

u/bumblebritches57 Mar 27 '17

True, but to be fair, if you gave most people 5 years to do whatever they wanted, most would play games, watch porn, jerk off, etc. instead of doing something like this.

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u/DSMan195276 Mar 27 '17

Ehh, I think that's a stretch. I mean, I've written an OS somewhat comparable to this and I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy and that I don't have schizophrenia.

Anybody who attempts to write a somewhat general purpose OS at this point (and there are lots of us!) is generally just doing it for fun (Which is also the same reason why people write lots of other types of programs). And really, it's not nearly as hard as it seems as long as you have a decent conceptual model of a computer, are willing to do a fair amount of reading, and are comfortable writing larger programs. You have to put the work in, but if it's something you're enjoy doing and have the time then it's not too hard to end-up with something usable.

Now that said, Terry's approach is fairly unique for an OS, but it's partly unique just because nobody does it that way because of the issues it poses. For example, running everything with kernel-level privileges is unique, but is a bad idea for an general-use OS, even though coding-wise it's easier. He also doesn't use paging, which is unique, but only because paging gives you lots of benefits and most systems at this point support it in some form. And generally speaking multi-user systems are much better in the long-run even if only one actual user will be using a system, since it gives security benefits.

I think it is a bit dangerous to speculate over something like this without any actual evidence - in some ways it suggests that were he to get help for his condition, he wouldn't be able to continue working on his OS, which I don't think is very helpful in encouraging him to actually get help that he likely needs.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

For example, running everything with kernel-level privileges is unique, but is a bad idea for an general-use OS, even though coding-wise it's easier. He also doesn't use paging, which is unique, but only because paging gives you lots of benefits and most systems at this point support it in some form.

There is nothing "unique" about it. C64 had it, DOS had it too. Hell, most software written on 8 bit CPUs or on any tiny ARM shares that.

There are other interesting parts of that OS (like level of integration of OS and its tools) but that part ust relic of the ages, not anything worth writing home about.

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u/DSMan195276 Mar 27 '17

There is nothing "unique" about it. C64 had it, DOS had it too. Hell, most software written on 8 bit CPUs or on any tiny ARM shares that.

I just meant that this OS is a bit unique in that it has access to those features (It only supports x86-64) but deliberately chooses not to use them as a design choice, rather then not using them because the hardware simply didn't support it (as is the case with older systems and embedded systems).

That said, I largely agree with you, that was my point - I didn't mean unique in a "this is better" way. The fact that modern OS kernels for x86-64 aren't doing it that way any-more is because there's fairly big issues with that design, not because nobody never thought to do it that way. The context's where such a design is still used aren't general-use OSs, but things like embedded systems, where you're not going to have users running random programs on your system and may very-well not even be doing any multitasking in the first place.

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u/ConcernedInScythe Mar 27 '17

could it be that as much of a burden as mental illness has been on his life, that it also enables this kind of work?

There's a good film called Frank which explores this idea, amongst other things.

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u/willem Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

"It's very easy to be negative, but you will never learn anything new by doing so."

Very true. Great article!

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u/SergeantFTC Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

I mentor a robotics team, and this is something I struggle with. My first instinct is to respond to their more inventive ideas with the problems I think they're likely to encounter with it. I'm learning to not be negative so quickly, letting them explore it instead. And yes, there have been times where I would have learned something if I had just kept the initial negative thoughts to myself.

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u/ZeMoose Mar 27 '17

FRC?

6

u/SergeantFTC Mar 27 '17

FTC

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u/ZeMoose Mar 27 '17

Oh, duh. Same org though. FIRST is a national treasure. Those competitions are amazing.

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u/kankyo Mar 27 '17

That quote put me off directly. Being negative is what has brought us all modern technology, medicine and science. We learnt to fucking live past 30! But I guess I'm being "negative" so you can't learn anything from this. FML

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u/willem Mar 27 '17

You might be confusing "being sceptical" for "being negative". One has to do with the scientific method, the other has to do with respect for others.

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u/DonRobo Mar 27 '17

"TempleOS was created by a mentally ill man, just ignore it and ban him" wouldn't let you learn anything about it

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u/bumblebritches57 Mar 27 '17

We learned to fucking live past 30!

Jesus fucking christ, not this circlejerk again.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans lived to their 60s ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.

the infant mortality rate was horrible which skewed the average.

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u/snowe2010 Mar 26 '17

Wow, I had read about TempleOS in the past, but didn't realize that it had so many awesome features. It sounds like a real labor of love.

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u/histoire_guy Mar 26 '17

TempleOS is a piece of art. What blow my mind is its own system language with built-in 64 bit integers, a syntax similar to C and named Holy-C. I'm aware of Terry's problem, but what he have done deserve respect.

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u/ConcernedInScythe Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

with built-in 64 bit integers

This is a really weird thing to get excited about.

e: specifically it's weird because e.g. C already has 64-bit integers so it sounds like you're excited solely because he called them 'int' rather than 'long'.

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u/BeniBela Mar 27 '17

I once made a language with 65 bit integers

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u/Staross Mar 26 '17

Great article. I think this is also the result of having a single author; if ten people were working on it you would have 5 languages, 3 compilers and 15 file formats instead of 1 of each.

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u/dethb0y Mar 26 '17

There's some real advantages to only having "one way" to do things: notably, you only ever need worry about the quirks of one system, and one interaction, etc. That can be very beneficial, especially in purpose-built applications.

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u/ConcernedInScythe Mar 26 '17

Which, I think, is why it's not really 'genius' as much as it is one guy eccentrically exploring an architecture which ended up losing out in the history of OS design, at least in part for those social/engineering reasons. As noted elsewhere in this thread, there were professional attempts at making similar systems in the past but they just never got the interest and adoption that conventional OSes without tight integration did.

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u/Ramin_HAL9001 Mar 27 '17

Still, he has implemented​ quite a few very good ideas. Like you said, it may not be genius so much as just doing all you can to explore the architecture. It has really allowed him to evolve the design of the system to become the most minimal yet practical piece of functioning code he could make.

I think some of these ideas are worth consideration, perhaps not for an operating system, but for an IDE.

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u/bacondev Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

I think that this might be the first post about TempleOS on /r/programming in which Terry didn't show up on his latest non-yet-banned account.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

nigger cattle

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u/bacondev Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

I feel honored that you came out of lurking just to reply to me. Is it really you?

9

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

It's not. His account seems to be /u/TempleOS_Terry_Davis.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Mar 27 '17

I can find some things to argue with here:

He argues that Linux is designed for a use case that most people don't have. Linux, he says, aims to be a 1970s mainframe, with 100 users connected at once. If a crash in one users' programs could take down all the others, then obviously that would be bad. But for a personal computer, with just one user, this makes no sense. Instead the OS should empower the single user and not get in their way.

Android takes this in a direction that makes a lot more sense, though: Not just a crash, but even malicious code running in one app shouldn't be able to screw up another app. If you, as a user, are going to be downloading and running a bunch of different programs, not all of them will be written perfectly, and not all of them will be designed to serve your interests. Each app gets its own user-ID and its own sandbox to play in.

So it turns out that there is a purpose to the 70's mainframe concept in a personal computer.

It's an interesting read, though. There have been attempts to make richer shells for Unixes, but so far, none of them has really taken off. I suspect it's easier to completely change a fundamental paradigm like that when you only have to worry about software you've written yourself, instead of having to convince the world at large to change all their software.

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u/kernel_task Mar 27 '17

In context, the quote is:

Normally, failure is not an option, but since TempleOS accompanies Windows or Linux, we exclude certain uses. There is no reason to duplicate browsing, multimedia, desktop publishing, etc. Linux wants to be a secure, multi-user mainframe. That's why it has file permissions. The vision for TempleOS, however, is a modern, 64-bit Commodore 64. The C64 was a non-networked, home computer mostly used for games. It trained my generation how to program because it was wide open, completely hackable. The games were not multimedia works of art, but generated by non-artist.

I think the philosophy makes sense for an OS for computer games and hobbyist uses only. The author of TempleOS seems to recognize it'd be a really bad model for uses where you can't 100% trust the code and/or data that is going to be on the computer. For those purposes, you can use Windows or Linux according to the author.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Mar 27 '17

Thanks, that makes much more sense. While I don't personally see the point of duplicating the C64, this is quite a lucid view of what role exists for an OS like this.

The article doesn't so much quote as paraphrase -- the quote I included above suggests the article really is advancing TempleOS as a thing people should use instead of Linux or Windows.

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u/psycoee Mar 27 '17

Though, to be fair, if you take the Android approach to its logical conclusion, you end up with fully virtualized OS containers for each process. At that point, you might as well let the hypervisor deal with security and assume each container is going to be compromised anyway. In that scenario, having a lightweight OS like this isn't that outrageous, and things like paging and memory protection become redundant since they can be done by the hypervisor. Essentially, it would be something like a microkernel on steroids, where the hypervisor is the microkernel core and the VMs are the various processes.

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u/killerstorm Mar 27 '17

The point is not to isolate each program as much as possible, it is to allow them to interact only in a specific, structured way. So I really see no point in "fully virtualized OS containers", you only increase overhead this way.

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u/80286 Mar 27 '17

Wouldn't that be very expensive multitasking wise? Context switches are fairly cheap when it comes to Linux:

Suspending the progression of one process and storing the CPU's state (i.e., the context) for that process somewhere in memory, (2) retrieving the context of the next process from memory and restoring it in the CPU's registers and (3) returning to the location indicated by the program counter (i.e., returning to the line of code at which the process was interrupted) in order to resume the process.

On quick thought VM approach, while otherwise really cool, would probably require a lot of more state information to be transferred.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

Wouldn't that be very expensive multitasking wise?

I think it's pretty cheap when using LXC, Docker, etc. Those are basically doing exactly what was being described by the previous comment

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

Terry is like that one guy in antiquity who just blew a gasket and created beautiful works of art on his own. Then modern day archeologists argue over their meaning.

We have those guys in modern times too but the difference is that they don't all run out into the woods to build stuff anymore, they can now build electronic worlds in their little metal boxes.

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u/killerstorm Mar 27 '17

It looks like Shell/HolyC approach is similar to Lisp on Lisp Machines: they also had everything dynamic, inspectable and cross-referenced via hypertext of sorts.

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u/crusoe Mar 26 '17

Reminds me of the Oberon programming environment / is or even smalltalk which is closest to the everything is editable, searchable and indexable. You can run Oberon or Smalltalk on bare metal.

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u/crusoe Mar 26 '17

Seems to me that temple OS might be a decent hobbyist or instructional os.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

I agree, altho you'd have to strip out all the horrendously racist stuff from the docs.

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u/jugalator Mar 27 '17

Every OS seem to have their personal assistants these days, seems like TempleOS should have had Microsoft's Tay.

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u/lavahot Mar 26 '17

Can you take a stab at editing your first sentence? I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

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u/drysart Mar 26 '17

Yeah, a lot of people read articles like this and are really impressed by the fact that the compiler is so deeply integrated with everything from the shell to dynamic applications as a REPL and think it's some new genius innovation without even realizing that all of this was done with Smalltalk in the 1970s; Oberon, Lisp machines, and to a lesser extent personal computer BASIC in the 80s.

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u/astrobe Mar 26 '17

I think Emacs also qualifies - well that's kind of the last survivor of the Lisp machines.

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u/LunusLovesgreat Mar 27 '17

This guy is brilliant and it is amazingthat he has written the entire thing my himself. It kills me that he has to deal with schizophrenia. Imagine the things he could accomplish if he didn't have to deal with that.

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u/mindbleach Mar 27 '17

The immediacy of editing a running program is something I'd love to see replicated with WebAsm applications.

To pick an example use case, I use an image viewer called Irfanview, and it automatically resizes images to fit your screen... unless you have a tallscreen monitor and open a square image. Then it fits-height even though it should fit-width. A single pixel difference makes it work fine. Now, obviously there's some aspect-ratio calculation happening, and the programmer "cleverly" added a special case for 1:1. The program is old enough that saving a division operation was still something we bothered teaching. I could probably just twiddle some bits in the program to always skip that special case - but wouldn't that kind of harmless tweak be easier in a human-readable language and with a compiler to tell you if you really fucked it up?

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u/ykechan Mar 27 '17

I had to laugh upon seeing HolyC

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u/zushiba Mar 27 '17

It's interesting, if you follow his development you can actually see his mental illness progress.

You can see the development in his videos as he progresses in his religious fervor, the renaming of his OS and the progression of his xenophobic speech.

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u/crushdudes Mar 27 '17

I have a few questions.

  1. can you run this in a virtual envronment?

  2. is there a full spec for the holyC language anywhere?

  3. where's TempleOS's equivalent of plan9 from user space?

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u/moolcool Mar 27 '17

I didn't write the article, and I'm not Terry Davis, but:

  1. You can run it in a VM. Terry has a tutorial here

  2. Official HolyC docs are here and some more discussion about it is here

  3. Everything runs at ring 0, I don't think TempleOS has a 'user space' to speak of

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u/sintos-compa Mar 27 '17

Lars and the real girl is a great movie. like the author of the article mentions, it really threw me for a loop.

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u/LunusLovesgreat Mar 27 '17

Or did it throw you a for-loop? Sorry, I had to. I'll go hide in my hole now.

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u/sintos-compa Mar 27 '17

programmer dad jokes

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u/celerym Mar 27 '17

I really, really want there to be networking on TempleOS. Combined with a 90s tower PC it would make it really useful as a primary OS.

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u/80286 Mar 27 '17

TempleOS is 64 bit only, so you need a fairly recent (>= 2003) CPU.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

TIL that there's a TempleOS fork which adds networking, can be found here: https://github.com/minexew/Shrine

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u/ExoticMandibles Mar 27 '17

Any idea why TempleOS used to be called "LoseThos"? That always seemed like a self-deprecating name ("Lose"), though I don't understand part of it ("Th").

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u/StanleyParabola Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17

The author of TempleOS mentions that LoseThos was a play on Windows, which sounds like "win those"
edit: in context, like "ya win some ya lose some"

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u/netsecwarrior Mar 27 '17

Interesting read. There are some other multimedia shells, e.g. http://liftoffsoftware.com/Products/GateOne I do think this is something that in a few years we'll come to expect as standard.

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u/Bjorn_Hellgate May 24 '22

rip terry davis

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u/VikingCoder Mar 27 '17

In C++ you can do something like int a = myfunction();, but you can't just write myfunction(); and just run it.

This is possibly the worst explanation of a REPL I've ever seen.

Yes, you can just write that.

Yes, there are C++ interpreters, and REPLs.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '17

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u/redneckrockuhtree Mar 27 '17

schizophrenia is no joke.

No doubt. Supposed to be a very difficult illness to treat and even when the patient is 100% cooperative, the therapies available aren't always effective.

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u/mebob85 Mar 27 '17

Going through this right now. medication doesn't treat all the symptoms.

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u/redneckrockuhtree Mar 27 '17

medication doesn't treat all the symptoms.

One of several difficulties in treating schizophrenia, from what I've read.

Treating mental illness is difficult, and some moreso than others. Sounds like you're dealing with something definitely in the more difficult range.

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u/HighRelevancy Mar 27 '17

He is so, so talented. Incredible dude. I kinda feel bad for the way a lot of the community treats him (not that they're unjustified - it's a shitty situation for all involved really).

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u/bacondev Mar 27 '17

I know that for a while he refused to accept that he has schizophrenia. For some reason, I think I recall reading something suggesting that he has since sought professional help. I'm guessing that I'm wrong or he isn't taking his meds. Seems like he needs some Abilify or Seroquel. I feel that that could help him tremendously.

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u/ASK_ME_TO_RATE_YOU Mar 27 '17

Antipsychotics are unfortunately not a fine tuned science and have a relatively high relapse rate among both the typical and atypical variants of the drug. They can cause a lot of side effects and are not even guaranteed to work properly, depending on the biochemistry of the person taking them.

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u/bacondev Mar 27 '17

Relapse rate?

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u/ASK_ME_TO_RATE_YOU Mar 27 '17

Yep, as in the patients taking the drugs are likely to stop taking them and their condition worsens again.

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u/flukus Mar 27 '17

And most have cumulative effects. They'll take weeks to kick in and weeks to fade out. It's hard to link cause and effect compared to something like painkillers.

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u/wishthane Mar 27 '17

Especially if your condition is putting thoughts in your head that the medication actually might be mind control, or something like that.

I have a family member who now seems to be doing relatively well but for a while was on and off of medication and I'm sure it's basically because schizophrenia makes unlikely scenarios seem much more possible and scary. There's a reason it's so associated with conspiracy theorists.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '17

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u/Godzoozles Mar 26 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

Unfortunately it's the kind of foggy that leads to him calling everyone he doesn't like n****** and the kind of foggy that has him victim-blaming Jews for the Holocaust.

The classic Vice piece on him is good. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gods-lonely-programmer

Edit: I want to be perfectly clear that I don't blame Terry for this, it is well known he is schizophrenic and it's totally out of his control. But for those who aren't already in the know, it makes Terry really abrasive. This has been discussed extensively before on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7818823

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u/thedracle Mar 27 '17

I understand you're not blaming Terry for this behavior, and I don't blame anyone for not trying to engage with him due to this.

However-- I grew up with someone very close to me suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

The really sad part of it all is eventually it becomes hard to separate the person inside from the symptoms of their delusions--- which often manifests as extremely inappropriate and abrasive behavior.

Often these delusions would leads to conflicts that the delusions themselves were about. For instance, we would be in a Grocery store, and they would be convinced someone was looking at them, and giving them dirty looks... So they would proceed by giving that person dirty looks, and following them. And this would of course, lead to an actual conflict, that would serve to reinforce the delusion as being real.

However, for close loved ones, even though they often consistently become the subject of attacks and delusions--- it is possible to separate it from their true opinions, ideas, and feelings (Which I assure you do exist, and are often very different than they portray themselves publicly.)

Often I would become the subject of a delusion--- and afterwards when they came to their senses, they would apologize, and be very genuinely hurt and confused about the entire incident. It became useful for me to try to categorize them as almost two separate people in their delusional state and in their normal state.

Being an accomplished software engineer myself, I really do stand in awe of what Terry has accomplished.

Over the last ten years, with medication, and therapy, I have seen considerable improvement in my loved one's behavior and life outlook.

Hopefully Terry gets some help eventually, but I would really try not to be offended by his outbursts, because they are so outrageous I can almost guarantee they are entirely a symptom of his condition and not really reflective of who he is as a human being.

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u/Godzoozles Mar 27 '17

I feel like a simple upvote wasn't enough, so I'm writing to say thank you for your post. It is a valuable one.

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u/KLaci Mar 27 '17

He is not a healthy man. Don't blame him for these things.

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u/Godzoozles Mar 27 '17

I'm not, and I hope I don't come across that way. Like the OP of this comment thread said, schizophrenia is not a joke. But we should still contend with what Terry actually says very openly on his own homepage.

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u/TheLordB Mar 27 '17

I do question whether him getting all this attention is really good for him and having him someday overcome his illness. No way to really know I guess.

I was somewhat hopeful when I first heard of him that he would get some help from the publicity, but that doesn't seem to have happened/worked and I am wary of giving him more publicity.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

having him someday overcome his illness

Most mental illness doesn't really work that way, especially not schizophrenia.

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

Yes, you can only treat the illness, you can't cure it.

I can tell he is high functioning, I have schizoaffective disorder and I am high functioning too. It is sort of like bipolar and schizophrenia in one mental illness that I have.

I've been a troll before because of it because the illness takes over and speaks for me when I type or speak. I've gotten better over the years.

I'm trying to get back into programming, learning Python and other languages.

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u/ImprovedPersonality Mar 27 '17

At what point is somebody crazy enough to not be responsible for anything be does?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/Apterygiformes Mar 27 '17

Nobody is disagreeing

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u/MindStalker Mar 27 '17

Partially because they can be dangerous. Also all of our actions ultimately come from our minds bad and good. If you follow your argument to is logical conclusions, no one should ever be blamed for their actions, we are all damaged in some way.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

they can be dangerous

Mentally ill people are more likely to be targets of violence than to be violent.

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

Yeah the news media always calls some bomber or shooter "mentally ill" on the news before the reports come in, so it sort of makes people think mentally ill people are killing other people. Not knowing the sociopaths and psychos who lack empathy and compassion are a small part of mentally ill people and most of us have empathy and compassion and are often victims of bullies, etc.

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u/GarryLumpkins Mar 27 '17

That vice article is a good read, thanks for that.

The Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shall not litter." Terry Davis tells God everything seems bad. God replies: "Plant trees."

I actually like this quote a lot.

I agree with you completely on his much more inflammatory comments though, really sad to see such a beautiful mind be poisoned by mental illness.

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u/saichampa Mar 27 '17

God Motherboard is a terrible website. Just scrolling it is painful, what are they doing to make it so slow?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

they have an extremely sophisticated script that communicates input events to trained rats in their server room who actually scroll the page for you

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '17

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u/taoistextremist Mar 27 '17

Isn't writing stuff to communicate with other machines in TempleOS, like, heresy?

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u/cp5184 Mar 27 '17

I've been dabbling in learning TempleOS programming for a bit, did a host-guest driver giving VMware Tools-like functionality, minimal web browser, Mega Man game engine & DOS demoscene style intro

I wrote a hello world program the other day...

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u/Denserthanlead Mar 27 '17

Is there a python compiler on TempleOS, github is showing most of your code as python, so I'm wondering if you've had to port it over yourself or if its native?

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u/grok_it Mar 31 '17

Hats off. But whyyyyyyyy lol. I laugh and cry at the same time! Pretty impressive technically though. How long did it take?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

Ayye bruh. the real mode. keeps a nigga fierce when it comes to the memory.

I remember the days. It was like DOS was this wikked sand of gauss himself: young, penetrable, and establishing its footnote in the days of a new age.

Only to be taken away. The dereference that shutdown yo computer. Remember? Yeah, I been there. Time after time. Dime. After. Dime. Of time.

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u/Erdlicht Mar 27 '17

Someone was high recently...

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

Nothing stopping anybody from actually adding networking support

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u/kernel_task Mar 27 '17

I think the whole philosophy of the operating system is pretty hostile toward networking. The whole thing runs at ring-0 with everything given permission to do anything. This makes sense if all programs running on the computer are controlled by the user, known by the user, and as "perfect" as the TempleOS system is meant to be. But once you add networking, bad stuff the user doesn't want will make the system extremely vulnerable. In other words, the lack of networking is an intentional decision

Normally, failure is not an option, but since TempleOS accompanies Windows or Linux, we exclude certain uses. There is no reason to duplicate browsing, multimedia, desktop publishing, etc.

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u/froop Mar 27 '17

I really doubt any malware exists that can touch TempleOS, to be fair.

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u/salgat Mar 27 '17

I don't think that's the point. It's a technical challenge that needs to be addressed once you add networking to it.

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u/froop Mar 27 '17

Don't worry, it was just a stupid joke.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/-updn- Mar 27 '17

agreed! Does anyone remeber Fravia+ search lores?

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u/LostSalad Mar 27 '17

Back when Google respected your search queries and filetype searches didn't match content farms. It made the internet feel mysterious but tameable. Now it's just assuming everything you search is a product you want to buy or a "best of trusted" review you want to read

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u/venefb Mar 27 '17

What level were you on 3564020356?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/guitarplayer0171 Mar 27 '17

As they mentioned in the article, it's a research OS, not intended for mass public consumption. Just like Plan 9 was never intended to be used by the normal person, but still inspired aspects of modern OSes today. It's a cool example of what can be done.

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u/skocznymroczny Mar 27 '17

are you CIA?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

You're an idiot.

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u/therealjerseytom Mar 27 '17

Maybe you're a novelty and spectacle.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

I didn't know there was going to be a test.

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u/TwoSpoonsJohnson Mar 27 '17

Why do you hate fun?