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From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: How wrong is MS-DOS? (or: OS generalizations)
Message-ID: <11295@lanl.gov>
Date: 13 Jan 91 19:10:43 GMT
References: <1991Jan13.070039.12473@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 25

From article <1991Jan13.070039.12473@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>, by jxf@altair.cis.ksu.edu (Jerry Frain):
> [...]
> The above definitions of the terms "multiprocessing," "multitasking,"
> and "time-sharing" are not consistent with current graduate-level
> operating systems teachings.  Nor are they consistent with most operating
> system text-book definitions which I have seen.
> 
> [... more stuff about the textbook definitions of the terms ...]


This only goes to show that the people who _use_ the features and the
people who train the implementors of the technology are using the terms
differently.  I deal mostly with the former while you obviously study
the later.  That kind of problem is pandemic in computing.

Unfortunately, this sort of miscommunication leads to the situation that
implementors want to support features that the users don't want or need
while the users ask for features only to be told by the implementors
that no one should want such things.  Bad deal for everyone if you ask
me.

In any event, by _both_ of our definitions, the functionality offered
by standard UNIX is not multitasking.

J. Giles