Talk:Singularity (operating system)

message: The concepts of "unsafe" and "safe mode" should be explained in this article since they're obviously not very common terms. -- intgr 16:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Linked each to type safety to provide context. Vesta 03:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I took those out because I don't think it has anything to do with type safety. C# is always a type safe language, for example. This seem to be talking of a "mode" rather than a programming language concept. Are you really sure this was about type safety? I first thought it spoke of unsafe code, but the sentence still doesn't make much sense to me even if that would be the case. — Northgrove 02:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I don't see what you're getting at.  Microsoft uses a JIT compiler rather than a virtual machine. Vesta 03:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think they're called virtual machines whether they compile the bytecode into native code or interpret it, but I guess that is debatable. Either way, JIT compilers are not necessarily completely secure. The optimizations performed by the compiler can create plenty of loopholes that can be used to trick the compiler into executing malformed or custom-crafted machine code. So I'm asking if hypothetically one of such bugs could be used to gain control of the entire virtual machine. -- intgr 17:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Such a bug can probably be exploited to gain control of the entire machine, not just the VM.  Let's hope that the developers build the compiler correctly. :) -- Vesta 02:11, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In one of their videos they mentioned this. They plan on moving from "trusting" Bartok to compiling to some kind of typed assembly language. That way the actual byte code can be verified. -- Jmacdonagh 02:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact it could be theoricaly possible to create a prooved implementation. However such a task is pretty complex. A Typed Assembly Language such as TALx86 could indeed be used to detect some compilation bugs. It is important to note that even with Typed Assembly Language, security holes are still possible. Nevertheless such an architecture would result in far more security holes than typical 'modern' OS.--debackerl 18:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: singularity

message: I added the overly technical box since an average user would have no idea what's going on in this article. Nrbelex (talk) 21:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The casual user would probably not have much interest in Singularity as it does not provide any applications.  It is more of a showcase, or proof of concept, rather than an operating system one might use to create a workstation out of (in it's current form).  In fact, one might say it's technical merits are it's only merits. 209.197.144.123 (talk) 23:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overly Technical 

message: Whats with the os's on the right: how can this have anything to do with DOS if the priject started in 2003?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.29.53.244 (talk) 08:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not DOS. This is just console. Singularity does not have anything from DOS --94.179.44.178 (talk) 10:49, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  OSs 

message: Hey guys, I'm a Wikipedia admin as well as a lead developer on the Singularity RDK, and just wanted to let you know a new major revision is out at CodePlex. Feel free to incorporate this into the article in any manner you feel is appropriate, I'm avoiding editing for WP:COI. :-) Dcoetzee 03:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  RDK 2.0 out 

message: Dose anyone know what are minimum system requirements for this thing?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.179.85.3 (talk) 14:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There aren't any official system requirements, but we've run it on some shuttle boxes with quite limited specs, like 512MB of RAM, a single 2.0 GHz proc, no hard disk. It's been run in Virtual PC with quite limited resources too, but I don't think you could push the RAM requirement much lower than 512 MB. Dcoetzee 19:36, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minimum system requirements 

message: Hey all, I've uploaded a portrait of Galen Hunt, the principle researcher behind Singularity (right). Not sure if it's useful for this article, or just for a future biographical article, but feel free to use. Dcoetzee 00:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New image 

message: Might IBM/s System/38, AS/400, etc. deserve places on the Related Technologies list?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.248.11 (talk) 15:10, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  AS/400 etc ? 

message: Good article with some ambiguities.  Good discussion in which some of those ambiguities are cleared up.  Might be good to go back over the article and apply some of the clarifications made on the discussion page to the article itself.
Points that leap to mind:  
-- Make first mention of "safe mode" a link to the safe mode article.  
-- Explicitly use the term "type safety" in connection with the "safer" languages and make it a link to an article that explains what that means.  
-- Make it clearer that the static analysis mentioned in the article occurs at application install time rather than at run time as explained in the discussion.  
There may be others I've missed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.248.11 (talk) 15:40, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review and revise in light of discussion? 

message: This Wikipedia articles on Singularity and Midori seem to be the best that is offered on most of the visible Web; the press and blogosphere is on to some incredibly speculative stuff, especially in regards to Midori. So while I'm not a frequent contributor to Wikipedia, I decided to improve this article some more, specifically the "Related software" section.
-- The title "related software" seemed rather vague, and since the articles in the list seemed to be either similar projects by entities besides Microsoft Research or adjacent projects by Microsoft and/or Microsoft Research itself, I split the section into two: one called Similar projects and another called See also. I ordered the See also section in order of generality.
-- I couldn't figure out why Erlang's message passing would be related specifically to Singularity but not to anything else (I think it's a rather common mechanism by now), so I removed the link. Please restore this link if there is indeed a significant relationship that I'm unaware of.
-- The phrase at the beginning: "The ideas of Singularity are not unique, and can also be seen in other software projects, listed here." seemed to be rather weasely and vague and unnecessary, so I removed it. It was unclear whether by "the ideas" it was meant that none of the ideas in Singularity are unique, or simply that some of them are visible in other projects. The former insinuation would likely be incorrect. For instance, no mention is made in any of the other operating system articles about the goal of dependability that is primary to Singularity, nor about what design principles were brought to the table (e.g. OS-managed installation, compilation and static verification) in order to achieve that goal.
rei 174.1.36.72 (talk) 10:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some changes to the Related software section 

message: It appears that the logo has been deleted.  Perhaps you should re-upload it, this time with licensing information.
-143.215.112.125 (talk) 07:32, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logo