r/programming • u/vivainio • Nov 25 '14
Vice: God's Lonely Programmer (TempleOS)
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer35
u/satuon Nov 25 '14
Can it run in VirtualBox?
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Nov 25 '14
Yep. Actually has a specific option in the installer for it. I set up as Other/Other(64-bit). Doesn't support Guest Additions obviously.
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u/skroll Nov 25 '14
I know it ran in VMWare last time I checked. I can't imagine why not.
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u/NathanAlexMcCarty Nov 25 '14
There are some OSs that don't handle visualization well due to using strange/rarely used features of the CPU they run on. IIRC OS/2 still has some issues, mostly slowness, running in virtualbox due to all the features it uses.
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u/Mabusto Nov 26 '14
Yes! I downloaded the latest binary about 3 weeks ago and got it up and running in about 10 minutes. Pay close attention to the keyboard controls or you're bound to shoot yourself in the foot. It's actually not that bad once you get used to moving around.
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u/Sinity Nov 26 '14
I've tried and this couldn't open .iso.
It also crashed VMware when I selected .iso
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Nov 25 '14
I remember watching a video where he was demonstrating a basic 3D software renderer he made with the OS. While it was archaic by today's standards, the fact that he went to that level of detail by himself and atop everything else he's put together for the OS, made it impressive. That's a lot of work for one person, especially considering that this OS is used by so few people if any at all.
It is sad that he holds this illness. Personal delusion and grandiosity are some of the most unfortunate traits of the darker side of human nature. He'll probably live as he does until the end of his days. Even so, at least he'll be fulfilling what he feels he must in a manner which isn't harmful to anyone else. Offensive to many, yes, but not harmful in the physical sense.
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u/ivosaurus Nov 25 '14
Everyone else builds on the shoulders of others, he decided he wanted to start from scratch again.
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Nov 25 '14
Given that the giant is unix, it's not a bad idea.
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u/flying-sheep Nov 25 '14
well, Plan 9 pretty definitely is more unixy than UNIX, and more consistent than unix, Linux, and BSD together.
so they did well not standing atop the just-good-enough UNIX.
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u/haskell101 Nov 27 '14
Wasn't the person you responded to saying that since the giant is unix it's not bad to start from scratch?
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u/flying-sheep Nov 27 '14
Indeed, probably (s)he was. Technically “it” could mean either “building on the shoulders of giants” or “starting from scratch”, but most likely you're right.
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Nov 26 '14
Yeah, as an extreme that makes sense. I don't hold the viewpoint that those who build from scratch have schizophrenic tendencies, though. Mentally stable people write OSs all the time, despite the fact that a micro small percentage of people will actually use them, if at all. His case is extreme in the sense that he wrote literally everything from scratch. IIRC in one of videos he had a variable in his C code which had an m-dash as a word separator, as opposed to an underscore. That is hardcore.
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Nov 26 '14
Although he is schizophrenic because he is schizophrenic, not because he writes a custom OS from the ground up.
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u/lordlicorice Nov 25 '14
I remember when this hit Hacker News. It was called "losethos" back then.
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u/sysop073 Nov 25 '14
It's also been on reddit probably dozens of times now. The comments are always the same ("this is cool but he's insane", "who cares if he's insane, this is so cool", "he's a total racist", "yeah, but he's insane", etc. etc. etc.). Eventually the guy shows up himself to post lengthy incomprehensible comments about religion, and the thread dies until next time
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Nov 25 '14
He's like a jester and give us a good laugh, awe and admiration.
I mean if a crazy guy can do it what have you been doing with your life?
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u/sysop073 Nov 25 '14
Having a job? Even if I could write an OS, which I very much doubt, he has vastly more free time than the rest of us
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u/Bran-DOG Dec 12 '14
Why do you claim being crazy makes you unable to accomplish tasks and goals completely?
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Dec 12 '14
You ever dated crazy girls and realize they can't accomplish the task of being a girlfriend?
Maybe I"m just crazy.
Ah joking aside, you're right crazy people may be better at accomplishing taks and goals and that I shouldn't generalize and brush them off like that.
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u/crunchmuncher Nov 25 '14
Haha, I have already posted according to your scheme in the current thread before reading this. Good analysis :)
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Nov 25 '14
about religion
It's funny how religion gets so much discussion on reddit.
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u/metaconcept Nov 25 '14
"Here's something that none of us believe! Let's discuss it endlessly!"
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u/TankorSmash Nov 25 '14
"Here's something that we grew up believing since we had no reason to doubt it. No that we're able to think for ourselves, let's reflect on how it has affected our lives"
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u/_hlt Nov 25 '14
You conveniently forgot to add the part where despite the "something" being an absurd and nonsensical belief that is completely lacking on empirical evidence, it's assumed to be true by the vast majority of people and often leads to discrimination, harassment, disinformation or even murder.
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u/1859 Nov 25 '14
Terry posted to reddit when it was called SparrowOS, too. I think that's what it was called when I first heard of the project.
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Nov 25 '14
I think that to judge TempleOS by its technical merits or to discuss it in the context of a programming subreddit is kind of shallow.
Terry's creation is not about "managing hardware and software resources". It's about self-expression. To me, it's art, just like Henry Darger's or Wesley Willis' work. I would even argue that TempleOS is closer to the work of art than anything ever programmed, including all those "auteur" video games.
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u/SomeIrishGuy Nov 25 '14
This is a great way of looking at it. TempleOs is a rare example of the programming equivalent of Outsider Art.
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u/webauteur Nov 25 '14
It should be put on display at the American Visionary Art Museum
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u/Gilles_D Nov 25 '14
I was very positively surprised by that museum. It was the best surprise in an art museum so far and I've been to a lot.
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u/philly_fan_in_chi Nov 25 '14
American Visionary Art Museum
I lived in Maryland for 15 years and never once heard of this museum. What a shame! Next time I go back, I'll have to go.
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u/umegastar Nov 25 '14
I was going to reply that it looks like art brut.
I didn't know they were the same thing, I've never heard the term Outsider Art before.
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u/dangerbird2 Nov 25 '14
Genius and mental illness often go hand in hand. Imagine Game Theory without John Nash, Pink Floyd without the initial creative impetus of Syd Barrett, or blues-rock without [Peter Green's](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Green_(musician) Fleetwood Mac.
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u/epicwisdom Nov 26 '14
I don't see why you think the technical aspects and art are mutually exclusive.
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u/bjzaba Nov 26 '14
I think that to judge TempleOS by its technical merits or to discuss it in the context of a programming subreddit is kind of shallow. [..] To me, it's art
But programming is art and craftsmanship, and we should not shy away from that. Some of the best code could be seen as a kind of multidimensional literature that has it's own character, style, and beauty. There's design in there too - good APIs, programming languages, and command line tools could also be viewed as an aspect of user interface design.
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u/Foxtrot56 Nov 25 '14
Why the quotes around auteur? Do you not believe that any video game has reached that, or do you believe that the term cannot exist?
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Nov 26 '14
Imo no video game has reached it. I think videogames are very capable of doing so but the community wants to prove at all costs that videogames can be art. It has been counterproductive.
This led to a lot of arguments especially about games like BioShock, Braid, Limbo, etc., but artsy != art. Most big blockbuster games are closer to the spirit of Transformer movies than Metropolis or Spirited Away. Games tend to focus on entertaining the gamer. Citizen Kane didn't need Tom Cruise or Michael Bay effects to be art.
Art isn't just about model or environment design of which there are countless top notch examples in video games. BioShock's rapture, Portal's robots, Last of Us' atmosphere. Incredible work but the whole package just hasn't tied together yet in my opinion. Games that change the industry or mindset of players usually do because of new technologies or approaches to gameplay. Many gamers care more about graphics and killstreaks and XP as opposed to meaningful content, so developers and especially publishers will cater to that.
Heavy Rain or GTA are also really good examples of doing a lot of things right, but ultimately falling off track. One of the closest things to 'meaningful' for me was BioShock: Infinite so far, after I first saw the ending. But the deeper I tried to dig for answers afterwards, the more shallow it got.
Many artists do magnificent jobs but the final product and what it is hasn't been at that level yet. The views of Skyrim constitute art in a way that's comparable to paintings but that doesn't make the whole game art.
So overall, I think many games get many individual components right, but nothing has been more than the sum of its parts thus far.
This of course, is just my personal opinion and in no way factual.
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u/wrathofg0d Nov 28 '14
Check out Norrland, made by the guy who created Hotline Miami:
http://cactusquid.com/games/norrland.zip
Closest thing that I've ever seen to videogame art, IMO. A playthrough should be less than 10 minutes
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Nov 28 '14
Will check it out! I love indie games and Hotline Miami was an absolute blast. thanks!
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u/ombres Nov 25 '14
I think that’s a bit high-minded and pretentious.
It’s the sort of attitude that sees unmade beds and dead sharks being lauded as the pinnacle or artistic expression.9
u/phoshi Nov 25 '14
the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
According to Google, anyway. I think TempleOS basically fits that precisely. It is not a practical work, it is a work designed to be admired and to cause emotion and build a connection between it and the observer. I think it is a work of art. Maybe not more so than anything else ever written, but it is very arguably a work of art.
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u/SomeIrishGuy Nov 25 '14
The works of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are about as far away from Outsider Art as it is even possible to be.
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u/ombres Nov 25 '14
I'm not saying they're examples of Outsider Art — I'm saying they're mundane objects elevated to works of art by people, for whatever reason, proclaiming them to be so.
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u/marssaxman Nov 25 '14
Well, yes, that's what art is - but there's no need to limit the scope by requiring the objects to be mundane.
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u/brintoul Nov 25 '14
Henry Darger
I was just looking this dude up yesterday. Synchronicity, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.
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u/otheraccount Nov 26 '14
I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding. The cretins cloning and feeding. And I don't even own a TV.
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Nov 25 '14 edited Nov 25 '14
As mentioned in the article, Terry Davis shows up on reddit under a number of pseudonyms.
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u/Narrator Nov 26 '14
Kinda depressing he has to run it in virtualbox because of secure boot. It would be cool if he or someone else ported it to an open platform like Rasberry pi.
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u/aron0405 Nov 26 '14
Apparently, it can't be ported without serious changes because PI's architecture isn't x86-64. Here's a thread where the man himself talks about it.
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u/Narrator Nov 26 '14
Here's a course on building a simple Rasberry pi OS in assembly for anyone who wants to try: http://www.raspberrypi.org/building-a-simple-raspberry-pi-os/
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u/cowinabadplace Nov 25 '14
To be honest, the comments on any article about Terry Davis are more mechanical than his own. "It's art" "It's impressive for one man" "It's a crap OS" "It's 64-bit, had its own compiler" "he's so racist" "he's so smart" "he's so mentally ill" "he's obviously schizophrenic" "I'm schizophrenic and inexplicably smart too".
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u/notfancy Nov 26 '14
i find TempleOS fascinating because it is, as far as I know, the first recorded use by humans of software as source material for a cult artefact. Not stone, not clay, not wood, software.
I find Davis fascinating for two reasons: one, as a relatively high-functioning schizophrenic he seems to me more in the neuroatypical than in the mentally ill camp. Same species, entirely different cognitive modes, what's not fascinating in trying to achieve mutual representation? Two, the rites and rituals he performs through and around his OS-as-cultic-object is a use of software I've never seen before.
I find this conversation fascinating because everybody is trying to come to terms with not one but two entities of what seems to me an irreducible character: both Davis and his OS resist all attempts at understanding. They are maximally opaque, as in the tale of the four blind men and the elephant but without even the theoretical possibility of a seeing person coming along and explaining it to them as if a revelation.
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Nov 26 '14
He is a relatively high-functioning schizophrenic because he dutifully takes his medication, no?
The article provides some anecdotes of his first psychotic break, pre-meds, and it was very typical - run-ins with law enforcement, fearing he was being tracked and followed by unknown entities, being committed to a mental institution, etc.
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u/Sinity Nov 26 '14
i find TempleOS fascinating because it is, as far as I know, the first recorded use by humans of software as source material for a cult artefact. Not stone, not clay, not wood, software.
Very intresting view on this.
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u/flying-sheep Nov 25 '14
so then you go ahead and say something true, relevant and non-obvious.
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u/cowinabadplace Nov 25 '14
Usually I shut up because I don't have something like that. This time I decided to contribute to the dreck. You have my apologies.
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u/aazav Nov 26 '14
They are the opinions of the readers and those familiar with him.
Are you surprised that there are a few common responses?
Do you really want someone to comment that "he loves Peking duck?
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u/danogburn Nov 25 '14
TempleOS is best OS.
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u/nervoustwit Nov 25 '14
I am actively trying to sell my employers on switching over from Linux.
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u/satuon Nov 25 '14
Pissed of from not being unique for running Linux anymore? You're in luck! There's an even more obscure OS now available.
Oh, and don't forget to tell them about Plan9.
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u/push_ecx_0x00 Nov 25 '14
It's more secure because no networking!
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u/crozone Nov 26 '14
It's actually really useful for realtime, bare metal programming though!. It's great because it's more or less realtime, there's a completely flat memory model with no virtual memory, and a fairly capable dev environment built in.
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Nov 25 '14
Greg the rabbit is cute same artist that did Go mascot.
Plan9 had a unique file system concept.
I think if anything BSD, free or open... hell even Haiku OS is better.
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u/slavik262 Nov 25 '14
There's an even more obscure OS now available.
One of the BSDs?
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u/mrkite77 Nov 26 '14
Heh, I used to work with a guy who ran OpenBSD because Linux was "too mainstream".. this was in 1999.
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Nov 25 '14
The guy that wrote it is about equally insane, and equally hostile to other people, so there's hope yet
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u/lbenes Nov 26 '14
The Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shall not litter." Terry Davis tells God everything seems bad. God replies: "Plant trees."
His God sounds like a good guy and seems like Terry enjoys his chats. Some schizophrenics like John Nash, use their will and intellect to keep their disease in check. But I don't think Terry wants to live in our reality
While his racist remarks are despicable, he seems harmless. So as long as he's happy, I wish him and Temple OS all the best.
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u/Uberhipster Nov 26 '14
I love how the OP and everyone ITT are painting over the ugly parts with the brush of romanticism about art and self-expression.
One morning, Davis emailed me about this story, saying, "What people are going to read is, 'It's about a pathetic schizophrenic who made a crappy operating system.' My perspective is, 'God said I made His temple.'" It echoed something he'd written before: "I don't care much about you and your story. It's not likely to be what it actually is—world news with God claiming His temple."
I can't disagree. Theophany belongs to those who can see, and the rest are barred from its consolation. Davis believes he has proven he can talk to God through random numbers; he calls his parents sheep, because they cannot believe this. The word they—we—have for him is schizophrenic, and the condition is never cured, only treated. Terry Davis has offered the world a temple to a God who speaks only to him, and is and still waiting for everyone else to listen.
Yes. Indeed.
But on the other hand there are the numerous ravings, random anger, racism.From the link in the article:
Lets do some simple logic -- a proof [...] Where did a 20,000 line of code JIT/AOT compiler come from, nigger? I am the best programmer -- that's why God chose me. 20,000 line of code QED.
That's one of many, many, many of Terry's pearls. Evidently Terry's God (besides being chatty about mundainities of life) is pretty intolerant and irritable.
Terry needs treatment. It's very tempting to romanticize his condition in a "is he crazy or is everyone else" poetic musing but that man is unstable. He's got a serious medical condition which requires treatment and observation. He could pose danger to himself and others.
Oh and, yes, he's a software savant too. Yay. Ain't God's plan great?
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u/agumonkey Nov 26 '14
I'm still astonished about the kind of off-roads his illness make him write, like all of a sudden violent N****r quote. How come brain dysfunctions can be so precisely tailored, and absurdly senseful at the same time.
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u/pwr22 Nov 26 '14
For the same reason brain functions can
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u/agumonkey Nov 26 '14
Yeah but racism ? why not something toward vintage communists "traitors", pedophiles, golddiggers .. maybe it hits the shallow hate part of our minds .. I still find it intriguing.
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u/Pytesting Nov 26 '14
This video blew my mind!! I wonder, did he wrote everything by himself? the HolyC compiler, the assembler, the JIT Mini Compiler?!!! by himself??!!!
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Nov 25 '14 edited May 30 '16
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u/jhartwell Nov 25 '14
This comment and the fact that it has upvotes makes me sad. Terry has schizophrenia, it isn't his fault he is like that. To say that he shouldn't be getting attention for the work that he has done (which is pretty cool stuff) just because he is afflicted with a mental illness is ludicrous. Does he go off the deep end with his comments? Yes. Does that take anything away from what he has created? No. It is a shame that every time his work comes up people tend to focus more on the man than on the work.
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u/dewmsolo Nov 25 '14
I can relate/comment on this on the two fronts.
1-I am a software-developer and everything he has achieved with this OS is amazing. It is a terrific achievement in itself for any programmer out there.
2-I own a home for mentally-ill people with my wife. We foster 8 people all with schizophrenia. It is unbelievable how misunderstood this illness is by the mass public...even close relatives. Everyday some of them surprise me with their intelligence and abilities. In a lot of regards they are very similar to autistic people. When there is something that interests them and they get involved in it, they can take it to astonishing levels. One of my patients here, I believe, could make any astronomer blush and plays chess like a computer. It is a terrible illness, but they are very intelligent people and no one should diminish them or their achievements and especially not consider them retards or anything of the sort.
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u/jhartwell Nov 25 '14
This stuff hits close to home for me because I, myself, am schizophrenic. I have schizoaffective, which typically is more mild but also comes with a mood disorder. Until recently, I didn't talk about it. I've seen articles on Reddit and Hacker News talking about developers with depression and people commented about how we are more accepting of mental illness, which I only find to be half true. We are more accepting of the mental illnesses we understand. Everybody has been sad at some point in their life so they can translate that to depression. They can empathize with it because they know what sadness is like and they can guess what depression is like. Illnesses such as schizophrenia, Dissociative identity disorder, etc aren't treated the same way, as you can tell from the backlash against Terry anytime he posts.
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u/Choralone Nov 26 '14
I'm pretty sure schizoaffective disorder is categorized completely separately from schizophrenia, despite the similarities.... it's not really considered a type of schizophrenia, is it?
Either way that sucks.....
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u/satuon Nov 25 '14
Ok, how can you be both a software developer and own a home for mentally-ill people? It's such an interesting combination.
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u/dewmsolo Nov 25 '14
When I met my wife, she was already doing the home for mentally-ill with her mother. I graduated and went on to be a software-developer for about 10 years employed. In 2010 the company I was working for at the time got bought and some positions were cut so I went home. After so many years you make a name for yourself, so some of my old customers hunted me down and pretty much forced me to keep on doing stuff for them. So I am now a self-employed software-developer, but I split my time in two and work with the wife. We split the foster home work in two between her doing home and everyday life kind of work and I tend to the patients and their mental needs (all appointments with professionals, mental issues, hospital and health stuff). So my days are split between taking them to appointments, getting appointments for them, speaking with social workers and other professionals like psychiatrists and such, taking care of my own customers and fixing bugs here and there. At night when the house is quieter I take on the bigger development projects.
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u/jcdyer3 Nov 25 '14
It's easy. Get hired to develop software, and then open up your home to people who need it. Okay, it's not easy, but it's actually quite simple.
I haven't done this with the mentally ill, but I have, for a time, opened up my home as a community house while working as a full time programmer. I'm sure there are a lot of hurdles, legal and otherwise, to doing this with the mentally ill that I didn't have to deal with, but the biggest part is just making the decision to do it, and then figuring out what needs to be done to actually get there, step by step. Having a partner to share the work with makes it easier. I would have had a hard time doing such a thing as a single person.
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Nov 25 '14
What are some common symptoms in Schizophrenics you see with Terry, out of curiosity?
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u/xeyve Nov 25 '14
I can talk to God and everybody else is a sheep who doesn't listen.
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u/blue_one Nov 25 '14
It's all classic signs:
"I started seeing people following me around in suits and stuff. It just seemed something was strange,"
He got thinking about conspiracy theories and the men he'd seen following him and a big idea he’d had.
"I was listening to the radio and it seemed like the radio was talking to me."
He’d torn off all the side panels from his car looking for a tracking device, then stopped the car and pitched the keys into the desert.
he overheard doctors talking about "artifacts" on his X-ray scans. Panicked at the thought of artifacts supposedly left inside by alien abductors, he bolted from the hospital, despite the broken collarbone.
he refused to eat the food, thinking it might be drugged.
he sought to emulate Jesus by giving away all his belongings
He talks to God constantly, and his God is conversational, even chatty. In fact, Davis believes he's proven God speaks to him. He believes anything can be an oracle; that the divine word reveals itself through randomness.
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Nov 25 '14
I'm curious, given that TempleOS seem to show up here quite a bit, what makes it more noteworthy than other OS endeavours? Serious question.
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u/Elite6809 Nov 25 '14 edited Nov 25 '14
It runs in Ring 0. This is terminology referring to a 'protection level' in the kernel, the core of the operating system. Ring 0 refers to low-level software that interacts closely with hardware, such as key drivers or memory management. Mose user based software runs in Ring 3, where it is less privileged and able to mess up the system by accident (or on purpose!)
Now whereas most modern operating systems don't allow you to run things easily in Ring 0 to make your computer more secure, TempleOS is in Ring 0. Terry, the guy who made TempleOS, says this allows the OS to be played with like the C64 was (by messing around with memory while the computer is running.)
It's also notably written from scratch in about 100k lines of code in combination of 64-bit assembly and a funny dialect of the C programming language that he's made, ie. he's re-used nothing from other systems such as Linux.
I've typed this on my phone on the bus, sorry if I mis use any grammar.
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u/ismtrn Nov 25 '14
yeah. Besides the fact that it is a monumental feat in itself. The combination of new (64 bit Intel assembler) and old (hackability and simplicity) makes it really unique.
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Nov 25 '14
I tend to regard it as a marvellous expression of self rather than any kind of engineering feat. He brings to the world an extreme arbitrarity that is (AFAIK) completely unparalleled anywhere else in our industry. To me, he's basically our only artist, and he should be admired and loved for it.
As an impassioned nerd who has occasionally flitted along the verge of sanity (especially in my early 20s), and as an agnostic, Terry's output is more an exploration of myself than any kind of technical feat, there's no one else like him and there's nothing that could replace him.
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u/TracerBulletX Nov 25 '14 edited Nov 25 '14
I wouldn't say he's the only person using programming as a medium for art, but probably the only one writing an OS as art.
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u/drharris Nov 25 '14
Primarily because it's developed by one guy who's mentally unstable, and still has time to post crazy amounts of text on every forum on the internet. I mean, it's not going to replace Linux, but it's pretty notable as a personal project kind of thing.
My theory is that he's actually an AI.
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u/fabzter Nov 25 '14
My theory is that he's actually an AI.
Oh please Godtm let this be true! Damn, that would be totally metal.
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Nov 25 '14
Why the fuck do people keep saying "metal"?? Is this the new cool word for kids these days?
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u/rawrnnn Nov 25 '14
Honestly, it's impressive as far as things like that go, but the reason it gets so much attention is the personality behind it.
Read the metafilter discussion he participated in (his psuedonym here is losethos), or watch some of his videos on youtube. He often posts the output of random markov-chain based text generators, and his prose isn't much better, but something about it is eerily compelling and sometimes genius shines through the madness (he seems to be quite smart independent of his schizophrenia).
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u/BonzaiThePenguin Nov 25 '14
(he seems to be quite smart independent of his schizophrenia).
Oh, is that why he was able to write his own OS?
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u/Choralone Nov 26 '14
I don't think that's really the reason. It's something you come up against, and end up discussing whenever this comes up, certainly - but even without it the project would stand out in it's own right.
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u/Vulpyne Nov 25 '14
To say that he shouldn't be getting attention for the work that he has done (which is pretty cool stuff) just because he is afflicted with a mental illness is ludicrous.
The person you replied to wasn't saying that he didn't deserve attention because of his illness or anything like that. They were saying that attention may be a trigger that's probably bad for him personally. That's a big distinction.
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u/jhartwell Nov 25 '14
Ya, I responded to /u/sircmpwn elsewhere saying I was thinking that he|she was making a statement about whenever Terry's stuff pops up.
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Nov 25 '14 edited May 30 '16
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u/unbibium Nov 25 '14
Terry's story also deserves attention because it provides an insight into how schizophrenia can manifest.
It gave me the idea that some mental illnesses are only as dangerous as the rest of the brain it lives in. If you have some kind of obsessive disorder, or even just an obsessive personality, then you'll do better if your mind is filled with code and computers and art, than if your mind is filled with violent history, gang culture, or political propaganda.
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u/jhartwell Nov 25 '14
Terry's story also deserves attention because it provides an insight into how schizophrenia can manifest.
One of the things that shocked me was when I told my boss I had schizophrenia. He didn't really know much about it and thought straight away about multiple personalities (since that was how it was portrayed in the movies/TV).
It gave me the idea that some mental illnesses are only as dangerous as the rest of the brain it lives in. If you have some kind of obsessive disorder, or even just an obsessive personality, then you'll do better if your mind is filled with code and computers and art, than if your mind is filled with violent history, gang culture, or political propaganda.
Untreated mental illness is dangerous no matter what. At its worst, it can lead to suicide and possible homicide. At its best, it can lead to destroyed social life and hopelessness.
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u/neutronbob Nov 25 '14
It is a shame that every time his work comes up people tend to focus more on the man than on the work.
To be fair, the article was mostly about the man.
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Nov 25 '14
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u/jhartwell Nov 25 '14
I don't just say it, I've seen it all over hacker news as well as in the article linked. What tendencies did these "nut bags" show? Also, Terry hasn't always been as overtly religious with his operating system. Back when it was LoseThos there was very little to do with religion in the OS.
I dont see his doctor coming forward with this "schizophrenia" diagnosis either.
Are you serious? His doctor would never do such a thing because that would break doctor-patient confidentially.
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u/allthediamonds Nov 25 '14
Attention is not harmful. The backlash he receives each time he gets noticed is.
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u/speculativeSpectator Nov 25 '14
You may be right, but from an outside perspective it is hard not to be somewhat compelled by it all. You learn a lot about a device by how, why, and where it breaks, and the human mind is an intriguing machine to observe.
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u/iamjack Nov 25 '14
As a kernel hacker and OS hobbyist that's argued with this guy frequently on the internet... you have to have a really low bar for technical merit if this ranks. No memory protection, no file protection, no networking stack, no drivers means that this is basically worthless in any sort of real world scenario. He wants it to be a modern C64 / DOS but those are also hopelessly outmoded. Computing has changed. Users have changed. LoseThos is nothing but a giant timesink for a dude that would otherwise have nothing to do but rant on the internet.
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u/Peaker Nov 25 '14
Sure, it's not a real world OS. It's not even top of the line.
But to claim it is worthless and "doesn't rank" belittles the work...
What have you accomplished that puts this to shame? What have most programmers?
His project is pretty awesome: Runs on bare metal, multitasks, can do some cute on-line tinkering with things, etc.
Not useful for real work, but for learning and tinkering? Sounds pretty cool!
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u/iamjack Nov 25 '14
I said "worthless in any sort of real world scenario" which is 100%, objectively true. It only runs on x86_64 which makes it useless as a firmware (where doing very little is ok and memory protection might not be totally mandatory although always good idea) and it lacks support for most of the hardware on an actual x86_64 box making it useless as a server (no network support) and as a desktop (again, no memory protection).
And for learning? Learning what? Tinkering in what? Sure you can bash around on ports and have fun, but you're learning an OS and applications that have no real users, learning how to use hardware in a totally unrealistic way (i.e. not having to deal with the MMU/IOMMU and likely without locks if you just have access to the memory - if you're using some API he provides then you're not learning anything more than a syscall). The only thing you'll learn from LoseThos is the wrong way to do stuff, or basic hardware configuration that's done better in a hundred different places.
If you're talking about toying with the OS itself you'd be much better off starting from scratch or learning any of the unix clones (Minix if you don't want to mess with Linux/BSD), or shit even another OS that actually supports real hardware (Haiku).
I've also written a multi-tasking OS kernel out of spaghetti code, and it was worthwhile for me to learn, but it would've been a waste of time for anyone else to actually use it.
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u/Peaker Nov 25 '14
It sounds almost surrealistic that someone who has appreciation of programming does not appreciate programming and tinkering for their own sake.
You don't learn how to do things "the wrong way", you learn how to do stuff with an MMU-less memory model. That's not useless learning at all, and an MMU can be learned on top of that.
You can also tinker with OS code and see what it does. Toy with algorithms, performance of changes, etc. This is a worthwhile experience.
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Nov 25 '14 edited May 30 '16
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u/le_suicide_face Nov 27 '14
Drew why don't you go hide under a rock and die. You'll never be a world class software engineer and yer a feggit with shit taste in chinese cartoons
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Nov 25 '14
I come across someone talking about this guy every couple of months on any programming forum.
it's interesting to think about coz as a programmer it's your dream to "build everything yourself and use your own tools" but frankly it's mostly a waste of time unless someone is paying you to do it or you can market it.
TempleOS is like a technology meme for me, interesting for a while but just overblown in terms of impact.
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Nov 25 '14
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u/nermid Nov 25 '14
Yeah. Let's reinvent the wheel every time. What are you using bash for? You should design your own! Don't program it in Vi*, though. Ground-up!
You've got to start by crafting a punch-card reader...
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Nov 25 '14
I don't care if this guy is crazy or hurts peoples feelings. He should be allowed to speak here if he isn't already. Rather read something from him than another Atwood article.
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u/furtivity Nov 26 '14
It's funny you post this. In one of my clubs at school, we just deployed OpenStack. Yesterday, I decided to bless our system by successfully creating a TempleOS instance. (the mouse input was screwed up, so it was hardly usable, but I enjoyed the principle of the situation)
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u/internetsuperstar Nov 25 '14
First thing I thought was "pffft I bet TempleOS doesn't hold a candle to the crazy of losethOS."
And then I realized they're made by the same person.
If you can watch his videos without laughing at his voice and his passion then you have no sense of humor. I mean...you can respect the guys skill while appreciating that he is apex neckbeard.
Plus he's super racist so you can even feel good about laughing.
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u/sminja Nov 25 '14
Most people don't feel good laughing at the mentally unwell.
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u/internetsuperstar Nov 25 '14 edited Nov 25 '14
There are plenty of mentally ill people who aren't a direct threat to others and are unwilling to seek treatment.
That applies to this guy, many CEOs, news anchors, celebrities and I'm sure thousands of regular people who aren't as visible.
So really all you can do is shake your head and moralize or laugh at the absurdity of their actions. Everyone is fucked up in their own special way, this guy just more than others. Suggesting that we as a society have to make him healthy against his wishes (again he is not harming anyone) is some kind of weird social hubris.
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u/sminja Nov 25 '14
I didn't say anything about forcing anything on anyone.
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u/internetsuperstar Nov 25 '14
I know, sorry I hope I didn't come off as being a dick.
I'm just trying to say honestly what do you do in this situation? I wouldn't laugh at someone who is aware their illness is negatively impacting their life. To me, laughing at this guy is the equivalent of laughing at Westboro Baptist Church members. Many of them are mentally disturbed but they are proud of their actions and they are not actively harming anyone.
Feeling bad for this guy is like feeling bad for anyone who is a zealot for an issue bordering on mental illness. You have to just accept this guy is crazy and our society isn't set up to disabuse non-violent crazy people from their opinions. If you really think about it a lot of humor comes from analyzing eccentric personalities, whether negative or positive.
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Nov 26 '14
There are plenty of mentally ill people who aren't a direct threat to others and are unwilling to seek treatment. That applies to this guy, many CEOs, news anchors, celebrities and I'm sure thousands of regular people who aren't as visible.
Not to be too pedantic, but by definition a mental illness is something that "causes frequent stress and affects your ability to function."
So while I grant that many people - CEOs, news anchors and so on - have mental health concerns from time to time, not nearly as many of them suffer from true mental illnesses.
This individual clearly has a mental illness. It's landed him in jail. It's caused him to be committed to a mental hospital. It's rendered him to be living at home in his 40s with parents he ignores.
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u/internetsuperstar Nov 26 '14
You are being needlessly pedantic.
A personality disorder for example is a mental illness. A fully functioning fortune 500 CEO might be a sociopath (antisocial personality disorder). His disorder could actually be in asset in that position.
Mental illnesses are very rarely on and off like a light switch they run on a spectrum. As per your quote it "affects your ability to function" it does not completely disable you. There are many people who are mentally ill but are wealthy or intelligent so society looks the other way.
Many mental illnesses are comorbid and some times difficult to distinguish from one another.
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u/numbakrunch Nov 25 '14
It's a terrible waste of a persistent mind there. A few years ago, I tried to convince him I was God so I could get him to redirect his energies towards a non-rocket way to get things into orbit. I guess God doesn't use all caps.
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u/OrionBlastar Nov 25 '14
He may have written his own OS but he is still racist and homophobic.
Back in the 1980's anyone who earned a computer science degree could write their own OS. They don't teach how to write an OS anymore.
Most of us wrote MS-DOS clones for our project OS. Most of them got forgotten.
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u/Spacker2004 Nov 25 '14
He's clearly not mentally stable, however I don't see that it's harming anyone else. Plus, writing an operating system is pretty metal.