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[Don Y]

Doc Shipley wrote:
>> MP3 player.
> 
> And now begins the "What constitutes an OS?" thread....

Exactly!  Every application domain has its own idea of
what an OS's role should be.

The OS is supposed to be a "resource manager" -- but, *what*
resources?  And *how* does it have to manage them??  Are
resources just hardware entities?  Or, software mechanisms
created in/by the OS for use by applications, etc.?

I.e. is a simple "program loader" -- read in a batch of
cards, jump to the first instruction and start execution -- an
OS?  It *is* managing ALL of the machine's resources!
Except it does so on an all-or-nothing basis.

:>

Too much quicksand in this sort of argument... ;-)