
  This is Objectify, a library that sits on top of an Operating System and 
  stores objects into files as implemented in that OS.  It is kind of a proof 
  of concept for the New World Operating System (NWOS) that I have envisioned.

  In March of 2001, while moving back to Salt Lake City from Virginia, I was
  trying to change something on my cell phone and became extremely frustrated 
  about how difficult it was to do anything with.  Why should a phone require 
  a 100 page manual to use?  That started me thinking about technology, and
  how overly complicated computers are.  (Three years later I discovered that
  I am not the only one that thinks so, I found the book "The Inmates are
  Running the Asylum" by Alan Cooper.)

  Anyway, when I returned to Salt Lake City, I started the Easy OS project on
  SourceForge (easyos.sourceforge.net).  While thinking about what it should
  be and how it should work, I was using and playing around with various Linux
  distributions, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.  In the winter of 2002/2003 (while
  moving again) I decided to try my hand at porting Gentoo Linux to the Play
  Station 2.  I thought it was really cool that I could have Linux running on
  the PS2, but the Linux that came on it didn't have very many programs that
  you could use.  So it occurred to me that if I could get Gentoo to run on
  it, you would have a much broader base of programs because they could be
  installed from source.  However, when I got digging around down in the guts
  of the thing I was amazed about how complicted just getting the basic tool
  chain running was.  It is very cool all of the GNU tools and how they work
  on umpteen different architectures, but it leads to so much complexity.

  I started thinking about how little computers have changed since I began
  working with them in the mid 70's.  Really, all of the concepts in current
  operating systems are almost identical to the operating systems of 30 years
  ago.  True we have build fancy graphical interfaces on top of them and
  added much more complexity, but we really haven't changed most of the 
  concepts they are based upon.  Which started me wondering: what if we
  started over from scratch?  What if we rethought everything based upon
  things that we have learned in the last 30 years?

  So, while moving again :) in the summer of 2004, I started designing the
  New World OS (taken from the phrase New World Order).  In december of 2004
  I wrote an article on OSNews http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9192 
  describing my ideas.  I won't reiterate all of them here.

  Since then I have debated how to start the project.  One approach would be
  to start at the bottom and build the whole OS from scratch.  There are
  some disadvantages to that approach.  The first being that it would be some
  time before having anything that was useful.  The second being that if (!?!)
  there were any flaws in any of my ideas, it would also be a long time before
  they were discovered, and possibly a lot of work wasted.  The other method
  would be to build upon existing operating systems (I know that is pretty
  ironic) and then dig down, replacing parts as it went.  The significant
  advantage, in my opinion, is that there would be something useful much
  sooner and the flaws discovered sooner as well.

  This is my first attempt at implementing NWOS on top of existing systems.
  My first thought was to implement my own hard disk partition format to store
  the objects, however, that would be the same problem a delay in getting
  something useful.  So once again, to speed the process to have something
  useful I have gone completely against the whole premise of NWOS and I am
  storing the objects inside of files.

  For instructions on installing see the INSTALL file.  For information on
  this release see the HISTORY file.

  NOTE: I am using the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm
  checksum code in the this program.  See the file md5/md5.copyright.

  Please send questions, comments, etc. to `j.scott.edwards.nwos@gmail.com' as the mail
  at qrwsoftware.com is not working at the present time.

  23-Feb-2007
     Note: I made an attempt at running this code on OpenBSD and it would read just fine,
     but writing would not work at all (prep_disk would not even work correctly).  I spent
     a few days trying to get it to work with no luck.  I unfortunately don't have more
     time to get it working right now, so for the time being the only system that this is
     know to work correctly on is Linux.

