At 10:56 am -0400 on 7/20/97, Jim Choate wrote:
You should look into Plan 9
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Since the OS already bids for processor space it would not require a major architecture mod to include E$/crypto functions.
Yeah. I've seen demos of what I think was plan 9, actually it's successor(?). Both of them were Bell (now Lucent) efforts, right? Certainly, it looks like it was a step in the right direction, if it works as advertised.
Finally, there's the issue of Mhyrvold's software-as-a-gas idea. That is, that bloatware is a direct result of Moore's Law.
I have to disagree. Bloatware comes from the way we look at software (ie generalize & modularize it) and the way we impliment it (ie libraries). While it makes the programmers job easier it makes the amount of software required for the job larger that required because the libraries have functions and features that aren't used (in this product). Bloatware won't be fixed unless we (ugh) go back to monolithic project design with most code custom built with little re-use from previous versions. I suspect it is easier to buy another 4M of RAM than to pay the programmers to re-create the wheel each time a new version comes out.
No, but I bet that if there was a profit-loss feedback loop at the lowest possible level of the, what?, solution (do we call a group of autonomous cooperating bits of code an application?) then, at some point in the development of a cash settlement mechanism, the benefits of efficiency would far outweigh the extra cost of cash handling. The idea of micromoney as processor food, I think, gets us a way to pay for the adaptive evolution with the same, or better, results than we'd get by top-down monolithic project design. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/