Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Eris Discordia schrieb: Been there, done that. --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:00 PM -0400 Pietro Gagliardi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have an idea, Eris. Why don't you fuck off and actually USE Plan 9 for once? Unspeakable horrors from outer space paralyze the living and resurrect the dead Isn`t that the manifesto of Plan 9? BB
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt]+0153--you call [Alt] an Option key, right? nope, Alt,T,M Well below 255, it's just extended/8-bit ASCII. Not right-to-left, not even out of ISO 8859. You could generate that character even on MS-DOS. I don't get this, ™ is the unicode character 2122, not ASCII. I agree it could be generated on a MS-DOS pretty much any byte sequence could be, but I doubt even DOS 6.22 had unicode support, so you would have to translate it to a code page reprisentation and load the correct fonts. -Steve
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Did your language training involve being taught the difference between a work/task and a job/profession? --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:08 PM -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: // Others, like me, have some petty work to do. Like knowing which // character on which line they're editing or controlling how long their // lines of text get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics. Wait, your *job* is knowing where editor cursors are and how long lines are? Wow, that really sucks. No wonder you're so angry.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
No, that's not the UNIX philosophy. That's the X/Linux/GNU philosophy. Go read Program Design in the UNIX Environment by Kernighan and Pike to see what I mean. Get educated. Don't you even know where X came from? Just a funny idea: have you noticed that the Kernighan, Pike, Ritchie, Thomspon quartet always lacks two legs? Am I right on this one? There is KR, KP, and PT. Have yet to see PR, is there one? In Plan 9, it's Alt t m, as three individual keystrokes. See keyboard(6) to find out what your system would see as Alt. You don't need to keep the Alt held down. Now send yourself an email with Alt f a (the for all character) and Alt * P (uppercase pi) How about going back to four buckey bits, hacker? For your information, Pi is within ISO 8859, 8859-7 to be precise. Now you do one thing: enter a daleth, put one rafe above it--i.e. דֿ--, and tell me the result. I do Windows. When I need to type in another language--and I often need that for three languages--I press [Alt]+[Shift] and I get the keyboard layout for that language. The right scan codes go to the right characters codes which in turn go to the right glyphs for every major alphabet/script on Earth, including right-to-left scripts. When I need a Unicode character out of the ordinary (like this one, ㊪) I press [Alt] and hold it, press [+] on numeric keypad once, then type in the hexadecimal code for that character. Any two-byte Unicode character. I learn the code out of Character Map from which I can get the character even more easily. http://www.fileformat.info/tip/microsoft/enter_unicode.htm Impressive. Someone learned something from us after all. (1985 -- when did curl come out?) Us? What is 1985? Your year of birth or Plan 9's or what? cURL's author didn't need to learn from you--whoever your you denotes--to do a simple job. Here's its history: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/history.html. It began in 1997. Gopher support was removed soon after because Gopher is a dead (or dying?)protocol. It would be about 75% shorter. And you can't just use the system calls. libc is built around subroutines. In all, Rob Pike got connected to an IP address in 2 lines of code compared to ~20 for sockets. (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) When and where did Rob Pike do it? Didn't he incidentally leverage two (or more) additional abstraction layers over the network stack and the socket abstraction to achieve that? I can get connected to an IP address--overlooking your glaring ignorance about the fact that on IP (Internet Protocol) machines connect to _endpoints_ not IP addresses--in a one liner on Microsoft .NET framework. Nevertheless, that doesn't make .NET framework my platform of choice for programming. Boast it when you can _do_ it. Whatever I tell you I _can_ do, I _can_ do. Whatever I _can't_ do, I keep to myself. No comment. Thank you, again. --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:08 PM -0400 Pietro Gagliardi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 19, 2008, at 9:39 PM, Eris Discordia wrote: No, that's not what I said. I said that Plan 9 obeys the UNIX philosophy, not that it was UNIX. GNU obeys this philosophy (up to the point of where to draw the lines on the size of tools). And to some extent, Windows (Windows Movie Maker doesn't call up another computer now, does it?) I guess the UNIX philosophy--whatever that vague phrase is supposed to mean--contains the X philosophy. The core dictum goes: mechanism, not policy. That is, they give you the femur, you determine its use. Russ Cox knows this better; he's the one at the MIT. The Plan 9 philosophy goes as far as telling you to not ask for a ruler in your text editor (ruler in vi := a pair of numbers; column, row). No, that's not the UNIX philosophy. That's the X/Linux/GNU philosophy. Go read Program Design in the UNIX Environment by Kernighan and Pike to see what I mean. Mac, and I use OS X Mail (so I can get my hands on IMAP's folder system). How about the fact that Simon was able to give you a trademark symbol? Do yourself a favor: YOU test it. Look in /lib/keyboard for some characters and send them here. If they come back as sent, you've proven my point. Otherwise, you found a bug. Plan 9 is not _my_ pet OS. 9people, and you who are too young to be a 9person, are taking pride in UTF-8. That's been the gesture for a over a decade. Now, it's old, it's insignificant, and Plan 9 doesn't even deliver. Anyway, _you_ made a claim. You have to prove it. I don't even run Plan 9 anymore. Gave it up. Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt] +0153--you call [Alt] an Option key, right? Well below 255, it's just extended/8-bit ASCII. Not right-to-left, not even out of ISO 8859. You could generate that character even on MS-DOS. Though, his email's header says the charset if UTF-8. No big deal. In Plan 9, it's Alt t m, as three individual keystrokes. See keyboard(6) to find out what your system would see as Alt. You don't need to
[9fans] sorry
Sorry for feeding the troll, I will shut up. -Steve
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
should be Just stay away from Acme if you aren't lucky enough to be stuck with Plan 9. Could be. Only _luck_ could make you that miserable; reason does a better job. Also, you could be a little funnier. --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:11 PM -0700 Skip Tavakkolian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just stay away from Acme if you aren't stuck with Plan 9. should be Just stay away from Acme if you aren't lucky enough to be stuck with Plan 9.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
as i suspected, you're here for therapy. _Intense_ therapy. i can see you're bitter. Not very much. The researching and submitting and hoyvin' mayvin' is going to be my bane, too. In a different field. Namely, differential geometry. More specifically, Finsler geometry. To be exact, finding of model spaces with constant positive flag curvature. Satisfied? and how does it make you feel when you know others are performing acrobatics? Sorry... for them. When you can Get A Job Done (tm) with a finger stroke you shouldn't be moving an arm. That's squandering. --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:26 PM -0700 Skip Tavakkolian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, you justify your salary, dear Sir. I honestly respect you for having written the nemo book--you're nemo after all. That, however, won't change my stance on Plan 9 and the 9people. as i suspected, you're here for therapy. You have nothing else but researching OS's and submitting papers. That justifies your 9life. i can see you're bitter. Others, like me, have some petty work to do. Like knowing which character on which line they're editing or controlling how long their lines of text get, _without_ resorting to acrobatics. and how does it make you feel when you know others are performing acrobatics?
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Enlighten me, then. Revealing a date of commencement won't comprise a breach of non-disclosure, would it? --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:34 PM -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
style(6) says not to convert tabs to spaces. I see. People on Plan 9 are told which characters they should or shouldn't use in their text. Great! An awk program can do this. The idea is to interpret tags as they come in the form of a stack: codestack htmlhtml headhead html title title head html /b title error: closing wrong tag You can also check to see if tags make sense or bad tags are nested. For example, don't see bodybody/body/body as normal, nor titleb/b/title. That stack has been implemented in vim. There're nearly 500 different syntax matching and highlighting schemes for vim, and there's a simple language for writing your own schemes. Why not use vi? --On Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:54 PM -0400 Pietro Gagliardi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just a few other bits of relevance to the original topic: On Aug 19, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Wendell xe wrote: 07. Automatic insertion of spaces for tabs style(6) says not to convert tabs to spaces. 11. Bookmarks If you know what text the bookmark will point to, make a comment on the line above it: /* C comment */ .\ troff comment # rc/awk comment Set the comment to the text of the bookmark. Then, search for the text of the bookmark with the appropriate comment delimiters. Easy enough. 16. HTML tag matching An awk program can do this. The idea is to interpret tags as they come in the form of a stack: codestack htmlhtml headhead html title title head html /b title error: closing wrong tag You can also check to see if tags make sense or bad tags are nested. For example, don't see bodybody/body/body as normal, nor titleb/b/title.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Wow. Does memorising codepoints fall under your job description aswell? No. I looked it up in Microsoft Windows' Character Map. Saw it was below 255. Knew UTF-8 corresponds to ASCII in lower character codes (not sure 7-bit or 8-bit). Figured it could as well be 8-bit ASCII. ifconfig: only root can do that mount: only root can do that Funny, but then not funny. What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? What if the terminal is your desktop PC? It isn't diskless and it certainly isn't meant to be a simple terminal in a network of a gazillion machines. Oh, I see, you run the equivalent of _four_ interconnected machines (cpu, terminal, some fs, and auth) to achieve that. How very clever. And how's that supposed to be any more secure than authenticating with Kerberos? Or, in case you're at home, a proper access policy? cp: /mnt/cell: permission denied Why permission denied? What keeps a wheel from giving a user permissions to /mnt/cell? You know, we live in a brave new world. ACLs were invented long ago. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 1:02 PM +0800 sqweek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Simon's trademark character, I presume, was generated by [Alt]+0153 Wow. Does memorising codepoints fall under your job description aswell? $ curl gopher://tokyo.ac.jp/a/b/r.tokyo.jpg $ ifconfig cellnetif num 555 555 ifconfig: only root can do that $ mount -t motofs /dev/cellnetif /mnt/cell mount: only root can do that $ cp ./r.tokyo.jpg /mnt/cell/ cp: /mnt/cell: permission denied -sqweek
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow. Does memorising codepoints fall under your job description aswell? No. I looked it up in Microsoft Windows' Character Map. Saw it was below 255. Knew UTF-8 corresponds to ASCII in lower character codes (not sure 7-bit or 8-bit). Figured it could as well be 8-bit ASCII. The ascii that is 8 bits is not the true ascii. ifconfig: only root can do that mount: only root can do that Funny, but then not funny. What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? No. Private namespaces. cp: /mnt/cell: permission denied Why permission denied? Sorry, that should have been no such file or directory. You need a mkdir. -sqweek
[9fans] forgive my sister
Eris can be a real bitch sometimes. For those who haven't picked up on the root of her name, Eris Discordia, just check out wikipedia and the general annoyance that are us discordians (and our corresponding goddess, Eris). The only way to deal with a discordian is to filter it, or ignore it. I'd stop feeding the troll with responses - trust me, Eris doesn't care about plan9 or anything related to operating systems. She's simply found yet another mailing list to annoy and fill with garbage.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? yes, no other things required, you fail (as per usual)
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
twenty years ago i was asked by a journalist to similarly explain why i was using UNIX. i ended up saying UNIX says screw you, i agree. it was one of the few random comments he didn't print. no 9fan needs to ask. they just get the job done because they know that what they are doing is much more sensible in 9-land than in some kids spinning brain. brucee On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 8:12 PM, matt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? yes, no other things required, you fail (as per usual)
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Read the rest of the paragraph you're responding to. Or stop feeding the troll as the big bosses advised you. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:12 AM +0100 matt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? yes, no other things required, you fail (as per usual)
Re: [9fans] forgive my sister
Eris wants no sisters, but she has a _big_ bro and he's called Ares. Help me, bro! Show them some muscles. I showed them intellect, to no avail. Perhaps the muscles do the job. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:04 AM -0700 erik discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Eris can be a real bitch sometimes. For those who haven't picked up on the root of her name, Eris Discordia, just check out wikipedia and the general annoyance that are us discordians (and our corresponding goddess, Eris). The only way to deal with a discordian is to filter it, or ignore it. I'd stop feeding the troll with responses - trust me, Eris doesn't care about plan9 or anything related to operating systems. She's simply found yet another mailing list to annoy and fill with garbage.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
The ascii that is 8 bits is not the true ascii. I answered that one. No. Private namespaces. And how does that solve the problem of whom to trust with mounting? Or with configuring a network interface? If someone has access to, say, eth0 then they have access to eth0. No amount of private namespaces keeps them from reading everything that goes through eth0, including other users' unencrypted traffic. Plan 9's model says if you have physical access to a terminal there is no way to secure _that_ terminal against your mischief. Therefore, it totally trusts you _that_ terminal. However, your home computer doesn't run only a terminal. To be usable, it has to run at least a cpu and an auth, in addition to a term. Now, where is the difference between running authentication on the same machine as the terminal and the traditional UNIX way of keeping authentication/authorization databases on each machine? Or from Kerberos' distributed authentication model? Sorry, that should have been no such file or directory. You need a mkdir. The directory could've been there beforehand. In any case, your deflection has nothing to do with the fact that Pietro Gagliardi's demand for a few commands to accomplish a certain task has been supplied with an adequate UNIX answer. He's under the false impression that abstraction actually _does_ things, and that because Plan 9 has an everything-is-a-file model it is any more trivial to access a cell phone over its proprietary communication protocol over the cellular network. An impression perpetuated by the 9people. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 5:53 PM +0800 sqweek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow. Does memorising codepoints fall under your job description aswell? No. I looked it up in Microsoft Windows' Character Map. Saw it was below 255. Knew UTF-8 corresponds to ASCII in lower character codes (not sure 7-bit or 8-bit). Figured it could as well be 8-bit ASCII. The ascii that is 8 bits is not the true ascii. ifconfig: only root can do that mount: only root can do that Funny, but then not funny. What's the Plan 9 way of solving that? Trusting the user at the terminal? No. Private namespaces. cp: /mnt/cell: permission denied Why permission denied? Sorry, that should have been no such file or directory. You need a mkdir. -sqweek
Re: [9fans] sorry
As will I. This thread has become pointless. I'm done attacking this guy. If you need me, I'll be making good programs in Plan 9 or watching stuff in iTunes. On Aug 20, 2008, at 4:16 AM, Steve Simon wrote: Sorry for feeding the troll, I will shut up. -Steve
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
Code page 1252, ANSI Latin I. Presumably the one most widely used. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:44 AM +0200 Sander van Dijk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 8/20/08, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Figured it could as well be 8-bit ASCII. Which one?
Re: [9fans] Acme without Flamage
One of the central tenets of Plan 9 is that everything is a file. So all file based activities are really, really easy. Most OO programming appears to follow a more DB oriented style (at least those with horrendous packaging/module mechanisms). That files are used to store your programs appears to be incidental. Therefore using a file oriented system when programming something like Java is painful, to say the least. Thus, acme is very probably not the right editor, unless you are in complete control of the code. But I would say the same holds for vi or emacs. Its just that those two have had a lot of additions poured into them that were inspired by the IDE world. Acme is supremely fabulous when you are in complete control or if you're programming using a language/environment where there are no strange rules on where your files have to go (the underlying OO DB, essentially). Initially, all that replacing vi/emacs with acme does is change your habits from keyboarding to mousing. All the pain you get from the bad code remains the same. Some of the IDE inspired features in vi/emacs may help lessen that pain slightly. But to get a more radical change, I'm afraid using a proper IDE is where it happens. Welcome to objects, good-bye files. Robby
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
On 8/20/08, Eris Discordia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ACLs were invented long ago. yes, I like clean and simple solutions too. iru
Re: [9fans] Acme without Flamage
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Wendell xe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My nutshell evaluation of Acme is that it is for systems-level coding in C on modest-sized projects. It seems very well designed for that purpose but quickly becomes awkward as you move away. It is definitely not suited to working with Java or Lisp, I used to feel much the same. Then I went back to coding java at work, fired up eclipse and was like ... where's my chording? :( :(. I had to whip up a plumbing rule so I could button 3 stack traces, but after that it was pretty comfortable. I keep switching between them now, generally using eclipse for browsing existing code or when using a lot of interfaces that I'm not familiar with (function completion = lazy way out), and acme when I want to view files side by side (eclipse's window management can bite me) or when eclipse annoys me too much with its highlights and tooltips and ctrl-w closing the window and automatic paren balancing and popups and underlines and FUCK OFF I KNOW THE FUNCTION NEEDS TO RETURN A BOOLEAN I'M HALFWAY THROUGH DEFINING IT GIVE ME A CHANCE JEEZE. ...which is somewhat often. or navigating large directories. Hm, why is acme particularly bad at this? I know I sigh every time I open my home directory in p9p acme because it's full to the brim with .foo .bar .qux .etc, the trick is just to know what you're looking for and type it in instead of trying to find it. Finally, I'm kind of surprised at the lack of interest in controlling fonts. My usual coding font is 12 pt. Dina or Terminus. But if my eyes are really tired, I might switch to 16 pt. Monaco. On the other hand, I sometimes use 8 pt. ProFont to better get an overview. I would think even Plan 9 hackers would appreciate being able to quickly shift around like that. That surprises me, to be honest. Most people I know find a font they like and stick with it. -sqweek
Re: [9fans] Acme without Flamage
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 10:14 AM, sqweek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Wendell xe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My nutshell evaluation of Acme is that it is for systems-level coding in C on modest-sized projects. It seems very well designed for that purpose but quickly becomes awkward as you move away. It is definitely not suited to working with Java or Lisp, I used to feel much the same. Then I went back to coding java at work, fired up eclipse and was like ... where's my chording? :( :(. I had to whip up a plumbing rule so I could button 3 stack traces, but after that it was pretty comfortable. I keep switching between them now, generally using eclipse for browsing existing code or when using a lot of interfaces that I'm not familiar with (function completion = lazy way out), and acme when I want to view files side by side (eclipse's window management can bite me) or when eclipse annoys me too much with its highlights and tooltips and ctrl-w closing the window and automatic paren balancing and popups and underlines and FUCK OFF I KNOW THE FUNCTION NEEDS TO RETURN A BOOLEAN I'M HALFWAY THROUGH DEFINING IT GIVE ME A CHANCE JEEZE. ...which is somewhat often. Hmmm acme plumbing rule for lisp s-expressions... that'd be neat :-) As I've never written a plumbing rule in my life, I'm not sure how practical that is. (just haven't needed to do it...) The only thing I'd miss in Acme vs emacs then, most likely, for lisp-like languages is paren-matching. And I'd miss it dearly.
Re: [9fans] my musical career and to try and live from stolen chicken and wine
hiro schrieb: Hi my friends, I have a question which I'm really concerned about. Please tell me: can java coding be fun? I would be very grateful for a serious answer since I'm trying to decide what to do in the next 20 years or so. Thank You, hiro In prinziple yes! But fun and profit are the two things that never last long enough.
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
You only need a cpu server if you want to let other machines run processes on your machine. You only need an auth server if you want to serve resources to a remote machine. i don't think this is accurate. You only need a cpu server if you want to let /multiple users/ run processes on your machine. You only need an auth server if you want to /authenticate/. you don't need multiple machines to authenticate. (you can authenticate to a fs running on the local machine. you can authenticate via imap locally.) you don't need multiple users to need a cpu server. you need a cpu server to run services such as smtp or cron. - erik
Re: [9fans] Acme without Flamage
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 7:42 PM, David Leimbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The only thing I'd miss in Acme vs emacs then, most likely, for lisp-like languages is paren-matching. And I'd miss it dearly. Double click on the paren selects the area enclosed by the matching paren. -- - curiosity sKilled the cat
Re: [9fans] my musical career and to try and live from stolen chicken and wine
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 10:56 AM, hiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi my friends, I have a question which I'm really concerned about. Please tell me: can java coding be fun? I would be very grateful for a serious answer since I'm trying to decide what to do in the next 20 years or so. Thank You, hiro As long as when you say java coding you mean, coding to the JDK, but not using Java :-). Use SISC, or Scala, or Clojure, but don't code directly in java, it's bad for the soul. (only half kidding...) Dave
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 2:58 AM, erik quanstrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You only need a cpu server if you want to let other machines run processes on your machine. You only need an auth server if you want to serve resources to a remote machine. i don't think this is accurate. You only need a cpu server if you want to let /multiple users/ run processes on your machine. You only need an auth server if you want to /authenticate/. you don't need multiple machines to authenticate. (you can authenticate to a fs running on the local machine. you can authenticate via imap locally.) you don't need multiple users to need a cpu server. you need a cpu server to run services such as smtp or cron. Ah, right. Thanks for clarifying Erik, sorry about the swearing Eris. Makes a lot more sense now, though I still don't see the need to run auth for a standalone terminal. cpu serv for cron, maybe. -sqweek
Re: [9fans] aquarela only uses /rc/bin/9fs?
The trick you want is in /rc/bin/service/startcifs - this may not be exactly the code you want but it demonstrates the technique you need. -Steve
Re: [9fans] aquarela only uses /rc/bin/9fs?
the correct namespace I would guess, you did do the import before you started cifs? Hmm... I used consolefs to the /srv/fscons to add srv -A test then as my user I could do \\myplan9server\test and get the root of the drive. Looks like a namespace issue after all. However, might this prevent users from all connecting to the system, unless I add a /srv/ entry for every user who might connect...? Thanks! -Ben winmail.dat
Re: [9fans] Using the Acme Editor
I was going to give it a rest. Really. But I couldn't overcome my bad habits. They outnumber me ten to one ;-) You're right; it isn't. Is that good or bad? What about in an office environment? Same answer there? Plan 9's aptitude for becoming easily distributed--that is, becoming decentralized--gives rise to a centralized system when it comes to security, because safekeeping of one auth server is much easier than keeping track of numerous authentications/authorization databases spread across the network. It's good. For a _large_ organization, it's good. For the same reasons time-sharing systems were good for university campuses. Centralization lowers overhead--in costs, time, security, and general maintenance hassles. Problem is, sometimes the center and the periphery are the _same_, e.g. in home computing. And for the same reasons a time-sharing system would be bad for home computing, an innately distributed system is also bad for it. Needless to say, home computing doesn't mean casual or insignificant computing. The term only denotes the individual--to contrast with organizational--quality of the computation involved. Decentralization in small scale either overburdens the user with complexity or leaves them at the mercy of a _centralized_ application provider; in safekeeping of credentials, for example. That's Microsoft's dream world of software as a service. Strangely, Plan 9--if it ever gets to enjoy a large user base--demonstrates the horrors of that dream. Way, way out of scope. Kinda like a fusion-powered terminal. Not like that. Biometrics is becoming dirt cheap these days. ...or incipient schizophrenia. Huh? Would that I could force you into not using double-quotes for emphasis! I used to use them for emphasis. Then I tried _underscores_ and reserved double quotes for sarcasm and invented/unfamiliar terms. --On Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:15 PM -0700 Geoffrey Avila [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not (currently) a Plan 9 user, but I gotta chime in: It seems the security ascribed to disposable machines comes from that user data is stored on a different, presumably safer, machine in, for example, some sort of data warehouse at a data center. This isn't a new idea--actually, it's _very_ old--and it's not what happens in home (or personal) computing. You're right; it isn't. Is that good or bad? What about in an office environment? Same answer there? Plan 9 respects that. Not trusting the hostowner is a waste of effort. Not with reliable biometric authentication, but that's out of scope here. Way, way out of scope. Kinda like a fusion-powered terminal. Now, your home computer may be a true single user machine but you store _some_ authentication information on it anyway; those of yours, namely. Such machine is in that respect as vulnerable as a UNIX machine. It has to be _physically_ guarded. It's no more a disposable machine. This is the argument I had for using Sunrays in public places at work. Single user, and if they were ganked from the lobby one night, the theives would only have a middling LCD monitor instead of a windows system with cached credentials. This is classic. Complication is a sign of maturation. ...or incipient schizophrenia. by not maturing, by avoiding diversification. Before you get angry I must say that's my personal opinion. Nothing I'm going to force unto you. Nothing I _can_ force unto you. Would that I could force you into not using double-quotes for emphasis! -GBA
