From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 02:18:32 -0400
From: Vadim Antonov avg@postman.ncube.com
Subject: [comp.os.linux.misc] Help wanted, Plan9 a piece of junk!
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1ac9c45e-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19950822061832.YbX-hgGVkDNA9UwwLmK70NVmttEK3C4VPql2hyAaM7k@z>

>The only problem is that you need an infinite amount of storage.
>A "functionally complete" system must be able to understand all
>the file formats of the world (audio, video, data compression, MS
>Word documents etc) including ones yet to be devised.

Not. Check any math book for the definition of the term.

>Look at X windows.  It is a system which _tries_ to be functionally
>complete.  Yet every new release provides yet another batch of ugly
>features that were "missing" in the last. 

You obviously confuse completeness with complexity.  May
i suggest elementary text on a math logics?

The problems of X are exactly because they did poor design of
the system, and instead of rethinking it to make things simplier
and more orthogonal (loosely speaking, to look for orthogonal
basis) they choose to patch it by adding more complexity.

In a sense, functional completeness is very close to minimality,
since it is hard to build a system which is complete and
*not* minimal, as gaining confidence in completeness is becoming
harder for larger systems.

My own research in O.S. architectures in an attempt to find
a complete set of kernel primitives led to a discovery of an
architecture which can work even on analog machines or support
process communication by means of ICBM exchange :)

--vadim