Re: [9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security

Re: [9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security

[forsyth]

>>          Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
>>
>>                                    Ludwig Wittgenstein

Anderson:  Ah .... I would only like to offer Professor Stone the observation that
language is not the only level of human communication, and perhaps not the most
important level.  Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we are by no means silent.
Verbal language is a technical refinement of our capacity for communication,
rather than the fons et origo of that capacity.  The likelihood
is that language develops in an ad hoc way, so there is no reason to expect
its development to be logical.  [A thought strikes him.]  The importance of
language is overrated.  It allows me and Professor Stone to show
off a bit, and it is very useful for communicating detail -- but the
important truths are simple and monolithic.  The essentials of a given
situation speak for themselves, and language is as capable of obscuring the
truth as of revealing it.  ...
	``Professional Foul'', Tom Stoppard.

[9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security

[Jim Choate]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk wrote:

> >>          Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
> >>
> >>                                    Ludwig Wittgenstein
>
> Anderson:  Ah .... I would only like to offer Professor Stone the
> observation that language is not the only level of human communication,

Language is a mechanism, not a level.

> and perhaps not the most important level.

Reality is observer dependent, what is important to you may be irrelevant
to me.

> Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we are by no means silent.

Duh.

> Verbal language is a technical refinement of our capacity for communication,
> rather than the fons et origo of that capacity.

That is certainly one way to look at it, universal it is not.

> The likelihood is that language develops in an ad hoc way, so there is no
> reason to expect its development to be logical.

Duh. Of course 'ad hoc' does represent one form of 'logic'.

> [A thought strikes him.]  The importance of language is overrated.

When did you discover you had direct thought transfer? Have you seen a
shrink for this delusion?

> It allows me and Professor Stone to show
> off a bit, and it is very useful for communicating detail -- but the
> important truths are simple and monolithic.

There are no 'truths', important or otherwise. Only viewpoints. There are
'facts', they however are not 1-to-1 with the concept of 'truth'.

> The essentials of a given
> situation speak for themselves, and language is as capable of obscuring the
> truth as of revealing it.  ...

You confuse mechanism and motivation, language is a coding mechanism and
has no goals in and of itself.

As to my use of the quote, I'm not the first to point out that
Wittgenstein himself certainly wrote a lot about stuff he claimed couldn't
be spoken of. The obvious implication of a statement is not always the
correct one.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

            Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

                                      Ludwig Wittgenstein

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
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Re: [9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security

[Dan Cross]

In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010702084722.24279s-100000@einstein.ssz.com> you write:
>When did you discover you had direct thought transfer? Have you seen a
>shrink for this delusion?

Errm, are you really flaming a quotation?

	- Dan C.

(And yes, I'm wondering what any of this has to do with Plan 9.)

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 (in)security

[rob pike]

Why stop at 64 bits per character? Why not go for 256, a 16x16
dot matrix of the ISO image for the character.  Perhaps with a
16-byte header with special information such as case, dialect,
diacritical marks, etc.

-rob

[9fans] Re: Plan 9 (in)security

[Jim Choate]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, rob pike wrote:

> Why stop at 64 bits per character? Why not go for 256, a 16x16
> dot matrix of the ISO image for the character.  Perhaps with a
> 16-byte header with special information such as case, dialect,
> diacritical marks, etc.

I'll assume you're being snide.

That's easy, it would be incompatible with systems that didn't use a 16x16
representation, say a vector processor. In other words it's restrictive
not enhancing.

What one wants is a mechanism to code the desired character to the
display, not restrict the individual system designer on how to impliment
that display. Which brings up the point that the mechanism needs to have a
inherent 'font change vector' attributed to the display as well. This
would allow you to not only mix language char's but also fonts (without
getting stuck in the mire of what fonts go on what system). It could be
two 'runes' long. The first is a warning rune that says "Hey, new font
coming up" and the second rune says "Look this far into the font table and
start using that font".

It's completely feasible that in the future some bright person might
create a display that takes images of individual characters at some high
resolution (say to imitate a true paper like look) and uses that. Clearly
an array coding the specific char/font would inherently be incompatible.
Whereas if it was only a vector into a table of some sort the only thing
that would have to change would be the actual display driver mechanism and
not the entire windowing system. Consider e-paper for example.

I'm using a 64-bit processor, a 64 bit rune representation (especially
when a 1GHz clock and half a Gig of RAM along with 120G of drive space
isn't exception - what I have hooked to my home stereo to play CD's,
DVD's, and video games) would not represent a significant system load.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

            Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

                                      Ludwig Wittgenstein

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------