Re: [9fans] 'wall' messages

[Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> > The bottom line is that my view is that the complexity should be in
> > the OS hidden from the users
>
> but it could be that they feel it's better to not have the facility
> until a non-complex method can be conceived rather than add complexity
> anywhere, including the OS.

I understand that point, clearly. I want it to be as simple as possible
with a couple of provisos,

* there should be -no- additional programming or commands for a user to
  do this. The basic skeleton is already there in the namespace and that
  is where it needs to stay. Not in some command line solution. That's
  an ugly kludge at best. In other words it must be consistent with the
  current cat/cp sort of approach, if another approach is taken the this
  add another layer of commands and that complicates things. People
  expect to be able to cat/cp to anything in a namespace, and that
  includes hardare. It's all a filesystem after all, and any other
  approach will break that paradigm and add confusion.

* it needs to be available to all users, with the owner of the box where
  the hardware is resident being in control of the security.

* it needs to work across -all- hardware devices such as displays,
  keyboards, mice, soundcards, etc. It is critical that P9 make it as
  easy as possible to share these resources, as well as deny the
  sharing. Standard file permissions look like the cats meow to me.

* the owner of the box is the one who decides the range of these services
  and nobody else.

* since there are at least two filesystems that a cpu server can run
  native (ie kfs and fossil) it needs to be outside of those; otherwise
  you've got to write the code twice - yuck. That leaves only -one-
  place, the kernel. This implies two points worth delineating; 1.
  devices need to be 'logged' at boot. 2. each new user connection that
  generates a std out/std err needs to be included. 3. it can't make any
  different to the command syntax or the recipient of such messages what
  their interface is.

I see this functionality as critical to the real world success of P9. For
example with this VoIP becomes easy; I cat my microphone to your sound
card and visa versa. Musicians sharing a set of MIDI channels from several
seperate locations becomes easy. It would have a big impact in training &
education with regard to being able to grab students displays one at a
time, as well as being able to dump content to them all at once. Robotics with
respect to agent clouds becomes a lot simpler than anything that's out
there now. MMOG's would recieve a massive boost from this sort of sharing
with regard to having the actual engine running in a processor cloud. This
helps solve the 'shared world synchronicity' problem in a big way (for
examples ping times become something the game can use directly to level
the playing field). Couple this with things like global sign-on and you
really start to see the power.


 -- --

God exists because mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exist because we
can't prove it.
                          Andre Weil, in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Adieu

      ravage@ssz.com                            jchoate@open-forge.com
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.com