Re: [9fans] crazy idea - drawterm in javascript?

[Balwinder S Dheeman <bsd.SANSPAM@anu.homelinux.net>]

On 05/18/2011 05:56 PM, blstuart@bellsouth.net wrote:
>> On 05/18/2011 05:12 AM, Jacob Todd wrote:
>>> Writing/porting web stuff to plan 9 will be hard. Writing something that
>>> accesses plan 9 from the web will be less hard.
>>
>> "The KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) acronym has been popular in business
>> for decades, but its message has never been more important and, or
>> useful for many." -- Rob Tannen
>>
>> "When simplifying, is's critical to target the right features for
>> excision, based on the customers' actual needs" -- Rob Tannen
>
> I'm confused.  Why are we using business ideas to constrain what
> we are doing with a research system?  It seems to me that what
> we work on (outside what puts food on the table) should be driven
> primarily by what we find intellectually stimulating.  I personally
> get no stimulation over the idea of porting an existing web browser.
> However, the idea of an emulator in a highly portable environment
> was interesting enough that I looked around some and found a
> PDP-11 emulator running 6th Edition (also in js).  I couldn't help
> but think about extending Bellard's work to include a drawable
> device and a network interface and then building a Plan 9 terminal
> for it, or running native Inferno on it, or using the same ideas to
> build a Dis VM in js, or...  It's true that utility can be a meaningful
> motivator for what questions we look at, but if all you care about
> is utility, it's hard to beat an android tablet.  Like most of us, I
> worry about what customers want in my day job.  But what
> customers want is boring to the point of suicide.  To borrow from
> the bard; "There is more in the computing universe than is dreamt
> of in the PC/Web philosophy."  Plan 9 and Inferno are the best
> places I've found to glimpse that hidden beauty.

How useful a research could be which is not backed by a business idea?
Who will fund such projects, why and for how long?

OTOH, nobody is going to stop anyone going his/her own way; everyone has
a right to beat his/her drum and that too either at any rhythm or no
rhythm at all ;)

However, the *real* programmers are different and they should/must know
well what they are doing and why?

--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman
(http://werc.homelinux.net/contact/)