From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@9fans.net Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 15:37:47 +0000 From: Balwinder S Dheeman Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: , <52554a7239d32323022bb20278974840@bellsouth.net> Subject: Re: [9fans] crazy idea - drawterm in javascript? Topicbox-Message-UUID: e64f5392-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 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/)