Sent from my iPhone
On May 18, 2011, at 5:24 AM, blstu...@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. > > BLS > > I don't think there's any real constraints. Bottom line is the code is there and it's pretty nice. You can do what you want. If you seek outside approval to chase an idea, you've already failed the most important person in the equation - yourself. Who cares what anyone else thinks? Or as Homer Simpson said, "I'm sure Einstein turned himself all kinds of colors before he invented the light bulb".
