Edward Jaffe writes:
| If IBM chooses to provide no equivalent function to SVC
| screening for PCs, then proceeds to change numerous
| services to use PCs instead of SVCs, and then complains
| because software that used to intercept SVC calls with
| SVC screening now uses "unintended" programing
| interfaces to intercept the equivalent PC calls, what can I
| really say about that? I just don't have much sympathy...
This is admirably restrained.
That PC calls would come in time to replace most SVCs, which are at best
obsolescent, was wholly predictable. The whole apparatus should go, but its
departure will not unfortunately come anytime soon. There are no technical
arguments for retaining it or using it ab initio, but the economic obstacles to
its wholesale elimination are formidable.
It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion that IBM's failure to provide a
PC-screening facility is attributable, not to lapses of imagination or even
stupidity, which are both in some sense forgivable, but to sloth or poor
oversight, which are not.
These things said, there is still a useful distinction to be made between
private screening of one's own PC calls and a proper general PC-screening
facility. The first is easy enough to accomplish using a single, eliminable
level of indirection. The second is not.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
_________________________________________________________________
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