Re: LINUX is obsolete Linux Inside
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Re: LINUX is obsolete

In article <1992Feb5.145630.759@wpi.WPI.EDU> entropy@wintermute.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>Actually my main problem with OS theorists is that they have never tested
>there ideas! None of these ideas (with a partial exception for MACH) has ever
>seen the light of day.

David Cheriton (Prof. at Stanford, and author of the V system) said something
similar to this in a class in distributed systems.  Paraphrased:

  "There are two kinds of researchers: those that have implemented
   something and those that have not.  The latter will tell you that
   there are 142 ways of doing things and that there isn't consensus
   on which is best.  The former will simply tell you that 141 of 
   them don't work."

He really rips on the OSI-philes as well, for a similar reason.  The Internet
protocols are adapted only after having been in use for a period of time,
preventing things from getting standardized that will never be implementable
in a reasonable fashion.  OSI adherents, on the other hand, seem intent on
standardizing everything possible, including "escapes" from the standard,
before a reasonable reference implementation exists.  Consequently, you see
obsolete ideas immortalized, such as sub-byte-level data field packing,
which makes good performance difficult when your computer is drinking from
a 10+ Gbs fire-hose :-).

Just my $.02

D

-- 
========================================================================
Dave Smythe   N6XLP    dsmythe@netcom.com (also dsmythe@cs.stanford.edu)