RE: Alive?

[btanksley@xxxxxxxx]

> From: David G. Durand [mailto:david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> I posted a similar message a few weeks ago. I'm very interested in 
> understanding the algorithms in the Udanax code -- I don't know if 
> the code itself needs to live on or not, since many of the issues 
> that it addresses (persistent storage, virtual memory management in 
> small memory systems, remote procedure calls) are now solvable either 
> by simply throwing hardware at the problem or available as standard 
> facilities in appropriate development systems.

Hmm.  Makes sense; whenever there's already a public standard (such as SOAP)
already in place, we should use that instead of Udanax's proprietary
solution.

> The algorithmic knowledge developed by the Xanadu principals, 
> however, may well be unique.

That's my suspicion as well.  Dr. Shapiro, however, posted to the TUNES
mailing list (see www.tunes.org for archives) that he believed that the
algorithms they created were sophisticated enough to be as much a problem as
a solution; in other words, they were solutions in search of a problem.

> I've been trying to figure out how the code works, and will volunteer 
> again here to help anyone write this stuff up as a proper paper.

I'd love to see this, but I haven't the time to help with it.

> I posted URLs to a few code browsers I quickly hacked together, and 
> some musing on what I have managed to extract from my occasional 
> evenings of code-browsing over the last few months.

I saw the musings, but I didn't notice the links.

> I'll repost if there's interest. My first posting produced no 
> response at all.

Could you please?  It certainly wouldn't overload the traffic on this email
server ;-).  At the time I was likely preoccupied by my last final exams
(whew, it's over at last, and I'm free!).

>  -- David

-Billy