A successful lisp machine?

[Mike McDonald]

>To: "Harvey J. Stein" <abel@netvision.net.il>
>Subject: Re: A successful lisp machine? 
>Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 14:48:03 -0700
>From: Kelly Murray <kem@franz.com>
>
>
>> can't afford to reboot every time they need to run TeX.  Trying to
>
>I see this machine as primarily only being on the network,
>accessed via your web-browser running on your desktop machine.
>So you can run "xv" on your desktop machine.
>
>You power it on, and it boots up the Linux kernel, and /etc/init then starts up
>Lisp, and maps in boot.db, and executes the generic function (boot-machine)
>You can add :before or :after methods to this function.
>It will create processes that establish network services,
>the most important one being the web server.
>
>Then from your web browser you connect to the machine, and by
>accessing different URLs, you have user access to different
>applications or user-interfaces to the system.
>You want to change the IP address of the machine?
>Perhaps there is some URL /internet-setup that allows it to be
>changed.  Access URL /reboot and it confirms you want to reboot the
>machine, and then it does so.

  Web browsers are good for some things (like making big core dumps!),
but they make crappy window systems! You want to edit lisp code in a
form's text entry window? Not me! I do want a good HTTP server on the
PC-LispM but I also want a real user interface.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com