[Fwd: Re: Position & proposal]

[William A. Barnett-Lewis]

William A. Barnett-Lewis wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod wrote:
> >
> > > Perhaps it's simply philosophical, but I believe that any computer
> > > resource is inherently cheaper than 1 second of a user/programmer's
> > > time.
> > > Hence 1 user = 1+ cpu and all resources. Once you begin timesharing, you
> > > create artifical scarcity (artificial in the sense that it's
> > > unnecessary)
> >
> > Unfortunately, we don't all live in a perfect world. If I have a choice of
> > time-sharing or computing on a paper and pencil, I'll go for the time-sharing.
> > But even in a world where we all have our own computers and CPUs, don't we
> > time-share the computers that route our packets, serve our webpages and
> > maintain our bank accounts?
> >
> >  Paul Prescod
> 
> Time-sharing was an advance; I have no doubt. I can remember watching
> both of my parents submitting card decks while they were in college.
> OTOH, the personal computer - the true workstation - was an equally
> great advance over timesharing. It simply seems to me that everyone in
> thier rush to bash M$ has decided to forget the wins in decentralized
> PCs.
> 
> Mutlitasking is exquisite; sharing those tasks with someone else is no
> longer necessary. Sometimes I think computer people lived so long in the
> desert of scarce resources that they didn't recognise that they had left
> it behind a long time ago.
> 
> As w/ my last message, this is a personal philosophy, not a technical
> matter. Personally, I just want Jay Lepreau to release the new version
> of the FLUX toolkit and then I can stop whining about what I want and
> get to work creating it ;')
> 
> William