The feel of a LispM/List of running machines

[DF@GLIDER.MACLAB.LONESTAR.ORG]

    Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 19:37 CDT
    From: "Chris Bitmead uid(x22068)" <Chris.Bitmead@alcatel.com.au>

    Well if you restrict yourself to the LispOS world, then nothing on the
    Unix side of things should break. They only break when you do things
    the Unix way.

Wrong.  Sometimes Unix machines just mess up for no frigging reason at
all.  For instance SDF (the Linux system I gateway my mail through)
recently rebooted, then fsck cleared its own i-node.  Major catastrophe.

The -only- way to get away from unix lossage is to not run unix.

    In the same way you can build a lisp file system on top of the Unix
    file system and save some work in the short run, while still providing
    all the above features that you so desire.

Yeah, all except robustness.  And if it were that easy to add trivial
features to unix's file system, then tell me WHY does unix still have no
transparent network file sharing?  WHY does unix still have no version
numbers?  WHY does unix -still- use one-way-ticket-to-hell file
deletion?  Why why why?

I mean, even unix's vaunted inventors now agree that it is worthless;
how long is it going to take the rest of the world to catch on?


But I'm going along with this write-lispos-on-top-of-linux-first idea
because as Fare Rideau (I think?) recently said, even the kludgiest lisp
system is better than a C system.  At least it will give us something
that mostly insulates us, relatively quick.  I just don't want us to
lose sight of the eventual goal of 100% lisp.