World: r3wp

-> recompile to run rebol.

Interesting nameclash :) http://www.cs.vu.nl/orca/. Found it by 
looking for Amoeba. "We cooperate intensively with the  Globe  group 
of  Andrew Tanenbaum ([ast-:-cs-:-vu-:-nl])."

(one of Tanenbaums distributed osses).

I like the bontago here. http://www.digipen.edu/main/Award_Winning_Games

To our physics: Is it possible to build a little physics-engine for 
such things, and how about collision-detection? The 3d from the contest 
could be sufficient for a small version of this.

is http://www.minix3.orgdead?

Slashdotted? I got that link there. But when i looked it was still 
running.

I love the system requirements: 16 MB RAM and a 386.

that's pretty tough .. I don't think I'd be able to find a 386 these 
days

there's still a lot of embedded matchbox-sized hardware that use 
those

I hope www.minix3.org isn't running Minix, because that would be 
bad marketing

I hope it's not running a 386!

it's up again now

http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1_article&TheCat=1005&path=computer/homepage/0506&file=cover1.xml&xsl=article.xsl&
<--- interesting link from that site.

Looks like they have a Pet emulator.

I had a gold fish once. Died after a week.

oh... THAT Pet.

a port of REBOL would double the amount of software available

the system can build itself, including the kernel, common drivers, 
and all servers (112 compilations and 11 links) in less than 6 seconds 
on a 2.2-GHz Athlon processor.
   Yeah! I'm starting to get interested.

The Problem with Threads http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2006/EECS-2006-1.html

hmm, I read some doc when I was looking into liboop and libevent 
etc., somewhere on those sites, but each of groups tasks vs threads 
had some valid points ....

I have heard RT will go with threads, because those are optimised 
on multi-cpu environments?

Pekr, the article is not so much about which concurrency model is 
good or bad. The paper contentionis  that the emphasis on developing 
general-purpose languages that support concurrency is misplaced. 
Lee believes that a better approach is to develop what he calls "coordination 
languages", which focus on arranging sequential components written 
in conventional languages into some concurrent configuration (I suppose 
that piping in a Unix shell could be considered a limited coordination 
language). For concurrent programming to become mainstream, we must 
discard threads as a programming model. Nondeterminism should be 
judiciously and carefully introduced where needed, and it should 
be explicit in programs.

(Taken from LtU. More info on this topic here: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1481)

hmm - so even task concurency? concurency in general? then we should 
not have task? But how is that we accept multiplexing, which is kind 
of "concurrency"?

I will read pdf .... till the section where mathematic equations 
start :-)

Concurrency is fine. The problem is how to use it. Is it implicit 
or explicit. How you coordinate msg passing, pipes, shared state, 
etc.

so if Carl brings us task! based upon threads, and we don't need 
to care about threads related headaches in rebol level, then even 
threads are ok for us, right?

Depends on how they guarantee the order of execution. For examplie 
in Mozart/Oz you can have a concurrency that ensures that the sequence 
of computation is maintained, just like if was sequential even though 
is executed sequentially.

Sorry executed in paralell.

In C threads you do this buy using Locks and Semaphores.

In Erlang you use msg queues and process-id.

msg-queues would be on pair with rebol imo ... we already have event 
queue, we have blocks and their accessor functions ....

But msg-queues have some drawbacks.

hopefully Carl knows threads headaches (I do remember his long time 
ago post to ml :-) .... and will do it the right way ...

Lets see what the wizard brings us ;-)

if threads are said to better utilise multi-core cpu, then I expect 
R3 to be ported to PS3 soon :-)) ... or even next gen SUN's Niagara 
III, utilising 64 cores :-)

As far as I know R3 Task! are going to be base in OS threads, they 
will not have shared state, but nothing has been said about how they 
will communicate with the environment, or how is the order of execution 
going to be guarantee.

.... to better maintain the task, Carl will opensource R3 :-)

got to go, later ....

From what i read Erlang works quite well. What problems?

A general-purpose concurrent language like Erlang or Ada has to include 
syntax for mundane operations such as arithmetic expressions, a coordination 
language need not specify anything more than coordination.

http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html<-- Apple introduces the 
13.3 inch Macbook.

Jaime, you said "In Erlang you use msg queues and process-id. But 
msg-queues have some drawbacks." I was addressing that.

Not deep enough toin Erlang to judge about problems, but if you can 
explain :)

Jaime, from your link: "The real problem is not threads as such; 
it is threads plus shared mutable state. To solve this problem, it's 
not necessary to throw away threads. It is sufficient to disallow 
mutable state shared between threads (mutable state local to one 
thread is still allowed)."

I doubt a coordination language can do without general-purpose stuff. 
Messages must be queued, counted, somewhat verified etc.

And then things may break, and distribution helps against that. If 
the decisions can be made smart. http://www.sics.se/~joe/tutorials/robust_server/robust_server.html

Another way of blogging? http://www.google.com/notebook/public/04439832352277312501/BDSJaSwoQtNrJ-bMh

Gabriel. I agree with that statement. So vanilla threads are a problem, 
and adding concurrency to language need to be done with care. How 
is R3 going to handle tasking?

Sun to opensource JAVA? - http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2156205/sun-promises-open-source-java