Re: OT: Re: [Chicken-users] rails-like framework

[F. Wittenberger]

Am Donnerstag, den 27.04.2006, 08:17 -0400 schrieb John Cowan:
> J?rg F. Wittenberger scripsit:
> 
> > Not a few, but they did already.  About 300 years ago.
> > 
> > And it's partially based on even older knowledge.  Military this time,
> > the problem of the byzantine generals. 
> 
> The Byzantine Generals problem was invented by Leslie Lamport, a
> computer scientist, in 1982 or shortly before that.  See
> http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#byz .

I don't recall how long this page
http://askemos2.tc-mw.de/A849640f672ed0df0958abc0712110f3c/ByzantineAgreement
refers to Leslie Lamports paper.

But if I understand the text behind the link correctly, that it claims
something else:

> There is a problem in distributed computing that is sometimes called
> the Chinese Generals Problem,
...
> I stole the idea of the generals
...
> The main reason for writing this paper was to assign the new name
> to the problem.

So, he correctly states that the problem was known before.  In fact most
solutions we find these days are incremental improvements of prior
knowledge.

BTW: I'd be surprised if those 5000 year of chinese culture had been an
especially non-military time.  And I'd bet, that the solution has been
know before.  Messenger used to have a lower chance to get through than
UDP packets and forced-to-be soldiers are not exactly trustworthy.

/Jörg