RE: Challenge: Find potential use cases for non-trivial confinement

[Christopher Nelson]

> At Mon, 01 May 2006 01:25:37 -0400,
> "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > I actually find this very curious. RMS has been willing to let the 
> > world evolve into understanding over time, and this has 
> been greatly 
> > beneficial. Marcus is trying to take a "giant leap." I 
> don't think it 
> > is going to work, but it is certainly interesting.
> 
> This is really strange.  No operating system in wide use 
> supports the confinement property as you advocate it.  Not 
> using confinement in the system design really is the 
> conservative choice.  In another mail you said that my 
> proposal was radical.  I wish I would have the honor of 
> finding a radical new operating system design, but that is of 
> course not the case.

Perhaps what was meant was that you embrace a system that actively
prohibits it.  Most current systems do not require *or* prohibit.  So
they are null ops for the purposes of examples.  IIRC, the AS/400 does
require this sort of confinement, and even uses hardware capabilities.
These systems are *extremely* common in the U.S.: almost every bank and
insurance company has a great number of them.  

-={C}=-