Re: [Swarm-Modelling] lifecycle requirements

[Bill Northcott]

On 27/11/2006, at 2:03 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> > > Analogies might be
> > > made to sand piles or whirlpools where the object is identifiable  
> > > even
> > > though its constituents are in flux.
> Consider a chemical reaction, or the experience of a scent or  
> flavor, where what is important is that multiple objects are  
> present at once.  Then the notion of a container is not actually  
> present and potentially misleading even as an implementation detail.

I have been following this discussion, and I am still at a loss to  
see what Glen is after that Objective-C Swarm does not provide.

This last remark of Marcus' sort of clarifies it for me.

How can the idea of 'present vs absent' be divorced from the concept  
of a container.  To me present means within some container and absent  
means not in that container.  This is not an implementation detail.  
The concept of present seems meaningless without reference to the  
concept of a boundary (container) within which the thing is or is not  
present.

Cheers
Bill