Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jupe | Hacker News Reader

That does not sound very secure.

Also, what's to stop another processor "finding" the Object before the intended recipient?

1. Just bare like that, it's not. Unless, of course, the object requires a key to allow a processor to execute it. See for example Capability-Based Access Control

2. In TupleWorld, there's no concept of "the" intended recipient. The tuple's properties determine what kind of processor would match. If those properties happen to only match a single processor, you'd get that 1:1 mapping you want, but that's missing the point of tuple spaces.

Just coordinating the 1:1 mapping I might want is fraught with challenges. Network delays, out-of-order execution, stampeding herd situations, poison objects, processors crashing (or being rebooted) at random times... I'm not seeing the benefit of a "bag" of objects to be processed whenever by whoever or whatever.

Perhaps this is attempting to solve a problem I've not come across. While it sounds interesting, I'm not sure I see the benefit? (Probably me just being short-sighted).

It's a way of doing massively parallel computations in a scatter/gather system. I suggest looking up the paper "Linda in Context. I'd provide a link but I'm on my phone.

Here you go (not on mobile):

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/63334.63337 (free access)

Also worth reading are the "Linda Letters" from Communications of the ACM, October 1989, vol 32, no 10, p 1244. I found an excerpt at https://web.archive.org/web/20160901000000*/https://www.cyph..., starting on page 4 of the PDF

Somehow this model works to build complex organisms in embryology...

Still have a problem with viruses, though...

Also, on "poison objects". We execute Javascript all the time in our browsers. Sandboxing and other measures keep the executable objects from exploiting our computers. It's imperfect, of course, and there are still exploits, but that's the general approach. Things like out-of-order execution and so forth require careful parallel design, but that's pretty much the bread-and-butter of things like SETI@Home

Reply on news.ycombinator.com