Re: Bytecode: Safe or not? / luac manual

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great Stefan Reich once stated:
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Petite Abeille <petite.abeille@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Nov 1, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Stefan Reich wrote:
> >
> >> The mobile code revolution is one that is still strangely lacking from
> >> computer science - and I believe it is imminent.
> >
> > Everything old is new again :)
> 
> Let me ask you this: How many of the apps you're running right now are mobile?

  I have plenty of mobile apps running on my iPhone.  

  Oh, that's not the definition of "mobile" you were using.
  
> Say that your battery is running out within 5 minutes and you have
> another machine sitting on your desk.
> 
> Can you transfer all your running apps over to that machine within 5
> minutes - with all their unsaved data etc.?

  Well, the device that's running out of juice is an Intel x86 device, while
the newly charged device is ARM.  Native apps aren't just going to transfer. 
So you solve that with virtual machines.  Fine.  The "transfer" process just
has to identify which processes need to be transferred ("cron" for instance,
doesn't---but "Adium" (a chat program) does).  The "transfer" process then
needs to transfer any files used by Adium, but oh, there are a few files on
the destination that differ from the source---do you update those?  What if
the files are currently in use by another program on the destination?  Or
does every process get its own sandbox?  

  Then there's the TCP connections that Adium has ... and transfering a TCP
connection to another box is ... well, I don't say impossible, but it won't
be seamless.  And a process like "ssh", with a cryptographically secure
connection, is even less seamless than a plain TCP connection.  Which also
brings up any firewall settings.  You'll need to synchronize those as well.  

  That's quite a rabbit hole you got there.

> Q.E.D. - it has not happened yet. But it sure can. :)

  I won't say it can't be done, but the devil is surely in the details.

  -spc (And there are a ton of details ... )