From: Jeff Shrager
Subject: Proposal for a Community KnowOS: "Through the Web" Lisp Resource
Date: 
Message-ID: <1190403288.396286.292150@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com>
In a recent post, Carlo Capocasa wrote:

"[...being commonly used by lispers] doesn't make [emacs] any easier
to learn to use when you've grown up with the heavily GUI-laden OSes
of the 90s and 00s." Later he suggests: "As for starting to work with
LISP, I suggest you simply download one of the distributions without
any IDE attached to it. [...] Be sure to download the binary version,
unpack it somewhere, and open its executable in a terminal. This will
give you a Lisp prompt where you can start typing in what you will be
learning in all the tutorials that have to do with the language
itself, and finding out what you typed returns."

[Don't worry, I'm going in a different direction from the flame war!]

This strikes me as quite oxymoronical: Don't use Emacs because it's to
hard compared to The Modern World, but do download and unpack the code
and then type straight into it talk about 70s technology!

It's clear that the "download, unpack, and run on your own machine"
model of computing is rapidly being supplanted by what I'll call
"through the web programming" -- look at the noise that FaceBook's
programming model has made (which is similar to Google's and Yahoo's).
But Lisp has had one of these for years: BioBike is built on KnowOS
technology, which is a multi-headed, multi-threaded through-the-web
lisp machine. And, being built on Lisp,  the BioBike/KnowOS technology
is much more powerful than either the Facebook or Google's or Yahoo's
technology (although, of course, many fewer people care about
biocomputing, so I doubt it's ever get the same level of attention).

It would be easy to make a free KnowOS server available to whomever
wants to use it to learn or play with lisp. That way, not only
wouldn't you have to use emacs, you wouldn't have to download
binaries; indeed, you wouldn't need anything more than a browser!
Indeed, I even have a server that I can do it on. What I don't have a
Unix/Lisp wizard who's willing to help support the public KnowOS
instance. Although the level of support is quite low (the KnowOS
servers are quite stable) what's actually critical is a knowledge of
chroot and other unix security issues so that assholes don't break out
into our server, which is naked because of the completely open, lisp-
all-the-way-down, fully programmable model.

Such an open KnowOS server would be, IMHO, a wonderful resource for
the community in a number of ways: It would give us a place to send
noobs; we could keep it up-to-date with the latest cool packages; and
it would (with some work) be a real showcase for Lisp. In the best
case if could become a community center for all levels of Lisp, from
the simple to the advanced. Moreover, living entirely in web-space, it
would even be a place where we could showcase highly interactive web-
centric Lisp applications that would put Facebook et al to shame!

If you think that you might be interested in helping deploy and
support such a KnowOS server for the Lisp community, please contact
me. I might even have some money to support this effort (although I
really don't think it's that much effort -- I just don't know enough
about chroot and unix security issues to be able to do it myself!)

From: Alex Mizrahi
Subject: Re: Proposal for a Community KnowOS: "Through the Web" Lisp Resource
Date: 
Message-ID: <46f43047$0$90268$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
(message (Hello 'Jeff)
(you :wrote  :on '(Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:34:48 -0000))
(

 JS> really don't think it's that much effort -- I just don't know enough
 JS> about chroot and unix security issues to be able to do it myself!)

well, i'm in no way an unix security expert, but to my knowledge modern 
(trendy) way to do it would be using virtualization like 
vmware/xen/virtuozzo/whatever. it's assumed to be more secure by default.
also it enables some interesting options -- like having a watchdog and "hot 
spare" [virtual] machine in case main fails.

and if server has enough memory it can even have multiple "private" images 
at once..

and btw the whole idea seems to be pretty interesting.. there was some 
tutorial recommending using prompt.franz.com telnet, but telnet development 
experience might be not what people like..

)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"Hanging In The Balance Of Deceit And Blasphemy") 
From: Carlo Capocasa
Subject: Re: Proposal for a Community KnowOS: "Through the Web" Lisp Resource
Date: 
Message-ID: <fd1g36$4qb$1@aioe.org>
> It would be easy to make a free KnowOS server available to
> whomever wants to use it to learn or play with lisp.

That is a really, really great idea. I have no idea whatsoever about
Internet Security but I'm willing to learn.

Carlo