[cap-talk] Why is EQ so dang fascinating?

[Jed Donnelley]

At 01:08 PM 11/5/2007, Charles Landau wrote:
>At 11:34 AM -0800 11/5/07, Jed Donnelley wrote:
> >On 11/5/2007 11:09 AM, Charles Landau wrote:
> >...
> >>  With EQ, the bank wouldn't need to invoke a malicious purse, and I
> >>  would always know any slow response would be the fault of the bank.
> >
> >Doesn't MyCap suffice for the above?  That is, isn't the purse
> >a capability supported by the bank?  If you are going to try to
> >arrange to be able to only blame the bank (or whatever single
> >service), then it seems that all related capability invocations
> >must be internal to that one service - hence subject to MyCap
> >rather than the more general EQ.  Right?
>
>Right.
>
>At 11:09 AM -0800 11/5/07, Charles Landau wrote:
> >I'm curious how you would design a robust protocol in the above
> >example, without using timeout or EQ.
>
>Still curious, without timeout or EQ or MyCap.

Curiosity understandable.  Curiosity notwithstanding, I just want
to make sure everybody knows that unlike EQ, the MyCap operation
is an invocation on a capability (the type extension capability),
and is thus subject to simulation, wrapping, etc.  MyCap is
thus less "fascinating" (problematic) - though seemingly it's
base implementation still needs to look at the innards of a
capability.

My curiosity would be to see a MyCap equivalent in E and to see
whether it might alleviate the need for EQ within Horton that
MarkM noted.  I wish I had more time to work on this stuff.

--Jed  http://www.webstart.com/jed-signature.html