At 9:02 -0500 99/11/19, Ralph Hartley wrote: ...
>No, he cannot. Tittle is not a pointer that can be discarded. No
>matter what Bob does he still holds the title. Regardless of how
>sincere he was when he gave everything to mallet, he can still get it
>back just by asking, and proving that he is Bob (which though
>sometimes difficult is not logically impossible even for programs).
>
In general that is correct. For objects that should be transferable it is
generally possible to make them a bit more complex and obey orders to
transfer allegiance. If someone (1) sends you a reference to a zot, (2)
you trust zots to behave as advertised, (3) they are advertised to obey the
allegiance transfer protocol, (4) and you confirm that the reference is
indeed to a zot (perhaps by consulting the zot source), then you can give
it this transfer order. The previous owner may race you but if you get a
good return you will know that you won and that the race is done. In
Keykos this might be carried out by the zot buying a new domain, moving its
state to that domain and deleting the old domain.
You can build a general transfer front end but a frontended zot would not then be recognized as a true zot. Sometimes this does not matter. Norman Hardy <http://www.mediacity.com/~norm>