Aucbvax.2074 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!HGBaker.Symbolics@MIT-Multics Sat Jul 4 09:05:08 1981 capability machines 1. A capability is just a fancy name for a pointer in a machine that doesn't have enough address space to begin with. 2. The current hangup of capability machines is their unwillingness to do garbage collection. (Tracing, etc., that is.) 3. Lisp was the first capability machine. It is true that the objects are quite small in the original Lisps, but with newer Lisps having vectors, strings, objects, classes, flavors, and what have you, they have all the power of Hydras, 432's, etc. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.