Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!bennett
From: bennett@mp.cs.niu.edu (Scott Bennett)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach as a Virtual Machine
Keywords: virtual machine - mach - design - architecture
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.210653.15591@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 18 Apr 91 21:06:53 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.133805.28465@ulowell.ulowell.edu> <1991Apr17.042700.2568@mtxinu.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 45

In article <1991Apr17.042700.2568@mtxinu.COM> ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould) writes:
>>I am trying to answer this question:
>
>>	"Is Mach a virtual machine software?"
>
>>  [text deleted  --SJB]
>
>Even in this sense, Mach does not present any more of a "virtual
>machine" than does any other operating system.  The Mach 3.0
>facilities don't implement any of the OS *interfaces* that we're
>currently used to, but they provide a way to implement those
>interfaces.  In that sense, Mach provides a virtual machine.  So
>does every other OS, albeit a different one for each OS.

     The above comment makes it obvious that an attempt has been
made to make the term "virtual machine" useless by forcing it to
to mean things it was never intended to mean.  The term *is*, after
all, virtual *machine*, *not* virtual operating system interface.
A virtual machine is one that looks to a program like a real machine.
Even an operating system is supposed to run correctly inside it.
     Terminology in almost any technical field nowadays is getting
to be so voluminous that people new to a field cannot be familiar
with all of it.  This results in their reinventing or misusing 
terms.  Thanks go to Ed Gould here for putting an end to the
nonsense in this case.
>
>-- 
>Ed Gould			No longer formally affiliated with,
>ed@mtxinu.COM			and certainly not speaking for, mt Xinu.
>
>"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
                                  Systems Programming
                                  Northern Illinois University
                                  DeKalb, Illinois 60115
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