From: Louis Newstrom (louisnews@comcast.net)
Date: Thu Jun 13 2002 - 18:22:58 MDT
From: "John K Clark" <jonkc@att.net>
> > It seems that you are somehow counting the two bodies as
> >"one" because they are "identical".
>
> If you don't like the word "one" try "exchangeable", you could swap the
two
> and nobody could tell the difference
Ok. I'll acknowledge "exchangable".
> In fact the two could be spontaneously exchanging identities a billion
times
> a second and yet nothing would change, if that doesn't prove that neither
is
> indispensable I don't know what would.
Destroying one of them would.
Most companies view their engineers as "interchangable". They don't care
which engineer does which project. However, if someone quits then there's a
lot of concern. Even though they are interchangable, the loss of any one
does decrease the company.
>
> >Any computer programmer can tell you that two runs of the
> >same thread on a computer instead of one IS different,
> >and IS significant!
>
> And he'd tell you that two identical programs working on identical data is
> pointless,
Not really. Think of a mail program. If the boss sends out a letter to
"all", you have hundred of programs displaying the same data on a hundred
screens. Simultaneous display of that data in a hundred places is very
valuable.
Almost all networks are based on the principal that many duplicates, all
doing the same job is much better than one doing that job.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:46 MST