2010-11-12

a doctor with good bed-side manners

11.6: adde/a doctor with good bed-side manners:

. a recent discussion about hypervisors
was discussing sophisticated ways to handle
extreme but transient mem'space shortages .
when multitasking several app's,
. the main approach should be
good bed-side manners:

. a study of why doctors get sued discovered
that, of the doctors who were sued the least,
what they had in common was
having good bed-side manners
(I would imagine that this would include
being honest with self and patient
with what they can expect,
and what their other options are).
. for a computer OS, that means
when a memory shortage comes up,
the OS is:
# making time to dialog with users:
(explaining why this app is bogged down
by the extent of its workload,
not getting the mem or cpu it needs,
what library components it's using
-- details that can be provided
only when the system is managed:
ie, the algorithm is compiled in a way
that keeps the os in charge,
and in the know).

# always keeping up with all user input:
(ie, the gui is on the highest priority thread;
the ability to take and display user input
is never frozen, and the input is always backed
by the os itself, a buggy app can't lose it .)
--
. this kind of control can get expensive,
and combining it with high-performance app's
might require networking 2 boxes or cores:
one for the user`interface,
and the other for app's to stay on task;
[11.9: but,
if 2 boxes are not available,
adda's translation should be providing
true multitasking by embedding into app's
frequent calls to the gui coroutine,
which then gives the os a chance to
stay in touch with the user .]

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