Pot Pourri

Jini Many people have recognized the potential of large numbers of mildly intelligent communicating devices. Devices as disparate as switches, lights, cameras, sensors, printers, vending machines, and large relational databases might all benefit from exchanging information. In the 1980s, Micro’s Editor-in-Chief, Ken Sakamura, headed the TRON Project, a large cooperative effort based on this idea. Java’s roots are in embedded systems and consumer electronics. From the first, it was also intimately associated with networking. Jini brings these threads together to provide a model for networking arbitrary devices. Many systems for distributed computing run afoul of the seven fallacious assumptions identified by computer scientist Peter Deutsch: