That's a mighty quick assumption there. It is, of course, possible to convert data into a file format and send it in that form. Could there not be a more obvious solution?Orthogonal persistence is fine, but what if a user wants to send a file as an email attachment, or save it to a floppy (usb keychain, CD-RW, 5" floppy) for viewing on a different system (non-orthogonal), how are you going to do that? Or conversely, how about receiving and loading one?
[...]
You can't seriously expect that everyone will be running your system, and using its magical facilities to communicate that stuff transparently..
Interoperability requires that there be a tangible piece of data in a well-defined format. Humans require it to have some human-friendly identification like, say, a name.
And if your database does all of that, it *is* a filesystem, might as well call it that. Database, filesystem, "My Documents", whatever. Pretending that it is not will just make it more awkward.
The database would not have to facilitate this itself either, so it is still not a filesystem. The file conversion could be at any point before transmission, really.
Sounds like you are complaining more about filesystems than the lack of filesystems. The whole point here is that you don't care where and how it's stored.The abstraction of having to store data on disk may be fine, until you start to care where it is stored and how. Where is my %%%ing file?!?!
The data is not restricted to your computer; I think I explained that simply enough above. I'm not saying the computer will never crash or the hard drive will never fail. In fact, there is no more real danger than in current operating systems. Filesystems get corrupted just like anything else, and hard drives go bad regardless of the operating system. It's just a matter of protection and recovery, both of which can be facilitated by some solid mechanisms in the OS or a good backup of the hard drive. I see no major problems, just a little bit of required thinking to increase the recoverability of the system. And the "Nothing Fancy v1.0" format really is "Nothing Fancy"; it's not like a filesystem or file format. Basically, this format would consist of the boot code being in the correct location and some data in the right location to specify where the page tables are. All the rest can be derived recursively from there. This "format" would basically be unchanging.in other words, the data will be restricted to your computer, assuming it never crashes, the hard drive never dies, and you never change the "Nothing Fancy v.1.0" data format.
The Law of Leaky Abstractions applies to everything. Nothing about this idea is really any more leaky than the abstractions of today. It's just different.
Anyway, how about if we stick to the question instead of attempting to make it moot?
