From: Zooko <zooko@zooko.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 07:53:30 -0500
Subject: Re: [e-lang] Commentary on Wallach's "Extensible Security Architectures for Java"

 ?!ng wrote:
>
> I guess i don't really understand why any other definition is necessary.
> Why should it matter whether your system has a formal representation of
> the act of delegation, when the issue is whether or not delegation can
> actually happen?

For one thing, a capability is around 20 bytes, and a copy of the object being 
accessed might be any size: kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes... 

This difference isn't because capability passing fits within some formal 
framework,  but because capability passing is so much more efficient that it 
might be *feasible* in cases where proxying is infeasible.

Regards, 

Zooko 

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