it isn't plumbing, but export/import, and it's useful. i had a usable sound system on my r3000 indigo, but my PC had none. on the pc, i imported the indigo's /dev and played sounds that way. i could imagine uses even a continent away (alarm system imports remote /dev and announces trouble). next door might be more useful.
I personally would like to see a lot more in the way of remote resource access using 9p and I'm working towards that by writing software for windows, linux and android. Its a slightly different use case than typical plan9 setup: ie my terminal has some devices and I push them to a cpu server so programs run there can access local resources. Instead you have resources on several machines that you own (and who doesnt own several machines these days, heck even my non-tech relatives do) and you import them to use them as necessary. I've been playing around with sound a lot as a starting point but I am hoping to move on to other devices soon. In my current prototypes I can import sound devices from (android, windows, linux oss) onto another (android, windows, linux oss) machine and either replace the current audio subsystem or offer the remote audio as an additional audio device. Why should all of your machines need a dvd drive, sound card, sdcard reader, etc.? Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com
