Context: object oriented programming

In order to fully understand acquistion, the difference between "is a" and "has a" relationships must first be understood.

"Is a" vs. "Has a"

Consider the following example:

A car:
is a vehicle
has an engine

Notice the difference. An "is a" relationship specifies that the object ("car") is ontologically a special case of a broader class ("vehicle"). "Is a" relationships form the basis of inheritance in object oriented programming.

Contrast the "has a" relationship. Here the relationship specifies that an object ("engine") is componentwise a part of a broader object ("car"). This relationship is the basis of acquisition.

Acqusition and Object Oriented Programming

In inheritance, subclasses automatically defines properties and operations from its superclass. Thus if the class Vehicle defines a property colour, then the class Car would have access to the property colour.

In acquisition, objects (instances of a class) automatically defines properties and operations from its container. Thus if an instance of the class Car defines a property colour, and contains an instance of the class Engine, then the value of the property make of Engine would be identical to the value of the property make of Car.

The most prominent usage of acquisition is in Zope, where one can specify an object within a folder which does not belong to that particular folder. Zope searches the parent folder for the same object, and follows this aquisition tree until the root object.

Can I share some copyright protected files with you, please?

Acquisition is a piece of pure beauty: It is not only incredibly good looking but also of a functionality many things on this planet don't achieve. What it is?

Why, a p2p - filesharing program for OS X, of course!

The brainchild of an David Watanabe, this is rather small proggy and has a nice, clean GUI that was oviously designed by a very levelheaded and minimalistic creature, as it is not cluttered with icons or sporting any vile colours (like Windows XP or any other product from the gates of hell). As I am not a very technical person, I may quote the gory details from the website:

"Acquisition is a gnutella client supporting modern gnutella features such as Ultrapeers, swarm (multi-source) downloads, download resumption, and distributed network discovery. "

It includes mp3 downloads automatically on an Itunes playlist, which is nice, as you always have your newest music automatically updated on your ipod. The search function is quite powerful, you can browse other users hd's and the little gem sorts your hits into albums, artists or filetypes, if wanted

Support is great, and for a mere 15$ it can be legally yours, although the tryout-version just has a little nagging window popping up from time to time and otherwise gives the same functionality as the registered thing.

http://acquisitionx.com

Ac`qui*si"tion (#), n. [L. acquisitio, fr. acquirere: cf. F. acquisition. See Acquire.]

1.

The act or process of acquiring.

The acquisition or loss of a province. Macaulay.

2.

The thing acquired or gained; an acquirement; a gain; as, learning is an acquisition.

Syn. -- See Acquirement.

 

© Webster 1913.

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