Stopping threads from the outside

[holger at trillke.net]

> > You really want to know it? I am currently working
> > on (coded) agents which move through the network.
> 
> "The network"?  Which one?  The Internet, or an internal
> network over which you have full control?  Who controls
> the servers on which these agents will be running?

well. at the moment the servers are under my control.
but this is hopefully going to change. 

> > But of course i'd sometimes like to shut down some or
> > all agent-threads. 
> 
> Run them in a separate process and kill the process when
> it's "sometime"?  If you can live without individual
> control.  Maybe you can identify groups of them?

As Boudewijn pointed out this would lead to the problem
of managing interprocess communication. One of the reasons i am
developing this system is to _avoid_ having interprocess
communication and/or remote references that bloats and complicates
the system. 

In fact it is quite hard to group the agent-threads because they are very
autonomous (and btw quite cooperative with other agents). 
And I just wanted to deploy a "kill-agent"
that manages to shutdown certain or all Agent-threads. 

thanks for your replies so far!

	holger