[development] DEP - cascading variable system

[Moshe Weitzman]

> Anybody pursuing the user-variables-in-variable-table idea in earnest 
> has just had a bad idea. (no, that is not waht I intended to write 
> originally)

Noone suggested this. Adrian proposed automatically loading *system* 
variables into memory like our current $conf. I think Chris missed this 
distinction and then asked for assurance about how our current system works.