Hi,

Some time ago someone mentioned that they wanted to keep the mail list 
number on the subject lines received from the ruby-talk mail list because 
their mail system was delivering them out of order. At first I thought 
this might have been a joke or grasping at straws or a rare race condition 
due to nearly simultaneous postings where the order of reading wouldn't 
really matter. 

However, over the past few days, I've seen several cases where a 
lower-numbered post has arrived considerably later (several hours later in 
one case) after batches of higher number posts. Does anyone know whether 
this sort of thing is fairly widespread? And does anyone know if this is 
typically an internal e-mail system problem? Or does the Internet itself 
sometimes somehow contribute to this phenomenon?

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)