Luis Góíez -------------------------------- 4360 NW 107th Av. Suite 102 Miami, FL 33178 +786.395.1490 lgomez / vfxnetwork.com Curriculum Vitae -------------------------------- This email contains information which may be confidential and priviledged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail to lgomez / vfxnetwork.com or tel. +1-786-395-1490 and delete the material from any computer. -----Original Message----- From: Charles Miller [mailto:cmiller / pastiche.org] Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 2:56 AM To: ruby-talk ML Subject: Re: Ruby + end user applications On 17/02/2005, at 11:44 AM, Shalev NessAiver wrote: > Instead of having every message sent to every person, create a > specific "mailing list client" > that is able to access a "mailing list server". Users of that client > would be able to browse a list > of messages on the server, and select messages they wish to read (as > in a normal email client). > The difference is, only messages which they select are downloaded and > displayed to the user. > Additionally, the messages are (optionally) not stored on the users > computer and continue to > remain on the mailing list server. A single file keeps track of which > files have already been viewed > by the user. In this way only the messages that a user specifically > requests are sent to that user. The problem with this is that it relies too heavily on a single central server. If that server went down, nobody would be able to even read any of the existing messages, let alone send any new ones. The obvious next step would be to have a network of cooperating servers. When a message was posted on one server, it would be automatically propagated through to the rest of the network. Thus, you wouldn't have to transmit every message to every user, but you would still get some geographical/network distribution and fault tolerance. Charles Miller (7007a78ccc84296a60f9f0b527219abd) -- Contributing to the heat death of the Universe since 1975 cmiller / pastiche.org http://fishbowl.pastiche.org