From: Charles Miller <cmiller@...>
Date: 2005-02-17T16:55:30+09:00
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)

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