From: JamesBritt <james@...>
Date: 2002-10-01T16:46:33+09:00
Subject: RE: ruby-talk separation, part II

> Email is an event driven push messaging bus.  For that reason, email
> is good.  Having to poll places for data doesn't scale, having
> something come in over the socket and send a kqueue event telling the
> listening process to check out the data that's blocking on the socket
> and waiting to be processed is good.  Having multiple lists is like
> having multiple ports.

Unless you're running your own mail server (which most people don't), you
have to have a process polling an external location for data.  Perhaps it's
better to have single process (your E-mail clinet) poll a single location
(your POP3 or IMAP server), but polling at least one place for data is
inevitable. (Using E-mail polling as the sole source for retrieving certain
types of data is another matter.)

The specific technology may be irrelevant if the data is available in a
multitude of forms, and  on demand (e.g. I shouldn't have to be at my home
PC, or require access to my mail server). The larger issue of an
announcement list is the effect on the use and maintenance of the RAA.
Already there have been announcements to rubynet-announce of items that have
no entry in the RAA.   How can we best promote and maintain a single
authoritative location for library information (including additions and
updates)?