Robert L Mathews wrote:
>(I generally don't put privately run NNTP
>servers in the "reliable" category; Tucows may be different, but I doubt
>it).
>
>
Agreed -- All servers have outages of some sort. When my mail server is
down, I'm busy fixing it, so I don't mind that I can't read my OpenSRS
discussion list -- I've never tried to read discuss list when my server
is having problems.
More importantly, it's my problem, I fix it.
If the list server goes down, no problem, it just means I won't see new
posts until the list comes up, I can still access my local archives,
read and reply to messages, etc. This can't happen with a pull
technology unless I'm constantly pulling.
I not only need to constantly poll (anybody think OpenSRS would mind if
I poll the RSS feeds once a second? -- Email is pushed to my server, my
server pushes a notice to me, so polling every second would actually
result in a delay from when messages are posted until when I am notified
about them), but if the pull server is down, I know about it and I can
complain about it.
If the list server goes down while I'm composing a message, I won't lose
it either, my mail server will resend it for me. This doesn't happen if
a web forum goes down -- More often then not the message will be lost,
unless I happen to notice, go back, save the message myself and try
posting it later. That's a lot of effort to help out a competitor using
my supplier's service.
Slightly off topic, anybody else read any of the various "RSS is
crushing my server" articles recently? There is a reason why infrequent
or unpredictable updates should be pushed rather then pulled.
-- They call it "PMS" because "Mad Cow Disease" was already taken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Jan 31 2005 - 23:00:02 EST