Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.17 $; site uiucdcsb.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcsb!essick From: essick@uiucdcsb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.notes Subject: Re: remote cancellation Message-ID: <3300006@uiucdcsb.UUCP> Date: Tue, 2-Oct-84 22:39:00 EDT Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.3300006 Posted: Tue Oct 2 22:39:00 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 01:51:10 EDT References: <1679@inmet.UUCP> Lines: 44 Nf-ID: #R:inmet:-167900:uiucdcsb:3300006:000:2004 Nf-From: uiucdcsb!essick Oct 2 21:39:00 1984 Why haven't I put remote cancellation into notes? Here are a few reasons. @ Once the data arrives on my machine, it's my property and I don't want some random Joe on the other side of the network to zip those babies away. Particularly if it's something I want to forward to my archive machine. @ remote cancellation leads to the following scenario, which is also why notes doesn't let you delete a note or response if there are later notes in the discussion: 1. person A writes a note 2. person B writes a well-thought-out, rational, coherent response. 3. person C writes a really stupid response 4. person D writes a response that says "the previous response is really stupid". 5. person C goes back and deletes his response 6. Person D now looks like a bozo for (apparently) saying that person B's response was really stupid. Steps 5 & 6 are avoided by not letting you delete a note/response if there are later responses in that string. The situation gets more complex if you let people do remote cancellation. @ Since the notes networking is passive in the sense that it doesn't happen the instant you write an article but later when a daemon comes around to package all the new articles (which looks a lot like what batching, doesn't it!) the user typically has a reasonable window to decide that he didn't really like what he wrote and he can edit the text. All of a sudden, you don't need remote cancellation, the reason you wanted to cancel the article has been taken care of in a purely local manner. Anyway, those are some of the reasons that I didn't implement remote cancellation of notes. It opens a number of problems with consistency, you can get people screaming about the information on their machine belonging to them, and the way I implemented notesfile networking you almost always have a chance to correct it before it gets sent out over the network. -- Ray Essick, University of Illinois -- ihnp4!uiucdcs!essick essick%uiuc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa