Re: low sugar - spotty vision

Freckles <locksmith9999@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Chris Malcolm" <cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4mnuq4F724d8U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Freckles <locksmith9999@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Alan S" <loralweightandcarbs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6i0dg2pd3mn3abtaq31n3cf46llkn4812n@xxxxxxxxxx

We crossed "in the mail". See my other response. Note the
timing.

Pax.

Crossed in the mail?

I think you are the one who needs to "note the timing'"

Of course you wouldn't know how to temporally change the date and time on
your computer do you?

Never heard of the asynchrony of newsgroup propagation have you? And
never heard of newsreaders that download the current newsgroups state
all at once, and leave you to potter through it at your own pace with
no updates while you're doing it?

Before you light the touch paper on your paranoia, it's a good idea to
check the facts. Otherwise you get hoist with your own petard. I'd
better point out that there's a French pun involved in that
Shakespearean joke, meaning you get levitated by your own fart. That
can cause spots before the eyes too.

I'm not certain your post is intended for me, but if it is I must admit I
have no idea what you are talking about.
I have never heard of the asynchrony of newsgroup propagation, and as far as
I know I have never had a newsreader that did whatever it is you mentioned
above. I guess YOU would say I am computer illiterate

Sorry to hear it. Batch mode newsreaders are still commonplace over
dial up connections and in Unix-type systems. I happen at the moment
to be using a dial up connection to a unix system which gets its
newsgroups in batch mode from my newsgroup server.

Maybe those things are well known in England and in Europe, but not here in
the U.S.A.

Sadly true, even though newsgroups were invented in the USA.

However, I bought my first computer in 1975, and at the end of this year I
will be buying my eleventh or twelfth.

Congrats. I didn't buy my first computer until 1979, although I'd been
programming them since the mid 1960s.

I have had Radio Shacks, IBMs,
Apples, Compaqs, Dells and a number of off brands. At years end I'll be
buying at least two more Dell computers for business and home use. I know
how to write computer programs in four languages and I'm now attempting to
learn two more; C+ and Visual Basic.

Can't remember how many computer languages I've programmed in. At a
guess it's well over a dozen.

I have designed and set up three
different websites for my home businesses and one for my personal use. I
have had five different ISPs.

I guess I must have set at least half a dozen websites. I've got five
ISPs at the moment, although only two of them are general purpose and
frequently used. No idea how many I've actually had over the years.

Before I retired 15 years ago I was a production manager for a fortune 500
company and I had to help the software techs write programs for inventory
control and other business related programs on the IBM mainframe.

Well, since I started life as a systems programmer in the 1960s,
retired two years ago, still work part time for the largest university
computer science dept in the UK, and still occasionally write
programs, I guess my experience trumps yours.

But, no, I have no idea what it is that you are talking about.

Newsgroup messages are supplied by newsgroup servers, of which there
are many all over the world. A posted message is first supplied to the
newsgroup server of the poster. The route by which it arrives at other
newsgroup servers can vary dynamically according to network
conditions. Newsgroup traffic has one of the lowest priorities over
the network, and is often sent on a batched or periodic basis. There
are still some bottlenecks in message propagation routes between some
servers, often for historical bureaucratic reasons, such as across
international boundaries, and when a computer goes down this can cause
delays of a few hours and even sometimes a few days, although this is
now very much rarer than it was. Messages are also sometimes lost,
although this is also very much rarer nowadays. I did switch servers a
few years ago because I was annoyed by the occasional delays of more
than a day which still happened often enough to be annoying.

The consequence of all this is that messages can arrive at your server
out of order, so that sometimes you will see a reply to a message
before the message being replied to has arrived.

It's also the case that some servers will supply newsgroups to your
newsgroup reader in batch mode, like batched email, so that you won't
see a message that arrives after receiving your current batch.

And even when none of these things apply, it's possible for someone
who is taking a while to post a message, perhaps because they're
multitasking, simply to be composing their message in their text
editor during the time when the other message arrives, so they post
afterwards although they started before.

One of the reasons behind the very old newsgroup interleaved and
indented quoting convention was because it copes with the message
arrival asynchrony which is an inherent and inescapable feature of the
system. Today's propagation speeds, and the proliferation of web-based
newsgroup interfaces has reduced this to near invisible proportions to
many modern newsgroup users, but it still happens, and is often behind
silly disputes of this "but I posted before you!" kind.

Of course that's not to say that any of this applied to Alan. He could
as you suggest be a devious *** who deliberately changed the time
in his computer so he could pretend he hadn't seen your message when
he posted his. And as another poster has pointed out, it's quite
possible his "good chap" persona is just a camouflage for the real
reason for his posting to asd, which is the profits he gets from
promoting certain book sales.

There's some nasty folk in this newsgroup.

--
Chris Malcolm cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

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