Another: Spam. The subscription handshake ensures that subscribers can trivially drop stuff they haven't subscribed to.
On Friday, February 19, 2010, ara.t.howard <[email protected]> wrote: >> PuSH is far, far simpler, less likely to be affected by ISP restrictions, > > hrm. than email? even a casual reading of this list will show a ton > demand to make it more complex: message queues, private subscriptions, > authentication schemes, opaque body contents, additive relays, etc. > all things part of SMTP/email. it seems unlikely that it will be able > to remain as simple as it is if it achieves widespread adoption. > >> and most importantly, actually exists. As far as I know, the SMTP-based >> system you're describing is 100% hypothetical. > > i'm talking about using simple email and, instead of letting mail > spool, configuring 'stdin hooks' instead of 'web hooks' which all mail > daemons provide a simple configuration for and every perl programming > sysad in the world can administer and understand - because they are > already doing it. > > let me put it another way: > > what major real world technical advantages does push have over > programatic subscription to url-name based mailing lists and > configuring programs which read on stdin to receive mail (rather than > letting is spool). what major real world dis-advantages would it have > compare to such a system. > > for the record, i've moved a lot of message around the world using > this paradigm and have found it to be ultra robust, scalable, simple > to write code for, simple to maintain, and simple to debug. i've also > maintained many varieties of push based systems and found them to be > massively painful in production due to the eventual real world > requirement to be aware of network issues on the receiving end - aka > retry logic - something which email based systems handle like none > other. > > i guess i really do not understand how a mega successful push system > would be technically superior to having a bunch of machines > subscribing to email lists and reading email instead of humans doing > the reading... > > in case people are not aware, there is some really interesting > application development in this space: http://lamsonproject.org/ > > > regards. > > > > > -- > -a > -- > be kind whenever possible... it is always possible - h.h. the 14th dalai lama > -- -- John Panzer / Google [email protected] / abstractioneer.org / @jpanzer
