From: Ross A. Finlayson (extropy@apexinternetsoftware.com)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 13:39:51 MDT
On Monday, September 30, 2002, at 10:46 PM, spike66 wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
>> Ross complains
>>> How come your messages go through so much faster
>>> than others'? ...
>> ... I started getting his messages *before* the ones he was replying
>> to, I had to give up on
>> that hypothesis and conclude that Ron is just an
>> human being who happens to have ESP. Lee
>
>
> Not at all. He was merely demonstrating
> faster-than-light communications. spike
>
>
>
What is the complete chain of events that leads to some of Ron H.'s
message replies being propagated before the message?
If it was a random quirk of the mailing list software, then we could
expect that to occur in other examples.
Is Ron H. a list moderator of the extropians list? In a moderated list
a moderator would have the opportunity to post his replies to earlier
e-mails before they were passed. I believe the chartered role, if that
is the correct term, of the moderator of extropians is to send queued
e-mails sent to the list from addresses of non-members, and otherwise
maintenance list operations, but otherwise posts from members are
automatically posted, and that it's somebody else.
The mechanism of the list software is, for each e-mail received, to open
a connection to the recipient's host, through a network of
interconnected computers, often on port 25, and to transfer to the
recipient's mail host a copy of the message, addressed to the
recipient. With hundreds or more list members, the host of the first
person on the recipient list would receive the e-mail before the host of
the last person. If the e-mails are sent in sequential manner, then
each recipient host should have the post before the next post reaches
the first host.
It isn't only a clock difference, which could result from varying system
clocks, there is sometimes a difference in the order received. Ron
posts through an aol account, or so the e-mail headers say,
Have you ever noticed any spelling errors that weren't in your posts?
How about spurious spelling errors in news articles? Are you reading
this? (Heh.)
Ron, what do you mean when you say that?
Ross
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