[cap-talk] Communication successes (was: Re: Session failures)

[Jed Donnelley]

At 10:09 AM 3/15/2008, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 15:47 -0700, Jed Donnelley wrote:
> > Thanks.  I guess I need to understand more about the problem
> > that the checkpoint/restart mechanism does solve.  Perhaps
> > a better step to resolving my confusion in this area would be
> > to look at distributed commit.
>
>That seems unlikely, since the entire reason that my scheme worked is
>that it was able to entirely avoid reliance on distributed commit.

I believe I understand your point.  However, my most fundamental
puzzlement has been in how any sort of, perhaps not necessarily
"agreement" but at least consistency, can be achieved in the
face of the problem facing the Two Generals.  I think if I
come to understand the workings of the Three Party Commit
protocol, which of course has to deal with the issues of
lost messages that the Two Generals face, then I'll be in a
better position to understand other efforts at distributed
... "consistency"?

What would you say your checkpoint/restart mechanism achieves
Jonathan?

> > If I could be confident of coming to an understanding
> > of this topic in, say, 1/2 days reading, I'd be happy to
> > make that investment.
>
>I wrote a tech note about it, but I confess it is a very bad tech note.
>The entire scheme crystalized around three in the morning after a rock
>and roll performance I was involved in, and I wrote it down in a
>marathon haze of overriding exhaustion and alcohol fumes. My only goal
>was to be able to recover the concept later myself, and the text is
>anything BUT clear. It's also a contender for the worlds worst
>collection of time puns, including one which is rendered in correct (and
>obscure, given the verb forms required) Latin.
>
>It's not presently online, but I can probably hunt it down.

I'll be interested to see it if you can make it available on-line.
Getting it out and looked at by others certainly seems to me
the best thing for starting to realize any value you see there.

At 11:08 AM 3/15/2008, Mark Miller wrote:
>On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Jonathan S. Shapiro 
><shap at eros-os.com> wrote:
>...
> >  It's not presently online, but I can probably hunt it down.
>
>I remember finding it understandable, enjoyable, and insightful. Well,
>I suppose there's no accounting for taste.

Heh.  You also had nice things to say about my brain/learning
model MarkM...  Still, I value your opinion, so I have even more
reason to carefully consider Jonathan's thoughts and writing ;-)

--Jed  http://www.webstart.com/jed-signature.html