[Mailnote to Kathleen Kelm, as part of KIT eLearning module MSC-CC-040205-01 chatting about the red flag problem and how I was close to having set off my "I've had enough" switch.  Posted 2004-02-06-16:30 -0800.

Hi KMK,

I will take your advice, though I am particularly grumpy because this is Friday and I am running Norton Antivirus over in my administrative account and that makes FirstClass run even more clumsily.  

In the spirit of empirical computer science, I can testify that posting to a folder from off-line has nothing to do with provoking synchronization of other new material in that folder back to the off-line version.

However my workaround still works.  It's a bother.

With regard to your question about dissertation projects, there's one in here abstracted to how does one troubleshoot application protocols (like the FirstClass ones) without requiring user expertise at the edges and without requiring the user to do too much work in providing reliable information back to the troubleshooters?

See, I am turning this problem into an opportunity!

This is a generic question.  I remember when I first saw a Xerox Alto computer in operation, around 1977, I was struck by the fact that crashes of applications would automatically lead to dumps and reports transmitted back to a trouble-shooting site.  I think mainframes have done things like that at various times.

Here on Windows XP Pro, there are little invitations to allow failure information (also about FirstClass) to be sent to some central point, but that is apparently just enough to know there's a problem and I have no idea what is done that will of be any use to me.  Being of use to anonymous others is not all that thrilling, and I stopped clicking "Yes" on those after the first few times.  This is a feedbackless data-collection system and I am not interested in being a drone in such a process.

I remember a famous paper (in my eyes, I think it is long forgotten and I will see what I can do to revive it), by Jack Dennis (oops, Earl C. Van Horn [1]) even longer ago about "reproducible behavior" as a principle.   At the time, people had all sorts of reasons to say that what he was calling for in his little manifesto was too  hard and too costly considering the size of machines at that time.  I think times have changed and we need to take another look at what Jack had to say.

I will certainly add this to my collection of confirmable experiences (mostly not!) and system coherence failures.  

-- Dennis

PS: I see we have another DH in this module so I will use ORC as initials on messages at times.  I find that there is apparently no other "orcmid" on the entire planet that is on the Internet.  Amazing for a 6-character name. -- orcmid

[1] Van Horn, Earl C.  (1967) Three criteria for designing computing systems to facilitate debugging.  Proceedings of the first ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles.  J. Gosden and B. Randall (eds).  ACM Press (New York: 1967).  Also Comm. ACM 11, 5 (May 1968), 360-365.   I read this in the Comm. ACM version.  Interesting issue.  It is where Peter Denning published the working-set model and other interesting articles appeared.  It would be interesting to see how Van Horn's dicta can serve us in the context of distributed computing.

Kathleen Kelm,Embanet writes:
Dennis Hamilton writes:
Hi Dennis

Enough venting.  I'll surrender my soapbox.  I think there was just a message that I may have lost my connection.

--- Dennis

OK, I am off my soap box.  I really want to be in this course and not surviving FirstClass though. 

I can understand your frustration.  I have been working with KIT for over two years, and this is the very first time that I have encountered any problems of this magnititude.  I know, based on information both posted for the students as well as from our VP, that there is quite a lot of work being done behind the scenes to correct the problem.

Please try (although I can see why it's hard to!) to keep your frustration at the back and enjoy the course.  I promise you (and I have taught this module before) that it is quite an enjoyable one. :-)

KMK

-- orcmid operating on Compagno
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Dennis E. Hamilton | KIT eLearning student | University of Liverpool on-line M.Sc in IT 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430
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