posts turning out late in my inbox?

HI Ivan
cc public list

Just checking the dynamics of this mailing list

william posted this message on june 20, 3.41 am , which si 12 hours ago
Gavin replied 8 hours ago
but I received it only 2 hours ago in my inbox

could you please let me know what kind of email group settings could prevent
this (long) gaps
in the communication? are there any tricks that Iwe should know of?
thanks

Paola

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William Waites <ww@groovy.net>
Date: Jun 20, 2007 3:41 AM
Subject: Re: automagic notifications and coordination...
To: Gavin Treadgold <gt@kestrel.co.nz>
Cc: W3C Disaster Management Ontology List <
public-disaster-management-ont@w3.org>


On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 11:09:33PM +1200, Gavin Treadgold wrote:
>
> E.g. within the plan may be a list of people that need to be notified
> if a certain event occurs. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the simple act
> of editing the plan dynamically modified the actual group within the
> messaging module as soon as the change is submitted (and approved if
> required). And a link is created automatically next to the list in
> the plan that takes the user directly to the form to send out an
> alert using the messaging module.

Nifty indeed, however in practical scenarios it is important to address
infrastructure that would normally be used for this sort of thing that
may not be available.

As a case in point, in Southern Mississippi and Louisiana, in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina, it was a good month and a half or two months
before the cellular networks were functioning with any semblance of
normalcy and even then only in some areas. Notifications by SMS or
telephone call would have been impossible. All communications in the
region for the initial period coordinated with the assistance of the
Amateur Radio Service (excepting perhaps the US Navy and National Guard
who have their own UHF/VHF facilities). I believe that, at the
beginning at least, it was not well known by the various authorities
that the Amateur Radio Service *exists* to provide communications
support in emergency scenarios where the normal infrastructure is
non-existant or destroyed.

Simply a caution about depending too much upon infrastructure that may
disappear the moment it is needed...

Another anectode from that time concerns the FEMA web site that was
intended to allow survivours to claim their benefit disbursement from
the Federal Government (around $2k IIRC). Putting aside the red tape
associated with, "I have no ID, it was all washed away", there was a
very serious problem: the web site was constructed using proprietary
technology (in this case Microsoft's Active-X extensions). Why does this
matter? Well the dozens or hundreds of donated computers which many
volunteers attempted to set up for the survivours to use were useless
for this purpose because (1) the web site did not work with Linux and
(2) most of the computers were too old to run anything recent enough to
support the extensions required by FEMA's web site. This is one of the
clearest examples that I know of about proprietary and encumbered software
contributing directly to the misery and despair of very many people.

Cheers,
-w





-- 



Paola Di Maio *****
School of Information Technology
Mae Fah Luang University
Chiang Rai - Thailand
*********************************************