People here are advocating setting up servers to send tarred compressed
update info about documents on their web site, on demand. I think this is a
good idea, because it would save a lot of network bandwidth, and CPU time on
both ends of the connection.
However, this is under today's "operating parameters", where Internet
speed/cost, processor speed/cost, and disk space/cost are as they are now.
In the future, all of these will change. And no one knows by how much, nor
when.
Systems optimised for today's "operating parameters" will be inefficient
under tomorrow's, almost without a doubt. [See also the 640K limit in
MS-DOS, the lack of parking in any area developed up before the advent of
cars, the 2**32 maximum number of IP addresses, etc, etc]
Of course, if we waited for everything to stabilise, we'd never get anything
done. So let's keep on optimising-- it is a worthy pursuit. I just thought
I'd share this one observation, FWIW.
Dan Howard
Ottawa, Ontario
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