Anton, et al -- Oooh! This has been fun :-) ...and then Anton Aylward said... % % On 04/21/2015 11:07 AM, David T-G wrote: % > % > To be fair, the common use of DropBox and other Cloud sync services is % > that you have a copy on your machine and the software keeps that in sync ... % > % > Now... Did I completely misunderstand, or are we simply talking about % > two different approaches? % % No but you've stated the problem: % % >> Edit on computer A, and the % >> changes show up on computer B in a few minutes (or when both have gone % >> online again). % % It won't take much juggling to have both A and B off-line after getting % a copy, update to A and update to B differently, then both go back % on-line. What to you think happens? True. Or ... It won't take much to have both online fairly regularly and up to date. How often do you really update the same file on two different computers when neither is near a network connection? I agree that it could happen, but it hasn't hit me yet, and my primary laptop is even unavailable for 12 hours a day on the office VPN while the tablet, the BBerry, the other laptop, and family computers are all visible to each other and Cloud services. % % I can see a number of scenarios but unless Dropbox is using some kind of % differential merge technology one set of updates is going to be lost. % % Suppose A goes back on-line first. % The sync means copy(A) -> Dropbox. % % Now what happens when B goes on-line? % One of two things depending on timestamps. % EITHER % copy(B)->Dropbox, pause, Dropbox->A overwriting the (earlier) copy(A) % OR % Dropbox -> B overwriting copy(B) Or DB notices and saves one as a "conflicted copy" for you to figure it out, just like many SCM packages. % % % Similarly, symmetrically if B goes on-line first. % % % if Dropbox tries to do a three-way diff-merge, then what? That would be cool, but I don't think the files that most folks use would take kindly to such play :-) % % % % >> But for those who have the possibility of working remotely, a sync % >> service (and one smart enough to detect and manage conflicts) is much % >> more capable. % % its a pretty classical problem :-( Agreed. And to the pointer to Google Docs on Drive, the reason is not because of Drive but because of Docs, which acts as an access broker for whoever is using it and maintains the single copy on the back end. If you like Google Docs, that is :-) % % % % -- % A: Yes. % > Q: Are you sure? % >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. % >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? Thank you for this, BTW. I grin every time I read it, which I don't usually bother to do from my own sig :-) HANN :-D -- David T-G See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/email/ See http://justpickone.org/davidtg/tofu.txt -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org