Comments on: Advice for Planning a Bar Camp

By: Fred Stutzman

Fred Stutzman — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:35:00 +0000

Bob – we need routers. Sorry for the confusion :)

By: Bob Simons

Bob Simons — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:06:00 +0000

Do you want access points like Linksys WAP54Gs and D-Link DWL-2000s? The info seems to say “router” and WAP interchangably. I’ve got many WAPs and but only two routers I could bring.

By: Fred Stutzman

Fred Stutzman — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 02:19:00 +0000

Please see http://rc3.org/2006/06/preventing_lost.php.

Snip: "I was trying to add my name to the list of attendees on the BarCampRDU Web site yesterday, and I found that regardless of the time of day, I couldn't get in, because the wiki software that is used to manage the site grants an exclusive lock to the person editing the page for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the lock remains but someone else can steal it.

Using exclusive locks to avoid the lost update problem is painful, especially in Web applications, because users can easily navigate away from a page without providing any kind of signal to the Web application that the lock should be released. For example, if I go to the BarCampRDU page, click on edit, and close my browser window, I'll keep my exclusive lock on the page for 15 minutes even though I'm not really editing it any more. This may seem like irresponsible behavior, but most people don't expect clicking on a link to give them an exclusive lock on a resource. That's not the Web way.

Optimistic concurrency control is the way to go in Web applications. It's used in Mediawiki (as well as many other applications), and support for it is built into lots of persistence frameworks, including ActiveRecord and Hibernate."

By: dew

dew — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 02:03:00 +0000

Hi! I’m sad to hear you found the locking mechanism difficult / unhelpful for PBwiki. We’d very much like to hear your two cents on a better mechanism that does not involve the possibility of users having to manually merge. Email me at david/a.t/pbwiki.com.

By: BrianR

BrianR — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:05:00 +0000

Great job on these notes Fred! Very important to share this info with people. I blogged it here.

By: Fred Stutzman

Fred Stutzman — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:37:00 +0000

James – No problem. Had a lot of fun planning BarCampRDU – a great experience. Man, as for Vancouver, I was there for all of 42 hours and I spent most of that in a hotel. I can’t tell you how bummed I was I didn’t get to better explore the city. JCDL 2007 is going to be held in Vancouver, and if I can scare up funds, I am definitely going to attend – and spend a good amount of time exploring the city.

By: James

James — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:14:00 +0000

Hey Fred, thanks for the great, informative post. I’m part of the rag-tag group organizing BarCamp Vancouver and one of my collaborators sent me the link. Did you enjoy Vancouver when you were here in the spring?