Autzoo.1101
gripes
utzoo!henry
Sat Nov  7 18:30:53 1981
backup messages...
When setting up the backup messages I thought for some time about
which messages should and should not cut through whatever a user
was doing.  It is necessary to balance (a) the undesirability of
messing up a user's current activity versus (b) the undesirability
of the final get-the-hell-off message arriving with no other
advance warning.  As it now stands, the 15-minute warning is not
seen if there is a format in progress but the 5-minute warning is;
this seemed to me to be the best compromise.  I am open to further
suggestions, but I am unwilling to adopt an approach that ignores
the existence of problem (b).  It is necessary to tell users about
the impending shutdown at some point, so it seems to me that curing
problem (a) completely is fundamentally impossible.