New answers tagged travel
1
Two Generals Problem
To more directly answer your question, in technological history, this is a form of Two Generals Problem, which not only factors in latency but the risk of losing transmissions (highly likely over the dangerous vastness of space) when sending data between two places with a risk of data loss/delay inbetween.
From a technical standpoint, ...
36
Quite simply, they did not guarantee atomicity or synchronicity, they guaranteed eventual consistency.
The general principle is simple: it doesn't matter when the money actually gets moved, provided that it's done in a 'reasonable' amount of time and is reserved for the specified transaction.
The way you achieve this is very simple too. For this to work, you ...
41
Historically, the solution to this was the letter of credit, circular note, traveller's cheque, or similar. Basically, it was an attestation that the bearer of the document had deposited a certain amount of money with the issuing institution. No attempt was made at "atomicity", rather, the goal was "eventual correctness", where the ...
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