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In what sense in this real-time? Hard or soft real-time? What guarantees does it provide?

It uses dnode which uses socket.io which uses WebSockets whenever possible and falls back on flash or xhr polling. Joint is pretty new and I provide no guarantees but I've found those libraries to be pretty dependable when it comes to telling me when someone disconnects and keeping the connection open (socket.io checks for a heartbeat).

Well that's not real time in any sense then is it?

"a non-real-time system is one that cannot guarantee a response time in any situation, even if a fast response is the usual result"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing

This complaint is getting a bit tiring. It's clear from the context that the author is talking about the real-time web, not real-time computing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_web

Do you have a better term to describe web-based systems that offer the appearance (to humans) of instant communication with the web server?

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