Mandel@his-phoenix-multics.arpa (07/13/88)
AN OPEN LETTER TO DAN RUBESH
Dear Dan,
By my count, "Do You Need The Ultimate Text Editor?" has appeared
an even dozen times in my mail since July 1. Are you trying to make
some kind of point, Dan, or to mess things up, or clog the channels, or
waste resources, or do you just have a sick mailer? For your sake, I
hope it's the last, because otherwise it's you that's sick. I don't
even know how to begin to estimate the waste in resources all over
NetLand caused by twelve iterations of your 345-line (in my mailbox)
message.
I could go on like this at some length, but I've made my point.
-- Mark Mandel
* My employer is not responsible for anything I say, do, think, or eat.SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (07/15/88)
> By my count, "Do You Need The Ultimate Text Editor?" has appeared >an even dozen times in my mail since July 1. I (we) sympathize, but I don't believe it's Dan's fault (he's probably REAL puzzled by the flame). That message appeared EXACTLY ONCE (well, maybe twice - but it was the SAME message -- I mean the identical message ID number, not a reposting) on the BITNET distribution which means it went through brl.arpa ONLY ONE time. What's going on here are some communications timing problems on arpanet (also at the gateways between the Internet and other nets - hence the problem could be occuring between crash.cts.com and uiuc.edu or trout.nosc.mil which are Internet mailforwarders which transfers mail between <nodes>.cts.COM and the Internet. The usual effect is mail is sent across a gateway but either a hardware or software glitch prevents the sending station from getting a final ACK (acknowledge) from the other end (we've seen this both ways across gates). The receiving end "THINKS" it's acknowledged and the sending end "THINKS" the message was lost -- so it gets sent again. As you might imagine, the problem is far more likey to occur if the message is long than if the message is short. Chris and I have received LOTS of bounce messages from all over arpa saying APPLE2-L mail "hasn't been delivered for 3 days because of inability to connect to host <u_name_it>.ARPA." I'd guess you have been the victim of an unfortunate series of mail transfer glitches (possibly even between your node and the next one over whether Dan's mail HAS or HAS not been delivered). Take a REAL CLOSE look at the headers (and check with your postmaster). You can usually identify the node responsible for the duplication(s) by checking the times received by each node in the header (when the times start to differ, you've found the culprit). IF (biggest word in the English language) Congress doesn't cut the budgets, an upgrade, currently under way, is supposed to "solve" the problem. Murph Sewall Sewall@UCONNVM.BITNET Business School sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu [INTERNET] U of Connecticut {rutgers psuvax1 ucbvax & in Europe - mcvax} !UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL [UUCP] -+- My employer isn't responsible for my mistakes AND vice-versa! (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited) "It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington." - Adm Grace Hopper