lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (12/02/83)
Since the ;login article mentioned was based on a talk I gave at Usenix in '82, I feel qualified to say the following. Don't try use that description! It is almost totally worthless and is extremely misleading and just plain wrong in both major and minor respects. I would very much appreciate it if copies of that old article NOT be further distributed, since I've spent enough time already trying to help people who tried to use the original article. I DID NOT WRITE THAT ARTICLE. IT WAS PUBLISHED FROM SOMEONE'S NOTES TAKEN DURING MY TALK, AND THOSE NOTES WERE NEVER VERIFIED FOR ACCURACY. More on this below... There are a number of reasons for the uselessness of the article. First of all, I was extremely rushed at the conference, trying to give a talk that really needed to be 2 hours long in less than 1/2 hour. As such, large amounts of data were omitted and a number of errors (from what I knew THEN) crept into the talk. Even worse, the notes are NOT an accurate representation of the talk -- I was never offered the chance to review them before publication. If I had been given that chance, I would have told them that they were an inaccurate record of my statements. Another important point is that I was pressured into giving that talk prematurely -- at the time I still had not completed my experiments and later learned that there were whole aspects to the protocol and protocol interactions which I had not yet discovered, and that part of my previous "understanding" was in error. The result was both errors and missing information of great importance. Yet another point is that the UUCP protocols and file formats are undergoing major changes at the moment that have invalidated much of what I knew at the time of talk. Of course, thanks to the poor notes that they published, even those points I did know then were not accurately recorded. The bottom line is that I NOW have the framework for a real, accurate, and complete protocol document already worked out, but I'm waiting for the current round of changes to settle down before finishing it up. Once that's done, I'll be in a position to release a doc that I know will be accurate and that won't cause people to go crazy from being led astray by erroneous information. It's a large task (especially given the changing environment and lack of comformity in various areas) but it is high on my list. I hope to be able to discuss this situation at the Washington conference. So please, do yourself a favor -- don't use that ;login article for anything other than papering bird cages. Instead, let me get something accurate and complete out that will be useful. Thanks much. --Lauren--