[comp.sources.d] UNIX clone with SOURCE CODE available now

dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) (01/11/87)

In article <5840001@hpvcla.HP.COM> ericr@hpvcla.HP.COM (Eric Ross) writes:
>
>After seeing this posting in about 10 different news groups, I am afraid
>that my flame threshold has been reached (and I am relatively 
>non-combustible).  

If your software worked, you would only have seen the cross-posted
article once. Usenet is designed so that multi-newsgroup articles
take up no extra space and no extra transmission time, and are shown
to each reader only once. If you are using news-reading software
which does not do this properly (I see you are at HP, so you are
likely using notes), blame the software, not the poster.

>1)  A item that is cross posted to this degree is usually over
>    posted unless there is some overwhelming announcement that
>    must be made(in my opinion Minix does not fill that category).

Opinions differ, of course.  I'm not so sure it was unreasonable.
Getting a complete v7 UNIX equivalent for US$79 sounds like a
pretty major event in the UNIX world.  And Andy Tanenbaum (of The
Netherlands, not to be confused with ima!trb) is a serious
researcher who has been around for a good number of years (I
remember his talk on Pascal at the 1979 UNIX Users' Group).

>3)  Minix is, in fact, probably of interest to a great number of 
>    people--these people usually read Unix software related groups
>    and one posting such as comp.sources.d would more than suffice
>    in spreading the word.

I'd suggest that determining the particular subset of technical
groups which UNIX people read is practically impossible.
comp.sources.d, your example, would not have reached everyone.
It's supposed to be for followup discussions from net.sources postings
(which, incidentally, was not the appropriate place for your flame).

Nuff said? Let's not all waste any more time on this (except to
the extent someone wants to fix notes to understand cross-postings,
if that indeed is the problem).

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
-- 
{ ihnp4!utzoo  seismo!mnetor  utai  watmath  decvax!utcsri  } !lsuc!dave

sxc8765@ritcv.UUCP (Sean Cunningham) (01/15/87)

>If your software worked, you would only have seen the cross-posted
>article once. Usenet is designed so that multi-newsgroup articles
>take up no extra space and no extra transmission time, and are shown
>to each reader only once. If you are using news-reading software
>which does not do this properly (I see you are at HP, so you are
>likely using notes), blame the software, not the poster.

This is not always true, I'm running under UNIX BSD4.3 and I see
multiple postings all the time.

Sean Cunningham

kvm@basser.UUCP (01/17/87)

In article <16@ritcv.UUCP> sxc8765@ritcv.UUCP writes:

>>If your software worked, you would only have seen the cross-posted
>>article once.  [...]
>
>This is not always true, I'm running under UNIX BSD4.3 and I see
>multiple postings all the time.
>
>Sean Cunningham

Ah, Sean.  What CAN I say?  Did ye read the original, laddie?
``If your software worked...''  And it's a BIG `if', too.  The
man's statement is true.  The fact that you see cross-posted
articles more than once simply means your software doesn't work.
I wasn't aware that 4.3BSD included special code in the kernel
that prevented execution of user images that had bugs in them.

	-Karlos

jc@cdx39.UUCP (02/04/87)

> >>If your software worked, you would only have seen the cross-posted
> >>article once.  [...]
> >
> >This is not always true, I'm running under UNIX BSD4.3 and I see
> >multiple postings all the time.
> >
> >Sean Cunningham
> 
> Ah, Sean.  What CAN I say?  Did ye read the original, laddie?
> ``If your software worked...''  And it's a BIG `if', too.  

Well, ours works, but I still see repeated articles.  Why?  Well,
when I investigated, I found that the articles weren't exact repeats.
They typically differed by one (blank) line, and sometimes one of
them has the signature repeated.  They also have different sequence
numbers, which is why my software treats them as different.

There are broken versions of postnews (I'd guess) around that send
out multiple versions of articles.  I've sent messages to this effect
to the usenet admins on some machines, but it takes a lot of time to
verify that I've got another case, and anyhow, I don't read all groups.

Now if someone would tell me why 2.11 readnews still has the bug that
causes it to repeat a subject line over and over and over......

-- 
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