) (05/17/91)
jpp@specialix.co.uk (John Pettitt) writes: > > Both your upstream feed (ibmpcug) and their upstream feed (specialix.co.uk) > run CNEWS - if you think that it must go then go find a bnews feed. ...and get my articles thrown away by machines in the US? Such as, say, UUNET? (Are they running the 'upgraded' C News yet?) > Some people - give them some free software that has taken a lot of man > hours to write and is a major performance improvment over the prior > version and all they do is bitch about it. The old C News delivered all the articles it could. The new one throws lots away unnecessarily. In what way is that a "performance improvement"? mathew
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/18/91)
In article <Tii426w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >The old C News delivered all the articles it could. The new one throws lots >away unnecessarily. In what way is that a "performance improvement"? As I said before: fewer screams from your victims. The old C News did indeed deliver all the articles it could, including a good many that caused cardiac arrest or twitching convulsions in other news systems. After a certain amount of jumping up and down by the proprietors of such systems -- including, as I recall, UUNET -- we somewhat reluctantly decided that being good citizens of the network required tightening up standards conformance somewhat. (There are limits to how far we can be moved by those screams. In particular, if it's a legal RFC1036 article causing the problems, our attitude tends to be "gee, that's too bad, why don't you fix your software?".) -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) (05/18/91)
In article <Tii426w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >jpp@specialix.co.uk (John Pettitt) writes: >> Some people - give them some free software that has taken a lot of man >> hours to write and is a major performance improvment over the prior >> version and all they do is bitch about it. > >The old C News delivered all the articles it could. The new one throws lots >away unnecessarily. In what way is that a "performance improvement"? Well, if you must ask stupid questions.....you get....well you know. It doesn't waste the rest of the net's time trying to deal with malformed articles. Saves lots of time IMO. Big performance improvement ;-). --Bill
) (05/20/91)
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > In article <Tii426w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) w > >The old C News delivered all the articles it could. The new one throws lots > >away unnecessarily. In what way is that a "performance improvement"? > > As I said before: fewer screams from your victims. The old C News did > indeed deliver all the articles it could, including a good many that > caused cardiac arrest or twitching convulsions in other news systems. If a system falls over because of errors in its input, then that system should be fixed. C News should not Nanny it. > After a certain amount of jumping up and down by the proprietors of > such systems -- including, as I recall, UUNET -- we somewhat reluctantly > decided that being good citizens of the network required tightening up > standards conformance somewhat. Right. It is entirely correct that *C News* should allow posting only of conformant articles. It is *not* correct to make it throw away non-conforming articles posted from other systems, especially if it does not tell them about it. > (There are limits to how far we can be > moved by those screams. In particular, if it's a legal RFC1036 article > causing the problems, our attitude tends to be "gee, that's too bad, > why don't you fix your software?".) I'll say it again. If *any* program falls over unsafely as a result of *any* sort of bad input, then that program is *faulty* and should be fixed. Yes, even if you're doing something mindbogglingly stupid like piping binary bitmap files into relaynews, it should still fail gracefully. If the input to relaynews is *really* unparseable (lacking *essential* information and containing *uncorrectable* errors) then it is reasonable to drop the input. The sorts of errors C News drops articles for are neither uncorrectable, nor are they errors which cause the article to lack essential information. mathew
ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) (05/21/91)
It's a good thing Cnews isn't for sale. -- Ben Cox ben@wri.com
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (05/21/91)
mathew@mantis.co.uk wrote: >If a system falls over because of errors in its input, then that system >should be fixed. Right ... but CNews doesn't have that problem. It does *exactly* what the code intends it to do. You can throw anything at it, and it will react accordingly, and not "blow up". It dropping articles that have illegal headers is *NOT* a case of the system "falling over"; rather it's policing exactly what it's intended to. >Right. It is entirely correct that *C News* should allow posting only of >conformant articles. It is *not* correct to make it throw away non-conforming >articles posted from other systems, especially if it does not tell them about >it. > [...] >I'll say it again. If *any* program falls over unsafely as a result of *any* >sort of bad input, then that program is *faulty* and should be fixed. But if a good number of those articles get dropped, the sysadmin at the receiving site will notice and (hopefully) tell the other site of the problem. >If the input to relaynews is *really* unparseable (lacking *essential* >information and containing *uncorrectable* errors) then it is reasonable to >drop the input. The sorts of errors C News drops articles for are neither >uncorrectable, nor are they errors which cause the article to lack essential >information. They are correctable only when the system can attempt to make an 'educated' guess -- but what if it's wrong? To use that argument is to say that sending mail to foo!bar.com is LEGAL under RFC822 because sendmail should be "intelligent" enough to replace the ! with a @, since the local site's not connected to a system called foo, and therefore it's a typo. Right? Wrong. -- Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski) (05/21/91)
In article <gi69231w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >If the input to relaynews is *really* unparseable (lacking *essential* >information and containing *uncorrectable* errors) then it is reasonable to >drop the input. The sorts of errors C News drops articles for are neither >uncorrectable, nor are they errors which cause the article to lack essential >information. Well, hell then, let's just throw out all protocol specs and allow things which are "close enough." This is a rather rash statement, but when there is a published document stating how things _should_ be, why should that software then have to correct information not in that format to conform to the published one? Yes, it's great for compatibility purposes, but there's a certain point when you have to stop being backwards compatible and take the leap forwards. It kind of strikes me as the whole war that some Mac developers have waged in the past. Yes, they'll do really nifty things on the Mac but they'll do things that _Inside Macintosh_ told them not to do, and when a new System comes out and their app breaks, they're surprised. The RFC's been around for a few years; software should have been changed to follow it by now. As far as mailing the originator in case of an article with a bad header, try this experiment: Send out a sendsys message. Note the number of replies you get. Now multiply this by the number of news articles which may get sent in a given day before you fix your software. Do you have that kind of mail spool space? I know my system doesn't... -- | William Kucharski, Solbourne Computer, Inc. | Opinions expressed above | Internet: kucharsk@Solbourne.COM | are MINE alone, not those | uucp: ...!{boulder,sun,uunet}!stan!kucharsk | of Solbourne... | Snail Mail: 1900 Pike Road, Longmont, CO 80501 | "It's Night 9 With D2 Dave!"
randy@m2xenix.psg.com (Randy Bush) (05/21/91)
ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: > It's a good thing Cnews isn't for sale. Heck. I'm willing to donate $25 bucks just because I appreciate folk trying to constructively achieve and propagate standards conformance. Be liberal in what you accept sounds nice, but in a hetrogenous world it is the path to chaos. -- randy@psg.com ..!uunet!m2xenix!randy
) (05/21/91)
kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski) writes: > Well, hell then, let's just throw out all protocol specs and allow things whi > are "close enough." This is a rather rash statement, but when there is a > published document stating how things _should_ be, why should that software > then have to correct information not in that format to conform to the publish > one? Because errors happen. People make mistakes. People edit news headers. Therefore there will always be news headers which contain errors. Punishing people for making errors is not productive. > It kind of strikes me as the whole war that some Mac developers have waged in > the past. Yes, they'll do really nifty things on the Mac but they'll do thin > that _Inside Macintosh_ told them not to do, and when a new System comes out > and their app breaks, they're surprised. But at least they get told about it. I'm not asking to be allowed to continue sending out bad headers. I'm asking to be told when I do send out bad headers, so that I can fix the problem (if it is a problem). I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the headers which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there is not a mistake. > The RFC's been around for a few > years; software should have been changed to follow it by now. Why? Software doesn't change by magic. You have to tell people when they're doing something wrong. They might not know. For all I know, the fact that my news program missed the "," out of the date might have been a typo by the author. mathew
) (05/21/91)
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes: > mathew@mantis.co.uk wrote: > >If a system falls over because of errors in its input, then that system > >should be fixed. > > Right ... but CNews doesn't have that problem. It does *exactly* what > the code intends it to do. You can throw anything at it, and it will > react accordingly, and not "blow up". I know that. However, one of the justifications given for C News's antisocial behaviour is that there are other programs which "blow up" on bad input. I am saying that those other programs should be fixed; C News should not be made to try and eliminate bad headers in order to nanny the faulty programs. > But if a good number of those articles get dropped, the sysadmin at > the receiving site will notice and (hopefully) tell the other site of > the problem. ^^^^^^^^^ "Hopefully" isn't good enough. Nobody told me for weeks, if not months. > > The sorts of errors C News drops articles for are neither > >uncorrectable, nor are they errors which cause the article to lack essential > >information. > > They are correctable only when the system can attempt to make an > 'educated' guess -- but what if it's wrong? So what if a Date: header is wrong by up to a few days? > To use that argument is to say that sending mail to foo!bar.com is > LEGAL under RFC822 because sendmail should be "intelligent" enough to > replace the ! with a @, since the local site's not connected to a > system called foo, and therefore it's a typo. Right? Wrong. In that case, I would say that sendmail should tell the user about his mistake. It does, does it not? Whereas C News doesn't. Which is wrong. mathew
mrm@sceard.Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy) (05/21/91)
In article <gi69231w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: [...] > >I'll say it again. If *any* program falls over unsafely as a result of *any* >sort of bad input, then that program is *faulty* and should be fixed. Were C News to fail by sending a message to the poster of a non-compliant article, that would be an unsafe failure. Consider the case in which the posting site is connected to a C News site. One site, one message, peachy. If the offending site is connected to a site that doesn't force compliance and that site to a C News site, one message, peachy. The problem arises in a multiply connected net of mixed force-compliance and non-force-compliance sites using a flood algorithm for news propagation, and more than one posting from the non-compliant site. (Which is what we have). Many messages, big burden on sites adjacent to offending site, not so peachy. What C News does is called "The Lesser of Two Evils." BTW, CNEWS MUST DIE!, have you gotten the hint yet that your news software might be putting out ever so slightly idiosyncratic format headers? If I were burdened with the messages complaining about your news non-compliance, I'd be irritated and cut you off. Oh, nuts, I probably wouldn't. I'd probably call on the phone and ask what I could do to help. -- Mike Murphy mrm@Sceard.COM ucsd!sceard!mrm +1 619 598 5874
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/21/91)
In article <gi69231w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >If a system falls over because of errors in its input, then that system >should be fixed. C News should not Nanny it. On the whole, we agree; it is not our job to save people from the flaws of their broken software. However, there is such a thing as being a responsible citizen even when it is not compulsory, especially bearing in mind that many people on the net are not in a position to fix their own software and may have trouble getting fixes out of the authors. Articles that do not conform to the relevant standards have been living on borrowed time; there has never been any guarantee that they would be relayed reliably. We regret the pain being caused by the transition to closer conformance, but still think it was a reasonable thing to do. >If the input to relaynews is *really* unparseable (lacking *essential* >information and containing *uncorrectable* errors... Once and for all: we have seen too much grief caused by misguided attempts to "correct" mistakes in headers to ever engage in this practice ourselves. The possibilities for nasty side effects are simply too great. We aren't going to do it. The subject is closed. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
cathyf@lost.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston) (05/22/91)
In article <ben.674771706@dragonfly.wri.com> ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >It's a good thing Cnews isn't for sale. Yup, because then we'd have to pay for it - and we _would_ pay if I had anything to say about it. Cathy -- Cathy Foulston + cathyf@rice.edu + Rice University, Network & Systems Support
ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) (05/22/91)
ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >It's a good thing Cnews isn't for sale. cathyf@lost.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston) writes: >Yup, because then we'd have to pay for it - and we _would_ pay if I had >anything to say about it. Bet you wouldn't pay for it if all your questions were answered like this: From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Message-ID: <1991May18.211109.20401@zoo.toronto.edu> >If you >want this to be changed, propose a workable, fully thought out alternative >without serious side effects. (Hint: you're going to have to put some >serious effort into this, because all the obvious schemes occurred to us >long ago. You needn't bother repeating them, and I'm not going to bother >telling you yet again what's wrong with them.) From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Message-ID: <1991May16.180014.4791@zoo.toronto.edu> >It's been answered at least twice in the last week, for heaven's sake... From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Message-ID: <1991May19.023101.29200@zoo.toronto.edu> >Please read news(5) instead of trying to wing it. This does not display a very good attitude on the part of the authors of cnews. If you're sick of answering dumb questions, Henry, just hit "U". If you write software and pretend to support it (and your presence in this newsgroup indicates that you are at least *pretending* to support it), you're gonna have to put up with stupid questions, and answer them either with a smile on your face or not at all. -- Ben Cox ben@wri.com
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (05/22/91)
In article <ben.674851460@dragonfly.wri.com> ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >It's a good thing Cnews isn't for sale. cathyf@lost.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston) writes: >Yup, because then we'd have to pay for it - and we _would_ pay if I had >anything to say about it. Bet you wouldn't pay for it if all your questions were answered like this: I'm sure that if Wolfram Research, Inc. (makers of Mathematica by the way) were to engage in a support contract with some reasonable company providing support for C News, they would get answers which would be to their liking. The cost for it would be right up there with (say) a support contract for Mathematica, $xxx or $xxxx/year, but it would get you polite, reasoned answers. Perhaps not from the authors of the software, of course, but from some competent and knowlegable people. The C News folks might even be able to put out nice full-color glossy books to go along with it... --Ed
scs@iti.org (Steve Simmons) (05/22/91)
ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >If you write software and pretend to support it (and your presence in this >newsgroup indicates that you are at least *pretending* to support it), >you're gonna have to put up with stupid questions, and answer them either >with a smile on your face or not at all. Easily disproved by showing counterexamples. See news.software.b. -- "SPAM is a registered trademark of a pork product packed only by Geo. A Hormel & Co. Corp." -- Sun Technical Bulletin, March 1991, pg ii
karl.kleinpaste@osc.edu (05/22/91)
ben@wri.com writes:
you're gonna have to put up with stupid questions
Why?ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) (05/22/91)
In <EMV.91May21164554@crane.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >I'm sure that if Wolfram Research, Inc. (makers of Mathematica by the >way) were to engage in a support contract with some reasonable company >providing support for C News, they would get answers which would be to >their liking. The cost for it would be right up there with (say) a >support contract for Mathematica, $xxx or $xxxx/year, but it would get >you polite, reasoned answers. Perhaps not from the authors of the >software, of course, but from some competent and knowlegable people. >The C News folks might even be able to put out nice full-color glossy >books to go along with it... I'm sure that was an attempt at a "cheap shot", but as a matter of fact, you demonstrate my point. Since we _do_ sell our software, we _do_ provide support for it -- and you _do_ get polite, reasoned answers. You should know better than to take my opinions as those of my employer. -- Ben Cox ben@wri.com
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (05/22/91)
In article <1991May21.163432.9609@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >Once and for all: we have seen too much grief caused by misguided attempts >to "correct" mistakes in headers to ever engage in this practice ourselves. >The possibilities for nasty side effects are simply too great. We aren't >going to do it. The subject is closed. Case in point: the way B-news handles postings to moderated groups where the machine doesn't have the newsgroup moderated: the article will traverse news as normal, until it hits sites that do, and they automatically mail a copy to the moderator. More than one moderator has gotten swamped by hundreds (if not thousands) of copies of an article. Mailing back error messages about bad headers to the originator would be infinitely worse. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Domain: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: ...!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis; Ferret Mailing List: ferret-request@eci386; Psroff (not Adobe Transcript) enquiries: psroff-request@eci386 or Canada 416-832-0541. Psroff 3.0 in c.s.u soon!
geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) (05/22/91)
Ben Cox: >This does not display a very good attitude on the part of the authors of >cnews. If you're sick of answering dumb questions, Henry, just hit "U". > >If you write software and pretend to support it (and your presence in this >newsgroup indicates that you are at least *pretending* to support it), >you're gonna have to put up with stupid questions, and answer them either >with a smile on your face or not at all. What twaddle! We don't have to do any such thing. Where do you get these strange ideas? This ridiculous attitude is why I post answers much less often than Henry does: people should not get the idea that I am ``supporting'' C News in this newsgroup. I occasionally answer a question about software that I wrote, but usually only when the answer isn't in our documention yet. I think Henry is far too generous with his time in posting answers to almost every bleeding question in this newsgroup. I've been known to post answers consisting of "See Page XXX in Managing UUCP & Usenet by O'Reilly and Associates" and I think that's the right answer most of the time. There are very few questions in this group that couldn't be answered by reading the documentation for a few minutes. We're programmers, not front-line support people, and we should not be wasting our time answering questions from ingrates who refuse to read the documentation. Even UUNET, who are in the business of supporting people who may know nothing about news, insists that people read Managing UUCP & Usenet *before* they call with questions. -- Geoff Collyer world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff
randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) (05/22/91)
In article <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that >the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the headers >which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there is >not a mistake. > I take it you don't program. When you write software, or use other's software to post your perls to a world wide audience, you had BETTER make sure there is not a mistake. Specially when you are messing with something like headers. Or do you blame the auto manufacture when his car dies because you played around with the F.I. system? -- Randy Suess randy@chinet.chi.il.us
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (05/22/91)
mathew@mantis.co.uk wrote: >> To use that argument is to say that sending mail to foo!bar.com is >> LEGAL under RFC822 because sendmail should be "intelligent" enough to >> replace the ! with a @, since the local site's not connected to a >> system called foo, and therefore it's a typo. Right? Wrong. > >In that case, I would say that sendmail should tell the user about his >mistake. It does, does it not? And, as Eliot Lear discovered recently, if the mistake happens on a large scale, it can completely overwhelm a system. Imagine this: three UUCP sites, hub, midwife, and node. The user at node has broken software, and passes up bogus headers; midwife hasn't updated in a while, so she just passes it right along to the hub. The hub *has* updated its software, and, if implementing your idea, would send back a mail message for any articles coming from midwife (and subsequently node) that had bad headers. Fine if node only sends through a few articles per hour, say. But then comes along a fourth system, unixbox. Unixbox has a few hundred users (say a small company), and gets a Telebit feed from node. The link now looks like: hub <-> midwife <-> node <-> unixbox Say one hundred of those users post articles in an hour; they get batched up. (The people at this company don't do much work.) Since unixbox polls node once an hour, it sends them all on the next call. The articles work their way up to hub, where it screams and spits back one mail message for EACH article. Assuming that there aren't other paths to unixbox (or aren't any cheaper paths, at least), that mail all goes right back down the pipe through midwife and node to unixbox. Why should midwife and node have to deal with spooling and sending 100 mail messages? And spooling a new message for each and every article is unfair overhead on hub, which probably has a few other feeds going at the same time. What if each user posted more than one article, all of which were bad? Anyway, the point is that there *does* need to be a better way than just dropping them on the floor---but user notification probably wouldn't be the best way. Brendan -- Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (05/22/91)
geoff@world.std.com wrote: >I think Henry is far too generous with his time in posting answers to >almost every bleeding question in this newsgroup. I've been known to >post answers consisting of "See Page XXX in Managing UUCP & Usenet by >O'Reilly and Associates" and I think that's the right answer most of the >time. There are very few questions in this group that couldn't be >answered by reading the documentation for a few minutes. Hmm, I wonder...has Nutshell considered adding a chapter on building CNews? -- Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/22/91)
In article <4!Y+P8.@cs.widener.edu> brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes: >>...answers consisting of "See Page XXX in Managing UUCP & Usenet by >>O'Reilly and Associates" ... > > Hmm, I wonder...has Nutshell considered adding a chapter on building > CNews? The current edition in fact does include modest coverage of C News, which is one reason why we mention it in our bibliography. It's not the answer to everyone's prayers, yet, but it is useful. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) (05/23/91)
From: brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe)
Date: 22 May 91 13:35:42 GMT
Hmm, I wonder... has Nutshell considered adding a chapter on building
CNews?
It's already there in the current edition. The next edition, which
should see print in the fall, will cover NNTP as well.
AMBAR
ambar@ora.com uunet!ora!ambar
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks
90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140; 617-354-5800
Book Orders => 632 Petaluma Ave, Sebastopol, CA 95472
800-DEV-NUTS (that's 800-338-6887) FAX 707-829-0104jim@crom2.uucp (James P. H. Fuller) (05/23/91)
In <4!Y+P8.@cs.widener.edu> brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes: > Hmm, I wonder...has Nutshell considered adding a chapter on building > CNews? _Managing UUCP and Usenet_ already has a long and good one. And thank heavens! When I first tried to install C news I had been running Unix for precisely nine days, with no previous experience on anything but DOS (oh yeah, and CP/M, if you count that.) With the help of _Managing_ and the outrageously helpful C news install script I got it in on the first try and there have been no, zero, 0, problems since then. She plug right in 'n' play. LARGE PUBLIC THANK-YOU to Messieurs Spencer & Collyer. Smaller but heart- felt thank-you to O'Reilly and Todino of Nutshell. crom2 Athens GA Public Access Unix | i486 AT, 16mb RAM, 600mb online Molecular Biology | AT&T Unix System V release 3.2 Population Biology | Tbit PEP 19200bps V.32 V.42/V.42bis Ecological Modeling | admin: James P. H. Fuller Bionet/Usenet/cnews/nn | {jim,root}%crom2@nstar.rn.com
dan@kfw.COM (Dan Mick) (05/23/91)
In article <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >Punishing people for making errors is not productive. Oh, pig dung. Punishing people for making errors is the only way to get them to stop. >You have to tell people when they're >doing something wrong. They might not know. But you're not allowed to "punish" them. Oh, I see. Let's just get rid of the correctional institutions, and we won't even be upset with people who kill our families...we'll just tell them they're wrong, because they might not know. You, sir, are beyond hope.
) (05/23/91)
randy@chinet.chi.il.us (Randy Suess) writes: > In article <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) > > I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that > >the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the header > >which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there > >not a mistake. > > I take it you don't program. Ha! One of the programs I wrote some months ago is an Expire program, currently used by several Waffle sites. One of the things it has to do is parse dates in Expires: fields. Guess what it does if it can't parse the date? (I'll give you a clue: it doesn't throw the article away, like C News does.) > When you write software, or use > other's software to post your perls to a world wide audience, > you had BETTER make sure there is not a mistake. Really? How many formally correct news software packages do you know of? > Or do you blame > the auto manufacture when his car dies because you played around > with the F.I. system? Do you discard the entire car when one of the tires is bald? In fact, do owners of motorways inspect your car before letting you use their road, and destroy your car entirely if the wing mirror is badly adjusted? mathew
stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) (05/23/91)
In article <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski) writes: > >People make mistakes. People edit news headers. Therefore there will always >be news headers which contain errors. I think we're mostly talking about software that reliably and consistantly generates bad headers, not people editing headers and putting in dates like 91/2/5. >> It kind of strikes me as the whole war that some Mac developers have waged in >> the past. Yes, they'll do really nifty things on the Mac but they'll do thin >> that _Inside Macintosh_ told them not to do, and when a new System comes out >> and their app breaks, they're surprised. > >But at least they get told about it. > >I'm not asking to be allowed to continue sending out bad headers. I'm asking >to be told when I do send out bad headers, so that I can fix the problem (if >it is a problem). I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that >the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the headers >which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there is >not a mistake. Okay, everyone, let's all send Matthew ten mail messages each, telling him that his headers are wrong. That should be good to fill his mail partition and bring the trans-atlantic and other network links to a reasonable semblance of a standstill. Matthew, why don't you see that there's no practical way for software to warn the source of bad headers that their software is messed up? If software corrects correctable errors, when are the errors ever going to stop being generated? -- Mike Pelletier | "Wind & waves are breakdowns in the commitment of The University of Michigan | getting from here to there, but they are the con- College of Engineering | ditions for sailing. Not something to eliminate, Student/Systems Admin | but something to dance with."
dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk (Matthew Farwell) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May23.144018.1986@engin.umich.edu> stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes: >Okay, everyone, let's all send Matthew ten mail messages each, telling him ^^^^^^^ >that his headers are wrong. That should be good to fill his mail partition >and bring the trans-atlantic and other network links to a reasonable semblance >of a standstill. Matthew, why don't you see that there's no practical way ^^^^^^^ >for software to warn the source of bad headers that their software is messed >up? If software corrects correctable errors, when are the errors ever going >to stop being generated? Whoa. Hang on. There is confusion here. I am Matthew, and mathew@mantis.co.uk is just that - 'mathew'. Please get the spelling right, or use email addresses as qualifiers. Dylan. -- Matthew J Farwell: dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk || ...!uunet!ukc!ibmpcug!dylan You can't kill me, I'm a genius!!!!
cudep@warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson) (05/24/91)
In article <ben.674851460@dragonfly.wri.com> ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >>It's been answered at least twice in the last week, for heaven's sake... >>Please read news(5) instead of trying to wing it. > >This does not display a very good attitude on the part of the authors of >cnews. If you're sick of answering dumb questions, Henry, just hit "U". Mebbe it depends on how nicely you ask, Ben? Or on whether Henry and Geoff are getting "dollars, homeboy" to take your abuse. >If you write software and pretend to support it (and your presence in this >newsgroup indicates that you are at least *pretending* to support it), >you're gonna have to put up with stupid questions, and answer them either >with a smile on your face or not at all. Mebbe when it gets him a regular salary. Till then you get what you deserve - you get told to RTFM or get a good answer. I've always had useful and timely responses from Henry. Cheers, -- \/ato /'\ /`\ Ian Dickinson TED KALDIS FOR PRESIDENT! /^^^\/^^^\ vato@warwick.ac.uk /TWIN/TEATS\ @c=GB@o=University of Warwick@ou=Computing Services@cn=Ian Dickinson / \
ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) (05/24/91)
stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes: > Okay, everyone, let's all send Matthew ten mail messages each, telling him > that his headers are wrong. (Note: He calls himself "mathew" with one T, and a lower case 'm'. Matthew with two T's runs his mailfeed site) I hope this was a sarcastic comment. To anyone considering doing this, please remember that his mailfeed picks up his mail from the UK backbone on a LD call at UK rates. The UK backbone can often fail to achieve 400 characters per second on its trailblazer, because the CPU is rather overloaded, although an upgrade is, I believe, promised. Flooding expensive mail links is not friendly to the admins in the middle. Flooding the UK mail backbone will damage mail reliability to all non-academic UK sites (like mine!). So, please please please don't mail him hate mail that's intended to fill his mailbox. It'll fill my newsfeed's newsspool as well, and severely hit their telephone bill! It is obvious that "mathew" is not going to switch from his self-centred attitude, and that flaming his thick hide will have no effect. His reason for complaining is that the C News (good) behaviour stops him from being having his articles read (read: getting attention). Therefore, the correct response would be to put him into your kill file and deny him the attention he really wants, no? -- Ronald Khoo <ronald@robobar.co.uk> +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)