jwh@wgate.UUCP (Joe Hughes) (10/10/90)
Is there a feature/bug in inews that limits the number of included lines? When I tried to post the following article using postnews: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In article <1990Oct8.221503.24219@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, hofbauer@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) writes: > Just picked up the Oct. 15 issue of BusinessWeek magazine which has > a cover story on Apple Computer. They say the following about the > new Macs: > > Mac Classic: 68000 > 1 meg., 1 floppy $999 > 2 meg., floppy > and hard disk $1499 available October 15 > > Mac LC: 68020 > 2 meg., floppy, > hard disk + color monitor $3098 available Oct. 15 > > Mac IIsi: 68030 > 2 meg., floppy, > 80 meg. hard disk $3769 available January 1991 > Does the article go into further detail? I was wondering how many slots the Mac IIsi will have and what is its clock speed? Thanks for the info. Joe Hughes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I got the error message: inews: Article rejected: jwh included more text than new text Article not posted - exit status 256 I found a way around the problem be replacing the > with -, but I don't like having to do this. Any comments from the experts? Thanks, Joe Hughes -- Joe Hughes Wandel & Goltermann Technologies, Inc. Home (919) 469-3851 1030 Swabia Court Work (919) 941-5730 Research Triangle Park uunet.uu.net!wgate.com!jwh North Carolina 27709-3585
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (10/11/90)
In article <154@wgate.UUCP> jwh@wgate.UUCP (Joe Hughes) writes: >Is there a feature/bug in inews that limits the number of included lines? ... This was a misguided attempt to enforce morality in late releases of B News. The only result has been an explosion of creativity in quoting conventions, making it much more difficult for smart news readers to parse articles. Mind you, although this was a poor way of doing it, morality is still worth maintaining. Including the whole prior article is lazy and inconsiderate; it is proper and civilized to prune included text down to the minimum necessary. -- Imagine life with OS/360 the standard | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology operating system. Now think about X. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
mathisen@dali.cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) (10/12/90)
In article <154@wgate.UUCP> jwh@wgate.UUCP (Joe Hughes) writes: > >Is there a feature/bug in inews that limits the number of included lines? When >I tried to post the following article using postnews: It's a "feature" in inews. The purpose is/was to keep people from sending around duplicates of entire articles, and then adding one line such as "Me Too"... With the References: line, it's easy to go back and see what the original article said, so why send it twice? It also encourages people to edit out .sig's, and to only include "relevant" parts of people's postings. Note that the easy way to avoid it is the method you suggested... The mechanism that inews uses is rather stupid, and only works in the simplest cases, but at least it makes people realize that they're potentially wasting resources...
mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) (10/12/90)
In article <1990Oct11.161136.10799@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >Mind you, although this was a poor way of doing it, morality is still >worth maintaining. I couldn't agree more, but I've always found that attempts to solve social problems through software are doomed to failure. A few atmospheres of peer pressure work wonders. mjr. -- coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (10/12/90)
In article <1990Oct11.161136.10799@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > This was a misguided attempt to enforce morality in late releases of B News. > The only result has been an explosion of creativity in quoting conventions, > making it much more difficult for smart news readers to parse articles. I don't know. I've shortened messages on the odd occasion when I've gone over the limit. It doesn't stop jerks from being jerks, but it acts as a useful warning for the rest of us. Perhaps a "Do you really mean to do this" message would be better. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` peter@ferranti.com
flee@dictionopolis.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (10/13/90)
When I was using "rn", I had HIDELINE set so that I never saw any quoted text. News was still perfectly understandable. (Well, as understandable as it ever is.) Quoted text is greatly overused. The Subject and maybe a line or two of context are usually enough. If a person reading an article wants more, modern newsreaders make it simple to follow back References. (This assumes that your news server keeps news around long enough; but note, the less quoted text, the more news you can keep.) -- Felix Lee flee@cs.psu.edu
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (10/13/90)
In article <Fj9tc!o2@cs.psu.edu> flee@dictionopolis.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes: >Quoted text is greatly overused. The Subject and maybe a line or two >of context are usually enough. If a person reading an article wants Agreed. But I still remember the time I replied to an article of about 100 lines. I very carefully trimmed the included material down to 4 lines which just gave the context. Then I added my carefully thought out and complete response. It took only one line. The damn thing was bounced. This made no sense at all. Of course what I did was try again, after adding several lines of meaningless fluff to my response just to circumvent such stupidity. There should at least be a reasonable sanity test. If the number of lines included is less than say 12 (half a typical screen) it should be allowed even if the response is only 1 line. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115. +1-815-753-6940
flee@dictionopolis.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (10/13/90)
>but at least it makes people realize that they're potentially wasting >resources... But it doesn't. Article rejected: included more text than new text is hardly an enlightening error message. Nowhere does it say anything about wasting resources. "included more text than new text". What does that mean? It's just another threatening error message from another hostile computer program. Or else it's another dumb error message from another dumb program that won't do what I tell it. Adding that restriction didn't really change news noticeably. Well, it got rid of pun-chains, but it created "inews fodder". -- Felix Lee flee@cs.psu.edu
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (10/13/90)
In article <2668@dali> osyjm@caesar.cs.montana.edu writes: >It's a "feature" in inews. The purpose is/was to keep people from sending >around duplicates of entire articles, and then adding one line such as >"Me Too"... With the References: line, it's easy to go back and see >what the original article said, so why send it twice? Except that between propagation delays and limited spool space the original article is often (usually?) expired by the time a response gets back. Thus the reference line is of rather limited usefulness. (BTW, This can cause problems with mail responses as well - I have recieved responses to things so late that I couldn't remember what i had said) -- --------------- uunet!tdatirv!sarima (Stanley Friesen)
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (10/14/90)
>If a person reading an article wants more, modern newsreaders make it >simple to follow back References. (This assumes that your news server >keeps news around long enough; And that the article being referred to arrives before you read the article referring to it, which is usually but *NOT* always true.
john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) (10/21/90)
In article <154@wgate.UUCP> jwh@wgate.UUCP (Joe Hughes) writes: > Is there a feature/bug in inews that limits the number of included lines? > When I tried to post the following article using postnews: No bug, it is a feature. This is to prevent people from reposting an artical to the entire net when a well chosen quote would have been just as effective. > I found a way around the problem be replacing the > with -, but I don't like > having to do this. Any comments from the experts? Even though you can get around the "feature", you are not being network polite. You could have quoted a few lines in your posting rather than the 20 or 30 that you chose to include. Anyone that would probably be able to reply to your posting would have most likely known all of the details that you enclosed anyway. -john- -- =============================================================================== John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 john@newave.mn.org NeWave Communications ...uunet!rosevax!bungia!wd0gol!newave!john ===============================================================================