rolf@warwick.UUCP (04/08/87)
I am sending this on April 8, 16:30 BST.
Recently I noticed that the Date: field on all the news articles
I read was set to the date and time the article ARRIVED here,
never the time when the article was SENT. This must be a bug, as
there is a separate Date-Received: field (both of these are always
set to the *same* value). Since articles from the US typically take
3-4 days to arrive here, and often longer, having a true transmission
date would be very useful. (I read a few articles which looked like
April Fool's jokes but were dated Apr 5 etc., making the joke fall
rather flat). Articles which refer to "today" or "next week" are
especially irritating in this context.
Is this the fault of the sending software, our news feeders, or
the software at this end to receive news? Is it our fault for
running an old version of the news software? (I don't know offhand
which version we are running). This seems such an obvious bug
I'm surprised I haven't seen any mention of it before. Comments anyone?
--
Rolf
Dept. of Computer Science, Tel: +44 203 523523 ext 2485
Warwick University, JANET: rolf@uk.ac.warwick.flame
Coventry, UUCP: {seismo,mcvax}!ukc!warwick!rolf
CV4 7AL
England. "Three pints? At lunchtime?!"