lmb@sat.com (Larry Blair) (05/02/91)
In article <NICO.91Apr30191104@bilbo.Micrognosis.Los-Gatos.CA.US> nico@Micrognosis.Los-Gatos.CA.US (Speaker-to-Workstations) writes: =In article <1991Apr30.001057.4812@sat.com> lmb@sat.com (Larry Blair) writes: = =>You gave it the distribution that restricted to the greatest extent possible =>without preventing it from leaving your site. I strongly suspect that the =>ba distribution is even more widely available than ca. It appears that =>everyone in the world thinks that they will be missing something if they don't =>get the news from Mecca. This is most annoying when you post an ad in =>misc.jobs.offered and receive resumes from all over the world. I usually get =>more responses from New Jersey, Michigan, and Texas than I do from local =>candidates. [Does that say something about conditions in those places?] = =I have been abused many times by people reading my postings, which I =distributed to "ba" or "ca" explicitly, but which got read just about all =over the world! = =I just thought it was a bug in the news system somewhere. Actually it is a bug in the news software. B News confuses distribution with hierarchy. A B News site can't pass ba.all without passing everything in any other group that was posted with a "Distribution: ba". It isn't even relevent whether the actual site is running B News or not; it is it's feeds that determine what it receives. =So you claim that the only reason people far away get this news is because =they explicitly subscribe to it? No. Even if they are not subscribed to any ba.all groups, they will see "Distribution: ba" postings in any other groups if the postings are sent to their site. In fact, if their site's feed is passing them ba.all they will see your message even if their site has !ba.all in its local sys file line. C News has a separated the distribution from the hierarchy. Unfortunately, it also continues to support the old ambiguous scheme so it is not clear to me whether "site:ba,comp,.../!ba.all:" will actually suppress "Distribution: ba" postings. In any event, it would not help much since, as I stated, it is the feeding site that counts and the biggest fish (uunet) runs B News (and will continue to forever, for obvious reasons). -- Larry Blair lmb@sat.com {apple,decwrl}!sat!lmb
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/02/91)
In article <1991May01.182617.2687@sat.com> lmb@sat.com (Larry Blair) writes: >C News has a separated the distribution from the hierarchy. Unfortunately, >it also continues to support the old ambiguous scheme so it is not clear to >me whether "site:ba,comp,.../!ba.all:" will actually suppress >"Distribution: ba" postings... If you read our wonderful documentation :-), you will find that the old ambiguous scheme is in effect *only* if there is no "/" in the field. However, your incantation isn't quite right; you want to say: site:ba,comp,.../all,!ba:... to pass all distributions except ba. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
bob@omni.com (Bob Weissman) (05/02/91)
In article <1991May01.182617.2687@sat.com> lmb@sat.com (Larry Blair) writes: >In article <NICO.91Apr30191104@bilbo.Micrognosis.Los-Gatos.CA.US> nico@Micrognosis.Los-Gatos.CA.US (Speaker-to-Workstations) writes: >=>I strongly suspect that the >=>ba distribution is even more widely available than ca. It appears that >=>everyone in the world thinks that they will be missing something if they don't >=>get the news from Mecca. >Actually it is a bug in the news software. B News confuses distribution with >hierarchy. First sentence is false, second sentence is true. If it were not for sites such as uunet passing "ba" all over the globe, the distribution/hierarchy ambiguity would not be a problem. All the "ba.all" groups are meant to propagate only within the "ba" distribution. The problem is one of human error, or perhaps of differing philosophies. -- Bob Weissman Internet: bob@omni.com UUCP: ...!{apple,decwrl,pyramid,sgi,uunet}!omni!bob