matt@srs.UUCP (Matt Goheen) (04/10/88)
In article <2216@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes: >I find it extremely annoying that the Backbone Cabal (and the recent >soc.sex fiasco makes it appear that there is one) refuses to create >a legitimately requested newsgroup. The rationale for this action was >that a) the name of the newsgroup would be offensive to many people, >and b) that many of them would not carry a group specifically devoted >to sexual matters regardless of the name. I get so sick of this argument. How can anyone think that they have a "right" to create a group on someone else's machine? The machines (and companies) in the backbone devote a great deal of their money and resources to supporting Usenet, and no one has any right whatsoever to dictate what they should or shouldn't carry on them. Many administrators fear that if they get "caught" carrying such silly groups (silly defined here as "not directly related to or beneficial to your job") as soc.{sex,boink,hammer,etc} that they will lose ALL Usenet access. So, you and your buddy are driving to work in your nice new sleek van. You stop at the local Stop-and-Pay-Lotsa-Cash store to grab a low-calorie, artificially flavored, artificially colored carcinogenic diet beverage. You come back to find ten people piled in the back. "What's going on?", you ask. "Well, we decided you should take us all to work", a stranger replies. "Huh?", you stumble. "Well, you're already taking HIM to work, aren't you?", he says, pointing to your friend. "But, it's MY van", you squeek. "Too bad", he replies, "we've got the majority here". "Well", you say to yourself, "I guess I can take them to work, it's not too far out of my way". "OK", you say. "By the way", the stranger continues, "we're going to soc.boink back here..." Silly -- yes. But it's not the only thing that is...wake up... -- - uucp: {rutgers,ames}!rochester!srs!matt Matt Goheen - - maybe-net: matt@srs.uucp S.R. Systems - - "We built some good machines, but they don't work no more." -
mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) (04/12/88)
In article <785@srs.UUCP> srs!matt@cs.rochester.edu (Matt Goheen) writes: >In article <2216@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes: >>I find it extremely annoying that the Backbone Cabal (and the recent >>soc.sex fiasco makes it appear that there is one) refuses to create >>a legitimately requested newsgroup. The rationale for this action was >>that a) the name of the newsgroup would be offensive to many people, >>and b) that many of them would not carry a group specifically devoted >>to sexual matters regardless of the name. > >I get so sick of this argument. What argument? I said I was annoyed about the Backbone refusing to create a group that had been voted into existence by the approved procedure. > How can anyone think that they have a >"right" to create a group on someone else's machine? I don't recall saying anything about "rights". I said "legitimately requested." The Backbone (or at least Gene Spafford) has published specific guidelines for creating newsgroups. It now appears that those guidelines should contain the proviso "subject to the approval of the Backbone admins." > The machines (and >companies) in the backbone devote a great deal of their money and >resources to supporting Usenet, and no one has any right whatsoever to >dictate what they should or shouldn't carry on them. Many administrators >fear that if they get "caught" carrying such silly groups (silly defined >here as "not directly related to or beneficial to your job") as >soc.{sex,boink,hammer,etc} that they will lose ALL Usenet access. Right. So I posted a patch in the article you referenced which would solve exactly this problem. It fixes what I consider to be a defect in the news software: its inability to transmit newsgroups that aren't localized. With this patch installed, a site can transmit news articles posted to a newsgroup without the newsgroup appearing on their machine(s). Is this sufficiently clear? In other words, Matt, I attempted to solve the problem instead of just whining about it. You, on the other hand, simply added to the volume on the net with your idiotic little tirade. Perhaps that was unfair. Maybe my article got truncated somewhere along the line and you only got the first paragraph. If so, I apologize. So I'll repost the original: Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin,news.software.b,alt.sex Subject: Patch for inews (was Re: Final action on soc.sex) Summary: Allows transmission of locally nonexistent groups Expires: References: <3720@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1988Apr6.171345.3827@sq.uucp> Sender: Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) Followup-To: news.admin Distribution: world Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA Keywords: I find it extremely annoying that the Backbone Cabal (and the recent soc.sex fiasco makes it appear that there is one) refuses to create a legitimately requested newsgroup. The rationale for this action was that a) the name of the newsgroup would be offensive to many people, and b) that many of them would not carry a group specifically devoted to sexual matters regardless of the name. This article contains a patch to News 2.11, patchlevel 14, which solves both of these problems by allowing sites to transmit articles posted to locally nonexistent groups. With this patch installed, all the news administrator has to do is add a line of the form: newsgroupname null [i.e. soc.sex null] to the news aliases file, and the article posted to the group will be junked locally, but will be added to the batchfiles for downstream sites. Readers at the local site will not be able to either read or post to the nullified newsgroup. (Of course, if they subscribe to "junk" they can read it.) Now for the bad news. This has not been tested very much, and only on a BSD (Sun) machine. The modifications involved look pretty much generic (a couple of uses of strncmp might have to be changed for Sys V systems.) Also, since this machine is a leaf node, I had to fake a downstream connection. All of which means: INSTALL THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! Installation: just pipe this article into patch with a -d flag indicating the directory which contains the inews source. If you're not running news at patchlevel 14, trying to patch won't do any harm, but watch for .rej files. It may be necessary to do this by hand. And for those of you running C News or News 3.0, sorry about that. Miscellanea: The files modified are inews.c and ifuncs.c. When a site receives an article posted to a nullified newsgroup, the software is specifically prevented from notifying you of the fact that the article is being junked locally. I felt that this was misleading, since the message printed was "newsgroup in active, but not in sys". If you disagree, hack out the code in inews.c:insert() which tests for the string "NULL:" at the beginning of nbuf. Warning: there are two tests for "NULL:" close together. Make sure you change the right one. If the article is cross-posted to groups which exist locally, it will appear in the existing groups instead of junk. The nullified newsgroup remains on the Newsgroups: line. I have no idea what impact this change will have on NNTP sites. I would expect none (the article would get junked on the server?), but I'm guessing. So, Backbone Admins, how about creating soc.sex (or soc.boink or whatever) now? I welcome any comments, corrections or flames. If this patch turns out to break anything, please let me know via e-mail (or post it if you prefer.) David Mack {hadron,sundc,grebyn}!inco McDonnell Dougles-INCO 8201 Greensboro Dr. McLean, VA 22102 (703)883-3911 (voice) ------------------------------ patch begins here ------------------------------ *** old-inews.c Sat Dec 5 18:11:41 1987 --- inews.c Fri Apr 8 15:00:29 1988 *************** *** 1051,1056 **** --- 1051,1057 ---- (void) strncpy(nextref, PATHSYSNAME, BUFLEN); #endif /* DOXREFS */ for (ptr = nbuf; *ptr;) { + if (strncmp(ptr,"NULL:",5) != 0) if (ngmatch(ptr,srec.s_nbuf) || index(ptr,'.') == NULL){ #ifdef DOXREFS while (*nextref++) *************** *** 1064,1070 **** --- 1065,1076 ---- ; } if (firstbufname[0] == '\0') { + /* Don't give misleading error message + on nullified groups + */ + if (strncmp(nbuf,"NULL:",5) != 0) { logerr("Newsgroups in active, but not sys"); + } (void) localize("junk"); } #endif /* !NFSCLIENT */ *** old-ifuncs.c Sat Dec 5 18:11:38 1987 --- ifuncs.c Fri Apr 8 12:54:47 1988 *************** *** 817,822 **** --- 817,824 ---- ** 2 - exact newsgroup name found in active or aliases file ** 3 - newsgroup name found as prefix in bugs file (but not #2) ** 4 - (2) plus name in bugs file + ** 5 - newsgroup name aliased to "null" - pass to other sites + ** but don't retain locally. */ #define NGUNSEEN 0 *************** *** 824,829 **** --- 826,832 ---- #define NGALIAS 2 #define NGBUGS 3 #define NGABUGS 4 + #define NGNULL 5 ngcount = 0; /* *************** *** 954,959 **** --- 957,967 ---- if (cp == (char *) NULL) { if (STRCMP(ngs[i], abuf) != 0) continue; + if (!STRCMP(bfr,"null")) { + uses[i] = NGNULL; + okcount++; + continue; + } if (isproc) cp = "Aliased newsgroup %s to %s"; else *************** *** 1084,1091 **** continue; if (pass == 1) j = strlen(ngsbug[i] == (char *) NULL ? ngs[i] : ngsbug[i]); ! else j = strlen(ngs[i]); if (j + 2 > avail) { logerr("Redone Newsgroups too long"); break; --- 1092,1102 ---- continue; if (pass == 1) j = strlen(ngsbug[i] == (char *) NULL ? ngs[i] : ngsbug[i]); ! else { j = strlen(ngs[i]); + if (uses[i] == NGNULL) + j += 5; + } if (j + 2 > avail) { logerr("Redone Newsgroups too long"); break; *************** *** 1093,1100 **** if (pass == 1) (void) strcpy(cp, ngsbug[i] == (char *) NULL ? ngs[i] : ngsbug[i]); ! else (void) strcpy(cp, ngs[i]); cp += j; *cp++ = (pass == 1) ? NGDELIM : '\0'; avail -= (j + 1); --- 1104,1117 ---- if (pass == 1) (void) strcpy(cp, ngsbug[i] == (char *) NULL ? ngs[i] : ngsbug[i]); ! else { ! if (uses[i] == NGNULL) { ! strcpy(cp,"NULL:"); ! strcat(cp,ngs[i]); ! } ! else (void) strcpy(cp, ngs[i]); + } cp += j; *cp++ = (pass == 1) ? NGDELIM : '\0'; avail -= (j + 1); *************** *** 1122,1127 **** --- 1139,1145 ---- #undef NGALIAS 2 #undef NGBUGS 3 #undef NGABUGS 4 + #undef NGNULL } -- Herr Professor Doktor Kent...errr, David Mack, Ph.D., L.L.D, D.M.A A man whose opinions diverge radically from those of the corporation (nameless now forevermore) which pays him to perform rites and rituals beyond the comprehension of mortal man.