zwicky@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) (10/06/90)
Folks, there is more than one article being repeated; in fact, the one in rec.arts.books is itself two articles. Since the articles in question have apparent originating hosts on different continents, I think you can stop abusing the posters... it's almost certainly some completely different host. Someone who understands the news system better than I may be able to figure out which one; walking through the paths and message-ids all I was able to determine is that each copy is apparently coming from a different machine. My guess is that some machine early on scrogged the article so as to damage the message ID so that most hosts that get the message end up assigning it a new one. In that case, we're in for a lot of repetitions, and I don't see any way of stopping it. You use the message ID to cancel - if it hasn't got one, what do you do? The source, then, would appear to be twofold; something that ate the message to begin with, and a few hundred machines, distributed around the world (I caught an originating host in australia) that are happily re-writing the message ID instead of junking the article. Isn't decntralization fun? Elizabeth Zwicky