chuq@sun.UUCP (05/30/86)
My apology in advance for the cross-posting to net.sources.mac, but this
is something that directly relates to that newsgroup. All followups should
be sent to net.micro.mac only (it will automatically if your software isn't
broken...)
I recently posted two sets of software to net.sources.mac -- a set of
files for the Boston II Font and the ADVSYS adventure package. I'm quite
dismayed at the number of people who have written back and told me that
they are broken at their site. I know that the package worked when it
left my machine, and there have been places on the net where it has worked,
so it isn't a global problem.
It seems to me, thnking back, that there hasn't been a single significant
posting to n.s.m for a while that hasn't been garbaged somewhere. BinHexes,
unfortunately, are very suceptible to single bit/byte errors.
Now, theoretically, the transport layer (UUCP) should protect us from that.
There seem to be areas of the net, however, that have consistent failures.
I want to find out exactly how bad this is. If you downloaded either the
Boston fonts or the ADVSYS game, will you PLEASE send me mail and tell me
whether the download worked or not. If you can, please send me the header
to one of the messages. From this, I will try to extrapolate what
percentage of the net is being munged and what sites are likely to be
doing it.
Frankly, I'm quite discouraged, to the point where I might just not bother
posting stuff in the future. If I have to try to get private copies to 10
or 15 people because the net screwed it up, it isn't worth my time -- I'll
just pop it over to info-mac on sumex and forget UUCP. Also, if this stuff
isn't working, I'm not going to make USENET volumes worse by throwing around
stuff that isn't any good.
If it turns out to be just a few sites that are bad, we can probably shine
it on. If not, we need to rethink the policy of posting BinHexed stuff -- if
it isn't doing any good, why do it? mod.mac isn't a solution, because stuff
gets garbaged regardless of its race, creed, or moderation. If we DO
have a problem, there are two solutions:
o stop posting, or
o create something better than BinHex. Rather than CRC, perhaps some kind of
ECC checksum that can rebuild the destruction if it isn't major.
This has some rather nasty implications to the rest of the net. If Mac
code is being garbaged, I think it is a good assumption that regular
messages, shars, and sources are being garbaged as well. It isn't as
critical a problem here, but if people are losing characters, words, or
paragraphs out of their postings, who can guess what it does to the context?
Comments and suggestions are welcome, but please send me the yes/no on
whether you could use that stuff and how it got to you. As it stands, I'm
not going to post any more stuff that I get my hands on until I'm sure
it isn't a wasted motion.
thanx
chuq
--
:From the lofty realms of Castle Plaid: Chuq Von Rospach
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The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands
and hoping when a rock or a club will do -- McCloctnik the Lucid