donn@sdchema.UUCP (03/26/84)
We've been through this little issue before... and no one has yet figured out what is going on. Lauren Weinstein and I corresponded with each other about the problem and found that the articles leave vortex intact and have moved into the future by the time they reach decvax. Only about half of vortex's articles are affected. We agonized over header formats in vortex's articles but eventually we concluded that they were legit. Two things suggest that the B news getdate() routine is responsible: one, news ALWAYS rewrites the dates in headers to put them into local timezones (a practice of questionable worth); and two, very occasionally other articles appear from non-vortex-news sites that have also undergone time travel, indicating that the problem is not caused by vortex's headers. I looked over the getdate() code (from Steve Bellovin) and was unable to make enough sense of it that I could determine where any errors might be occurring. (Steve? are you out there? are we missing a bug fix?) Since the fields involved are intended for use mainly by human beings, there hasn't been much motivation for anyone to bear down and spend the time to fix news... Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn