merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) (12/13/89)
In article <10282@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>, rossc@extro (Ross Cartlidge) writes: ^^^^^^^^^^^ not really! | Original-posting-by: rossc@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Ross Cartlidge) | Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) | Posting-id: 891208.1915 | Posting-number: Volume TEST, Number TEST | Archive-name: tcpcon -- connect an arbitrary process to a device | | [This is an experimental alt.sources re-posting from the | newsgroup(s) comp.protocols.tcp-ip. | No attempt has been made to edit, clean, modify, or otherwise | change the contents of the original posting, or to contact the | author. Please consider cross-posting all sources postings to | alt.sources as a matter of course.] | | [Comments on this service to emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)] [a gizillion lines of code that anyone reading tcp-ip has seen DELETED] Yeah. I started this conversation in email, and after three rounds, Edward told me to take it to alt.sources.d, which I am now doing. To summarize rounds 1-3: My main point: Edward is not generating any new information, but rather using up bandwidth with his reposting service. My request: If he wants to provide a "clipping service", he could post an article to alt.sources once a week (or even once a day) with: topic/title, newsgroups posted-to, article-id so that I could go fetch it as I wanted and needed it. His reply (paraphrased): (1) what about sites that don't get that group? (2) what about sites with short expiry times? (3) what about auto-archivers of alt.sources? (4) it takes work to look up the articles My reply: (1) they don't get it for either political or functional reasons, the problems of which are not solved by reposting articles from that group. (2) short expirations are likely to apply to alt.sources too, if so. (3) [didn't communicate this one to him] the archivers could be made smarter to recognize his articles and do the proper extraction. (4) tough. My newsreader does it with two keystrokes. My second proposal: [not communicated to him] If he really wants to make this service available, why doesn't he just *archive* the "useful stuff", and provide a *mail-server* so we can access his archive if we desire. Another comment: Redistribution like this may be in violation of the Berne Convention. But, I'm not a lawyer. Anyway, whadda y'all think? I want to see these silly repostings of very long sources *stopped*. This is not in the spirit of UseNet to be doing these repostings. Just another news oldtimer, -- /== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\ | on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, Sol III | | merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn | \== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/
tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) (12/13/89)
In article <5343@omepd.UUCP> merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes: >Anyway, whadda y'all think? I want to see these silly repostings of >very long sources *stopped*. This is not in the spirit of UseNet to >be doing these repostings. I think that short sources are well reposted, but long ones should be pointed to with an abstract here. I object to all the extraneous "header" lines -- this is not some automated group, just alt.sources. I do like the fact that all of a sudden alt.sources is flooded with SOURCE CODE for a change! Bracing feeling 'innit. In short, the experiment was worth trying and NOT self evidently alien to Net spirit. But in the long haul a more economical compromise would make sense. -- To have a horror of the bourgeois (\( Tom Neff is bourgeois. -- Jules Renard )\) tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
jeffm@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Jeff Medcalf) (12/13/89)
I like the reposting service. It is a lot less work for me to get his post
than to look up the original article, which is important when I am short on
time (which is most of the time).
I don't think that the bandwidth is all that much to worry about. If it is,
however, perhaps you can suggest a way to create alt.sources articles which
are links to articles in other newsgroups, as if the original had been
crossposted.
Some people can read the news, but not e-mail or ftp.
--
Jeff Medcalf jeffm@uokmax.{uucp|ecn.uoknor.edu} !chinet!uokmax!jeffm
BoB smokes *my* pipe! We carry in our hearts the true country...
In 1869, the waffle iron was invented, thus solving the annoying tendency of
waffles to wrinkle in the dryer. No new tale to tell.jgd@rsiatl.UUCP (John G. De Armond) (12/13/89)
In article <5343@omepd.UUCP> merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes: >Anyway, whadda y'all think? I want to see these silly repostings of >very long sources *stopped*. This is not in the spirit of UseNet to >be doing these repostings. > >Just another news oldtimer, I think this service is a GREAT idea. Combined with the indexing service, it saves wading through all those cute non-source posts that end up in non-moderated groups. Maybe if we could get the user base to grow up enough to stop posting drivel in source groups, then perhaps the service would be unnecessary. As it is, I'm more than willing to spend the bandwidth and storage to accomidate the dups. John -- John De Armond, WD4OQC | The Fano Factor - Radiation Systems, Inc. Atlanta, GA | Where Theory meets Reality. emory!rsiatl!jgd **I am the NRA** |
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (12/14/89)
I believe my article <EMV.89Dec7021427@noether.math.lsa.umich.edu> in
alt.config and alt.sources.d should address any "fair warning" issue.
These were clearly marked as experimental, and should be considered as
such. (Have we all forgotten what alt is for?) I am generating new
information: where sources are, some classification information, and
the actual contents of the original articles for the convenience of
those who didn't see it the first time around. I think I've also
increased the amount of other people's postings to alt.sources so the
side effects seem to be OK, at least within alt.
After a few days worth of repostings I think I have a better handle on
what constitutes good things to repost, bad things to repost, and
questionable stuff.
Bad: "very long sources" (1000 lines? 500 lines? I dunno. Maybe 0.)
patches in comp.sources.bugs
one-liners (even clever one-liners)
announcements of where to find sources (they're not sources)
Archive-name: without a valid SysV pathname immediately following
Anything that's already in comp.sources.*
Good: postings of up to about 8K (300 lines)
general interest stuff posted to obscure groups
(some say nothing would be good)
Questionable: postings from 8K to 25K (300-1000 lines)
special interest things (i.e. elisp, REXX, DCL, perl :-)
patches, esp. patches not by the author (alt.sources.patches ?)
On the matter of headers. I think it's reasonable to tack on headers,
especially if it makes it easier for someone to archive this stuff;
the cost isn't too great, and the added likelihood that someone else
will have what you once saw in alt.sources and will be able to find
it makes the difference. I've tried to come up with a minimal
subset to see to it that not much information is lost; the original
article is currently in the References: line so if you want the
real McCoy it's very easy to get it.
If I can get cooperation from archiving software writers, I'd like to
propose a change for my treatment of jumbo stuff. Instead of sending
out the full text of the reposting, I'll tack on appropriate headers
that have the message-id and original newsgroups of the thing in
question. Your software will have to parse this information, grab the
article in question, and set it aside. This can be problematic if the
repost is from a particularly obscure group, if you've expired it
already, or if it hasn't arrived yet; that would be up to you to
cope with it.
--Edtneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) (12/14/89)
It's true that if a large source posting appears in newsgroup X which isn't fed to your site, then merely *pointing* to it in alt.sources doesn't help a great deal if you decide you actually want that source. But that's an acceptable risk. If you don't get a feed for newsgroup X in the first place, it's reasonable to suppose you're not interested in its contents -- including large source postings that might appear there. So forcibly reproducing them en masse in alt.sources is more likely to be an annoyance than a help. In short, if you can't follow a pointer, you probably don't want to. In principle you are as likely to be uninterested in short sources from unwanted newsgroups as you are long sources; but because the net expense and annoyance from gratuitous short source postings is smaller, this too is an acceptable risk. The problem with all those headers is they (plus the existing required headers) frequently rival the actual source code in size! Too much overhead. Alt.sources should be informal. -- "Nature loves a vacuum. Digital \O@/ Tom Neff doesn't." -- DEC sales letter /@O\ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
patw@leadsv.UUCP (Patrick L. Wigen) (12/14/89)
I don't think the repostings are a useful service. Either you
have to edit what is posted to keep bandwith to a reasonable figure.
In which case you don't satisfy the needs of all the people who would
use your service. Or you post everything, in which case you needlessly
floud alt.sources with reposts from other news groups.
Lastly I don't want to have to remember or somehow try to
figure out if I have already saved the sources in alt.sources from
another news group. It is much less time consuming to know that the
sources in alt.sources are mostly unique.
Patrick L. Wigen Voice: (408) 756-9748
Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. ( patw@leadsv.UUCP )
Sunnyvale, Ca. ..{cae7780,sun!sunncal,savax}!leadsv!patw
*********************************************************************
Disclaimer: My opinions are my own(mostly). Certainly not those of
LMSC's.
*********************************************************************sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon) (12/15/89)
In article <EMV.89Dec13153632@picasso.math.lsa.umich.edu> emv@math.lsa.umich.edu writes: >Bad: "very long sources" (1000 lines? 500 lines? I dunno. Maybe 0.) If the source was not posted in a sources newsgroup, it is not 'too long'. I've found some large gems in non-sources groups over the years, and they've faded away elsewhere because they weren't in an archived group. "Very long" is 40 parts or so. > patches in comp.sources.bugs Are we supposed to wade through all the discussion and debugging in c.s.bugs? The patches should get reposted here so we can easily spot them. -- Scot E. Wilcoxon sewilco@DataPg.MN.ORG {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco Data Progress UNIX masts & rigging +1 612-825-2607 uunet!datapg!sewilco I'm just reversing entropy while waiting for the Big Crunch.
chuckb@lotex.UUCP (Chuck Bentley) (12/15/89)
I like the idea of information on sources/shell scripts, etc. available in other news groups being posted to alt.sources. I'm not prepared to say if it should be just pointers or the whole article, or if the whole article how large it should be before it is crossposted. What strikes me is that if it were only pointers, and I were not subscribing to a particular group, and if I started noticing a number of things that were interesting, I would try to find some way of getting a feed of that group. Just a thought. Chuck...
halliday@cheddar.cc.ubc.ca (Laura Halliday) (12/15/89)
I like the idea of having pointers to interesting stuff from other newsgroups being posted to alt.sources.d. I'm not sure I care for having the postings reposted in their entirety. ...laura
harrys@tons61.UUCP (Harry Skelton) (12/15/89)
In article <1989Dec13.061409.2126@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> jeffm@uokmax.UUCP (Jeff Medcalf) writes: > >I like the reposting service. It is a lot less work for me to get his post >than to look up the original article, which is important when I am short on >time (which is most of the time). > I think the repost "service" is GREAT! I have looked for such a program but had little luck or time to find one. Now that I have it I can proceed with new plans for the network here! If bandwidth is such a problem, why not have a field that simply states Archive-name: file.shar Request-route: deamon@site Request-name: site/file/name/here and build a script program to parse the message through and request the file on a need to know basis. Unlike most of the "blessed" system, we lack ftp to internet. Strickly a UUCP and News site. KEEP POSTING - ITS ABOUT TIME! -- Harry Skelton - Senior Systems Administrator - U.S. Dept. of Transportation ..!attctc!tons61!harrys ..!obdient!tons61!harrys ..!tfd!tons61!harrys [ Views expressed by Harry Skelton are not those of the US Gov. or CBSI ]
sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon) (12/16/89)
In article <9080@leadsv.UUCP> patw@leadsv.UUCP (Patrick L. Wigen) writes:
< Lastly I don't want to have to remember or somehow try to
<figure out if I have already saved the sources in alt.sources from
<another news group. It is much less time consuming to know that the
<sources in alt.sources are mostly unique.
I got the impression that the reposting service is an interim measure
while encouraging crossposting to alt.sources.
--
Scot E. Wilcoxon sewilco@DataPg.MN.ORG {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco
Data Progress UNIX masts & rigging +1 612-825-2607 uunet!datapg!sewilco
I'm just reversing entropy while waiting for the Big Crunch.bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (12/16/89)
In article <9080@leadsv.UUCP> patw@leadsv.UUCP (Patrick L. Wigen) writes:
: Lastly I don't want to have to remember or somehow try to
: figure out if I have already saved the sources in alt.sources from
: another news group. It is much less time consuming to know that the
: sources in alt.sources are mostly unique.
If you use rn, you might try using a kill file. Those postings
have headers which should be easy enough to filter out. Or, if
not, I'm sure Ed could arrange that it be so.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.comtneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) (12/16/89)
In article <1989Dec15.194952.13579@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes: >If you use rn, you might try using a kill file. Those postings >have headers which should be easy enough to filter out. Or, if >not, I'm sure Ed could arrange that it be so. It's worth pointing out in all contexts -- but especially in the realm of large source postings -- that news articles don't arrive at sites cost free, KILL files notwithstanding. Cross posting allows articles to appear in multiple useful places with only the cost of one distribution, but RE-posted sources from some individual newsreader's site forces people to bear the cost of two distributions, unless they want to forgo the use of the group (which means missing original postings too). So while it's important to know about KILL files, they don't fully replace proper posting to begin with. -- "NASA Announces New Deck Chair Arrangement For \_/ Tom Neff Space Station Titanic" -- press release 89-7654 \_/ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (12/16/89)
In article <15006@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
It's worth pointing out in all contexts -- but especially in the
realm of large source postings -- that news articles don't arrive
at sites cost free, KILL files notwithstanding. Cross posting
allows articles to appear in multiple useful places with only
the cost of one distribution, but RE-posted sources from some
individual newsreader's site forces people to bear the cost of
two distributions, unless they want to forgo the use of the group
(which means missing original postings too).
Too true. It is a potential waste of bandwidth to shovel things
around twice, so the solution will have to be a way to not send the
reposted articles in the first place.
The easy (and somewhat brute-force) way is to stop getting alt.sources
entirely, but that's overkill for sure; you're likely to miss a lot
of good stuff that way. Somewhat more trickly but still doable is to
wipe out articles coming from the offending site, with a B news sys
file something like this on your upstream feed(s):
yoursite:world,...,alt,!alt.sources,...
yoursite/offending-reposting-site:world,alt.sources,...
where 'offending-reposting-site' is the name in the Path: header which
is responsible for the errand deed. There's a risk to this; the
miscreant might actually post something useful from that site, so you
could wipe out too much.
If anyone's contemplating this approach, let me know, and I'll change
the Path: headers that I'm creating from the generic ones I have now
to tack in a different one that's only ever going to occur in the
context of reposted articles. I'll probably make it go from
Path: math.lsa.umich.edu!emv
to
Path: math.lsa.umich.edu!derrida.math.lsa.umich.edu!emv
so you can put
yoursite/derrida.math.lsa.umich.edu:....
in your sys file.
It's too bad there isn't the equivalent of kill files for news
relaying -- if I were to get a newsfeed at home I might want to have a
news clip type service run on the feeder machine and have it send me
only what I want from the newsgroups I'm interested in. Anyone have
this running now ?
--Edlee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) (12/17/89)
(sorry if this is lng dead -- we're a few days behind on news...) The reposting is an excellent idea, and tremendously useful. Keep it up! merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes: >rossc@extro (Ross Cartlidge) writes: > >His reply (paraphrased): > >(1) what about sites that don't get that group? >(2) what about sites with short expiry times? >(3) what about auto-archivers of alt.sources? >(4) it takes work to look up the articles > >My reply: > >(1) they don't get it for either political or functional reasons, >the problems of which are not solved by reposting articles from that group. Or they don't get it because they know that no sources are posted there. >(2) short expirations are likely to apply to alt.sources too, if so. No, we have a 1-day or 0-day expiry on many groups at the moment, for example, but alt.sources lives a little longer. Generally articles take from 0.5 to five days to reach here, depending on newsgroup, so the alt.sources articles have expired *before* the others arrive! (this is a short-term problem here, but it is shared by other sites...) >(3) the archivers could be made >smarter to recognize his articles and do the proper extraction. I assume you mean recognise the sources posted to non-source groups. Recognise them from where? This is absurd. And how are you going to get articles into the archives all over the world if you don't post them? >(4) tough. My newsreader does it with two keystrokes. perhaps you are not reading news on a 286 Xenix PC? >If he really wants to make this service available, why doesn't he just >*archive* the "useful stuff", and provide a *mail-server* so we can >access his archive if we desire. > >Another comment: > >Redistribution like this may be in violation of the Berne Convention. >But, I'm not a lawyer. I do not believe so. >Anyway, whadda y'all think? I want to see these silly repostings of >very long sources *stopped*. It would be best of all of the posters of the original articles either cross-posted to alt.sources (not everyone can do this) or posted only to a source group, and posted a pointer in the other group. That way people like me who only read a subset of newsgroups because of time would still get to see all these useful programs. I personally welcome the postings. We have to accept the fact that there is too much news to read these days. Sigh. >-- >Stonehenge Consulting Services Didn't we obsolete Stonehenge at the last British Firmware Release? :-) :-) Lee -- Liam R. Quin, lee@sq.com Until Dec. 20th (visiting sq, not an employee) After Dec 20, Unixsys (UK) Ltd, Knutsford, UK -- +44 565 50021 At home: +44 925 831084 (0830 GMT to midnight GMT only please...) rn: .signature: cannot open: no such fire or dirigible
kim@uts.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) (12/17/89)
In article <1989Dec17.041155.11834@sq.sq.com>, lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) writes: > > I personally welcome the postings. We have to accept the fact that there > is too much news to read these days. Sigh. I agree. I have already pulled a number of useful tidbits off of alt.sources since this began that I would have otherwise missed (Thanks!) Possibly something along the lines of reposting short items in their entirety, and pointers for the longer items would be appropriate. The definitions of "short" and "long" are somewhat subjective, and should probably stay that way (I'd hate to see something nice not be reposted simply because it was a few bytes or lines longer than some arbitrary "rule"). Also, if there is something truly "significant" (again, subjective), I would not object to it's being reposted to alt.sources ... shouldn't happen very often anyway. /kim P.S. BTW, a complete distribution of a Forth interpreter was just recently posted to comp.lang.forth in about 7 or 8 parts. It goes by the name "tile", and uses the GNU license. Dunno if it's any good or not, but it seems a pity that it'll never get archived ... -- UUCP: kim@amdahl.amdahl.com or: {sun,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,uunet,oliveb,ames}!amdahl!kim DDD: 408-746-8462 USPS: Amdahl Corp. M/S 249, 1250 E. Arques Av, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 BIX: kdevaughn GEnie: K.DEVAUGHN CIS: 76535,25
bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) (12/19/89)
If the source is something that I'm interested in, I already saw it the first time around because I read the groups discussing subjects that I'm interested in. If it's something that I'm not interested in, I don't mind (all that much) "n"ing over it in alt.sources, but it certainly adds to the clutter. I keep thinking things like "I thought I avoided looking at this traffic by not subscribing to those newsgroups discussing things I don't care about!" and "I already saw this once, right?". My main objection is to the cost of transporting the same stuff twice. It's measurable here, and substantial when multiplied by the number of non-NNTP edges in the network. I'd prefer not to have the reposting service. It's a disservice to me.
trier@shasta.scl.cwru.edu (Stephen Trier) (12/19/89)
With all the hubbub about the reposting service, it seems that we've missed
a possibility. Why can't a listing of sources from other groups get posted
in digest format, giving only the critical information? (Critical information
being: What is it? Why is it worthwhile? What is its message ID?)
Something like this, on a weekly basis, could make it easier to find the
sources, while avoiding the network bandwidth being gobbled by the reposts.
<=> Stephen Trier seldon!sct@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu
sct@po.CWRU.Edu
{sun,att,decvax}!cwjcc!skybridge!trierandrew@tvcent.uucp (Andrew Cowie) (12/21/89)
In article <1989Dec19.015853.18002@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> trier@shasta.UUCP (Stephen Trier) writes: >in digest format, giving only the critical information? (Critical information >being: What is it? Why is it worthwhile? What is its message ID?) > >Something like this, on a weekly basis, could make it easier to find the >sources, while avoiding the network bandwidth being gobbled by the reposts. How about an extention to the weekly posting to alt.sources.index? BTW, It would be nice if alt.sources.index had a brief description of what the programs do, IMHO. -- Andrew F. Cowie at TVC Enterprises, Toronto, Canada. uunet!mnetor!lethe!tvcent!andrew andrew@tvcent.uucp