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From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Methods for updating a feeds sys file
Message-ID: <1989Nov15.064018.14705@rpi.edu>
Date: 15 Nov 89 06:40:18 GMT
References: <1989Nov13.145624.15454@monymsys.uucp>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 36

In <1989Nov13.145624.15454@monymsys.uucp> david@monymsys.uucp (David Kozinn):
DK> The question is: Is there some way to do this automatically? If
DK> not, would this be a useful feature to have? I'm not sure exactly
DK> how it would be implemented (perhaps a regular mail message to
DK> news@yourfeed with some special contents), but do others think
DK> that this would be a useful thing to have?

In principle, I don't like this idea too much.  I see some people
want to use IHAVE/SENDME type messages to do it, too.  Some of my
concerns:

  o The conspiracy could muck with your machine pretty easily and
    verification and authorization would be nearly impossible (same
    old song, follow-ups to alt.slack).

  o The "human" factor.  I _like_ having relations with other admins
    and talking to them through mail.  It would be a shame if the
    de facto interaction with your USENET neighbours was to involve
    even less direct contact between admins.

These are of course seemingly minor things to people that want
automation for everything; it's more how I _feel_ about it all.

You want a regular mail message to usenet@feed with special comments?
"Hey Dave, could you stop sending us alt.oxymorons?  Thanks.  (By the
way, I see Clarkson toasted RPI's butt on the ice this past weekend.)
-- Russ"  Okay, so it's a hypothetical message and Russ doesn't talk
to me all that much anyway. :-)  I still like to have the interaction.

These concerns are probably meaningless anyway.  If I didn't want
remote editing of my sys file, I could disable it.  I am wary of
standards determined by default behaviour though.

Dave
-- 
 (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))