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From: tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Bad expiry dates on incoming news articles
Keywords: expire,bug
Message-ID: <766@barsoom.nhh.no>
Date: 8 Apr 90 13:37:37 GMT
Distribution: news
Organization: Norwegian School of Economics
Lines: 19

From time to time (a few times a week, to be more specific), I get an
error message from B news about an "unparsable date" in an incoming
news article.  These messages can come from different sites, but the
error situation is always this:

Expires: 31 Dec 69 23:59:59 GMT

The last one I got was from amelia.nas.nasa.gov, I haven't kept track
of the earlier ones, unfortunately.

So, what I'm wondering is, is this just a bad joke or is it a bug in
that site's news software?  Obviously, this date has an internal
representation of -1L, so I reckon it could be an error return that
was used as a date instead of being trapped?

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway.  Telephone: +47-5-959205
tih@barsoom.nhh.no, thelbekk@norunit.bitnet, edb_tom@debet.nhh.no