Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucla-cs!rutgers!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp From: tp@mccall.com Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: <3077.26985a23@mccall.com> Date: 9 Jul 90 10:19:14 GMT References: <1990Jun28.164938.23367@DSI.COM> <3008.268b1e9a@mccall.com> <1990Jul5.005618.17046@techbook.com> <3070.2694591f@mccall.com> <3662@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 158 In article <3662@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU>, rhealey@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Rob Healey) writes: > In article <3070.2694591f@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com writes: >>In article <1990Jul5.005618.17046@techbook.com>, jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: >>5) You may not even have any local internet folk. And even if you do, it is >>not at all unlikely that they will be unfriendly. It happened to me. I had > ^^^^^^^^^^ Hmmm >>a modem in New York City, and had actually set up forwarding with rutgers >>in New Jersey before one guy in the city changed his mind (he didn't even >>answer my mail for 3 weeks, later said he read it but was too busy to >>answer, and if I hadn't found anyone else, he'd do it, but it would be a >>while before he could get around to it. REAL friendly). > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Hmmmm #2. > > The last sentance shows a VERY disturbing attitude on the part of > small UUCP sites. i.e. UUCP connections are a RIGHT not > a PRIVLEDGE. Most small sites take on the attitude that bigger > site admins should drop all their responsibilitys to their > organization and cater to the whim of the smaller site; GET REAL. Personally I figure anyone that takes 3 weeks to answer mail is being a tad unfriendly, unless it is an honest mistake. This guy read my mail but chose to ignore it. That is not what I call friendly. I'd rather get a message saying I can't do it now, contact me in a month if you still haven't found anyone (I did get one of those BTW). I was responding to someone who seemed to doubt that it was likely that an internet site would balk at doing MX forwarding for a uucp site. If you read the messages leading up to this, in this discussion friendly implies willingness to help a uucp site get registered/connected. Maybe thats the wrong word. I certainly don't think anyone is obligated to help me out. I did want to point out that many sites are unwilling to be helpful in this regard (is helpful a better term? Read my message again substituting helpful/unhelpful for friendly/unfriendly, and I think it will be closer to my intended meaning). > How many of these small sites realize the amount of TIME and > MONEY it takes to support a small .UUCP site from the other > side? I've done it. I've run a uucp site with numerous small neighbors, most unregistered. It isn't that big a pain. (Running newsfeeds to them when their sites frequently go down IS a pain, but that is another issue.) Maybe it's worse for a sendmail site, I don't know. I don't deny your right to refuse to do it. It would be nice if you didn't take 3 weeks to say no (or maybe, or whatever). > How many realize how bad they screw things up with > poorly constructed mail addresses with .UUCP or multiple > combinations of !%@ that take ALOT of time constructing > rulesets for? Note that I was talking about finding an MX site so that I could STOP being a .uucp site! It sounds like if you go to as much trouble as you imply, you probably provide very good service, in which case I find your attitude puzzling. If you didn't do a lot of work on custom rule sets, but just took the easy way out, it wouldn't be that much work. Also note that (possibly unlike your site), I am talking about sites that already had uucp connections, so they have already dealt with the needed rewrite rules. I only had the uucp maps to use in finding connections, so I certainly wasn't contacting anyone who didn't already know how to deal with uucp sites, including unregistered ones. > Then they have the balls to bitch at their > feed site when the bad addresses they send through get > bounced. Unless someone at my feed site reads this group, they are totally unaware of how I feel about munging headers (I intend to talk to them about it when the are less busy). However, it is IN GENERAL (certainly not always), the internet sites running sendmail and gatewaying mail between uucp and the internet that take PERFECTLY VALID RFC822 addresses, such as mine and screw them up by rewriting them as bang paths, which THEN get screwed up. Re-read my message, I'm talking about difficulties in getting registered, which is needed in order to NOT generate .uucp addresses, or things with % or ! in them. > Why any internet site would take on the pain in the ass of > supporting a .UUCP site is beyond me, the grief involved > isn't worth it. I guess some people are more generous than you. Luckily, there seem to be a lot of them. I was simply pointing out the existance of people like you. Thank you for confirming my point. > I know from experience. The small sites > complain about how expensive domain registration is, that > cost is no where near the TIME cost of supporting a .uucp > site on the feed side. Then you have ill-mannered sites. Tell them so and dump them. Just don't generalize that to all of us. Again, I wanted to get registered, and couldn't find an MX site. Let me get this straight. You feel that we should get registered so we won't generate bogus addresses, but you aren't in the least bit interested in helping us do it, right? Thanks a lot! Some of us don't have the money or connections to get onto the internet (it takes both). I guess you consider us useless, eh? I note that you read netnews, which originated in the uucp world, and includes many uucp sites (including the sender of the message you are flaming in response to), so we must not be totally beneath your notice. Why are you even reading a group devoted to uucp mail? I guess you think we should all subscribe to uunet and leave you alone, eh? Some people can't afford that. Sorry. Some people seem to get spoiled by having a university or large commercial concern to pick up their tab. I hope you end up at a small site some day that nobody wants to take the time to deal with. > I'd feed a domain site that > generated valid internet addresses in a second, I'd tell someone > who insisted on a .uucp domain to keep on walking. Many of us generate valid domain addresses which are then screwed up by our feed sites. You may be blaming the wrong people. If you've been reading this discussion, you will see that very few people INSIST on a .uucp address, but many people can't find an MX forwarder, which is a prerequisite to doing anything else. I guess you are an example of the reason for this. > I'm not > being unfriendly, I'm saving myself and my organization > time and money. If the small sites can't be burdened to construct > valid and easily parsed addresses then their feeds shouldn't > be burdened with having to decipher the garbage To: and Reply-To: > lines. Refusing with good grace (for whatever reason, including yours) to be helpful is not unfriendly. Flaming people for being in a situation that they can not or do not know how to correct is certainly unfriendly, at the least. I am (thanks to the good people at Kansas State University) no longer in this situation, but I still have empathy for those who are. Having been there twice, at 2 different sites/companies, I feel qualified to some extent to speak on the subject. I'd bet you have never run a small uucp site. > The US post office, and most others in the world, REQUIRE a certain > format of a letter's address. I see no reason why requiring e-mail > addresses to be standard is any more unreasonable than requiring paper > mail addresses to be standard. The post office does not require each person using the mail to find a well-connected sponsor before he can put a return address on his envelope to which said post office will be willing to deliver mail. Your analogy is flawed. > All views expressed here are MY OWN and in no way, shape or form > represent the views of the U of M or any of its subunits. If you want to > scream at somebody about the contents, scream at me. Sure thing. However, if you are the postmaster of your site (as you imply), I submit that the above paragraph is blatantly false. -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA