Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!decwrl!sgi!vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Who pays the bill? Summary: UUCP mail != news Message-ID: <66146@sgi.sgi.com> Date: 5 Aug 90 22:39:39 GMT References: <26A738A8.725B@tct.uucp> Sender: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 56 > > It looks like any article posted from apple.sgi.com will go unseen at > > apple.com. > > Nor will it get to apple's downstream (single feed) sites. Several people have said that news posted from apple.sgi.com will not be propagated, and that apple.sgi.com is an invalid name because apple is not unique. The first statement probably not true. What matters is what would actually appear in the Path: line in articles posted from apple.sgi.com. It is likely that it will work fine, regardless of which of the several available combinations of news archive machines, versions of inews, protocols (direct, NNTP, or home-grown news/mail), and inews versions (B or C) would actually be used by someone posting from apple.sgi.com. The second statement is true only to the extent that people or computers use the unqualified "apple" in contexts where it could be confused with apple.com. However, both are irrelevant. Please excuse me for pointing out that this discussion concerns rewriting headers in electronic mail using UUCP as a lowest level transport mechanism. It is taking place in a news group named "comp.mail.uucp." This discussion has nothing to do with "USENET" or "net news" except that some common tools associated with net news can be used to generate email messages, use addresses or routes obtained from news articles, and these computer generated routes inflame many people into committing what others call rudeness. Netnews is not mail via UUCP. Mail has nothing to do with the news flooding algorithm. ---- I must admit that the rewriting Mr. Lear's describes seems unlikely to cause much harm. The only harm obvious to me would be to those of us trying to figure out what is broken. For example, I have often sent mail messages to myself through distant and ciruitous routes. I have been inconvenienced by systems that presumed to know more about what I wanted than I did. Still, I oppose Mr. Lear's rerouting first because it would makes it harder for me to debug mail routes, and second because I doubt that most people will do it as well as he. Most people will do no better the that the unnamed wright at AT&T committed in /bin/mail. (Stock SVR3.2 /bin/mail presumes to reroute, based purely on text comparisons. For that matter, 4.[23] BSD Mail likes to trash complicated and apparently redundant routes.) Rerouting violates my esthetic of keeping things stupidly simple more than silly routes violate my dislike for giving Mother Bell money. Vernon Schryver vjs@sgi.com