Xref: utzoo news.admin:14447 news.software.b:7808 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!zardoz.club.cc.cmu.edu!cactus From: cactus@zardoz.club.cc.cmu.edu (Todd Masco) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <1991May19.022219.18956@cs.cmu.edu> Date: 19 May 91 02:22:19 GMT References: <5ukZ24w164w@mantis.co.uk> <1991May17.170033.17759@dsuvax.uucp> Sender: netnews@cs.cmu.edu (USENET News Group Software) Organization: Physics Department, Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 31 In article ben@wri.com (Ben Cox) writes: >This is the lazy man's answer. Given sufficient effort, one could probably >write a shell script that would fix a Date: header. Oh? What would you do with a header, Date: 910201 Is it January 2nd or February 1st? Okay, you're going to have to 1) Fudge some things arbitrarily, or 2) Drop some badly formed articles and keep others. I'm not going to touch rewriting headers into a form that may be wrong (IE, Jan 2 becomes Feb 1). I consider that alternative unacceptable. As has been said by othes, there's a reason behind RFCs. Better to drop everything that doesn't conform to the standard -- otherwise, some people will have some articles that mysteriously drop while others posted by the same person will die. "My articles were working," the user will whine to the admins. "What changed?" The admins in at least one case would probably scratch their heads for a few hours and then give up. The standard is almost useless if it isn't conformed to by everybody. Dropping all non-conforming articles makes it perfectly clear what the problem is -- the RFCs aren't being followed. -- Todd L. Masco - CMU Physics | "Your god has gone and from now on, you'll cactus@zardoz.club.cc.cmu.edu | have to learn to hate the things you fear.