Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!mips!sdd.hp.com!caen!stealth
From: stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: CNEWS MUST DIE!
Message-ID: <1991May23.144018.1986@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 23 May 91 14:40:18 GMT
References: <1991May20.215138.12821@solbourne.com> <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Lines: 38

In article <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk
	(CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes:
>kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski) writes:
>
>People make mistakes. People edit news headers. Therefore there will always
>be news headers which contain errors.

I think we're mostly talking about software that reliably and consistantly
generates bad headers, not people editing headers and putting in dates
like 91/2/5.

>> It kind of strikes me as the whole war that some Mac developers have waged in
>> the past.  Yes, they'll do really nifty things on the Mac but they'll do thin
>> that _Inside Macintosh_ told them not to do, and when a new System comes out
>> and their app breaks, they're surprised.
>
>But at least they get told about it.
>
>I'm not asking to be allowed to continue sending out bad headers. I'm asking
>to be told when I do send out bad headers, so that I can fix the problem (if
>it is a problem). I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that
>the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the headers
>which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there is
>not a mistake.

Okay, everyone, let's all send Matthew ten mail messages each, telling him
that his headers are wrong.  That should be good to fill his mail partition
and bring the trans-atlantic and other network links to a reasonable semblance
of a standstill.  Matthew, why don't you see that there's no practical way
for software to warn the source of bad headers that their software is messed
up?  If software corrects correctable errors, when are the errors ever going
to stop being generated?

-- 
Mike Pelletier             | "Wind & waves are breakdowns in the commitment of
The University of Michigan |  getting from here to there, but they are the con-
  College of Engineering   |  ditions for sailing.  Not something to eliminate,
Student/Systems Admin      |  but something to dance with."