Xref: utzoo news.admin:14615 news.software.b:7943 Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <1991May24.163328.28374@zoo.toronto.edu> Date: Fri, 24 May 1991 16:33:28 GMT References: <1991May21.190510.15062@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology In article mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >> No, that it's a problem that is very difficult to solve, and that the >> naive solutions which people constantly propose have unacceptably nasty >> side effects. > >I see. And having hours of my time wasted by your software is not an >"unacceptably nasty side effect"? It's regrettable, but not in the same league. >> Our overwhelming experience is that nobody bothers until we start throwing >> away articles. > >What experience is this? When did you try mailing out warnings to sites >producing bad headers? Or are you just pontificating? Ever looked at the statistics on who runs what? There are still sites out there running versions of news so old they creak, versions which are known to have nasty bugs in them. On a lesser scale, it's not uncommon for us to get problem reports that we recognize as caused by things we fixed many months ago. The inertia in the net's software is enormous; this is a long-established fact. (And yes, as a matter of fact we did try some mailings before releasing the March patches. They had *some* effect.) -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry