Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!celit!billd
From: billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <18065@celit.fps.com>
Date: 29 May 91 00:45:46 GMT
References: <1991May20.204313.25340@decuac.dec.com> <17898@celit.fps.com> <57314277@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA
Lines: 29

In article <57314277@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>In my experience, 3/4 of the 'maxed out' sites in the world are doing at
>least one thing so STUPIDLY that they could free up giant chunks of
>capacity with a stroke, if only they knew what they were doing.

Sure, I know lots of way to make the system go faster.  Most involve
getting rid of things that other people who I have to share the
resource with cannot or will not do without.  The machine I run news on
is not strictly my machine or nor is it solely dedicated to news and
mail.  Personally, I highly appreciate any efforts to make news more
efficient.

>smart admin is managing a system at capacity, there is a tradeoff you
>can outline.  Is building a more error free network worth sacrificing X
>percent of your throughput every day?  If not, exactly WHY not?  If some
>rampaging news explosion that *could* have been prevented by additional
>"insurance" software -- at a 1% cost per day -- succeeds in knocking
>your cluster out for a weekday, was it worth it?  You can buy your way
>out of a capacity bind, but not (in general) a reliability bind.

I can buy all of this.  And yes, if speed sacrifices reliability by any
potentially significant amount, then it's not worth it.  However, I
think that's getting away from things a bit.  A big part of the reason
Cnews is tossing articles with bad headers is to keep from having a lot
of crap released onto the net (the other part being efficiency).  Bad
software, especialy that which generates bad "Date:" headers is a major
culprit in the "crap released onto the net" problem.

--Bill Davidson.