Xref: utzoo news.admin:14814 news.software.b:8076 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall.com!tp From: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <1991May31.101334@mccall.com> Date: 31 May 91 15:13:34 GMT References: <3752@ksr.com> <10623@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991May29.221015.1865@druid.uucp> Reply-To: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 65 In article <1991May29.221015.1865@druid.uucp>, darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes: >that it conforms to the relevant specifications. No one on the "CNEWS >IS RIGHT" side suggests otherwise. It's the "CNEWS MUST BE WHINED AT >AND DIE" group that thinks that the posting software can slough that >stuff onto software running 6 or 7 hops away. How about the "WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL US IN ADVANCE" group? Answers to that one that I've seen (all paraphrased), and my responses: 1) Because we didn't have time. This patch had to go out in such a hurry? 2) Nobody would fix the software anyway until we dropped articles Pure BS. I know I would have. I suspect the author of dxrn would have. Unfortunately, he was gone so I had to, and in a big hurry, causing me to screw up twice trying to get it out the door. 3) Who cares about the rest of the world as long as C news works. This seems to be the majority opinion (though not that of the more responsible people, who fall into groups 1 and 2). 4) We could have done a better job, we're sorry, and will try to avoid similar debacles in the future. OOPS! What was I thinking? That response has been totally absent. I must have dreamed it. >That's like arguing >that print spoolers should correct spelling because users make >spelling mistakes. How about arguing that before you switch the printer from ASCII to EBCDIC, you should tell the users that will be trying to print things. >So, the $64K question: Who or what should take responsibility for >the correctness of news headers? > A) The novice poster that probably hasn't even heard of an RFC. > B) The software that injects the message into the net. > C) The software that transports the message around the world. > >CNews suggests that the right answer is B. It's detractors claim that >C is right but they seem to argue that the only other alternative is A. The right answer is B. The software is correct. The transition was severly bungled. This is a human issue, not a software issue. C news switched from the de facto standard (B news Date: header processing) to the de jure standard (RFC822 date header processing) without sufficient warning to the non-C news community. (The suggestion that everyone should read news.software.b because so much of the net uses B and C news is utterly ridiculous.) I fully agree that RFC822 processing is correct and desirable. If the next release of nntp required message-id's and dates as I've been told the nntp spec requires, thus breaking most unix news readers, and this were done with little or no advance warning, there would be massive bitching. In my opinion, this would be justified. It seems the reaction of the "C news is holy" camp would probably be one of the first 3 above. -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!deimos!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA