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From: aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <10739@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 31 May 91 20:34:58 GMT
References: <1991May29.221015.1865@druid.uucp> <10674@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991May31.002356.10376@druid.uucp>
Organization: Put your analyst on danger money, baby!
Lines: 44

In article <1991May31.002356.10376@druid.uucp> darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) writes:
|   3 - The transport software should move news through a variety
|       of networks.  To do this efficiently it should act on
|       a well defined set of rules.  Messages that fail to
|       conform to these rules should not be passed.
|

|So if you agree with #1 and #2 and disagree with #3, on what
|basis do you do so?  Remember that the user is protected by
|the posting software so buttinsky transport software is only
|protecting bad posting software.  I happen to believe that
|if you are writing software that injects news into the news
|system than the onus is on you to follow the standards and
|not to expect Henry and Geoff to conform to yours.

For what I think is the third time for me, and more if you count
Mathew's contributions, there is no question where the "onus" lies - it
is, clearly, with the posting software.  No-one is asking Cnews to
conform to standards I just made up.

However, it still seems to me a necessary feature of quality software to
behave sensibly given erronous input.  I don't know what you mean by
"protecting" bad software, since I still think that spiteful software is
a bad idea.

|I'll buy that.  However I suspect we disagree on what the sensible
|thing for transport software to do is.  You seem to think it should
|start a flood of reports back to the originator.  I think that Cnews
|does the sensible thing and drops them.

There are two arguments here: one, is it desirable for Cnews to behave
nicely given non-compliant articles to transport, and two, is it
possible.  Here you're arguing that it's not possible.  I note that
no-one has commented on Kent Paul Dolan's suggestion, and conclude that
no-one really cares whether it's possible or not since it's not
desirable. 

(By behave nicely, I mean making some attempt to either ignore, fix, or
report errors.)
                                         ____
\/ o\ Paul Crowley aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk \  /
/\__/ Part straight. Part gay. All queer. \/
"I say we kill him and eat his brain."
"That's not the solution to _every_ problem, you know!" -- Rudy Rucker