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From: darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <1991Jun1.152224.1293@druid.uucp>
Organization: D'Arcy Cain Consulting, West Hill, Ontario
References: <10674@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991May31.002356.10376@druid.uucp> <10739@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 91 15:22:24 GMT

In article <10739@castle.ed.ac.uk> aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley) writes:
>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.
Nope.  Just that a workable solution hasn't been found yet and that there
is no compelling reason for C News to take half measures just because
there are people who want to write news posting software without reading
the relevant specifications.

>                                                        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.

You say no one has commented on Kent's suggestion?  Maybe you mean Henry
hasn't accepted his suggestion uncritically.  He did, however, respond in
<1991May29.223011.25730@zoo.toronto.edu>
>In article <1991May29.180201.5365@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>>Instead of mailing a warning back each time an
>>article is dropped, each site should roll a random
>>number generator, with a small chance of mailing a
>>warning, and a large chance of dropping the article
>>silently.
>
>How do you set the odds?  Remember, news software sticks around for a long
>time and is often maintained by relatively naive people.  You can't count
>on having the probability changed when appropriate.  Especially given your
>desire to have the probability different for each incoming path, this is
>not a trivial problem.

There were also other comments and followups to this thread such as this one
from Phillip Evans in <1991May30.030612.8395@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca>:
>In article <1991May29.223011.25730@zoo.toronto.edu>
>  henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> [ above message repeated ]
>Have the authors of the news software send some kind of control message
>with the desired value.  They will no doubt be attuned to the volume of
>bad posts and responses.  

Then Neil Rickert made a suggestion in <1991May31.060933.27374@mp.cs.niu.edu>
further in this thread following up another message which stemmed from Kent's
original suggestion.  In response to this Henry had this to say in
message <1991May31.162219.21079@zoo.toronto.edu>:
>Various ideas along these lines have been proposed recently.  It would
>certainly be better than mailing a response.  Doing it as a control message
>would be the obvious method, but unfortunately some of the major gatewaying
>packages do not propagate control messages.  (And no, gatewaying is not a
>trivial issue.  There is a *lot* of it, and it accounts for a significant
>fraction of the total traffic.  It also probably accounts for a lot of
>the ill-formed articles.)  I'm not yet happy with any of the schemes, but
>it seems a promising direction.

So exactly what do you mean by "no-one has commented on Kent Paul Dolan's
suggestion?"  Do you mean that Henry and Geoff, after years of planning
and studying the news transport system, including the RFCs, coding,
testing and discussions in various forums did not immediately implement
Kent's idea into the next patch?  Do you mean that the comments were not
to your liking?  You certainly can't mean that absolutely no one has posted
any sort of response to Kent's suggestion even if that is exactly what you
said.

All the evidence that I have seen points to the fact that Henry and Geoff
are putting out well thought out, well designed software and that they
are willing to consider any new ideas if those presenting them have made
at least some effort to investigate the effects of their ideas.  They
seem to be willing to engage in dialogue.  They don't seem to be overly
impressed by whining and foot stomping and I would be surprised if they
considered someone changing their name to "CNEWS MUST DIE" to be an
example of reasoned and logical debate.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)     |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting             |   There's no government
Toronto, Ontario, Canada           |   like no government!
+1 416 424 2871                    |