Xref: utzoo news.admin:14897 news.software.b:8112
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <244y314w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 3 Jun 91 16:10:24 GMT
References: <1991May31.145603.10105@sceard.Sceard.COM>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 52

mrm@sceard.Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy) writes:
> mathew, this is the way you do it.
> 
>   0) You decide you want to use USENET.
>   1) You install News software.
[...and so on...]
>   5) You repeat 4) until you are satisfied that your postings are not pond
>      scum
[...]
>  11) If you want to know how far you get, post to misc.test with an unlimited
>      distribution. You are allowed to do this with reasonable frequency to
>      see if your software and your connectivity are unimpaired. If something
>      changes, such that you are dissatisfied, repeat 10) as though your
>      software had changed.

As I have mentioned several times, I did all of this. The software I was
using was perfectly OK according to every test I was able to do from here. I
didn't get any error reports, I didn't notice anything untoward. Postings to
misc.test using the 'bad' software worked -- I got responses.

I therefore assumed everything was OK -- until suddenly our feed site changed
to the latest C News, and I got a mail message from the administrator there
saying "Oh, all your postings from <blah> are being dropped, here are the log
entries". Since this was at least a number of weeks after the changes to C
News were released, I am forced to assume that for those weeks all my
articles were being dropped by all the sites running the latest C News, and
therefore not being propogated properly.

I'll admit that I didn't initially spend much time studying the headers
produced by the software I was using. I didn't spend hours checking the
syntax with that in the RFCs. Who does?  Yes, initially I overlooked the
difference between "Wed, 19 Oct 91" and "Wed 19 Oct 91". Should that be a
capital offense?

Later, when I began to suspect that things were amiss, I asked politely in
news.software.b how C News treated bad date headers. Nobody even bothered to
reply. Then, as I say, I got some mail saying that all my articles had been
dropped for the past few months.

>  14) For still more response, irritate someone with an impaired restraint gla
>      so that they'll forge a sendsys that points to you.

It has been pointed out before, but I'll point it out again just in case:  In
order to overload this site, you would have to send a sufficiently large
quantity of junk that you would certainly overload ibmpcug, and probably
overload UKC -- hence screwing up Usenet access for much of the UK. Such
net.terrorism would, I feel, be inadvisable.


mathew