Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews "dropped article" quasi-problem
Message-ID: <1991Jun7.155931.8771@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1991 15:59:31 GMT
References: <1991Jun4.161440.4161@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca> <11663@mirsa.inria.fr> <1991Jun7.125001.7519@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Jun7.125001.7519@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca> davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>	4) iff the header is required, insert a syntactically correct
>		but possibly semantically incorrect replacement.

Herein lies a serious problem, alas.  Depending on the nature of the
defective header, step (4) can do anything from recirculating ancient
news with brand-new dates on it (so the date filters are not effective
in catching it) to turning hopelessly mangled articles into superficially
legal ones that duplicate existing articles but have different message IDs.
The net regularly sees bursts of trash when some overambitious gateway
starts sticking new message IDs on articles.

Header rewriting is evil, Zmailer notwithstanding.
-- 
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry