Xref: utzoo news.software.nntp:1371 news.software.b:8208 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!robobar!ronald From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b Subject: Re: NNTPD hates Message-IDs with TWO '@'s in them. Message-ID: <1991Jun10.202510.6405@robobar.co.uk> Date: 10 Jun 91 20:25:10 GMT References: <1991Jun9.232828.17956@europa.asd.contel.com> <5930@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> Followup-To: news.software.b Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND. Lines: 55 sob@tmc.edu (Stan Barber) writes: > One might argue that if Cnews throws away articles with bad dates, why doesn't > it throw away articles with bad Message-ids? It should. I'd hazard a guess that the reason it doesn't already do so is simply because Zmailer doesn't choke on two '@'s in a message-id. But that's a guess. If you can show that this particular violation of the RFC's breaks an existing installed software base, I would urge the C News maintainers to drop these too. And while I'm here, I'm going to mount my soapbox. .nntp readers can leave here. Followups are redirected to .software.b. In this current storm, mostly stirred by Sean "mathew" Murphy @ mantis.co.uk, people seem to have forgotten that all this article dropping isn't Henry's idea anyway. In fact, Henry's well on record for opposing the "guerilla tactics" of deliberately being cruel to force people to get their software up to scratch. I have to disagree with that point of view. The truth of the matter is that only squeaking wheels get fixed. Henry knows this, he's just too soft. (:-) At the end of the day, networking is about getting stuff implemented from all different directions to talk to each other. You can't do this without adhering to standards. While software should be lenient in accepting non-conformant rubbish, the other half of that maxim says that it must not let that stuff escape out. That's the "conservative in what you generate" half. Current C News software does this. The error reporting may not be all things to all men, but it's good enough. I don't really want to spend lots of cpu time picking up the the rubbish left behind by non-conformant software -- that would be ridiculous. Why should I suffer for their errors ? You can't network in a vacuum either. To those who complained about Henry's warnings being not sufficiently loud, I have only this to say: If you're maintaining or writing software that interoperates with B News, you're problems have only just started if you don't subscribe to news.software.b. This is (IMHO) the paramount reason for not splitting off news.software.c. Maintainers of systems, and implementers of the software need to know what each other are doing, hence both need to read news.software.b and news.admin. Both groups have a reasonably good signal to noise ratio if you put /@mantis.co.uk/h:j into your kill file. All the current furore serves to do is waste the precious time of Henry Spencer. Many of us are waiting for time when he can put down this C News project and go back to the things he's left behind -- like the superfast string library. I wish I could put that above-mentioned line into Henry's Kill file for him. Anyway, it's time for bed. flames > /dev/null please. -- Ronald Khoo +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)