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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: The TRUTH about .UUCP
Message-ID: <3194@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 01:48:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.3194
Posted: Mon Sep 30 01:48:16 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 03:27:11 EDT
References: <593@down.FUN> <10476@ucbvax.ARPA> <12317@Glacier.ARPA> <10490@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Distribution: net
Organization: Ninja Ewok Training Grounds
Lines: 63

In article <10490@ucbvax.ARPA> jordan@ucbvax.UUCP (Jordan Hayes) writes:
>
>In article <12317@Glacier.ARPA> reid@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes:
>>Honeyman is right. Most of his detractors are wrong. Most of them
>>completely miss the point. Luckily it doesn't matter because none of this
>>will ever work anyhow.
>
>Sorry, I don't agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but here is "THE POINT"
>that most of us "detractors" are missing.
>
>	1) Addresses should be global. Relative addressing leads
>	   to ambiguity and headache.
>
>	2) The current bang addressing scheme is old and has outlived
>	   its usefulness.
>
>	3) If something is not done, the structure of UUCP as we know
>	   it will fail to make the transition back into a useful
>	   network 

Well, I started this discussion (innocently enough) decades (was it only
weeks?) ago, and I'm both amused and dismayed that it is still going on.
The inability for the people who KNOW the situation to agree on anything
just shows the depth and severity of the problem.

As far as I can tell, Honeyman is right. Reid is right. Jordan is also
right. The only thing that doesn't seem to be right is the network, and
there doesn't seem to be a lot that can be done about it.

Problems:
    o size: .UUCP is too large to deal with as a single domain, as shown by
    the massive size of the maps. 

    o organization: .UUCP has too much anarchy to ever agree on how to
    split things up and get the world to complete it successfully. Even the
    people on the same side seem to be arguing about which side they're on.

    o anarchy: Even if the experts could agree on a single plan, implement
    it, put it in the public domain and publicize the hell out of it,
    significant portions of the net will simply ignore it and do what they
    want anyway, either by implementing their own cute hacks (a LOT more
    fun than installing someone elses) or by doing nothing and relying on
    bang format to get them through. This means that the 'smart' sites are
    either going to have to be backwards compatible or mung headers, or
    both. I still find unrequested header munging at an unknown site
    distasteful; I don't like the thought of a piece of software knowing
    better regardless of what I know and not being able to override.

I tend to think that if there was a 'real' solution that we'd have been
able to agree on it by now. Without the real solution, large kludgey hacks
that mostly work (mod.map, pathalias, 'smart' routers and distasteful
header munging) seems to be better than nothing at all, even if it breaks
things once in a while (ihnp4 decided that it wanted to route all nsc mail
through cbosgd recently, even though we no longer talk to cbosgd, resulting
in a fair amount of chaos for us...). I have a feeling that a lot of the
things that were advantages when USENET was smaller (anarchy, autonomy, and
the relative freedom to experiment and do your own things) has come back to
bite us in spades...
-- 
:From under the bar at Callahan's:   Chuq Von Rospach 
nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA               {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid}!nsc!chuqui

If you can't talk below a bellow, you can't talk...


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