Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: The TRUTH about .UUCP Message-ID: <1718@peora.UUCP> Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 08:31:20 EDT Article-I.D.: peora.1718 Posted: Thu Oct 10 08:31:20 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 17:01:09 EDT References: <593@down.FUN> <10476@ucbvax.ARPA> <12317@Glacier.ARPA> <10490@ucbvax.ARPA> <273@graffiti.UUCP> <899@plus5.UUCP> Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl. Lines: 54 > I still think hybrid routes *within the UUCP domain* (Hi jer!) Hi. How did I get involved in this discussion again? Now, I really am not going to spend more than 5 minutes on this, but: > The problem with this approach, Peter, is it *assumes* the first site of > the bang path is the next hop, while in actuality the @site on the end > might have been the neighbor who sent the mail along. The last part of your statement is the key to your interpretation, and to one of the big hidden-dichotomies (what did someone recently call that? a "domain-problem"? an overused word) in people's solutions to the mail routing. You said "might have been the neighbor who sent the mail along"... this is only a problem if you are trying to generate a reply from some badly-written "From" line, a "From" line that contains a route rather than an address. This is also the major origin of a lot of the arguments for some other problematic things, e.g., the tendency of ihnp4, etc. to cut off ("optimize") parts of the UUCP route given it... because it has to deal with things like replies generated by the Netnews software from the path the news took. These problems disappear if you write addresses in your RFC822 headers instead of putting UUCP paths in there. I stand by my original opinion, though, that rejecting "hybrid" routes as soon as they reach a site that is willing to do so is going to be a bad thing. It's already getting hard enough to deliver mail the past few weeks as it is. [At this point I could demonstrate how anybody mailing through ucbvax right now must be generating hybrid addresses, since when I tested a week ago they wouldn't take the all-! addresses, but instead I will stop. I don't want to get into these long essays again.] > Talk to Peter Honeyman about pathparse. This is sort of an AI solution, and human beings (if they are the prototype of AI, which some AI people claim they are not) make many mistakes unless they discipline their thinking well. This includes not being swayed by counter arguments to your own unless you can see they are valid; > It is always fascinating watching people follow the learning curve. I can > hear the laughter of the folks who watched me follow the same path. the path that the majority agree on is not always the best, since good solutions often come from a perspective external enough to get the "big picture", and not to be confused by popular superstition. -- Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: Ofc: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer Home: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jerpc!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642