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From: jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.bugs
Subject: Re: Expiration Dates On Articles
Message-ID: <307@epimass.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Jul-86 20:24:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: epimass.307
Posted: Thu Jul 10 20:24:22 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jul-86 22:13:32 EDT
References: <629@codas.ATT.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Distribution: net
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 47
Xref: linus net.news:4230 net.bugs:757

In article <629@codas.ATT.UUCP> mikel@codas.ATT.UUCP (Mikel Manitius) writes:
>I was recently approched by the administrator of a neighboring site, and
>asked why the command "find /usr/spool/news -mtime +X -print" (where X
>was some number larger than the number of days given to expire) will find
>articles. The answer was obvious, pre-set expiration dates. However our
>curriosity had us look up such articles. We found articles that won't
>expire UNTIL THE TURN OF THE CENTURY! ...Below is a list of six ...

grep '<id>' ~news/history will find them, so let's see...

>article id		    date posted			expiration date

><316@phred.UUCP>	     1 May 86 04:38:28 GMT	31 Dec 99 06:00:00 GMT

In this article, Jeffe Parke asks for a vt200 termcap.  I wonder for
how many years he'll continue to get answers.  It's such a
self-defeating thing to do that maybe someone forged the article to
abuse him.

><279@ubu.warwick.UUCP>	    10 May 86 18:51:09 GMT	 1 Aug 86 00:00:00 GMT

This article announces a faculty position available in the fall.  I
guess this isn't so bad, but people getting free advertising should
be satisfied with two weeks worth.

><4933EV9@PSUVMA>	    15 Apr 86 05:15:30 GMT	 6 Oct 86 07:00:00 GMT
><302@phred.UUCP>	    17 Apr 86 09:51:56 GMT	31 Dec 99 08:00:00 GMT
><218@phred.UUCP>	    17 Mar 86 17:50:41 GMT	31 Dec 99 08:00:00 GMT

I don't have these articles around anymore, because of a disk
problem; I don't do daily or weekly backups of news.

><132@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>   7 May 86 12:38:30 GMT	21 Dec 99 02:00:00 GMT

A semi-flame about keyboard design for left-handers.  This guy'll give us
lefties a bad name.

>(Yes, I *do* know about "-I" on expire, that's not the point).

Exactly.  There are good reasons to make an article stay around
longer (like the index to the mod.sources archive, for example).
On the other hand, six questionable Expires: lines in several
months is hardly major abuse ... maybe alerting people who didn't
know about Expires: does more harm than good.
-- 
- Joe Buck 	{ihnp4!pesnta,oliveb,csi}!epimass!jbuck
  Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California