Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mcgill-vision!mouse
From: mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Message-IDs: how they're built
Message-ID: <1030@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 88 07:13:52 GMT
References: <1861@epimass.EPI.COM> <14276@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <586@nusdhub.UUCP> <8569@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Organization: McGill University, Montreal
Lines: 23

In article <8569@eddie.MIT.EDU>, wisner@eddie.MIT.EDU (Bill Wisner) writes:
> der Mouse say:
>> 1988Jan23.202318.22868
>>	[guesses at origin of the pieces, guessing date.time.PID]
> Probably.  Using PID like that isn't really a safe way to generate
> unique message IDs; I've known some systems to be active enough that
> they cycle through the entire thirty-thousand process limit in a day.

So have I; I think it's happened to the one I'm typing to right now,
for instance.  Small worry, though; to break the above, it'd have cycle
through thirty thousand processes in one second (because of the time).
Perhaps some machine exists which could do this, but I tend to doubt
it.  (Even more do I doubt that it would happen except deliberately.)

Hey!  You left out the most interesting one - the stuff from
andrew.cmu.edu!  What's that?  (And are they under the impression that
Message-IDs are case-sensitive?  Sure looks like it.  Wonder what it'd
take for them to generate two Message-IDs that differ only in case, and
get a nasty surprise?)

					der Mouse

			uucp: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp
			arpa: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu