Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bpa!asi!metro
From: metro@asi.UUCP (Metro T. Sauper)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: brentp@microsoft
Message-ID: <387@asi.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 88 00:20:05 GMT
References: <16262@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Organization: Assessment Systems, Inc., Philadelphia, PA
Lines: 21

From article <16262@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, by len@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Len Rose):
> Did anyone else notice over 900 misc.test messages from microsoft?
> All with the same message ID,author and header..

YES!!!!! From what I have tracked down, there seems to be two bugs at work,
perhaps inciting each other.  The first, is someone somwhere positing over
and over the same article.  The second is a bug in the news software for
sites which do not use the DBM database option.  The format of the alternate
history file uses tabs "\t" to delimit the fields in the file.  If you noticed,
the three articles from microsoft (one in each of misc.test, rec.games.hack,
and sci.space.shuttle) each have a tab in the message ID.  Thus when the news
software goes to the history file to see if the current article has already
been read in, it stops at the first tab found to get each message id in the 
history.  Once the offending message ID has been added, only a partial id
is ever retrieved allows the same messageID to be added again if it is
transmitted again (which it was in this case, apparently many many times).

-- 
Metro T. Sauper, Jr.                              Assessment Systems, Inc.
Director, Remote Systems Development              210 South Fourth Street
(215) 592-8900                 ..!asi!metro       Philadelphia, PA 19106