Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!smsc.sony.com!dce
From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Dynamic "smart" expiration?
Message-ID: <1989Dec30.212935.1570@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 30 Dec 89 21:29:35 GMT
References: <1989Dec27.033817.9953@smsc.sony.com> <1989Dec28.063932.13720@robohack.UUCP> <68634@looking.on.ca> <1989Dec29.213539.2801@utzoo.uucp> <6118@yunexus.UUCP>
Reply-To: dce@Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 30

In article <6118@yunexus.UUCP> davecb@yunexus.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>	2) provide a simple rule to its client base: for example, "you must
>	   read category c in one week, category s in 5 days and the rest
>	   daily, or you will miss material".
...
>      4) articles in groups which are being read locally shall be kept for
>	a period known to the readership, shall disappear soon after that 
>	time and are in general unrecoverable after they disappear. [1+y]

I agree with most of David's points, but I think that "will" and "shall"
in the above should be softened by adding "probably".

That is, people should know that news will be around for no less than
the given expiry date, and it might be around after, but should not be
counted on.  This is intimated in the statement "general[ly]
unrecoverable".

One thing I wonder about is the mechanism to use for grabbing the
subscriber info.  You can't rely on .newsrc being used or being
available. On our network, for example, people read news using NFS, and
they may not even have accounts on the main news machine (they only
need it to post).  Of course, we also have people who don't like the
idea of being in a network, so they read news on the main news
machine.  In other words, I don't even have a good set of rules to
follow.
-- 
David Elliott
dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce
(408)944-4073
"But Pee Wee... I don't wanna be the baby!"