From: Kai Henningsen (kaih@khms.westfalen.de)
Date: Sun Jul 01 2001 - 07:31:00 CDT
dennis.scp@multiweb.nl (Dennis SCP) wrote on 06.06.01 in <1eulca0.dsv2iz1j1qrqtM%dennis.scp@multiweb.nl>:
> It would post a search request (usually a messageID of an article of
> which I don't have the body) and any other user of the same software
> would automatically search their offline article database and Usenet
> server and email or post it to me. I would then Cancel my search
> article.
Uh-oh.
The last time something like that was even remotely feasible was *long*
before the web.
There's a reason sendsys and similar control messages are obsolete.
We had An Incident(tm) in Germany with sendsys, causing all Internet mail
connectivity of Germany to go down over the weekend (all three MX servers:
two in Germany, one in the Netherlands), sometime in the eighties - more
than twenty years ago. That incident caused practically all major
newsservers in Germany to specifically block that type of control message.
It's known (among us oldtimers) as the "Sendsys-GAU", using the common
term for the worst-case accident used with nuclear power.
MfG Kai