From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Jul 21 2004 - 11:53:14 CDT
In <40FC551D.6F83@xyzzy.claranet.de> Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> it isn't just you and your server. This misfeature is
>> performed by an injecting agent, and causes it to issue a
>> _genuine_ control message which is then seen by the rest of
>> Usenet, who have no way of knowing that it originated as
>> "just a 'cmsg' hack".
>That's exactly what I want if I send an article with e.g.
>Subject: cmsg cancel <40FBED16.3436@xyzzy.claranet.de>
Now that is absolutely HORRIBLE!
The one thing that injecting agents absolutely MUST NOT do is to alter
articles submitted by the user in any substantive manner, and especially
in a manner that will have side effects all over Usenet.
>Fowarding it as is won't work, because then some old servers
>will follow RfC 1036, new servers will treat it as ordinary
>article, and maybe a 3rd group refuses to forward it at all.
So? If a user tries to use some feature that has been declared obsolete,
he has only himself to blame if it is only effective at a few sites that
still adhere to the old ways. Particularly as that is already the current
situation even if our draft says nothing.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5