| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
| Date: |
05 Dec 2007 02:04:16 PM |
| Object: |
Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article
sent from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news.
Is anybody using different news reading software having the
same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups"
header line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted
article, newsgroup names should be separated by commas and
nothing else. In Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup
names are now separated by a comma and a space, and this *breaks*
some standards-compliant software.
Google has lately been unable or unwilling to put a stop to abuse
originating from their site, such as the spectacularly abusive
sports shoe spammer who has been daily posting 2 or 3 dozen
ads at a time into each group he pollutes, for over 6 months.
Reported bugs in basic functions like searching go unfixed, but
they can pay programmers to insert purely cosmetic blanks into
their Newsgroups headers, making them non-compliant to standards
and breaking other people's standards-compliant software.
I can't tell whether they're having internal problems and people
who own stock should be selling it, or if they've just grown so
big that they can now say:
"We don't care. We don't have to care. We're Google Groups."
--
David Canzi | Eternal truths come and go. |
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 AM |
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On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
We have more bandwidth now so we should send less text? Maybe we should
limit Usenet *posts* to four lines...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
“We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only
in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory
that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
- H. L. Mencken
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 01:45:33 PM |
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In article <FIKdnebl86RVlsXanZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@giganews.com>,
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. ...
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
When I post, my reader lets me edit the entire article including
headers. I usually spot the defective Newsgroups header and
correct it before posting. So it's just an inconvenience, an
unnecessary inconvenience, an inconvenience imposed on us by
Google for entirely frivolous reasons...
News servers have been accepting these non-standard headers for a
very long time. I have no idea why, since I can't remember ever
having seen one of these defective headers before Google started
flooding USENET with them. Google's recent unresponsiveness
to abuse complaints and bug reports gives me no reason to hope
that they will undo this change. I don't think this is going
to be the last time Google changes something standard, making
it non-standard. I wish I could reconfigure our news server
to reject everything from Google, but I don't relish having a
hundred outraged users screaming for my head on a platter.
trn tries to "protect" the news server from these non-standard
headers by warning me and then letting me edit them. It looks
like I'm going to have to modify my copy of trn not to do that.
The trn source has more ifdefs than actual lines of code... yeccch.
Vernor Vinge must have seen the source code for trn before he wrote
"A Deepness in the Sky"
Maybe it's time to abandon trn and go looking for something else.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
We have more bandwidth now so we should send less text? Maybe we should
limit Usenet *posts* to four lines...
The 4-line rule has actually been around for a long time, maybe
as far back as UUCP days. It was probably a reaction to fools
posting one-line articles with 100-line signatures. If you've
just started noticing it lately, maybe you've switched from some
news reader that doesn't enforce it to one that does?
--
David Canzi | Eternal truths come and go. |
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 03:18:14 PM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:45:33 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
In article <FIKdnebl86RVlsXanZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@giganews.com>, Mark K.
Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is
anybody using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. ...
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
When I post, my reader lets me edit the entire article including
headers. I usually spot the defective Newsgroups header and correct it
before posting. So it's just an inconvenience, an unnecessary
inconvenience, an inconvenience imposed on us by Google for entirely
frivolous reasons...
You mean they had reasons at all? I thought maybe somebody slipped and
hit their head in the break room.
News servers have been accepting these non-standard headers for a very
long time. I have no idea why, since I can't remember ever having seen
one of these defective headers before Google started flooding USENET
with them. Google's recent unresponsiveness to abuse complaints and bug
reports gives me no reason to hope that they will undo this change. I
don't think this is going to be the last time Google changes something
standard, making it non-standard. I wish I could reconfigure our news
server to reject everything from Google, but I don't relish having a
hundred outraged users screaming for my head on a platter.
trn tries to "protect" the news server from these non-standard headers
by warning me and then letting me edit them. It looks like I'm going to
have to modify my copy of trn not to do that. The trn source has more
ifdefs than actual lines of code... yeccch.
Heh. Well, it's grandpa *was* Larry Wall.
Vernor Vinge must have seen the source code for trn before he wrote "A
Deepness in the Sky"
Maybe it's time to abandon trn and go looking for something else.
On what OS? Pan is decent in the *Nix world. I *think* they were porting
to Windorks but I'm loathe to accuse you of using Microsoft for fear of
getting you angry. <g>
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
We have more bandwidth now so we should send less text? Maybe we should
limit Usenet *posts* to four lines...
The 4-line rule has actually been around for a long time, maybe as far
back as UUCP days. It was probably a reaction to fools posting one-line
articles with 100-line signatures. If you've just started noticing it
lately, maybe you've switched from some news reader that doesn't enforce
it to one that does?
No, the McQuary limit was created in the '90s by a self-appointed
"warlord" who decided--by what mystical means we are not told--that 4 was
The Holy Number and charged off to spread the truth by flame war.
And then apparently left Usenet in 1995 (though I find about three posts
by him in a music group in 2004 but only).
We are now saddled with a minor net cop's "rule" without anything going
through Usefor or any other part of the IETF. Prior to His Warlordness
setting up shop, the *netiquette* was two or three lines with additional
one or two if needed (particularly for the days when people were on
multiple, disconnected networks). And it was a "should" kind of thing.
Back In The Day, when I thought 9600 baud was fast and I had an hourly
CompuServe connection (plus toll charges since the node was not local), I
would have had a fit over ASCII art sigs. So would just about everybody.
It's like watch what happens here when somebody posts HTML (which renders
in newsreaders as total gibberish, annoying the hell out of everybody).
Now even people stuck on dial-up are on "all you can eat" flat rates and
growing numbers of us are on broadband. My 1.5 meg is "pokey" by today's
standards and that's what a business used to pay out the ears for in a T1
line in the Bad Old Days.
So why are we enforcing by software a four line limit? How many
milliseconds are we trying to conserve between the four line and the five
line sig?
Hell, you want to talk bandwidth being wasted, more Internet traffic is
now *SPAM* than anything else. Our refusal to deal with the issue here in
the US is flooding the planet's entire Net infrastructure with dreck
that's actually causing overloads. Half or more of the globe's Net
bandwidth would be freed up if we in the US would decide to stop being
the world's spam haven...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing
it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
- H. L. Mencken
.
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 08:05:09 PM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:18:14 -0600, Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:45:33 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
trn tries to "protect" the news server from these non-standard headers
by warning me and then letting me edit them. It looks like I'm going
to have to modify my copy of trn not to do that. The trn source has
more ifdefs than actual lines of code... yeccch.
Heh. Well, it's grandpa *was* Larry Wall.
Vernor Vinge must have seen the source code for trn before he wrote "A
Deepness in the Sky"
Maybe it's time to abandon trn and go looking for something else.
On what OS? Pan is decent in the *Nix world. I *think* they were porting
to Windorks but I'm loathe to accuse you of using Microsoft for fear of
getting you angry. <g>
I'm running Linux, and now trying pan for the first time. It's to
be expected that I won't like it initially, given that I've been
using essentially the same newsreader for over 20 years...
The 4-line rule has actually been around for a long time, maybe as far
back as UUCP days. It was probably a reaction to fools posting
one-line articles with 100-line signatures. If you've just started
noticing it lately, maybe you've switched from some news reader that
doesn't enforce it to one that does?
No, the McQuary limit was created in the '90s by a self-appointed
"warlord" who decided--by what mystical means we are not told--that 4
was The Holy Number and charged off to spread the truth by flame war.
And then apparently left Usenet in 1995 (though I find about three posts
by him in a music group in 2004 but only).
We are now saddled with a minor net cop's "rule" without anything going
through Usefor or any other part of the IETF. Prior to His Warlordness
setting up shop, the *netiquette* was two or three lines with additional
one or two if needed (particularly for the days when people were on
multiple, disconnected networks). And it was a "should" kind of thing.
Back In The Day, when I thought 9600 baud was fast and I had an hourly
CompuServe connection (plus toll charges since the node was not local),
I would have had a fit over ASCII art sigs. So would just about
everybody. It's like watch what happens here when somebody posts HTML
(which renders in newsreaders as total gibberish, annoying the hell out
of everybody).
Now even people stuck on dial-up are on "all you can eat" flat rates and
growing numbers of us are on broadband. My 1.5 meg is "pokey" by today's
standards and that's what a business used to pay out the ears for in a
T1 line in the Bad Old Days.
So why are we enforcing by software a four line limit? How many
milliseconds are we trying to conserve between the four line and the
five line sig?
It probably seemed like a good idea to some people at the time, who
implemented it in their news readers, and now it remains because of
inertia.
Hell, you want to talk bandwidth being wasted, more Internet traffic is
now *SPAM* than anything else. Our refusal to deal with the issue here
in the US is flooding the planet's entire Net infrastructure with dreck
that's actually causing overloads. Half or more of the globe's Net
bandwidth would be freed up if we in the US would decide to stop being
the world's spam haven...
The problem is not so much lax laws in the US, as the insecure software
running on tens of millions of people's computers -- and between their
ears -- allowing Black Hat hackers to build enormous botnets and flood
the internet with pump and dump spam. Botnetting and pump & dump are
flagrantly and unambiguously illegal, even in the US.
.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
07 Dec 2007 06:00:02 PM |
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On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:05:09 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
<snipping for space, attributions may be screwed>
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:18:14 -0600, Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:45:33 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
I'm running Linux, and now trying pan for the first time. It's to be
expected that I won't like it initially, given that I've been using
essentially the same newsreader for over 20 years...
That'll do it. Pan has its annoyances but, overall, I think they did a
good job.
And having used it since its beginning, I'm still using it on the Mac via
MacPorts. Same thing, I don't like any other reader since I've been using
pan for so long. <g>
So why are we enforcing by software a four line limit? How many
milliseconds are we trying to conserve between the four line and the
five line sig?
It probably seemed like a good idea to some people at the time, who
implemented it in their news readers, and now it remains because of
inertia.
What hacks me is that the hard *4* line rule has no basis other than a
self-appointed net cop/flame warlord type. Nobody does their homework
anymore. The opinion of a single person does not a standard make.
Hell, you want to talk bandwidth being wasted, more Internet traffic is
now *SPAM* than anything else. Our refusal to deal with the issue here
in the US is flooding the planet's entire Net infrastructure with dreck
that's actually causing overloads. Half or more of the globe's Net
bandwidth would be freed up if we in the US would decide to stop being
the world's spam haven...
The problem is not so much lax laws in the US, as the insecure software
running on tens of millions of people's computers -- and between their
ears -- allowing Black Hat hackers to build enormous botnets and flood
the internet with pump and dump spam. Botnetting and pump & dump are
flagrantly and unambiguously illegal, even in the US.
Oh I think the defect is the law.
Take a look at the Do Not Call list. A violator, no matter how many
intermediaries used, is fined. Nobody would consider the argument:
"But the phone calls were made from India so you can't fine me!"
To have the least bit of validity.
But when it comes to the Internet, you see all kinds of hand waving about
"off shore servers" and such. I don't flying flip where the server is,
somebody hired the spammer.
Somewhere along the line, somebody has to have their hand out, expecting
money. There *has* to be a point of contact or you couldn't give them
money.
FINE THAT PERSON.
What they're doing is they're hiring spammers then throwing up their
hands and saying, "I wasn't responsible!" I mean, it's not even a
complicated, convoluted, complex scheme, it's a simple *lie*. Spammers do
not up and advertise your product because they think it's pretty.
Somebody hires them.
That's all we'd have to do to shut down the bulk of the spamming. Fine
the company whose product is advertised. They'll stop hiring spammers and
the "market" will dry up.
It worked for the Do Not Call list. The corporations whose products were
being hawked were slapped with $11,000 per call no matter who they used
to actually *make* the phone call. They stopped calling.
Yeah, it won't work for the overseas scams. But the US is the primary
source for spam on Earth. So we only get 80% of the spam stopped? I'll
take it!
Further, we know where the spammers are. We know their names, their
addresses, have their pictures. These are not "underground" operations.
One was about forty miles from where I lived in Louisiana. They knew
*exactly* who it was and where he was.
Such as take a look here:
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso
200 operations responsible for 80% of Earth's spam. And we know who they
are and where they are. And most are right here.
It would take us, what, an afternoon to eliminate half the planet's spam?
And I do so love the argument that they'll just "move overseas". Yeah,
riiiight. These are lazy bastards who are looking for the quick buck.
They're going to relocate to Bejing? Sure they are.
They're not going anywhere.
Personally, I'm against criminal sanctions. They've actually thrown some
spammers in jail and though I'm not the *least* bit sympathetic, I think
this is a civil matter. Bankrupt them with fines, sure. But jail? For
spam?
We criminalize too much in this country.
But, primarily, we need to fine the company advertising their product via
spam. The spammers won't have any clients if the companies are being
fined for hiring them.
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.
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| User: "Andrew Haley" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 12:06:39 PM |
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Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less?
That rule has been around for a long time, and dates back to at least
1987:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/posting-rules/part1/
<< If you have a standard signature you like to append to your
articles, and you are running a form of news software that supports
automatic inclusion of a signature file, it is usually enabled by
putting it in a file called .signature in your home directory. The
posting software you use should automatically append it to your
article. Please keep your signatures concise, as people do not
appreciate seeing lengthy signatures, nor paying the phone bills to
repeatedly transmit them. 2 or 3 lines are usually plenty. Sometimes
it is also appropriate to add another line or two for addresses on
other major networks where you can be reached (e.g., CompuServ,
Bitnet). Long signatures are definitely frowned upon. DO NOT include
drawings, pictures, maps, or other graphics in your signature -- it is
not the appropriate place for such material and is viewed as rude by
other readers. >>
Long sigs have been around Usenet since long before it was publicly
accessible.
Yeah, and they have been against the rules for all that time.
Andrew.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 02:48:54 PM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:06:39 +0000, Andrew Haley wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less?
That rule has been around for a long time, and dates back to at least
1987:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/posting-rules/part1/
When bandwidth was tiny and everybody was paying for every byte.
And, no, the McQuary limit came along later. The FAQ you quote says:
Please keep your
signatures concise, as people do not appreciate seeing lengthy
signatures, nor paying the phone bills to repeatedly transmit them. 2
or 3 lines are usually plenty. Sometimes it is also appropriate to add
another line or two for addresses on other major networks where you can
be reached (e.g., CompuServ, Bitnet).
As a guideline that, you'll notice, ends up being a recommendation for 2
to 5 lines (2 or 3 plus "another line or two").
The 4 line, McQuary limit was created by a self-appointed net cop who
founded or was seriously active in alt.fan.warlord which, by the way, is
a dead newsgroup.
Long sigs have been around Usenet since long before it was publicly
accessible.
Yeah, and they have been against the rules for all that time.
There's no such "rule". Never has been. Not even the McQuary limit is a
"rule". The closest to a "rule" is the FAQ you quoted which suggests
guidelines.
I find it irritating that the McQuary limit has been taken on as some
hard and fast "rule" when the very reasons for it existing are *GONE*. We
don't pay for every byte we squeeze down a 300 baud line. Even people on
dial-up are on "all you can eat" flat rate and have been for years.
I'm tired of my newsreader bitching at me because I have some longish
quotes. We're talking less than 4KB of text (that's the smallest chunk
possible on my system). And I'm on a 1.5 meg connection which, by today's
standards, is *slow*. In one of my other (becoming) regular ngs, I saw a
post from a guy complaining he had to open multiple connections to his
Usenet provider to get to 5 meg in download speed. This was disappointing
to him.
(Oh to be disappointed by topping out at 5 meg downstream)
The great irony being that it was *not* a widely enforced convention when
every bit count. Now that T1 speeds are "pokey", everybody's jumped on a
bandwagon created by a guy who apparently left 12 years ago!
(I find about three posts in 2004 from a Yahoo account under the name
George F. McQuary. Beyond that, his posting ends in 1995 according to the
Googlely).
Also, lest we forget, the McQuary limit also states that a sig should
contain no lines greater than 80 characters in width because those folks
reading Usenet on a dumb terminal hooked up to a mainframe will have
trouble.
Gosh, let's be sure to conform to dumb terminal specifications in *all*
our Internet traffic. Just in case!
Finally, the FAQ you're citing did not come from Usefor and the IETF.
It's descriptive, not prescriptive. The closest thing we have to "rules"
in the Internet are RFCs and that ain't one...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
Let me get this straight: You believe that a cosmic Jewish
zombie who was his own father will let you live forever
if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood, and
telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master,
so he can remove an evil force from your soul that he put
there a long time ago as punishment for all humanity because
a rib-woman made from a dust-man was convinced by a talking
snake to eat fruit from a magical tree.
- Unknown
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| User: "Andrew Haley" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
03 Jan 2008 07:45:23 AM |
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Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:06:39 +0000, Andrew Haley wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less?
That rule has been around for a long time, and dates back to at least
1987:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/posting-rules/part1/
When bandwidth was tiny and everybody was paying for every byte.
And, no, the McQuary limit came along later. The FAQ you quote says:
Please keep your
signatures concise, as people do not appreciate seeing lengthy
signatures, nor paying the phone bills to repeatedly transmit them. 2
or 3 lines are usually plenty. Sometimes it is also appropriate to add
another line or two for addresses on other major networks where you can
be reached (e.g., CompuServ, Bitnet).
As a guideline that, you'll notice, ends up being a recommendation for 2
to 5 lines (2 or 3 plus "another line or two").
Well, you seemed to be saying that the rule was invalid because it was
new, and now you're saying it's invalid because it is old and
quibbling about whether the limit is 4 or 5 lines.
The 4 line, McQuary limit was created by a self-appointed net cop
who founded or was seriously active in alt.fan.warlord which, by the
way, is a dead newsgroup.
Long sigs have been around Usenet since long before it was publicly
accessible.
Yeah, and they have been against the rules for all that time.
There's no such "rule".
Dammit, I even pointed you to the rule, and you're still denying it
exists!
Never has been. Not even the McQuary limit is a "rule". The closest
to a "rule" is the FAQ you quoted which suggests guidelines.
Oh, come on. Which part of "Rules for posting to Usenet. This
message describes some of the rules of conduct on Usenet." do you not
understand?
You asked the question "Who the hell..." so I told you the answer.
Also, lest we forget, the McQuary limit also states that a sig
should contain no lines greater than 80 characters in width because
those folks reading Usenet on a dumb terminal hooked up to a
mainframe will have trouble.
Or even a standard size window.
Gosh, let's be sure to conform to dumb terminal specifications in *all*
our Internet traffic. Just in case!
Finally, the FAQ you're citing did not come from Usefor and the IETF.
It's descriptive, not prescriptive. The closest thing we have to "rules"
in the Internet are RFCs and that ain't one...
USENET is not the Internet. The Rules are the rules for USENET, and
have always been. Your post is basically a cross between "the rules
don't apply to me" and "the rules dont apply any more", which is what
every net.kook believes too.
Nobody can force you to obey the rules, sadly. But don't complain
when the rules are pointed out to you -- especially when you *asked*.
Andrew.
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
03 Jan 2008 12:29:10 PM |
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In article <13nppnj6t23hrc9@news.supernews.com>,
Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
The 4 line, McQuary limit was created by a self-appointed net cop
who founded or was seriously active in alt.fan.warlord which, by the
way, is a dead newsgroup.
For some reason Mark Bilbo's article is not present on UW's
news server, rumours.uwaterloo.ca.
The four-line limit existed in early 1987 and was being enforced
by at least some news software.
http://groups.google.com/group/news.software.b/msg/06194fb2b9d35e6a
--
David Canzi | Eternal truths come and go. |
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
04 Jan 2008 10:17:18 AM |
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On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:29:10 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
In article <13nppnj6t23hrc9@news.supernews.com>, Andrew Haley
<andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
The 4 line, McQuary limit was created by a self-appointed net cop who
founded or was seriously active in alt.fan.warlord which, by the way,
is a dead newsgroup.
For some reason Mark Bilbo's article is not present on UW's news server,
rumours.uwaterloo.ca.
It's an old thread.
The four-line limit existed in early 1987 and was being enforced by at
least some news software.
http://groups.google.com/group/news.software.b/msg/06194fb2b9d35e6a
But was popularized as "law" by McQuay and people have swallowed it whole
without thought. Especially when you consider that the primary reason for
the limit died years ago. In the thread you point to, this message:
http://groups.google.com/group/news.software.b/msg/f71a02285507dc5b
Comments:
"Just try reading a couple dozen of those at 1200 baud, then see if you
still think that reducing the line count of signatures isn't important."
In those days, there were *backbones* running at 56 to 64K. That was
speedy then. We're *long* past that now. Even at modem speeds of 56K, the
difference between four lines in a sig and four times that (16) isn't
going to make any serious difference. Especially given text compresses
better than just about anything else. Web browsing pumps a *hell* of a
lot more data down the line than the longest sig ever seen.
The irony is that the enforcement when it mattered was spotty. Now that
it doesn't matter, it's widespread.
Go figure...
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"Arrogance has to be earned. Tell me what you've done to earn yours."
- Dr. House
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| User: "Apostate" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
03 Jan 2008 10:55:41 AM |
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On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:45:23 -0000, Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:06:39 +0000, Andrew Haley wrote:
Mark K. Bilbo <gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less?
That rule has been around for a long time, and dates back to at least
1987:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/posting-rules/part1/
When bandwidth was tiny and everybody was paying for every byte.
And, no, the McQuary limit came along later. The FAQ you quote says:
Please keep your
signatures concise, as people do not appreciate seeing lengthy
signatures, nor paying the phone bills to repeatedly transmit them. 2
or 3 lines are usually plenty. Sometimes it is also appropriate to add
another line or two for addresses on other major networks where you can
be reached (e.g., CompuServ, Bitnet).
As a guideline that, you'll notice, ends up being a recommendation for 2
to 5 lines (2 or 3 plus "another line or two").
Well, you seemed to be saying that the rule was invalid because it was
new, and now you're saying it's invalid because it is old and
quibbling about whether the limit is 4 or 5 lines.
The 4 line, McQuary limit was created by a self-appointed net cop
who founded or was seriously active in alt.fan.warlord which, by the
way, is a dead newsgroup.
Long sigs have been around Usenet since long before it was publicly
accessible.
Yeah, and they have been against the rules for all that time.
There's no such "rule".
Dammit, I even pointed you to the rule, and you're still denying it
exists!
Never has been. Not even the McQuary limit is a "rule". The closest
to a "rule" is the FAQ you quoted which suggests guidelines.
Oh, come on. Which part of "Rules for posting to Usenet. This
message describes some of the rules of conduct on Usenet." do you not
understand?
You asked the question "Who the hell..." so I told you the answer.
Also, lest we forget, the McQuary limit also states that a sig
should contain no lines greater than 80 characters in width because
those folks reading Usenet on a dumb terminal hooked up to a
mainframe will have trouble.
Or even a standard size window.
Gosh, let's be sure to conform to dumb terminal specifications in *all*
our Internet traffic. Just in case!
Finally, the FAQ you're citing did not come from Usefor and the IETF.
It's descriptive, not prescriptive. The closest thing we have to "rules"
in the Internet are RFCs and that ain't one...
USENET is not the Internet. The Rules are the rules for USENET, and
have always been. Your post is basically a cross between "the rules
don't apply to me" and "the rules dont apply any more", which is what
every net.kook believes too.
Nobody can force you to obey the rules, sadly. But don't complain
when the rules are pointed out to you -- especially when you *asked*.
Andrew.
You're quite out of your mind, and your net-nannying is OT.
At least have the grace to mark it as such. (It's a "rule".)
--
Apostate a.a. #1931
..sig currently undergoing maintenance
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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| User: "Andrew Haley" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
03 Jan 2008 11:53:56 AM |
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Apostate <godless.*****@yeehaw.org.invalid> wrote:
Lots of irrlevant suff deleted. Please learn to trim.
Nobody can force you to obey the rules, sadly. But don't complain
when the rules are pointed out to you -- especially when you *asked*.
You're quite out of your mind, and your net-nannying is OT.
Eh? I'm not net-nannying, I'm answering his question. He obviously
wanted to know, or he wouldn't have asked.
At least have the grace to mark it as such. (It's a "rule".)
So why didn't you do so, then?
Andrew.
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| User: "Christopher A.Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 10:04:25 AM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<gmail@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping
elephants to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Whatever happened to him?
We have more bandwidth now so we should send less text? Maybe we should
limit Usenet *posts* to four lines...
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| User: "skyeyes" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 12:15:26 PM |
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On Dec 6, 9:04 am, Christopher A.Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping
elephants to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Galloping elephants...? Walking trees...? Say what?
I missed something somewhere.
Brenda
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| User: "Cary Kittrell" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 12:49:27 PM |
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In article <3f3c9c3f-3ac2-4bc6-827d-467928d0cb64@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> skyeyes <skyeyes@dakotacom.net> writes:
On Dec 6, 9:04 am, Christopher A.Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping
elephants to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Galloping elephants...? Walking trees...? Say what?
I missed something somewhere.
Hooo boy...
Ted Holden in his own words:
http://www.bearfabrique.org/catastrophism_main.html
From another viewpoint:
http://www.ediacara.org/tedquiz.html
- cary
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| User: "Christopher A.Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 12:33:13 PM |
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On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 10:15:26 -0800 (PST), skyeyes
<skyeyes@dakotacom.net> wrote:
On Dec 6, 9:04 am, Christopher A.Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping
elephants to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Galloping elephants...? Walking trees...? Say what?
Ted Holden. Really long time regulars will remember him. A loony who
believed both Velikovski and Genesis.
I missed something somewhere.
Brenda
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 03:55:34 PM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:33:13 -0500, Christopher A.Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 10:15:26 -0800 (PST), skyeyes
<skyeyes@dakotacom.net> wrote:
On Dec 6, 9:04 am, Christopher A.Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo"
<gm...@com.mkbilbo> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is anybody
using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by a
comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping
elephants to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Galloping elephants...? Walking trees...? Say what?
Ted Holden. Really long time regulars will remember him. A loony who
believed both Velikovski and Genesis.
Wow! A double layered fruit-cake!
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Problems responding to articles posted from Google. |
06 Dec 2007 02:14:42 PM |
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:04:25 -0500, Christopher A.Lee wrote:
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:48:40 -0600, "Mark K. Bilbo" <gmail@com.mkbilbo>
wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:04:16 +0000, David Canzi -- non-mailable wrote:
Lately, when I try to post a followup to a cross-posted article sent
from Google, I get an error message. I use trn to read news. Is
anybody using different news reading software having the same problem?
The reason why this is happening is that Google's "Newsgroups" header
line is not compliant to standards. In a cross-posted article,
newsgroup names should be separated by commas and nothing else. In
Google-generated cross-posts the newsgroup names are now separated by
a comma and a space, and this *breaks* some standards-compliant
software.
My reader whines about it all the time but just as a "warning". But I've
gotten so used to it whining about my sigs that ignoring the warning is
second nature now.
Speaking of which, who the hell appointed himself god of the Usenet and
issued the decree that sigs must be four lines or less? Long sigs have
been around Usenet since long before it was publicly accessible. Hell,
elaborate ASCII art sigs were around in the days of dial-up and 110 baud
modems.
They got abused by idiots like Ted Holden. He of the galloping elephants
to get to the ark before the rain. And the walking trees.
Whatever happened to him?
Not a clue. Though he has a website:
http://www.bearfabrique.org/
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
"Just because it's inexplicted doesn't mean it's inexplicable."
- Dr. House
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