[plug] New PLUG news server

[Bernd Felsche]

James Devenish <devenish at guild.uwa.edu.au> writes:

>In article <teop22xgka.ln2 at innovative.iinet.net.au>, Bernd Felsche wrote:
>>>Put it this way: If I am absent,
>>> - I expect to be able to put an autoresponder on a server and have the
>>>   autoresponder send out messages promptly as appropriate.
>> Nice for spammers.

>Nice for Real People, too. People who are entitled to expect a response
>deserve to be advised that none will be forthcoming.

>> It will; it can just take a lot of time to download all the backlog
>> of articles.

>One idea is to only download things that you're interested in. Is that
>really such a novel idea to you?

Not at all. The novel idea you appear to have is that somehow they
can ascertain an explicit interest without seeing the header. :-)

>>>That sounds like a particularly artificial barrier.
>> Practical, historically speaking.
>[...]
>> leafnode2 has a configurable 'maxage' as a default and for newsgroup
>> patterns.

>If it is truly configurable then sites may surely tweak it as applicable
>to their operations -- then it is only an artificial barrier.

It's a real barrier until you alter the source code and
rebuild leafnode.

Other than that way, the barrier exists but it depends where you put
it.

>> But to find out what those messages are about, you have to at least
>> parse the headers.

>Sure. So, what's the problem? If you are interested in viewing the
>backlog, then the message are there for you. If you are not
>interested, then you just skip them.

I'm starting to believe that I have a disability in not being able
to sense what's in news articles without at least looking at some of
the headers.

>> Hwo do you knwo that the thread you really "need" to see isn't the
>> one that's one past the fence-post in the number you nominate?

>You previously proposed that the server impose its own fence-post
>that has no particular relation to an individual's needs. 

Yep. It's arbitrary in some ways. But valid in that the archived
articles posted before the news server existed cannot logically be
found in the newsgroup.

>I proposed that the server not impose such a restriction. People
>who have a "need" can satisfy that need but those who have no such
>need are no worse off.

>> I didn't state that you had to.

>Hold on: you continually refer to "delays". If you are not saying
>that I have to read all the articles, why are you saying that I
>would experience delays?

Each header takes a finite amount of time to transmit. Multiply that
by 50,000 or more. Depending on your newsreader, the time required
to thread, etc can be a large as n^3.

Simply knowing that there are 52,678 (for example) messages
available, how can you tell which ones you want to read?
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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