Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!lsuc!iguana!merce
From: merce@iguana.uucp (Jim Mercer)
Subject: Re: BITFTP grief!
Message-ID: <1991May19.052610.10658@iguana.uucp>
Organization: Ed (the iguana) Memorial Society
References: <1991May17.041635.4503@iguana.uucp> <qqD524w163w@phoenix.com>
Date: Sun, 19 May 91 05:26:10 GMT

In article <qqD524w163w@phoenix.com> stanley@phoenix.com (John Stanley) writes:
>merce@iguana.uucp (Jim Mercer) writes:
>> it's assholes and ignoramuses who absolutely positively have to have THAT
>> file, but are not willing to pay their own way.
>
>   If you have a problem with the users of your system, take it up with
>them. Don't come out into the world and demand that everyone else give
>up what they have just because you can't afford to give it to your
>users. If you want THEM to pay their way, well, then, CHARGE THEM. With
>all the lawyers you must have floating around there, the legal issues 
>certainly wouldn't be a problem.

oh, for the days of old, when money wasn't the root of all things on the net.

i don't want to charge anyone anything.

i just want them to be reasonable.

>> >> how much of a net.lobby do we have to do to get pucc.princeton.edu to shut
>> >> down BITFTP?
>> >
>> >   No! This is a valuable service to the entire UUCP community. Well, at
>> >least it is here. 
>> 
>> No! BITFTP is a terrible DIS-service to the entire UUCP community.
>
>   Your uucico hosed you while transferring BITFTP mail, so BITFTP is
>bad for everyone. That is a grand-daddy of over-generalizations. 

ok, i should have used the term MBAS.

my uucico works perfectly fine for normal loads, as it does on literally
thousands of other systems.

(it just so happens that the only 3 times our uucp spool overflowed, they
 were all caused by BITFTP transfers.)

>   BITFTP makes available a huge amount of information, much of which is
>not available in any other way. Alot of the traffic on USENET (one of
>those UUCP things, you know) is eliminated by the single posting "X is
>available via anonymous ftp at A.B.C.D." The fact that YOU might have to
>pass the same thing twice or thrice is more than compensated for by all
>the things you won't have to carry AT ALL because they weren't posted. 

news and mail are two different systems.  news is better able to handle large
transfers.

>   When EVERY anonymous ftp site is also available via a mailserver,
>THEN you can argue that BITFTP is of NO service to UUCP. It will be a
>long time before that happens. Those who set up anon-ftp sites tend to
>think in terms of Internet and forget about anyone who can't ftp. 

you seem to be stuck on another point here.

i would prepare that all mailservers (for files) be dropped.

they are a plague on the email portion of the network.

>   You will NEVER be able to make that 'DIS-service' claim stick. 

the users will probably not like it, but i'm getting a lot of support from
admins out there.

>> talk to the sites in Ontario, Canada, who are possibly going to lose all
>> internet connectivity partially due to increased mail volume (ie. BITFTP).
>
>   And just how is BITFTP going to increase your mail volume when it no
>longer accepts mail requests?

the problems started way before BITFTP was shut down to user outside of BITNET
and EARN.

>Or is this your threat for when human
>generated mail fills your spool? If I were one of these sites I would
>start looking for another feed right now, because you have already
>indicated that you aren't happy carrying their mail and are looking for
>the next available excuse to cut it totally. 

i have not dropped any of the sites related to the BITFTP abuse through
our system.  i have no problem with regular mail volume, or even mailinglist
explosion.

>> >   Your problem (which is the same problem here, BTW) is that a UUCP
>> >connection will happily accept that which it cannot store. The BITFTP
>> >connection is just a symptom.
>> 
>> excuse me?
>
>   There is none. You bitched about your spool area filling up, mail and
>news being lost, and your disk being trashed. You blamed users
>downstream from you, and BITFTP. If YOUR uucico didn't accept more stuff
>from your feed than there was room on your disk, your disk wouldn't have
>been trashed, mail and news would not have been lost, and your spool
>area wouldn't have filled. Your system would have processed what it could,
>and then, when there was space, would accept more.

the problem is not a lack of disk space, but an abundance of traffic.

why should i fix my software, if it handles what it was designed for.

if you want to redesign the uucp systems, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

BTW: my file systems overflowed because of the way news and mail are piped
around.  if this had been straight file copies, the system would have shut
down the modem sooner.

>Don't supply mail services to your users and
>then tell them that they can't use them, and worse, don't tell the rest
>of the world not to do something just because you can't handle it. 

they can use them, just not abuse them.

i read this on the net a long time ago, read it and think about it.

abuse of email causes bad karma.

-- 
[ Jim Mercer   work: jim@lsuc.on.ca  home: merce@iguana.uucp  +1 519 570-3467 ]
[              "Anarchists Unite!" - seen spray painted on a wall             ]
