Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff

In <[email protected]> Russ Allbery <[email protected]> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <[email protected]> writes:

>>> How could you not be aware that multiple injection is taking place?
>>> Some agent involved in the process clearly *does* know this unless the
>>> multiple injection is being done manually by a human, in which case the
>>> *human* knows this.  You're starting with an existing news article
>>> rather than with a blank screen and an editor; that's a pretty obvious
>>> difference.

>> Small local networks with more than one site tend to be run in an
>> amateurish fashion. So the second guy, who caused the extra "leak", may
>> have been badly configured, or ignorant, or both.

>Right, but either it's a normal relaying agent to relaying agent
>connection that leaks, or he knew he was reinjecting.  He may not know how
>to configure it properly.

Suppose the local network has some local.* groups which all participants
are instructed not to let leak to the outside Usenet.

So our amateurish guy implements this by configuring that all bona-fide
Usenet groups are to be relayed/injected as the case may be, but carefully
omits the local.* groups from his list. And for months and months that
works fine, so the guy believe he is configured just fine.

Then, one day, someone elsewhere on the local network writes an article
crossposted to local.misc and comp.misc - well you can see what happens
then, and two versions of the article running around Usenet is one
possible outcome.

{Just as an aside, there are actually two top level hierarchies on Usenet
known as "man.*. One is the University of Manchester, and the other is the
University of Manitoba. Both hierarchies have groups called
man.cs.general, and occasionally we used to see articles from the "wrong"
hierarchy for just that reason. I had some discussion with the Newsmaster
at Manitoba, and we agreed there was nothing much to be done about it, and
that such occasional insights into the "other" culture might even be
beneficial.}

-- 
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: [email protected]      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