I am desperate! Yesterday I posted a response to "aus.mathematics" and now
the original question and my response have disappeared! Instead a second
response has shown up and it is at the top level now. This is not the first
time something like this happens to me.
The problem is my complete lack of understanding how usenet works, I think.
Can anybody give a short explanation (if possible) or better, can anybody
tell me if there is a nice English book that covers this topic thoroughly?
I know I have to apoligize for asking such questions but this is a
wonderfully responsive news group with wonderfully knowledgeable people.
(Usually I do not want to annoy you, it just happens as I have a heretic
mind.)
Janos Blazi
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From: Reini Urban
Subject: netnews for dummies (was: off topic again (sorry!!))
Date:
Message-ID: <38838435.8322276@judy>
Janos Blazi wrote:
>I am desperate! Yesterday I posted a response to "aus.mathematics" and now
>the original question and my response have disappeared! Instead a second
>response has shown up and it is at the top level now. This is not the first
>time something like this happens to me.
>The problem is my complete lack of understanding how usenet works, I think.
>
>Can anybody give a short explanation (if possible) or better, can anybody
>tell me if there is a nice English book that covers this topic thoroughly?
Okay, my approach for dummies:
(I got accustomed to dummy questions in my autolisp group)
Usenet is a large distribited network of news servers. (they use a
special somewhat simplified protocol called nntp)
every message is distributed worldwide and carries a (hopefully) unique
message-id. see the full message headers to get an idea. every response
carries also the References: header line to help building the threading
tree.
Now to your problem:
it might be servers problem (any server in the link) or a client
problem. (only yours).
most users of aus.mathematica will sit in australia or new sealand,
watching their newsservers in au or za. this is far away (distribution
problem) and on a largely different timezone.
a lot of servers and esp. clients have timezone problems, so there can
be several reasons for the delay or wrong sorting (which can appear
also).
A lot of servers work under heavy duty and may loose messages, esp.
servers which carry a lot of binaries (as yours does).
Your message appeared now on a server, where the follower found it and
responded to it.
but you see everything only through your personal news server which is
newsfeed.com.
1.) now this gigantic newsfeed.com server of yours (it's really a big
one) might have lost your posting. (happens sometimes. see some daily
news server statistics for common problems).
2.) newsfeed.com sorted the response before the initial message
(timezone problem)
2.a) ms outlook together with your system sorted the response before the
initial message (local timezone problem), but see below.
3.) your client sorts threads (the response tree) according the
subject-line and not according to the reference id's (=> problem if a
response changes the subject line or if some client is not 8bit aware)
4.) your server timed-out your message. this is called "expire". on a
text group the expire is normally set to two weeks, but if the hard disc
is full (80 GB per day!), the oldest messages do expire automatically.
and
5.) and most likely: you cfg'ed your client to see only unread messages.
you might have already read your message which is not shown anymore.
"yank" is called the command to see all messages instead of only unread.
(but I don't know outlook, maybe it's "Show unread".)
In case of problems you might check out a free (probably read-only)
newsserver. there's a list somewhere but don't ask me. deja.com is
wellknown and easy to use for dummies.
http://deja.com/group/aus.mathematics
Another (hacky) web-interface sample:
http://webnews.atnet.at/index.cgi?cmd=xover&utag=&group=comp.lang.lisp
this interface shows you even the internal server id's.
To see a simple flow statistic this is from one of my feeds. every
larger server has typically a lot of feeds (servers where they get their
news from), say three, to carry the heavy volume, 50-80 GB per day.
this is really heavy.
http://www.aco.net/admin/news/news-flow-stat.html
(austrian academic net)
The daily distribution tree is informative, also the
list of daily problems:
http://www.aco.net/admin/news/newsfeed01/20000117.html#07
Note that most of the typical problems there are just server backups
(where the request normally times out) or misconfigurations by dummies.
You might try a different news client such as emacs with gnus or "forte
free agent" and read the docs there. ms outlook is by far the worst
known client.
There are special newsgroups for dummy questions and answers like this:
news.answers or news.newusers.questions or news.groups.questions.
better than books.
--
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html
From: Janos Blazi
Subject: Re: netnews for dummies (was: off topic again (sorry!!))
Date:
Message-ID: <3883edd6_3@goliath.newsfeeds.com>
Thx, that will help me.
I dod not understand everything immediately but I'll visit those newsgroups
for newbies and shall read the articles I was told about (I also received
private response to this posting.) Most unfortunately I didi not know about
the newsgroup for newcomers (actually I have been using usenet for years)
and it seems the way to find out about these things is asking.
Janos Blazi
Reini Urban <······@x-ray.at> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
················@judy...
> Janos Blazi wrote:
> >I am desperate! Yesterday I posted a response to "aus.mathematics" and
now
> >the original question and my response have disappeared! Instead a second
> >response has shown up and it is at the top level now. This is not the
first
> >time something like this happens to me.
> >The problem is my complete lack of understanding how usenet works, I
think.
> >
> >Can anybody give a short explanation (if possible) or better, can anybody
> >tell me if there is a nice English book that covers this topic
thoroughly?
>
> Okay, my approach for dummies:
> (I got accustomed to dummy questions in my autolisp group)
>
> Usenet is a large distribited network of news servers. (they use a
> special somewhat simplified protocol called nntp)
> every message is distributed worldwide and carries a (hopefully) unique
> message-id. see the full message headers to get an idea. every response
> carries also the References: header line to help building the threading
> tree.
>
> Now to your problem:
> it might be servers problem (any server in the link) or a client
> problem. (only yours).
> most users of aus.mathematica will sit in australia or new sealand,
> watching their newsservers in au or za. this is far away (distribution
> problem) and on a largely different timezone.
> a lot of servers and esp. clients have timezone problems, so there can
> be several reasons for the delay or wrong sorting (which can appear
> also).
>
> A lot of servers work under heavy duty and may loose messages, esp.
> servers which carry a lot of binaries (as yours does).
>
> Your message appeared now on a server, where the follower found it and
> responded to it.
> but you see everything only through your personal news server which is
> newsfeed.com.
>
> 1.) now this gigantic newsfeed.com server of yours (it's really a big
> one) might have lost your posting. (happens sometimes. see some daily
> news server statistics for common problems).
>
> 2.) newsfeed.com sorted the response before the initial message
> (timezone problem)
>
> 2.a) ms outlook together with your system sorted the response before the
> initial message (local timezone problem), but see below.
>
> 3.) your client sorts threads (the response tree) according the
> subject-line and not according to the reference id's (=> problem if a
> response changes the subject line or if some client is not 8bit aware)
>
> 4.) your server timed-out your message. this is called "expire". on a
> text group the expire is normally set to two weeks, but if the hard disc
> is full (80 GB per day!), the oldest messages do expire automatically.
>
> and
> 5.) and most likely: you cfg'ed your client to see only unread messages.
> you might have already read your message which is not shown anymore.
> "yank" is called the command to see all messages instead of only unread.
> (but I don't know outlook, maybe it's "Show unread".)
>
> In case of problems you might check out a free (probably read-only)
> newsserver. there's a list somewhere but don't ask me. deja.com is
> wellknown and easy to use for dummies.
> http://deja.com/group/aus.mathematics
>
> Another (hacky) web-interface sample:
> http://webnews.atnet.at/index.cgi?cmd=xover&utag=&group=comp.lang.lisp
> this interface shows you even the internal server id's.
>
> To see a simple flow statistic this is from one of my feeds. every
> larger server has typically a lot of feeds (servers where they get their
> news from), say three, to carry the heavy volume, 50-80 GB per day.
> this is really heavy.
>
> http://www.aco.net/admin/news/news-flow-stat.html
> (austrian academic net)
> The daily distribution tree is informative, also the
> list of daily problems:
> http://www.aco.net/admin/news/newsfeed01/20000117.html#07
>
> Note that most of the typical problems there are just server backups
> (where the request normally times out) or misconfigurations by dummies.
>
> You might try a different news client such as emacs with gnus or "forte
> free agent" and read the docs there. ms outlook is by far the worst
> known client.
>
> There are special newsgroups for dummy questions and answers like this:
> news.answers or news.newusers.questions or news.groups.questions.
> better than books.
> --
> Reini Urban
> http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html
-----------== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
http://www.newsfeeds.com The Largest Usenet Servers in the World!
------== Over 73,000 Newsgroups - Including Dedicated Binaries Servers ==-----
On Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:50:27 +0100, Janos Blazi <······@netsurf.de> concluded
we would all be made wiser by knowing that:
>I am desperate! Yesterday I posted a response to "aus.mathematics" and now
>the original question and my response have disappeared! Instead a second
>response has shown up and it is at the top level now. This is not the first
>time something like this happens to me.
>The problem is my complete lack of understanding how usenet works, I think.
>
>Can anybody give a short explanation (if possible) or better, can anybody
>tell me if there is a nice English book that covers this topic thoroughly?
The way Usenet works is that people all over are posting messages at
the same time, as well as expiring messages.
When you submit a message, it heads off to your ISP's NNTP server
(perhaps INN).
It then stores it, for a while, and sends off copies to other NNTP
servers that it regularly talks to. They pass the message on, and so
on, and so on, and, you hope, gets the message out to all NNTP servers
that service the newsgroup.
And then, after a while, each of those NNTP servers will cause that
message to expire. After all, storing all of Usenet takes a whole lot
of disk space, and good disks are fairly expensive. And so each NNTP
server throws away the message based on some local policy.
In some cases, the expiry period is rather short, perhaps only a
couple of days. If that be the case, then if it takes 3 days for the
message to propagate and be answered, it may very well be that the
original message will have been purged before the response comes back.
And that, in a nutshell, is why you're seeing what you're seeing.
--
"It has every known bug fix to everything." -- KLH (out of context)
········@hex.net- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/internet.html>