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From: donn@sdchema.UUCP (Donn Seeley)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Dates in news headings
Message-ID: <152@sdchema.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Jun-84 03:20:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdchema.152
Posted: Fri Jun  1 03:20:53 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Jun-84 06:53:09 EDT
References: <537@dual.UUCP> <648@sbcs.UUCP>
Organization: State Home for the Maturity-Impaired, San Diego
Lines: 26


	From: debray@sbcs.UUCP
	Date: Tue, 29-May-84 22:51:29 PDT
	Date-Received: Thu, 31-May-84 18:04:02 PDT

	Does that mean that the time in the header is the time in *the
	reader's time-zone* corresponding to the time of posting of the
	article?  If so, of what use is it?)

In case you were wondering, this symptom is part of the reason for
the existence of the notorious time warp bug in B news (fixed by Jim
McGinness, decvax!jmcg).  B news ALWAYS converts date fields into an
internal format when it receives an article, causing the time zone
information to disappear.  When you read an article, the time zone in
the date fields is your own.

This means that the date information in an article header is useless
for determining the longitude of the poster or the local time the
article was posted.  It DOES give you an idea of how long the article
took to get to your site.  Actually I would rather not have the date
fields interpreted...  I can't imagine how not interpreting the dates
would break anything.  What do the B news maintainers think of this?

I didn't REALLY post this article at 3:20 in the morning,

Donn Seeley    UCSD Chemistry Dept.       ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn