Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: news.config Subject: Re: uwvax (rsch.wisc.edu) downtime Dec 27 and Dec 29 Message-ID: <7454@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Tue, 30-Dec-86 17:11:45 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.7454 Posted: Tue Dec 30 17:11:45 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 30-Dec-86 17:11:45 EST References: <3087@rsch.WISC.EDU> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 23 > Sometime on Dec 29, uwvax will be converted to 4.3+NFS. I'll be out of > town during the conversion, so I can't guarantee that news or uucp will > work when uwvax comes back... No offense to Dave -- this is presumably beyond his control -- but doing such conversions over the Christmas holidays is often a mistake. It's a gross violation of Ron Natalie's Law: "Never set major cutover dates on or near major holidays". (The Arpanet found out the hard way by planning its TCP/IP cutover for Jan 1 a few years ago, as I recall.) It's attractive to do cutovers when there are few customers around, but it also means that people affected by the cutover aren't around to cope with the consequences promptly. This is particularly troubling when other sites are affected, since then it's not practical for all affected people to synchronize their vacations. It's not an accident that none of the "change days" of the newsgroup name changes fell on holidays. The original tentative schedule put change days at seemingly-logical times like July 1 (US Independence Day, Canada's Dominion Day) and Sept 1 (the World Science Fiction Convention, a major holiday for many computer folks). Ron talked us out of it. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry