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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