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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Expiration dates on OtherRealms
Message-ID: <2823@phri.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 07:31:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.2823
Posted: Tue Jul 28 07:31:07 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jul-87 05:42:03 EDT
References: <2525@hoptoad.uucp> <6957@g.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 27

In article <6957@g.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.csnet (Sean Casey) writes:
> I doubt anyone is needlessly suffering for it.  I believe the
> fact that no one else is complaining is an indication of this.

	Actually, I think the reason nobody complained is because nobody
noticed.  Most of us don't have a lot of time to waste babysitting news and
resent it when anybody does anything which makes it more difficult to run.
True, I could special-case r.m.or and put a "find" in my /usr/lib/crontab
to zap the old articles, but think what would happen if everybody started
doing that?  What happens when the good folks in unix-wizards decide they
don't like answering the same questions over and over again so they start
putting long Expire: headers on their answers?  And what about the AIDS
info postings; don't they deserve long Expire: lines?  And the definitive
compendiums of light bulb jokes?  And.....

	As for Chuq's complaint that if he doesn't put Expire: headers in,
the arbitron poll will miss his stuff, that's the kind of pathetic
reasoning I expect out of New York City politicians.  A couple of years
ago, we had a case of a bicycle hitting a pedestrian.  The pedestrian was
wearing earphones so couldn't hear the bike coming.  The City Council
passed a law making it illegal for *bicyclists* to wear earphones!  The
answer is to fix arbitron, not cow-tow to its bugs by keeping articles
around longer.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016