Somebody crossposted something to 8 newsgroups and set followups to 4, one of which was here. Then the usual thing happens where people reply without trimming the followups, and there are now some lovely flames going. You probably can't see the crossposts if you're viewing from Fidonet.
As ever, if helps if people refrain from feeding the troll. (and I suppose you on Fido don't have killfiles either, and killing crossposts isn't a thing you can do)
Theo
Re: Re: Politics on this echo? By: A. Dumas to mark lewis on Mon Mar 29 2021 07:17:51
no, it is not...
no, we are not using that software... we have no control over what someone else runs on their BBS system... that someone has chosen to run a gateway package and connect an echo with a newsgroup is their decision and their's alone... since you are the one(s) being bothered, it is on you to complain to the gate operator... most things look just fine over here...
email doesn't work?? interesting...
are you saying that my message, written from the US east coast (UTC -0400 right now) should have its timestamp thrown out and the time my message is processed at the gateway should be used?
or are you saying that the gateway software should convert my UTC -0400 time stamp to UTC +1300?? that should be easily handled in the cases where the message has a proper TZUTC control line...
however, TZUTC is a relatively new ""feature"" in fidonet messages... it being only a decade or so old... it is not required by the fidonet standards and there's a lot of older software being used that has no idea what TZUTC is so their posts carry only the timestamp with no indicator of the originator's timezone... if the original software and standards had specified that the message time stamps were to be in UTC this would not be a problem but fidonet is a hobby network with a ton of software written by hobbists... we won't even talk about the time stamps of the messages written by users and uploaded to the BBSes using offline messaging standards like QWK, QWKE, and Bluewave which also know nothing about timezones...
since the gateway is located in New Zealand, that sounds about right...
see above...
we see similar on this side of the fence, at times, too... we don't worry about it since we're more interested in the message bodys (first), maybe who wrote the message (second), and possibly some third thing related to the message or conversation or people involved...
)\/(ark
Re: Re: Politics on this echo? By: A. Dumas to Vincent Coen on Mon Mar 29 2021 07:20:06
it absolutely does matter! otherwise you might have 100 messages all with the same time stamp on them instead of the real one for when the message was actually written... you're not thinking this through...
)\/(ark
It's a valid/useful thing to do. People also gateway the USENET groups into online web forums (fora?) where people don't realise that they are participating in a USENET group (which leads to questions about 'postings in this forum' and 'why isn't the moderator deleting this post!" etc.)
And sometimes to and from e-mail style mailing lists.
Naturally, they don't belong together here (here as in "comp.sys.raspberry-pi") either.
But crossposting from off-topic groups is a thing, sadly. As is off-topic discussion within the group.
In your posts, you refer to other posters as (I assume) the FIDOnet entities
BY: Mike(3:770/3) and BY: TimS(3:770/3) -- I suspect whoever at 3:770/3 is running the gateway, and is translating email addresses over here into FIDOnet address there, and v.v. -- it's a while since I've used FIDOnet :)
-- --------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Mike Brown: mjb[-at-]signal11.org.uk | http://www.signal11.org.uk
Re: Re: Politics on this echo? By: Anssi Saari to A. Dumas on Mon Mar 29 2021 15:59:53
AS> Wow, this again. I remember a very, *very* long thread about wrong AS> timezones and gateway software in the last few years. Don't remember AS> the Usenet group though.
probably this one... it is a fairly popular area in fidonet... especially when one doesn't want to have to set up a news reader...
AS> As I recall the discussion never went anywhere so I suppose the AS> gateway software didn't get fixed either.
it is next to impossible to fix a binary without the source code or someone very adept at binary level hacking ;)
)\/(ark
Re: Re: Politics on this echo? By: A. Dumas to mark lewis on Mon Mar 29 2021 14:31:03
typical "A. Dum(b)as(s)" response ;)
)\/(ark
It's easily found all right but it is on you. You are bothering us with that faulty gateway, *you* are using that software. I don't know Paul Hayton, I don't have an account on his system.
No conversion is needed, just a correct format of the Date: header. I suspect it is being converted wrongly; it should just use the current local time of the gateway computer with the correct timezone added. It says +13 which seems right, so just use that without any time conversion. Right now, all fido posts appear to be from the past, sometimes older than the post they are replying to.
It doesn't matter what time the client has set, the *gateway* posts, so it should use its local time with correct timezone info.
Something bigger wrong than that. My guess would be are in a zone like Eastern America UTC-4, which should be applied, however it is applying New Zealand UTC+13. How does NZ get +13? Shouldn't it be -11? Is it something to do with daylight saving.
Wow, this again. I remember a very, *very* long thread about wrong timezones and gateway software in the last few years. Don't remember the Usenet group though. As I recall the discussion never went anywhere so I suppose the gateway software didn't get fixed either.
Is there a header or something else that unambiguously indicates that a message has been gatewayed through to Usenet? Thne I could filter it out.
-- Tim
Oh f*ck off.
Yeah, it was here.
Any of these, I guess:
Organization: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | bbs.nz/#Fidonet User-Agent: VSoup v1.2.9.47Beta [95/NT] X-Mailconverter: SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
It seems that there's no way to fix it since the original timestamps do not always carry timezone information. Put it in the bin with two digit years, indistinguishable date orderings and other unfixable bugs and move on.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
No, it isn't. It's comp.sys.raspberry-pi, a Usenet newsgroup. Somebody on Fidonet (hard to believe it's still around...last time I used it was over 25 years ago, and one of the local sysops in 1:209 ran a Usenet gateway back then) may be mapping it to the local idiom, but that's all it is: a mapping from one network to another.
_/_ / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail) (IIGS(
OK, Moocher.
OK, Doomer.
OK, Lib-Tard
(you're welcome)
you young whippersnappers, GET OFF MY LAWN!
(heh heh heh)
-- (aka 'Bombastic Bob' in case you wondered) 'Feeling with my fingers, and thinking with my brain' - me 'your story is so touching, but it sounds just like a lie' "Straighten up and fly right"
On 28 Mar 2021 at 07:27p, Theo pondered and said... Th> Somebody crossposted something to 8 newsgroups and set followups to 4, Th> one of which was here. Then the usual thing happens where people reply Th> without trimming the followups, and there are now some lovely flames Th> going. You probably can't see the crossposts if you're viewing from Th> Fidonet. Th> Th> As ever, if helps if people refrain from feeding the troll. Th> (and I suppose you on Fido don't have killfiles either, and killing Th> crossposts isn't a thing you can do)
Hi Theo.
Just catching up on this thread. I run the gateway and will try to emulate the killfile idea to prevent the non raspberry pi cross posted stuff from passing across to Fidonet. Not sure how successful I'll be but would like to try. If you have any suggested newsgroups that I should try to filter as junk groups can you let me know please :)
Best, Paul
On 28 Mar 2021 at 07:36a, Craig Dooley pondered and said... CD> Just curious, why is there so much political discussion on a Raspberry CD> Pi echo? CD> Is someone mis-gating this echo?
Hi Craig
The newsgroup comp.sys.raspberry-pi is bi-directonaly gated to the Fidonet echomail area RBERRYPI , this ha been for the most part without issue for a number of years with folks from both sides of the gateway chatting about Rpi related topics.
The gateway software is legacy stuff called SoupGate. The gateway is based in New Zealand where we are UTC +1200 and during our daylight savings time (Sept - April) it's UTC +1300 ... so messages in/out via nodes from Fido have this time stamp applied. Of course Fido nodes are also all around the globe so we see messages in Fido here in NZ from our yesterday while we post in other folks future :)
The gateway attempts to filter out some spam but is not (nor will never be)
100% effective at it.Best, Paul
No Newsgroup suggestions for going under the ban hammer, but would it be possible to add Spam Assassin to your spam filtering pipeline? Its a good, flexible an configurable email spam filter. At the least, it would be interesting to see if it is also useful for filtering newsgroup or Fidonet message streams.
-- Martin | martin at Gregorie | gregorie dot org
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