Raspberry Pi

Actually it works perfectly, as long as there's a correct time zone supplied in the first place.

09-23-18 08:10 Roger Bell_West wrote to Ed Vance about Re: Raspberry Pi Howdy! Roger,

RB> @MSGID: RB> On 2018-09-22, Ed Vance wrote: >It would be nice if usenet converted the Time/Date to UTC/GMT Date/Time >instead of using the persons Local Date/Time. >I guess usnet doesn't do that."

RB> Actually it works perfectly, as long as there's a correct time zone RB> supplied in the first place.

I never have made a connection with Usenet. I post my messages to a BBS with a Offline Reader since I learned how to transfer .QWK Packets sometime around 1994.

Before then I entered my messages manually when I used my Commodore 64 to connect to a BBS.

Someone told me how to use (I think it was) Outlook in Win98SE to Log On a BBS through the internet.

It's been 20 years ago when I tried doing that and can't really remember if the BBS address was NNTP or some other type of internet connection.

I have tried Logging On this BBS with Telnet which to me seemed to work sorta like a Dial-Up connection did but changed my ways to begin using a FTP script to get/put BBS .QWK packet from/to the BBS.

Another message mentioned looking at the .RC file so I looked at MMAIL.RC to see if a entry was in it for Time Zone or Date.

I didn't see mention of it in MMAIL.RC so I read some text files that came in MultiMail 0.49 DOS and saw mention of an Environmental Variable called TZ that could have the entry EST5EDT put in it.

To Me an 'Environmental Variable' is a setting outside of MultiMail, so I looked in XP's Control Panel - System - Advanced - Environmental Variables

to see if a 'TZ' Variable was set but didn't find anything there.

SET didn't show anything about Time or Date either when I went to a CMD Prompt to see what settings it would show.

As I was typ w32tm /tz

Two of the Three lines of Text that came on the screen mentioned 'Eastern' Time Zone.

Could You or another person reading this let me know if I need to put a TZ variable in either MMAIL.RC or the Environmental Variables setting of System -- Advanced in XP's Control Panel. Thanks.

The BBS I use is in the same Time Zone so I might not have to do anything.

Boy!, I had a lot of Head Scratching here tonight and probably caused lots of other folks some Head Scratching too. Sorry about that.

I feel like that Robot on the T.V. show when it says: DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Thanks for reading me blabbering about things I don't know anything about. I can't help anyone with their Raspberry PI so I'll go back into LURKING MODE.

... Have you checked your smoke detector batteries & Fire Ext, LATELY?!

Den 2018-09-23 skrev Ed Vance :

Then the gateway between Fidonet and Usenet is responsible[0]. Apparently that gateway is in +12:00 and either

- does not get any time zone in the Fidonet posting. What can it do? Its local time zone is as good as any, perhaps slightly better (assuming people might use a gateway local to them.)

- does get a time zone in the Fidonet posting, which is replaces with its own. This is room for improvement.

Which is it?

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[0] your headers:  

	Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.bbs.nz 
	 !.POSTED.agency.bbs.nz!not-for-mail 
	From: no0spam.Ed.Vance@f1.n770.z5343.fidonet.org (Ed Vance) 
	Newsgroups: comp.sys.raspberry-pi 
	Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi 
	Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2018 21:30:00 +1200 
	Organization: Agency BBS, Dunedin - New Zealand | bbs.nz 
	Message-ID:  
	References:  
	Mime-Version: 1.0 
	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii 
	Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 
	Injection-Info: news.bbs.nz; posting-host="8IWYKlztXHa0+IViEdY46zrq8kpk7dC9fTbT74JiSDQ"; 
	  logging-data="13819"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@news.bbs.nz" 
	User-Agent: VSoup v1.2.9.47Beta [95/NT] 
	X-MailConverter: SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
	X-Comment-To: Roger Bell_West 
	Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.sys.raspberry-pi:18796

It looks all wrong. 4 pm is not 3 pm and the correct time stamp would have been:

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 01:15:00 +1200

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Hello Axel,

That +1200 against UTC/GMT is wrong here. Central European Summer Time in The Netherlands and Germany is only UTC/GMT +02:00. So in that case my original message date should be 13:15 +00:00. I have checked my BBS software and the TZ variable shows: TZ=CET-01CES Unfortunately it is not transfered to a kludge in the messages.

Why Monday? It was written at sunday afternoon, 15 minutes past 3 o'clock.

01:15 is also wrong as that was not the UTC/GMT time I was writing. The Netherlands has UTC/GMT+01:00 and because of summertime it is 1 hour later, so that's why we have here UTC/GMT+02:00, same as you. Note: BST (British SummerTime) = UTC/GMT+01:00. So the Usenet time should be: Sun, 23 Sep 2018 03:15 +1200. I think the + of - sign has UTC/GMT as a base setting. So the software should convert local time of the writer to UTC/GMT, in my case subtract 2 hours from it, and than convert it to the local time of the gateway by adding that +1200.

May be a problem arises when that calculation has to change date also. Suppose I wrote that message 4 hours earlier: Then my time was 11:15 local, but 09:15 at real UTC/GMT. Than his software would made it: Sat 22 Sep 2018 23:15 +1200 for usenet. As 23:15 +12:00 gives 11:15 my original time. Problably that day conversion is the hick we now have? Then he doesnot change day, and indeed that is in future.

The difference between The Netherlands and NZ is only 10 hours in summer, am I right? I do not know if NZ has summertime (Daylight Saving Time) too? So that hour difference between 15:15 and 16:15 can be explained by that? At the end of Oktober You and I have no summertime any more.

So we still have to find a good way for converting date and times to a value not causing messages in future, because that was the problem at some systems.

Every good programmer knows that you allways have to check the values at the end sizes that can occur. So you have to try every date and time on every place in the world compared to the local time the gateway is using. And that has to be converterd to UTC/GMT with an offset to local. That should be the writing time, not the converting time, as the may differ ;-).

But then there is the problem that not al BBSsoftware packages show the time zone in their msg's. So he does not know in what time zone that bbs resides. But that can be find too. He knows the from nodenumber which is listed in the FidoNet NodeList complete with a location. Then he only needs a table of BBSplaces and their timezone compared to UTC/GMT. Then he can calculate the time difference between the gateway station and that BBS location. Is that a workable way?

Henri.

No and to be correct it should not and must not be. +12:00 is the time zone you state, so that is the zone whose time you have to state.

Arguably the behaviour of the gateway is wrong, but it is known, it is reproducable and it your gateway of choice, so it's up to you to adapt your local time setting to yield correct results when passed through it.

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Hello Axel,

HD>> Why Monday? HD>> It was written at sunday afternoon, 15 minutes past 3 o'clock. HD>> 01:15 is also wrong as that was not the UTC/GMT time I was writing.

AB> No and to be correct it should not and must not be. +12:00 is the time AB> zone you state, so that is the zone whose time you have to state.

Hmm. The message should almost allways have the time and timezone of the location of the writer, period. That was me, and I was writing in Europe time zone +02:00 and not in NZ. If choosen something else, than that should be convertered by the gater. In this case, sort out the time zone of the writer, and subtract or ad the difference with the time zone of the gate. Now the gate mixes time and time zones ;-(. As our time zone is +02:00 UTC/GMT in Europe and his Time Zone is +12:00 in NZ, the gater should subtract 10:00 h. = the diff of the time zones, from the writers time, to get an unchanged result everywhere. I.e. sunday 15:15 +02:00 in NL.EU is the same as monday 01:15 +12:00 in NZ, because that moment was sunday 13:15 +00:00 at UTC/GMT.

AB> Arguably the behaviour of the gateway is wrong,

So it is not me who is acting wrong, let that be very clear.

AB> but it is known, it is reproducable

Exactly. Now we all have to try to get that corrected.

AB> and it your gateway of choice,

No, I did not choose that gateway directly, only indirectly. I was reading and writing to a worldide FidoNet Echo Mail Area, who some nice guy gated to and from an InterNet News group, thank him. I am very happy with that Idea.

AB> so it's up to you to adapt your local time setting to yield AB> correct results when passed through it.

Not at all. It is primairy not my job to correct my behavior for the fault of someone else, i.e. the gate. That's the opposite world. Second, I am not allowed to use another time than my local time, as that is against the FidoNet rules I think. I only may use the time and time zone that corresponds to my physical location, in this case Europe. The only exception are FidoNet Points travelling around with a laplop in a different time zone. Then they have to use that local time and time zone where they are at that moment, or their home time if their system time and time zone settings were unchanged.

The only fault at my side could be that my software doesnot put a time zone kludge into my messages. But every sysop knows my location (see FidoNet NodeList), and could find out the corresponding time zone, simple he? ;-). The conversion of time settings is a job for the gate, not for the writer.

A solution could be to create a list of all the FidoNet writers here with their Nodenumber, sysop name, Location and time zone? Before feeding the FidoNet msg's to the gate, convert the writers time to the corresponding NZ time, using that table. Then there are never messages in the future, someone, not I had. That guy could also change the time stamps some hours back before tossing them into his messagebase.

But there is some hope. When I am ready converting my UniCornBBS to another system (probably a Pi 1B) with new software, the problem may be go away if my "new" software does supply a time zone kludge in the FidoNet messages. I'll look especial to this kludge when I am configuring the new system.

I am not sure if this time zone kludge adding would solve the problem at the gate? Besides that, there are more FidoNet users at other systems writing here. Then the problem is still there. So I think the best solution is to solve the problem at the gate. I am not the problem nor the solution, only mediating ;-).

Henri.

ation

While true up to a point, this is not helpful.

Exactly. It's you who chose a gateway of known, albeit arguably wrong behaviour. It's (more than) a courtesy to your readers to adapt your settings so we can see if your post came before or after another in the thread. Your timezone, while not totally irrelevant, is of far secondary interest to us.

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The best solution is to use Usenet directly, without involving Fidonet at all.

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That does these days require an Internet connection...

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  ?A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,  
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,  
?We did this ourselves.? 

? Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Number of people worldwide WITH Fidonet connection and WITHOUT internet connection... My guess is zero.

rea.

That is the same thing. There are many ways for you to speak to us in this newsgroup and this is the one you chose.

I always blame the artisan, not his tools.

Who says I want to? I read this group and I get what is served here. THe choice to inject Fidonet content is not mine and I can't do anything about it (except perhaps elaborate filtering).

I haven't though some here state they do. My thread is correct but it is still sometimes relevant whether someone has ignored another opinion or had no chance of seeing it when writing.

This is not Fidonet. If you come here as a guest, it's mandatory for you to act accordingly to our rules. I used to visit UseNet aus a guest from MausNet. I know the rules and our sysops at the time made sure we abided by them. Iirc Fidonet had a flaky reputation even then.

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Really?

My non-POTS ISP quit carrying Usenet about a year ago. Way back when, I actually had a POTS UUCP connection with them and ran my own node. The "more-local" ISP that offers the broadband connections never carried Usenet.

Here in the US, if you want a text-only usenet source, a BBS is probably the easiest way to find one.

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Den 2018-10-04 skrev Mike Powell :

Eternal September might be run from Europe, but you can talk to it from the entire connected world.

News peering is an enthusiast niche today, which means that with a small investment in a VPS and some polite emails to news admins you probably can have your own Usenet server with a nice feed.

Fidonet simply is not relevant anymore. (From a technical standpoint. There most likely is a healthy community of flamewars

Internet. Not so sure about pictures of kittens, though.)

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Indeed. See