EarthLink's netnews server is defective
Bruce Adler
is missing a significant fraction of the posted articles. This
tends to make news.earthlink.net look better than it actually is.
I've located a netnews server which seems to be missing a lot fewer
articles than deja.com.
Here's a comparison of the number of articles available from
news.earthlink.net in the newsgroup comp.unix.solaris, versus
the number of articles in the same group from talkway.com. You
should in particular note how bad the last week has been on
news.earthlink.net.
The comp.unix.solaris article counts by day, as of Jan 14, 2000
at 0200 PST:
Datestamp
of article ELNK / talkway = %%%
TUE 12/21/99 74 / 182 = 41%
WED 12/22/99 111 / 149 = 74%
THU 12/23/99 132 / 140 = 94%
FRI 12/24/99 91 / 97 = 94%
SAT 12/25/99 51 / 53 = 96%
SUN 12/26/99 52 / 53 = 98%
MON 12/27/99 132 / 138 = 96%
TUE 12/28/99 153 / 156 = 98%
WED 12/29/99 178 / 182 = 98%
THU 12/30/99 104 / 108 = 96%
FRI 12/31/99 51 / 50 = 102%
SAT 01/01/00 42 / 43 = 98%
SUN 01/02/00 48 / 57 = 84%
MON 01/03/00 134 / 128 = 105%
TUE 01/04/00 159 / 184 = 86%
WED 01/05/00 160 / 195 = 82%
THU 01/06/00 148 / 194 = 76%
FRI 01/07/00 120 / 198 = 61%
SAT 01/08/00 23 / 48 = 48%
SUN 01/09/00 48 / 79 = 61%
MON 01/10/00 91 / 183 = 50%
TUE 01/11/00 116 / 233 = 50%
WED 01/12/00 85 / 158 = 54%
THU 01/13/00 128 / 37 = 54%
=================================
TOTAL 2431 / 3245 = 75%
ELNK vs talkway for last 7 days:
TOTAL 611 / 1136 = 54%
Me
>
> I've discovered that deja.com on some days during the last month
> is missing a significant fraction of the posted articles. This
> tends to make news.earthlink.net look better than it actually is.
> I've located a netnews server which seems to be missing a lot fewer
> articles than deja.com.
>
> Here's a comparison of the number of articles available from
> news.earthlink.net in the newsgroup comp.unix.solaris, versus
> the number of articles in the same group from talkway.com. You
> should in particular note how bad the last week has been on
> news.earthlink.net.
Geez, why are you complaining about this problem on a newsgroup?
Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a configuration problem
with the news server or the server might not be getting all the postings
it should from its feeder server? The logical thing to do in such situations
is to report the problem to the service provider. No where in your message
did you indicate that you did so. What was your point in posting the message
on a newsgroup?
Captain Howdy
wouldn't be making such an ignorant statement. Reload the headers and
start reading this issue from several months ago....
Capt'n
Lee Kanner
pretty damn pissed off. If I have a second instance of this, I'll
definitely find another ISP.
Just before Christmas, I purchased a $55 chess playing program, Macintosh
version. The manual left a lot to be desired and was oriented toward the
PC version. I had a few questions about the notation in the display and
sent email to the programmer in England. After not having received an
answer for a few weeks, I posted my questions in rec.games.chess.computer
and checked that newsgroup daily for an answer. Late last week I received
an email from a fellow giving me a few minor tips and mentioning that a
certain person had thorougly answered my questions. I put the person's
name into a search engine and found his web site. He is the proprietor of
a British magazine on chess computers. So, I then looked in deja news
(aka www.deja.com) and, by gosh, found the missing article and it did, in
fact, answer my questions, and also mentioned that the reason I got no
answer from the progammer was that the latter was still away in New
Zealand.
Well, long story. But the point is that the newsgroups are a terrific
resource for getting obscure information, and it was only by sheer luck
that I got the information in this case.
EarthLink--straighten up your act!
Herb
In article <Xxah4.6465$Wn2.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
"Bruce Adler" <bruce.NxOxSx...@acm.org> wrote:
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>------=_NextPart_000_008C_01BF61ED.524A2EC0
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>Earthlink must be "upgrading" again because I see that the percentage
>of missing articles in my favorite newsgroup is again over 20%.
>
>Earthlink's latest trick was to drop a bunch of active newsgroups and
>then let their tech support phone answers deny for a few hours that they
>ever remove any newsgroups. I can just barely fathom how some misinformed
>netnews administrator might assume that removing *inactive* newsgroups
>might somehow be useful and manage to fat-finger the command and remove
>a bunch of *active* newsgroups at the same time. But AFAIK any reasonable
>netnews server (and even INND) doesn't waste any significant amount of
>resources on inactive newsgroups. So while performing an essentially
>pointless bit of server maintainence Earthlink managed to royally screw
>up, again. Even if we assume that deleting inactive newsgroups is somehow
>useful I can't begin to understand how that could possibly be a higher
>priority than figuring out why Earthlink lost about 35% of the posted
>articles (in all newsgroups) during the past week.
>
>------=_NextPart_000_008C_01BF61ED.524A2EC0
>Content-Type: image/png;
> name="untitled.png"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
>Content-Disposition: attachment;
> filename="untitled.png"
--
Herb and/or Lee Kanner
For e-mail reply, replace "acmd" by "acm"
Sam Habash
: resources on inactive newsgroups. So while performing an essentially
: pointless bit of server maintainence Earthlink managed to royally screw
: up, again. Even if we assume that deleting inactive newsgroups is somehow
: useful I can't begin to understand how that could possibly be a higher
: priority than figuring out why Earthlink lost about 35% of the posted
: articles (in all newsgroups) during the past week.
Well, removing newsgroups may be a pointed bit of server maintenance,
especially if the groups have collected spam cruft. (Especially
if they've removed alt.binaries.*) It's not difficult to figure out
why you're seeing lossage...try looking in the path: header and
noticing who they use for upstreams, telnet to the nntp port and note
what software they're using, and imagine a machine lacking I/O bandwidth,
peers, or proper software to keep up, and then keep in mind that any
tinkering with the server will take it out of commission for about a day
or so (best case). Even if you have a 'hot spare', your article numbers
will go out of whack, confusing certain newsreaders. And I'm not sure if
they care about "news" as much as you do, it's very difficult
to compete with outsourced NNTP these days.
Also, the ba.* charter prohibits binary postings. If you're going
to post here, as it's arguable that your post has anything to do
with Bay Area Internet access, you really don't need to clutter
your posts with attachments when you can simply publish the
.png to a site somewhere and link to it there.
--Sam
nob...@primenet.com
> Well, removing newsgroups may be a pointed bit of server maintenance,
> especially if the groups have collected spam cruft.
At Primenet (where news is one of all too few things they actually do
very well) right now there are 33936 active groups. Of those 7033 are
currently empty and 1146 of them remain virgin (never had anything at
all in them). Not that this means a whole lot in terms of performance
but these ratios have been pretty typical over the past few years...
Bruce Adler
"Sam Habash" <use...@llama.com> wrote in message
news:38858985$0$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
> In ba.internet Bruce Adler <bruce.NxOxSx...@acm.org> wrote:
>
> : resources on inactive newsgroups. So while performing an essentially
> : pointless bit of server maintainence Earthlink managed to royally screw
> : up, again. Even if we assume that deleting inactive newsgroups is somehow
> : useful I can't begin to understand how that could possibly be a higher
> : priority than figuring out why Earthlink lost about 35% of the posted
> : articles (in all newsgroups) during the past week.
>
> especially if the groups have collected spam cruft
I said Earthlink claimed they intended to only remove "inactive" newsgroups.
A newsgroup that has "spam" isn't inactive. Removing a newsgroup because of
"undesirable" content (e.g., spam) would be censorship rather than cleanup.
AFAIK, Earthlink's policy has always been and still is, no censorship (of
any form) of newsgroup content. I also haven't seen any indication that
Earthlink has any form of anti-spam policy or filters for newsgroup content.
Rather, I think they've simply got a defective news server and aren't
careful enough or conscientious enough when they make changes to their
server.
JayDee
<bruce.NxOxSx...@acm.org> wrote:
hmm, a crossposted bitch-n-whine-n-moan-n-groan; wow!
and, just the thread for me to hijack, corrupt, and prevert...
and, I think I'll contribute, FWIFW
>Earthlink must be "upgrading" again because I see that the percentage
>of missing articles in my favorite newsgroup is again over 20%.
not to mention my home newsgroup, (alt.alt.alt.alt.alt) which has been
active for over three years and runs an average of 200 articles per
day, just up-and-disappeared sometime over the weekend, leaving
me (in Seattle) with no local access, and a Bellingham user gone...
inquiry got me nowhere, so, I'm here
>Earthlink's latest trick was to drop a bunch of active newsgroups and
>then let their tech support phone answers deny for a few hours that they
>ever remove any newsgroups.
I got some smug little asswipe that essentially told me that's how it
is...I've done support for Microsoft, and if I had been listened-in-on
and made a delivery like that, I'd have gotten another black mark
oh, my Microsoft black marks:
exceeding my service boundaries (I was given Win issues, not DOS
by some strange coincidence, and coded these issues as-such)...
the comment by other techs about this was "the sharks got you"
I also openly sexually harassed a non-networked Gateway 386
...go figure; the Gateway didn't complain, however
plus, I got too-low a score on the post-knowlege exam (98%)
...however, it took them several months to figure that one out
I never had to do any callbacks, because I fixed the issues fast
the KB is a good tool, and I always archived what I felt was needed
locally on a CVF, so when the servers crashed, I'd have my info...
oh, and I asked a mentor a "stupid question"...that was black mark #4
>Even if we assume that deleting inactive newsgroups is somehow
>useful I can't begin to understand how that could possibly be a higher
>priority than figuring out why Earthlink lost about 35% of the posted
>articles (in all newsgroups) during the past week.
someone fucked up
so did I; I didn't ask who I was speaking to re. the
alt.alt.alt.alt.alt issue, for what bitching was worth...
nevertheless, I'll pursue restoration of Alt5 (it even has a charter)
it's UseNet Friendly Name is "beyond alternative"
it's function?
..it's a support group for the beyond-alternative user that
traditional support groups are not an option, since they likely
can't deal with some of the issues that have been presented
JayDee
>Sam Habash <use...@llama.com> writes:
>
>> Well, removing newsgroups may be a pointed bit of server maintenance,
>> especially if the groups have collected spam cruft.
>
>At Primenet (where news is one of all too few things they actually do
>very well) right now there are 33936 active groups. Of those 7033 are
>currently empty and 1146 of them remain virgin (never had anything at
>all in them). Not that this means a whole lot in terms of performance
>but these ratios have been pretty typical over the past few years...
so, I should get an account @ Primenet?
eh, one of my most-adored trolls is a Primenet user
...but, she's in Phoenix
what I want to know (tm. Max Headroom) is why this NG
is propagating off Earthlink servers and into Primenet?
JayDee
>This thread explains an experience I had this week, and about which I'm
>pretty damn pissed off. If I have a second instance of this, I'll
>definitely find another ISP.
considering the attitude I ran into when I called-in on the
tech-support number, I'd say gofor it, and if I had any sayso
in who the ISP is around here, I'd tell them to stick it, even
shit, I can use FreeI and NoCharge, and open servers
and, no, I don't have to tolerate those banners, either...
JayDee
<bruce.NxOxSx...@acm.org> wrote:
>
>"Sam Habash" <use...@llama.com> wrote in message
>news:38858985$0$2...@nntp1.ba.best.com...
>> In ba.internet Bruce Adler <bruce.NxOxSx...@acm.org> wrote:
>>
>> : resources on inactive newsgroups. So while performing an essentially
>> : pointless bit of server maintainence Earthlink managed to royally screw
>> : up, again. Even if we assume that deleting inactive newsgroups is somehow
>> : useful I can't begin to understand how that could possibly be a higher
>> : priority than figuring out why Earthlink lost about 35% of the posted
>> : articles (in all newsgroups) during the past week.
>>
>> Well, removing newsgroups may be a pointed bit of server maintenance,
>> especially if the groups have collected spam cruft
>
>I said Earthlink claimed they intended to only remove "inactive" newsgroups.
>A newsgroup that has "spam" isn't inactive. Removing a newsgroup because of
>"undesirable" content (e.g., spam) would be censorship rather than cleanup.
>AFAIK, Earthlink's policy has always been and still is, no censorship (of
>any form) of newsgroup content. I also haven't seen any indication that
>Earthlink has any form of anti-spam policy or filters for newsgroup content.
>Rather, I think they've simply got a defective news server and aren't
>careful enough or conscientious enough when they make changes to their
>server.
my beef is that they "lost" alt.alt.alt.alt.alt, which IS an active
newsgroup all over the fucking planet and carried by every
NNTP I've logged-into, except some esoteric open servers...
and they not only dumped the newsgroup, but some little punk
in support just coldly blew me off with an essentially "tuff" trip
someone like that is going to get their ass kicked, in the real world
but likely not, because that sort are usually different in real-life
...probably beat their dog, woman, and kids
nob...@primenet.com
> so, I should get an account @ Primenet?
I don't think they're even selling accounts there any more,
it got eaten by Frontier (the phone company in New York) and
they have a different news server (also in New York)...
> what I want to know (tm. Max Headroom) is why this NG
> is propagating off Earthlink servers and into Primenet?
Well -- I'm reading it on ba.internet which is a non-vendor-
specfic group for the San Francisco bay area. It's also in
a few other non-Earthlink groups too, enough that I'm posting
to it with the null account (I already get enough junk email)...
JayDee
>JayDee <nobody...@moo.poo> writes:
>> so, I should get an account @ Primenet?
>I don't think they're even selling accounts there any more,
>it got eaten by Frontier (the phone company in New York) and
>they have a different news server (also in New York)...
well, if I was in Phoenix, that'd be a different story...
I'd likely run-away to Flagstaff, anyway, if I ran away to PHX
>> what I want to know (tm. Max Headroom) is why this NG
>> is propagating off Earthlink servers and into Primenet?
>Well -- I'm reading it on ba.internet which is a non-vendor-
>specfic group for the San Francisco bay area. It's also in
>a few other non-Earthlink groups too, enough that I'm posting
>to it with the null account (I already get enough junk email)...
interesting how the crossposting starts and propagates...
that's one thing that the denizens of alt.alt.alt.alt.alt don't
like, is crossposts, even if it brings-in new, umm, talent
and the NG goddess who kicked it all-off? she ain't around
nearly as much as she was, but she still hosts the FAQ, etc.
...she was totally paranoid of Meower invasion
so-far, invasion hasn't happened...the NG is immune, I say
Bruce Bergman
reply)" <justano...@onebox.com> wrote:
>JayDee,
>
>You do realize that ELN techs use headsets, not hand-held phones.
>This can have significant repercussions.
>
>Here's what you do:
>
>1. Call tech support.
>2. Request to speak with the tech from the Alt5 call.
> - be persistent
> -claim you want to apologize for being rude >:)
>3. Wait for the tech to reach the phone.
>4. Turn your speakers to full volume.
>5. Blast the "Hampster Dance."
>
>Repeat process until satisfied.
>
>(for optional long-term satisfaction enhancement, use small recorder
>to record tech's scream)
>
>(original concept taken from RW)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but while this is a truly eeeeeeeevil
idea, it won't work too well. I know the Telco headsets have volume
limiters on them (I've installed them on older equipment that didn't
come with them), and the ones Earthlink uses most likely have them
also, that is if the manufacturer doesn't want some big liability
lawsuits for permanent hearing loss disabilities...
--<< Bruce >>--
--
Bruce L. Bergman blCHURRObergman@ NOearthSPAMlink.netEVER Remove the caps.
Troubleshooter - Electrician, Phones, HVAC, Plumbing,...
'Current'ly with Westend Electric, Agoura, CA 818/889-9545
WARNING: No Unsolicited Commercial E-mail is EVER accepted.
RW (remove 'not' to reply)
message news:p23h8skg2qbj9kmov...@4ax.com...
>
> You do realize that ELN techs use headsets, not hand-held phones.
> This can have significant repercussions.
>
> Here's what you do:
>
> 1. Call tech support.
> 2. Request to speak with the tech from the Alt5 call.
> - be persistent
> -claim you want to apologize for being rude >:)
> 3. Wait for the tech to reach the phone.
> 4. Turn your speakers to full volume.
> 5. Blast the "Hampster Dance."
>
> Repeat process until satisfied.
>
> (for optional long-term satisfaction enhancement, use small recorder
> to record tech's scream)
>
> (original concept taken from RW)
>
>
RW
H. Myler
blCHURR...@earthlink.net wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2000 00:14:47 GMT, "Rob Haynes (remove 'just' to
> reply)" <justano...@onebox.com> wrote:
>
> >JayDee,
> >
> >You do realize that ELN techs use headsets, not hand-held phones.
> >This can have significant repercussions.
> >
> >Here's what you do:
> >
> >1. Call tech support.
> >2. Request to speak with the tech from the Alt5 call.
> > - be persistent
> > -claim you want to apologize for being rude >:)
> >3. Wait for the tech to reach the phone.
> >4. Turn your speakers to full volume.
> >5. Blast the "Hampster Dance."
> >
> >Repeat process until satisfied.
> >
> >(for optional long-term satisfaction enhancement, use small recorder
> >to record tech's scream)
> >
> >(original concept taken from RW)
>
> Sorry to burst your bubble, but while this is a truly eeeeeeeevil
> idea, it won't work too well. I know the Telco headsets have volume
> limiters on them (I've installed them on older equipment that didn't
> come with them), and the ones Earthlink uses most likely have them
> also, that is if the manufacturer doesn't want some big liability
> lawsuits for permanent hearing loss disabilities...
>
> --<< Bruce >>--
Unfortunately, I for one would like to see the lawsuit filed on the
childish jackasses who would perpetrate such a stunt. There is no justice
in America...
Harley Myler
JayDee
<blCHURR...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Sorry to burst your bubble, but while this is a truly eeeeeeeevil
>idea, it won't work too well. I know the Telco headsets have volume
>limiters on them (I've installed them on older equipment that didn't
>come with them), and the ones Earthlink uses most likely have them
>also, that is if the manufacturer doesn't want some big liability
>lawsuits for permanent hearing loss disabilities...
engaging someone in a long conversation while
feeding them wild stealth subliminals is better...
whoop, I think I got caught doing that, last year
now that it's known-about, all I get is voicemail