In message <[log in to unmask]>, Michael L Gueterman
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Roy articulated very nicely:
>
><snip>
>
>>Now the gateway also reads all the postings in comp.sys.hp.mpe, and
>>filters out those that it originated from HP3000-L. For the rest, those
>>that originated on comp.sys.hp.mpe, it takes a copy of each one and
>>sends it as an email to each subscriber on the HP3000-L list.
>
>A slight correction for those keeping score; The gateway sends
>each of the newsgroup originated messages to HP3000-L directly
>and lets Listserv distribute it just like any other HP3000-L
>posting.  The gateway itself acts just like any other subscriber/
>poster.  Also, since I can't accurately filter out messages based
>on time (propagation delays in Usenet can cause interesting things
>to happen to messages :), the gateway looks at each message-id and
>determines if it has seen that message-id before. If it has, then
>it skips over it (since message-ids are unique).  This prevents a
>message from being posted multiple times to HP3000-L.
>
>The gateway program itself does not do any content filtering or
>message "massaging" outside of reading the message into a big
>character string, then writing that string back out. Although
>we could do pretty much anything to it in between those actions,
>we've felt that doing so presented a very slippery slope which
>we didn't care to slide down. :)

Thanks for the corrections, Michael. Of course that's how it works.....

Somewhat to my surprise, though, I find I have another correction.

Of the 18 'spams' currently on my comp.sys.hp.mpe newsgroup (14 days'
expiry, 784 messages present) only 4, maybe 5, have been posted as
articles to comp.sys.hp.mpe

Us readers of comp.sys.hp.mpe can tell where a message came from,
without even looking at the headers, by the presence or absence of the
'subscribe' info added by the Listserv to the end of each message.

The other 75% of them have this info appended, and so must have been
injected directly into HP3000-L.

So what I said about spam ain't so.

3 times as much flows out from HP3000-L across the gateway as flows in.
Still less than 2% of the postings, though, so no large damage.....
--
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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