Subject: Re: example .procmailrc stuff for announce lists

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 13:02:58 -0700 (MST)

> From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>

> ...
> in his assessment): It's not my regular DSL network connection which 
> I use when I'm at home, but my connection back to that network when I 
> am using my Handspring Visor on the road. I've got a maximum 14.4kbps 
> connection over my mobile phone back to my home network. So, even if 
> life were perfect, on the hectic days of 50 messages at 4K a message 
> (200kB or 1.6Mb of data), that's about 2 minutes of download time per 
> day. ...

There are many obvious solutions to that and similar problems that do
not require waiting for other people to do anything, or imposing
on them to do it.  One is to subscribe with that regular DSL network
connection and use the recently offered to forward the desired
subset to the Handspring Visor.

>         ...  (It would solve my problem I could do server side 
filtering. For assorted reasons, I can't.)

I cannot conceive of any legitimate reasons to not be able to do server
side filtering.  It might be impossible to get other people to install
filters at qualcomm.com or elsewhere, but that and similar reasons do
not make it a big deal to run free software on an old free or nearly
free junk PC running sendmail and procmail on a free UNIX box.

No, lack of technical experience doing such things or time to do
them is not a legitimate reason for demanding extra service from
others who receive no payment.

> ...
> interesting question is the hit the secretariat takes. Even if there 
> were only 1000 subscribers to IETF-Announce, that's 200MB of data on 
> the busy days. However, my guess (and the secretariat can give us the 
> real numbers) is that that number is at least an order of magnitude 
> too low.

That number could also be an order of magnitude high if the IESG is
running sendmail or another MTA that does the obvious with batches of
addressees all with the same next SMTP hop.  It seems plausible that
many subscribers share ISPs.  Judging from Received lines, I think the
IESG's software can do the right thing in such cases.

Instead of counting (or guessing) bits, it would be more interesting
to look at the queue wait times.  For example, if the Secretariat has
a T3, then even 2000 MByte per busy day does not matter.  Only if it
takes more than perhaps about a day to finish a batch of announcements
does the load matter.  From the durations of the big bursts of I-D
announcements that I see, I doubt this is a problem that needs solving
or that would not be more than counterbalanced by the hassles of
running more mailing lists.  Besides the work by the computers, having
more lists inevitably means more chances for error, for more I-D
announcements to be lost or misplaced.  If you actually pay attention
to any I-D announcements, you've noticed a error rate that is a
significant fraction of a percent.

> ...
> people would subscribe to get all of the I-D announcements. Given the 
> low investment of time it would take to test this out, I think it 
> would be worth attempting it.

Investments imposed on other people are usually low enough to justify
themselves in the estimation of those doing the imposing, not matter 
what those paying the taxes think.

Besides, it has already been more than "attempted" by a third party.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 15:01:33 -0600

On 11/23/01 at 1:02 PM -0700, Vernon Schryver wrote:

>...not make it a big deal to run free software on an old free or 
>nearly free junk PC running sendmail and procmail on a free UNIX box.
>

So let me get this straight: I (and the folks desiring this service 
who have said so publicly and the other, I suspect much larger, bunch 
who have not said so publicly) should go out and get a PC and spend 
the time configuring and maintaining sendmail and procmail (instead 
of my simple though admittedly less powerful Macintosh SMTP server) 
so that the secretariat can avoid the one time investment of setting 
up two lists on the majordomo server that they're already running to 
receive the two sets of mail they're already sending and thereby cut 
down on the total number of messages sent. I'm just dying to know 
under what cost-benefit analysis the former is better than the 
latter. Heck, I'll tell you what: I'll get together with Steve Coya 
in Salt Lake City and over a beer or two help him create the two new 
lists so that we're not "demanding" any "extra service from others 
who receive no payment". In what world is reinventing the wheel 
multiple times a good idea?

(For the record, I've configured sendmail and procmail in the past 
and could do it again if I wanted to change my local software (and 
probably hardware) set up. Lack of technical experience is not at 
issue. Certainly I could find time to do so, though I think total 
time could be better invested.)

>Besides, it has already been more than "attempted" by a third party.

Well, not yet. But as soon as Bruce goes and sets this up, I will 
certainly be subscribing to his lists (thank you Bruce!).

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102