Sorry: I don't have a clue what happened. Deleting one at time.

ACK!!! Got this reply all done and my system froze just as I was
about to hit send and had to do a hard reboot.

Oh well. Feces occurs. Moving on....



Peter Hucker wrote in
:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:45:11 -0000, Skywise
wrote:

Snipola
And just how do you decide how many messages to knock off from each
group?

You delete the oldest ones first, irrespective of what group they are
in.

And just how do you decide which groups to delete from? For example,
you get a flood in one group of 1000 posts, how do you decide which
of the 15,000 other (or more) groups gets one (or more?) messages
deleted?

Actually, I can envision a way, but it would require too much
CPU overhead to accomplish. I'm no porgramming expert, but most of
my programs are database crunchers, which is what the core of NSP
server software is. It is far easier to say "I have 5 new messages
for group X, which has a message cap of 1000. That group already has
1000 messages, so I'll just delete to 5 oldest ones to make room for
the 5 new ones" than it is to say "I just received 5 new messages
for group X, but I need to make room on the servers so I need to scan
through all 15,000 groups and millions of messages and trillions of
bytes to figure out which ones are the oldest and to delete them to
make room and hope I can do all this before the next new message
arrives in the next few milliseconds."

Just as a point of reference, my most sophisticated programs were
used to analyze earthquake databases to statistically analyze
prediction methods. Personal use only, so didn't need any fancy
interface and could spend all my time optimizing the search routines.



BTW, with your proposed method, it is theoretically possible to wipe
out the posts from every newsgroup with a large enough flood to only
one group.

I doubt it. Do you know how large usenet is? There are people
posting pirate DVDs faster than a spammer can flood.

Hence the caveat "theoretically". Obviously the more capacity a
server has, the less likely it is to occur.

Your example of DVD postings is a good one. Do you propose to
use your method to make room on the servers for these messages
just the same as a flood? Why should ABPA loose it's older messages
just because someone decides to post the entire 10 season collection
of Stargate SG-1, which is at least 50 DVD's. (I know, I have them)

And herein lies the problem with your method. How do you tell the
difference between a flood and just a massively huge, but legit
post?

So as you can see, although you don't like the way messages fall
off the servers, there are very good practical reason that things
are done the way they are.

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Quake "predictions": http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:56:43 -0800, Geoff
wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:49:04 +0000, Peter Hucker
wrote:

[snip]

The NSP I use works this way.

No, it doesn't. Altopia works the same way as the others. As I
suspected, you have never run an NNTP server and have no clue.

It keeps x days of binaries.

... and it keeps y days of text.

Q.E.D.

What? I've never said text was the same as binaries. What I've said
is all binary groups are the same expiry time.
--
This message has been brought to you by solar and wind power. Who needs the national grid?
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't point to their crotch when asking where the bathroom is?

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:29:16 -0000, Skywise
wrote:

ACK!!! Got this reply all done and my system froze just as I was
about to hit send and had to do a hard reboot.

Oh well. Feces occurs. Moving on....

Doesn't it auto save?

Peter Hucker wrote in
:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:45:11 -0000, Skywise
wrote:

Snipola
And just how do you decide how many messages to knock off from each
group?

You delete the oldest ones first, irrespective of what group they are
in.

And just how do you decide which groups to delete from? For example,
you get a flood in one group of 1000 posts, how do you decide which
of the 15,000 other (or more) groups gets one (or more?) messages
deleted?

I just told you, you delete the oldest message first.

Actually, I can envision a way, but it would require too much
CPU overhead to accomplish. I'm no porgramming expert, but most of
my programs are database crunchers, which is what the core of NSP
server software is. It is far easier to say "I have 5 new messages
for group X, which has a message cap of 1000. That group already has
1000 messages, so I'll just delete to 5 oldest ones to make room for
the 5 new ones" than it is to say "I just received 5 new messages
for group X, but I need to make room on the servers so I need to scan
through all 15,000 groups and millions of messages and trillions of
bytes to figure out which ones are the oldest and to delete them to
make room and hope I can do all this before the next new message
arrives in the next few milliseconds."

How about having a counter which is set to the oldest date articles
are currently stored. When the disk capacity reaches a set value (say
90%), increment the counter by say 6 hours, and go through each group
removing all messages older than the new date counter.

Just as a point of reference, my most sophisticated programs were
used to analyze earthquake databases to statistically analyze
prediction methods. Personal use only, so didn't need any fancy
interface and could spend all my time optimizing the search routines.



BTW, with your proposed method, it is theoretically possible to wipe
out the posts from every newsgroup with a large enough flood to only
one group.

I doubt it. Do you know how large usenet is? There are people
posting pirate DVDs faster than a spammer can flood.

Hence the caveat "theoretically". Obviously the more capacity a
server has, the less likely it is to occur.

Your example of DVD postings is a good one. Do you propose to
use your method to make room on the servers for these messages
just the same as a flood? Why should ABPA loose it's older messages

It doesn't. Altopia has a different retention time for multipart
binaries (eg DVDs) and single part binaries (eg photos).

just because someone decides to post the entire 10 season collection
of Stargate SG-1, which is at least 50 DVD's. (I know, I have them)

Why not just watch them on the telly like I do? If you want to see
one again (I can't think why), you can watch a repeat.
--
This message has been brought to you by solar and wind power. Who needs the national grid?
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

Q: If you have a mothball in one hand and another mothball in the other hand, what would you have?
A: The undivided attention of a very large moth!

Peter Hucker wrote in
:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:29:16 -0000, Skywise
wrote:


Your example of DVD postings is a good one. Do you propose to
use your method to make room on the servers for these messages
just the same as a flood? Why should ABPA loose it's older messages

It doesn't. Altopia has a different retention time for multipart
binaries (eg DVDs) and single part binaries (eg photos).

Which just goes to show that they have individual settings for each
group.

It should mean something to you that since Usenet providers have
always done things the way they are doing them probably means
there's a good reason for it. If for nothing else, it allows the
admins to tailor the settings for each group to the needs of the
users of that group. This regardless of my ability to convince you
or not.


just because someone decides to post the entire 10 season collection
of Stargate SG-1, which is at least 50 DVD's. (I know, I have them)

Why not just watch them on the telly like I do? If you want to see
one again (I can't think why), you can watch a repeat.

I was simply using it as an example of a potentially large (illegal,
of course) upload. There was no need to take a shot at me just
because you happen to not like the show. That I like the show is
irrelevant. I simply pointed out the fact of it's size and supported
that fact by stating I own the series.

But it's obvious you are certain you are right, and are using a well
know logical fallacy - looking only for evidence that supports your
theory and dismissing all evidence that goes against it. Therefore
I see no further need to continue this discussion. I get my fill of
"true believers" in the psuedoscience forums I partake in. At least
there I'm on topic.

Apologies to the group for going OT for so long.

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Quake "predictions": http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:22:58 -0000, Skywise
wrote:

Peter Hucker wrote in
:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:29:16 -0000, Skywise
wrote:


Your example of DVD postings is a good one. Do you propose to
use your method to make room on the servers for these messages
just the same as a flood? Why should ABPA loose it's older messages

It doesn't. Altopia has a different retention time for multipart
binaries (eg DVDs) and single part binaries (eg photos).

Which just goes to show that they have individual settings for each
group.

It should mean something to you that since Usenet providers have
always done things the way they are doing them probably means
there's a good reason for it. If for nothing else, it allows the
admins to tailor the settings for each group to the needs of the
users of that group. This regardless of my ability to convince you
or not.

Here's a reply from the guy running Altopia:

Does Altopia remove articles after x days have passed, or is there a certain disk space allocated to each group?

Neither.

Altopia classifies messages based on certain characteristics
(text/binary, size, # of parts) and then stores a message based on
that determination into what are called storage classes.

The virtual volumes for each class are essentially big circular
buffers. New messages overwrite the oldest messages on an ongoing
basis. There is no concept of a daily expire.

A single group can have messages of each storage class contained in
it. This results in groups containing multi-month old text messages
while only maintaining multi-day old binaries.

Current retention, for each class, is up at:

https://www.altopia.com/retention/retention.html

Let me know if you have any more questions about this.

Chris Caputo
President, Altopia Corporation

just because someone decides to post the entire 10 season collection
of Stargate SG-1, which is at least 50 DVD's. (I know, I have them)

Why not just watch them on the telly like I do? If you want to see
one again (I can't think why), you can watch a repeat.

I was simply using it as an example of a potentially large (illegal,
of course) upload. There was no need to take a shot at me just
because you happen to not like the show.

I do like the show, which is why I wrote "like I do".

That I like the show is
irrelevant. I simply pointed out the fact of it's size and supported
that fact by stating I own the series.

But it's obvious you are certain you are right, and are using a well
know logical fallacy - looking only for evidence that supports your
theory and dismissing all evidence that goes against it. Therefore
I see no further need to continue this discussion. I get my fill of
"true believers" in the psuedoscience forums I partake in. At least
there I'm on topic.

Apologies to the group for going OT for so long.

Brian
This message has been brought to you by solar and wind power. Who needs the national grid?
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

Women are not served here. You have to bring your own.