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Re: mail/news unification

2003-02-23 20:12:13

In <10214959861(_dot_)20030222130448(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com> Dave Crocker 
<dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com> writes:

To me, the only user-level difference that is major is one of
addressing, between explicitly sending to one or more individuals,
versus explicitly sending to a "group". In this regard, I believe that
that netnews is essentially the same as an email list.

Yes, one subscribes to a list but not to a newsgroup. However think
about the mode of posting to an open mailing list that you are not
subscribed to, and using the mailing list archive as the basis for
reading contributions.  It is darn close to the style of a newsgroup.

Yes, the superficial similarities are apparent, but there are real serious
differences behind the scenes. You see this when you try to gateway
between a newsgroup and a mailing list. The simple cases work fine, but
just think what happens if an article is submitted to two mailing lists,
or is posted to several newsgroups with more than one of them gatewayed to
a mailing list. Life suddenly starts to get extremely complicated for the
poor implementor(s).

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clw(_dot_)cs(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk      Snail: 5 
Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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