>Retieval by message ID is ok for one or two articles, but it >doesn't scale well. Anyone using it as a method of news sucking >deserves to be LARTed for wantonly wasting CPU on the news server. I respectfully disagree. As more and more indexing and cross-reference databases become available, more news systems will retrieve based on the unique Message-ID of the article. In one design for the next generation of usenet, the news articles themselves are NEVER flooded around the net, just index information (much like the existing overview files). This may even be done using some sort of FEC and multicasting. Should that catch on, articles will be retrieved solely by their message-id, as there will be no implied order to them in their storage. Schemes like this are the reason that Message-ID retrieval was included in the NNTP design. >Apart from the CPU issues, a machine which can't cope with having >the entire history database loaded up will basically be unusable >for all the other readers on it, so message-ID retrieval turns into >a denial of service attack. Which means that the news server needs to be fixed, not the users. Program inefficiencies and/or hardware shortcomings are rarely a good reason for enforcing restrictions on users. After all, in some sense, isn't the purpose of the system to serve its users? - Brian
