Re: Origins of DATE command

[Tom Limoncelli <[e-mail]>]

> In the arguments over the NNTPv2 spec, one of the concerns was that
> clients would use the DATE command as a remote time clock, and beat
> the NNTP server to death asking about the time of day.  [In today's
> [...]
> add a command (never named) which would represent a 'magic cookie'
> that could be fed to the NEWNEWS command just as the ISO date is in
> the v1 implementation.  It was to be a server-dependent item; you would
> request it and save it and return it, but you didn't interpret it.
> Whether it was an ISO format timestamp, an encrypted version of it,
> an offset into the history file, or whatever, wasn't important.  It

Let me be a polyanna and suggest that we simply return the date in
YYYYMMDDHHMM format... that is, we don't return the number of seconds.
It still works for NEWNEWS, you just might get a couple more articles
since losing the number of seconds means rounding down.  We just have
to make sure it doesn't break (many) existing implementations.

If someone chooses to set their clock by that rather than by installing
NTP, rdate or something else... all power to them.

I'd prefer not to invent a lot in this area.  Let's spend our
"invention" budget on search mechanisms, improved transports, and truth,
justice, and 8-bit text.

--tal


-- 
             Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal
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