In article <V0BgcD4w165w@bwalk.dm.com>, dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis) writes:

I'd like to remind everyone of the well-thought-out scheme for authenticating cancels proposed some time ago by Taneli Hujskonen and Benjamin Franz, that can also be integrated into a Lazarus-like system for tracing forged cancels.

Maybe. On the other hand, there's nothing to keep certain well-connected news administrators from removing the appropriate header line, or, even more interestingly, substituting values such that the cancel equation is well known. Fundamentally, though, what I've discovered is that any significant change to the news system is impossible to do, because installed base restricts what people are willing to change. Look at the dozens of extensions to NNTP which all conflict, are non-standard or ill-described, yet are demanded by moronic software such as Netscape's news reader. When will we see NNTP v3? Never... jms Joel M Snyder, PhD, 1404 E Lind Rd, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Phone: +1 520 324 0494 (voice) +1 520 324 0495 (FAX) jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms Opus One PLEASE NOTE: The useful parts of Arizona changed from area code 602 to area code 520 on March 20, 1995.