Oren wrote:
On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:13:10 -0400, aemeijers
wrote:

Oren wrote:
On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:46:34 -0400, jeff_wisnia
wrote:

My email client (Thunderbird) allows cancelling messages...very handy
feature for "why did I say that" times )
That might work for e-mail, but my understanding is that moments after
you send a post to a news server it gets spread to servers all over the
planet and is then impossible to "cancel" or "delete".

Can someone please tell me if I've got that right?

Jeff
My news reader help file snip.

"Rescind Usenet Post command (Action menu)
Use this command to remove a Usenet message you posted. Rescinding a
message sends a message to your news server asking it to delete the
message. This message is also passed along to the other news servers
on the Internet so that they can delete the message as well."

Now if the news message have already been retrieved - somebody will
see it before the rescind command can be honored.

IIRC, most of the major news servers have ignored 'cancel' messages for
many years now. It did work like that in the old days, when usenet was
run by geeks with some sense of honor. But then breathing scum and 'bots
started canceling other people's messages, and rather than fuss with
'did not- did too', they just dropped the feature.


"'did not- did too'" now that's funny. I remember somebody typed "I
hope I don't get AIDS from your keyboard".

Maybe those with a newer reader can tell us if the feature is still
offered to cancel/rescind.

Waste of money if they developed it and it will not work for the user.

Anyway, so I was told. I could be wrong, I often am lately.

The last time I was wrong, I was mistaken :-/


I'm going to post this and then cancel it. Hmmmm.....