changed-lines in objects.
Hi db-wg, I have a suggestion which maybe is good or bad :) A thought occured to me (as I for the xxxx'th time was accused of hacking somebody who has a firewall). The changed-line in every object simply refers to a mail-adress and a timestamp. Whould'nt it be more accurate to have a nic-hdl instead of just a mailadress there? managers of objects move, and mailadresses gets obsolete, and the only thing they are used for is to send abuse-matters, which of course are the wrong recipient in 99.9% of the cases, but if there was a nic-hdl, one could give information via that nic-hdl on how to get in contact with 'good' recipients, or the users would have to actually think and maybe realize that the other names that occur in an answer from ripe-db possibly could be the right recipients for abuse-matters. an example, instead of this: inetnum: 194.68.1.0 - 194.68.1.255 netname: SE-GEFLE descr: Gefle Dagblad country: SE admin-c: MAEK2-RIPE tech-c: MAEK2-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PI mnt-by: SUNET-MNT changed: ber@sunet.se 19940420 changed: fredrik@sunet.se 19990211 changed: fredrik@sunet.se 19991105 source: RIPE there would be inetnum: 194.68.1.0 - 194.68.1.255 netname: SE-GEFLE descr: Gefle Dagblad country: SE admin-c: MAEK2-RIPE tech-c: MAEK2-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PI mnt-by: SUNET-MNT changed: BE10 19940420 changed: FW526-RIPE 19990211 changed: FW526-RIPE 19991105 source: RIPE Comments are welcome. -- Best regards /Fredrik ------------------------------------------------------- KTHNOC, KTH, S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden +46 8 790 65 17 -------------------------------------------------------
At 8:12 AM +0200 24/5/03, Fredrik Widell wrote:
A thought occured to me (as I for the xxxx'th time was accused of hacking somebody who has a firewall). The changed-line in every object simply refers to a mail-adress and a timestamp. Whould'nt it be more accurate to have a nic-hdl instead of just a mailadress there? managers of objects move, and mailadresses gets obsolete, and the only thing they are used for is to send abuse-matters, which of course are the wrong recipient in 99.9% of the cases, but if there was a nic-hdl, one could give information via that nic-hdl on how to get in contact with 'good' recipients, or the users would have to actually think and maybe realize that the other names that occur in an answer from ripe-db possibly could be the right recipients for abuse-matters.
I think they are just about useless anyway and anything you put in there some clown (or their program) will use to send you either SPAM or abuse about SPAM. The objects I modify usually have a comment about where to send abuse reports and the changed field has nobody@domain as the address, which nicely hits the bit bucket for those people who can't read/understand. Mark.
On 2003-05-24 16:25:38 +0930, Mark Prior wrote:
At 8:12 AM +0200 24/5/03, Fredrik Widell wrote:
A thought occured to me (as I for the xxxx'th time was accused of hacking somebody who has a firewall). The changed-line in every object simply refers to a mail-adress and a timestamp. Whould'nt it be more accurate to have a nic-hdl instead of just a mailadress there? managers of objects move, and mailadresses gets obsolete, and the only thing they are used for is to send abuse-matters, which of course are the wrong recipient in 99.9% of the cases, but if there was a nic-hdl, one could give information via that nic-hdl on how to get in contact with 'good' recipients, or the users would have to actually think and maybe realize that the other names that occur in an answer from ripe-db possibly could be the right recipients for abuse-matters.
I think they are just about useless anyway and anything you put in there some clown (or their program) will use to send you either SPAM or abuse about SPAM. The objects I modify usually have a comment about where to send abuse reports and the changed field has nobody@domain as the address, which nicely hits the bit bucket for those people who can't read/understand.
At the Database Working Group of the RIPE meeting last week, the topic of the e-mail addresses in the "changed:" attribute came up. I asked the participants how many people actually used the information in the "changed:" attribute for themselves to track who had made changes in their objects, and a significant number said they did. This was surprising to me, but means that people do find it useful. I was talking with one of the engineers in our group here, and he made the suggestion that we should make the changed attribute: changed: YYYYMMDD <freeform> When an object is updated, the value of the "changed:" attribute would be checked, and if the first 8 characters were not the date, then the date would be inserted. This attribute would preserve the useful features of the "changed:" attribute: - automatic timestamping for users who want it - place to put an identifier for the person making the change It would solve the problem of having a meaningless e-mail in the attribute. A further improvement would be to make the attribute optional, since it has no strict meaning. It does not address the problem that people assume that the "changed:" attribute actually properly identifies when an object was changed. If this is desired, then the attribute should be made mandatory, and the timestamp always added by the server. In the past, there has been opposition to this idea. -- Shane Kerr RIPE NCC
At 12:44 PM +0200 24/5/03, Shane Kerr wrote:
It does not address the problem that people assume that the "changed:" attribute actually properly identifies when an object was changed. If this is desired, then the attribute should be made mandatory, and the timestamp always added by the server. In the past, there has been opposition to this idea.
Your suggestion does have merit. If people want to tag the changed line they can do and for those of us who don't we just see when it was (possibly) last changed. Why did people oppose the idea of it being added by the server? Mark.
Shane Kerr wrote: [...]
changed: YYYYMMDD <freeform>
When an object is updated, the value of the "changed:" attribute would be checked, and if the first 8 characters were not the date, then the date would be inserted.
This attribute would preserve the useful features of the "changed:" attribute:
- automatic timestamping for users who want it - place to put an identifier for the person making the change
It would solve the problem of having a meaningless e-mail in the attribute.
A further improvement would be to make the attribute optional, since it has no strict meaning.
It does not address the problem that people assume that the "changed:" attribute actually properly identifies when an object was changed. If this is desired, then the attribute should be made mandatory, and the timestamp always added by the server. In the past, there has been opposition to this idea.
The presenatation of this proposal (http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-40/presentations/timestamping...) was made at RIPE 40, but as Shane mentioned was rejected. Andrei Robachevsky RIPE NCC
participants (4)
-
Andrei Robachevsky -
Fredrik Widell -
Mark Prior -
Shane Kerr