From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 93 15:49:09 PDT
To: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>
Subject: Re: criminal gif upload
In-Reply-To: <199310052159.AA28270@eff.org>
Message-ID: <cggTWzm00awJQEOrRt@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> > ha ha.  Seriously tho, just posting a list of MS-DOS filenames is rather
> > useless as filenames do get changed.  It is highly likely that a sysop
>                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > or user might have changed the filenames to something else, especially
> > if their operating system supported filenames longer than 8 characters.
>
> I'm interested in the source of that probability calculation. In
> my experience, sysops dealing with a large volume of files normally
> don't bother to change the names of a few of them, unless they see
> a compelling reason to do so.

I suppose my choice of words was bad, but it does happen.  You're right,
most sysops don't change the filenames.  Usually the filenames get
changed when someone is moving the image to a different computer
platform, such as an Amiga user uploading a GIF to a IBM-compatible BBS
where the OS differences would necessitate a filename change.  And of
course there are some punks who just change the filename to get more
upload credits on ratio systems.  I didn't mean to put down the EFF's
efforts to protect sysops, I was just pointing out the possibility for
potential problems.