[NNTP] Article number wording

[Matthias Andree]

"Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

> Fifthly, when we worked on the text originally, nobody noted the signed
> versus unsigned problem. The limit we have in the text is 2^32-1 (spelled
> out, of course). Should this be changed to 2^31-1 before publication
> (presuming it's acceptable as a minor change)?

Don't change. 2^32 - 1 is valid, if hackers abuse half of their number
space to fold some ridiculous flags in, they can suffer.

> For now, put in some wording like:
>
>     It is likely that at some stage at least one NNTP server will reach the
>     limit of 4,294,967,295 in at least one newsgroup. Ways to deal with
>     this while not gratuitously breaking compatibility are still being
>     investigated and are likely to result in publication of a revision or
>     extension to this specification at some future date.
>
> and let that be a warning to implementers.

Fine.

-- 
Matthias Andree