why python is slower than java?

[Maurice LING]

In this way version 1.0 is all python. v1.1 has 20% C++; v1.2 is 34% C++
... until v2.0 is all C++. Each upgrades is faster, but does not introduce
any new functionality and the risks that new functions imply.

If you were faithful to this concept, version 3 requires you to use the
oldest python branch who's functions will not be modified, to start
development. Could be v1.1 or 1.9.

I don't quite get the last part right, the version 3 part. I got lost in
it....

thanks maurice

 

[Maurice LING]

Do you have any data to support this ?
On Windows XP, Windows NT and Linux (Gentoo ), I have consistently
found python apps using wxpython to be far faster to load
and to be far more responsive than Java apps.

well, I do not have data to support this. Just based on an impression,
perhaps seriously flawed impression. maurice

 

[Harald Massa]

On the updated version at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/craps.php,
Python beats at least two java implementations.

Very interesting link, great ressource!!!

What really is disturbing: within the test "hash access" perl2 comes out
first compared with java.

A know that Python dictionaries are the most heavily used datastructure
(because it is allways used within Python itself), and from looking at the
sourcecode there is the line "with help from Raymund Hettinger"; so I am
very sure it is probably THE optimal coding.

So... string processing, regular expression, blablabla no problem; but why
second to perl2 in Hash-access ???

Harald

 

[gabriele renzi]

Harald Massa ha scritto:

server.bigpond.net.au:




Very interesting link, great ressource!!!

What really is disturbing: within the test "hash access" perl2 comes out
first compared with java.

A know that Python dictionaries are the most heavily used datastructure
(because it is allways used within Python itself), and from looking at the
sourcecode there is the line "with help from Raymund Hettinger"; so I am
very sure it is probably THE optimal coding.

So... string processing, regular expression, blablabla no problem; but why
second to perl2 in Hash-access ???

maybe because perl has been polished for more years
Anyway, 3 things worth noting about the shootou

- you won't *ever* write heapsort and things like that in python,
obviously it is slow, and obviously you have'em builtin.
- there are some tricks like using numarray for matrix calculations
- the ranking system is named CRAP(s).

 

[Alex Martelli]

On 2004 Nov 06, at 08:31, Maurice LING wrote:
...

1. it is a disk intensive I/O operation.
2. users delay is not in the equation (there is no user input)
3. I am not interested in the amount of time needed to develop it. But
only interested execution speed.

OK, could you provide a simple toy example that meets these conditions
-- does lot of identical disk-intensive I/O "in batch" -- and the
execution speed measured (and on what platform) for what Python and
Java implementations, please?

For example, taking a trivial Copy.java from somewhere on the net:

import java.io.*;

public class Copy {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File inputFile = new File("/usr/share/dict/web2");
File outputFile = new File("/tmp/acopy");

FileReader in = new FileReader(inputFile);
FileWriter out = new FileWriter(outputFile);
int c;

while ((c = in.read()) != -1)
out.write(c);

in.close();
out.close();
}
}

and I observe (on an iBook 800, MacOSX 10.3.5):

kallisti:~ alex$ java -version
java version "1.4.2_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_05-141.3)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2-38, mixed mode)

-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 2486825 12 Sep 2003 /usr/share/dict/web2

kallisti:~ alex$ time java Copy

real 0m7.058s
user 0m5.820s
sys 0m0.390s

versus:

kallisti:~ alex$ time python2.4 Copy.py

real 0m0.296s
user 0m0.080s
sys 0m0.170s

with Python 2.4 beta 1 for the roughly equivalent:

inputFile = file("/usr/share/dict/web2", 'r')
outputFile = file("/tmp/acopy", 'w')

outputFile.write(inputFile.read())

inputFile.close()
outputFile.close()

which isn't all that far from highly optimized system commands:

kallisti:~ alex$ time cp /usr/share/dict/web2 /tmp/acopy

real 0m0.167s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.040s

kallisti:~ alex$ time cat /usr/share/dict/web2 >/tmp/acopy

real 0m0.149s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.090s


I'm sure the Java version can be optimized easily, too -- I just
grabbed the first thing I saw off the net. But surely this example
doesn't point to any big performance issue with Python disk I/O wrt
Java. So, unless you post concrete examples yourself, the smallest the
better, it's going to be pretty difficult to understand where your
doubts are coming from!


Alex

 

[Carlos Ribeiro]

Is it just me, or is the climate in c.l.py getting less friendly to
newbies? In any case,
http://www.zoology.unimelb.edu.au/staff/nicholas.htm mentions Maurice
Ling as an honor student.

Not only that, but Maurice Ling has started a long thread a few weeks
looking for a good research topic for his thesis (involving Java &
Python, btw). At some points he was bashed, but went ahead with the
discussion, that ended up touching in several interesting topics.

As for the climate in c.l.py, it's just interesting to note that the
climate *is* getting less friendly, and that it does coincide with
several old-timers moving away from the list. A few years ago I
remember that the likes of Tim Peters, effbot, Skip Montanaro, and
several others (sorry, I would really like to remember more names from
the top of my head) were frequent posters here. They've now moved to
other interests, or are focusing their efforts on the python-dev list.
It must not be a coincidence.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: (e-mail address removed)
mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Carlos Ribeiro]

"Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice".

Although not originally yours, anyway: +100 QOTW!

But why that should be so this year more than last year, say, is not
clear to me...

I think that (at least for c.l.py) it has something to do with the
fact that several old-timers are moving away from the list. I don't
know if this is a cause or a consequence. But it's not a coincidence,
IMHO.

--
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: (e-mail address removed)
mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Eric S. Johansson]

Interestingly enough, I sort of share your perception -- and I have
noticed the same thing, and seen it remarked upon by others, in other,
completely unrelated newsgroups as well, such as it.comp.macintosh.

I think it can be explained by donor fatigue.

I've experienced this on a couple of projects where the initial
developers/intellectual foundation are very helpful and a lot of work
and they get burned out. The Next Generation comes along and doesn't
quite know enough to be able to handout ready answers but tries real
hard and get frustrated. Users get frustrated and then as you point
out, the clueless twits start dominating the conversation. Sort of an
intellectual approximation of Gresham's law.

I know from my perspective, I have been reluctant to really talk much
about what I've done with Python in developing the camram anti-spam
system because of fatigue of a different type. It is a radically
different system and the very odd thing is that ordinary users get it in
a heartbeat and many technologists fight it with every fiber of their being.

so as a result, I ask questions trying to describe the abstract case of
what I'm trying to do so that I don't get distracted down a rathole of
defending the application. Needless to say, I suspect others are doing
the same thing and it's really really hard to describe the abstract case
in a way that's clear.

now I'm going to throw out another radical idea for dealing with donor
fatigue: I will argue that we might want to start including in the
headers of mailing list/newsgroups a dana reference. If you are
familiar with Buddhist culture, dana is an expression of generosity. A
gift given in response to a priceless lesson. There is no expectation
giving and there is no expectation of receiving.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dana.html therefore, with a dana
header, someone who is happy with the answer to a question could gift
some money to the recipient.

I'll argue that some form of compensation system is necessary to help
combat donor fatigue. We all live for reward stimuli be it money, sex,
chocolate. Compulsory "pay for the answer" systems don't work well
because you have no assurance that you'll get an answer you can use.
The flip side "pay for the cheapest answer that meets your needs" does
not encourage participation because it's usually a financial race to the
bottom. I think the middle path of Dana is the most likely to succeed
although it won't make anybody rich. You contribute and maybe somebody
will thank you for it. You'll know that it was given in the spirit of
generosity and kindness, not because of a contractual requirement.

another advantage of this idea is that it builds on the existing
infrastructure of mailing lists and newsgroups not a walled garden of a
web site somewhere.

There are some challenges connecting the dana id to financial systems
and e-mail/news clients. But these are known problems with solutions
and with tools like Thunderbird, we can easily make modifications and
make them available.

---eric

 

[Kendall Clark]

This may be a dumb thing to ask, but besides the penalty for dynamic
typing, is there any other real reasons that Python is slower than Java?

I favor a different kind of explanation than the ones usually offered
here. While the degree to which Python is "slower than Java" will
depend in large part on what you're trying to do with both of them,
it's also the case that Java leads Python by probably $1 billion
dollars, if not more, in JIT compiler R&D.

The main reason Java is "faster" is because it's been backed by Sun
and IBM, for use in enterprise applications, on some of the biggest
hardware available, and they've put massive R&D effort (i.e., money)
into making it faster.

I suspect if MS had chosen Python instead of C#, and then spent a few
billion and 5 to 10 years of R&D effort, people would be asking why
Perl is so much slower than Python.

Common Lisp is fast because it's had similar R&D effort, spread out
over 40 years or so, going back to the first Lisps. Same goes for
Smalltalk. Java is fast because Sun & IBM and others decided it had to
be. Python is slower because the Python community is incomparably
smaller, less well-heeled, and mostly doesn't care too much about
performance.

There are *technical* reasons for all of this, but I think those
reasons exist largely because of non-technical, social reasons.

My two cents. :>

Best,
Kendall Clark

 

[Dan Perl]

Interestingly enough, I sort of share your perception -- and I have
noticed the same thing, and seen it remarked upon by others, in other,
completely unrelated newsgroups as well, such as it.comp.macintosh.

I'm still one of the newbies and I was not reading this newsgroup a year
ago, so I cannot draw any comparisons, but I wonder, has this group also
grown much during this time? Could this be a cultural thing like the
difference between a small town culture and a big city culture?

It's not, I think, about newbies in general: people who come and post
help requests, without giving the information that's quite obviously
indispensabile to let us help them, keep getting treated with
unreasonable amounts of friendliness and courtesy even after many
requests for more info go unheeded, for example.

However, newbies who are clueless enough to come blasting in with the
usual whines we've heard a zillion times -- Macs cost too much, Python
is too slow, there's no apps for Macs, Python must absolutely add
feature X or it will die, Apple's gonna go broke tomorrow, etc, etc --
do appear to get on our collective nerves worse than their essentially
indistinguishable precursors did last year, two years ago, &c.

I have complained myself about several aspects of Python that I was
discovering as I was learning it (although I never said Python will die).
But I have been programming for enough years to believe that I am entitled
to have an opinion even in something that I am new at and that I am entitled
to express that opinion.

On the other hand, as I become more experienced in Python and I have
opportunities to help other people who are even newer at this than I am, I
also feel some frustration when I do not get enough help from them to help
them. But I probably can still relate better to them because, like them, I
still need help in so many areas.

IMO, we all must show more tolerance. I believe though that newbies are
naturally more tolerant of experts because newbies need the experts. So I
am making a plea particularly to experts to show more tolerance to newbies.
The newbies' complaints come out of frustration, frustration just like
yours, which shows in terms like "clueless", "blasting in", and "whines
we've heard a zillion times", all in just one sentence (and that is in a
discussion on friendliness towards newbies).

Are you learning any new subject now and are you involved in a newsgroup as
a newbie? If you're not doing that already, python experts, please try it
and you'll probably see what it's like. No better way to see the other
side's point of view than being on the other side.

Dan

 

[Brian van den Broek]

Alex Martelli said unto the world upon 2004-11-06 02:12:

Interestingly enough, I sort of share your perception -- and I have
noticed the same thing, and seen it remarked upon by others, in other,
completely unrelated newsgroups as well, such as it.comp.macintosh.

It's not, I think, about newbies in general: people who come and post
help requests, without giving the information that's quite obviously
indispensabile to let us help them, keep getting treated with
unreasonable amounts of friendliness and courtesy even after many
requests for more info go unheeded, for example.

However, newbies who are clueless enough to come blasting in with the
usual whines we've heard a zillion times -- Macs cost too much, Python
is too slow, there's no apps for Macs, Python must absolutely add
feature X or it will die, Apple's gonna go broke tomorrow, etc, etc --
do appear to get on our collective nerves worse than their essentially
indistinguishable precursors did last year, two years ago, &c.

The accusation of being a troll often follows, breaking the old advice
to "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by
incompetence". Maybe it's a case of the corollary to that old advice,
"Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice".
But why that should be so this year more than last year, say, is not
clear to me...


Alex

Hi all,

I should say up front that I'm a relative newcomer to technical
newsgroups and mail-lists myself, so these comments aren't backed-up by
years of observation. I'd also like to make clear that I am responding
with general observations to what I took to be general observations in
the quoted msgs above; I don't think any of Alex, Hans, or I intend to
be talking about any one post or poster. Last, having just finished
writing this email, I see it got a bit long. There is a concrete
proposal at the end, so I invite those who feel its a ramble to skip
down 5 or so paragraphs.

The thread has offered donor fatigue and old-hands drifting away as
partial explanations, but I'd say any decline in newbie-friendliness
must be at least partly explained by success. Many in the Python
community seem to share the laudable goal of spreading Python, and not
just to the already technically informed. From Guido's Computing For
Everybody project, to the ever-patient folks on the tutor list, to any
number of other manifestations one could point to, the Python community
seems to have a "Welcome. You don't have to know what a dip-switch is to
enter here" sign up. That's a good thing. But, if it works (and it
does--witness this post ;-), it brings in people who don't know the
social norms.

That community attitude doesn't necessarily explain the Mac list Alex
cites. (I've not read the list, so cannot say.) But there too, there
must be an upsurge of new folk who finally got tired of doing what Bill
told them to do. (Among my circle, about 1 frustrated Windows user
every month or two switches to Macs.) So, it both cases, it is likely to
be driven by continued expansion of the membership outside the bounds of
those who know what elm and pine are.

Python might also be vulnerable to a strange, paradoxical phenomena: it
a way, it seems the more people get for less ($ or effort) the more they
expect. I'm on a list for 2 shareware products, a few freeware (beer
sense) ones, and a few open-source. People do seem to demand more of
list membership and project owners the more free the project is. That
one puzzles me, but I guess helps explain why the non-free,
non-responsive Redmond machine still is widely accepted.

Of all the lists (tech and non) I have read, the Python lists are among
the most tolerant and welcoming. It certainly took me a few tries to
get reasonably close to appropriate form. But, not once was I flamed or
more than gently nudged in the right direction. This friendliness is
important, to be valued, and I think protected. (I recall a post I made
to a LUG asking for help with an aborted attempt to get Linux and my
laptop's Winmodem to co-operate. I was flamed because my mail headers
indicated that I was using Thunderbird on *Windows* -- the horror! --
Not the way to welcome people to the world of Linux.)

But, if Python's increase in user-base continues, on these issues onward
and downward seems all too possible.

So, what to do? Well, I've just subscribed to the list on another
address to check, and there is nothing in the welcome message giving
people new to newsgroups and mail-lists a "Newbie's Introduction to the
Medium". Nor is there a recap posted in the monthly subscription reminder.

I'm not a fan of 'Official List Rules' full of "Thou shalt"s and that's
not what I am suggesting. I am also aware that many of the people whose
post exasperate are also the people least likely to read or attend to
such introductions. But, still, something along the lines might help.

What I have in mind is a wiki-page or three with links prominently
located in the welcome message and the reminder message. I could see at
least three distinct pages being of use. In rapid-sketch mode:

1) Welcome to the list, here are our norms
At minimum, a short 1-2 paragraph distillation of "Smart Questions", a
link to it, a reminder of the existence of the tutor list, and links to
the other two here mentioned.

2) How to find information about Python
Links to one or more of the comp.lang.python archives with perhaps some
advice for optimal searching. This could include a link to a quick "How
to google".
Perhaps a link to Mark Hammond's wicked-cool Python Sidebar for
Firefox/Mozilla <http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/mozilla/> and
to any other similar aids.

3) Links to threads that answer common questions
Yes, there is an FAQ and yet people still ask why Python gets division
wrong. But I've often seen people dig up links to threads for questions
perhaps not so common to be written up in an FAQ, but perhaps common
enough to merit linking on a wiki page. I'm not under the illusion that
it would solve the problem on its own, but it might well head some
repeat questions off. For those it doesn't, it would give an easy way to
answer.

Yes, some (or even all) of this info is already on Python.org. But this
way would allow it to be audience-tailored and to be ultra-easy to
direct newbie's toward. And yes, not all newbies read Eric Raymond's
"Smart Questions" essay within the first 5 times they are pointed at it.
Clearly it won't be a silver bullet, but maybe it would help.

As a relative newbie myself, I think I might make a better person to
start off (1) and (2) than some of the old-hands who are further away
from the newbie mindset. And, on the "talk not followed by effort is
chatter" principle, I surely ought volunteer, too ;-) I'm happy to do
so, provided 1) it doesn't strike people as a silly or hopelessly naive
idea, 2) I'm not committed to providing a proof of concept within the
next week , and 3) I can count on other's to do the wiki thing to my
starting effort.

So, if anyone's still reading, thanks. I'm curious to see if the
suggestion seems worthwhile. Best to all,

Brian vdB

 

[Alex Martelli]

Are you learning any new subject now and are you involved in a newsgroup as
a newbie? If you're not doing that already, python experts, please try it
and you'll probably see what it's like. No better way to see the other
side's point of view than being on the other side.

What if we do, _AND_ carefully follow Eric Raymond's excellent
recommendations each and every time we ask for help? Are then we
allowed to loathe and despise the mass of clueless dweebs?-)

I can be a newbie at a bazillion subjects, easily -- but I cannot truly
be a newbie at such tasks as human interaction, social dynamics, general
information retrieval and processing. I can easily guess what will
happen if I enter any mailing list or newsgroup with both guns blazing
out of frustration, for example, and therefore I cannot easily
sympathize with anybody who _does_ behave so foolishly. It's not a
matter of expertise about any specific subject, not even exactly one of
skills, but rather one of personal maturity and character.

I know how to search mailing list archives, or google groups ones, and
considerate enough to use this easily acquired and very useful knowledge
to try and avoid wasting other people's time and energy, for example, by
airing some complaint that's been made a thousand times and answered
very comprehensively. When I can't find an answer that way, I ask with
courtesy and consideration and appreciation for the time of the people
who, I hope, will be answering my questions. Etc, etc -- reread Eric's
essay on how to ask for help, it's a great piece of work.

That doesn't mean a newbie isn't always welcome, _if_ they show any sign
whatever of being worth it. But asking for tolerance and patience
against _rude_ newbies which barge in with shrill, mostly unjustified,
repetitious complaints, is, I think, a rather far-fetched request.


Alex

 

[Roger Binns]

while ((c = in.read()) != -1)
out.write(c);

Incidentally, that Java code copies one character at a time.

outputFile.write(inputFile.read())

The Python code is reading the entire string into memory and
then writing it.

The interpretter overhead vs system calls could be measured
by having the language involved in every byte transferred as
in the Java example, or negligibly as in the Python example.

Whenever anyone has an agenda, you can make all sorts of silly
claims. IMHO the best thing to do is to lead by examples.
For years many people claimed Perl was line noise, hard to
maintain etc. I never really saw much response, since the
Perl people were too busy writing real world code and helping
deliver part of the web revolution. (And selling zillions of
books for O'Reilly

I couldn't find any Python success stories on python.org itself,
but if you dig you can find the stories for the Python Business
Forum as well as Pythonology.

There are however remarkably few where you can go grab the
source code and see how it is all put together. In fact I
couldn't find a single one, but didn't do an exhaustive
search from python.org.

Perhaps it is also worth linking to the projects done in
Python on SourceForge and elsewhere?

http://sf.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=178

Roger

 

[Y2KYZFR1]

Thanks, lets just say that I have no interest in trolling.

1st of all, I thought it is somehow common knowledge that python is
slower than java in many cases. Though I may be wrong... When I do a
Google search, this came up...

http://twistedmatrix.com/users/glyph/rant/python-vs-java.html

although http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf
showsjust the opposite.

What I need to work on now is something that requires speed (and dealing
with files), without user's intervention. So the part about users' delay
time is not in the equation. My choices boils down to Python or Java.

Cheers
maurice

dude that "comparision" from twistedmatrix you refrence is ANCIENT!!!

it is comparing versions that are YEARS out of date and use!

you are just trolling or your don't know enough to understand the
answer to your question which is way to vague to be answered, as there
is no real correct answer.

 

[Tim Jarman]

What I have in mind is a wiki-page or three with links prominently
located in the welcome message and the reminder message. I could see at
least three distinct pages being of use. In rapid-sketch mode:

1) Welcome to the list, here are our norms
At minimum, a short 1-2 paragraph distillation of "Smart Questions", a
link to it, a reminder of the existence of the tutor list, and links to
the other two here mentioned.

2) How to find information about Python
Links to one or more of the comp.lang.python archives with perhaps some
advice for optimal searching. This could include a link to a quick "How
to google".
Perhaps a link to Mark Hammond's wicked-cool Python Sidebar for
Firefox/Mozilla <http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/mozilla/> and
to any other similar aids.

3) Links to threads that answer common questions
Yes, there is an FAQ and yet people still ask why Python gets division
wrong. But I've often seen people dig up links to threads for questions
perhaps not so common to be written up in an FAQ, but perhaps common
enough to merit linking on a wiki page. I'm not under the illusion that
it would solve the problem on its own, but it might well head some
repeat questions off. For those it doesn't, it would give an easy way to
answer.

Yes, some (or even all) of this info is already on Python.org. But this
way would allow it to be audience-tailored and to be ultra-easy to
direct newbie's toward. And yes, not all newbies read Eric Raymond's
"Smart Questions" essay within the first 5 times they are pointed at it.
Clearly it won't be a silver bullet, but maybe it would help.

As a relative newbie myself, I think I might make a better person to
start off (1) and (2) than some of the old-hands who are further away
from the newbie mindset. And, on the "talk not followed by effort is
chatter" principle, I surely ought volunteer, too ;-) I'm happy to do
so, provided 1) it doesn't strike people as a silly or hopelessly naive
idea, 2) I'm not committed to providing a proof of concept within the
next week , and 3) I can count on other's to do the wiki thing to my
starting effort.

So, if anyone's still reading, thanks. I'm curious to see if the
suggestion seems worthwhile. Best to all,

Brian vdB

Sounds good to me - go for it!

 

[Y2KYZFR1]

I've already said the following and was not noticed:

1. it is a disk intensive I/O operation.
2. users delay is not in the equation (there is no user input)
3. I am not interested in the amount of time needed to develop it. But
only interested execution speed.

Thanks maurice

this is still not enough information to give an answer to. and as for
"disk intensive" all languages handle disk i/o about the same since
they have to rely on the underlying Operating System, its drivers.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?F=E1bio?= Mendes]

[...]

As a relative newbie myself, I think I might make a better person to
start off (1) and (2) than some of the old-hands who are further away
from the newbie mindset. And, on the "talk not followed by effort is
chatter" principle, I surely ought volunteer, too ;-) I'm happy to do
so, provided 1) it doesn't strike people as a silly or hopelessly
naive
idea, 2) I'm not committed to providing a proof of concept within the
next week , and 3) I can count on other's to do the wiki thing to
my
starting effort.

So, if anyone's still reading, thanks. I'm curious to see if the
suggestion seems worthwhile. Best to all,

This would be very nice in any OOS list!
+1

Fabio

 

[Israel Raj T]

The main reason Java is "faster" is because

I would reject the premise entirely.

When looking at desktop apps made with Python, they positively whiz when compared to Java
swing apps.

As for non desktop apps, the entire portage system of Gentoo is written in Python.
'emerge sync' causes a python app to synchronise a local application database with database at a non-local mirror.
It is i/o intensive and appears to work very well and very fast.

 

[Israel Raj T]

(I recall a post I made to a LUG asking for help with an aborted attempt to get Linux and my laptop's Winmodem to
co-operate. I was flamed because my mail headers indicated that I was using Thunderbird on *Windows* -- the horror! --

Or perhaps because you had not read the many available resources on using winmodems under linux.

BTW, if you are looking for a decent mail client check out gnus. Of the over 20 mail clients that I have used over the
years, this is the best.

 

[Israel Raj T]

I will argue that we might want to start including in the
headers of mailing list/newsgroups a dana reference.

I would argue that this would debase newsgroups even further.