fetch, modification time and -F

[Ben Paley]

Hello,

I'm on a free dial-up (crap but cheap, as the Levellers used to say) and the 
connection drops quite often. As a result I often get left with bits of files 
half downloaded. Abou half the time I can pick them up using -rR without any 
problems, and the rest of the time I get a "local modification time does not 
match remote blah blah" error, so I have to use -F to force it.

That's not too bad if I'm actually at the machine, but as soon as I try to 
automate something it's a total wind-up: for instance, trying to do 
portupgrade -RF kde.

So my question is how can I stop this happening? Should I set it somewhere 
(where?) so that fetch automatically assumes -F when run from make or 
portinstall or whatever? And would that be safe? OR, should I reset my system 
clock which I think is pretty accurate at the moment? OR, do I just have to 
put up with it till I can get a proper connection?

Thanks for your help,

Cheers,
Ben