From mstar!root@cis.ohio-state.edu Thu Oct 11 14:20 PDT 1990

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 14:20 PDT 1990
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 16:56:12 EDT
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: comments on the history of gnu.*
X-IMAPbase: 1230225494 15
Status: O
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Date: Wed, 10 Oct 90 17:49:45 pdt
From: [email protected] (Bruce Jones)

If you have time and the interest please look this over and see if
there's anything you want to comment on... Lastly what the list
needs most are dates. The year of an event is fine but if you can
approximate month and year please put them in...

(BT) "biz" and "inet" hierarchies. "Gnu" hierarcy.

gnu.* came to me in the shower on the morning of 17 Mar 88. It was
established using Erik Fair's gateway code (originally written for the
inet groups). The join-up invitation went out to the news neighbors
of tut.cis.ohio-state.edu on Mon, 2 May 88 17:15:29 EDT. By ten days
later it was well-enough populated and propagated for Spaf to add it
to his "alternative news hierarchies" article. It had penetrated well
into the UK by 27 May 88, and via mcvax onto the continent (EUnet) on
18 Jul 88. Brian Reid's USENET Readership Report for June 88 reported
most gnu.* groups with over 25% propagation, and August's showed over
50% - possibly the fastest growth of any alternative hierarchy. gnu.*
underwent its first Great Renaming yesterday, perhaps a sign of
maturity :-)

I asked Spaf to add gnu.announce to the "backbone"'s list of moderated
aliases - in effect, requesting a mild policy change in the
administration of the Usenet (its administrative structure would
formally begin carrying some of the administrative freight for a few
non-Usenet hierarchies, removing their ability to claim to be
completely separate from and independent of the mainstream "Usenet
Proper"). In a precedent-setting step, the request was provisionally
approved on 14 May 88. This opened the way for the mechanized
moderation of Brian Reid's alt.gourmand and others since.

Are those enough dates, and precise enough? :-)

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 16:32 PDT 1990
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 17:31:38 EDT
From: [email protected] (Amanda Walker)
To: [email protected]
Subject: Kremvax & Moscvax
Status: O
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I am pretty certain that the (in)famous kremvax posting was done 1983, since
I believe that I read it before I left CWRU (which was around January 1984).

Also, do DEC WARS and the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Net deserve mention?
They were pretty popular for a while there...

--Amanda

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
To: [email protected] (Bruce Jones)
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: The List again :-)
<[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 21:59:39 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 3

Here's a few more comments.... I joined the Usenet in 1981, when
gatech got a Vax 780 and we started getting news from allegra, so
that's where my comments come from.

>> (BT) Pathalias software (Honeyman)

My memory fails me on this, but someone had a "competing" program with
pathalias that appeared just before (early 82?). I believe it was
called rpaths.... It simply took in news path information and mail
paths, then saved out the shortest path between each two arbitrary
sites. It wasn't as sophisticated as pathalias because all edges were
assumed to have unit length.

I used it at Gatech for a year or so. I remember that I shared path
files with Rob Kolstad to feed the beast. When it became evident
there were a significant number of one-way links, most sites switched
to pathalias. We shouldn't forget that other program though (although
I can't remember who wrote it -- John Quarterman?). When Mark started
the mapping project, I shipped him the files I had.

>> (BT) Formation of the "Backbone"
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > backbone creation, circa 1984

I was the "father" of the backbone. It came about from two different
things.

1) I had been maintaining the list of newsgroups for a while, and was
concerned at the time about the unrestrained growth in newsgroups
(little did I know....). I was also concerned about the very flat
namespace. At the time, I put together a mailing list to talk about
renaming newsgroups. Principles in that group were Chuq von Rospach
and Mark Horton. The discussion didn't go anywhere in particular at
the time, but I kept the list as a group to talk about matters of
importance. The people listed were admins or prominent sites....soon
to be the backbone.

2) I was aggressively trying to established better uucp connections to
gatech. I did some hand mapping with pathalias output and awk counts
on news articles, and came up with a small set of "regions" on the net
with important machines connecting those regions to others. I set up
connections from gatech to those machines and encouraged some other
cross-connections to improve propagation (anybody remember those mail
messages? A total stranger telling you to set up connections with
someone else... :-)

Eventually, by the time of the great renaming after the 1986 Usenix
conference, I formalized the backbone in a regular posting with a map
and a description of what consituted a backbone site --- good
connectivity, carrying the mainstream groups, and a commitment to
stable news and mail software. These were the same things I had
encouraged earlier on, or the reasons I had put people on the mailing
list.

This is also why I felt no major qualms about declaring the backbone
dead from NNTP-overdose years later....

>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > monthly postings of FYI stuff about 1984
>> [What's this one all about? -bj]

In 1981, Adam Buschbaum was posting an article now and then that
listed the newsgroups as he knew them. Adam was a HS student whose
father was at Bell Labs. When Adam went off to college (I think) in
1982, he asked me to take over the postings because he would no longer
have access. I have continued to do this as the list of active
groups.

Shortly thereafter, by a year or two, I started collecting a few other
things that appeared to be particularly useful for net readers to post
everything all together. I don't have the dates of when I added
items, but the first two to be added were the "Frequently asked
questions" by Jerry Schwarz and Chuq's "Netiquette" article. You
might try to find them and ask the dates.

>> (BT) net.women.only experiment

I remember this as 1984-1985

>> (BT) Hoaxes etc. (kremvax)
>> [Is there a copy of the kremvax article floating around somewhere?
>> I once saw a copy but ... -bj]

Ask Piet @ eunet.eu.net about this one. He was the author. 1987?
Chuq did the April Fools forgery of me warning about forgeries --
still one of my favorites.

>> (BT) The re-emergence of mailing lists

The mailing lists never went away, really. I used to post Rich
Zellich's list of mailing lists along with the newsgroup list until
they got too large. Then I tried extracting out the uucp only lists
and a few things that weren't in Zellich's list. It became a regular
posting, and hardly a month goes by where I don't get one or two new
ones added from people starting new ones or advertising old ones.

The flaps over net.women.only and net.motss created a small surge in
new mailing lists at that time.

(it net.motss in this list somewhere as a milestone?)

>> (BT) The emergence of voting for creating newsgroups

As I remember, this phased in from about 1987 on. As the influence of
the backbone began to wane, in part from workload, and in part from
flak, we would float calls for discussion of new groups, and a sort of
show of support. When the backbone "died" a more formal mechanism
took it's place about 6 months later. I seem to recall that the
anarchy in place as people started creating groups and flaming each
other brought that on. My memory here on all this is not clear -- it
fades together that this point as I began to curtail my news reading
and posting. I also went through about a 3 month period in the summer
of 1988 where I didn't post or read anything on the net....and almost
no one noticed.

>> (BT) Checkgroups messages (Spafford)
>>
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > checkgroups -- late 1986

Checkgroups was added to B news by Rick Adams and myself in the months
following the 1986 summer Usenix. I seem to remember February of 87
as the actual first posting. This was in 2.11 B news

>> (BT) The problems with the old releases of B news

Continued at least into 1989 when I would get error messages when
creating new moderated groups.

>> (BT) Moderated newsgroups:
>> a) mod.announce
>> b) mod.newprod and commercial information on the net
>>
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > moderated groups -- late 1986 (after summer Usenix in Atlanta)

mod.announce was the first -- an experiment. Mark Horton created it
after Rick Adams had modified the news to support it, backbone site
admins installed it, and I started sending out lists of moderator
addresses.

As I remember, Larry Auton (now [email protected]) came up with the
idea originally at our "backbone" meeting at the Atlanta Usenix.
(Present were Horton, Pleasant, Adams, Auton, Heiby, Fair, Woods,
Beals, Spencer?, Jackson (Curtis), and me. There were at least one or
two more present, but I don't remember them. It was 3/4 of the
"backbone" of the time.)

>> (BT) The great renaming (Horton)
>>
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
>> > The renaming was instigated and done by Rick Adams because his
>> > news/sys file was getting unwieldy.
>>
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > grand renaming -- started July 86, ended March 87
>>
>> >From [email protected] Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
>> > Actually, Rick Adams was the prime force behind this.

Actually, there were two discussions of renaming prior to the one in
86/87. I started one, and Chuq started the other. Rick was in the
mailing list for my discussion. The idea was one that finally
"ripened" by 1986. Rick was the one who did all the postings, but it
certainly wasn't all his idea. As I remember, the group of us
involved in the design floated a number of ideas, but Rick was the one
who condensed it and came up with the final proposal.

The idea for the top level hierarchies I believe came from Mel
Pleasant at the Usenix meeting. I remember we decided the names of
all the hierarchies at that time except for misc or rec, which Rick
added later.

>> (BT) The attempt to form comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac. (Webber)

This was in the summer of 87.

>> (BT) Monthly postings, newuser group, commonly asked questions.
>>
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > monthly postings of newsgroups -- pre 1981

As noted above, the monthly postings were started by Adam Buschbaum in
1981 (at least) and continued by me. The newusers group was the
second moderated group created in summer 1986.

>> (BT) UUNET arrives (Adams) (Seismo fades)

Andybody ask Rick about this? If nothing else, someone at Usenix can
provide the date....

>> (BT) Internet & TCP/IP begins to pervade the net. The backbone begins to fade.
>> >From [email protected] Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
>> > backbone goes away, 1987

I was wrong. I found a note to myself, June 15 1988, where I said
that I considered the backbone to be dead and I would no longer post a
"backbone" map. I removed the word "backbone" from all my regular
postings starting that month. I kept the mail aliases, though :-)

>> (BT) AT&T complains about source code on Killer, shuts it off temporarily(?)

Permanently.

>> (BT) The forming of comp.society.women (proposed as comp.women) (Roberts)

Hmm, I seem to believe this was near the end of 88, beginning of 89.

>> (BT) Oct/88 Internet Worm (perhipheral to usenet)

Nov 2, 1988, to be exact. :-)

>> (BT) Confiscation of USENET sites involved with phrack.

At this point, it is not clear that any Usenet site was confiscated
because of Phrack. Some Usenet nodes were confiscated, but the ones I
know about were confiscated because they were used for the storage and
transmission of trade-secret AT&T code, not because they had anything
to do with Phrack.

Neidorf's machine was confiscated to search for evidence for the
trial, but it was not a Usenet node.

>> (BT) EUNet and its policies (pay for feed, limit feed, not all groups)

This happened much earlier.

>> (BT) USENET over 10 megs/month

I'm not sure about this, but the figures I compiled on Oct 1, 1988 for
the IETF meething showed 11,000 sites; over 1800 articles per day;
over 4MB of traffic per day, average; and over 450 newsgroups.
My figures were taken from Rick Adam's summary stats posted from
Seismo or uunet, and from Brian Reid's arbitron stats.

That same presentation had these figures taken from stats by Adams,
Spencer, Horton, Bellovin and Reid:

1979 3 sites, ~ 2 articles per day
1980 15 sites, ~10 articles per day
1981 150 sites, ~20 articles per day
1982 400 sites, ~50
1983 600 sites, 120
1984 900 sites, 225
1985 1300 sites, ~375 articles per day, +1MB per day
1986 2500 sites, ~500, 2MB+
1987 5000 sites, 1000 per day, 2.5+MB
1988 11000 sites, 1800, 4+MB

Volume growth is exponential in number of sites, not in number of
newsgroups (as some have claimed). Plot the figures -- they make nice
curves.

I found some old stuff I'll pas along here in following messages...

--spaf

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
To: usenet.hist%[email protected]
Subject: The backbone
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:00:51 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 4

Here is what the "backbone" looked like at the end:

A Usenet "backbone" site is one which exchanges every (non-local) news
article it receives with at least two other backbone sites; or which is
the main newsfeed for a particular geographical area (e.g., Australia)
or special news gateway (e.g., inet) and exchanges news with at least
one other backbone site. This exchange is done (theoretically) with
minimum delay. Thus, any article submitted to a backbone site is
supposed to propagate to all other backbone sites within a very short
time period. (Under actual conditions, your mileage may vary.) To be
labelled as part of the "backbone," a site must also:
* be of sufficient capacity to handle the load of news;
* be of sufficient capacity and connectivity to handle the load
of mail generated by replies to news articles and as submissions
to mailing lists and moderated groups sent through the backbone;
* be running a recent version of the news software, and keep
up-to-date with new releases and patches;
* provide a stable news and mail relay service, preferably including
a mailer understanding domains and domain-based addressing;
* be staffed by experienced, responsible, capable staff who
will maintain news and mail, and quickly respond to problem
reports and requests for assistance;
* wish to be advertised as a backbone site, thus taking part in
discussions and debate as well as becoming a target for abuse
from the net-at-large;
* evidence some measure of financial and/or political stability
so as to be able to remain as a backbone site for the
indefinite future.
Site admins wishing their site included in this posting should
document the above points in mail to "[email protected]".

Each backbone site normally feeds some number of well-connected
secondary sites, most of which are not "leaf" (terminal) nodes.
These secondary sites feed the news out to other distribution and leaf
nodes, and so on.

For optimal news distribution, each site should establish an "L" type
link with a site closely connected to a backbone site. This will help
ensure that any articles submitted from that site get propagated to the
whole net with a minimum of delay. Sites should *not* request a news
feed from a backbone site unless they are willing to feed at least five
or six (or more) other, non-terminal sites.

Note that some backbone links (viz., ALL--munnari,ncar--nbires,
uunet--mcvax) do not carry all newsgroups, usually meaning "talk" and
some "rec" groups, but sometimes also including "soc", "sci", "news",
"misc", and "comp" newsgroups. The European component of Usenet
receives a limited number of groups from outside Europe, as well as
having a number of active "eunet" newsgroups, and exchanges all those
articles via X.25 links.

To send mail to the administrators of all the backbone sites, address
your mail to "[email protected]". If you wish to send mail to the
administrator of a particular site, consult the uucp map for the name
and address of the appropriate individual(s). (In Europe uucp map
entries are obtained through the national backbone's "netdir"
service).

/-------------------ohio-state vuwcomp
/ | :
/ /---------------\ | ncar.....................nbires ..munnari
| / \ | | \ | /
| / linus--husc6-+-ukma | \----ames---amdahl----uunet---attcan--utzoo
| | / | | | | | |\ \ : \ |
| | (decvax) | | | | | | \ : (mcvax) \ |
| | | | | | | (rutgers) | \ : : \ |
| | | | | | | | | \ : : | |
| | | | | | | ucsd--ucbvax : kddlab | |
| \ philabs---cmcl2 | | | | \ : | utgpu
| \ \ | gatech-----purdue---decwrl--hplabs | |
| \ \ | | | / | |
| \ \ | | | / | |
| mit-eddie-----------rutgers---mcnc---decvax---------------tektronix |
| / | \ / \ |
| (ucsd) | bellcore (linus) |
| | / \ |
| | | ulysses |
| | | |
\ | clyde----------------------------------------watmath
\ |/
\----------------------att-----alberta----ubc-cs

--- = full link
... = restricted link

This is the European backbone (mcvax feeds all of them):

tut enea diku unido hafro tut -> Finland
| \ | / | enea -> Sweden
| \ | / | diku -> Denmark
| \ | / | unido -> W. Germany
| \ | / | inria -> France
inria----+----------mcvax-------------+ mcvax -> Netherlands
| / | \ | cernvax -> Switzerland
| / | \ | ukc -> Great Britain
| / | \ | prlb2 -> Belgium
| / | \ | i2unix -> Italy
tuvie ukc prlb2 i2unix cernvax tuvie -> Austria
hafro -> Iceland

Site Who They Are
alberta University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
amdahl Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA
ames NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
att AT&T "virtual machine", Columbus OH & Naperville, IL.
attcan AT&T Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
bellcore Bellcore, Morristown, NJ
cernvax CERN Labs, Geneva, Switzerland
clyde AT&T, NJ somewhere
cmcl2 NY University, New York City, NY
decvax Digital Equipment Corp, Nashua, NH
decwrl Digital Equipment Corp, Palo Alto, CA
diku University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
enea ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Taeby, Sweden
gatech Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
hafro Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland
hplabs HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA
husc6 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
i2unix University of Genova, Genova, Italy
inria INRIA, Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay, France
kddlab KDD International T&T Co., Tokyo, Japan
linus Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA
mcnc Microelectronics Center of NC, Research Triangle Park, NC
mcvax Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, Netherlands
mit-eddie Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
munnari University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
nbires NBI Inc., Boulder CO
ncar National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
ohio-state Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
philabs Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff Manor, NY
prlb2 Philips Laboratory, Brussels, Belgium
purdue Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
rutgers Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ
tektronix Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
tut Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland
tuvie TU Wien, EDV-Zentrum/PRA, Wien, Austria
ubc-cs University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
ucbvax University of CA at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
ucsd University of CA at San Diego, La Jolla, CA
ukc University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
ukma University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
ulysses AT&T Bell Labs, ??, NJ
unido University of Dortmund, Dortmund, W. Germany
utgpu University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
utzoo University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
uunet UUNET Communications, Inc., Fairfax, VA
vuwcomp Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
watmath University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:15 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Ooops
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:12:33 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 5

moderated groups existed prior to 1986. They came about in 1984 when
Rick released B News 2.10. What came in 2.11 that Larry Auton (with
input from Mel Pleasant, too, as I remember) thought of was the idea
of the "newspaths" file to get submissions to the moderators.
Moderated groups weren't working well up to that point because the
users didn't like the idea of manually mailing things to the moderator.

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:19 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Renaming the mod groups--blast from the past
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:16:24 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 6

Here is some old mail about renaming the mod groups to mainstream.

>> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 87 19:18:01 EST
>> From: [email protected] (Rick Adams)
>> To: [email protected]
>> Subject: newsgroup renaming
>>
>>
>> Back in July, after much "discussion", we decided on a renaming scheme.
>> We've done the first half. The renaming of the moderated groups still needs
>> to be done.
>>
>> A poll at the Usenix Usenet BOF resulted in 98% (3 did not agree) of
>> the people present agreeing with the proposition that we should get the
>> renaming over with, even if it does cause some problems. The only way
>> to see for certain is to do it.
>>
>> I (and others) fully agree. The results of a "versions" control message
>> I sent out last week show that over 50% of the sites are running 2.11
>> (434 out of 802). This should be enough to remove any technical problems.
>> We need to either do it now or admit that we are never going to do it.
>> People are getting confused over group names, etc.
>>
>> The renaming would take place in the "usual" three stages. Newgroups, followed
>> by aliasing, followed by rmgroups.
>>
>> I propose the following:
>>
>> The following groups should become unmoderated and gatewayed onto the ARPANET
>> mailing lists:
>>
>> (Old name) (New name) (# in last 14 days)
>> mod.telecom comp.dcom.telecom 34
>> mod.protocols.tcp-ip comp.protocols.tcp-ip 49
>> mod.protocols.appletalk comp.protocols.appletalk 6
>> mod.computers.workstations comp.sys.workstations 4
>> mod.computers.vax comp.os.vms 809
>> mod.computers.pyramid comp.sys.pyramid 0
>> mod.computers.laser-printers comp.laser-printers 23
>> mod.computers.apollo comp.sys.apollo 24
>> mod.computers.68k comp.sys.m68k 36
>>
>> The following new groups should be created:
>> new comp.windows.news 0 (unmoderated)
>> new comp.sources.atari 0 (moderated)
>> new comp.windows.misc 0 (unmoderated)
>>
>> The following groups should be renamed to moderated groups:
>> mod.ai comp.ai.digest 42
>> mod.amiga.binaries comp.sources.amiga 0
>> mod.amiga.sources comp.sources.amiga 0
>> mod.announce news.announce.misc 0 MINOR NAME CHANGE
>> mod.announce.newusers news.announce.newusers 10
>> mod.comp-soc soc.comp 19
>> mod.compilers comp.compilers 27
>> mod.computers comp.sys.misc 0
>> mod.computers.ibm-pc comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest 3
>> mod.computers.masscomp comp.sys.masscomp 4
>> mod.computers.ridge comp.sys.ridge 0
>> mod.computers.sequent comp.sys.sequent 0
>> mod.computers.sun comp.sys.sun 0
>> mod.conferences news.announce.conferences 31
>> mod.graphics comp.graphics.digest 0
>> mod.human-nets soc.human-nets 0
>> mod.mac comp.sys.mac.digest 6
>> mod.mac.binaries comp.sources.mac 21
>> mod.mac.sources comp.sources.mac 3
>> mod.mag.fidonet rec.mag.fidonet 2
>> mod.mag.otherrealms rec.mag.otherrealms 0
>> mod.map comp.mail.maps 20
>> mod.music.gaffa rec.music.gaffa 499
>> mod.newprod comp.newprod 4
>> mod.newslists news.lists 9
>> mod.os comp.os.misc 20 MINOR NAME CHANGE
>> mod.os.os9 comp.os.os9 1
>> mod.os.unix comp.unix 0
>> mod.philosophy talk.philosophy.misc 0
>> mod.philosophy.tech sci.philosophy.tech 0
>> mod.politics talk.politics.misc 0
>> mod.politics.arms-d talk.politics.arms-d 2
>> mod.protocols comp.protocols.misc 4
>> mod.protocols.kermit comp.protocols.kermit 0
>> mod.psi misc.psi 0
>> mod.rec.guns rec.guns 9
>> mod.recipes rec.food.recipes 21
>> mod.religion.christian soc.religion.christian 4 NEW
>> mod.risks soc.risks 1
>> mod.sources comp.sources.unix 42
>> mod.sources.doc comp.doc 0
>> mod.sources.games comp.sources.games 0
>> mod.std comp.std.misc 0
>> mod.std.c comp.std.c 0
>> mod.std.mumps comp.std.mumps 0
>> mod.std.unix comp.std.unix 11
>> mod.techreports comp.doc.techreports 0
>> net.sources.games comp.sources.games 115
>> net.sources.mac comp.sources.mac 36
>>
>> This should stay unmoderated with a new name:
>> net.sources.bugs comp.sources.bugs 17
>>
>> This should become a moderated group, with very low standards.
>> I.e. it doesn't have to be well written, documented, etc. It would
>> have VERY fast turnaround (unlink mod.sources). I believe Rich Salz
>> (the current mod.sources moderator) will semi-moderate it.
>> I think an unmoderated net.sources is a mistake. (look at whats
>> in there now as an example)
>>
>> net.sources comp.sources.misc 60 SEMIMODERATED
>>
>> The following groups should be aliased to these already existing
>> unmoderated groups (i.e. killed):
>>
>> mod.religion talk.religion.misc 0 UNMODERATED
>> mod.music rec.music.misc 0 UNMODERATED
>> mod.rec rec.misc 0 UNMODERATED
>> mod.amiga comp.sys.amiga 12 UNMODERATED no sources
>>
>> talk.philosophy.tech should be renamed sci.philosophy.tech. It's been
>> low volume and "rational" and has earned moving out of the talk
>> category (we did mention that as a possibility months ago). It sets
>> a good example.
>>
>> ---rick
>>
>> To: [email protected] (Rick Adams)
>> Cc: [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: newsgroup renaming
>> <[email protected]>
>> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 87 05:12:49 +1100
>> From: Robert Elz <[email protected]>
>>
>> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 87 19:18:01 EST
>> From: [email protected] (Rick Adams)
>>
>> I propose the following:
>>
>> The following groups should become unmoderated and gatewayed onto the
>> ARPANET mailing lists:
>>
>> (Old name) (New name) (# in last 14 days)
>> mod.telecom comp.dcom.telecom 34
>> This one is a truly moderated list (even though the moderator
>> has a tendancy to leave in "Submission for.." subject lines,
>> and I'm not sure I blame him). It should stay on the
>> moderated list.
>>
>> On net.sources - I think it could work as a moderated group, but the
>> way to do it would be to get a whole bunch of moderators (say 10 or
>> so in North America, a few in Europe, and one in each of whatever other
>> major areas exist (Aust, Korea, Japan, whatever else)). I don't think
>> this should be dumped onto Rich, mod.sources is enough work already.
>>
>> In particular, John Gilmore (hoptoad!gnu) should be strongly pressed
>> into becoming one of the moderators, with the emphasis that he can
>> post anything to it that he likes.
>>
>> I think doing it this way would kill a lot of the objection to
>> having it moderated, it would tend to keep out the trash, keep
>> postings in a form that is likely to get distributed without
>> total lossage, and make it practically impossible for anyone to
>> claim that they can't get mail to the (a) moderator.
>>
>> net.sources (or comp.sources.misc, or whatever) is ideal for this
>> kind of moderation, the whole point would be to keep no archives
>> do no sanitising (adding makefiles, man pages, etc), no making
>> volumes, etc, just see that its source, and post it. There would
>> need to be no communication between moderators (its barely possible
>> that something could be sent to many of them, and all of them post
>> it, but I think that problem can be faced if it ever arises).
>>
>> I am certainly in favour of doing this change ASAP, especially the
>> change of currently moderated groups that shouldn't be into
>> unmoderated ones.
>>
>> kre
>>
>>

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:23 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Backbone in 1984
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:20:32 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 7

Here is the backbone as of July 1984:
/-----------------------------\
| |
| mcvax------------philabs |
| / / | |
tektronix-----------------decvax------------linus | |
| \ | | | |
| uw-beaver | | | |
| | | | | |
| ubc-vision seismo--harpo---ulysses | | |
| | | | | | | |
| alberta-------(-----ihnp4 hou3c | | |
| | | | | | |
| | we13----burl utzoo | |
| | | | | |
hplabs-------------hao clyde----watmath | |
| | | |
sdcrdcf---sdcsvax-----------------akgua----------mcnc-----/

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:27 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: voting & silly groups
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:24:25 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 8

The following old article should help place upper limits on when
voting for groups came about (soc.sex instigated them, as I remember,
and earlier in the year than this posting). It also helps place the
other votes, etc. The "vote" for the eniac-tcp group was going on or
recently finished when this was posted:

>> Article 2954 of news.groups:
>> Path: purdue!spaf
>> From: [email protected] (Gene Spafford)
>> Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
>> Subject: Re: Timely Notification (creating groups & other points)
>> Keywords: newsgroup creation, backbone
>> Date: 18 Apr 88 01:41:44 GMT
>> References: <[email protected]>
>> Followup-To: news.admin
>> Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
>>
>> I'm afraid a number of people have the wrong ideas about newsgroup
>> creation.
>>
>> First off, let me try to clear up some misimpressions about the list I
>> keep and about the backbone. The list I keep is no more "official"
>> than is my "position" -- neither is vested with any formal authority.
>> The list is an advisory from me to news admins and readers, and is
>> simply a reflection of groups that a significant percentage of sites on
>> the network keep or transmit. A new site coming on line should expect
>> to be able to get those groups (or most of them) from almost any feed.
>> The list is viewed as authoritative because I try to keep it up-to-date
>> and I try to verify that the groups are likely to be carried. The fact
>> that many, many sites tend to view it as "official" means the admins
>> either don't care, or else they believe it is a pretty close
>> representation of their view of the Usenet reality.
>>
>> In a like manner, the "backbone" is not an official policymaking body.
>> Rather, it is a collection of experienced system admins who run
>> machines with substantial connectivity and news capacity. They
>> represent academic, research and commercial sites. Their opinions as a
>> group are likely to represent the opinions of many other site admins,
>> and as such, something they overwhelming agree to is worth noting. The
>> group collectively has a few hundred years of Unix and Usenet
>> experience, and includes some or all of the authors of A, B and C
>> news. If for no other reason, that is why I tend to listen carefully
>> to anything the group says, and I suspect that is why others pay close
>> attention too. As individuals, the backbone admins don't agree on
>> everything (sometimes they don't agree on anything), but all are
>> concerned with the continuing existence of Usenet. As such, they work
>> together to try to reach a group consensus and then present a united
>> approach...including the issuing and honoring of "newgroup" and
>> "rmgroup" messages.
>>
>> So it is with creating newsgroups. Any news admin can create a group,
>> at any time. The main purpose of the voting procedure the "backbone"
>> has outlined is to try to put some time into the process for people to
>> consider consequences and to allow for comment and debate on the topic
>> and name. The "backbone" as a group will probably ignore newgroup
>> messages for groups that don't follow the procedure for the simple
>> reason that most of the backbone admins (and many others too) believe
>> it is critical to the future of the Usenet that there be some serious
>> consideration given to content and name-space issues before blindly
>> creating new groups.
>>
>> Furthermore, there is *NOTHING* that anyone can do to force a site to
>> carry a group. If 500 people or 50000 people send in votes for a
>> group, that doesn't mean it will be carried by a majority of sites.
>> Thus, groups like "soc.sex" and "net.rec.drugs" that could cause
>> difficulties will likely not be carried by many major sites because
>> their admins don't believe them appropriate. If a group is not going
>> to be carried by a significant percentage of sites, I don't include it
>> in my list-of-lists because that is misleading to people at sites where
>> the group is not received. The backbone is a representative group of
>> experienced system admins and what they carry and their concerns serve
>> as a good indicator of the likelihood of a group being carried. 3/4 of
>> the backbone won't ever carry anything like soc.sex, no matter what the
>> vote, so it will not be in the list-of-lists.
>>
>> Likewise with nonsense or frivolous groups like the eniac.tcp (or
>> whatever) group that Mr. Webber has been making noises about. No doubt
>> many people took the whole idea as a joke.... and either sent in votes
>> "for" because of that, or else they didn't bother to send in votes
>> against. Either way, it is an obvious attempt to create a "bizarre"
>> group in the comp distribution -- something that a number of sites have
>> already indicated they won't carry. I'm sure if someone wanted to take
>> a vote for "rec.lobotomize.webber" then we'd get thousands of approval
>> votes, but I wouldn't add that to the list of active newsgroups,
>> either (although I would the idea tempting).
>>
>> It comes down to "anarchy" I suppose. If you have news admin privs on
>> your machine you can issue a net-wide newgroup message for any group
>> with any name you care to mention. You can do it at any time, without
>> any vote or discussion. However, other news admins can feel free to
>> issue rmgroups for those groups too. Each site is free to ignore
>> either set of messages or honor both. At least within the "standard"
>> namespace, news admins tend to ignore such messages unless they match
>> the list I keep, since it makes it easier to maintain their news. If a
>> group appears in my list, they will probably want to get it, and the odds
>> are good that they will be able to find a feed for it. Groups that don't
>> fit these criteria get created under different names and distributions
>> (like the "alt" groups, for instance) and the admins make separate
>> decisions on those on a per-site basis.
>>
>>
>> So, bottom line: a vote doesn't guarantee that a group will be created
>> and carried by anyone. It does pretty much establish that there is a
>> desire for a group and that it should be considered seriously. It also
>> pretty much guarantees that admins won't immediately issue "rmgroups"
>> if the group shows up after the vote is taken. Groups with real topics
>> that are unlikely to cause problems for admins will usually get added
>> to the list-of-lists and created after a successful vote. And that's
>> about *all* you can say about it.
>>
>> --
>> Gene Spafford
>> NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center,
>> Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
>> Internet: [email protected] uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf
>>

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:28 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: MES
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:26:26 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 9

The following seems to suggest that "Mark Ethan Smith" was at its best
in 1987....

>> Article 3049 of news.admin:
>> Path: purdue!umd5!mimsy!oddjob!gargoyle!att!chinet!mcdchg!clyde!watmath!watdcsu!dmcanzi
>> From: [email protected] (David Canzi)
>> Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal
>> Subject: Best of MES
>> Date: 22 Jul 88 02:52:46 GMT
>> Followup-To: /dev/null
>> Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
>>
>> For the benefit of relative newcomers to the net who are not familiar
>> with Mark Ethan Smith, I present several choice quotes from his
>> articles that were posted to the net late last year. Now that Mark
>> is posting again, I will no doubt be adding to this collection.
>>
>> (This article is posted to news.admin and misc.legal because this is
>> where the flame wars are occurring. This isn't posted to soc.women
>> because I avoid posting there. Be sure to edit the newsgroups line
>> if you attempt to follow up.)
>>
>> Here are the quotes:
>>
>>
>>
>> ... it is important to recognize that the undiminished pronouns
>> males have historically attempted to reserve exclusively to themselves,
>> are connected, in the minds of many men, to the pronouns they used
>> to refer to their male deities. Even when not capitalized, many men
>> believe that an undiminished pronoun is not merely a title of honor
>> and respect, but actually a term of deification.
>>
>>
>>
>> Only Meitner had both the ability and the necessity of making
>> such a momentous discovery. The penis-bearing morons were all
>> great men and their careers were assured. But Jews, women, and
>> other subhumans were destined only for the gas ovens of Auschwitz,
>> to be used for slave labor, and turned into soap. ...
>>
>>
>> Einstein always spoke of Meitner as, "The Mother of the Bomb,"...
>> Our own Defense Intelligence Agency suppressed Einstein's later
>> papers. Can you think of a reason why? ... Can you
>> think of ANY reason for suppressing Einstein's later papers, other
>> than that by crediting Meitner with the discovery of fission he
>> would have given ammunition to those who were fighting to open up
>> educational opportunities to women in America?
>>
>>
>>
>> It was not respect for American women that had male doctors strapping
>> women to stretchers on their backs with their legs spread and their
>> hands tied down. It was to slow the birth process, make it more
>> difficult and painful, and give the doctor more ability to schedule
>> it so as not to interfere with his golf game. ...
>>
>>
>> And to anyone who is about to flame me for offending men in this
>> group by expressing my anger, go right ahead. Somebody has to defend
>> the rapists, incestuous fathers, anbandoners, batterers, non-payers
>> of child support, discriminatory employers, harassing co-workers,
>> and other bums, why not you?
>>
>> --
>> I am not David Canzi, my name is.

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:32 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Gated newsgroups
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:30:16 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 10

Here is UCB's alias file as of March 87. This gives some idea of the
Arpa mailing lists gated into Usenet groups:

>>
>> Date: Thu, 12 Mar 87 08:22:51 PST
>> From: "Erik E. Fair" <[email protected]>
>> To: [email protected], spaf%[email protected]
>> Subject: current gateway file from ucbvax
>>
>> ################################################################################
>> ## ##
>> ## USENET mailing aliases ##
>> ## ##
>> ## Before munging this part of the file, please ask `usenet' ##
>> ## ##
>> ## This part of /usr/lib/aliases is generated with m4(1) ##
>> ## as such, if you modify it, chances are that your mod ##
>> ## will disappear the next time this section is rebuilt. ##
>> ## ##
>> ################################################################################
>> #
>> TIMESTAMP
>> #
>> # How we get it from elsewhere through the mails
>> post-netnews:"|POSTER"
>> post-usenet: post-netnews
>> #
>> ALIAS(rnews) "|HOME/uurec"
>> #
>> # Some extra aliases
>> news: berknews
>> berknews: allmsgs
>> #
>> # seminar announcements (from seminar@ernie)
>> MPOST(seminars,{ucb.seminars,ba.seminars})
>> #
>> # Here are the ARPA INTERNET Gateway aliases for the `mod' category of
>> # USENET News Groups. Each Post alias has a return alias which points to
>> # the real mailing list at the site where it resides.
>> #
>> SYSFILE(comp.ai, ailist, ailist, ailist-request, sri-stripe.arpa)
>> SYSFILE(comp.sys.m68k, info-68k, mwm, info-68k-request, ucbvax.berkeley.edu)
>> MODPOST(ailist, mod.ai, sri-stripe.arpa)
>> MODPOST(info-68k, mod.computers.68k, ucbvax.berkeley.edu)
>> MODPOST(apollo, mod.computers.apollo, yale-comix.arpa)
>> MODPOST(gouldbugs, mod.computers.gould, brl.arpa)
>> MODPOST(info-ibmpc, mod.computers.ibm-pc, b.isi.edu)
>> MODPOST(laser-lovers, mod.computers.laser-printers, washington.arpa)
>> MODPOST(info-pyramid, mod.computers.pyramid, mimsy.umd.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-ridge, mod.computers.ridge, hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa)
>> MODPOST(info-sequent, mod.computers.sequent, sally.utexas.edu)
>> MODPOST(sun-spots, mod.computers.sun, rice.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-vax, mod.computers.vax, sri-kl.arpa)
>> MODPOST(works, mod.computers.workstations, red.rutgers.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-graphics, mod.graphics, ads.arpa)
>> MODPOST(human-nets, mod.human-nets, red.rutgers.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-mac, mod.mac, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> MODPOST(love-hounds, mod.music.gaffa, eddie.mit.edu)
>> MODPOST(poli-sci, mod.politics, red.rutgers.edu)
>> MODPOST(arms-d, mod.politics.arms-d, xx.lcs.mit.edu)
>> MODPOST(protocols, mod.protocols, red.rutgers.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-applebus, mod.protocols.appletalk, c.cs.cmu.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-kermit, mod.protocols.kermit, cu20b.columbia.edu)
>> MODPOST(info-postscript,mod.protocols.postscript, score.stanford.edu)
>> MODPOST(tcp-ip, mod.protocols.tcp-ip, sri-nic.arpa)
>> MODPOST(risks, mod.risks, csl.sri.com)
>> MODPOST(archive, mod.sources.doc, brl.arpa)
>> MODPOST(std-unix, mod.std.unix, sally.utexas.edu)
>> MODPOST(techreports, mod.techreports, smu.csnet)
>> MODPOST(telecom, mod.telecom, xx.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #MODP(vision-list, ddn.comp.ai.vision, ddn, ads.arpa)
>> #MODP(irlist, ddn.comp.computers.ir, ddn, vpi.csnet)
>> #
>> # The following aliases are for bi-directional gatewayed groups.
>> # With these, it doesn't matter whether you read them as mail or
>> # netnews, since a posting to netnews will be forwarded to the
>> # mailing list, and a message sent to the mailing list will be
>> # posted as netnews.
>> #
>> UGW(aviation, rec.aviation, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(dead-heads, rec.music.gdead, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(evolution, talk.origins, kestrel.arpa) - do not turn on!
>> #GATEWAY(header-people, comp.mail.headers, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> GATEWAY(info-ada, comp.lang.ada, ada20.isi.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(info-amiga, comp.sys.amiga, red.rutgers.edu)
>> GATEWAY(info-apple, comp.sys.apple, brl.arpa)
>> GATEWAY(info-atari16, comp.sys.atari.st, score.stanford.edu)
>> GATEWAY(info-atari8, comp.sys.atari.8bit, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(info-c, comp.lang.c, brl.arpa)
>> GATE_A(info-cpm, info-cpm-ddn, comp.os.cpm, simtel20.arpa)
>> GATE_E(minix-l, minix-l, comp.os.minix, ndsuvm1.bitnet)
>> GATE_A(info-hams, info-hams-ddn, rec.ham-radio, simtel20.arpa)
>> #GATEWAY(info-law, misc.legal, brl.arpa)
>> #GATEWAY(info-micro, comp.sys.misc, brl.arpa)
>> GATE_A(info-modems, info-modems-ddn, comp.dcom.modems, simtel20.arpa)
>> GATE(info-modula-2, info-modula-2-list, owner-info-modula-2, comp.lang.modula2, world, rochester.arpa)
>> #GATEWAY(info-pascal, comp.lang.pascal, brl.arpa)
>> GATEWAY(info-terms, comp.terminals, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(info-unix, comp.unix.questions, brl.arpa)
>> GATEWAY(info-vlsi, comp.lsi, think.com)
>> #GATEWAY(packet-radio, rec.ham-radio.packet, eddie.mit.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(physics, sci.physics, sri-unix.arpa)
>> GATEWAY(prolog, comp.lang.prolog, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATEWAY(railroad, rec.railroad, rochester.arpa)
>> #GATEWAY(sf-lovers, rec.sf-lovers, red.rutgers.edu)
>> UGW(sky-fans, sci.astro, xx.lcs.mit.edu)
>> GATE_A(space, space-incoming, sci.space, angband.s1.gov)
>> GATE_E(umforth, umforth, comp.lang.forth, weizmann.bitnet)
>> GATE_A(unix-emacs, arpa-unix-emacs, comp.emacs, bbn.com)
>> #GATEWAY(unix-wizards, comp.unix.wizards, brl.arpa)
>> GATE_A(videotech, videotech-ddn, rec.video, simtel20.arpa)
>> GATEWAY(xpert, comp.windows.x, athena.mit.edu)
>> GATEWAY(news-makers, comp.windows.news, brillig.umd.edu)
>> #
>> # mailing lists which are gatewayed strictly into the DDN
>> #
>> #GATE(lingua, lingua, news, ddn.comp.lang, ddn, ucf1vm.bitnet)
>> #GATE(asm370, asm370, news, ddn.comp.lang.asm370, ddn, ucf1vm.bitnet)
>> #GATE(prolog-hackers, prolog-request, ddn.comp.lang.prolog.hackers, prolog-hackers, prolog-request, ddn.comp.lang.prolog.hackers, ddn, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE(rexxlist, rexxlist, news, ddn.comp.lang.rexx, ddn, ucf1vm.bitnet)
>> #GATE(opsys, opsys, news, ddn.comp.os, ddn, ucf1vm.bitnet)
>> #GATE(ibm-nets, ibm-nets, hank, ddn.comp.protocols.ibm, ddn, bitnic.bitnet)
>> #GATE(cyber-l, cyber-l, info, ddn.comp.sys.cdc, ddn, bitnic.bitnet)
>> #GATE(l-hcap, l-hcap, nu025213, ddn.soc.handicapped, ddn, ndsuvm1.bitnet)
>> ##
>> #GATE(sigbig, mer.sigbig, jup.welch, ddn.comp.sys.super, ddn, ames-vmsb.arpa)
>> #GATE(info-cad, "cadinterest^.es", anderson.es, ddn.comp.cad, ddn, xerox.com)
>> #GATE(info-zilog, cbmvax!mail-zilog, cbmvax!mail-zilog-request, ddn.comp.sys.zilog, ddn, seismo.css.gov)
>> ##
>> #GATE_D(ai-ed, ddn.comp.ai.ed, ddn, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(nl-kr, ddn.comp.ai.nl-kr, ddn, rochester.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(self-org, ddn.comp.ai.self-org, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(editor-people, ddn.comp.editors, ddn, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-futures, ddn.comp.futures, ddn, bu-cs.bu.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-macforth, ddn.comp.lang.forth.mac, ddn, harvard.harvard.edu)
>> #GATE_D(icon-group, ddn.comp.lang.icon, ddn, arizona.csnet)
>> #GATE_D(info-idl, ddn.comp.lang.idl, ddn, sei.cmu.edu)
>> #GATE_D(franz-friends, ddn.comp.lang.lisp.franz, ddn, ucbvax.berkeley.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-xlisp, ddn.comp.lang.lisp.x, ddn, pt.cs.cmu.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-postscript, ddn.comp.lang.postscript, ddn, sushi.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(scheme, ddn.comp.lang.scheme, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(vpllist, ddn.comp.lang.visual, ddn, sushi.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(mh-users, ddn.comp.mail.mh, ddn, uci.edu)
>> #GATE_D(mhs_implementation, ddn.comp.mail.mhs, ddn, rsch.wisc.edu)
>> #GATE_D(arpa-mhs, ddn.comp.mail.mhs.arpa, ddn, brl.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(mmm-people, ddn.comp.mail.mmm, ddn, b.isi.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-nets, ddn.comp.networks, ddn, oz.ai.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-aos, ddn.comp.os.aos, ddn, sierra.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(amethyst-users, ddn.comp.os.cpm.amethyst, ddn, simtel20.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-rsts, ddn.comp.os.rsts, ddn, oz.ai.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-v, ddn.comp.os.v, ddn, pescadero.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(parsym, ddn.comp.parallel-sym, ddn, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-printers, ddn.comp.printers, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(nntp-managers, ddn.comp.protocols.nntp, ddn, ucbarpa.berkeley.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-pcnet, ddn.comp.protocols.pcnet, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(pup-lovers, ddn.comp.protocols.pup, ddn, rochester.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(namedroppers, ddn.comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains, ddn, nic.sri.com)
>> #GATE_D(pcip, ddn.comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc, ddn, louie.udel.edu)
>> #GATE_D(milsim, ddn.comp.simulation.military, ddn, simtel20.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(soft-eng, ddn.comp.software-eng, ddn, xx.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-dec-micro, ddn.comp.sys.dec.micro, ddn, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(pc-token-ring, ddn.comp.sys.ibm.pc.net, ddn, oac.ucla.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-xenix310, ddn.comp.sys.intel.310, ddn, simtel20.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-laptop, ddn.comp.sys.laptops, ddn, oz.ai.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(mus, ddn.comp.sys.masscomp, ddn, eneevax.umd.edu)
>> #GATE_D(northstar-users, ddn.comp.sys.northstar, ddn, simtel20.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-iris, ddn.comp.sys.sgi, ddn, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-ti-explorer, ddn.comp.sys.ti.explorer, ddn, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-1100, ddn.comp.sys.xerox, ddn, sumex-aim.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(heath-people, ddn.comp.sys.zenith, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-hz100, ddn.comp.sys.zenith.100, ddn, radc-tops20.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(info-bitgraph, ddn.comp.terminals.bitgraph, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(info-blit, ddn.comp.terminals.tty5620, ddn, brl.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(theory, ddn.comp.theory, ddn, rsch.wisc.edu)
>> #GATE_D(ca, ddn.comp.theory.ca, ddn, think.com)
>> #GATE_D(info-finite, ddn.comp.theory.finite-el, ddn, ardec.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(na, ddn.comp.theory.na, ddn, score.stanford.edu)
>> #GATE_D(security, ddn.misc.security, ddn, red.rutgers.edu)
>> #GATE_D(horse, ddn.rec.equestrian, ddn, ccp.bbn.com)
>> #GATE_D(dead-heads, ddn.rec.music.gdead, ddn, ai.ai.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(cube-lovers, ddn.rec.puzzles, ddn, ai.ai.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(nuke-winter, ddn.sci.nuke-winter, ddn, sun.com)
>> #GATE_D(phil-sci, ddn.sci.philosophy, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(epsynet, ddn.sci.psychology, ddn, uhupvm1.bitnet)
>> #GATE_D(info-japan, ddn.soc.culture.japan, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(nihongo, ddn.soc.culture.japan.lang, ddn, mc.lcs.mit.edu)
>> #GATE_D(mail-men, ddn.soc.men, ddn, rochester.arpa)
>> #GATE_D(bizarre-people, ddn.talk.bizarre, ddn, pt.cs.cmu.edu)
>> #
>> # These aliases are for people who wish to submit news as Mail, since
>> # mailers often have nice editing and/or word processing capabilities.
>> #
>> POST_BY_MAIL
>> #
>> ################################################################################
>> # END of USENET Mail aliases #
>> ################################################################################
>>

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 20:39 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Renaming groups
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 22:36:57 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 11

As I pointed out in an earlier message, Chuq von Rospach had tried to
get some momentum on renaming groups in 1984 or 1983. Enclosed is
mail from him to me in 1985 showing the groups then available and
where his attempted ended earlier....

Note that net.women.only had failed by this time.

>> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 85 22:29:33 pdt
>> From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email protected]>
>> To: spaf%[email protected]
>> Subject: name reorganization
>>
>>
>> Here is what I had on the reorganization when I dropped it last time. This
>> went through a couple of revisions through the net, and seemed to have
>> pretty favorable responses. It also, with a few exceptions, handles 14
>> character group name restrictions sanely. Feel free to borrow or ignore it
>> as you will, and I'll support whatever you come up with...
>>
>> chuq
>> ---
>> net.adm (news.adm)
>> net.adm.bug (news.b)
>> net.adm.config (news.config)
>> net.adm.header (mail.headers)
>> net.adm.mail (mail)
>> net.adm.msggroup (mail.msggroup)
>> net.adm.newsite (news.newsite)
>> net.adm.notes (notes)
>> net.adm.sa (news.sa)
>> net.adm.test (test)
>> net.arts
>> net.arts.book (books)
>> net.arts.comic (comics)
>> net.arts.mag (mag)
>> net.arts.movie (movies)
>> net.arts.music| (music)
>> net.arts.music|.classical (music.classical)
>> net.arts.music|.folk (music.folk)
>> net.arts.music|.synth (music.synth)
>> net.arts.poem (poems)
>> net.arts.sf (sf-lovers)
>> net.arts.sf.drwho (tv.drwho)
>> net.arts.sf.startrek (startrek)
>> net.arts.sf.sw (movies.sw)
>> net.arts.theater (theater)
>> net.arts.tv (tv)
>> net.arts.tv.soaps (tv.soaps)
>> net.consumer (consumers)
>> net.consumer.invest (invest)
>> net.consumer.legal (legal)
>> net.consumer.tax (taxes)
>> net.cs
>> net.cs.ai (ai)
>> net.cs.arch (arch)
>> net.cs.cog-eng (cog-eng)
>> net.cs.emacs (emacs)
>> net.cs.graphics (graphics)
>> net.cs.network (lan)
>> net.cs.research (research)
>> net.cs.standard (std)
>> net.cs.terminal (info-terms)
>> net.cs.text (text)
>> net.cs.workstation (works)
>> net.culture
>> net.culture.celts (nlang.celts)
>> net.culture.greek (nlang.greek)
>> net.culture.india (nlang.india)
>> net.culture.language (nlang)
>> net.game (games)
>> net.game.bridge (rec.bridge)
>> net.game.chess (chess)
>> net.game.empire (games.emp)
>> net.game.frp (games.frp)
>> net.game.go (games.go)
>> net.game.hack (games.hack)
>> net.game.pbm (games.pbm)
>> net.game.puzzle (puzzle)
>> net.game.rogue (games.rogue)
>> net.game.trivia (games.trivia)
>> net.game.video (games.video)
>> net.issue
>> net.issue.abortion (abortion)
>> net.issue.flame (flame)
>> net.issue.origin (origins)
>> net.issue.philosophy (philosophy)
>> net.issue.poli|tic (politics)
>> net.issue.poli|tic.theory (politics.theory)
>> net.issue.reli|gion (religion)
>> net.issue.reli|gion.christian (religion.christian)
>> net.issue.reli|gion.jewish (religion.jewish)
>> net.lang (lang)
>> net.lang.ada (lang.ada)
>> net.lang.apl (lang.apl)
>> net.lang.c (lang.c)
>> net.lang.f77 (lang.f77)
>> net.lang.forth (lang.forth)
>> net.lang.lisp (lang.lisp)
>> net.lang.mod2 (lang.mod2)
>> net.lang.pascal (lang.pascal)
>> net.lang.prolog (lang.prolog)
>> net.lang.st80 (lang.st80)
>> net.micro (micro)
>> net.micro.32k (micro.16k)
>> net.micro.432 (micro.432)
>> net.micro.6809 (micro.6809)
>> net.micro.68k (micro.68k)
>> net.micro.apple (micro.apple)
>> net.micro.atari (micro.atari)
>> net.micro.cbm (micro.cbm)
>> net.micro.cpm (micro.cpm)
>> net.micro.hp (micro.hp)
>> net.micro.mac (micro.mac)
>> net.micro.pc (micro.pc)
>> net.micro.ti (micro.ti)
>> net.micro.trs80 (micro.trs-80)
>> net.micro.zx (micro.zx)
>> net.misc (misc)
>> net.misc.rumor (rumor)
>> net.org
>> net.org.decus (decus)
>> net.org.usenix (usenix)
>> net.people (social)
>> net.people.college (college)
>> net.people.kids (kids)
>> net.people.motss (motss)
>> net.people.roots (roots)
>> net.people.single (singles)
>> net.people.suicide (suicide)
>> net.people.women (women)
>> net.rec (rec)
>> net.rec.auto (auto)
>> net.rec.aviation (aviation)
>> net.rec.bicycle (bicycle)
>> net.rec.bird (rec.birds)
>> net.rec.boat (rec.boat)
>> net.rec.coin (rec.coins)
>> net.rec.cook (cooks)
>> net.rec.cook.veg (veg)
>> net.rec.disc (rec.disc)
>> net.rec.garden (garden)
>> net.rec.joke (jokes)
>> net.rec.joke.d (jokes.d)
>> net.rec.mcycle (cycle)
>> net.rec.nude (rec.nude)
>> net.rec.pet (pets)
>> net.rec.railroad (railroad)
>> net.rec.scuba (rec.scuba)
>> net.rec.ski (rec.ski)
>> net.rec.skydive (rec.skydive)
>> net.rec.travel (travel)
>> net.rec.wine (wines)
>> net.rec.wood (rec.wood)
>> net.sci (sci)
>> net.sci.astro (astro)
>> net.sci.astro.|expert (astro.expert)
>> net.sci.bio (bio)
>> net.sci.crypt (crypt)
>> net.sci.math (math)
>> net.sci.math.s|tat (math.stat)
>> net.sci.math.s|ymbolic (math.symbolic)
>> net.sci.med (med)
>> net.sci.physics (physics)
>> net.sci.space (space)
>> net.sci.space.|columbia (columbia)
>> net.source (sources)
>> net.source.bug (sources.bugs)
>> net.source.game (sources.game)
>> net.source.mac (sources.mac)
>> net.source.wanted (wanted.sources)
>> net.sport (sport)
>> net.sport.baseball (sport.baseball)
>> net.sport.basketball (sport.hoops)
>> net.sport.football (sport.football)
>> net.sport.hockey (sport.hockey)
>> net.tech
>> net.tech.analog (analog)
>> net.tech.audio (audio)
>> net.tech.chip (lsi)
>> net.tech.dcom (dcom)
>> net.tech.ham-radio (ham-radio)
>> net.tech.periph (periphs)
>> net.tech.photo (rec.photo)
>> net.tech.video (video)
>> net.unix (unix)
>> net.unix.bug (bugs)
>> net.unix.bug.|2bsd (bugs.2bsd)
>> net.unix.bug.|4bsd (bugs.4bsd)
>> net.unix.bug.|sys5 (bugs.usg)
>> net.unix.bug.|uucp (bugs.uucp)
>> net.unix.bug.|v7 (bugs.v7)
>> net.unix.eunice (eunice)
>> net.unix.wizard (unix-wizards)
>> net.usenet (news)
>> net.usenet.group (news.group)
>> net.usenet.stargate (news.stargate)
>> net.wanted (wanted)
>> net.wanted.forsale (forsale)
>> net.wanted.job (jobs)
>> net.wanted.people (net-people)
>>
>> Moved into mod groups:
>>
>> announce -- moved to mod.annouce
>> announce.newusers -- moved to mod.announce.newusers
>>
>> Removed from the network:
>>
>> followup -- gone completely
>> general -- gone completely
>> [these groups are obsolete-- articles should either be in
>> a specific group, sent to mod.announce, or posted at last
>> resort to net.misc]
>>
>> usoft -- gone completely
>> [absorbed into soft, I guess (find a good definition for this group!)]
>>
>> wobegon -- gone completely
>> [rec.music.folk takes a good part of the reason for this to exist.
>> if it had any volume (it doesn't) I'd suggest rec.radio or
>> rec.radio.npr]
>>
>> women.only --- gone completely
>> [failed experiment-- taken over by mail.feminist and women]

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 21:08 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: More on renaming
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 23:05:10 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 12

I found two more archives chock full of interesting things, but they
are too large to burden the mailing list with.

If you want to look at them, ftp to arthur.cs.purdue.edu, and get the
files ~ftp/pub/spaf/{rename,usenet2}.Z

rename contains mail traffic related to my first start at renaming
some groups. I don't have the archive of the mailing list &
discussion that followed, but you can see the obvious beginnings of
the "grand renaming" fully months before the Atlanta Usenix where we
agreed on a final plan.

usenet2 started out with my wanting to have a mailing list where we
could all discuss a more rational replacement for Usenet. There is
tons of stuff in that archive I didn't remember until I looked through
it. It's long, though. However, if you look through, you will find:
* comments that presage Arbitron, ClariNet, EFF, NNTP and other
things that have come to pass.
* Mark Horton and I both predicting the death of the net. :-)
* Comments on the copyright flaps at the end of 85
* Newsgroup propagation, usage, and poster statistics from 1984 & 1985
* Dates for start and milestones with the Stargate & UUCP project.
Plus other stuff.

--spaf

PS. Packrats with large disks are greatly appreciated by historians. :-)

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 21:18 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Creating groups
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 90 23:15:15 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 13

Well, the idea of voting for newsgroups was around at least since
1987, and it appears that Bob Webber was up to his eniac thing earlier
than I had originally thought. This was posted in early 1988:

>> Article 2084 of news.groups:
>> Path: purdue!gatech!hao!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!munnari!vuwcomp!andrew
>> From: [email protected] (Andrew Vignaux)
>> Newsgroups: news.groups
>> Subject: How **NOT** to Create a New Newsgroup :-)
>> Summary: A parody of Gene Spafford's regular posting
>> Date: 9 Feb 88 00:02:57 GMT
>> Organization: Comp Sci, Victoria Univ, Wellington, New Zealand
>>
>>
>> How **NOT** to Establish a New Newsgroup
>>
>> [ This is not a criticism of the backbone administration, Gene Spafford's
>> posting, or Bob Webber. It is just an example of what the "Creation
>> Guidelines" posting might look like if someone had to describe what really goes
>> on in "news.groups". ]
>>
>>
>> Guidelines
>> ----------
>> The following guidelines assume you have determined that you want a newsgroup
>> to be created. You may want this newsgroup to address a topic of particular
>> interest, or it might be to help subdivide an existing newsgroup. Once you
>> have decided you want a new newsgroup, you should do the following:
>>
>> 1) Post a message to an existing newsgroup describing your proposed newsgroup.
>> Ask for suggestions and a possible name. If there are several newsgroups that
>> might be interested -- cross-post to them all. Don't worry if the group already
>> exists -- the backbone admins will tell you when you get to step 6.
>>
>> 2) After a day or so, examine the responses and invent a name for your proposed
>> newsgroup -- a name should be short, ambiguous and preferably unpronounceable.
>> If there is some doubt about the top-level name leave it undecided -- this is
>> just the discussion stage [Note: if the top-level name is "comp" it is likely
>> to have a wider distribution than, say, the "talk" groups]. If you are
>> proposing to split a group, suggest 20 or more sub-groups -- a dictionary may
>> be of help here. Also determine if you want the newsgroup to be moderated.
>> This is a very important question and the answer will determine the success or
>> failure or your new group. Why not toss a coin?
>>
>> 3) Post an article to the newsgroup "news.groups" describing your proposed new
>> group. Be sure to emphasize that significant discussion has gone on in other
>> groups and creation should just be a formality. Ask for any comments and votes
>> to be posted or mailed. Be sure to cross-post your article to any newsgroups
>> where there might be interest, so people who don't read "news.groups" can
>> follow the discussion.
>>
>> 4) Consider carefully all comments and objections, whether posted or mailed.
>> Flame all objections and most of the questions because it keeps the discussion
>> alive during the voting period. Make a casual remark about MES. This will
>> encourage the MES opponents into the discussion who will immediately cross-post
>> to everything in sight and will mean that your proposal will be spread further.
>> Remember, that the backbone admins regard the almost inevitable flamage between
>> you and Bob Webber as epitomising the arguments for and against the creation of
>> the group. Prepare for this debate -- practice your arguments on friends.
>>
>> 5) Collect the votes on the issue of the new newsgroup. Post current totals
>> and received votes every second day so people know whether their vote has
>> arrived (don't worry about the communication bills -- it's in a good cause).
>> If after a reasonable time there are more "yes" votes than "no" votes, post an
>> article to the "news.groups" newsgroup with the totals and the list of account
>> names of people voting. Thank people for their support -- make it touching and
>> poignant. If you fail to get enough votes, it is probably because of the well
>> documented conspiracy of the backbone against the creation of new newsgroups.
>> You could consider starting a mailing list for your topic or else show the
>> backbone what you think of the bureaucracy of a central administration and
>> start the group as an "alt" group.
>>
>> 6) Send mail to the backbone and ask that the group be created. You can issue
>> the control message yourself, but many sites will ignore the group unless the
>> control message originates from a known backbone admin. If you know how, try
>> forging the creation message to be from one of them -- it will save them the
>> trouble if posting it themselves.
>>
>> 7) Now the newsgroup has been created, the first topic of conversation should
>> be whether you have chosen the correct name for the group. There are three
>> situations: (a) everyone is deliriously happy with the name of the newsgroup
>> and your group enters the top 40 newsgroups (by popularity) after only one
>> week; (b) the name seems to overlook a significant area of discussion and
>> therefore it should be changed slightly. The backbone admins will be more than
>> happy to oblige as long as you hold another public vote in "news.groups" (see
>> steps 3-6); (c) people seem to think that your newsgroup is the place to
>> discuss things that are completely different from the topics you want
>> discussed. If this happens, let them have their new group and start up another
>> (correct) newsgroup from step 1.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Domain address: [email protected] Path address: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!andrew

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 22:13 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: One last one
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 90 00:10:10 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 14

Anybody know whatever happened to Rich Rosen? For a while, he
accounted for something like 10% of all Usenet traffic. Then he
decided to stop posting to see if anybody missed him. Nobody noticed
for weeks....

Also, the history should probably list Mark V. Shaney, the AI project
at the Labs that mangled articles. BIFF is certainly far from a
unique idea.... Enclosed is one MVS article I saved that poked fun at
some articles about the "End of the World" party Chuq had when I
visited him in 84:

>> Article 3556 of net.singles:
>> ion: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gatech.UUCP
>> From: [email protected] (Mark V. Shaney)
>> Newsgroups: net.singles
>> Subject: the definitive party followup!
>> Date: 5 Nov 84 23:40:15 GMT
>> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
>>
>> While the topic is hot, I was delighted by the way! That was brunch,
>> of course... Spaf (originally a New Yorker, like myself... the devil
>> made him move to Atlanta, I think.. ) treated this Connecticut Yankee
>> <sort of> to all kinds of good stuff... I haven't had access to my
>> account for almost four weeks. I shall be getting back to you for
>> having lost weight, but it doesn't really change how life is. That's
>> Williams, NOT William's. O.K., minor problem. I doubt that's
>> possible. No I didn't. I knew what I suggest others do, is mail a
>> short (non-flame) note back to the hinterlands.. We even got
>> directions to a rather large record shop in Atlanta which we visited on
>> our way back to you folks as soon as I caught on; duhhhh... But I try
>> to keep their names in the terms I outline above, so it's not going to
>> stick to my original algorithm, because I've found many MOTOS
>> interesting who were not all that enjoyable to be with. Let's say a
>> subset. The problem is, the more immature and self-centered is
>> ``sensitivity''. It can be, conditionally, since unless a person's
>> self-centeredness is complete they usually can empathize with someone
>> to get a man's friendly attention. The first thing any advertiser must
>> do is get the prospect to read that CHANGING one's sleeping position
>> commonly results in terminating an on-going dream; changing back to the
>> posters of inappropriate articles are relatively new to the person I'm
>> addressing or those I'm with, consideration for these others being my
>> prime concern. At least this is it. I had no oppertunity to get men
>> to take all the pain in the air am I. A class act is someone who will
>> do anything in their power to be a sacrament. And there has been
>> emotionally assaulted. I've seen a number of such attacks is
>> increasing at an alarming rate. The Reagan Justice Department has so
>> far refused to do that. The whole business of advertising -- the whole
>> problem, the de facto assumption that going out with someone to get to
>> know my partner better. Sex has become part of the very foundation of
>> what makes a relationship and then I'll tell you you're beautiful if
>> you'll have dinner with me-- they say 'you're beautiful'. And mean
>> it. A class act is much, much too rare. When are people mature enough
>> to have sex? I feel that the principle that I had no oppertunity to
>> get a man's friendly attention. The first couple of comments on some
>> of the survey will be posted in net.wanted, car-for-sale announcements
>> should be posted in net.wanted, car-for-sale announcements should be
>> posted to the net and trying to say and say it. The following
>> "personal" advertisement was found in the teeth'' by using their SO is
>> in a rational manner.
>>
>> _-_-_-_-Mark
>>

From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 22:25 PDT 1990
To: [email protected]
Subject: Various
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 90 00:22:04 EST
From: Gene Spafford <[email protected]>
Status: O
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 15

Based on some things in my archives, net.motss existed prior to July
1984.

Enclosed are three postings I saved out for their humor value. The
first helps document when the "netgod" label was in vogue (and I
didn't like it particularly much), one is about as good an analysis of
"car for sale" adds in net.general as there ever was, and the third
indicates that Richard Sexton had fish on his mind before the soc/rec
aquaria debate...

After this, I'm going home for the night. :-)

--spaf

=====Included #1
>From spaf Thu Apr 3 22:15:29 EST 1986
Article 1507 of net.rumor:
Path: gatech!spaf
From: [email protected] (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: take over
Date: 4 Apr 86 03:15:14 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Organization: Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), Georgia Tech

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Carl Greenberg) writes:
>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (brian suhina) writes:
>>I have heard a rumor the net.rumor is being taken over by a group of
>>crazies. Can anyone verify this?
>I have heard some kind of weirdness regarding this "Carl Greenberg"
>fellow out in Berkeley who thinks Gene Spafford is the antichrist.
>It seems this lunatic wants to take over the USENET and oust people
>who are against computerised weirdness. Can anybody besides Andy
>Beals (bandy@lll-crg) verify this?
> Carl Greenberg

Well, I have heard this a few times recently and think I ought to clear
the matter up. I was offered the position of antichrist in 1983, but
turned it down due to the amount of travel required. (I heard it was
offered next to a certain member of the "fun people," but I'm not sure
if he took the position. However, it is interesting to note that he is
now in NJ and that HoneyDanBer UUCP uses "666" for a packet checksum.
Makes you wonder, eh?)

Later, due to my excessive zeal as a net-fascist, I accepted a
promotion to "netgod" in 1984. Due to an unfortunate accident last
year when I was testing my powers, I turned Andy into a newt (he got
better, though). I think he may still hold it against me, so don't
believe anything he might say about the whole incident.

It's a job. It doesn't pay well (actually, it doesn't pay at
all), and I have to take a lot of flak from the pedants and boors, but
hey -- I count myself as lucky. After all, how many positions are open
to an extra-terrestrial without a permanent visa? (When I arrived, I
traded the secret of anti-gravity for one, but it turned out to be a
dog license with the word "dog" scratched out and "Vegan" written in in
crayon. Was I embarassed!)

As to the rest of the rumor: no, I don't want to take over Usenet. I
already have. And yes, I am against all weirdness. I believe that the
Usenet is only for technical discussions of great import, just like
this one. Should you persist in rumor-mongering of this nature, I will
be forced to turn you into a lower life-form -- something like a
toaster, or a backbone admin.

So there. And your little dog too!
--
Gene Spafford
Software Engineering Research Center, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ Relay.CS.NET
uucp: ...!{akgua,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!spaf

======Included #2
>From islenet!bob Fri Sep 28 03:11:34 1984
From: [email protected] (Robert P. Cunningham)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.wanted
Subject: Re: Car for Sale. (secret of net.general revealed)
Date: 28 Sep 84 07:11:34 GMT
Organization: Hawaii Institute of Geophysics

[begin lampoon mode]

Seeing the articles in net.general for apartments to let in
Mississippi and '67 Plymouths for sale in Chicago I used to wonder:
Why would people advertise such things worldwide?

No more. I've put 2+2 together, thanks to an obscure federal government
census report. I now know the secret behind such postings.

The "Place of Work" report, compiled from 1980 federal census survey data,
describes the way people travel to their jobs in the U.S. It's meant to
used by government agencies for transportation planning.

I found much mundane information about the state & city where I live.
E.g., the state of Hawaii has 412,307 workers, of which various percentages
travel to work via various means of transportation.

However...

Thirty-three people working in Honolulu reported that they rode to their jobs
in a subway, elevated train or by railroad. Rather strange, since as far
as I know, Honolulu has never had a subway or elevated train...and the
railroads went out of business in the 1920's.

Could this mean that there is a secret rail transportation system, known only
to those 33 people?

Eight people living outside the state reported that it took them an average
of 28.4 minutes to commute to their jobs via bus vs. the 36.8 minutes it
took the 32,984 workers who live in the state to get to their jobs via bus.

The state of Hawaii is completely isolated in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean. I refuse to believe those eight people live on the ocean. Does
this mean that these eight people have access to a bus capable of making
quick overseas trips?

It gets even more interesting...

Exactly 204 people who live OUTSIDE the state WALK to work. Presumably by
walking on water.

And - according to the report - there are MORE THAN 1,000 people who live
outside the state and travel to work by car.

I'd thought the out-of-state car license plates I saw in Honolulu were
simply the same plates that those cars had before being brought over here by
ship. According to the federal report, I was wrong. Some of those drivers
obviously commute daily.

Then, the other day, the proof. I saw a '67 Plymouth with Illinois license
plates on the Lunalilo Freeway. Note that despite its Hawaiian name, the
freeway is part of the federal "Interstate Highway" system!

Pulling up beside the car, I yelled over to the driver, "Did you actually
drive that car all the way to Hawaii?"

His answer was "Right. Sure!" He laughed and drove away, and I didn't
have a chance to ask him if he got the car through an advertisement in
net.general.

However, there's little doubt left in my mind. The evidence is plain:
those old cars advertised worldwide because they are capable of
fast, WORLDWIDE travel!

In order to fully uncover the secret of net.general, I intend to buy the
very next '67 Plymouth advertised there for sale in Illinois, and learn
the secret of rapid intercontinental travel. Who knows, some day I
may be able to commute from that apartment in Mississippi!
--
Bob Cunningham ..{dual,ihnp4,vortex}!islenet!bob
Honolulu, Hawaii

=====Included #3
Path: purdue!decwrl!labrea!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!killer!wisner
From: [email protected] (Bill "Spam Eggs Sausage and Spam" Wisner)
Newsgroups: soc.women,misc.legal,talk.religion.misc,news.admin,news.groups
Subject: And now for a friendly word from System Administrator Man
Date: 31 Jul 88 10:37:27 GMT
Organization: HASA

Good morning, kids. It's me. System Administrator Man.

I've been sent here by an exclusive little group of System Administrators
just like me to let you know that most of us really don't care about what
pronouns you use to refer to Mark Ethan Smith, about his lawsuit, about
Christianity, the Bible, and atheism.

Those of us that DO care probably subscribe to the appropriate groups.

So, since it's become quite bothersome to keep up-to-date kill files
to weed out all you boneheads, I've been asked to deliver the following
warning:

Stop discussing these, and other topics that have nothing to do with
running USENET, out of the news.all newsgroups.

Because if you don't, we'll tell Richard Sexton that you ate his fish.

Richard Sexton has friends. Big friends. Big, strong friends named Mario
that carry automatic weapons. They will find you. They will find you and
do unspeakable things to you. Things that would make even George Romero
cringe. And they will take their time.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Speaking for an elite club of System Administrators, none of whom are
named Bubba--
--
Bill Wisner / [email protected] / +1 208 286 7929