jmturn@ringwld.UUCP (10/04/85)
From: ringwld!jmturn@cca-unix
A short history of SF-L, as I recall it:
SFL started as a direct distibution list in the late seventies.
The original maintainer (Ed somebody?) soon went on to greener
pastures, and dumped the thing in Roger Duffey's lap.
I met Roger in 1980, when he pulled my butt out of a political
fire I had started at the AI lab. I got to know him, and helped
him out a little with the SFL and HumanNets distribution in the
early 80's.
By 1980, SFL reached something like 2000 addresses directly. It
(and HNets) were a sufficient load on the MIT-MC mailer that he
had hung a bag onto the side of the COMSAT mailer called PULSAR,
which spread the distribution over 3 machines and 4 hours. His
constant complaint was that SFL was taking so much time away from
his thesis that he would never graduate.
The total archives as of early '81 were something like 8
megabytes, and were never kept online except when necesary. I
once read through the entire pile (about three linear feet of output).
One of his main worries was keeping SFL quiet. Our persistant
nightmare was DARPA or Proxmire taking a close look at SFL, and
Fleecifiying it to death. A number of times, queries as to the
eligibility of SFL for fanzine Hugos were quickly smothered.
At one point, Roger, Chris Stacy, and I were neverously sitting
in the Sheraton Boston during a Boskone, contemplating the
potential damage a panel entitled "Computers and Fanzines" could
do to us. While we joked about standing up and yelling FIRE if
anyone mentioned SFL, Roger mumbled about emergency plane tickets
to Russia. At one point, I mentioned Roger's name loudly, and a
man came over. He said "Are you Roger Duffey? I'm running the
panel the afternoon, and I was looking for you." It turned out
that not only were all the panelists SFL readers, but that they
had all agreed to keep clear of SFL in the discussion.
(As a footnote, at the Boskone in 1984, things had improved
enough so that we actually had a panel where Saul Jaffe, Chip
Hitchcock, and I were all participating, and SFL was the main topic).
The Noreascon II SFL party was much like the current parties,
with the following exceptions.
1) There were more pros (notably Pournelle, who was still reading
SFL at the time (and maybe Niven?)).
2) The party was held in a suite, donated for the evening by
Robert Forward. He graced the room for the entire night with his
neon plaid vest.
3) There were less people. There might have been 20 people in and
out of the room all night, as compared to about 40 at the LA
party. Given that Saul estimated 20,000 readers of SFL at last
count, this isn't surprising.
As a final note, much of the digest protocol seen today (headers,
local redistribution, compactifying and elimination of duplicate
messages) is directly connected to Roger's work with SFL and
Human Nets. He did a remarkable amount of pioneering work,
especially when you consider that the digests were a hobby to him.
Save Your Vertical Blanking Intervals
for Big Cash Prizes!
James Turner
(The Ringworld Engineer)
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---------------------------------------------------wombat@ccvaxa.UUCP (10/08/85)
/* Written 5:29 pm Oct 3, 1985 by jmturn@ringwld.UUCP in ccvaxa:net.sf-lovers */
/* ---------- "THe good old days of SF-L" ---------- */
It (and HNets) were a sufficient load on the MIT-MC mailer that he
had hung a bag onto the side of the COMSAT mailer called PULSAR,
which spread the distribution over 3 machines and 4 hours.
(As a footnote, at the Boskone in 1984, things had improved
enough so that we actually had a panel where Saul Jaffe, Chip
Hitchcock, and I were all participating, and SFL was the main topic).
James Turner
(The Ringworld Engineer)
/* End of text from ccvaxa:net.sf-lovers */
I used to work on an isolated DEC-10 and always wondered what PULSAR was for.
As another footnote, at this year's NASFiC there was a panel on the
electronic fanzine (Chip Hitchcock and John Quarterman participating), and
the main topic of discussion was CompuServe. Blah, blah, blah.
"When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all."
Roger Zelazny, *Doorways in the Sand*
Wombat
ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!wombat