moore@NCSC.ARPA (Moore) (10/15/86)
I *HAVEN'T* had enough! While I agree that some convention should be estab- lished so that a person could tell by the Subject field if the message contains source or UUENCODED executable, I signed up to this news group because it does have such a large volume of information. Maybe people who develop software should just place an announcement on the net, and then collect a list of those who respond, and mail just to them. I don't think so: personally, I very much enjoy getting the quality of software displayed recently by ARC, ARCSHELL, UNITERM, and UEMACS for **Free** and without the hassle of mailing disks to someone to get a copy. And isn't one of the reasons the news group exists in the first place to teach new users about the capabilities of the machine? If so, you can surely expect some redundancy in message topics, since new folk are added to the list con- stantly (I imagine). So, to all those people who have been taking the time to develop, encode, and mail programs to the net, thank you very much. If something comes up again and it's decided that no source or encoded material will be allowed, please go ahead and put my address on your own mailing list: I want the *opportunity* to decide whether I want a copy or not. Jim Moore Naval Coastal Systems Center Panama City, FL (moore@ncsc.arpa) P.S. Send any and all sparks to rick@ncsc, 'cause he don't get no mail.
olson@endor.harvard.edu (Eric Olson) (10/15/86)
I think the complaint is valid. In the Mac world, we have long had net.micro.mac and net.sources.mac (a misnomer: there are about 100 times as many binaries as sources in net.sources.mac). So why not net.micro.atari16.sources and/or net.micro.atari16.binary? Then the sites who don't want programs don't even have to have them uucp'd to themselves. I also think the original poster may have been complaining about true garbage, i.e., a few recent uuencodes that went sour somewhere. This should, of course, be avoided as much as possible, but we're all only human, after all. -Eric
jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (10/16/86)
I am a non-ST-owner interested in information on STs. I have zero use for actual code. I have generally not saved any of the code that went whizzing by. I figure that when and if I buy an ST, most of what is available now will still be available for the asking, and probably several bug-fix versions later. I would vote for descriptions of what programs are available and mailing of actual source or object code only to those who care enough to ask. That would also solve the "source vs. object" controversy. -John Sangster jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa
pes@bath63.UUCP (Paul Smee) (10/30/86)
I'm not convinced that 'descriptions and mail to requesters' would actually cut the net traffic. At present (bar accidents) net stuff crosses the Atlantic once (to Holland, innit?), crosses the Channel once, and so on. A separate trans-Atlantic posting to each requestor would pretty obviously crank the transmitted bitcount right up. Similar arguments, of course, apply to non-international posting. Also, I think that this net has a higher connectivity than 'pure user mail', so that solution would leave lots of people out, I spect. Better, the idea (is it reelly going to happen) of a separate meeting for the software, so that them as don't want it can more easily miss it out.