[news.sysadmin] AP Press Release: UUCP Virus

snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy T. Beagle) (11/10/88)

In article <18@jove.dec.com> vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes:

|2. USENET is a lousy way to get real live newswire-type information broadcast;
|  in particular, this topic has been discussed at length in news.admin and
|  news.announce.important as well as comp.bugs.4bsd.ucb-fixes.  Forwarding a
|  piece of AP News is almost always silly, since news takes a few days to
|  get everywhere -- when Challenger blew up, 20 people logged in and typed
|  a short message about it.  I read about it in the next day's paper before
|  I saw any of the USENET messages on the topic.

I disagree.  On numerous occasions I have first learned of urgent news
through usenet.  [ And I seriously doubt that I am better connected than
decwrl :-)  ]  For most of us, news items like the Challenger disaster are
not urgent, there is nothing we can do about them.  In other cases, like
the current worm problem, or a product alteration/contamination problem like
the infamous extra-strength Dielenol case from a few years ago, the word
should out on every reasonable network.
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   /_____\    Snoopy
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