brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (10/29/89)
USENET is perhaps the world's largest computer conferencing network, and I've been on it almost since the beginning. At the start, USENET was a bold and successful experiment in human-computer networking. I think that field is one of the world's most exiting -- the cutting edge of the story of society and technology. As such, as with the hardware and software industries, we should be watching a whirlwind of change. But we're not. Recently I've had to ask, "what's new in USENET?" It's not that there's nothing, but all I can say is that it's a slight breeze and not a whirlwind. In particular, what's new in a networking sense? There have been some new readers recently, and new net software for new machines, but they only change one person's view of the net, unless they get real wide acceptance. And many of the recent developments, such as C news, don't attempt to do anything new. It's highly useful to have the same thing done much faster (I make my living from that, after all) but it doesn't change what the net is. The "References:" and "Supersedes:" fields were implemented over 4 years ago, but they still can't be used. Indeed, change in the netwide transport mechanism seems impossible. RN changed the net a fair bit, but it's over 4 years old now too. 4 years is a lifetime in software. The basic inews tools and their format aren't a lot different from their origins 8 years ago! TMN has some interesting ideas, but it has yet to have any impact on the net. The only significant thing I can point to of late is NNTP. On LANS, NNTP has no effect on the net, other than letting clients save disk space. As a transmission mechanism, it has not had a direct affect. Instead, its effect comes in tandem with NSF's funding of the internet, and the vastly reduced transmission times that come with it. So what is new? I like to think I'm doing new things, with stuff like an ultra-moderated newsgroup, electronic publishing, fancy feed/filtering tools and classification tools. But I can't deny that many of these things are not truly new. Hell, you could read UPI on "The Source" when it opened up in 1978. Better article classification has existed on other nets for some time, too. The only thing that really distinguishes USENET these days is the strongly moderated group. Most other nets don't have that, or don't use it much. (No surprise, on things like CIS the people pay to post, and hardly want to write things to have a moderator toss it away.) But this idea is just an evolution of something that existed on the ARPANET in the 70s. We're going into the 90s now. Much of the "news" on USENET these days isn't about revolution in computer networking. It's about whether aquariums are hobby or science. Or about what new tweak should be made to newsgroup creation rules. Now the object of this article is not to have everybody list some minor new thing that's happened to USENET. I want to find out why we aren't watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. And what we can do about it. I do know one reason, and it comes from my own experience as (I think) one of the few people to try to do completely new things in this network environment. You get pointlessly flamed whenever you try to innovate. People have forgotten what USENET should be about. USENET is about *doing* things in computer networking. Not thinking up arguments why people shouldn't do them. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/29/89)
In article <40056@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > Now the object of this article is not to have everybody list some minor > new thing that's happened to USENET. I want to find out why we aren't > watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. > And what we can do about it. > > I do know one reason, and it comes from my own experience as (I think) one > of the few people to try to do completely new things in this network > environment. You get pointlessly flamed whenever you try to innovate. > > People have forgotten what USENET should be about. USENET is about > *doing* things in computer networking. Not thinking up arguments why > people shouldn't do them. I think that there are a couple of things which have happened to Usenet over the past few years. One is simply that it has gradually changed from being an experiment to being an institution. You can get away with stuff on a testbed that you can't get away with on a production system, and Usenet is at this point more similar in many ways to a production evironment than an experimental one. This instills some inertia right there. Another thing, which I do think is revolutionary, is that the edges are blurring rather quickly these days. From the newsgroups & occasional gatewayed mailing list, we now have AP & UPI feeds, Fidonet conferences, gateways (at least experimental ones) to commercial services like CompuServe, Genie, AppleLink, and so on. Usenet is quickly become the place for "one stop shoppping" when it comes to computer-based telecommunication. This would have been science fiction a mere decade ago... -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> -- "If your application does not run correctly, do not blame the operating system." -- Geoffrey James, _The_Zen_of_Programming
wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) (10/30/89)
In article <40056@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > [ much deleted ] > > Now the object of this article is not to have everybody list some minor > new thing that's happened to USENET. I want to find out why we aren't > watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. > And what we can do about it. gee brad, isnt it obvious? usenet has gone mainstream. many people who are on it dont care about the roots of usenet, namely computers, unix and networks. they just have a terminal in their dorm rooms or at work and there is a really great newsgroup called soc.culture.china, or rec.games.frp or whatever that they like to read. usenet has become a standard. standards dont change quickly. you could ask the same questions about why hasnt the "C" language or the telephone changed much. once you get a mass of people this large that is using something and expecting it to stay the same then you _cant_ change things. personally, i think this change is great. this means that most people arent using usenet because it's a neat new revolutionary networking concept, they are using it to get "real things" done. > Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 -wayne
blm@6sigma.UUCP (Brian Matthews) (10/30/89)
In article <40056@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: |I want to find out why we aren't |watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. |And what we can do about it. Look at who makes up Usenet. Seven or eight years ago when I first started reading news on Usenet, a vast majority of the sites were university and college computer science departments. Today many of the sites are companies. This alone explains a lot of the Usenet stagnation: 1. Computer science departments tend to have more people with time to work on things like Usenet. Very often companies don't even have people to install bug fixes to the software (witness Rick's recent version findings), let alone take the time to design and develop new software that is going to be given away. 2. Many companies now rely on the news software internally. At my previous company we used B news and rn to communicate among our sites in Seattle, Phoenix, Toronto, and Chicago. This meant that any new software installed had to be stable, and compatible with older versions, as each site didn't always update at the same time. In other words, Usenet has become a necessity when it used to be a luxury. It was originally the domain of computer science students who could make time to write and install new software, and if some of that new software disrupted the network for a day or two it was no big deal. Also, the network was relatively small, so you could expect new software to be installed everywhere in a week or two at most. Today, any new software will probably never be installed at some sites, and will take quite a while to be installed at many others. Doing something about this is left as an exercise for the reader :-) -- Brian L. Matthews blm@6sigma.UUCP
csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack) (10/30/89)
In article <40056@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >Now the object of this article is not to have everybody list some minor >new thing that's happened to USENET. I want to find out why we aren't >watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. >And what we can do about it. Why no major changes? Three reasons: 1) Despite the flaming and gibberish, it works. It allows people all over the world, with incredibly different computing and networking resources, to communicate. 2) Standards. They help ensure compatibility, but they also stultify. People on the net quote RFC822 and RFC1036 as if they were carved in stone. A change that conflicts with one of the standards, even if it's an improvement, is not likely to succeed. 3) The hardware environment. There are still people sucking this stuff through 1200 baud modems into ASCII terminals. We use everything from PCs through Crays to implement Usenet. Point out a single major change that can be made that will leave the net usable by all the current users. >I do know one reason, and it comes from my own experience as (I think) one >of the few people to try to do completely new things in this network >environment. You get pointlessly flamed whenever you try to innovate. What innovations are you referring to? r.h.f? ClariNet isn't part of Usenet, it's a commercial service that uses the same transport mechanism. Newsclip might be considered an innovation if it were available to anyone on the net, not just ClariNet subscribers. Ultramoderated newsgroups... What the hell are ultramoderated newsgroups? >People have forgotten what USENET should be about. USENET is about >*doing* things in computer networking. Not thinking up arguments why >people shouldn't do them. Horseshit. Usenet is about communication. Saying "Usenet is about *doing* things in computer networking" is like saying "writing is about putting strings of letters on paper." It's true at some level, but it misses the point entirely. This came out flamier than I'd intended. Brad has made some valid points here. If we are to make major improvements to Usenet, I believe it will be at the cost of access to quite a few of the users. I suggest that the way to do this with minimum disruption to the rest of the net is to do it in another hierarchy - effectively a different net, with different rules, that doesn't try to cater to the lowest common denominator, that will set standards rather than obeying them. Three major areas that we might attack are: 1) Data transport. Right now we have UUCP, NNTP, and probably others I know nothing about running through phone lines, Ethernet, Decnet, etc. Is this the best we can do? What happened to stargate? What happened to the idea of regional nets based on CATV? 2) Article selection. How do we decide which articles to read and which not to? Brad's NewsClip, or something like it, might be a step forward. There has to be a better route than kill files and rn macros. Better article classification, as per Barry Shein's recent proposal, falls under this heading as well. 3) Article composition and presentation. Don't all of you sitting out there reading this in monochrome and monofont on a high-resolution bit-mapped color terminal think something's wrong? Would it be so difficult to implement a WYSIWYG PostScript(tm) editor and display PostScript newsreader? Crispin Goswell's {x}ps program is a major chunk of the latter. The suggestion box is open. -- Dave Mack
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (10/30/89)
Oh, USENET's size is part of the cause of its stagnation. But it doesn't have to be so. The other big nets -- Compuserve etc. -- are doing new things all the time. Yes, many of those new things are stuff that you can only do with a non-distributed net -- but they are doing things. Ah, you say, CIS has central control, they can mandate innovation. USENET can't. This is true, but the anarchist in me has always hoped that less structure can mean more room for innovation. If things like CIS are doing a better job, we have to rethink what we are. In some ways, the commercial nets are way behind USENET and don't intend to catch up. In other ways USENET is left in the dust. When was the last time you saw something on USENET that excited you as a new development in computer networking? -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (10/30/89)
In article <40056@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > >People have forgotten what USENET should be about. USENET is about >*doing* things in computer networking. Not thinking up arguments why >people shouldn't do them. Originally, USENET was to exchange experiences with unix. That is, today, to a large degree, a very minor part of USENET. Unix is now ``just'' a support mechanism to support the flow of information about various other topics. This did not happen because of say, .aquaria, it happened the moment more postings began flowing over the net for IBM PC's and related toy computers (:-) for the humor impaired) than about unix. My word! With USENET increasing at the rate it is, and it's pervasivness at changing peoples attitute towards written commnunication (``can I just email you or do I have to put it in the mail or call you?'') among a constantly growing and changing culture, I find contemporary USENET a very exciting place. The thing about the NET I personally find most exciting is the ability of communicate with a peer group on a common interest and compile information - this is easy as you already have it in a form which is easy to manipulate. Severel project have evolved from the net in terms of printed works - the r.h.f joke book, Brians recipes, Chuq's otherrealms. Perhaps none are going to win a pulitzer, but I believe they signal a trend and point the way towards one of the most significant things USENET can do for society at large. USENET is as stagnent as you see it. There are bad things about it and there alway will be. But they remain a small constant, while the amount of good things that comes out of USENET is ever on the rise. -- ``Hacker: a human being whose sense of humor has been surgically removed'' - Kent Paul Dolan richard@gryphon.COM decwrl!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV
wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) (10/31/89)
WARNING: Some opinions expressed herein touch on highly sensitive issues and may be offensive to readers. Private e-mail replies are welcome, but malicious flames will be forwarded to site managers. Since I am a University of Washington employee, standard disclaimers apply. > From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) > > [background information deleted] > > The only significant thing I can point to of late is NNTP. [...] > As a transmission mechanism, it has not had a direct affect. Instead, its > effect comes in tandem with NSF's funding of the internet, and the vastly > reduced transmission times that come with it. NO, NO, NO! :) It is painfully obvious that very few people on the UUCP side understand how the Internet works. NSF funds the high-speed backbone, a set of T1 links which connect the regional academic subnetworks and the NSF-sponsored supercomputer centers. However, the subnets are funded by the participating universities and affiliates. The UW is part of NWNET, and happens to be the connection point between the NSFnet backbone and the NWNET ring. It is certainly true that NNTP allows accelerated receipt/transmission of the feeds for sites on the NSFnet backbone or one of the regional subnets. The protocol doesn't really matter, however. The speed advantage will last only as long as there is excess bandwidth, which may not exist beyond the next few years. In addition, big sites such as ours tend to place their large, general purpose systems a hop or two behind the gateway, to facilitate local sub- netting, and there may be delays on these hops which make them behave more like well-connected UUCP nodes in terms of the user's perceived turnaround time. NNTP >has< had a major effect as a transmission mechanism because of the ever- increasing connectivity to the Internet. We are now providing Usenet access to the entire campus population, a total of 50,000 students, faculty and staff. Other major universities are in the process of doing the same thing. We are talking about a potential audience of 10M people just on the academic domains within the US. This has never been practical to implement using UUCP links alone. The consequence of this is that academia has now recognized Usenet as a production news and conferencing service, and is looking at its viability for various applications related to the instructional and research missions of higher education. The future of Usenet will be dramatically influenced by the success or failure of these activities, as judged by the academic community. I will elaborate on this point, below. > So what is new? I like to think I'm doing new things, with stuff like > an ultra-moderated newsgroup, electronic publishing, fancy feed/filtering > tools and classification tools. But I can't deny that many of these > things are not truly new. Hell, you could read UPI on "The Source" when > it opened up in 1978. Better article classification has existed on > other nets for some time, too. Technical issues in the field of information science are of great interest to me, but I will pass on the subject for the time being, so as not to obscure the central thrust of this reply. > The only thing that really distinguishes USENET these days is the > strongly moderated group. Most other nets don't have that, or don't > use it much. (No surprise, on things like CIS the people pay to post, > and hardly want to write things to have a moderator toss it away.) Again, NO. The Usenet model does provide for editing/moderation, but the vast majority of general-interest newsgroups don't use it! Commercial services such as CIS actually have a greater level of moderation built in, because many of their customers are willing to pay to have someone monitor the input and keep out the flakes. (This doesn't work in certain areas, for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion.) There are many hundreds of moderated discussions on the Internet, of course, that exist as open-subscription mailing lists. Usenet has not begun to address the task of incorporating these services into a single entity. > Much of the "news" on USENET these days isn't about revolution in > computer networking. It's about whether aquariums are hobby or science. > Or about what new tweak should be made to newsgroup creation rules. You obviously don't read the same newsgroups I do. A lot of useful information is being exchanged in comp.*, some groups in sci.*, and even rec.games.misc. (I also think rec.humor.funny deserves passing mention, since I use it in my networking classes.) I sense, by reading between the lines, that you are dissatisfied with the loss of decorum in news.* and are worried about the implications that has to future Usenet administration. I agree. The NNTP side of Usenet is not going to embroil itself in such trivial debates, however... > I do know one reason, and it comes from my own experience as (I think) one > of the few people to try to do completely new things in this network > environment. You get pointlessly flamed whenever you try to innovate. It's advantageous to follow this line of thinking a few steps further. The flaming is not the problem in and of itself. People argue in every conceivable forum, and human nature dictates that at some point it will start getting personal. Other forums maintain better order by enforcing a clearly-defined cutoff point. As examples, consider the letters column in your favorite journal or your local newspaper. Do they print every crank letter they receive? Of course not, and the reasons are obvious. The old-guard UUCP community, which currently holds administrative control over Usenet, has made a conscious decision to allow more-or-less unconstrained public access, with very few rules and essentially no enforcement of those that do exist. This has allowed Usenet to evolve into an amazingly diverse forum being read by an even more amazingly diverse audience. The extremes can be seen quite clearly when looking at recent newsgroup creation proposals and the discussions thereof. There is a price to pay for this openness, however. Some of your best new ideas may be lost because the innovators take a look at the system as a whole and dismiss it as inherently umanagable. I would personally like to propose the creation of a whole set of new groups of particular relevance to the academic applications, things like comp.math edu.* comp.math.mathematica edu.physics.problems comp.math.benchmarks edu.chemistry.problems comp.stat edu.math.problems comp.stat.* edu.logic.problems (etc...) sci.information info.conferences info.proceedings info.abstracts But I can't see how to get there from here. The newsgroup creation process discourages experimentation. There is some risk that radical elements (read: idiots) will sabotage our efforts before they are given time to take root. Can such groups survive unmoderated, or will they sink to the lowest common denominator and then be abandoned by those who seek a true academic forum? Who would be willing to moderate such groups knowing that it may mean accepting personal abuse from complete strangers who have no stake in the academic mission? What leverage is there to deal with troublemakers? I teach classes at this center on how to use e-mail and other network services, including Usenet, and I see wildly enthusiastic reactions from faculty and grad students toward its possibilities. In many cases, however, this is quickly tempered by the user's first hands-on experience. It starts with a list of unsubscribed groups in alphabetical order, with alt.sex and alt.sex.bondage on the very first screen. A typical continuation is to post a simple question in comp.whatever, which generates perhaps four e-mail replies, one with useful information and three flames for wasting net bandwidth. Since our users tend to be of moderately high intelligence, they quickly assume that the net is dominated by a small subset of users with no academic or corporate affiliation, little or no accountability, and in certain cases exposing emotional problems. They are thus unable to take Usenet seriously. It doesn't help that we have seen this model evolve on our own campus-wide bulletin board system with parallel results. As soon as the undergraduate student population was given free access, they immediately set up discussion topics entitled "Satan", "Great*Sex", "Anal*Sex", and other non-academic (perhaps 'immature' is a better word) diversions. There are an assortment of networking 'addicts' who frequent the center, some of whom will tie up ports for 12-14 hours/day doing nothing but read the local bulletin boards and Usenet. I ask myself, "where is the educational value in that?" We've even come close, once or twice, to legal actions alleging libel and/or sexual harassment, and one wonders when and where the first big Usenet scandal along these lines will strike. The bottom line is that Usenet is now visible to a much larger audience, one which has expectations of the network as well as new ideas to help bring them about. Usenet must come to terms with the fact that it is no longer an experiment, or a club for state-of-the-art technologists, but rather a public service catering to disparate interest groups with conflicting needs. This is a prerequisite to realizing major progress along the lines we are discussing. > I want to find out why we aren't > watching *major* changes, and why we aren't watching a lot of them. > And what we can do about it. OK, since you asked... 1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of expert users rather than by a popular vote. The time has come for the creation of some official Usenet by-laws, and in particular for the establishment of a governing body with elected representatives from the various constituent groups. This body should have ultimate authority on administrative issues such as the naming of groups, the status of moderators and the certification of software updates. 2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Our users do not appreciate having to repeatedly refuse subscriptions to bogus groups such as alt.sex.bestiality. Forgeries may eventually become a real problem; this may require some enhancements to the protocols. 3) Site managers have to be impressed with the importance of ensuring that their local users adhere to Usenet guidelines and reasonable net etiquette. We could probably split off a heated debate on how exactly to go about this. As a corollary, major sites such as ours may need some legal protection in actions which stem from libelous or obscene material we may receive as part of the feeds. This would suggest the development of a "rights and responsibilities" document of some form, which would be signed by all participating sites as a condition of membership. 4) Sites with problem mailers (e.g. Portal) should be tarred and feathered. 4a) Seriously, there needs to be a concerted effort to get more UUCP sites to register with valid domain addresses and to upgrade their mailers. This will greatly improve the reliability of Usenet as perceived by the new user. 5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator and an archive site, or even more than one of each for very active groups. The moderator does not have to clear each posting in advance (although this may be desirable for certain applications), but should have the ability to cancel, route to a different group and, most importantly, mark for preservation. There should be a means for sites to identify valuable postings and keep them on-line indefinitely, so the often-asked questions and answers don't have to be reposted over and over again, especially since most major sites can't commit disk space for more than two weeks of feeds at a time. The lack of knowledge of what has gone before is probably the most intimidating aspect of Usenet to new users. 6) Usenet needs a mechanism for maintaining a database of mail distribution lists at each backbone site, and for passing updates to this database along with the feeds. This is why many of the most popular academic discussion groups are still administered using the LISTSERV utility on BITNET. It should be possible to use the newsreader to request a subscription to an open mailing list (and to examine a list of lists), even though the message distribution is via mail rather than a newsgroup feed. Many special-purpose applications are best served by separating the message traffic from the feeds, for both political and performance reasons. Also, a lot of people are reluctant to use mailing lists now because they feel their application needs the exposure that the Usenet feeds provide. If mailing lists fit into the namespace somewhere and could be queried by the newsreader, it would substantially reorganize the information and expedite the matching of new users to their most immediate interests. As a side benefit, it would greatly reduce the bandwidth wasted on flames about the wasted bandwidth. This almost certainly requires protocol enhancements. I do not wish to slight the valuable suggestions put forward by others regarding local newsreader enhancements and the improvement of searching and indexing capabilities. I do feel that the above-described changes are of fundamental importance if Usenet is to remain a single entity. The consequence of not implementing these changes is that the academic side of the network will, in all probability, explore the idea of maintaining a separate distribution hierarchy with its own administrators, and as the software evolves to meet the high volume of academic users, the public sites will be left behind. > From: amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) > > Another thing, which I do think is revolutionary, is that the edges are > blurring rather quickly these days. From the newsgroups & occasional > gatewayed mailing list, we now have AP & UPI feeds, Fidonet conferences, > gateways (at least experimental ones) to commercial services like CompuServe, > Genie, AppleLink, and so on. Usenet is quickly become the place for "one > stop shoppping" when it comes to computer-based telecommunication. This may sound like a quibble, but most of the above is attributable to service enhancements on the Internet, and does not represent any change to Usenet itself. Public and commercial users tend to lose sight of the fact that the Internet costs money, and that it is primarily underwritten by universities and the federal government for the specific purpose of furthering the academic mission. The Internet is not, nor will it become, an unregulated gateway for the private sector to access commercial services. This has considerable bearing on what can and cannot be done on Usenet. > From: wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) > > personally, i think this change is great. this means that most people > arent using usenet because it's a neat new revolutionary networking > concept, they are using it to get "real things" done. With many more applications still to come, I hope. > From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) > > In some ways, the commercial nets are way behind USENET and don't intend > to catch up. In other ways USENET is left in the dust. When was the > last time you saw something on USENET that excited you as a new development > in computer networking? Never mind .aquaria, it's sci.forest vs. alt.trees! > From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack) > > ... If we are to make major improvements to Usenet, I believe it will > be at the cost of access to quite a few of the users. I suggest that the > way to do this with minimum disruption to the rest of the net is to > do it in another hierarchy - effectively a different net, with different > rules, that doesn't try to cater to the lowest common denominator, that > will set standards rather than obeying them. We have just completed a cycle of protocol and transport enhancements. It is now time for experimentation on the applications side, to see what will and will not work within the scope of the present model. If the changes I enumerated above don't occur on Usenet, then I agree that we will see the next cycle of software updates occuring in the context of a separate hierarchy. (bill) Bill Newell Systems Analyst, Applications Consulting Group University of Washington WCN@MAX.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU
davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) (11/01/89)
news.admin's own brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) said:
-
-People have forgotten what USENET should be about. USENET is about
-*doing* things in computer networking. Not thinking up arguments why
-people shouldn't do them.
[ Breaking out of my Halloween costume temporarily... ]
Where does it say what Usenet is/should be about? Because I don't agree
with what you defined it as.
To me Usenet is about communication and interaction; not necissarily on
the immediate level, but certainly on a time responsive level (i.e. current
events *can* be discussed). All else serves this purpose: newsgroup naming,
bandwith discussions, meta-discussions, even flames and newgroup/rmgroup
wars (to some extent).
If the software is old, so what? The messages (in many, although I'll admit
not in most cases) are not old.
Usenet is the message, not the medium.
--
David Bedno, Systems Administrator, The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Email: davidbe@sco.COM / ..!{uunet,sun,ucbvax!ucscc,gorn}!sco!davidbe
Phone: 408-425-7222 x5123 Disclaimer: Speaking from SCO but not for SCO.
"History is an angel, being blown backwards into the future."
- Laurie Andersonrichard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (11/01/89)
Yeah, but it's real hard to argue with the price.
A few, no doubt, will though.
--
richard@gryphon.COM {routing site}!gryphon!richard henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (11/02/89)
In article <9499@max.u.washington.edu> wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: >1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of expert >users rather than by a popular vote... At one point, this was so. Remember the great sinister Backbone Cabal? It eventually dissolved because (a) the experts persistently had trouble reaching consensus on significant issues, and (b) they were taking a whole lot of largely-undeserved shit from the populace at large. (Obligatory Usenet Disclaimer: :-) having been one of them, I'm not unbiased.) >The time has come for the creation of >some official Usenet by-laws, and in particular for the establishment of a >governing body with elected representatives from the various constituent >groups. This body should have ultimate authority on administrative issues such >as the naming of groups, the status of moderators and the certification of >software updates. This is an interesting idea. Doubtless it will be followed by membership fees and rules on who is allowed to be a Usenet member? (For example, all those awful capitalist swine in businesses clearly have much deeper pockets than universities, so they should pay ten times as much for the privilege of being second-class citizens.) The result will be an interesting network, but it will not be Usenet. I'm not saying this in the sense of "the spirit will be gone", but in the sense of "this is literally a new network, not a revision of an old one". Usenet will continue to exist in parallel, since a lot of people won't be interested in joining the New Order Of Things, and there is no way to force them to. >2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Our users >do not appreciate having to repeatedly refuse subscriptions to bogus groups >such as alt.sex.bestiality. Forgeries may eventually become a real problem; >this may require some enhancements to the protocols. The major security holes now in place are inherently unfixable without, at the very least, improved transport technology. In an environment of insecure transport provided by insecure sites, "enhancements to the protocols" simply cannot do the job. >3) Site managers have to be impressed with the importance of ensuring that >their local users adhere to Usenet guidelines and reasonable net etiquette... How? Nobody has ever been able to come up with a way to legislate the presence of competent and conscientious administrators. At many sites, such animals simply do not exist and cannot be conjured up easily. >... major sites such as ours may need some legal protection in actions >which stem from libelous or obscene material we may receive... I hope you realize that one major *disadvantage* of having an official Usenet government is that it becomes an obvious target for legal action. One strength of the current network is that when the lawyers come knocking, there's nobody home. >5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator ... Can you explain how these people would be paid? (You're *not* going to get them to do it for free; it's too much work.) >...I do feel that the above-described changes are of >fundamental importance if Usenet is to remain a single entity. It is not now, and never has been, a single entity. -- A bit of tolerance is worth a | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology megabyte of flaming. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) (11/02/89)
Boy, oh, boy. Some people just set themselves up _so_ well... According to wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr): >It is painfully obvious that very few people on the UUCP side >understand how the Internet works. Well, maybe. But read on... >Usenet must come to terms with the fact that it is no longer an experiment, >or a club for state-of-the-art technologists, but rather a public service >catering to disparate interest groups with conflicting needs. It is obvious that Mr. Newell doesn't understand what Usenet is. Usenet is not a "public service", nor does it "cater" to anyone. Rather, it is a collection of sites, each of which has its own access policy. Some sites are public access, and some cater to one group or another. But the Usenet as a whole cannot be so characterized. >1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of >expert users rather than by a popular vote. He wants another Backbone Cabal. A real forward thinker, this one. >... official Usenet by-laws ... >... governing body with elected representatives ... Without a funding source and enforcement mechanism, you can forget it. And what site will permit some outsiders to decide their Usenet access policy? Certainly not any site I administer. >2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Technical ignorance as well. Why does this not surprise me? >5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator and an archive >site... Hahaha... Please, stop... I can't stand it... >The consequence of not implementing these changes is that the academic side >of the network will, in all probability, explore the idea of maintaining a >separate distribution hierarchy with its own administrators, and as the >software evolves to meet the high volume of academic users, the public sites >will be left behind. Here we get to the crux of Mr. Newell's misunderstanding. The largest portion of Usenet, at least by site count, is: >> COMMERCIAL << That's right, folks: The academics are the >minority<. And Mr. Newell didn't even mention us! If Mr. Newell is correct about the academic community abandoning Usenet -- which I don't believe for a minute -- the Usenet they leave behind won't die. It will live on and prosper. -- You may redistribute this article only to those who may freely do likewise. Chip Salzenberg at A T Engineering; <chip@ateng.com> or <uunet!ateng!chip> "'Why do we post to Usenet?' Naturally, the answer is, 'To get a response.'" -- Brad "Flame Me" Templeton
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (11/02/89)
>henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >>wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: >>1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of expert >>users rather than by a popular vote... >At one point, this was so. Remember the great sinister Backbone Cabal? >It eventually dissolved because (a) the experts persistently had trouble >reaching consensus on significant issues, Actually, I think the real reason the backbone died was that the definition of backbone became outdated due to NNTP -- which caused so many people to be able to join the Backbone Cabal that it became impossible to get anything done. When there were 10 or 20 people on the backbone, it was possible to get things done. When that number topped 50, it was just like arguing in news.groups -- too many people to ever finish a discussion or get a consensus. If some way could be set up to get a reasonable-sized committee of whatevers, I think it could be made to work again. Said number to be at least half a dozen and no more than 15 or 20. Who and how are left as exercises to the reader. >and (b) they were taking a >whole lot of largely-undeserved shit from the populace at large. >(Obligatory Usenet Disclaimer: :-) having been one of them, I'm not >unbiased.) Agreed, but I'll qualify it by saying that it was not generally the populace at large, but a small, very noisy group of people who seem to enjoy rabble-rousing and being obnoxious on general principles. It only takes a few very motivated individuals to completely screw things up [this ins't true of just USENET; look, for instance, at the censorship issues at schools and libraries, where one or two people can successfully screw up entire school districts]. >>The time has come for the creation of >>some official Usenet by-laws, and in particular for the establishment of a >>governing body >This is an interesting idea. It's an interesting idea that comes up about every two years and has since I joined the net. The problem is there's no way to enforce membership, since USENET is a free, anarchic society. All we'd do is start up the "Usenet, Inc." flamewars of a couple of years ago. It's a nice thought, but creating an organization and associated bureacracies would not solve all of USENET problems -- it would solve some of them while creating a new class of problems to worry about. It would also be the end of USENET as we know it; not necessarily a bad thing. There would be a net, but it would be much different than we currently have. >>2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Our users >>do not appreciate having to repeatedly refuse subscriptions to bogus groups >>such as alt.sex.bestiality. Forgeries may eventually become a real problem; >>this may require some enhancements to the protocols. As soon as you can design and implement a public domain, secure version of UUCP and a secure version of NNTP and make it available to everyone on the net, we'll be *happy* to deal with the security holes. The problem is figuring out how to make sure the data we need to validate the incoming information stream is available from UUCP -- and how to trust that data, since if the person is hoaxing the data, it'd be fairly easy to hoax the validation data as well. Fun stuff. [note to the paranoid: when I call UUCP unsecure here, it is from the point of view of validating the incoming data for mail or USENET. UUCP is not a general security hole into your system -- it just is missing specific data items we would need to verify that the data being passed ot the mailer or news daemons are what we're saying they are. They currently have to be trusted...] >The major security holes now in place are inherently unfixable without, >at the very least, improved transport technology. In an environment of >insecure transport provided by insecure sites, "enhancements to the >protocols" simply cannot do the job. We could probably do a few things to tighted it up: inews could, for instance, check to make sure the incoming news is from a site that we actually are supposed to be getting news from. Inews could also send a verification back to that site to make sure the message came from the site before accepting it, but suddenly you're taling about three UUCP trips (message over, validation back, acknowledge over) -- non-trivial propogation delays and disk storage requirements -- plus, a smart forger could just forge the acknowledgement. We can make it tougher, at fairly expensive costs to the network, but we can't plug the holes. >>3) Site managers have to be impressed with the importance of ensuring that >>their local users adhere to Usenet guidelines and reasonable net etiquette... >How? Nobody has ever been able to come up with a way to legislate the >presence of competent and conscientious administrators. At many sites, >such animals simply do not exist and cannot be conjured up easily. Another suggestion that comes up every couple of years. Another good suggestion, without any way of successfully implementing it. We tried a few things over the last ten years, and none of them worked markedly. >>... major sites such as ours may need some legal protection in actions >>which stem from libelous or obscene material we may receive... >I hope you realize that one major *disadvantage* of having an official >Usenet government is that it becomes an obvious target for legal action. >One strength of the current network is that when the lawyers come knocking, >there's nobody home. The entire liability issue is clouded beyond belief. Among other things, there are no precedents worth bothering with. My greatest hope is that it stays that way as long as I'm on the net.... >>5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator ... >Can you explain how these people would be paid? (You're *not* going to >get them to do it for free; it's too much work.) I happen to be a supporter of a 100% moderated net in theory -- or, at least, moderating as much of the net as you can. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking] Aftershock. Bummer.
karl@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (11/02/89)
chuq@Apple.COM writes:
If some way could be set up to get a reasonable-sized committee of
whatevers, I think it could be made to work again. Said number to be at
least half a dozen and no more than 15 or 20.
15 or 20 is already much too large. Just about exactly a year ago, I
tried to resurrect a mailing list of backbone-like people, in terms of
interest in and dedication to do something with various Usenet issues.
It fell apart in less than 4 weeks. There were only ~25 people.
Try 10. Maybe 5.
--Karlcoolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge) (11/02/89)
Summary; Yes, this _is_ long... wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: [A fairly long article, about which many good replies have already been made. I'm just picking and choosing points to extend on.] >The speed advantage will last only as >long as there is excess bandwidth, which may not exist beyond the next few >years. While this is true, it's not necessarily the dire threat that it appears to be. Many of the regional nets, as well as the NSF, have indicated a desire for _more_ 'bandwidth-wasting' on things like news. This is because, in networking as in so many other things, the amount of usage determines need and hence funding. The higher the load is now, the more likely the national 'data superhighway' proposal is to actually get passed and implemented. >The consequence of this is that academia has now recognized Usenet as a >production news and conferencing service, and is looking at its viability for >various applications related to the instructional and research missions of >higher education. This is somewhat true; however, most users of the Usenet (academic or not) realize that Usenet is not a corporate entity; it is not 'reliable' in the sense that there is no official support mechanism for it. Usenet will last as long as people want it, which appears to be a long time --- therefore it's safe for production use. But its continued existance cannot be _guaranteed_. >[In reference to the flamefests in news.*:] >The NNTP side >of Usenet is not going to embroil itself in such trivial debates, however... I haven't seen any particular qualitative difference in posts coming from NNTP vs. UUCP/Bitnet/whatever in news.*, or anywhere else for that matter. Both sides have good contributors and bad contributors --- and the distinction is often not trivial (one person's annoying flamer is another person's interesting commentator). >The old-guard UUCP community, which currently holds administrative control over >Usenet, has made a conscious decision to allow more-or-less unconstrained >public access, with very few rules and essentially no enforcement of those that >do exist. This has allowed Usenet to evolve into an amazingly diverse forum >being read by an even more amazingly diverse audience. [...] >There is a price to pay for this openness, however. Some >of your best new ideas may be lost because the innovators take a look at the >system as a whole and dismiss it as inherently umanagable. This is _not_ a function of 'the old-guard UUCP community'. A lot of NNTP sites believe in relatively public access with small amounts of restriction and regulation as well. And: the system _is_ 'inherently unmanageable'. There is simply no way to 'manage' a vast collection of voluntary cooperating sites. The only real obligation any Usenet site has is to its feeds, and even that is a pretty tenuous obligation. There are lots of assumed _moral_ obligations (pass on what you received intact, etc), but these can't be _enforced_ from outside (except by cutting the site out entirely). It works because the _individuals_ (sites and people) who constitute Usenet all _want_ it to work, not through any sort of management. >I would personally like to propose the creation of a whole set of new groups of >particular relevance to the academic applications, things like > >[Many comp.*, edu.*, etc group proposals] > >But I can't see how to get there from here. The newsgroup creation process >discourages experimentation. There is some risk that radical elements (read: >idiots) will sabotage our efforts before they are given time to take root. Can >such groups survive unmoderated, or will they sink to the lowest common >denominator and then be abandoned by those who seek a true academic forum? Who >would be willing to moderate such groups knowing that it may mean accepting >personal abuse from complete strangers who have no stake in the academic >mission? What leverage is there to deal with troublemakers? The standard Usenet leverage: ignore 'em. If you really are interested in trying something like this out, set up a proposal for an entirely new top-level hierarchy (edu.* perhaps?) and put all of the groups within it. There's plenty of precedent for that sort of thing. Only feed it to sites that are interested --- if the idea blossoms, plenty will be. There are plenty of useful groups in the Usenet that the idiots haven't managed to sabotage; with careful distribution and moderation, there's no reason why your academic hierarchy couldn't join their ranks. >[First net experience;] It starts with a list of >unsubscribed groups in alphabetical order, with alt.sex and alt.sex.bondage on >the very first screen. A typical continuation is to post a simple question in >comp.whatever, which generates perhaps four e-mail replies, one with useful >information and three flames for wasting net bandwidth. Since our users tend >to be of moderately high intelligence, they quickly assume that the net is >dominated by a small subset of users with no academic or corporate affiliation, >little or no accountability, and in certain cases exposing emotional problems. >They are thus unable to take Usenet seriously. Yes, and some people love the freedom of alt.* and believe that it _proves_ that the net is something new and useful. After all, alt.* works in spite of complete disorganization. The rest of the net works better yet. As far as flaming responses and the like go, the best defense is preparation: give your new users all of the Usenet newuser guides and so forth, and write extensions based on local experiences. Moderation won't help this problem --- as long as e-mail is fairly free, it's pretty likely that some e-mail flaming will go on. And, for me, the existance of the one useful reply should prove that the network _is_ serious. On the other hand, I have _never once_ been flamed seriously, e-mail or otherwise, for what I've written to the net. I've had serious, sometimes bitter, occasionally unreconcilable disagreements with people. but the level of discussion never got to finger-pointing or name-calling. Nor have I ever been flamed for wasting bandwidth. And I've been posting to the net for quite a while. I'm _most certainly_ not denying that these things happen; I've read alt.flame and seen posted e-mail proving beyond a doubt that such things do happen. But they definitely don't happen to everyone, and IMHO one's writing style and content have more to do with not getting flamed then do random chance. >There are an assortment of >networking 'addicts' who frequent the center, some of whom will tie up ports >for 12-14 hours/day doing nothing but read the local bulletin boards and >Usenet. I ask myself, "where is the educational value in that?" We've even >come close, once or twice, to legal actions alleging libel and/or sexual >harassment, and one wonders when and where the first big Usenet scandal along >these lines will strike. There are several issues here. First is the 'lab rat' syndrome, which happens pretty much everywhere. It doesn't worry me too much; most of the lab rats have the computer lab as their social life (such as it is). I've seen some serious relationships spring from silly newsgroups and forums. There can be a tremendous amount of educational value in such things, at least for some people, because users of things like Usenet learn (or _can_ learn, at least) a lot about self-expression in print media, writing style, and communication in general. Second, there's the problem of libel and other legal issues. There are several partial solutions to this. One is to put prominent disclaimers all over the place: 'Warning, this network (or this portion of the network) contains potentially offensive material. By reading this topic, you agree to waive all claims of liability on the part of the computer center, university, etc. for presenting this material to you'. Warn people that their actions in posting have potential legal consequences, and warn people that their actions in reading are voluntary and do not create an obligation on anyone else's part. >The bottom line is that Usenet is now visible to a much larger audience, one >which has expectations of the network as well as new ideas to help bring them >about. Usenet must come to terms with the fact that it is no longer an >experiment, or a club for state-of-the-art technologists, but rather a public >service catering to disparate interest groups with conflicting needs. This is >a prerequisite to realizing major progress along the lines we are discussing. People may have lots of expectations about Usenet. The question is: just because someone has an expectation, does that create an obligation to uphold the expectation? I don't think so. _Usenet_ must come to terms with nothing in particular, because _Usenet_ as an entity does not exist. The Usenet _is_ an experiment in cooperative anarchy. It _is_ a club composed of all the sites that exchange news. The Usenet is _not_ a public service in the sense that no site on the Usenet can be compelled to carry any group or do any service that they don't want to do (except, again, by public pressure (which winds up creating voluntary actions in the end, anyway) or by cutting them out). >1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of expert >users rather than by a popular vote. The time has come for the creation of >some official Usenet by-laws, and in particular for the establishment of a >governing body with elected representatives from the various constituent >groups. This body should have ultimate authority on administrative issues such >as the naming of groups, the status of moderators and the certification of >software updates. As others have mentioned, this is the 'backbone cabel' writ large. There will never be 'official Usenet by-laws' or a Usenet 'governing body' because the resulting network WILL NOT BE the Usenet. It will be an entirely different network. The fundamental defining characteristic of the Usenet is not the groups it carries (several are available elsewhere) but rather the voluntary, cooperative nature of the beast. >2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Our users >do not appreciate having to repeatedly refuse subscriptions to bogus groups >such as alt.sex.bestiality. Forgeries may eventually become a real problem; >this may require some enhancements to the protocols. But that's the entire _point_ of alt: _anyone_ can create groups whenever they want to. Don't carry alt.*, or fix your newsreaders to assume unsubscription to alt.*, or warn people about its nature. Newgroups in alt.* are _not_ part of a security hole, they're what alt.* is all about. This doesn't deny loads, and I mean loads, of real security holes within the various pieces of software used to implement Usenet. Fixing them will require major changes net-wide, and lots of work for lots of people. For now, the net has made a de facto decision to live with the holes because the sites are unwilling to pay the (fairly high) cost of installing security. If you can find a bunch of volunteers willing to implement a comprehensive security package for the Usenet, though --- go for it! >3) Site managers have to be impressed with the importance of ensuring that >their local users adhere to Usenet guidelines and reasonable net etiquette. We >could probably split off a heated debate on how exactly to go about this. As a >corollary, major sites such as ours may need some legal protection in actions >which stem from libelous or obscene material we may receive as part of the >feeds. This would suggest the development of a "rights and responsibilities" >document of some form, which would be signed by all participating sites as a >condition of membership. Many site managers could care less whether their users adhere to the guidelines or follow etiquette. Many site managers run Usenet on a time-available basis, and don't even begin to have the time to watch what their users are doing. Some site managers are running private home machines, some are pure volunteers not even employed by the organization that owns their machine, etc. The responsibility should be on the users, not the site managers. The same is true with legal liability. Right now, it's a guess as to exactly who is liable, but the best bet is probably the individual who caused the problem. Organizing the Usenet, changing it from a voluntary association, and adding a 'rights and responsibilities' document will probably _increase_ the risk for the sites, not decrease them. >4) Sites with problem mailers (e.g. Portal) should be tarred and feathered. Again, they're on the network voluntarily. If they fail to follow the standards, all that can be done is to put vocal pressure on them and to flame them. There's nothing that can be done to _force_ them to change short of cutting them off. >5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator and an archive site, or >even more than one of each for very active groups. As someone else pointed out, who's going to pay for all this? With the other proposed changes making the Usenet an organization rather than a cooperative, people will expect pay for services rendered. Lots of people will volunteer time and effort to help out the vast, wonderful, anarchic Usenet. How many of those people would contribute to Usenet, Inc? Especially considering that their status as moderator will probably increase their legal risk... >6) Usenet needs a mechanism for maintaining a database of mail distribution >lists at each backbone site, and for passing updates to this database along >with the feeds. Not a bad idea. Perhaps someone should volunteer to implement it? >I do not wish to slight the valuable suggestions put forward by others >regarding local newsreader enhancements and the improvement of searching and >indexing capabilities. I do feel that the above-described changes are of >fundamental importance if Usenet is to remain a single entity. Usenet is not, has never been, and will never be a single entity. Usenet is (repitition is a virtue :-) ) a cooperating collection of autonomous sites. If someone took what is now the Usenet and created a formal Usenet, Inc out of it, then most likely another collection of cooperating sites would spring up to fill the gap. IMHO the 'new Usenet' would be a much more interesting and useful entity than Usenet, Inc before too long, because most of the people keeping the Usenet going now would throw in with the new voluntary net, not the old, no-longer-anarchic Usenet. >The consequence of not implementing these changes is that the academic side of >the network will, in all probability, explore the idea of maintaining a >separate distribution hierarchy with its own administrators, and as the >software evolves to meet the high volume of academic users, the public sites >will be left behind. Why should this be so? What is it about academic use that mandates high volume, and what evidence is there that the public sites couldn't handle it? Why do non-academic public sites care about academic- oriented traffic anyway? Why couldn't they continue to contribute to other, non-academic-specific groups? Closing note: the one thing that most fascinates me about the Usenet is watching a cooperative anarchy actually function and do things that many theorists thought anarchies couldn't do. The second most fascinating thing is the ability to engage in discussions with people from all over the place: academics at all levels, workers in industry with many different jobs, and users in the general public. This is what makes the Usenet such a valuable 'place' for me --- and, I suspect, for many of the other regular readers. Losing the diversity, the chaos, the dissention, the occasional flaming, the sheer anarchy of the net would drastically reduce its value to me, and I'd probably stop contributing either my thoughts to the net or my efforts in keeping the articles moving. Probably lots of others would do likewise. Each person dropping out doesn't wreck the net, but fifty or one hundred key admins dropping out would severely impact the net --- and many of them _would_ drop out if the net were to change. A lot of people derive satisfaction for contibuting to the good of Usenet by developing or fixing programs, adding and maintaining sites, fixing propagation glitches, whatever. Many of them would stop doing these things if the net were to be bureaucratized, because somehow contibuting to the wellbeing of a formal bureaucracy is less satisfying than contributing to a cooperating group, even if the group is large. --John -------------------------------------------------------------------------- John L. Coolidge Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself) Copyright 1989 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed. You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.
karl@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (11/02/89)
coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > Yes, and some people love the freedom of alt.* and believe that it > _proves_ that the net is something new and useful. After all, alt.* > works in spite of complete disorganization. Given the recent rash of newgroups in alt, I am inclined to disagree with the idea that "alt works." (Not that John was claiming for himself that alt works.) Considering that in recent days (just days, not months or even weeks), we have seen alt.stupidity alt.peeves alt.cyberpunk.tech alt.cyberpunk.movement alt.sex.bondage alt.sex.bestiality alt.sex.masturbation alt.sex.masterbation it becomes impossible to take it seriously. The one alt group I've let pass here in months is alt.sources.wanted, because there was actually some sense to it, and enough effort was expended to determine its worth that an informal poll was conducted. (Yes, I know .bondage has been around for months. I periodically see another newgroup for it. I ignore all newgroups for subgroups of alt.sex.) defs.h's NONEWGROUPS is essential, IMO, even for alt. > there's the problem of libel and other legal issues. I suggest that libel and other legal issues are not a problem. Consider the legal problems that have presented themselves to the Usenet over the last N years: [1] Most recently, r.h.f -vs- JEDR. It managed to hit the papers; whoopie. No change to the operation of the Usenet, except that site `looking' has more newsfeeds than it used to. [2] The posting of a Mac terminal emulator to then-net.sources a number of years ago. The posting originated from a university which subsequently fell off the Usenet. The specific person responsible was never identified, and nothing further came of it. [3] The posting of Niven's _Man_of_Steel,_Woman_of_Kleenex_. Niven was so mellow about that it he didn't even care. (I recall quotes from Chuq's correspondence with him to the effect, "it's a very old story and not worth much to me now.") The evidence of these incidents is that legal issues are simply not a problem. We've had 10 years for someone to get truly uptight about the Usenet, and no one ever has. --Karl