brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (06/13/89)
Well, the net.flamoids are predictable as ever, but I won't dwell on them. It has been a longstanding, but moderately unknown, policy of comp.newprod that if a product announcement is particularly directed at the readership of a particular newsgroup, then crossposting is ok. I naturally checked this with Ron Heiby, Mr. Newprod, before proceding. Quiet independent of my recent use of it, it is in my opinion a very sensible policy. It never made much sense to me to put all the announcements together in one place, requiring the readership to go through piles of stuff they don't want just to see the one or two they do. And comp.newprod, like the other highly commercial groups on USENET, is reasonably popular. In fact, it used to draw even higher readership in its early days, consistently placing amongst the top. Now, if the announcement of a new alternate network using the famous B news file format isn't appropriate for news.admin, I don't know what is. -------- Now I'm not going to use USENET for electronic publishing, although I would be glad to provide free no-strings-attached stand-alone samples if they are requested. (ie. track the China situation in soc.culture.china, boxscores in comp.sport.baseball, whatever net folk desire.) But even if I *were* going to use USENET for electronic publishing, say on a shareware (or 'sharewire!') basis, I will still wonder at the complaint. To my mind, if you post something people want to read, you are using USENET well, even helping it. If you post reams of crap (like flame-rebuttal wars) that nobody wants to read, then you are abusing USENET. What you get out of it is your own business and nobody else's. All that matters is whether the readers get something out of it. So the question I would ask is, which of the following is use of usenet and which is abuse? a) Posting material that people desire so much they'll pay money. b) Posting flame wars that everybody puts in their kill file. The answer is left as an exercise to the reader. See you at Usenix. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (06/13/89)
In article <3506@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes
a decent response to the folks worried about the purity of their news feeds,
but he still hasn't explained how he's going to avoid siccing the lawyers
on the net (whatever his intent, as soon as the legal sharks smell Usenet
they'll go into a feeding frenzy) when the inevitable "leaks" occur.
In a private message to me he has indicated that his policy in this area
constitutes his private intellectual property.
I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
--
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180.
Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford) (06/15/89)
) In a private message to me [Brad] has indicated that his policy in ) this area constitutes his private intellectual property. ) ) I'm not quite sure what to make of that. It means he hired Reagan's old speechwriters.
jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) (06/15/89)
>-- >Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. ... In the June 12, 1989, issue of /usr/digest I see that Interactive Systems Corp. has just announced a software product called "Looking Glass". It looks like Brad's ship has finally come in. -- John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID 83707, (208) 343-1865 uunet!visdc!jiii