webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (05/15/88)
In article <863@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>, jesup@pawl15.pawl.rpi.edu (Randell E. Jesup) writes: > In article <May.4.21.19.23.1988.8726@constance.rutgers.edu> webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes: > > In the past, I would have > >advised you to take the vote, but now that it appears that votes don't > >matter, I would say send the create group messages. > > Now I think (if it wasn't fairly obvious before) Webber's purpose for the > comp...eniac proposal is made more obvious: it gives him ammunition > to try to undermine the backbone and the new group creation guidelines. Absolutely not. Although I knew that the backbone was generally a humorless and incompetent lot, I had every reason to expect that a proper vote on a group whose name was not offensive to people with Victorian moralities would be sufficient to get the group created. The fact that they have chosen to substantially modify the guidelines (see latest newuser posting) is sufficient evidence to me that they realize that the group satisfied the previous guidelines [indeed, it satisfies the current guidelines as well, the main significance of the new guidelines are the emphasis placed on the fact that following the guidelines is meaningless]. I now find myself in the position where I can not recommend to anyone the undertaking of the effort of collecting a vote because there is no reason to believe that the backbone will give its result any form of good faith consideration. It is not a position I enjoy being in and it is not a position that I sought, but it is my current position, to do otherwise would be to ignore the facts of the last few months. ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) (05/16/88)
This reply is directed at new readers of this group; Bob Webber is explicitly exempt from reading it, since he's heard this hundreds of times before, so I guess nothing will convince him. In short, the backbone administrators do not owe anything to anybody except their paying customers, which are usually not the net readers. They spend their time and their sites' resources for our benefit; the guideline they publish, like any good-will agreement, are valid only as long as they are not abused. The backbone administrators have every right to determine what constitutes an abuse, and act accordingly. Any sites who do not like this policy, are welcome to exchange phone numbers and uucp passwords, and set their own network. Above all, calling these dedicated people 'incompetent', does require and apology, especially coming from someone who had contributed nothing but complaints to the net. (We are still waiting for your keyword-based news system to replace the newsgroup system!) -- Amos Shapir (My other cpu is a NS32532) National Semiconductor (Israel) 6 Maskit st. P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 amos%taux01@nsc.com 34 48 E / 32 10 N
shane@pepe.cc.umich.edu (Shane Looker) (05/16/88)
In article <645@taux01.UUCP> amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) writes: ! < Explination of backbone people...> ! < And then about Bob Webber > >(We are still waiting for your keyword-based >news system to replace the newsgroup system!) And the public domain C compiler which will run on all machines so we can get rid of the evil binary groups from Hell :-) >-- > Amos Shapir (My other cpu is a NS32532) Shane Looker shane@pepe.cc.umich.edu uunet!umix!pepe.cc.umich.edu!shane Looker@um.cc.umich.edu
webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (05/18/88)
In article <514@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>, shane@pepe.cc.umich.edu (Shane Looker) writes: > In article <645@taux01.UUCP> amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) writes: > ! < Explination of backbone people...> > ! < And then about Bob Webber > > >(We are still waiting for your keyword-based > >news system to replace the newsgroup system!) I can't imagine what was meant by this (time warping has brought your quote before the message you quote apparently). The keyword-based system is already in place. As explained earlier, the keywords are the text of the message. The patterns that you choose to match on are a function of your interests, various net idioms, and the computational resources you can bring to bear on the task. I run the searches as background jobs -- am currently recasting the awk prototype into lex as the startup of a large awk script per new news message was causing the runs to take a bit longer than I liked. If instead of the keyword-based system what was actually being referred to was the ascii hypertext system, that is progressing nicely. Look for it on alt.hypertext and/or alt.sources. > And the public domain C compiler which will run on all machines so we > can get rid of the evil binary groups from Hell :-) When this was last brought up, nil interest was expressed by the net in such a thing. Since I have little personal usage for it, it sank rather low on the list of things to do. On the other hand, there are enough fiddles to the layout of the CPL/BCPL/B/C/C++ family that would make a really nice language, that you might yet see P (for Portable), whether you want it or not. Enjoy. --- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)
webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (05/25/88)
In article <645@taux01.UUCP>, amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) writes: > ... > In short, the backbone administrators do not owe anything to anybody > except their paying customers, which are usually not the net readers. > They spend their time and their sites' resources for our benefit; the > guideline they publish, like any good-will agreement, are valid only as > long as they are not abused. The backbone administrators have every > right to determine what constitutes an abuse, and act accordingly. Yes there is no question that the backbone have every right in a strict legalistic sense to act in the backward way they do. However, you must realize that USENET predates the backbone and that their policies reflect neither the original purposes of USENET nor current realities vis a vis communication and computer technology. > Any sites who do not like this policy, are welcome to exchange phone > numbers and uucp passwords, and set their own network. Such a net was created. It was called USENET. Then along came this bunch of big sites who now call themselves ``backbones'' and you can see what happened. Sigh. > Above all, calling these dedicated people 'incompetent', does require I guess it depends on what you view them as dedicated to as to whether they are actually ``incompetent.'' Would you prefer me to call them ``evil'' under the assumption that they are actually dedicated to creating the mess they have created or ``incompetent'' under the assumption that they are did not intentionally create the current mess? > and apology, especially coming from someone who had contributed nothing > but complaints to the net. (We are still waiting for your keyword-based > news system to replace the newsgroup system!) I have certainly contributed things other than complaints to the net -- however if you only read junk groups like news.* groups, you have probably only seen the complaints. Even the complaints a number of people have found interesting, for various reasons at various times. Vis a vis the keyword-based system, if your system has find, lex (or flex), and more (or less), you probably have all the software you need vis a vis reading keyword-based news. Probably at some point an online thesaurus would be useful. I also highly recommend the Soundex hashing scheme to defeat the problems that spelling errors cause to keyword searching. At some point a detailed investigation of spelling-correction technology would be useful, but currently Soundex appears sufficient. Of course, what you actually look for is another matter -- but this is something that requires individual experimentation and adaption. --- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber) [The Soundex algorithm was posted to the net earlier by someone else -- it was apparently patented in 1918. The algorithm begins with the substitution of b,f,p,v -> 1, c,g,j,k,q,s,x,z -> 2, d,t -> 3, l -> 4, m,n -> 5, r -> 6, and everything else to 0. this gives you an encoding of each word into a string of digits. now throw away any that are the same as the previous digit in the same sequence. then throw away all the zeros. (somehow that seems more useful that the 3k C source or the corresponding hypercard binary).]
lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) (05/26/88)
In article <May.24.23.39.59.1988.11767@constance.rutgers.edu> webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes: >Such a net was created. It was called USENET. Then along came this >bunch of big sites who now call themselves ``backbones'' and you can >see what happened. Sigh. Yes! I SEE the light! Let's nuke the backbone!!! Just let me dig out my trusty backbone map to see who we should pick on first. Hmm.... There's this site called 'rutgers' that claims to have nine backbone connections. Let's nuke them first. The rest of the net should then be able to rest in peace. -- {alberta,utzoo,uunet}!ncc!lyndon lyndon@Nexus.CA