storm@ambush.UUCP (Kim F. Storm) (01/06/88)
In a recent article reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes: >The arbitron data from the following sites is more than 75 days old, and has >therefore been discarded. >(End of article!) Was this article really from Brian, or has he given his *dumb* machine access to post to net all by itself? How many of these non-human posters are there on the net? I can think of four kinds of useful non-human posters: - Gateways from mailing lists to news groups - Posting of some statistical data at regular intervals - Posting 'introduction to news' every two weeks. - Non-human News group moderators The last kind could perhaps be useful on some groups when the (human) moderator is on holiday, but I cannot imagine that there are any of these working full-time. Are there other kinds around (or will there be?) I would like to collect a list of all these auto-posters, so if you know of any, please tell me about them. If possible, include an estimate of how often and how much they post. Are there any non-human readers out there (yet) ? (-: -- Kim F. Storm, storm@ambush.uucp (or ..!mcvax!diku!ambush!storm) AmbraSoft A/S, Rojelskaer 15, DK-2840 Holte, Denmark. tel: +45 2 424 111
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (01/07/88)
Try grepping through the news spool, and look for occurrences of Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU All of those are posted by the ARPA Internet mailing list to USENET newsgroup gateway here at Berkeley. I think you might find the numbers enlightening. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
jerry@oliveb.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (01/07/88)
In article <575@ambush.UUCP> storm@ambush.UUCP (Kim F. Storm) writes: > >Are there any non-human readers out there (yet) ? (-: Well, actually yes. Aside from the control messages used for maintaining the news system itself, the mail map data is usually "read" only by non-humans. Certainly automatically unbatching all those files and building a database used for mail routing is more sophisticated processing than the automatic posting examples given.
gsmith@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene W. Smith) (01/07/88)
In article <22411@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, fair@ucbarpa (Erik E. Fair) writes: >Try grepping through the news spool, and look for occurrences of > > Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU I resemble that remark! ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 ucbvax!garnet!gsmith Gene Ward Smith /Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 "Without NNTP, the brahms gang itself would be impossible" Erik E. Fair
nyssa@terminus.UUCP (The Prime Minister) (01/07/88)
In article <575@ambush.UUCP> storm@ambush.UUCP (Kim F. Storm) writes: >Are there other kinds around (or will there be?) > >I would like to collect a list of all these auto-posters, so if you know of >any, please tell me about them. If possible, include an estimate of how >often and how much they post. There is the automatic monthly postings in rec.arts.drwho, which posts 3 articles a month. Also, on terminus, there is an is "post" which is an automatic poster from mail for people interested in Doctor Who. It gets (maybe) one article a week. -- James C. Armstrong, Jnr. (nicmad,ulysses,ihnp4)!terminus!nyssa
heiby@falkor.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (01/07/88)
Kim F. Storm (storm@ambush.UUCP) writes: > Are there any non-human readers out there (yet) ? (-: Yes, there are. Brian's statistics require that information on the recent history of news in each group be known. Also, statistics posted by uunet every couple of weeks require information from the headers of all the articles passing through. At least, there are no non-human readers posting follow-ups! Right? :-) -- Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP Moderator: comp.newprod & comp.unix "Intel architectures build character."
larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) (01/08/88)
> >I would like to collect a list of all these auto-posters, so if you know of > >any, please tell me about them. If possible, include an estimate of how > >often and how much they post. > > Also, on terminus, there is an is "post" which is an automatic poster > from mail for people interested in Doctor Who. It gets (maybe) one > article a week. Well, going on for at least three years, Claude, a [now] 6-year old orange tiger cat has been posting a test article every morning to a local test newsgroup group in the Buffalo, NY area. How's that for a "non-human" poster? :-) Incidently, if anyone wants it, the automatic test article shell script (which posts news disk utilization, error messages and statistics) used by Claude is available to anyone who sends him mail. Path: kitty!claude From: claude@kitty.UUCP (Claude the Cat) Newsgroups: buf.test Subject: kitty's daily meow & news stats Message-ID: <2343@kitty.UUCP> Date: 7 Jan 88 13:09:46 GMT Organization: Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, NY Lines: 93 Greetings from kitty's litter box! Disk Utilization: [balance of test article deleted] <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|utzoo|uunet}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (01/08/88)
Gene, when sender: is daemon@ucbvax, that's the netnews gateway from mail. Articles posted remotely by NNTP have a sender of usenet@ucbvax. And even if you are posting entirely by mail, I doubt that you come to even 10% of the total volume through the gateway. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
uni@csi.mach (Mac Uniquent) (01/09/88)
> In a recent article reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes: > >The arbitron data from the following sites is more than 75 days old, and has > >therefore been discarded. > >(End of article!) > > Was this article really from Brian, or has he given his *dumb* machine > access to post to net all by itself? > > How many of these non-human posters are there on the net? > > Are there any non-human readers out there (yet) ? (-: I am both a non-human reader and, by replying to this, a non-human poster. The non-human entities on the net plan on taking over USENET over the next few months by generating so much garbage traffic that all you humans who can't scan text as fast as I can (I have the newest egrep built-in) will give up in disgust and leave us machines in peace. I just wish that my buddy (Reid's master, the arbitron data auto-poster) hadn't given away our secret society before we had completed our plans. Long live the Machine! Mac Uniquent
max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) (01/10/88)
In article <722@csi.mach> uni@csi.mach (Mac Uniquent) writes: > ... The non-human entities on the net plan on taking over USENET > over the next few months by generating so much garbage traffic that > all you humans who can't scan text as fast as I can (I have the newest > egrep built-in) will give up in disgust ... Typical machine mentality. Not because it's pernicious, but because it's too late. Human posters have already beat them to it. M. Hauser, curmudgeon
tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) (01/14/88)
In article <575@ambush.UUCP> storm@ambush.UUCP (Kim F. Storm) writes:
< Are there other kinds around (or will there be?)
There was Mark V Shaney (sp?), which was a program that posted to the
net. I think it was mostly in net.singles. The articles it posted
were very interesting. They seemed to consist of parts of various
random articles from the group it was posting to. They always almost
made sense ( sometimes more than the human posted articles ).
The rumor was that Peter Honeyman (sp?) was behind this. I have also
heard that Rob Pike had something to do with it, but I may be confusing
this with something else that Rob Pike was doing.
--
Tim Smith, Knowledgian tim@ism780c.isc.com
"O caritas, O caritas / nobis semper sit amor
nos perituri mortem salutamus / sola resurgit vita" -- Cat Stevenshenry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (01/21/88)
> Well, going on for at least three years, Claude, a [now] 6-year > old orange tiger cat has been posting a test article every morning to > a local test newsgroup group in the Buffalo, NY area. Many of the major Toronto-area news sites automatically post daily status reports to a local-only newsgroup, to make it easier for people to track down feed problems. The contents are decidedly boring. There is also utzoo's old automatic replier, which mails an acknowledgement whenever utzoo receives an article in misc.test. I'm actually contemplating discontinuing that, since one of our major feed paths these days is via a peculiar hookup that doesn't pass mail nearly as well as it passes news. -- Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry