evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) (11/13/89)
As some of you may know by now, there are 70 new newsgroups floating
around in a new hierarchy, ccm.*.
This is the result of a gateway between masnet and Canada Remote
Systems, the largest BBS in Canada and likely one of the larger ones in
the world (70+lines, a few gig of on-line stuff for downloading, etc.).
As of now, the sites which either carry these groups now or will soon
(that I know of) are: attcan, becker, masnet, telly, tmsoft, utgpu.
After a few days' worth of postings, here are some observations:
ORIGIN:
As I understand it, CanConfMail is a network of a number of Canadian and
U.S. PC-based Bulletin Boards that have not gone into Fidonet.
It appears that the largest member (by far) is Canada Remote Systems.
There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern:
Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the
connections - or the differences - between them).
Here is a grep of originating systems, based on what's been sent
here so far. (There are only 70 sites identified in 915 articles.)
You'll notice the \xxx notation in places, noting where they have used
8-bit PC graphics characters in their "sig":
<< CHARLIE >> (517)790-0598 1+Gig 9 Nodes
Animation Station -- (416) 443-8671
Bert's Bulletin Board. Brandon, Man. Can. (204)763-4684
Bit Systems ~ Guelph ~ 519-767-1755 HST
Bits & Bytes BBS *(416) 532-1784 * Toronto, O
CHIPS+ Connection * Newport Beach, CA 714-760-3265
Canada's CAPital BBS -Ottawa- (613) 233 4774 {view node}
Canadian-Micro BBS (519)681-3113 London, Ont.
Channel 1 (TM) * 617-354-8873 * 26 Lines *
Computer Buy/Sell 713-694-5399 Hou TX
Crystal Palace * Toronto * (416) 925-5742 *
DAT-A-REA - St-Bruno,Quebec (514)441-3229
DPS, Pacific Palisades, CA. (213)459-6053
Data Bit Network 703-719-9648 Running Board 301-229-5342
DataGate (202) 948-8332 HST
Data World BBS - Knoxville, Tn. - 615)966-3574, 9600V
Exchange BBS (804) 340-5042 * 9 NODES !
FRONTLINE! BBS 416-840-5269.
FoxNet PCBoard ~ Grand Falls, NF ~ (709) 489-4758
Gateways * New York City * [212] 219-8824
Gil Tennant - SSH 416-288-9412
HUB BBS Arlington, Va. 703-685-0019 HST
HYMAN INDUSTRIES BBS - Winnipeg, MB - (204)4
Haley's Comment BBS - Innerkip. Ont. - (519) 469-3028 *
Harred On-Line- South Jersey Smartnet from Millville N.J.
Hillside BBS, GUELPH,ON. (519)821-6389 & 654-9657
K-W AMATEUR RADIO BBS* >(519)-578-9314< (1:221/177)
Lake Erie Vineyard 814-459-4631 Hayes V.42 * 814-455-9860 HS
Little Angels PCB * (213)387-5901 HST D/S * Los Angeles, CA
MSW BBS, Winnipeg, Mb. (204) 663-8490
MUI-Net . Sydney, Nova Scotia CANADA . (902) 564-5022 *
Media Shack ~ Toronto ~ (416)699-1846 *
MegaByte / Comox, B.C. (604)339-0522
Microwave Research BBS (813) 442-4286 HST
MoonDog BBS Brooklyn,NY 718 692-2498 9600-V
Next Generation <..Smartnetting at Warp Speed...>
Oasis BBS (613) 236-1730 Ottawa, CANADA
Odyssey <SMARTNET> Morris Plains,NJ (201)984-6574
Omaha Network* 4.3beta GAP (402)453-1504 HST
One Thousand BBS ~ (416)236-3209 ~ Toronto *
Party Line - Memphis - 901-873-2328 - HST
PharmStat Systems Bayside, N.Y. (718)(217-0898)
Pokey's Place Winnipeg, MB (204) 253-1342 (HST) <<SmartNet>>
ProData Exchange * Tampa, FL * (813) 920-8820
Programmer's Exchange, Toronto, (416) 787-1965
Quarterdeck Tech Support (213) 392-9701
Rall Computers, Seal Beach, CA (213) 594-5528
Role-Players Haven (613)824-0059 "The Origin of Gaming"
Ron S.. SysOp London PCUG-BBS-(519)472-9471
S.I.T.E. Contrecoeur QC, 514-587-5154.
SCAN/IS Toronto's Business BBS (416)265-8724
SUPER 88 enr. Laval, Quebec (514) 622-6024
Santa Software Associates VA:(703) 349-0135
Sasquatch BBS, Terrace, B.C. (604) 635-2184
Shadow RAM BBS Ottawa, CANADA
Skeleton Crew =-818-718-9219 Chatsworth CA
SoftNet London, CANADA 519/685-5306
Spartan BBS. Etobicoke, ON.
St Pete Programmers Exchg *HST* 813 527-5666
Synapse BBS - Gatineau PQ - (819) 561-5268
System EX-10 Canada * (416) 275-4248 *
T.N.M.C. Buckeystwn Md 301-698-0212 HST 38.4k
TAVERN BBS Chazy NY {{{{ A SMARTNET Board }}}
ULITMATE LINK (201) 680-9718 - Hayes v9600
WINNING EDGE - (416) 277-8253 - PARADOX USERS GROUP
Wildfire BBS Woodstock, Ont (519)-539-0523
Windsor Spitfire BBS ~ USR HST ~ (519)735-1504 ~
Ye Olde Bailey - 1 713 520 1569 - SMARTNET - Hayes 9600
Zooman's Zoo BBS * New York Cty * (212) 432-1992
dBored/HUBSD - San Diego - 619-748-3644 (HST)
HEADERS:
Regardless of where the message actually came from, the return address
and "Organization:" header (for the purpose of Usenet) reads only Canada
Remote Systems. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of
origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good
assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS.
The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless
of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person
at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if
Usenet postings to these groups will get back into CRS.
It is a serious drawback that messages coming in from this network has
no distribution. This makes it more difficult to alias ccm groups into
their equivalent Usenet groups (why should a person reading news have to
choose whether to post to comp.dcom.telecom or ccm.hayes?)
My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of
the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a
header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult?
CONTENT:
The jury's still out. There's a lot of garbage and some pearls. It
shudders to make me think that looking at a few hundred CCM postings
would have be *missing* recent ravings in news.groups, alt.sex and
can.general. There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff
that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal
policy statements or the CRS sysop telling a questioner "yeah, I
can get that for ya cheap."
Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging
their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently
like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if
nobody wants to know.
There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles
and sparse use of quoting.
Big - no make that HUGE - chunks of messages are of the kind that on
Usenet would be ghettoed in comp.sys.ibm.pc.questions. Someone actually
sent out a message asking what the going price of an EGA card was, and
another had a "sig" of "Microsoft products are tops!".
A guy from Quarterdeck answers any Unix-related questions with
"Well, why not just get Desqview?"
There's a lot of stuff that I would say is more appropriate as e-mail
rather than broadcast, but in fairness, that also applies to much of
Usenet :-|.
On the plus side, for IBM PC/286/386 postings, I find some of the
writers more knowledgable than the average comp.sys.ibm.pc poster. There
is more specific coverage of applications like spreadsheets or
accounting.
CONCLUSIONS:
There's some stuff here that I'd genuinely like to see gatewayed into
mainstream Usenet. With ccm groups getting to tmsoft, attcan and utgpu,
it would be trivial to get this stuff to uunet and NNTP.
But there is much to do first. There are a number of these groups that
have no business being broadcast at all. The others need better headers.
I'm still not sure if they deserve their own hierarchy or a merger (via
aliasing) into conventional Usenet groups.
I hear CRS is getting some Usenet. Is it ready for the deluge that a full
bidirectional gateway would bring?
--
Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing,
Why can't they put 'em all there? | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
- CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan
--
Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing,
Why can't they put 'em all there? | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
- CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evanmshiels@tmsoft.uucp (Michael A. Shiels) (11/14/89)
I just thought I should clarify some of the points in the message posted by evan@telly. E@T>As of now, the sites which either carry these groups now or will soon E@T>(that I know of) are: attcan, becker, masnet, telly, tmsoft, utgpu. I don't really carry the newsgroups in other than a gateway capacity. I currently can only handle one feed and that is tmsoft. Europe. E@T>There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern: E@T>Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the E@T>connections - or the differences - between them). Smartnet is the US counter part to CanConfMail (which will soon be expanding into the US). E@T>Here is a grep of originating systems, based on what's been sent E@T>here so far. (There are only 70 sites identified in 915 articles.) E@T>You'll notice the \xxx notation in places, noting where they have used E@T>8-bit PC graphics characters in their "sig": I guess I should put in some 8th b. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of E@T>origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good E@T>assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS. PCBoard and the networking softare used (QNet) currently don't support any sort of site identifier and as you can probably see parsing the trailing portions of the messages is almost impossible. There is a new version in the works with a 3 part node identifier. Hopefully then I will be implementing proper Organization: and From: etc headers. Currently there is no alternative since the information isn't present in the messages. E@T>The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless E@T>of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person E@T>at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if E@T>Usenet pprefer that people not merge the ccm.* names into the normal Usenet groups so that people will know these are CCM areas and not normal Usenet areas. I don't want CCM members complaining about getting flamed by Usenet users for inappropriate postings in a Usenet group since they are not posting to a Usenet group. E@T>My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of E@T>the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a E@T>header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult? Distribution: ccm will be added right away. E@T>CONTENT: E@T> E@T>The jury's still out. There's a lot of garbage and some pearls. It E@T>shudders to make me think that looking at a few hundred CCM postings E@T>would have be *missing* recent ravings in news.groups, alt.sex and E@T>can.general. There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff E@T>that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal E@T>policy statements or the CRS snths on how best to make use of Usenet hopefully things will also spill over into the CCM groups. E@T>Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging E@T>their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently E@T>like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if E@T>nobody wants to know. E@T> E@T>There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles E@T>and sparse use of quoting. Quoting is not implemented the chains will only last so long (till they renumber) and they can't reference the Usenet MSGID at all. E@T>Big - no make that HUGE - chunks of messages are of the kind that on E@T>Usenet would be ghettoed in comp.sys.ibm.pc.questions. Someone actually E@T>sent out a message asking what the going price of an EGA card was, and E@T>another had a "sig" of "Microsoft products are tops!". E@T>A guy from Quarterdeck answers any Unix-related questions with E@T>"Well, why not just get Desqview?" E@T>There's a lot ofage comp.sys.ibm.pc poster. There E@T>is more specific coverage of applications like spreadsheets or E@T>accounting. A lot of the conferences are called "Technical support" conferences and are frequented by the authors/maintainers of the appropriate software/hardware. E@T>There's some stuff here that I'd genuinely like to see gatewayed into E@T>mainstream Usenet. With ccm groups getting to tmsoft, attcan and utgpu, E@T>it would be trivial to get this stuff to uunet and NNTP. Would anyone beyond the local calling area really be interested in this stuff? The other option is that they setup a local ccm.* newsgroup gateway in there city if there is a CanConfMail/Smartnet node there already. I am trying to polish up the software to run under OS/2 and then I will release it. E@T>But there is much to do r CRS is getting some Usenet. Is it ready for the deluge that a full E@T>bidirectional gateway would bring?
brian@ncrcan.Toronto.NCR.COM (Brian A. Onn) (11/15/89)
In article <1989Nov13.055204.22757@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >ORIGIN: > >As I understand it, CanConfMail is a network of a number of Canadian and >U.S. PC-based Bulletin Boards that have not gone into Fidonet. >It appears that the largest member (by far) is Canada Remote Systems. CanConfMail originated when CRS was not chosen as the "Super Regional Hub" for the (then) largest PCBoard network in North America, which had it's number one node in Memphis, Tenn. I think this was Smartnet, but can't remember exactly. When the job of Super-Regional went to Rose Media BBS (another large system in Toronto, with approx. 60 nodes), CRS (IMHO) got ticked, created CanConfMail, and enticed other Canadian BBS's to join, with CRS as the CanConfMail hub. >There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern: >Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the >connections - or the differences - between them). I am not sure of the differences either, but they are all PCBoard based systems, usually organized in a star configuration (or multiple stars) with gateways at various sites. >HEADERS: > >Regardless of where the message actually came from, the return address >and "Organization:" header (for the purpose of Usenet) reads only Canada >Remote Systems. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of >origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good >assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS. This is a limitation of the PCBoard network software. There is no information propagated with the message to construct a valid return address from. Same for organization. Some BBS's tag each outgoing original message with a BBS name, others do not. Also, the tag is inserted into the body of the message, not in any header, so it is difficult to extract. >The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless >of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person >at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if >Usenet postings to these groups will get back into CRS. Not knowing the implementation of the MasNet software, I can't say for sure if the scenario below is what really happens, but... it is important to note here that the CanConfMail network (and any other PC based BBS network, to the best of my knowledge) is strictly broadcast oriented. PCBoard networks have a concept of Conferences, some of which are 'echoed' and others which are not. Conferences have numbers associated with them, and (for example) the IBM PC conference is often a different conference number on each BBS system that carries it. Everything is a message, and there is a concept of private and public messages, although to be honest I am not certain how this is handled. The limitations of the system are immense. Every user is identified by a first name, last name pair. There are users on CRS (and I am sure other boards) that have had to change the spelling of their names to use the system. (ie, if there were 3 "BRIAN ONN"'s in Toronto (god forbid :-)), then the first one would log in as BRIAN ONN, the second BRYAN ONN, and the third BRIEN ONN.) If you sent a message to STEVE SMITH inside an echoed conference, then every STEVE SMITH on every BBS in the network would get notification of the message for him. Also, if it's public, then everyone else can read it as well. I am not sure if private messages posted to an echoed conference are actually echoed as private messages. From the point of view of the PCBoard software, this would mean that every BBS would have to carry the (private) message for potentially no reader. I would suspect that the MasNet software takes ccm.* postings and injects them into the appropriate conference as a public message on CRS. This would permit the message to be echoed to other BBS's and PCBoard networks. When acting as a gateway for private mail for first.last@canremote.UUCP, I would suspect that the MasNet software would turn the mail message into a public message and inject it into an echoed conference on CRS. The problem with mail, however, is that unless the mail header indicates which conference contained the original message to which you are replying, I don't see how the message can get injected into an echo system properly. The only alternative would be to choose a default conference to inject into when the mail header does not indicate an appropriate conference. In the case of mailing a reply using rn's 'r' or 'R' command, then the Newsgroups: line is conveniently included in the mail header. >It is a serious drawback that messages coming in from this network has >no distribution. This makes it more difficult to alias ccm groups into >their equivalent Usenet groups (why should a person reading news have to >choose whether to post to comp.dcom.telecom or ccm.hayes?) > >My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of >the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a >header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult? I should think that adding a Distribution line to the headers when they leave tmsoft should not be a problem. This is probably easily fixed. Organization is more difficult, as mentioned above. >CONTENT: > >... There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff >that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal >policy statements or the CRS sysop telling a questioner "yeah, I >can get that for ya cheap." I have noticed this as well, being a member of CRS. I feel that this is really the fault of the software used to post messages. The software defaults to a public message, and the user has to make an effort to make the message private. As a result, most messages are public, to the effect that you get stuff like "Hey, Johnny, do you want to go out tonight?" and its reply. I once spent time on CRS going through about 20 messages between two CRS members in an echoed conference! >Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging >their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently >like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if >nobody wants to know. :-) Yeah, a different crowd, I suppose. As for shareware stuff, there are many conferences that are strictly set up as Shareware Support Conferences. Most of the shareware authors are good about pointing out that discussions re: his product should be moved to the appropriate support conference, where the talk is welcomed. >There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles >and sparse use of quoting. Another limitation of the software. Messages are stored as a message number on the local system. When you reply to a message, the reference is only one message back, and is meaningful only to the local system. So a reference number of 15540 on one system refers to an entirely different message when taken in the context of another system. Quoting is only a recent development on BBS's, having become more popular since the advent of off-line message readers. All in all, I think that the PCBoard software must become more mature before much advancement can be made here. For the time being, they are better off in there own ccm.* groups. Brian. -- +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+ | Brian Onn | UUCP: ..!uunet!attcan!ncrcan!brian | | NCR Canada Ltd. | INTERNET: Brian.Onn@Toronto.NCR.COM | +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+