malloy@ittral.UUCP (William P. Malloy) (10/27/85)
Some comments.
1) NAME: net.internat. Which BOZO thought this up? I thought this thing was
about ARPA's internet or something. If you folks must insist on this group
at least use a better name. This is one of the reasons the current method
for creating newsgroups was invented for. To make sure the name made sense
outside the small narrow minded little group that proposes it. (This is a
counter-flame, to the flames from the Europeans). ``Across the pond'',
indeed.
May I suggest ``net.std-intnl''? Not net.internationallization! We just
got a bunch of long newsgroup names from Erik Fair at UCBVAX. Although
laser-lovers and sun-spots suffer from the cuteness problem, these long
newsgroup names suffer from that most dreaded of all things ``software
engineeritis''. This is the tendency to take simple and efficient things
and turn them in to full blown verbose nonsense. Such people use program
variables with names like `A_very_long_variable_name_for_loop_indexing'
instead of `i' like normal people. They also write things like VMS, which
insists on gving you an error message everytime you do something (often
several), even when no real errors occur. Please help stamp out this
dread disease, today! Help make the world safe for hunt and peck typists!
2) CREATION. Well it's true USENET's current method of creating groups is
fairly silly, it's the only way we've got. I find it ASTOUNDING that on
the entire continent of Europe not a single person is intelligent enough
to read the Intro to USENET document. (See you Europeans aren't the only
ones that can be insulting).
As to having it voted on by EEUG (?) and thus it's as ``official'' as a new
group from USENIX. (Big Deal) The last time some people at a USENIX
conference got the bright idea for some newsgroups they created all those
mod.* groups. Boy was I (and lots of other people) pissed. The hate mail
was furious. I don't think anymore bright ideas for newsgroups will be
proposed at USENIX conferences ever again. Most of the mod.* groups are
dead, except for the newly moved fa.* groups. People are just too shy to
mail things to a moderator.
Finally in the same way the USA is not the whole network, neither is Europe
(it cuts both ways). Except there a lot more sites in the USA then every
where else. It would've been nice if they'd at least TELL someone they were
going to create it. This is what annoyed me the most about the silly mod.*
groups. We finally got an explanation of what was going on about a month
later. I suspect some of the so called "NET Gods" had to link their mail-
boxes to /dev/null if the flameage content on the net was any indication,
of the flames they received by mail.
3) CONTENT. I saw a few articles in net.internat, before I rmgroup-ed it.
The articles consisted of flames on ASCII not being any good for European
langauges, arguments cross-posted to net.news.group, and one request by
someone for a path to someone in Australia (that's internat ain't it?)
I supect net.std-intnl will quickly die from either, over flaming or from
under use. Creating a group does not mean you will get the stuff you want
to read, unless someone else posts it.
Finally on Gene Spafford. Our friendly neighborhood net Vegan, has done a
pretty good job of maintaining the list of active newsgroups. He cleans up
the old and tired newsgroups when they run out, and general does a pretty good
job, with no pay. Other then having been involved in the mod.* fiasco, and
also helping out with those silly long newsgroup names. For those of us who
administrate machines off the backbone of the net he makes it easier to keep
our active file in shape. What is really needed is more rmgroup-ing, not less.
May I suggest mod.music, mod.movies and mod.motss??
=wpm
The opinions expressed above are my own, and not those of my employer.
--
Address: William P. Malloy, ITT Telecom, B & CC Engineering Group, Raleigh NC
{ihnp4!mcnc, burl, ncsu, decvax!ittvax}!ittral!malloy
--
Address: William P. Malloy, ITT Telecom, B & CC Engineering Group, Raleigh NC
{ihnp4!mcnc, burl, ncsu, decvax!ittvax}!ittral!malloy