[net.news] Apologies, with whimpers...

mwm@ea.UUCP (06/18/84)

#N:ea:8700004:000:1025
ea!mwm    Jun 17 22:04:00 1984

I posted an article on the "Why make news run on a PDP-11" argument a while
ago that was both poorly expressed, and inappropriate. I was correctly
called to task, and want to publicly retract some of my comments. My
(corrected) views are:

	1) News should not reach a state wherein it will not run on
	a machine active on the net at the time it is distributed.

	2) Regardless of this, a new (and better?) version of news
	that won't run on 11's could be distributed, *provided it
	is compatible with one that will*. Compatible means the new
	and old software can at least exchange articles.

	3) The PDP-11 is an obsolete machine, mostly because of
	the segmented address space. However, this is not sufficient
	reason to assume that your software won't have to run on it.

	4) I should never have gotten involved in this anyway.
	After all, I am among the enlightened that use notes :-).

I was responding to a perceived software design issue, as opposed to the
NetNews issue under discussion. My apologies to all.

	<mike