dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (David Gross) (08/24/89)
Hi. This is David Gross and I'm somewhat new to the net. New enough so I don't know whose directions to follow and whose to ignore. The post about amino acids was the first and only post I have made to alt.drugs and to comp.sys.att. I have since received confusing hatE-mail regarding my decision to cross-post. I was under the impression that AT&T was dropping alt.drugs. Some folks had posted on alt.drugs requesting that they somehow be able to read the messages in alt.drugs through another medium. Some people suggested mail, others newsgroups; some suggested it in an informative way, some in a retaliatory way. The consensus seemed to be to crosspost to comp.sys.att I, in my naivete about the terminnology of the net, thought that this would send the messages to a place (AT&T) where they could be selectively read by those who wanted to go looking for them. I now realize that comp.sys.att is a newsgroup like any other and is not related (directly) to AT&T. I apologize for whatever trouble this may have caused. If someone will tell me a more appropriate way to get messages from alt.drugs to AT&T, I will forward my future posts to alt.drugs (if, indeed, I post any future messages there) in that fashion. --Dave Gross
esker@abaa.uucp (Lawrence Esker) (08/25/89)
In article <13740@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (David Gross) writes: >Hi. This is David Gross and I'm somewhat new to the net. New enough so I >don't know whose directions to follow and whose to ignore. The post about >amino acids was the first and only post I have made to alt.drugs and to >comp.sys.att. I have since received confusing hatE-mail regarding my decision >to cross-post. > >I was under the impression that AT&T was dropping alt.drugs. Some folks had >posted on alt.drugs requesting that they somehow be able to read the messages >in alt.drugs through another medium... > ...I now realize that comp.sys.att is >a newsgroup like any other and is not related (directly) to AT&T. > >I apologize for whatever trouble this may have caused. Looks like David got caught in the retaliation crossfire. To give some background for you and other new members to alt.drugs: 1) AT&T decides to drop alt.grugs for fear of media pressure. (Ahh, the power of the media when on one of its crusades. Don't even have to do anything, yet people cower in fear and paranoia.) 2) Some asshole in alt.drugs says "Hey my posting to alt.drugs is to important to be ignored by the employees of AT&T. I am going to cross post to comp.sts.att" Typical activist responce to media, net.police, establishment, relgious evangelist, etc.'s attempt to maintain control on what they belive will some America's problems. "Stamp out drugs, censor all conversation of drugs, make America a safer place for our children." 3) More activist agree to the proposal. Wow, a consensus. We will after all change AT&T's managements opinion and mediaphobia by attacking the readers of a newsgroup centered on AT&T's personal computers. I doubt if a majority of AT&T employees even read comp.sys.att, let alone the management management. 4) A new reader of alt.drugs comes along and follows the consensus and wonders why he was burned by flames. You see, the creaters of the cross post anti-censorship retaliation didn't care about flames, they are too busy flaming AT&T. As a lesson to all, please never cross-post to a group that is totally unrelated to the subject matter in the message. There are too many closet militants with there fingers waiting on the 'F' key just waiting for such an opportunity to flame the crossposter. Even those who cross post with the best of intentions will get flamed because some anti-social deviate is not interested in the subject matter posted, even though it is related to to the newsgroups posted to. As you can guess, I think every side of this issue are wrong and getting totally out of hand. I am not a reader of the comp.sys.att and this is not just another anti-crossposter flamer. Lets be a little more constructive about our retaliation to any event that we do not agree with. The sooner we create a main-stream newsgroup to replace the group alt.drugs, the better. 1) It does not effect the innocent in other nesgroups. 2) It will throw AT&T management off garde (they will have be continuously bothered by having to repeatedly censore every newsgroup we create.) 3) It is of little hassle to the alt.drugs reader, all they have to do is unsubscribe to alt.drugs and subscribe to the new group. 4) It will be helpful to all is it is called something not intuatively obvious as alt.drugs. (The problems that occured when the system adminatrater saw a file in by directory called News/Alt.drugs when I had saved a post. Now the sad part in this long tyraid. I do not have the time to follow the formal procedure of creating a mainstream newsgroup. Some of us have to make a living and read news only on their precious free time. If someone out there is truely interested in keeping AT&T employees in our family, please pursue this matter. (Maybe we don't need the call of votes, etc. if all we want is a name change.) -- ---------- Lawrence W. Esker ---------- Modern Amish: Thou shalt not need any computer that is not IBM compatible. UseNet Path: __!uunet!mimsy!rutgers!citi!itivax!abaa!esker == esker@abaa.UUCP