comp.unix.sco, An objective negative opinion!
Buster Irby
the purpose for the group 'comp.unix.i386'. It is intended to be
a forum for *ALL* Intel 80386 based unix systems. I believe that
this is important, because all 386 based System 5 implementations
are similar and hopefully are even binary compatible. This means
that discussions about problems concerning Esix or 386/ix or any
other 386 based Unix Systems are meaningfull to the whole group.
I personally use three flavors of 386 unix, Esix, 386/ix and AT&T
V.3.2/386, and as such, I find that there is a lot of overlap in
problems. If you split SCO off as a splinter group, then you
must also be prepared to split off comp.unix.esix,
comp.unix.386ix, comp.unix.att386, comp.unix.intel386 and
countless others. I feel that this will create much unnecessary
article duplication and in the end will be doing a disservice to
us the readers. It is hard enough to keep up with the news
groups I read now.
--
Buster Irby buster!rli
Randall L. Smith
> problems. If you split SCO off as a splinter group, then you
> must also be prepared to split off comp.unix.esix,
> comp.unix.386ix, comp.unix.att386, comp.unix.intel386 and
> countless others. I feel that this will create much unnecessary
> article duplication and in the end will be doing a disservice to
> us the readers. It is hard enough to keep up with the news
> groups I read now.
Hear, hear. Good show old bean. This is the single most rational,
unemotional fact, seen yet to date, against the proliferation of added
newsgroups. I was in favor of the duplicity of groups until now. It
would have been easy to subscribe to the groups desired but my 'n' key
gets enough exercise and the net is already overloaded. Thanks Buster.
Cheers!
- randy
Usenet: ra...@rls.uucp
Bangpath: ...<backbone>!osu-cis!rls!randy
Internet: rls!ra...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Chris Holt
>In article <1990Apr29....@buster.irby.com>,
r...@buster.irby.com (Buster Irby) writes:
>> I feel that this will create much unnecessary
>> article duplication and in the end will be doing a disservice to
>> us the readers. It is hard enough to keep up with the news
>> groups I read now.
>
>unemotional fact, seen yet to date, against the proliferation of added
What is going to happen to news groups when the load factor increases by
10 (<5 years, when more universities allow their students access) and
100 (<15 years?, when more non-computing people gain access) and
1000 (<25 years?, when the rest of the world starts linking in)?
As it is right now, I can't look at all the groups I want to, because
the traffic is too high (though I continue to be amazed that some
people (e.g. Chuq, Peter da Silva) not only read a wide variety of
groups but also manage to contribute usefully!).
Claim: centralized algorithms are not going to work. A single,
overseeing news.groups cannot cope, so each node will have to have its
own .groups to deal with fissions.
Claim: centralized unmoderated groups are not going to work. There
will have to be local groups, which submit (how?) articles to regional
groups, which submit articles to national groups, which submit articles
to the world group.
Question: is it worth providing a forum for discussion of what shape
the net should take? Clearly people have (perhaps ill-formed) images
of the future; and clearly anything we predict will be wrong; but is
it worthwhile to try to perform an informal requirements analysis,
using the expertise of those who have years of experience, rather
than to just flow with the tide?
Just a thought.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Chris Holt, Computing Lab., U. of Newcastle | Chris...@newcastle.ac.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There is a holy mistaken zeal in programming as well as in religion..."
Randall L. Smith
> What is going to happen to news groups when the load factor increases by
> 10 (<5 years, when more universities allow their students access) and
> 100 (<15 years?, when more non-computing people gain access) and
> 1000 (<25 years?, when the rest of the world starts linking in)?
This "threat" has been around for a long time and it is being handled by
subdivision and alteration of additional nets. e.g. Vmsnet, Bitnet, Fido,
Clari? :-), as well as commercial nets.
Besides, don't you believe horsepower and transmission speeds will
increase? :-) I know, you're talking about "How will we ever read it
all?". In a phrase, we won't.
Me, I'm worried about Alpha Centuari linking in. Yow, their yakkity.
> Claim: centralized algorithms are not going to work. A single,
> overseeing news.groups cannot cope, so each node will have to have its
> own .groups to deal with fissions.
The traffic is hardly overwhelming in comp.i386.
> Claim: centralized unmoderated groups are not going to work. There
When the traffic gets there, we'll know it and splinter. Probably by,
experience level, not variations of a theme. The expectations of this
centralized newsgroup is that the Intel architecture Unix is merging to
the peculiar (System V / BSD) standard at all levels and will stay there.
Wherever there is...
> Question: is it worth providing a forum for discussion of what shape
> the net should take? Clearly people have (perhaps ill-formed) images
That is what news.groups is about. This process has taken on the form of a
quick and dirty program (apologies to Mark Horton and other pioneers) that
continually gets patched from a variety of programmers with a variety of
styles. When will we sit back and actively design its future? Who knows?
You are welcome to be the messiah that save us from collapse.
BTW, the comment re: quick and dirty is the net was never designed or
expected to be what is today. Kudos to all involved since it does handle
it nicely anyway.
> Just a thought.
Same here. No flames intended, etc.
> "There is a holy mistaken zeal in programming as well as in religion..."
Please add, network architecture too. ;-)
Cheers!
- randy
Usenet: ra...@rls.uucp
Bangpath: ...<backbone>!osu-cis!rls!randy
Internet: rls!ra...@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Disclaimer: Oh, am I gonna get flamed for this one... Right Brad?
Chip Salzenberg
>What is going to happen to news groups when the load factor increases by
>10 (<5 years, when more universities allow their students access) and
>100 (<15 years?, when more non-computing people gain access) and
>1000 (<25 years?, when the rest of the world starts linking in)?
Long before that time we'll have better newsreading tools widely
available. One that's almost out is "trn", which is a threaded
version of rn. Written by Wayne Davison, trn shows the discussion
tree in graphical form on the upper-right of the article display. It
also has a thread selection mode, where specific threads can be read
and the rest dropped.
In my opinion, newsgroup proliferation is a cosmetic solution to the
basic problem of article classification. I'd rather program my
newsreader than try to change the Usenet namespace. The latter
requires great effort for an unknown benefit, while the former offers
immediate feedback and utility.
>Question: is it worth providing a forum for discussion of what shape
>the net should take?
Such a thing is needed. The last attempt failed; the mailing list
became an argument magnet, just like news.groups. Who will try again?
--
Chip Salzenberg at ComDev/TCT <chip%t...@ateng.com>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>