CALL FOR DISCUSSION: rec.ham-radio reorganization
Skip La Fetra
better, and (my favorite point) separates the recreational and legal
discussions (I read both, but would prefer not at the same time).
A previous poster suggested using "amateur" rather than "ham", as
it is less colloquial (hows that for the obligatory $10 word?)
-- I agree.
- Skip AA6WK
Chris Klausmeier
/ Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
/ hierarchy:
/
/ PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
/
/ 1. rec.radio.ham
/
/ "A General newsgroup for discussions about amateur radio."
How about rec.radio.ham.misc? That seems to be the emerging standard for
these leafy hierarchies.
/ -=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX | Without KILL files,
/ ->pa...@shasta.Stanford.EDU | life itself would be impossible.
--
[] Chris Klausmeier -- cya...@mixcom.UUCP []
[] if I could wave my magic wand... [][][][]
Brian Kantor
> It seems the only effect of this reorganization is the addition of
>rec.ham-radio.legal, other than the name changing.
> Why is this a Good Thing? Why not just add rec.ham-radio.legal and
>leave the rest of the structure alone? Is it not simpler (and prone to
>fewer screwups) to do this instead of renaming everything?
Because they're young and haven't yet learned that no matter what you do
to the net, disorder increases. There is no way to reverse entropy.
But let them try. It won't hurt for long. Won't help either.
paulf
PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
1. rec.radio.ham
"A General newsgroup for discussions about amateur radio."
2. rec.radio.ham.legal
"A newsgroup for the discussion of legal aspects of amateur radio."
3. rec.radio.ham.packet
"A newsgroup for discussions about amateur packet radio."
4. rec.radio.ham.swap
"A forsale group for the rec.radio.ham hierarchy."
PROPOSED DELETIONS:
1. rec.ham-radio
Now superseded by rec.radio.ham and rec.radio.ham.legal.
2. rec.ham-radio.packet
Superseded by rec.radio.ham.packet
3. rec.ham-radio.swap
Replaced by rec.radio.ham.swap
Commentary Period: Dec. 4 -14, 1990
-=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX | Without KILL files,
Jay Maynard
>> Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
>> hierarchy:
> It seems the only effect of this reorganization is the addition of
>rec.ham-radio.legal, other than the name changing.
> Why is this a Good Thing? Why not just add rec.ham-radio.legal and
>leave the rest of the structure alone? Is it not simpler (and prone to
>fewer screwups) to do this instead of renaming everything?
The idea behind this is to move the ham radio groups into the same hierarchy
as the other radio groups. The hierarchy rec.radio was created a couple of
years ago to hold rec.radio.shortwave, and has acquired other radio-related
groups since then; it's the logical place for ham radio, too.
(Side note: Please make sure that discussion is posted to news.groups as well
as rec.ham-radio. This is required by the Guidelines for Newsgroup Creation.)
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"...flames are a specific art form of Usenet..." -- Gregory C. Woodbury
Avatar
+hierarchy:
<portions of your most exellent plan deleted to save bandwidth>
+
+PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
+
To which I'd like to see the addition of 'rec.radio.cb'..sounds silly
comming from me, right? The notion is advanced that in giving people a
_place_ for discussions related to the use of CB radio, perhaps it will
foster some healthy growth and change there.
Additionally, there might be a trend towards involving more people in the
_hobby_ of radio, since CB can be a stepping stone towards a ham ticket.
Consider this a vote FOR the plan, with or without my proposal, nice job!
-Avatar-> (aka: Erik K. Sorgatz) KB6LUY +-------------------------+
Citicorp(+)TTI *----------> panic trap; type = N+1 *
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90405 +-------------------------+
{csun,philabs,psivax,pyramid,quad1,rdlvax,retix}!ttidca!sorgatz **
(OPINIONS EXPRESSED DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF CITICORP OR ITS MANAGEMENT!)
Jay Maynard
> I second the use of something like rec.radio.ham.regs .. making it
>'.legal' is kinda like proposing a group for '.nocode' too. :-)
That's the idea. .legal is intended to be the place to have the interminable
no-code wars.
Charley Kline
also agree that we should be using the word "amateur" instead of
"ham".
_____________________________________________________________________________
Charley Kline, KB9FFK, PP-ASEL c-k...@uiuc.edu
University of Illinois Computing Services Packet: kb9ffk@w9yh
1304 W. Springfield Ave, Urbana IL 61801 (217) 333-3339
T.J.Saarinen OH3YN
>hierarchy:
>
>PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
>
>1. rec.radio.ham
>3. rec.radio.ham.packet
>4. rec.radio.ham.swap
>
>PROPOSED DELETIONS:
>
>1. rec.ham-radio
>2. rec.ham-radio.packet
>3. rec.ham-radio.swap
I do agree!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| - InterNet : ts7...@tut.fi | - HamRadio : OH...@OH3TR.FIN.EU |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want! |
John Stanley
pa...@shasta.Stanford.EDU (paulf) writes:
> Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
> hierarchy:
>
<<General re-naming of rec.ham-radio and adding .legal deleted.>>
It seems the only effect of this reorganization is the addition of
rec.ham-radio.legal, other than the name changing.
Why is this a Good Thing? Why not just add rec.ham-radio.legal and
leave the rest of the structure alone? Is it not simpler (and prone to
fewer screwups) to do this instead of renaming everything?
> Commentary Period: Dec. 4 -14, 1990
<> "If winning is not important, then why keep score?" -- Turtle Head
<> "Eaten any good books lately?" -- Q
<> "Sanity check!" "Sorry, we can't accept it, it's from out of state." - me
Bob Witte
So what's the purpose of changing 'rec.ham-radio' to 'rec.radio.ham'?
Other than that, it sounds like a good idea.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Witte HP Colorado Springs Division
bo...@col.hp.com P.O. Box 2197
Phone:(719) 590-3230 Colorado Springs, CO 80901
Radio: KB0CY
"Of course, then again, I've been wrong before."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran Atkinson
one which I fully support.
The new heirarchy should be rec.radio.AMATEUR though not rec.radio.HAM
because the jargon term "Ham-Radio" is not common outside North America
and large portions of the net are now outside North America (unlike
when the current group was created). By using the normal, non-US-jargon
terminology the namespace is clearer and easier for folks to use. It
is also easier for folks potentially interested in becoming licensed
Amateur Radio Operators find the right newsgroup.
I'd also advocate mv'ing the parent group into a .misc group
(or equivalent) to reduce cross-posting and make the namespace simpler
(hence easier to use). I know that Jay won't like this last idea
since he`s opposed the whole .misc concept in news.groups, but I still
see lots of hard evidence that the concept works in the general case
not just in comp.sys.*
Regards,
Ran
ran...@Virginia.EDU
former FM Broadcast Engineer ( FCC Commercial License )
P.S.
I haven't had time to learn Morse yet. When I do, I'll get an
Amateur license as well...
Jay Maynard
> A few comments: a few sentences about the other rec.radio groups would
>have made it clear why you were changing ham-radio to radio.ham, and I
>would like to see .misc used for the catch-all group.
I'll make sure the text for the CfV explains the reason behind the relocation.
I'm not married to rec.radio.ham versus rec.radio.ham.misc; comments, folks?
For that matter, there seems to be some sentiment for .amateur versus .ham;
I'd like to see some kind of consensus one way or the other.
> Finally, I don't personally like the .legal name, as it encourages
>thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
>name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
>don't really care for legal-issues or legalities, but perhaps
>regulations would be better, since you will probably be talking mostly
>about things which are not laws (passed by congress) but regulations
>from the FCC.
The name .legal came from the commonest flame on rec.ham-radio: "You can't do
that, it's illegal!" It describes the intended traffic pretty well.
Dugal James P.
> Finally, I don't personally like the .legal name, as it encourages
>thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
>name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
I agree; how about calling it "rules" rather than "legal" ?
--
-- James Dugal, N5KNX Internet: j...@usl.edu
Associate Director Ham packet: n5knx@k5arh
Computing Center US Mail: PO Box 42770 Lafayette, LA 70504
University of Southwestern LA. Tel. 318-231-6417 U.S.A.
David F. Reed
with rec.radio.amateur , etc.; in either case, I support the move to conform
to net standard/convention...
--
____________________________________________________________________
"...just my opinion, not speaking for AMD." KK5D, 7J1AGO, XE1ZDR
David F. Reed 4512 Clarno Austin TX 78749
packet: KK5D@KB5PM driving by? try 442.150 repeater
NM1D
> Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
> hierarchy:
>
> PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
>
> 1. rec.radio.ham
> "A General newsgroup for discussions about amateur radio."
> 2. rec.radio.ham.legal
> "A newsgroup for the discussion of legal aspects of amateur radio."
> 3. rec.radio.ham.packet
> "A newsgroup for discussions about amateur packet radio."
> 4. rec.radio.ham.swap
> "A forsale group for the rec.radio.ham hierarchy."
>
> PROPOSED DELETIONS:
>
> 1. rec.ham-radio
> Now superseded by rec.radio.ham and rec.radio.ham.legal.
> 2. rec.ham-radio.packet
> Superseded by rec.radio.ham.packet
> 3. rec.ham-radio.swap
> Replaced by rec.radio.ham.swap
>
This makes sense... BUT if we are going to go through the pain of changing
the name of this group, we SHOULD make an effort to refer to ourselves in a
way that a casual 'reader' (the supposed 'lay' reader, or non-amateur) would
understand who we are.....
Basically, what I am saying is that all references to the slang 'HAM'
should be changed to 'AMATEUR'.... therefore 'rec.radio.ham' becomes
'rec.radio.amateur' and so on. This will not cause confusion on anyones part.
I think that only 'hams' know what the term 'ham' radio really means.
PLEASE, if we are going to change names of the group, lets go for the
full name:
rec.radio.amateur
rec.radio.amateur.packet
rec.radio.amateur.swap
rec.radio.amateur.legal (yes, I think this subgroup can be added,
although I wonder how many people will 'read'
it at all!)
P.S. It seems that this site only receives a VERY FEW postings for
rec.ham-radio. So if I seem to not know what is going on... it's because I
don't!!!
Rich
--
/**************************************************************************\
* Rich Bono (NM1D) If I could only 'C' forever!! rb...@necis.nec.com *
* (508) 635-6300 NEC Technologies Inc. NM1D@WB1DSW *
\**************************************************************************/
Peter B. Hayward
> In article <29...@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davi...@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill
davidsen) writes:
> > Finally, I don't personally like the .legal name, as it encourages
> >thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
> >name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
>
> I agree; how about calling it "rules" rather than "legal" ?
I completely agree with this proposal to change the proposed name to
...rules. I have been very uneasy about the ...legal name, believing that
it would *not* be intuitively obvious what *should* be in the new
group. I felt the result would be that people would cross-post
to several rec.ham-radio groups, thus increasing the noise level.
With rec.ham-radio.rules (or rec.radio.amateur.rules) we might
save some bandwidth (and sanity).
---------------------------
Peter B. Hayward N9IZT
University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Greg A. Woods
> hierarchy:
I would respectfully suggest the slang term "ham" be replaced by the
proper designation "amateur". This slang term has caused more
problems for public relations and promotion of amateur radio around
the world than any other single thing (IMHO).
I propose the proposal be re-worded as follows (uppercase used for
emphasis):
1. rec.radio.AMATEUR
"A General newsgroup for discussions about amateur radio."
^^^^^^^
2. rec.radio.AMATEUR.legal
"A newsgroup for the discussion of legal aspects of amateur radio."
^^^^^^^
3. rec.radio.AMATEUR.packet
"A newsgroup for discussions about amateur packet radio."
^^^^^^^
4. rec.radio.AMATEUR.swap
"A forsale group for the rec.radio.amateur hierarchy."
--
Greg A. Woods
woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP ECI and UniForum Canada
+1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA
"Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible"-ORWELL
Ran Atkinson
>I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
>groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
>the service altogether.
>Mike.
Ignoring the fact that local administrative problems aren't of relevance
to the net at large, there probably are a fair number of folks who'd like
to read the Amateur Radio groups as mail rather than news.
Perhaps someone out there would be willing to setup a news->mail gateway
for one or more of these groups. There is a very slight chance I could
work out something like that, but it isn't trivial for me in my present
circumstance. Surely there is an Amateur Radio operator who is a sysadmin
somewhere already who could be talked into creating such a service. I'd
be happy to help out with the "How to set it up under UNIX ?" if someone
were willing to put it in place.
Ran
ran...@Virginia.EDU
Jim Grubs
> From: davi...@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
> Date: 5 Dec 90 14:34:04 GMT
> Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
> Message-ID: <29...@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
> Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.ham-radio
> |
> | 1. rec.radio.ham
> | 2. rec.radio.ham.legal
> | 3. rec.radio.ham.packet
> | 4. rec.radio.ham.swap
>
> | PROPOSED DELETIONS:
> |
> | 1. rec.ham-radio
> | 2. rec.ham-radio.packet
> | 3. rec.ham-radio.swap
>
>
> | Commentary Period: Dec. 4 -14, 1990
>
> have made it clear why you were changing ham-radio to radio.ham, and I
> would like to see .misc used for the catch-all group.
>
> thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
> name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
> regulations would be better, since you will probably be talking mostly
> about things which are not laws (passed by congress) but regulations
> from the FCC.
How about rec.radio.amateur.policy?
My only objection to the new newsgroup is that it has all the earmarks of
sticking one's head in the sand rather than coming to grips with the fact
that when ham radio dies (and it probably will) it will be for political
reasons. We ignore that side of the hobby at our peril.
The technoids go on and on wonderfully about their ideas for the design of
the Phantasmagorical Data Engine with the blind faith assumption that when
they're done, we'll have amateur bands to use it in. I don't think we can
assume that, and sticking those who write about it in a "newsghetto" so they
can be ignored more easily will be counterproductive in the long run. Penny
wise and pound foolish, as it were.
--
Jim Grubs - via FidoNet node 1:234/1
UUCP: ...!uunet!w8grt!jim.grubs
INTERNET: jim....@w8grt.fidonet.org
Jeff DePolo
> Basically, what I am saying is that all references to the slang 'HAM'
>should be changed to 'AMATEUR'.... therefore 'rec.radio.ham' becomes
>'rec.radio.amateur' and so on. This will not cause confusion on anyones part.
> I think that only 'hams' know what the term 'ham' radio really means.
Sounds like a good idea to me. We could use more members, and I think
"amateur" is more recognizable to non-hams.
> rec.radio.amateur
> rec.radio.amateur.packet
> rec.radio.amateur.swap
> rec.radio.amateur.legal (yes, I think this subgroup can be added,
> although I wonder how many people will 'read'
> it at all!)
r.r.a.legal seems a bit too specific. Legal debates (e.g. regulation
debates, tower ordinances, etc.) seem to come and go in spurts. I
don't see the use of having a seperate group for just this particular
aspect of normal traffic.
r.r.a.swap might be better as just rec.radio.swap, since this may encourage
others with non-amateur-specific yet amateur-related equipment to post
here as well. For example, test equipment, SW receivers, scanners,
microwave equipment, etc. is of interest to hams, but is not necessarily
ham specific. Traffic on the current r.h-r.swap is relatively light
the way it is now (probably averages about 8 articles/day), so expanding
it seems to be logical.
Another idea, though I don't feel too strongly one way or the other
on this one. Make it rec.radio.amateur.digital instead of .packet.
This may encourage discussion of possible new modes other than
what we commonly consider "packet" (e.g. spread-spectrum). Oops.
I can see it now. Some of the die-hard CW ops will decide that
this is their place to hang out. :-)
--- Jeff
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jeff DePolo N3HBZ Twisted Pair: (215) 386-7199
dep...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu RF: 146.685- 442.70+ 144.455s (Philadelphia)
University of Pennsylvania Carrier Pigeon: 420 S. 42nd St. Phila PA 19104
John Stanley
re...@mozart.amd.com (David F. Reed) writes:
> I also like the re-structure, but find it might offer more clarity to go
> with rec.radio.amateur , etc.; in either case, I support the move to conform
> to net standard/convention...
Errrr, what is not standard about rec.ham-radio? Other than the
inhabitants, what is unconventional about it? It tells you right off what
it is, certainly better than things like comp.sources.d (what, the next
language after C?)
Just because there is a rec.radio.* is not a reason to change
rec.ham-radio.
John Stanley
eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike Willis) writes:
>
> I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
> groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
> the service altogether.
> Mike.
Bravo! Like the old saying goes, if it ain't fix, don't broke it.
Mike Willis
Bob Witte
> A few comments: a few sentences about the other rec.radio groups would
>have made it clear why you were changing ham-radio to radio.ham, and I
>would like to see .misc used for the catch-all group.
>
> Finally, I don't personally like the .legal name, as it encourages
>thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
>name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
>don't really care for legal-issues or legalities, but perhaps
>regulations would be better, since you will probably be talking mostly
>about things which are not laws (passed by congress) but regulations
>from the FCC.
Thanks for the clarification on "rec.radio.ham". I revise my opinion
to supporting:
rec.radio.amateur [I hate the word 'ham']
rec.radio.amateur.rules or rec.radio.amateur.regs
and, of course,
rec.radio.amateur.swap
rec.radio.amateur.packet
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Witte HP Colorado Springs Division
bo...@col.hp.com P.O. Box 2197
Phone:(719) 590-3230 Colorado Springs, CO 80901
Radio: KB0CY
"I absolutely hate people who are intolerant."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jay Maynard
> To which I'd like to see the addition of 'rec.radio.cb'..sounds silly
>comming from me, right? The notion is advanced that in giving people a
>_place_ for discussions related to the use of CB radio, perhaps it will
>foster some healthy growth and change there.
OK, is there support for this one? If so, I'll be happy to add it to the plan.
There has been occasional CB-related discussion in rec.ham-radio, and it has
proven to be a remarkable flame generator...
David Stockton
At the risk of repeating an earlier posting, Much of the stuff that
we want to leave behind:
Code/No code
The legality of using a police autopatch to order a nuclear attack
on a baby gay whale.
The thinly disguised broadcasting of hatred on amateur bands.
Etc. etc.
The people who are making the most noise on these things are probably
far fewer than the numbers who read rec.ham-radio. They may be
incapable of ever changing their opinions, but they are not stupid.
They are preaching, trying to change everyone else to their viewpoint.
when they realise that their audience are not reading -legal or -rules,
simple - they just cross post to everything !
:-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-(
73 de GM4ZNX
Norman Yarvin
>> I think that only 'hams' know what the term 'ham' radio really means.
>
>Sounds like a good idea to me. We could use more members, and I think
>"amateur" is more recognizable to non-hams.
This seems exaggerated. I have been involved neither in actual ham radio
nor in the newsgroup, but have known the meaning of the word for ages.
Do you really want those who don't know what a ham is to post?
--
Norman Yarvin yarvin...@cs.yale.edu
"It's safer to be heartless than to be mindless. The history of the world
is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless."
-- Sir Humphrey Appleby, _Yes_Minister_
Alan Ruffer
>
> Basically, what I am saying is that all references to the slang 'HAM'
>should be changed to 'AMATEUR'.... therefore 'rec.radio.ham' becomes
>'rec.radio.amateur' and so on. This will not cause confusion on anyones part.
>full name:
>
> rec.radio.amateur
> rec.radio.amateur.packet
> rec.radio.amateur.swap
> rec.radio.amateur.legal (yes, I think this subgroup can be added,
> although I wonder how many people will 'read'
> it at all!)
I agree 100% with the above! Since we are going through the process, lets
get the names of the groups to correspond to convention. Also lets
make the group names descriptive. Get rid of the "ham" and substitute
amateur!
While I am not sure that rec.radio.amateur.legal is the best name for the
^^^^^
additional group, I do not have a better suggestion so will go along with
this until a better idea comes along.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Alan R. Ruffer UUCP: {csccat,chinacat!holston}!adept!alan |
| Route 1, Box 1745 Amateur Radio Station WB5FKH |
| Sulphur, LA 70663 BBS: (318) 527-6667, 19200(PEP)/9600(V.32)/2400/1200 |
| |
| "A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Alan Ruffer
>
>eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike Willis) writes:
>>
>> I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
>> groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
>> the service altogether.
>> Mike.
>
> Bravo! Like the old saying goes, if it ain't fix, don't broke it.
>
This is utter nonsense! One groups administrative problems, either
real or perceived, do NOT constitute a logical justification for opposing
real progress which is needed in this case.
Phil Howard KA9WGN
> From: davi...@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
> From: ran...@Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson)
> From: sor...@ttidca.TTI.COM ( Avatar)
> From: jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard)
> From: j...@pc.usl.edu (Dugal James P.)
> From: eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike Willis)
> From: pb...@midway.uchicago.edu (Peter B. Hayward)
> From: dep...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeff DePolo)
> From: sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> thought of "what part is not legal?" If you can can think of a beter
> name (ie. more descriptive) it might aid in identifying the group. I
> don't really care for legal-issues or legalities, but perhaps
> regulations would be better, since you will probably be talking mostly
> about things which are not laws (passed by congress) but regulations
> from the FCC.
This depends on what you want in the subgroup. I believe most everyone
wants to see the "no code wars" and the "pizza patch wars" put away in
this subgroup. But what about issues like "antenna covenants" and stuff
like "urban zoning" as it relates to ham (excuse me, amateur) radio?
Also there are legal issues related to radio but NOT amateur radio, such
as the issues related to listening to private transmissions. Maybe we
need:
rec.radio.legal
or even:
rec.radio.moral :-) [smiley means I am NOT serious]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: ran...@Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson)
> Date: 5 Dec 90 16:39:57 GMT
>
> The new heirarchy should be rec.radio.AMATEUR though not rec.radio.HAM
> because the jargon term "Ham-Radio" is not common outside North America
> and large portions of the net are now outside North America (unlike
> when the current group was created). By using the normal, non-US-jargon
> terminology the namespace is clearer and easier for folks to use. It
> is also easier for folks potentially interested in becoming licensed
> Amateur Radio Operators find the right newsgroup.
This is yet another opportunity to further promote a more modern amateur
radio service and shrug off the "ham" concept which is some people's minds
is someone "hamming it up" on a radio in a way much like CB.
> I'd also advocate mv'ing the parent group into a .misc group
> (or equivalent) to reduce cross-posting and make the namespace simpler
> (hence easier to use). I know that Jay won't like this last idea
> since he`s opposed the whole .misc concept in news.groups, but I still
> see lots of hard evidence that the concept works in the general case
> not just in comp.sys.*
If this concept works, what was the original problem in the first case?
I really don't see any particular need to do this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: sor...@ttidca.TTI.COM ( Avatar)
> Date: 5 Dec 90 18:25:16 GMT
>
> To which I'd like to see the addition of 'rec.radio.cb'..sounds silly
> comming from me, right? The notion is advanced that in giving people a
> _place_ for discussions related to the use of CB radio, perhaps it will
> foster some healthy growth and change there.
Sounds like an interesting idea. It would certainly "document" the
differences and perhaps reduce a lot of the "is this the CB group"
question postings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard)
> Date: 5 Dec 90 19:18:52 GMT
>
> I'm not married to rec.radio.ham versus rec.radio.ham.misc; comments, folks?
> For that matter, there seems to be some sentiment for .amateur versus .ham;
> I'd like to see some kind of consensus one way or the other.
consensus_for_amateur += ka9wgn;
/* C lingo for add vote to the .amateur idea */
> The name .legal came from the commonest flame on rec.ham-radio: "You can't do
> that, it's illegal!" It describes the intended traffic pretty well.
Jay, do we want to include NON-FCC legal issues as well, such as local
zoning and covenant problems?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: j...@pc.usl.edu (Dugal James P.)
> Date: 5 Dec 90 23:00:36 GMT
>
> I agree; how about calling it "rules" rather than "legal" ?
If we want to limit the group to FCC rules, then ".rules" would work.
DO NOT use ".fcc" since this is a world-wide newsgroup.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike Willis)
> Date: 6 Dec 90 09:54:16 GMT
>
> I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
> groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
> the service altogether.
> Mike.
Usenet changes newsgroups often (read news.groups) and there should be
in place some administrative or automatic function to keep things up to
date there. Why don't you offer to help do it?
Really now, should the rest of us be bound to limitations which are the
cause of one or a few systems having insufficient system administrator
resources or competency? I say we should not. Sorry, Mike.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard)
> Date: 6 Dec 90 13:31:42 GMT
>
> In article <21...@ttidca.TTI.COM> sor...@ttidca.TTI.COM ( Avatar) writes:
> > To which I'd like to see the addition of 'rec.radio.cb'..sounds silly
>
> OK, is there support for this one? If so, I'll be happy to add it to the plan
> There has been occasional CB-related discussion in rec.ham-radio, and it has
> proven to be a remarkable flame generator...
It has my support. As I mentioned before I believe it could readily show
that there *IS* a difference. Lots of people still don't know there is a
difference between ham or amateur radio and CB radio.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: pb...@midway.uchicago.edu (Peter B. Hayward)
> Date: Thu, 6 Dec 90 15:55:09 GMT
>
> I completely agree with this proposal to change the proposed name to
> ...rules. I have been very uneasy about the ...legal name, believing that
> it would *not* be intuitively obvious what *should* be in the new
> group. I felt the result would be that people would cross-post
> to several rec.ham-radio groups, thus increasing the noise level.
> With rec.ham-radio.rules (or rec.radio.amateur.rules) we might
> save some bandwidth (and sanity).
If someone has a legal issue, such as:
is it legal to...
is it illegal to...
we should remove rule...
we should add rule...
and cross posts it, then the the problem is with someone who is simply
not thinking about what they are doing. Eliminating ALL these groups
would clearly get rid of that problem. Of course we don't want to do
that. The difference between "legal" and "rules" is small, but there
is some. The NON-rules things would be left out. Maybe that is what
the consensus wants in which case ".rules" would be appropriate.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: dep...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeff DePolo)
> Date: 6 Dec 90 18:42:14 GMT
>
> r.r.a.legal seems a bit too specific. Legal debates (e.g. regulation
> debates, tower ordinances, etc.) seem to come and go in spurts. I
> don't see the use of having a seperate group for just this particular
> aspect of normal traffic.
Sometimes it comes in floods. More often in firestorms. When it does
come, it seems to be causing readers to drop off.
> r.r.a.swap might be better as just rec.radio.swap, since this may encourage
> others with non-amateur-specific yet amateur-related equipment to post
> here as well. For example, test equipment, SW receivers, scanners,
> microwave equipment, etc. is of interest to hams, but is not necessarily
> ham specific. Traffic on the current r.h-r.swap is relatively light
> the way it is now (probably averages about 8 articles/day), so expanding
> it seems to be logical.
That seems like a reasonable argument. While there might be some reason
to separate amateur-only swap posting so that they can be fed into a
packet network, that might be a BAD THING by encouraging the lack of
someone (carbon based unit) filtering the messages. But this is a matter
for rec.radio.amateur.legal when it comes online (presumptuous aren't I).
> Another idea, though I don't feel too strongly one way or the other
> on this one. Make it rec.radio.amateur.digital instead of .packet.
> This may encourage discussion of possible new modes other than
> what we commonly consider "packet" (e.g. spread-spectrum). Oops.
> I can see it now. Some of the die-hard CW ops will decide that
> this is their place to hang out. :-)
This is probably where r.r.a.tech or such might be better. Where would
you like to classify transmitting voice by digital, but not packet, means?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley)
> Date: Thu, 06 Dec 90 17:15:37 EST
>
> eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike Willis) writes:
> >
> > I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
> > groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
> > the service altogether.
> > Mike.
>
> Bravo! Like the old saying goes, if it ain't fix, don't broke it.
Phil's corollary:
If I was able to fix it, then it must have been broken.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
--Phil Howard, KA9WGN-- | Individual CHOICE is fundamental to a free society
<ph...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> | no matter what the particular issue is all about.
Gary Coffman
> Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
> hierarchy:
>
> PROPOSED ADDITIONS:
>
> 1. rec.radio.ham
> "A General newsgroup for discussions about amateur radio."
> 2. rec.radio.ham.legal
> "A newsgroup for the discussion of legal aspects of amateur radio."
> 3. rec.radio.ham.packet
> "A newsgroup for discussions about amateur packet radio."
> 4. rec.radio.ham.swap
> "A forsale group for the rec.radio.ham hierarchy."
>
> PROPOSED DELETIONS:
>
> 1. rec.ham-radio
> Now superseded by rec.radio.ham and rec.radio.ham.legal.
> 2. rec.ham-radio.packet
> Superseded by rec.radio.ham.packet
> 3. rec.ham-radio.swap
> Replaced by rec.radio.ham.swap
The fallacy of this proposal as I see it is that rec.radio.ham.legal will
consist of cross-posts to/from the base group. The purpose of many of the
posts that prompted this proposed reorganization of the groups is to wake
up amateurs to the political implications for the survival of amateur radio
of many regulatory matters. These posters will continue to cross-post in
an attempt to get the widest readership. In addition, many of the postings
that the reorganizers want shifted to legal are triggered by posts in the
base group and will continue to be answered in the base group until a flurry
of postings begging for the thread to be taken to legal are received in
the base group. This is not the intended result of this reorganization.
A better plan (IMHO) is as follows:
1. rec.radio.ham.bland
A safe smug little hole for those offended by controversy. No
posting of mods allowed. No postings about antenna matching allowed.
No code/no-code postings allowed. No mention of autopatches allowed.
No mention of the future of amateur radio allowed. No postings about
VECs allowed. No mention of using amateur radio in aircraft or trains
allowed. Don't even use the letters A R R L in this group. No
content allowed.
2. rec.radio.ham.misc
A general replacement for the current rowdy base group.
3. rec.radio.ham.swap
The swap group works relatively well, though for sale postings do
continue to be seen in the base group.
4. rec.radio.ham.packet
The packet group works relatively well, though it too seems full
of cross-posts lately.
Don't even THINK of renaming the groups "amateur" rather than "ham", that's
MUCH too controversial.
Gary KE4ZV
Bill Gunshannon
]
]
] > I also like the re-structure, but find it might offer more clarity to go
] > with rec.radio.amateur , etc.; in either case, I support the move to conform
] > to net standard/convention...
]
] Errrr, what is not standard about rec.ham-radio? Other than the
] inhabitants, what is unconventional about it? It tells you right off what
] it is, certainly better than things like comp.sources.d (what, the next
] language after C?)
I agree with this completely. rec.ham-radio has been here since the
very early times. If anything is non-conforming, it is rec.radio which
is now trying to assume control of a group that has done just fine
without it, Thank you.
] Just because there is a rec.radio.* is not a reason to change
] rec.ham-radio.
]
It seems we have once again forgoten the old adage:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!
bill KB3YV
--
Bill Gunshannon | If this statement wasn't here,
bi...@platypus.uofs.edu | This space would be left intentionally blank
Ran Atkinson
".tech" subgroup because most of the existing postings
are technical to some degree or another and most Amateur
Radio operators think that they are technically oriented
so it wouldn't split the traffic neatly -- which is the
point of having a subgroup created...
Brian McMinn
> r.r.a.legal seems a bit too specific. I don't see the use of having
> a seperate group for just this particular aspect of normal traffic.
I'd rather see r.r.a.rules or r.r.a.regulations
> r.r.a.swap might be better as just rec.radio.swap
I'd rather see this too.
I'd also like to see rec.radio.cb so that CB related stuff would have
a place to be without being flamed to death and rec.radio.amateur.tech
(or perhaps just rec.radio.tech since the shortwave folks would also
be interested in the same things) for technical discussions.
--
--
Brian McMinn br...@amd.com
Advanced Micro Devices N5PSS
Austin, Texas 1-(512)-462-5389
"You can't leap a chasm in two jumps."
Brian Kantor
> rec.radio.amateur.rules or rec.radio.amateur.regs
> rec.radio.amateur.packet
In the library world, this is known as "Dewey Decimal Syndrome" - a
strange neurotic compulsion to categorize things down nearly to the
finest grain, regardless of the usefulness of the categorization to
those people attempting to use them. This is a mild case, but clearly
it's the thin end of the wedge.
Should there be created such a group as .legal (or .pilpul, or whatever)
how many are going to subscribe to it? Or is this just a thinly-
disguised case of NIMBY - an attempt to get all those people who insist
on talking about legal issues to go away and stop bothering you?
A brief reminder as well: dots in newsgroup names indicates branches in
the tree-structured hierarchy of groups. They're not just namepart
separators. The dash character is more appropriate for that.
Finally, I'm moderately proud to be called a "ham radio operator";
I think it's nicer than being called an amateur (as opposed to
"professional"). I think the people who want to be called 'amateurs'
instead of 'hams' are being overly formal - like insisting on being
called Robert instead of Bob.
- Brian
Wm E Davidsen Jr
| The technoids go on and on wonderfully about their ideas for the design of
| the Phantasmagorical Data Engine with the blind faith assumption that when
| they're done, we'll have amateur bands to use it in. I don't think we can
| assume that, and sticking those who write about it in a "newsghetto" so they
| can be ignored more easily will be counterproductive in the long run. Penny
| wise and pound foolish, as it were.
Your right to speak is subordinate to my right to ignore you. Mixing
in stuff people don't want to read doesn't make them read it, it makes
them hate it. And makes it harder to find for those who want it.
--
bill davidsen (davi...@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.
Jim Vienneau - Sun Microsystems
>Let me just say that I'd oppose any proposal to create a
> ".tech" subgroup because most of the existing postings
You've got to be kidding! Most of the postings technical? Only if you
consider questions about nocode, callsign projects, clean fists, club
stations, licensing procedures (aka Gorden West), Ham stacks, super
repeaters, radar detectors, *Camcoders*???, CB, QSL card dimentions,
reverse autopatches, flea markets, fees, numerous FCC comments, cyrillic?,
Herbie net, antenna restrictions, etc, etc, etc, technical?!. Yes, *PLEASE*
let's setup a .tech subgroup (works for rec.auto).
Jim Vienneau, Sun Microsystems Inc - Billerica, MA
Email: jvie...@east.sun.com Amateur Radio: WB1B
Good old Ma Bell (well old anyway): (508)671-0372
Jim Grubs
> Basically, what I am saying is that all references to the slang 'HAM'
> should be changed to 'AMATEUR'.... therefore 'rec.radio.ham' becomes
> 'rec.radio.amateur' and so on. This will not cause confusion on anyones
> part.
> I think that only 'hams' know what the term 'ham' radio really means.
I'm not arguing against changing the name, but at the same time I think you
underestimate the degree to which 'radio ham' has over the decades become a
widely understood term among non-hams.
John Stanley
al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
> This is utter nonsense! One groups administrative problems, either
> real or perceived, do NOT constitute a logical justification for opposing
> real progress which is needed in this case.
What is the real progress? Changing the name from rec.ham-radio to
rec.radio.amateur is not progress of any kind, much less "real". It is
just "change".
Since there was an affirmative reply to the post of one site against
it, then there are obviously TWO sites. If there are TWO, then there are
probably more.
In fact, EVERY site will have to go through the trouble of changing
the newsgroup names, feed and fed information, etc. All for what? A
simple name change? Will this happen without incident? Ha ha ha.
The only real change is the addition of a .rules or .legal subgroup,
which could be done WITHOUT any other name change.
Your post is yet another wild claim of perceived benefit with no
justification provided, and it the only utter nonsense here. I have asked
several times for a real justification for this change, and NOBODY has
answered. The only "reason" so far is "it's a new name". So what?
Will it stop the cross posts? Hardly. Does it describe anything
better? No. Will it change ANYTHING, other than the name? Ha ha ha. No.
Your claim that a name change is real progress is the same as claiming
that all New York City needs to do to solve it's problems is rename
itself to South Bend, Indiana.
Jim Grubs
> Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
> Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio,rec.ham-radio.packet,rec.ham-radio.swap,
> rec.radio.shortwave,news.groups
>
> Your right to speak is subordinate to my right to ignore you. Mixing
> in stuff people don't want to read doesn't make them read it, it makes
> them hate it. And makes it harder to find for those who want it.
I'm not arguing with the logic of the mechanics. I'm arguing against the
attitude that produced the desire for the new mechanics. I believe that it is
dangerous to believe that ignoring the very real political problems we face
will make them go away.
Robert Wier
> Jay Maynard and I propose the following reorganization of the rec.ham-radio
> hierarchy:
>
I'd be in favor of this - I hate typing those @*@&!&!(#7#
hyphens...
- Bob Wier
-------------- insert favorite standard disclaimers here ----------
College of Engineering
Northern Arizona University / Flagstaff, Arizona
Internet: r...@naucse.cse.nau.edu | BITNET: WIER@NAUVAX | WB5KXH
or uucp: ...arizona!naucse!rrw
paulf
> In fact, EVERY site will have to go through the trouble of changing
>the newsgroup names, feed and fed information, etc. All for what? A
>simple name change? Will this happen without incident? Ha ha ha.
This is, of course, false. For starters, the vast, vast majority of sites
take everything. The next most common layer gets rid of the talk groups,
and the one after that, soc and rec. So, the actual number of sites that
will have to make adjustments to their distribution file is very small.
About five years ago, USENET went through a very major name reconstruction,
for the most part without incident. Frankly, the proposed shift should have
been done then, but that's hindsight.
> Your post is yet another wild claim of perceived benefit with no
>justification provided, and it the only utter nonsense here. I have asked
>several times for a real justification for this change, and NOBODY has
>answered. The only "reason" so far is "it's a new name". So what?
I went into this extensively about three months ago. To reiterate, the
change is necessary to better integrate the newsgroups into the
developing USENET hierarchy. USENET is not a static entity. The population
is growing exponentially, and the number of groups is growing linearly with
time. Thus some tendency to order is justified. There is no good
justification for RHR's second level domain status, as the tree that is
developing under it is directly related to the tree growing in rec.radio.
Given that rec.radio is the better organized tree, it only makes sense to
direct growth of the smaller tree (RHR, and growth into rec.ham-radio.legal)
off of the other tree.
> Will it stop the cross posts? Hardly. Does it describe anything
>better? No. Will it change ANYTHING, other than the name? Ha ha ha. No.
Empirically not true. While .d groups have not drawn off all of the flames
from the mainline groups, they have been for the most part effective.
Frankly, the ham subculture of armchair lawyers is pretty well defined
(I say that being one of them); there are some people who do NOT want to
be part of that subculture. The flames resulting from a few thoughtless
crossposts should be enough to pen in the obnoxious.
> Your claim that a name change is real progress is the same as claiming
>that all New York City needs to do to solve it's problems is rename
>itself to South Bend, Indiana.
Similar claims were made during the aforementioned Great Reorg, as well as
the Internet move to domains a few years back. Remember host tables?
Heh, thought so...;-)
Geert Jan de Groot
be a good idea to make a FAQ message and send it once a while.
It happens that once a while, a casual reader writes a message in the
wrong group, the most common error seems writing in rec.ham-radio what
should be in rec.ham-radio.swap.
Usually, this results in a flame storm to the mailbox of the offender,
and sometimes on the net as well.
It seems to me that the distinction between rec.radio.ham and
rec.radio.ham.legal is less clear than the swap group.
As a result, I think that more articles are mis-posted, and with the
dynamic properies of this group, the flaming remains!
Also, a FAQ might give an answer to some flame-prone questions, like
taking various equipment onto air flights, etc.
One question from an innocent beginner and the group is filled for the
rest of the month!
Other thing: Like Brian, I too would like to keep 'ham' instead of
'amateur'. At least here, broadcast band pirates and the like also
call themselves 'amateurs'.
Moreover, I usually find a new interesting newsgroup from a list
with descriptions (like a checkgroups message), instead of just the
name. And, yes, I like 'ham' too, even if (or because) there is no
similar word in Dutch or German as far as I know of.
Finally, I'd like to propose 'rules' instead of 'legal'. Bandplans,
for instance, have no legal meaning here, just 'gentlemen's agreement'.
If discussed, I'd like to see that in the rules group, because
of the traffic involved. The way I see it, 'rules' is for all rules,
not just the ones issued by the government.
That's my stuiver's worth. I'm interested in your opinion.
73, Geert Jan PE1HZG
--8<--nip-nip---------------------------------------------------------------
Geert Jan de Groot, Email: gee...@ica.philips.nl
Philips ICA, ..!hp4nl!philica!geertj
Weisshausstrasse, Ham: PE1HZG
5100 Aachen, West-Germany
phone: +49 241 6003 714 "Programs are like waffles:
fax: +49 241 6003 709 you should always throw the first one out"
[Standard disclaimers apply] - Sutherland
Greg A. Woods
> I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
> groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
> the service altogether.
I can't imagine why an educational institution would have trouble with
anything to do with Amateur Radio! Maybe this shows how poor our PR is.
In article <1990Dec6.1...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Ran Atkinson <ran...@Virginia.EDU> writes:
[.... a suggestion to gateway rec.radio.amateur.* [;-)] to mail ....]
> Perhaps someone out there would be willing to setup a news->mail gateway
> for one or more of these groups. There is a very slight chance I could
> work out something like that, but it isn't trivial for me in my present
> circumstance. Surely there is an Amateur Radio operator who is a sysadmin
> somewhere already who could be talked into creating such a service. I'd
> be happy to help out with the "How to set it up under UNIX ?" if someone
> were willing to put it in place.
I know of one person locally who is currently doing this with the
rec.ham-radio groups specifically. I am sure I'll be able to do so as
well, once I get my machine (robohack) operational again, though I
will probably want to restrict the service to the local area.
--
Greg A. Woods
woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP ECI and UniForum Canada
+1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA
Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible-ORWELL
Alan Ruffer
>rec.radio.amateur is not progress of any kind, much less "real". It is
>just "change".
>
John, I have to ask how can a logical person say that a name change to
better describe this group to tens of thousands of sites worldwide is not
progress?
Merriam-Webster defines real as: Authentic, genuine, actual and true.
Progress is defined as: To develop a higher, better or more advanced stage.
How can you state that it is not progress of ANY kind? Are your criteria
different than that of the international dictionary? If so, why?
> Since there was an affirmative reply to the post of one site against
>it, then there are obviously TWO sites. If there are TWO, then there are
>probably more.
>
Maybe not, and if so, so what? The majority consensus will prevail as defined
in the net rules established for creation of new groups. Two sites MAY be 2
no votes if they even take the time to vote.
> In fact, EVERY site will have to go through the trouble of changing
>the newsgroup names, feed and fed information, etc. All for what? A
>simple name change? Will this happen without incident? Ha ha ha.
>
What trouble?
Since you obviously are not up to speed on group creation, removal etc, a
short education is in order for you. Many sites have AUTOMATIC new group
creation enabled. Those that do not, require a simple intervention by the
news administrator. I am the news administrator at this site, so don't
try to snow me with how difficult this all is!
> The only real change is the addition of a .rules or .legal subgroup,
>which could be done WITHOUT any other name change.
>
Wrong. See defininition of "real" above.
Sure it COULD be done without any other changes.
If you are not going to change something with the goal to make it as near
perfect as something man-made can be, why bother at all?
Do you approach all your projects with an attitude of why bother to do my best?
> Your post is yet another wild claim of perceived benefit with no
>justification provided, and it the only utter nonsense here. I have asked
>several times for a real justification for this change, and NOBODY has
>answered. The only "reason" so far is "it's a new name". So what?
>
The JUSTIFICATION was stated at the beginning of the reply as well as by
numerous other posts on this subject. The only wild claims were made in
your emotional original post and reply.
> Will it stop the cross posts? Hardly. Does it describe anything
>better? No. Will it change ANYTHING, other than the name? Ha ha ha. No.
>
I've seen some negative posts in the last 4 years in this group.
You should be proud to be right up there with the worst of them, providing
NO rational basis for your claims. You are guilty of the very same error
you accuse me and others of making.
> Your claim that a name change is real progress is the same as claiming
>that all New York City needs to do to solve it's problems is rename
>itself to South Bend, Indiana.
>
This is an extremely inaccurate analogy. I never claimed that the name
change would provide a solution to this groups problems. Maybe next time
you should spend as much time reading as you do wasting bandwith with
inaccurate analogys, erroneous and inflamatory claims.
paulf
> So then, the discussions in news.admin about trapping all newgroup
>messages so they are done by hand are also false? If you trap the ones
>creating alt.nuke.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom then you also trap the
>ones for rec.radio.amateur. Not every site does this, yet, but it seems
>to be a trend.
That's an argument against ANY change, not just the name change and group
addition. And it's also largely a problem with ALTnet and ALTnet only.
Assuming that the people who are working on the mkgroup authentication hack
finish fairly soon, this will be a moot point, in any event.
> Hmmm. News.*, comp.*, rec.*, talk.*, sci.*. Rec.ham-radio seems to fit
>quite well in the rec.* hierarchy.
Yeah, the same what alt.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork does.
This does not justify having ham-radio as a second level domain, which is the
principal contention.
> Moving rec.ham-radio down under rec.radio will do nothing to reduce
>the growth.
Never claimed it would. It does however make that growth easier to manage.
> It will do nothing to sort out the traffic into more
>appropriate places. Creating .legal (or .rules) will help, but could be
>done much more easily as a subgroup of rec.ham-radio. Imagine, any site
>not wanting rec.ham-radio.legal need do NOTHING, versus creating a new
>set of groups and deleting old.
Contradiction #1. You claimed earlier that it was a royal pain to hack the
distribution. Now you claim that they "need do NOTHING". Uh huh.
> There is no good justification for third level status, either. Is
>being at the second level really a status symbol? If so, then we should
>be the LAST ones to suggest a change.
No, there's not status associated with domain level. The justification for
hanging the ham-radio tree under the radio tree is both intuitive and
obvious. In fact, hyphenated domain levels are seen as being somewhat
archaic...
> What will moving down a level do to traffic? It will increase it. It
>seems, from my experience, that feeds often do the easiest thing for
>them. If you ask to have rec.arts.startrek added to your feed, they will
>probably add r.a.*.
This is only a problem if you assume that the readers of rec.ham-radio are
not interested in the rest of the rec.radio hierarchy, an assumtion that
is false for the most part. Now whether they have the time to read the
entire hierarchy is a different matter...
>Now you have all of arts being stuffed down your
>throat, using your bandwidth, filling your junk. (Junk is the highest
>volume group, here.) So, moving under rec.radio means you will get all of
>rec.radio, like it or not. A waste.
The usual cause of "junk" filling up is a mismatch between your distribution
and you active files. Bnews (and presumably Cnews) junk articles that they
can't find an active entry for. If your "junk" is in fact your highest
volume newsgroup, then it sounds like your site is misconfigured. Remember,
just because "you" don't subscribe to a group doesn't mean the system won't
keep the group around for others to read.
> Which rec.radio is related to packet? Maybe the best thing to do is
>just be subsumed under rec.radio.noncomm. Not rec.radio.noncomm.amateur,
>just r.r.n. There is pitifully little traffic in r.r.n now, so we would be
>able to take them over with little effort.
The purpose of the hierarchal structure of USENET is to divide posts into
meaningful structure. What goes on in r.r.n has little to do with Amateur
Radio (read the group charter). Moreover, your suggestion of "taking it
over" is childish at best.
> If it made any sense to change, then yes. Since there is NO benefit to
>changing, then there is no sense to change. I haven't seen the arbitrons,
>but my impression is that rec.radio.noncomm is nearly dead, and
>rec.radio.shortwave is mostly crossposts from r.h. Which tree is smaller?
It's quite clear that noncomm has little if anything to do with ham radio.
It is quite clear that ham radio has something to do with radio. At least
the last time I took E&M it did, anyway.
> Where in the suggested change was the .d group? Aren't discussions
>still going to take place in rec.radio.amateur?
Jay and I hashed this out about a week or two ago. Basically, .legal IS
meant to be the debate (old term for .d groups) group for the r.r.ham
(at this point most likely ham => amateur).
> I agree with the suggestion to add rec.ham-radio.legal. It can be
>quite simple to do that.
There is no difference in difficulty between adding rec.ham-radio.legal only
and adding and deleting four newsgroups. You still have to enter emacs
only once, if at all.
On the whole, the name change is more of an administrative change than
anything else. If nothing else, it allows for a more logical growth
in the tree structure for future splinter groups off of the ham radio
discussion section. Certainly, the name change does't address some of the
other problems (for example, traffic volume) that currently exist. But it
does make addressing those problems easier, and at a very minimal cost.
John Stanley
jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>
> (Side note: Please make sure that discussion is posted to news.groups as well
> as rec.ham-radio. This is required by the Guidelines for Newsgroup Creation.)
>
Unfortunately, it is not possible to do that here. Guidelines is
guidelines, not law. In this case, they can't be followed.
Jay Maynard
>You've got to be kidding! Most of the postings technical? Only if you
>consider questions about nocode, callsign projects, clean fists, club
>stations, licensing procedures (aka Gorden West), Ham stacks, super
>repeaters, radar detectors, *Camcoders*???, CB, QSL card dimentions,
>reverse autopatches, flea markets, fees, numerous FCC comments, cyrillic?,
>Herbie net, antenna restrictions, etc, etc, etc, technical?!. Yes, *PLEASE*
>let's setup a .tech subgroup (works for rec.auto).
There's more to ham radio than just technical subjects. The object of adding
.legal and not .tech is to move the flames, not a subset of the non-flames. I
am strongly opposed to a .tech group, and don't see the overwhelming consensus
that one is needed that would change my mind.
Please continue this discussion in both news.groups and rec.ham-radio, as per
the guidelines...
Greg A. Woods
> In article <14...@necis.UUCP> rb...@necis.UUCP ( NM1D) writes:
> > I think that only 'hams' know what the term 'ham' radio really means.
>
> I'm not arguing against changing the name, but at the same time I think you
> underestimate the degree to which 'radio ham' has over the decades become a
> widely understood term among non-hams.
You point out that the term "radio ham" is understood by a growing
majority of non-amateur's. However this doesn't indicate the
connotations many non-operators associate with the term "radio ham".
In my experience, this term has no redeemable value with most
"non-hams". In fact I would argue the connotations are so negative
that we should do anything and everything we can to move to a more
neutral term, and to dispell the negative connotations associated with
Amateur Radio.
I think that the degree of "understanding" the average layman has of
the term "radio ham" is the precise reason why we should adopt the
term "amateur".
I suspect that at one time people would have argued the term "amateur"
had negative connotations. I doubt many sane people would do so now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
While I'm here, I'd like to also state that I favor the following two names:
rec.radio.amateur.digital (to replace rec.ham-radio.packet)
rec.radio.amateur.regs (instead of r.r.a.legal)
Wm E Davidsen Jr
| Finally, I'd like to propose 'rules' instead of 'legal'. Bandplans,
| for instance, have no legal meaning here, just 'gentlemen's agreement'.
| If discussed, I'd like to see that in the rules group, because
| of the traffic involved. The way I see it, 'rules' is for all rules,
| not just the ones issued by the government.
Another one. I see most of the posting support a name indicating that
legal is not the best name for this group. Is the proposer listening?
wat...@halley.uucp
and just saw the post in n.n.ng.
> From: dep...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeff DePolo)
> Date: 6 Dec 90 18:42:14 GMT
> r.r.a.swap might be better as just rec.radio.swap, since this may encourage
> others with non-amateur-specific yet amateur-related equipment to post
> here as well.
I'm not as sure that much traffic of interest to amateurs
would be generated. There's been about zero traffic in
rec.radio.noncomm about equipment to sell/buy/trade. Of course, with
a specific group for such... I don't think that this will bother
any other rec.radio folks. It won't bother me, at least.
(Declaration of ulterior motive: Many campus radio broadcast
stations are hurting for lack of people with engineering skills. If
the rec.ham-radio groups move into the rec.radio.* heirarchy, possibly
more folks might cross over. Unlikely, at best, but it can't hurt to
try...)
A similar argument could be made for rec.radio.rules as for
rec.radio.swap, but I suspect that the regulations are sufficiently
different that sharing the same newsgroup would only annoy everyone
involved. Rec.radio.noncomm and the BITNET mailing list have had
quite a lot of traffic on indecency/obscenity/safe-harbor, which I
don't think would interest the hams.
William
ktru Chief Engineer, 1980-83
--
William J. Watson (Keep trying if halley bounces mail. It's flakey)
(cs.utexas.edu!halley!watson, wat...@halley.uucp, watson_...@tandem.com)
Preferred^ ^Most reliable (?)
John Stanley
> In article <mPBXT...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> > So then, the discussions in news.admin about trapping all newgroup
> That's an argument against ANY change, not just the name change and group
> addition. And it's also largely a problem with ALTnet and ALTnet only.
That's right. If and only if the benefits of change are greater than
the cost is the change justified. In this case, it is not. The cost of
any change is the effort to implement that change.
> > Hmmm. News.*, comp.*, rec.*, talk.*, sci.*. Rec.ham-radio seems to fit
> >quite well in the rec.* hierarchy.
> Yeah, the same what alt.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork does.
This is a problem with alt. In one breath you differentiate USEnet
from alt, and in the next you don't. Be consistent.
> This does not justify having ham-radio as a second level domain, which is the
> principal contention.
What justification is needed?
> > Moving rec.ham-radio down under rec.radio will do nothing to reduce
> >the growth.
> Never claimed it would. It does however make that growth easier to manage.
No. It will be just as easy under rec.ham-radio as under rec.radio.ham.
> > Imagine, any site
> >not wanting rec.ham-radio.legal need do NOTHING, versus creating a new
> >set of groups and deleting old.
> Contradiction #1. You claimed earlier that it was a royal pain to hack the
> distribution. Now you claim that they "need do NOTHING". Uh huh.
No, read what I wrote. If you do NOT want rec.ham-radio.legal, you
need do nothing at all. If you do not want rec.radio.ham.legal, you will
still need to mangle the news feeds to get rec.radio.ham. There is no
contradiction here.
> No, there's not status associated with domain level. The justification for
> hanging the ham-radio tree under the radio tree is both intuitive and
> obvious.
In your opinion. Above you say there is no justification for the
status of ham-radio being at the second level. Here you say there is no
status. This seems to be a contradiction.
> The usual cause of "junk" filling up is a mismatch between your distribution
> and you active files. Bnews (and presumably Cnews) junk articles that they
> can't find an active entry for.
Yes. I know that.
> If your "junk" is in fact your highest
> volume newsgroup, then it sounds like your site is misconfigured.
Or the feed is misconfigured. I have very little control over how they
configure, other than asking them to change things. They have already
told me "that's the way things are". I am guessing they are feeding me
the same groups that they feed others, to make life simple for them.
> Remember,
> just because "you" don't subscribe to a group doesn't mean the system won't
> keep the group around for others to read.
Yes, because I don't subscribe DOES mean the system will NOT keep a
group around for others to read.
> > Which rec.radio is related to packet? Maybe the best thing to do is
> >just be subsumed under rec.radio.noncomm. Not rec.radio.noncomm.amateur,
> >just r.r.n. There is pitifully little traffic in r.r.n now, so we would be
> >able to take them over with little effort.
>
> The purpose of the hierarchal structure of USENET is to divide posts into
> meaningful structure. What goes on in r.r.n has little to do with Amateur
> Radio (read the group charter). Moreover, your suggestion of "taking it
> over" is childish at best.
So your claim that r.h.* is closely related to r.r.* is not
supportable. I think your suggestion to rename r.h just to rename it is
childish at best, but I try to argue based on the argument and not on the
personal characteristics of those I argue with. What, run out of rational
arguments already?
> It's quite clear that noncomm has little if anything to do with ham radio.
> It is quite clear that ham radio has something to do with radio. At least
> the last time I took E&M it did, anyway.
Of all the rec.radio, ham-radio is supposed to be the least
commercial. Even PBS stations are running adverts these days ("This
program was funded by ..."). So, we are more noncomm than noncomm. The
noncomm name fits us better than those who are there now.
> There is no difference in difficulty between adding rec.ham-radio.legal only
> and adding and deleting four newsgroups. You still have to enter emacs
> only once, if at all.
No. You must edit your active file. You must send mail to your feed to
tell them to send you the new groups. If you feed someone, you have to
edit the file that says what you feed (if they don't take everything
already). That's at least two edits (my mail editor is emacs), maybe
three.
> On the whole, the name change is more of an administrative change than
> anything else. If nothing else, it allows for a more logical growth
> in the tree structure for future splinter groups off of the ham radio
> discussion section.
You made this claim before, and it is still as false as it was then. It
does nothing to allow a more logical growth. There is NO DIFFERENCE
between adding groups under rec.ham-radio and adding them under
rec.radio.ham. None. Zip. Nada. If rec.ham-radio can't grow logically as
rec.ham-radio, then it can't grow logically under rec.radio.ham. Once
again, the whole argument comes down to claims that are not supportable.
Jim Grubs
> From: emcg...@ccad.uiowa.edu (Ed McGuire)
> Date: 11 Dec 90 02:02:40 GMT
> Organization: CAD-Research, U. of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
> Message-ID: <1990Dec11.0...@ccad.uiowa.edu>
> Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave,rec.ham-radio,rec.ham-radio.packet,
> news.groups
>
> In article <689.27...@w8grt.fidonet.org> jim....@w8grt.fidonet.org
> (Jim Grubs) writes:
>
> I'm not arguing against changing the name, but at the same time I
> think you underestimate the degree to which 'radio ham' has over
> the decades become a widely understood term among non-hams.
>
> Outside of English speaking countries? Among non-hams in those
> countries?
Err, isn't that academic, considering r.h-r is in English anyway?
--
Jim Grubs - via the friendly folks at UUNET
UUCP: ...!uunet!w8grt!jim.grubs
INTERNET: jim....@w8grt.fidonet.org
John Stanley
pa...@shasta.Stanford.EDU (paulf) writes:
> In article <JLyyT...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> > No, read what I wrote. If you do NOT want rec.ham-radio.legal, you
> >need do nothing at all. If you do not want rec.radio.ham.legal, you will
> >still need to mangle the news feeds to get rec.radio.ham. There is no
> >contradiction here.
>
> Wrong. If you want rec.ham-radio.legal, you have to manually mkgroup it,
> since (by your first statement) people have turned off automake to handle
> the alt shotgun. Otherwise it'll end up in junk. That was the contradiction
Read what I wrote. If you do _NOT_ want rec.ham-radio.legal ... You
keep missing the NOT part of the sentence. You are not authorized to drop
random words in other peoples arguments just so you can make whatever
point you want to make. If you do NOT drop the NOT, there is no
contradiction.
-----------
If you created .legal in rec.ham-radio, anyone who does not want it has
0 (zero) work to do. No changes in feeds, no changes to active files. This
is easy.
If you move rec.ham-radio to rec.radio.ham, and add .legal there,
anyone who does NOT want .legal will still be required to make the
changes to get rec.radio.ham. This is positive, non-zero effort. You
claim it is editing one file. That is demonstrably false. Even so, it is
one chance to mess up what is already there.
As the end result, the structure of the ham radio group would be
exactly the same IN EITHER CASE. There would be a top level group for
general discussion, a swap subgroup, a packet subgroup, and a legal
subgroup. This structure would be the same if the group were under
rec.radio or directly under rec. The management of growth would be the
same. Identical. No difference. Zero (0).
The only difference is in the work required to make the changes to
move it all under rec.radio. Since there will be no difference in the
results, why go to the effort?
> There IS however a status associated with being archaic, and I'd rather that
> ham radio wasn't stuck with said status.
So the entire argument in support of moving rec.ham-radio is that you
don't like hyphens. Let's all mix everything about just to keep Paul from
having to see a hyphen.
> The noncomm refers to noncommercial broadcast radio. Read the charter. With
> the exception of certain legally dubious operations, ham radio is not
> broadcasting.
And since this is a reorg, what stops us from changing the charter?
Especially if it leads to a better solution to the problem. You ignored
the ability to do that in your pot-shot post. Amazing, isn't it, but
EVERY idea I used in the alternate proposal was based on arguments
provided by supporters of this one.
And even without a charter change, USEnet is anarchy, remember?
> Incidentally, PBS is NOT running advertisements. Note that the sponsorship
> messages don't mention specific products. (One did once and the FCC got
> very angry, very angry indeed.)
"Jeff Smith's Frugal Gourmet Cookbook is available for $24.95 by
calling 1 800 555-1212." Can't get too much more specific than that, can
you. Have you also noticed that some commercials on commercial TV are
designed with the sole intent of keeping a company name in your mind?
Borden did this for a while. Chrysler, I recall, had a bunch where they
didn't hype any one car, just that Chrysler was back, better than ever.
Infiniti had a series where they didn't even have a car, just seasides and
scenic views -- and the Infiniti logo. No difference from showing me the
XYZ company logo and saying "underwriting provided by...". Or telling me
"... Syracuse China, manufacturer of fine china in Syracuse for 57 years."
And, yes, there was an experiment several years ago, approved by the
FCC, testing adverts on PBS. It was just a few stations. Part of the
fallout, after pressure from PBS's, was that it is now ok to use company
supplied graphics.
> I'm sorry, but you've consistently overstated the difficulty in both actions
> to be taken, and the number of sites that will have to take those actions.
No, I'm sorry, but you've consistantly overstated the benefits of this
change. "No benefit" has been dramatically inflated.
By all means, we need a new subgroup for rule pondering and debating.
Add it. It can be added with NO other changes, with less effort, and with
the same results -- barring the hyphens.
paulf
> This is a problem with alt. In one breath you differentiate USEnet
>from alt, and in the next you don't. Be consistent.
My references were extremely consistent. Flagrant mkgrouping is occurring
in ALT. alt.swedish-chef.bork^3 is an example of a group that violates the
hierarchal structure. No contradicion there, _for the purposes for which the
definitions were used_.
> No, read what I wrote. If you do NOT want rec.ham-radio.legal, you
>need do nothing at all. If you do not want rec.radio.ham.legal, you will
>still need to mangle the news feeds to get rec.radio.ham. There is no
>contradiction here.
Wrong. If you want rec.ham-radio.legal, you have to manually mkgroup it,
since (by your first statement) people have turned off automake to handle
the alt shotgun. Otherwise it'll end up in junk. That was the contradiction.
> In your opinion. Above you say there is no justification for the
>status of ham-radio being at the second level. Here you say there is no
>status. This seems to be a contradiction.
Logical hierarchy and "status" are not necessarily isomorpic. For example,
do names that begin with "A" have more status than those that begin with "B"?
There IS however a status associated with being archaic, and I'd rather that
ham radio wasn't stuck with said status.
> Of all the rec.radio, ham-radio is supposed to be the least
>commercial. Even PBS stations are running adverts these days ("This
>program was funded by ..."). So, we are more noncomm than noncomm. The
>noncomm name fits us better than those who are there now.
The noncomm refers to noncommercial broadcast radio. Read the charter. With
the exception of certain legally dubious operations, ham radio is not
broadcasting.
Incidentally, PBS is NOT running advertisements. Note that the sponsorship
messages don't mention specific products. (One did once and the FCC got
very angry, very angry indeed.)
For the vast majority of sites, the name change will involve only editing
in the new names and removing the old (and this assumes that the mkgroup
hack isn't finished by then). No change in feed will be necessary, as again,
the vast majority of sites that receive rec.ham-radio.* also receive
rec.radio.*.
I'm sorry, but you've consistently overstated the difficulty in both actions
to be taken, and the number of sites that will have to take those actions.
I say this having managed several sites (marque, a few ihnnn, shasta) over
the past five years or so. I'll be the first one to admit that there are
people who have been around here one heck of a lot longer; those that I know
of, I've consulted, and they tend to agree with my assessment. That's also
the purpose of a CFD.
The split we've proposed took in a number of concerns, the biggest of
which was the info-hams mailing list; we split off the legal discussions
instead of the technical discussions to better meet the needs of that
community. We're currently evaluating some of the other proposals we're
seen (the "amateur" mapping seems likely at this point).
Ed McGuire
I'm not arguing against changing the name, but at the same time I
think you underestimate the degree to which 'radio ham' has over
the decades become a widely understood term among non-hams.
Just curious. How widely understood is "ham" outside of the U.S.?
Outside of English speaking countries? Among non-hams in those
countries?
--
peace. -- Ed
"Over here, Bones! This man's dying!"
"Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a . . . What did you say?"
Jim Grubs
> From: al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer)
> Date: 10 Dec 90 00:53:01 GMT
> Organization: Perfect Partners Inc., Sulphur, LA
> Message-ID: <3...@adept.UUCP>
> Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio
>
> In article <oHqVT...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley)
> writes:
> >
> > What is the real progress? Changing the name from rec.ham-radio to
> >rec.radio.amateur is not progress of any kind, much less "real". It is
> >just "change".
> >
>
> John, I have to ask how can a logical person say that a name change to
> better describe this group to tens of thousands of sites worldwide is
> not
> progress?
Whether it's 'progress' or not is truly beside the point. "Ham Radio" is our
traditional pet name for our hobby, and changing our hobby, especially
changing its name, to fit the needs of an external medium we use to discuss
it is to let the tail wag the dog. Sure we could do that, but the only ones
who would want to are the ones whose hobby is 'newsgrouping' rather than
'hamming'.
Law: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Corollary: Even if it's broke, I like it that way.
John Stanley
jim....@w8grt.fidonet.org (Jim Grubs) writes:
> > From: emcg...@ccad.uiowa.edu (Ed McGuire)
> >
> > Just curious. How widely understood is "ham" outside of the U.S.?
> > Outside of English speaking countries? Among non-hams in those
> > countries?
>
> Err, isn't that academic, considering r.h-r is in English anyway?
No. My dictionary (something a non-speaker might use to look up words)
gives a radio oriented definition for "ham", but nothing about radio for
"amateur". So, looking up "ham radio" would give the correct answer, while
looking up "amateur" would leave the poor fellow scratching his head.
However, it is claimed that renaming the group to r.r.a would make it
easier to find. This leaves me scracthing my head along with the other
fellow.
Ed McGuire
A. Woods VE3TCP) writes:
You point out that the term "radio ham" is understood by a growing
majority of non-amateur's. However this doesn't indicate the
connotations many non-operators associate with the term "radio ham".
In my experience, this term has no redeemable value with most
"non-hams". In fact I would argue the connotations are so negative
that we should do anything and everything we can to move to a more
neutral term, and to dispell the negative connotations associated with
Amateur Radio.
What are these negative connotations? I've never encountered them myself.
Jim Grubs
> From: wo...@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods)
> Date: 10 Dec 90 22:26:02 GMT
> Organization: Elegant Communications Inc.
> Message-ID: <1990Dec10.2...@eci386.uucp>
> Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave,rec.ham-radio,rec.ham-radio.packet,
> news.groups
>
> I think that the degree of "understanding" the average layman has of
> the term "radio ham" is the precise reason why we should adopt the
> term "amateur".
I don't think the average layman gives a hoot what we call ourselves and even
if they do, who cares? We should call ourselves what WE want to call
ourselves.
Speaking for myself, I have been quite happy calling myself a radio ham for
the last 40 years. When anyone asked what 'W8GRT' was, I said "My ham radio
call letters." Nobody ever came back with "What's a 'radio ham?'" A few
wanted to know if that was like a CB'er, but none wanted to know if that was
an actor or an advertized product on the radio. They ALL knew it was some
form of personal hobby two-way radio.
So, what's the big deal? Who needs changing the name of our hobby to fit some
cockamamey Usenet organization table?
Mark Laubach
Throwing my own two sparks into the fray, here's what I'd like to see:
rec.radio.amateur
Discussions about amateur radio, e.g. technical *and/or* legal.
A large percentage of any legal discussions will be technically
based. It will be hopelessly confusing to separate the two
and will result in endless cross postings. Since we as hams are
supposed to be using minimum power necessary to communicate, we
should not create a .legal group.
rec.radio.amateur.qst
Announcements only for special events, AMSAT, shuttle, prediction
bulletins, etc. These are important for everyone and should not
be buried in the discussions.
rec.radio.amateur.packet
Same as before.
rec.radio.amateur.swap
Same as before.
Mark
N3BMN
Mike Willis
>> > groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
>> > the service altogether.
>>
>> I can't imagine why an educational institution would have trouble with
>> anything to do with Amateur Radio! Maybe this shows how poor our PR is.
Frankly, our PR is very bad. Most achademics have a low view of radio
amateurs, or at least that is the impression I get. It is not a good idea
to pass on the information you are a radio amateur in some circumstances.
I think CB is to blame for this, at least in the UK.
>
> Not all groups deal with ham radio.
>
> Universities, in particular, have shown increasing concern about
>providing USEnet news to their students/staff. They are concerned about
>free speech issues and liability for racist or sexist remarks made in
>news systems they run. The admins are concerned about the net.flamage
>that a student/staff member can generate by posting things in poor taste.
>The PSU admin did not escape the flames when his site was guessed to be
>the source of a BIFF post. The admin of the site that sourced an explicit
>description of sex between the crew of the Enterprise is probably less
>than happy that his site has USEnet.
>
> If you worry about these things, the easiest thing to do is not carry
>ANY news.
This is very true. It is difficult to get any un-moderated groups, and the
undergraduates do not have access to the majority of news services. Also
the finance is of great concern. Hence, we do not see most of the Rec.*
articles here, simply as they are deleted when new stuff arrives. Every
Monday, somthing like this happens
130 unread articles in newsgroup Rec.ham-radio read(y/n)
skipping unavailable article
Article XXXX of newsgroup Rec.ham-radio (15 left),
r somthing like that. ie we lose 115 articles and only see the last 15. I
suspect this is common to many educational sites.
UKC does not pass on any of the alt.sex or alt.drugs newsgroups (not that
I would want to read them). Those who complain about people posting
uuencoded files to the net might consider that many UK sites do not have
any easy FTP access to overseas accouts. Remember, we are now a third
world economy (nearly)
73 Mike
-- if you need a disclaimer, it is time you sorted out your legal system.
Lenin.
John Stanley
al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
> In article <oHqVT...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> >
> > What is the real progress? Changing the name from rec.ham-radio to
>
> John, I have to ask how can a logical person say that a name change to
> better describe this group to tens of thousands of sites worldwide is not
> progress?
I see. Ham-radio is a rather specific term, which is probably pretty
well known worldwide. Amateur is a generic english word, which means, as a
first approximation, 'not professional'. Since dictionaries seem to mean
'final arbiter of all' to you, here are quotes, from The Living Webster:
"Amateur: One who cultivates any art or pursuit for the enjoyment of
it, instead of professionally or for gain, sometimes implying desultory
action or crude results." There is no mention of radio in this definition.
"Ham: (under a section of the definition labelled 'radio') a licensed
operator of an amateur radio station."
So, ham when applied to radio specifically determines the subject.
Amateur when applied to radio implies ANY non-professional activity
including radio.
Keep in mind, I am reading this as someone who does not know what ham
radio is, does not know English, and looks every new word up, which is the
basis for your claim for the change being good. Only those worldwide
beings who do not know what ham-radio is would benefit from the name
change. Sadly, if they don't know either ham or amateur, the dictionary
does not define radio.amateur as well as it does ham-radio, and they will
not benefit. They lose. This is a step backward.
Not an unreasonable occurence: "Hey, I run a pirate station in Greece,
but I don't do it professionally. I am an amateur user of radio, but I am
not a licensed amateur radio operator. If I saw radio.amateur and looked
it up I would guess I fit in. If I saw ham-radio, and looked it up, I
would know I don't."
Oh, then read the charter. That will clear things up. Well, the
current charter clears things up, too. So, if reading the charter is the
primary way of identifying groups, there is no reason to change.
> Merriam-Webster defines real as: Authentic, genuine, actual and true.
> Progress is defined as: To develop a higher, better or more advanced stage.
> How can you state that it is not progress of ANY kind? Are your criteria
> different than that of the international dictionary? If so, why?
Which section of your dictionary defines the name change of
rec.ham-radio as a higher, better, or more advanced stage? I happen to
use the same definition of progress as Mr. Webster. I just realize that
the name change is not a higher, better, or more advanced stage. It is
just different. Since it is not a h, b, or mas, it is not progress. That
is how I can say it is not progress of ANY kind. A chickadee is not a
cat, so I can say a chickadee is not ANY kind of cat.
And, as Mr. Webster has shown above, renaming will actually broaden the
definition of the group instead of clarifying it. This is a step backward.
> > Since there was an affirmative reply to the post of one site against
> >it, then there are obviously TWO sites. If there are TWO, then there are
> >probably more.
>
> Maybe not, and if so, so what? The majority consensus will prevail as define
> in the net rules established for creation of new groups. Two sites MAY be 2
> no votes if they even take the time to vote.
That comment was in the context of a claim that I was the only
objector. I pointed out that that statement was false. It shows the trend
in the arguments of the proposal supporters to make proveably false
statements. You have not proven it was true, so you argue into the wind.
It goes with the provably false argument that this change would involve
editing only one file.
> Since you obviously are not up to speed on group creation, removal etc, a
> short education is in order for you. Many sites have AUTOMATIC new group
> creation enabled. Those that do not, require a simple intervention by the
> news administrator.
Not all sites require a simple intervention. You make unwarranted
assumptions about the world. For someone at an easy site to claim that it
is easy everywhere is an insult to those who are at the difficult site.
> I am the news administrator at this site, so don't
> try to snow me with how difficult this all is!
You are an admin at an easy site. I am an admin at a difficult site.
Don't try to 'educate' me as to how easy it is, cause it ain't. The only
snow here is from those who have easy sites and don't like hyphens.
> > The only real change is the addition of a .rules or .legal subgroup,
> >which could be done WITHOUT any other name change.
>
> Wrong. See defininition of "real" above.
My entire statement is correct. Moving an entire tree enmass from one
parent to another involves no change in the tree. This name change is
exactly like mv'ing a directory that has subdirectories from one parent
to another. Nothing in the children changes. Only the full path changes,
but if you have trouble with files being in two children at the same
time, mv'ing the parent directory will not fix that.
> Sure it COULD be done without any other changes.
> If you are not going to change something with the goal to make it as near
> perfect as something man-made can be, why bother at all?
You are saying the renaming rec.ham-radio will make it as near perfect
as something man-made can be? Then those who took part in the Great Reorg,
who created rec.ham-radio, did not do their best? Of all the problems
people are having with ham-radio, this solves NONE of them, and makes it
less specific from the name what the group is about. Take two steps back.
> Do you approach all your projects with an attitude of why bother to do my bes
That is just silly. Claiming that renaming rec.ham-radio is the best
is just silly. It is one of those unsupportable, unsupported allegations
that keep getting tossed into the discussion.
> > Your post is yet another wild claim of perceived benefit with no
> >justification provided, and it the only utter nonsense here. I have asked
> >several times for a real justification for this change, and NOBODY has
> >answered. The only "reason" so far is "it's a new name". So what?
>
> The JUSTIFICATION was stated at the beginning of the reply as well as by
> numerous other posts on this subject. The only wild claims were made in
> your emotional original post and reply.
I did not make the original post. Are you sure I am who you think I
am?
The only justification given has been that 1) it makes the name
better, and 2) it makes the name less archaic.
1) was pretty well shot down by Mr. Webster. 2) is a personal opinion,
and has not been justified. Archaic is not bad, per se. "Ham-radio" (as a
hyphenated word) does not match any of the bad definitions of archaic.
> I've seen some negative posts in the last 4 years in this group.
Did you see the reply form Paul to my alternative proposal? That was
pretty negative, and certainly more negative than anything I have posted.
I keep asking for the reasons for the change, and I keep getting the same
unsupported claims and subjective analyses of how bad the name is. Nobody
can supply a reason that makes the effort worthwhile. I took those same
unsupported claims and generated a better proposal, one that included
groups for other amateur users of the spectrum (some that were explicitly
asked for in responses to the CALL but were ignored by the original
authors), and specified the name better, and got a two line pot shot in
return. That is being negative.
> You should be proud to be right up there with the worst of them, providing
> NO rational basis for your claims.
I was making the assumption that those I was talking with were
cognizant enough to realize that the whole world is not C news and UNIX,
and that some sites are more difficult to manage than others. That they
realized that 'difficult' and 'hard' are highly subjective terms, and that
what they perceive as easy is not easy for everyone. That different
procedures that achieve the same results at different places are not
necessarily all equivalent as to difficulty. That, perhaps, one person
saying 'this is not easy' would gently remind them of these facts, without
having to provide crossed-t's and dotted-i's and counts and statistics and
ad nauseum.
However, I see this belief is unjustified.
Not every site in the world runs UNIX and C News. There are alot of
VMS sites. There are alot of IBM VM/CMS sites. There are a lot of Xenix
sites. There are alot of PC sites. There are alot of 'you name them'
sites, that are not UNIX and not C news.
Not every site in the world feeds everything. Some sites take only
what they want. Some just physically couldn't handle the load. Some have
management limitations (cf. the recent post re: sci.ham-radio in
news.groups) that prevent full feeds. Some are allowing news as long as
it takes no work to maintain, or on a tentative footing (cf: the post
from the gentleman from the University who is in this situation). Most
sites provide feeds to others on a free basis. That means that any
changes requested by the feed fall at the bottom of the stack.
'Hard' and 'easy' are subjective terms. That means what is hard is
very much dependent on who is doing it. What is easy for you may be hard
for others. If this were not true, then we would all be UNIX gurus, and
make millions playing professional sports. A friend of mine is struggling
with an HP printer. I could set her up in about 5 minutes, but this is
for work and I don't work there. It is hard for her. If I said 'oh, that
is easy', that would be rude and insulting.
Since not every site in the world is the same, they don't all do the
same things in the same way. Some of the equivalent procedures may be
easy at your site, and not easy at another. Compare this with computer
languages. Complex arithmetic in FORTRAN is easy. Complex arithmetic in C
is not so easy. Both come out with the same results.
> You are guilty of the very same error
> you accuse me and others of making.
You are guilty of ignoring the variance in the world. I am guilty of
assuming you would know there WAS variance.
> This is an extremely inaccurate analogy.
It is extremely accurate. Renaming rec.ham-radio will obscure the fact
that it is for ham radio, just like rec.radio.noncomm seems to mean ANY
noncommercial radio. Renaming NYC to SBN will hide the fact that it is in
NY. Renaming r.h will not fix the problems with cross posts, or anything
else. Renaming NYC will not fix the roads or the potholes or the crime.
In both cases, you wind up with the same thing under another name.
> I never claimed that the name
> change would provide a solution to this groups problems. Maybe next time
<<important plot element follows>>
If the change does not provide a solution to this group's problems, then
WHY DO IT? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Change for change' sake is
not progress, it is chaos.
> you should spend as much time reading as you do wasting bandwith with
> inaccurate analogys, erroneous and inflamatory claims.
I would suggest that you think about what I write, and perhaps you
will catch the analogies and understand the claims the first time,
instead of making me dot all the i's and waste all the precious
bandwidth explaining everything twice.
John Stanley
wo...@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) writes:
> In article <1990Dec6.0...@EE.Surrey.Ac.UK> eep...@surrey.ac.uk (Mike W
> > I had enough difficulty getting the University to enable the current
> > groups, changing things just makes life difficult. We will probably lose
> > the service altogether.
>
> I can't imagine why an educational institution would have trouble with
> anything to do with Amateur Radio! Maybe this shows how poor our PR is.
Not all groups deal with ham radio.
Masahiro Kitagawa
I am against rec.radio.amature.*.
"Ham" is not just a slang or jargon. It has been widely recognized.
Preserve the term "ham", please !
73 de JH3PRR
*--- **** ***-- *--* *-* *-*
Masahiro Kitagawa
NTT Research Labs. Tokyo Japan
kita...@wave.ntt.jp
John Stanley
wo...@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) writes:
> I suspect that at one time people would have argued the term "amateur"
> had negative connotations. I doubt many sane people would do so now.
>
Oh? If you have a badly leaking water heater do you call an amateur
plumber? When you are deathly ill, do you go to an amateur doctor? If
you are involved in a law suit do you seek an amateur lawyer? Unless you
answered YES to all three, then you yourself harbor negative feelings toward
the word amateur.
am-a-teur n.
2. a person who does something without
professional skill
from the Webster's New World Dictionary, 1988. The Living Dictionary includes
a phrase something like "usually with crass connotations".
The main problem with the term amateur is it is not specific about amateur
what. Ham-radio is rather specific.
Jim Grubs
> From: sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley)
> Date: 12 Dec 90 00:08:43 GMT
> Organization: One Man Brand
> Message-ID: <99H2T...@phoenix.com>
> Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio
One of many scratching their heads right along with you is Masahiro Kitagawa
of the NTT Research Labs in Tokyo who sent me e-mail agreeing that all this
name changing talk is D U M B. Adding rec.ham-radio.legal is a good idea. The
rest of the proposed change should be dropped as one of those ideas that pop
up at 3 A.M. after eating tacos.
Gary Coffman
>In article <35...@jaytee.East.Sun.COM> ji...@east.sun.com (Jim Vienneau - Sun Microsystems) writes:
>>You've got to be kidding! Most of the postings technical? Only if you
>>consider questions about nocode, callsign projects, clean fists, club
>>stations, licensing procedures (aka Gorden West), Ham stacks, super
>>repeaters, radar detectors, *Camcoders*???, CB, QSL card dimentions,
>>reverse autopatches, flea markets, fees, numerous FCC comments, cyrillic?,
>>Herbie net, antenna restrictions, etc, etc, etc, technical?!. Yes, *PLEASE*
>>let's setup a .tech subgroup (works for rec.auto).
>
>There's more to ham radio than just technical subjects. The object of adding
>.legal and not .tech is to move the flames, not a subset of the non-flames. I
>am strongly opposed to a .tech group, and don't see the overwhelming consensus
>that one is needed that would change my mind.
Jim is dead on the money. A rec.ham-radio.tech or (gag) rec.radio.amateur.tech
is just what we need. The packet subgroup and the cries over the demise of
Ham Radio magazine demonstrates that there is a fairly large following for
technical discussion among the members of rec.ham-radio. Also a group with
a technical charter seems to avoid much of the flaming found in the base
group. I believe that the .legal proposed group would be a source of cross
posts to the base group and a subject of endless flame wars consisting of
"this belongs in legal" "no it doesn't, it effects us all" type exchanges.
The last thing we need is yet another subject to bicker about. Also almost
all of the "legal" rangling that prompted this group pertains to USA hams
only and should be distribution limited to US sites, preferably by a mailing
list not a full usenet group. Ham radio is a technical hobby first and formost
and deserves a tech group. A rec.ham-radio.misc can hold the remainder.
Gary KE4ZV
Ron Miller
> What are these negative connotations? I've never encountered them myself.
> --
> peace. -- Ed
"Oh! So *you're* the cause of my TV going on the blink!"
Talk to any ham with a large tower and beam. He'll tell you that the
neighbors think that the beam makes TVI worse, when, most likely,
it reduces it (because the radiating elements are being spaced from
the susceptible devices.).
In the '70's, it was common for hams to be blamed for CB mischief.
Ron
NW0U
Alan Ruffer
>
>Whether it's 'progress' or not is truly beside the point. "Ham Radio" is our
>traditional pet name for our hobby, and changing our hobby, especially
>changing its name, to fit the needs of an external medium we use to discuss
>it is to let the tail wag the dog. Sure we could do that, but the only ones
>who would want to are the ones whose hobby is 'newsgrouping' rather than
>'hamming'.
I guess your license says ham on it? Hmmm, funny mine doesn't, it says
Amateur. I don't think the discussion had anything to do with dogs. 8-)
A tree must bend with the wind or BREAK. So too we must be flexible, in our
choices, when having to deal with a medium external to our usual pusuits.
I'm somewhat at a loss to understand who gave you charge of defining
for others what their hobbys may or my not be though...
>Law: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This should be applied wherever possible. The problem is things are not
right or there never would have been a call for reorganization.
>
>Corollary: Even if it's broke, I like it that way.
>
This is a refuge for those without the initiative to make things better.
Jim Grubs
> From: al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer)
> Date: 14 Dec 90 04:04:29 GMT
> Organization: Perfect Partners Inc., Sulphur, LA
> Message-ID: <3...@adept.UUCP>
>
> I guess your license says ham on it? Hmmm, funny mine doesn't, it says
> Amateur.
The "penny" on my desk says "cent", too. So what?
> A tree must bend with the wind or BREAK.
In a storm, yes. Any storm here is a figment of the imagination.
> So too we must be flexible, in
> our
> choices, when having to deal with a medium external to our usual
> pusuits.
Ah, but we don't HAVE to deal with this external medium. We particularly
don't HAVE to rename ourselves to suit it. It's all a matter of OUR personal
preference. I don't recall any messages from the Lord High Poobah of
Newsgroups saying, "OK, you turkies, we need to change the name of that
thing!"
> I'm somewhat at a loss to understand who gave you charge of defining
> for others what their hobbys may or my not be though...
I didn't decide it. I just saw it and pointed it out.
> This should be applied wherever possible. The problem is things are not
> right or there never would have been a call for reorganization.
Wrong. Some people just don't know when to leave well enough alone.
> This is a refuge for those without the initiative to make things better.
Ah, now who's deciding things for others?
Jay Maynard
> Another one. I see most of the posting support a name indicating that
>legal is not the best name for this group. Is the proposer listening?
Well, I'm listening as best as I can, given a machine that's been sporadic in
receiving news the past week or two...
Tell you what. Come up with a name that describes the intended traffic as well
as .legal, and is more inclusive than .rules, .regs, or .regulations, and I'll
adopt it. Fair enough?
John Stanley
al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
> I guess your license says ham on it? Hmmm, funny mine doesn't, it says
> Amateur. I don't think the discussion had anything to do with dogs. 8-)
Mine says neither rec.ham-radio nor rec.radio.amateur. It does use the
word "license". If what the license says is what we should use, then the
group name should be amateur.radio.license.
> >Law: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
>
> This should be applied wherever possible. The problem is things are not
> right or there never would have been a call for reorganization.
The name is not broken. Don't fix it. The structure is broken. Fix that.
Changing the name is not chaging the structure.
> >Corollary: Even if it's broke, I like it that way.
> >
> This is a refuge for those without the initiative to make things better.
There is still no evidence that renaming the group will make it better.
Look up the word "ham". Look up the word "amateur". See which definition
talks about radio. See which one doesn't.
Jay Maynard
>jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>> (Side note: Please make sure that discussion is posted to news.groups as well
>> as rec.ham-radio. This is required by the Guidelines for Newsgroup Creation.)
> Unfortunately, it is not possible to do that here. Guidelines is
>guidelines, not law. In this case, they can't be followed.
Your software is broken if it can't cross-post. I suggest you get it fixed.
The purpose of having discussion in news.groups is to make sure that those
who pay attention to newsgroup issues have all of the issues brought out
for their perusal. If you don't post there, you won't convince them.
Phil Howard KA9WGN
>Tell you what. Come up with a name that describes the intended traffic as well
>as .legal, and is more inclusive than .rules, .regs, or .regulations, and I'll
>adopt it. Fair enough?
What is the intended traffic?
I think we clearly want all discussion of FCC rules in there.
But what about:
1. Proposed rules and petitions to the FCC?
2. NPRM's issued by the FCC?
3. Local antenna/tower issues, laws, covenants.
4. Scanner laws and related issues?
5. Bandplans and other operating agreements?
6. Repeater coordination?
The name .regs or .regulations seems to be way too narrow. Also .fcc would
be equally too narrow.
The name .legal seems to exclude 5 and 6.
The name .rules seems to but somewhat vague but does seem to be broader.
If we can converge on just WHAT we want in the subgroup then maybe the
NAME of the subgroup will come out of that.
--
--Phil Howard, KA9WGN-- | Individual CHOICE is fundamental to a free society
<ph...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> | no matter what the particular issue is all about.
Jay Maynard
(What is the intended traffic?)
>1. Proposed rules and petitions to the FCC?
>2. NPRM's issued by the FCC?
>3. Local antenna/tower issues, laws, covenants.
>4. Scanner laws and related issues?
>5. Bandplans and other operating agreements?
>6. Repeater coordination?
All of the above. _Anything_ having to do with what can and cannot be done,
or should and should not be done, in the world of ham radio.
>The name .legal seems to exclude 5 and 6.
Not when you consider that both have been given legal weight by the FCC.
John Stanley
jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
> In article <DuyyT...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> >jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
> >> (Side note: Please make sure that discussion is posted to news.groups as w
> >> as rec.ham-radio. This is required by the Guidelines for Newsgroup Creatio
> > Unfortunately, it is not possible to do that here. Guidelines is
> >guidelines, not law. In this case, they can't be followed.
>
> Your software is broken if it can't cross-post. I suggest you get it fixed.
That's a hoot. I have seen exactly the opposite opinion regarding
cross posting to groups not carried. Your software is broken if it
allows you to post to groups that you have no way of reading. That was
from someone with whom I was not involved in a discussion of any sort,
much less on opposite sides. I tend to believe his opinion over someone
who would grasp at straws to denigrate an opponent.
I have since added news.groups. It is sort of a waste, don't you
think? Since every post here shows up in rec.ham-radio (or is supposed
to, according to The Net Gospel), I now have twice the space used for
the rec.ham-radio reorg messages, plus all the other discussions. Too
bad some people can't live outside their precious 'guidelines'.
Jay Maynard
>jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>> Your software is broken if it can't cross-post. I suggest you get it fixed.
> That's a hoot. I have seen exactly the opposite opinion regarding
>cross posting to groups not carried. Your software is broken if it
>allows you to post to groups that you have no way of reading. That was
>from someone with whom I was not involved in a discussion of any sort,
>much less on opposite sides. I tend to believe his opinion over someone
>who would grasp at straws to denigrate an opponent.
Oh, I'm sorry. I expected that, since your site is on Usenet, that it would
carry the groups that discuss Usenet itself - news.*. How foolish of me.
Please feel free to continue in your ignorance - after all, ignorance is
bliss, and you certainly appear to want to avoid being unhappy.
> I have since added news.groups. It is sort of a waste, don't you
>think? Since every post here shows up in rec.ham-radio (or is supposed
>to, according to The Net Gospel), I now have twice the space used for
>the rec.ham-radio reorg messages, plus all the other discussions. Too
>bad some people can't live outside their precious 'guidelines'.
Adding news.groups wastes *nothing*, as does any crosspost. The
article is neither transmitted twice nor stored twice on disk. It does
allow those who follow the group creation process to weigh *all* of the
issues before casting a vote. Further, the guidelines - which you show
such disdain for - were designed to minimize the possibility that changes
would be made that did not reflect the true wishes of the users and admins
of the net. Failure to follow them would doom the reorganization effort,
as there are many people who automatically vote against any proposal that
violates them...or is this your intent - to torpedo a proposal that you
obviously dislike in this backhanded manner?
John Stanley
jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
> In article <5LDau...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> >jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
> [in reply to John's comment that he can't cross-post to news.groups]
> >> Your software is broken if it can't cross-post. I suggest you get it fixed
> > That's a hoot. I have seen exactly the opposite opinion regarding
> >cross posting to groups not carried. Your software is broken if it
> Oh, I'm sorry. I expected that, since your site is on Usenet, that it would
> carry the groups that discuss Usenet itself - news.*. How foolish of me.
The topic was not whether carrying news.groups is good. It was about
the ability to post to groups that may not exist. You make the claim
that my software is broken because it will not let me post to a group it
thinks is non-existant (and if it is not in the active file, it isn't).
I would claim that any posting software that does not stop you from
posting to a group that might not exist, and you certainly couldn't read
responses from, is broken.
Argue the topic and not some sarcastic clap-trap.
> Please feel free to continue in your ignorance - after all, ignorance is
> bliss, and you certainly appear to want to avoid being unhappy.
And you miss the very next line that says I have since added
news.groups. In fact, it is the major point of the next paragraph. Did
you 'ignore' that? Are you blissful? Do you feel better fighting an
ad-hominum war -- that is what you seem to want. You started it.
> > I have since added news.groups. It is sort of a waste, don't you
> >think? Since every post here shows up in rec.ham-radio (or is supposed
>
> Adding news.groups wastes *nothing*, as does any crosspost.
Any article appearing in news.groups that is not cross posted uses
disk space, on ANY system. Any article appearing in news.groups that is
cross posted to comp.sys.amiga or rec.nude DOES waste both space and
bandwidth on THIS system, as neither of these groups is carried here.
> The article is neither transmitted twice nor stored twice on disk.
At your site, cross posts are not stored twice on disk. At my site they
are. You are making a blanket claim about all sites when I am making specific
claims about this one. Unless you know all sites, and can convince me that my
site does not behave the way I know it does, you are just plain WRONG. Take
a moment and consider that not all sites are the same, and, just maybe, I am
correct in saying that discussions re:rec.ham-radio take up twice the space
on this system now that I have added news.groups. Would that kill you?
> ...or is this your intent - to torpedo a proposal that you
> obviously dislike in this backhanded manner?
In the same manner you try to torpedo my objections by making false
claims about my system when you know nothing anything about it?
If you want to continue the ad-hominum battle you started, take it
to mail.
Alan Ruffer
>al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
>> I guess your license says ham on it? Hmmm, funny mine doesn't, it says
>> Amateur.
>word "license". If what the license says is what we should use, then the
>group name should be amateur.radio.license.
This is the only part I am reccomending.
Lets not TWIST everything that I've said here, as you have a habit of
doing.
I was merely pointing out that the license says AMATEUR not ham.
>> >Law: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
>>
>> This should be applied wherever possible. The problem is things are not
>> right or there never would have been a call for reorganization.
>
> The name is not broken. Don't fix it. The structure is broken. Fix that.
> Changing the name is not chaging the structure.
I'm not saying the name is broken here...
It's just not as descriptive as it should be.
As part of the structure enhancement rec.radio.amateur.satellite might do
some good towards the end of distributing some of the traffic.
>> >Corollary: Even if it's broke, I like it that way.
>> This is a refuge for those without the initiative to make things better.
> There is still no evidence that renaming the group will make it better.
There is no evidence it WON'T make it better either.
Jim Grubs
> From: jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard)
> Date: 15 Dec 90 15:12:42 GMT
> Organization: University of Texas Medical School at Houston
> Message-ID: <44...@lib.tmc.edu>
> Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio
>
> Tell you what. Come up with a name that describes the intended traffic
> as well
> as .legal, and is more inclusive than .rules, .regs, or .regulations,
> and I'll
> adopt it. Fair enough?
rec.ham-radio.policy.
Jim Grubs
> From: jmay...@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu (Jay Maynard)
> Date: 17 Dec 90 00:29:39 GMT > Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio,news.groups
>
> Oh, I'm sorry. I expected that, since your site is on Usenet, that it
> would
> carry the groups that discuss Usenet itself - news.*. How foolish of me.
> bliss, and you certainly appear to want to avoid being unhappy.
Chill out. Some of us pay for our line charges and connect time ourselves
rather than freloading on the taxpayers or an employer. Moreover, some of us
have as little as ten megs total disk space. Such folk are seldom inclined to
import any newsgroups they don't have a passionate interest in.
John Stanley
al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
> In article <VyL9T...@phoenix.com> sta...@phoenix.com (John Stanley) write
> >al...@adept.UUCP (Alan Ruffer) writes:
> >> I guess your license says ham on it? Hmmm, funny mine doesn't, it says
> >> Amateur.
> > Mine says neither rec.ham-radio nor rec.radio.amateur. It does use the
> >word "license". If what the license says is what we should use, then the
> >group name should be amateur.radio.license.
> ^^^^^^^
> I was merely pointing out that the license says AMATEUR not ham.
And I was pointing out it says a lot more than just Amateur. Don't trot
out the license as support for changing the name and then ignore the rest
of it.
> > The name is not broken. Don't fix it. The structure is broken. Fix that.
> > Changing the name is not chaging the structure.
>
> I'm not saying the name is broken here...
> It's just not as descriptive as it should be.
Look up the words. Ham is better than amateur at describing the hobby.
> As part of the structure enhancement rec.radio.amateur.satellite might do
> some good towards the end of distributing some of the traffic.
But there has been NO suggestion of r.r.a.s. You are right --
changing the structure will distribute the traffic. The ONLY structure
change is adding the .legal subgroup, which is NOT dependent on changing
anything else. Adding r.h.l will have the same effect as changing the
name and adding r.r.a.l, with less work for all.
> > There is still no evidence that renaming the group will make it better.
>
> There is no evidence it WON'T make it better either.
If there is no evidence either way, why bother to do it at all?
P.S. Alan - your system is mis-configured. It is delivering mail to the
wrong places and abusing net resources. Fortunately, I was able to stop
mine from automatically correcting your error and resending it. You
should fix yours, I might not catch it next time.