HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
Subject: Re: Beals - Third Strike
Newsgroups: news.admin
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: Amiga Yarn 2.0, 1992/06/25 01:41:36
Keywords: 
Summary: 
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:22:20 PST
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica

In <1992Jul23.000223.9571@oracle.us.oracle.com>, rchilder@us.oracle.com (Richard Childers) wrote:
> mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer) writes:
> 
> >bengtl@maths.lth.se (Bengt Larsson) wrote:
> >> Re: cancelling other people's articles out of personal whim: this is wrong.
> 
> >So what does this have to do with what Andy did?
>
> Mike, if you want to keep defending bandy, have at it. But your motives are
> questionable, to me.

That would be a good trick, considering I haven't started defending
him. All I've done is pointed out that what he intended to do was less
obnoxious than what the habits he was trying to deal with, and that
what he actually did was at about the same level.

I've also specifically stated what he did wrong.

If you think that means I'm defending him, I'd appreciate you working
for the defense if I hever have to go to court.

	<mike
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: lwj@cs.kun.nl (Luc Rooijakkers)
Subject: Re: 1 meg article size limit
Summary: use MIME
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 07:27:32 GMT

In <158tisINNdfi@rodan.UU.NET> kyle@rodan.UU.NET (Kyle Jones) writes:

>I agree about "real" articles, but it's about time to look into
>putting article splitting and reassembly in the
>batcher/unbatcher.  There are legitimate uses for large articles,
>and I'm tiring of figuring out what new way someone has divised
>to split, compress and binhex their source/binary/graphics/audio
>posting.

There is an easy way out of this: use the fragmentation/reassembly and
encoding parts of MIME. To get this widely deployed, we need

	1) A simple defragger program for saved news articles.
	   This actually means a partial MIME reader; perhaps metamail
	   can serve this purpose? Someone want to create a "metanews"?
	   
	2) A simple fragmenting program to complement the above.

	4) MIME support in the most widely used newsreaders.
	   This could be full supports, but could also be as simple as
	   adding metanews hooks.
	   
	5) Automatic fragmentation of articles during posting and/or
	   transmission. Should we get this added to C-news?
	   
	6) Education, to get the people to use the new standard format.
	   This is actually the hardest part.

MIME is an extension of RFC 822, basically defining a Content-Type header
and lots of content types, among others plain text, rich text (bold
etc), audio, multipart, etc.  As a bonus, we would also get news support
for multimedia things. Anyone want to start implementation? :-)

MIME-capable mail software is available today. It is available
fully-integrated for Mh and Andrew and lots of other systems can support
metamail, which gives them at least reading functionality.

References (for those who have never heard of MIME or metamail):

	MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) - Mechanisms for
	Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies,
	N. Borenstein, RFC 1344, June 1992.

	Implications of MIME for Internet Mail Gateways, N. Borenstein &
	N. Freed, RFC 1341, June 1992.

	Adding Diverse Multimedia Format Support to Established RFC822
	Mail and Bulletin Board Readers, N. Borenstein, mailers.txt from
	the metamail distribution.

	Metamail distribution, available by anonymous FTP from
	thumper.bellcore.com as /pub/nsb/mm.tar.Z and from
	ftp.funet.fi as /pub/unix/mail/metamail/mm.tar.Z.

--
Luc Rooijakkers                                 Internet: lwj@cs.kun.nl
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science     UUCP: uunet!cs.kun.nl!lwj
University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands         tel. +3180652271
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: eggert@twinsun.com (Paul Eggert)
Subject: nonconforming news Message-IDs of last week
Organization: Twin Sun, Inc
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 18:47:44 GMT

Here is a list of Message-IDs discarded by twinsun's news software last week
because they do not conform to the Internet RFC 1036 and RFC 822 standards.
If a Message-ID from your site is on this list,
your news or mail software is probably broken and should get fixed.
The headings describe the probable reason for nonconformance.

(unknown cause)

	<920716091556991-MTAJLUG:>

	<19920702.180059.967@almaden.ibm.>

	<dbehr@cs.up.ac.za.15.711308458@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za>

	<rfries.73@fries_Robert@ub.ub.com>
	<rfries.77@fries_Robert@ub.ub.com>

	<maurice.steyvers@ica.1.711386572@rulimburg.nl>

	<20110001@.grenoble.hp.com>
	<2910001@.grenoble.hp.com>
	<2910002@.grenoble.hp.com>
	<2920001@.grenoble.hp.com>

	<2793954841@>

C News (pre-1992) configuration botch

	<1992Jul20.093655.17692@.crihan.fr>

	<1992Jul15.035729.2456@athena.cs.>

	<1992Jul15.140200.22146@dialogic.>

NewsWatcher 1.3d1 (obsolete)

	<sutton-160792083654@attitude.aero.org.>

	<jw-160792083335@jwmac.mitre.org.>

	<pete-140792141901@mac110.ugadm.nwu.edu.>

	<Barb_Turney-180792161508@mac84021.educ.ualberta.ca.>

	<mwalker-150792153248@mwalker1.npd.provo.novell.com.>
	<mwalker-160792125243@mwalker1.npd.provo.novell.com.>
	<SoRHS.org-150792083739@mwalker1.npd.provo.novell.com.>
	<SoRHS.org-150792084421@mwalker1.npd.provo.novell.com.>

	<jtkrauss-170792144939@padre.princeton.edu.>

	<pallone-140792105209@pi.dev.upenn.edu.>

	<white-140792113442@sylviac.concordia.ca.>

NNR (obsolete version)

	<92196.16:40:50.414686.BWWL@IBM.RZ.TU-CLAUSTHAL.DE>

	<92202.14:48:10.100967.BP1@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
	<92202.15:36:35.454936.BP1@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
	<92202.15:47:36.953554.L58@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>

sendmail configuration botch + mail-to-news gateway botch

	<9207162132.AA09266@.doelztc.timeplex.com>

	<9207141344.AA06036@uk0x06.ggr.gri.com.>
From: jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Line)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Request for ideas - news spool dumping strategy
Date: 22 Jul 92 23:17:40 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

I am in the process of setting up a news server, and with a 1GB spool
partition (which is already looking too small! - also includes the C-news
control files) and no local tape drive, it's not clear what we can or should do
about dumping the spool to tape to allow recovery in the event of hardware
failure or software running wild (mis-edited expiry definitions?).

Though I've heard that many sites treat the news spool as volatile - if the
disk dies, tough luck - my personal feeling is that a large enough proportion
of the information will be considered too important to lose by the users
(user population = entire university) that we really ought to aim not to start
from scratch every time anything goes wrong - our clients would get too upset
at missing recent news in their favourite groups. [My concern is especially
high at present after the spool partition self-destructed last week, for no
obvious reason, during a routine system reboot - platform is Sun 4/390 & SunOS
4.1.2 - with C-news and NNTP 1.5.11.]

Dumping of the other partitions is done to a remote EXABYTE (low density,
EXB8200), but the overnight dump cycle is also dealing with several gigabytes
of disk from 3 other 4/390 servers, which are about to have a big increases in
disk capacity.

The person responsible for the dumping feels that the turnover rate of the news
spool data (about 30-40MB/day, even though we only get around 1500 newsgroups
here in Britain compared to maybe double that number (?) in the USA) is just
too much for him to fit this into our standard dump procedures, which involve
using a single tape (unattended, overnight) for daily incrementals (since the
last weekly or full dump) - towards the end of the week, that could mean 0.25GB
of news data, and that probably wouldn't fit (predictably) along with the daily
incrementals from the other partitions/systems. A second EXABYTE drive handles
weekly and monthly dumps.

So: it has been suggested I should find out what (if anything) other news
server sites do about dumping the news spool contents, and any related issues
that I ought to be aware of.

I was tempted to say "send me mail and I'll summarise", as there's likely to be
a lot of overlap, but I guess that's not in the USENET style. Instead, I'll
just suggest that before posting a followup you check if someone else has
already described a similar scheme, so that you can save your time and the
net's bandwidth by avoiding duplication. (You could send me mail if you want
add support or fine details to something already posted, I suppose.)

                                John
-- 
John Line - Cambridge University Computing Service, Computer Laboratory,
            New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, ENGLAND.
Internet: jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk  JANET: jml4@uk.ac.cam.cus  Phone: +44 223 334708
Xref: sparky news.admin:6001 comp.org.eff.talk:4729 misc.legal.computing:1407
From: jim@ferkel.ucsb.edu (Jim Lick)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 21:23:06 GMT

In <136@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
>It is not the medium, but the usage.  Backing up to a CD-ROM (ok, WORM)
>would not be wrong.  Selling copies of the magtape for profit would be.

I seem to recall that UUNET used to or still is selling news to special
people (FBI or CIA or something like that) who are unable to receive
it through other means.

                            Jim Lick		       
Work: University of California	| Play: 1236 Camino Meleno
      Santa Barbara		|       Santa Barbara, CA 93111-1007
      Dept. of Mechanical Engr. |	(805) 964-2088 voice/msg
      2311 Engr II Building     |	(805) MUD-SPY1 data
      (805) 893-4113            |       jim@case.isla-vista.ca.us
      jim@ferkel.ucsb.edu	| This article is freely distributable
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.sex.bondage
From: greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield)
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Organization: Syracuse University, CIS Dept.
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 23:30:47 EDT

In article <711770390@romeo.cs.duke.edu> ggw@duke.cs.duke.edu (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes:
>
>Brad, the "lurker factor" is huge.  On my system, there are 15 users with
>currently in use ".newsrc" files, indicating that they are reading the
>materials.  The number of active posters from this site is only 4.
>
>When I had news administrative access on the university public UNIX box a
>few years ago, the lurk factor was on the order of 180:25 (out of >2000)
>active accounts.

Well, it's nice to know that big brother is watching!


>This has been one of the main advantages of netnews.  Since the luirk
>factors are generally high in most media (viz letters to the editor of a
>daily newspaper)  netnews is an effective way to allow folks who want to
>listen to discussions without having to make their own comments to do so.

But apparently not with anonymity, eh?

-- 
J. S. Greenfield                                         greeny@top.cis.syr.edu
(I like to put 'greeny' here, 
but my d*mn system wants a 
*real* name!)                        "What's the difference between an orange?"
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 02:55:03 GMT
Organization: D'Arcy Cain Consulting

jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews) writes:
>     What "idea" is contained in "Cindy's Torment"?  It's a
>piece of violent erotica.  You can't argue with it because it
>doesn't present any arguments; it just affects you by pressing
>sexual buttons, which are not subject to rational thought.

Sexual buttons?  What are those?  Are you saying that there are certain
things that just viewing them causes rational thought to stop and some
sort of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing to happen?  Is this something that you
are personally aware of or is it only those mythical "others" that this
happens to?

Just curious.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid.com)  |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting              |   There's no government
Toronto, Ontario, Canada            |   like no government!
+1 416 424 2871          DoD#0082   |
From: kyle@rodan.UU.NET (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: 1 meg article size limit
Date: 30 Jul 1992 10:15:56 -0400
Organization: UUNET Communications
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
 > But I cannot see any reason for a 1 meg "real" article to be
 > treated as anything more than an extreme exception.

I agree about "real" articles, but it about time to look into
putting article splitting and reassembly in the
batcher/unbatcher.  There are legitimate uses for large articles,
and I'm tiring of figuring out what new way someone has divised
to split, compress and binhex their source/binary/graphics/audio
posting.

Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.sex.bondage,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 00:11:49 GMT

People who do insist on talking to the press on such issues, by the way,
should put a lot of caveats in place before using Brian Reid's numbers
for USENET size.   There are a lot of assumptions in these numbers, and
we don't really know how accurate they are.  One measurement I did
a few years ago pegged them as probably 3-5 times too large.  Other
measurements have given different results.  Nobody can be sure.

However, if people are doing negative articles about USENET, and any
article on alt.sex.bondage is 99% likely to be a negative article,
there is no need to use numbers we don't even know are right to
pump up the significance of the "problem" for them.

The only hard number we have is that under 6,000 people have posted
anonymously or even REPLIED BY MAIL to anonymous postings on
alt.sex.bondage.  And that should be reduced by those who have been
re-assigned aliases.   If there are 120,000 readers, than the lurk
factor of people who have done nothing but read -- no posting, no
e-mail replies, is huge.

However, remember that NO STORY which decides to take alt.sex.bondage as
its focus, even a story that corrects negative impressions from a previous
story, is going to be a positive story for USENET.   Even if the story
is balanced -- and the Globe's story was remarkably balanced -- it will
not send a positive message to most readers.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Subject: Re: Changing follow up ( was Re: Can We Get Off This ^#$! Subject?
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:57:20 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

According to jj@alice.UUCP (jj, curmudgeon and general grouch):
>Doing anything devious with the "followup" line is simple net.terrorism.

I think this analogy's bogosity rates on the order of one gilley:
terrorists kill many innocent bystanders to achieve their goals.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
   "Do Rush place weird subliminal backmasked messages in their songs to
 compel unwilling geeks to commit evil .sig atrocities?"  -- Dean Engelhardt
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: aggarwal@tigger.jvnc.net (Vikas Aggarwal)
Subject: Receiving news via email and injecting into the newsflow
Summary: NEEDED: script to control access for news -email gateway
Originator: aggarwal@r2d2.jvnc.net
Keywords: recenews email
Organization: JvNCnet
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 15:37:49 GMT

To clarify what I want to do...

I wanted a 'recenews' (distributed in the Cnews distribution) kind of
script so that  *selected* sites could simply email news batches/articles 
to my server, and thus inject the articles into the news flow (via my
inews).

Kind of like UUCP's rnews, but instead, injecting news via internet
mail. NOTE that this is different from a mailnews gateway.

the way I was thinking of preventing abuse of this kind of gateway,
was to have a 'recenews_access' file (similar to the nntp_access in
a way), which would look at the hostname of the sender of the news
batch email, and decide if it should be allowed or not.

Does anyone have such a script ?

As for *why* I want this capability- for dialin users using 'ka9q' (for
example). This has a nice NNTP reader, but no posting. This capability
would allow users to create news articles on their PC and then email
it off to 'recenews@my-newsserver'. My 'recenews' would pipe the mail
thru a script which would look at the sender to verify that the message
is from a valid host.

Thanks, and comments welcome.

	-vikas
	vikas@jvnc.net
	..rutgers!jvncnet!vikas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: tk0jut1@mp.cs.niu.edu (jim thomas)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 03:16:57 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.234956.29190@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:


 
>I say, bring on the stuff that's worth paying for but which is donated
>for one-time use only.   Blocking it seems like a silly thing to do.
>"We won't accept your gift unless it's on our terms and is universally
>given to everybody forever."   What a strange attidude to advocate.
 
Posting to Usenet is akin to speaking on a box in Hyde Park. Regardless 
of what the speaker intends, he/she is speaking in a public forum and
the speech/posts may generally be reproduced. Usenet contributions are
public comments in a public forum. Reposting snippets of comments 
fall within the fair use doctrine. The passionate advocacy of those
who wish to own their own words even in an international public forum
cannot change that.
 
A gift given with conditions is no gift. A gift given with conditions
that both violate permissable use of the gift and impose idiosyncratic
conditions is a curse. What a strange attitude to advocate otherwise.
 
If speakers intend for speech to remain private, then they should 
reconsider speaking in public forums. 
 
Jim Thomas
From: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk (Neil Readwin)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Changing follow up ( was Re: Can We Get Off This ^#$! Subject?
Date: 29 Jul 92 23:01:16 GMT
Organization: Micrognosis, London, UK.

In article <5783@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil>, rpwhite@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (rpwhite) writes:
|> Let's face facts:
|> 
|>           NO ONE POSTS ACCIDENTALLY TO MISC.TEST

For all definitions of 'ACCIDENTALLY' which are useful in this context this
is stuff and nonsense.

|> Ever seen this before?:
|> 
|>  This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
|>  civilized world.  You message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of
|>  dollars to send everywhere.  Please be sure you know what you are doing.

Yep. Back in the days when I used rn I saw it all the time. Now I use xrn
and I never get told these things.

|> It takes a definite, positive response in order to post.

Wrong. Not everybody uses Pnews to post stuff.

|> Followup-To: news.admin,talk.bizarre,alt.newbie,misc.test,alt.test

No, I don't think I will.
-- 
 Phone: +44 71 528 8282  E-mail: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk
 Anything is a cause for sorrow that my mind or body has made
From: Paul.Fortman@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Paul Fortman)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: hiding sex info from minors (was: "Computers graphic when it comes...)
Date: 27 Jul 92 02:39:20 GMT
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service


     In article <JBW.92Jul26000243@bigbird.bu.edu> jbw@bigbird.bu.edu 
     (Joe Wells) writes:

     I find censorship of anything at any time for any reason to be wrong,
     immoral, and evil.

I agree.

*Pooh Bare

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  bbs.oit.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
From: dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: article size limit
Date: 21 Jul 92 16:00:28 GMT
Organization: Columbia University, Dept. of Biological Sciences.

In article <iFVuNB25w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
>dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>
>Yes, there are good reasons for limiting articles to a certain size. 
>
>There exist plenty of systems which will fall over if an article bigger than
>x kilobytes hits them.  Unfortunately, in my experience alone x ranges from
>around 8 to 32000.
>
>However, x = 64 is generally the accepted limit.  It's also a pretty
>reasonable limit, unlikely to inconvenience many posters.
>
    I'm still wondering if it really is a big enough problem to worry about.
There is a person (or several, I haven't kept track) posting to an as yet
unnamed newsgroup without obeying this limit. When this happened before
(I remember it from a few years ago), there was a chorus of objection. Recently
there has been not a peep. And since the poster has not stopped, I presume that
they are not being barraged with e-mail.

DanZ

-- 
This article is for entertainment purposes only. Any facts, opinions,
narratives or ideas contained herein are not necessarily true, and do
not necessarily represent the views of any particular person.  
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: bogstad@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (Bill Bogstad)
Subject: Re: Copyrights on netnews articles
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:09:17 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.164124.2202@wolves.uucp> news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den) writes:
>In article <1992Jul28.050144.17029@gtephx.UUCP> forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:
>>
>>I strongly and courteously suggest that you read all the posts
>>in news.announce.newuser before posting again.  What applies here
>>is not copyright laws, but the terms and conditions of the contract
>>in which you have freely entered.  
>
>There is NO contract, because there is NO ENTITY with whom you are
>contracting.  Usenet is not an entity in any legally defined sense, and
>there is no way for you to contract with it.
>
>And again, Chuq's "Primer" is merely opinion, not law or fact.

	You might not have an (implied) contract with an entity called
"USENET"; but you might have one with the owners/operators of each one of
the sites which distributes your articles.  They give you permission to use
their machine for copying (with certain restrictions which MIGHT include
allow them to pass your article on) while you provide them with the contents
of your article.  I think both parties have received value in the
transaction so it might be enforceable.  Instead of dealing with implicit
permission to copy, we now have an implied contract.  The question is what
are the terms of the implied contract.  Well, some people are saying they
include the right to copy and distribute the article freely in any
electronic (or other?) media as long as credit is given to the original
author.  Others don't want to give out those kinds of rights when they
post.  Can anybody comment on what happens when the parties of an implied
contract disagree on its terms?  What would it take to protect my site in
such a case?  Would my site posting our implied contract terms once a month
to some newsgroup be sufficient?

				Bill Bogstad
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Date: 23 Jul 92 11:49:15 GMT
Organization: Taronga Park BBS

In article <136@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
>It is not the medium, but the usage.  Backing up to a CD-ROM (ok, WORM)
>would not be wrong.  Selling copies of the magtape for profit would be.

Why? People sell Usenet feeds, and in various times and places Usenet has
indeed been fed via magtape. The CDROM is just another Usenet feed.
-- 
                                                                `-_-'
                         Have you hugged your wolf today?        'U`

Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX  +1 713 568 0480/1032