HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kevinl@dec17.cs.monash.edu.au (Kevin Lentin)
Subject: Re: Questions (one or two of 'em)
Followup-To: aus.sf,aus.tv
Organization: Computer Science, Monash University, Australia
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 06:01:30 GMT

Anestis Kozakis <Rez> (rez@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
> OK, here's a few questions in regards to a couple of shows showing here
> in aus lately.

> 1> "Something is out there". I've just started watching it. Can somebody
> please tell me the basic plot to this series? (e-mail'll do nicely).

It's back on? When when when when?
The story is that she is an alien who came from a ship in space that had a
big monster on it that was coming to earth and then they saved the world.
He's a cop. They fell in love. She makes love through her hands, can't
understand why he was uncomfortable when she kept on walking around with no
clothes because 'we've seen each others' hands'

> 2> What is it about British actresses in american series that make the
> shows much more enjoyable and watchable? What kind of an appeal do they
> have? (ref. "Max Headroom" and "The Flash" -- Amanda Pays(sp?) and
> "Something is Out There" - Whatever her name is!)

Something different I suppose. Her name is Miryam D'Abo I believe (sp?) She
was in the Living Daylights with Timothy Dalton.

> 3> If the people who were clamouring for a 7:30 pm timeslot of Star
> Trek:The Next Gen, it would have been cancelled due to the cricket. As
> it is, The cricket breaks tonight for news and Star Trek:The Next Gen.
> What have you got to say for yourselves now?

More likely, it breaks for the News and ends for the Cricket :-) Back when
ST:TNG _was_ at 7:30 we missed quite a few episodes due to cricket. In many
of these cases, the State where the cricket was being held _did_ see an
episode. I wonder if the other states ever saw those episodes - there were
many non-MCG games when when missed an episode in Melbourne but Sydney etc
saw it.
From: kav@hpausla.OZ (John Kavadias)
Newsgroups: aus.sf
Subject: Re: Isn't anyone READING anymore?
Date: 20 Dec 92 12:23:27 GMT
Organization: Open Software Associates Limited
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

I am. 8-)

Recently read "Days of Atonement" by Walter Jon Williams.

High tech research outfit is set up outside the small New Mexico
town of Atocha. Joint venture firm set up by several global corps,
sharing the risk and reward of high energy physics research.

The Atocha Chief of Police, a good 'ole boy, is at odds with the
head of security for the research facility, an ex-special forces
type.

It all starts when a John Doe drives a stolen BMW right up to the
police station and dies on their floor. The Chief of Police is
upset by the fact that Doe looks exactly like a man he saw die
after a car accident 20 years earlier.

Things get interesting when the local power brokers and research
station security try to prevent investigation of the murder.

Other WJW books are "Hardwired", "Voice of the Whirlwind" and
"Angel Station". H and VotW are pretty much CyberPunk and more
engrossing than any Gibson I have read. AS is a cross between
CyberPunk and your more traditional ('60's - early '80) interstellar
SF adventure.

WJW's writing is pretty taut. Plots are careful. Hold on, he can
move fast enough to lose you at times.

Re-read "Vertigo" by Bob Shaw too, re-issued as "Terminal Velocity".
I'd like my own personal anti-gravity harness, wouldn't you? What
a mess when EVERYBODY has one ... can you imagine the hazards of
being a traffic cop in Europe? This is a short book, leaning on only
a couple of SF ideas to tell the story. Minor parallels with WJW's
DoA.

Hey, DoA is also Dead on Arrival, and John Doe dies almost as soon
as he arrives. Could this just be coincidence? Or is my tired brain
dragging me into the Twilight Zone?

John Kavadias.
______________________________________________________________________
   ***** ******     Open Software Associates Ltd.
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**    **   *    **  P.O. Box 401, Ringwood, Victoria, 3134, AUSTRALIA.  
**    **  **    **
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   *****   ****     Direct: +61 3 871 1656       Email: kav@osa.oz.au
Newsgroups: aus.sf
From: ghm@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller)
Subject: Isn't anyone READING anymore?
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:36:42 GMT

I'm sure the detailed discussion of the latest ST:TNG episode
is interesting (although I usually skip it until I've had 
time to watch the programme on tape), but is that really all
there is to SF in Aus?  Come on, people  -  what happened to 
all the discussion of favourite authors, pulling plots apart
and so on?

Geoff Miller  (g-miller@adfa.oz.au)

Newsgroups: aus.sf
From: daz@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Darren Primm)
Subject: Re: Unification
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 23:21:36 GMT

Scott_Le_Brun@guru.apana.org.au (Scott Le Brun) writes:

>Ok. STTNG episode Unification. I've just recently seen this on video and it
>was eat! The only thing that I can't work out is this:

>Spock is a Vulcan, who as such outlives us humans.
>Sarek (?) his father is also a Vulcan. His wife, Spock's mother is human
>and she outlives the Vulcan! In one of the Star Trek movies, we see Spock's
>mother who seems old even then.

In Unification, Sarek has his second wife in the program. His first
wife, Amanda, seen in Star Trek IV - TVH, must have died between Star
Trek IV and Unification.

>Scott
Daz.


--
  Darren (Dazza) Primm, Dept EE Eng, Melb Uni, Parkville, 3052, Australia
 "There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish, sometimes."
   Internet: daz@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au  [dazza@ecr.mu.oz.au]  IRC: Family
From: speednut@werple.apana.org.au (Mark Jose)
Newsgroups: aus.sf
Subject: ST:TNG  Booby Trap (yeah, spoilers probably)
Date: 20 Dec 1992 14:31:25 +1100
Organization: werple public-access unix, Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: werple.apana.org.au

Original Message From: 10726446@eng2.eng.monash.edu.au (LAU WAI KUEN)
 
>  Ha!  Well, I utterly freaked when Data played a 1000 year old tape,
>and the alien on it promptly spoke in English (or whatever common
>language the Feds use).  Sheesh!  How much trouble would it have
>been to have some say that they'll have the computer translate it from
>data tapes or something?  Yes, it would have slowed down the plot
 
ANd what do they do, preface every alien encounter with, "please
switch to translator, Mr. Data". It wouldn't be long before the show
became boorish and pretty soon people would start saying "Jeez, I wish
they would stop treating us like idiots, we know they'd have to have
some translating device operative". Sort of a catch-22 situation.
 
Me, I am quite happy to allow such plot foibles if it allows the
series to not become too engrossed in explaining every single
alien encounter, new life form, new concept etc.
 
Perhaps they should have sub-titles on the screen, but if they do
that I can imagine viewer alienation on this planet. (pun intended)
 
>desperate he is, or a slight mental problem).  I still can't figure
>out why Picard destroyed the derelict ship; putting a warning beacon
>would have sufficed, long enough for the Feds to get a demolition team
>in to plant explosives on the generators, destroying them.
 
How would the team have got in. They would be unable to use energy and
also they would have been exposed to radiation. Not worth the risk.
All the ships logs were bought back onto the Enterprise. They have
detailed logs of what happened, so that is enough to satisfy every-
body but the archaeologists. Blowing it up was the safest and quickest
way of preventing another vessel falling into the same trap.
 
 
Newsgroups: aus.sf
From: s.barkla@shower.curtin.edu.au (Scott Barkla)
Subject: Re: Unification
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 04:32:52 GMT

>>Spock is a Vulcan, who as such outlives us humans.
>>Sarek (?) his father is also a Vulcan. His wife, Spock's mother is human
>>and she outlives the Vulcan! In one of the Star Trek movies, we see Spock's
>>mother who seems old even then.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but was it not, mixed up with the other 
forgetableness of Star Trek V, the inference that Amanda was Sarek's SECOND 
wife, which would make his wife in Unification at  least his third..?

Maybe it was just in Ballard's novel.

Scott
*****************************************     
  Scott Barkla:                               __ 
  Curtin University                          /  \-<              _|
  of Technology                              ====              _|
  Western Australia                          |o o\---{       _|
                                             |o o \        _|
  INTERNET: s.barkla@admin.curtin.edu.au     |o o o\     _|
*****************************************   {********} _|
 

Newsgroups: aus.sf,aus.tv
From: J.Gallagher@unsw.EDU.AU (Jason Gallagher)
Subject: Re: Questions (one or two of 'em)
Organization: Psychology Department, University of N.S.W
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 01:33:56 GMT

>3> If the people who were clamouring for a 7:30 pm timeslot of Star
>Trek:The Next Gen, it would have been cancelled due to the cricket. As
>it is, The cricket breaks tonight for news and Star Trek:The Next Gen.
>What have you got to say for yourselves now?
>(BTW: There is no Startrek Next week. Carols By Candlelight is on
>instead (due to next Thursday being Christmas Eve!!! :-)

I'd say hooray! Bloody cricket, it's just a screenblanker for television.

:-)
Jason
/----------------------------------------------------Jason Gallagher-\
| INet: J.Gallagher@unsw.edu.au        | "The eyes aren't too big!"  |
|       jasong@hydra.maths.unsw.edu.au |           -Me               |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------/
From: abcc@DIALix.oz.au (Adrian Booth Computing Consultants)
Newsgroups: aus.sun-works
Subject: Reading an inode directly from filesystem - how?
Date: 17 Dec 1992 16:36:10 +0800
Organization: DIALix Services, Perth, Western Australia
Distribution: aus
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.dialix.oz.au
Summary: How should I do it?
Keywords: inode filesystem
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.4.19 #1

<SunOS 4.1.x>

Given that I can traverse the mount table and obtain the struct fs via the
superblock, and that I know the inode number, how do I read an inode from 
the filesystem?

I assumed from <ufs/fs.h> that I should say:

	blk = itod(fs, inum);
	off = itoo(fs, inum);

	seekpos = blk * fs->fs_bsize + off * sizeof(struct inode);

and then lseek to seekpos on the filesystem device and read sizeof(struct inode)
bytes.

(BTW, I assumed I had to multiply off by sizeof(struct inode) since with
two files with inodes x and x+1, the value I get for blk is constant and the
value for off is either y or y+1, respectively).

However I'm just getting garbage back on the read. I tried the fsbtodb macro 
in <ufs/fs.h> will no improvement.

What's the simple way to read a given inode given the appropriate struct fs
and the inode number? Alternatively, what's wrong with any of my assumptions
above?

Thanks in advance...

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
 | Adrian Booth					|	                  |
 | Adrian Booth Computing Consultants		|	Ph: (09) 354 4936 |
 | 7 Glenrowan Pl., Willetton WA 6155		|	abcc@DIALix.oz.au |
 | AUSTRALIA                                    |                         |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
for a in past present future; do
	for b in clients employers associates relatives neighbours pets; do
echo The opinions in this article in no way reflect the opinions of my $a $b.
done;done
From: taka@fxis.fujixerox.co.jp (Takahiro Kanbe)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: This UUCP site runs INN
Date: 21 Dec 92 04:14:59 GMT
	<1992Dec18.135727.4601@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM>
	<BzHxws.187@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Organization: Fuji Xerox Information Systems Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan.
Supersedes: <1h3gabINNcd1@fxisms.fxis.fujixerox.co.jp>
NNTP-Posting-Host: litra.nwt.fxis.fujixerox.co.jp
In-reply-to: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us's message of 19 Dec 92 07:53:15 GMT

In article <BzHxws.187@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
	mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) writes:
   INN wants to keep the entire history file in memory, all the time.
   How much "lots" is depends on how much history you are keeping.

As far as I know, INN dose not read the entire memory, but dbz's *.pag
file.  And I hear that 1.3 will select doing this behavior, and this
might helps performance on less memory machines.

--
Takahiro Kanbe <taka@fxis.fujixerox.co.jp>	FXIS / Network Team.
From: glenn@sundeck.usask.ca (Glenn Hollinger)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Multi-FS news spool layout question
Date: 15 Dec 1992 19:08:26 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
NNTP-Posting-Host: sundeck.usask.ca
Originator: glenn@sundeck.usask.ca

Question: Has anyone investigated I/O efficient layouts for a
multi-partition news spool directory?

I am using INN 1.2 on Ultrix 4.3 with an RZ57 as my /usr/spool/news.

The disk is doing as many I/Os per second as it can, but the incoming
NNTP feeds are backloged and not catching up noticably.  My solution to
this; split /usr/spool/news over multiple partions.  But this prompts
my question: Has anyone done any investigation into layout policies for
I/O efficient multi-partition news spools?  Any serious speculation or
real world experience?

The reason I think this is an issue is that to read an article via a
sym-link name costs 2 I/Os instead of 1, negating part of the benefit
of using 2 disks.  This tells me that to maximize performance, I must
minimize the number of reads by symlink name.  A good heuristic to
achieve this is to minimize the number of symlinks.

I speculate there is a characteristic of the groups cross-posting
involves and the order the groups are specified that may dictate a
layout preference.

Opinions or experinces..?

Glenn Hollinger,
University of Saskatchewan
From: rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Q: Cnews vs. INN w/ uucp
Date: 11 Dec 1992 12:55:11 -0500
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

In <1992Dec3.123613.27873@morwyn.uucp> morwyn.uucp!forrie@unhtel.unh.edu (Forrest Aldrich - SysAdmin) writes:
>	Good luck, Susan.  I've asked this question here several times, even
>	to the author of INN and got NO RESPONSE.  You'd better stick with
>	CNews, for that matter.
I received one mail message from you, I wrote a response and it bounced.
The mail was sent from UUNET, which is fairly reliable.  I got a second
mail message from you, told what I just wrote, and promised a more
detailed reply.  I have seen one or two people ask for comparisons, but I
don't recall your name -- and certainly not "several times."

Nobody really knows how to compare INN and C News for incoming UUCP
processing.  Anecdotally, if you have memory the few people who have
converted from C News to INN have found it to be speedier.  The rnews
in INN unpacks batches and offers them one at a time to innd.  This
is fairly fast.  If you have lots of incoming batches, queue them up
and run multiple rnews's (heh heh).

While not designed to be most efficienct in a UUCP-only environment, INN
seems to work there quite well.  The minute NNTP gets involved, INN starts
to win big.  I'm biased.  Your mileage will vary -- design and run tests,
and share your results.
	/r$
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Multi-FS news spool layout question
Date: 16 Dec 1992 18:58:23 -0500
Organization: Mentor Graphics -- IC Group
NNTP-Posting-Host: milk.warren.mentorg.com

In article <1gli95INNid5@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> JIM@brownvm.brown.edu (James Mathiesen) writes:

>A more elegent solution is to let dbz() have a write-through cache,
>this lets .pag be kept in memory, but updates are written to disk
>as they occur.  I'm enclosing patches below to dbz.c, dbz.h and
>his.c that add and use dbzwritethough().

Excuse my ignorance, but would it be better if the history.pag file was
mmap()'ed?  that way, a simple fsync() call would write out just the
changes rather than the entire file.

Also, having a dbzsync() every 10 articles is pretty insane.  I've
changed mine to 50, though I'd think 500 would be respectable.

Just curious,

Tom
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
Reality is stranger than fiction #943247:  The IRS granted
ANS approval as a 501c3 "charity" on September 14, 1992.
From: jerry@austin.ibm.com (Jerry Heyman)
Subject: Re: how can I have private newsgroups?
Originator: jerry@dcheney.austin.ibm.com
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:55:34 GMT
Reply-To: jerry@austin.ibm.com
Organization: IBM AIX AWSD Austin, TX
Keywords: private newsgroups news


In article <1992Dec18.162951.12616@rick.dgbt.doc.ca>, andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) writes:
> Is there a way for me to have private local newsgroups?
> 
> That is, I have a list of users and they should be the only ones who
> can read and post to this newsgroup.  Better yet, no one else should
> even know about this newsgroup.
> 
> I am using C-News and various news readers.
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Patrick, Ph.D.       Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, CANADA
>                        andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.CA

We do this here at several levels.  We support several sites that use our
local news server, and each site has a different set of restrictions on which
newsgroups they can read.  Using the /usr/lib/news/nntp_access file, you can
control who gets to read which newsgroup(s) either by individual machines, or
by a domain.  Using your domain it would translate to:

	calvin.dgbt.doc.CA   represents an individual machine
	*.dgbt.doc.CA        represents every machine in the domain
	*.doc.CA             represents a larger domain

As for sending (or the prevention of sending) your private newsgroups to any
where else, you will have to modify /usr/lib/news/sys and specifically list
the hierarchy that you don't want to send to the machine that you take your
feed from.

An entry like:

    feed_machine: all,!private_group,!private_group/all,!private_group:F:

Hopefully this is of some use...

jerry
-- 
Jerry Heyman                         e-mail   : jerry@austin.ibm.com
IBM AWSD AIX Dev Env Tools MS 9631    "Software is the difference between
Austin, TX  78758                        hardware and reality"
*** All opinions expressed are exactly that - my opinions and NOT IBM's
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Automatically flushing C News history.o
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 23:49:31 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <MRL.92Dec18123306@sun4.uai.com> mrl@uai.com (Mark R. Ludwig) writes:
>... If I don't delete history.o,
>doexpire (or something it calls) complains that it has to run with
>expire -r.

A modern doexpire will itself delete history.o before it starts getting
serious about space shortages.  You've got a seriously-old copy of C News.

>What is the purpose of history.o?  When is it needed?  Can I automate
>the removal of history.o? ...

It's just the old history file.  It can be useful for troubleshooting.
Otherwise, its only real use is that it ties down about the amount of
space that doexpire will need for the history rebuild, in effect reserving
it to increase the chances that doexpire won't need to resort to -r.
Modern doexpires automate its removal already.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: xcea@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Chad Adams)
Subject: inn's newsfeeds file
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:21:18 GMT

I am new to inn and I am haveing trouble figureing out how to make the
newsfeeds file do what I want.

uchinews1\
        :!nptn.*,!clari.*,!chi.*,!to.*,!bgu.*/chi,il\
        :Wfm:

What I want the above line to do is send everything not in the above !ed
groups that had a distribution of chi or il.  What it does is ether send
all distributions or articles with no distribution header.  So far I
have just found articles with no Distribution header in the feed file.

Chad Adams
-- 
Chad Adams              __               Educational Computing Network
Systems Programmer     /  ) /         /  University Park, IL  USA
1-708-534-0200        /    /_  __, __/   ECN, networking in IL since 1975
c-adams@bgu.edu      (__/ / /_/_/_(_/_   "Wherever you go, there we are."
From: tgll@datasci.co.uk (Tim Lyons)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: CNEWS or BNEWS (was Re: CNEWS or BNEWS on Xenix)
Date: 18 Dec 92 14:31:54 GMT
Reply-To: tgll@datasci.co.uk (Tim Lyons)
Organization: Data Sciences, Farnborough, Hampshire, UK

In article <1gircaINN85h@milk.Warren.MENTORG.COM> tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli) writes:
>In <1992Dec13.093227.2220@psg.com> rick@psg.com (Rick Buhagiar) writes:
>
>>.... run cnews4 on xenix 2.3.2. Someone told
>>me to stick to bnews but I read somewhere that cnews is quickier and much more
>>powerful.
>
>C news is much more modern and much better supported that B news.
>Considering that the author of B news doesn't use B news anymore, I
>don't think it's a good idea to use it.

I use Bnews on a Sun.

I have tried to ask one or two questions about Bnews, on one or two
different newsgroups, but I have only ever got one reply (thanks whoever
it was), and that said I should switch to Cnews (or INN).

In fact, I can't even find a newsgroup where Bnews is ever discussed, so
if anyone can suggest a better place to ask I would be grateful as I
still have some glitches to sort out.

In the absence of replies, I periodically think that I really must
think seriously about switching to Cnews, so I have the following
question: 

Can anyone give me any advice on switching from Bnews to Cnews?  Are
there any particular problems or issues I should look out for?

Tim Lyons
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: dejesus@archimedes.nwc.navy.mil (Francisco X DeJesus)
Subject: Re: Handling JUNK
Organization: Science Applications International Corp.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:23:48 GMT

In article <Bz7Kxs.Eo2@mccc.edu> pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>
>Does anyone have a well-behaved program for handling news articles that
>end up in the junk newsgroups?
>

I basically have a script that goes into the "junk" directory and execute
something like this:

grep "Newsgroups: " ./* | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | awk '$1 >= 10 {print " " $1 "  " $2 }'

...this simply gives me a list of junk newsgroups with over ten articles in
the past day. I check this every night before expire runs (I set junk to
expire in 1 day). Then it's a matter of me checking for junk newsgroups that
have 10+ articles per day for a few days straight so I can manually add them.

Other than that, there's little you can do about junk articles other than
take note and expire them. I'd be interested in finding out if anyone there
has further automated the "checking for sustained newsgroup traffic" which
I'm doing manually right now. I remember someone mentioned a script/program
which would do this, but there was never a follow-up.



-- 
      Francisco X DeJesus  ----- S A I C -----  dejesus@chinalake.navy.mil
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp,news.software.readers