Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sat, 11 Apr 1992 09:54:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      (Fwd: *C&CD*) How to get on the zappa list (8)

Date:          Sat, 11 Apr 1992 09:15:44 EDT
From:          BITNET%"R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET"  Robert Royar (C&CD Moderator)
Newsgroups:    bitserv.mbu-l,comp.edu.compositon,alt.fan.frank-zappa
Message-Id:    <1992Apr11.091544.1.Grendel.Lair@Cratylus>
Subject:       How to get on the zappa list (8)
Reply-to:      Martin Rosenberg <ATMER@ASUACAD.BITNET>

>From: Martin Rosenberg <ATMER@ASUACAD.BITNET>
>Message-id: <01GIOJO3C6LSBETEPG@ulkyvx.bitnet>
>Rob R:  Pulll-eeee-zzee tell me how to get on the Zappa List!!!!!!!!!
>        I want to wax eloquence over "Weasels Rip My Flesh"!

Newsgroup: alt.fan.frank-zappa
Available through news readers connected to Usenet.  It is neither a moderated
nor a listserv list.  As far as I know, you must have access to a news program
and read it through that (unless there is a gateway somewhere).  I'm
cross-posting this to the Zappa interest group.  Perhaps someone on there can
tell you how.

But Martin's request brings up broader questions (ones that have haunted me
since beginning this thing (Computers and Composition Digest) in 86).  What
exactly are all these lists, and readers, and forwarding gateways? What are
the relationships between them?

When C&CD began I was told you could only have moderated groups on Bitnet.
There were limits to the number of messages you could send within a 24-hour
period and limits to individual message size--limits that seemed system wide,
but which also seem no longer to apply.  There were two other nets--ARPA and
Usenet.  ARPA lists were a mixture of moderated and unmoderated, to get to
them you needed gateways (wiscvm was one as was bezerkley).  Usenet lists were
completely unmoderated.  Gateways to them were through *nix machines.
Messages could take weeks to cross the continent on Usenet.  ARPA lists seemed
to have a signup procedure, not listserv but a requesting mechanism.  You
could get them delivered to you mailbox.  Bitnet lists were the same way,.
But usenet lists seemed more amorphous.  They were just there--somewhere--on
the net.  You could subscribe if you had a mail reader, that received that
list or if you could get to a gateway that would forward direct to your
mailbox.

I used to read Digests (psychology, ai, motorola mpu, pc, os-9, space, etc.)
which were actually collections of individual articles from the usenet and
ARPA lists.  That's similar to what I do with MBU.  We even set up a gateway
through (Michael Myers?) at bezerkley so the digest could be broken up and
sent to the usenet people.  Any mail that came to the digest address went
through berkeley (compos01%ulkyvx.bitnet@ucbvax.berkeley.edu) first where it
was routed out to the readers on usenet.  There was also a gateway at
wisconsin (ahh I remember those beauruecratic error messages from there about
too much traffic and abuse of the furniture).

Well, all that's from the old days.  But funny thing is that the berkeley
gateway is still active, and I'm now receiving mail through it once in a while
(comp.edu.composition is its name). Also many of the old ARPA/Bitnet gate
sites (FINHUTC for instance) still redistribute this thing.  But as far as I
can tell, there's no reliable way to subscribe individually (even though I
seem to have managed it for comp.edu.composition) to those usenet groups.

Can anyone shed some light on this admistrative arcania?

 --Robert Royar (r0mill01@ulkyvx.bitnet) New York Institute of Technology

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