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From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Why not just eliminate all the hierarchies?
Message-ID: <5071@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 89 19:42:59 GMT
References: <34075@looking.on.ca>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Lines: 34
In-reply-to: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)

In article <34075@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking (Brad Templeton) writes:
[describing treating neighboring sites as "users" with their own
newsrc files...]
| After that a neat trick is possible.  You have a program on your system
| that 'ors' together all the .newsrc files on your system, your client
| systems, and the .newsrc feeding files of the sites you feed.  Each
| day you send this 'or' to the site that feeds *you*, where it is used
| to create the feeding .newsrc file for your site.

I had to read that twice to make sure it said that...
"all the .newsrc files on your system".

Uhhh, who ever said that:
(a) all the newsreaders available on a system use the same format file, and
(b) all the .newsrc files (or whatever they are called!) are available
to the "news" userid?

For item (a), I offer "gnews" (a GNU Emacs newsreader) which stores my
subscribed groups in a file very un-.newsrc-like.  For item (b), I
offer NNTP, where many of the .newsrc's are on a different system that
is not necessarily available to the master host.  (I can't even see my
"news" system's active file!  The only access I have is through NNTP.)

Nope.  You can invent "UseNet II -- the son of UseNet" and your own
transport mechanism and readers to be used on a particular node, but
as long as you had somebody using the standard transport mechanism,
you can't get away with your proposal.

Just another old-time netter,
-- 
/== Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ====\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, Sol III  |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn	         |
\== Cute Quote: "Welcome to Oregon... Home of the California Raisins!" ==/