Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!telly!evan From: evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) Newsgroups: tor.news Subject: CanConfMail Message-ID: <1989Nov13.055204.22757@telly.on.ca> Date: 13 Nov 89 05:52:04 GMT Distribution: tor Organization: Telly Computing, Brampton, Ontario Lines: 177 As some of you may know by now, there are 70 new newsgroups floating around in a new hierarchy, ccm.*. This is the result of a gateway between masnet and Canada Remote Systems, the largest BBS in Canada and likely one of the larger ones in the world (70+lines, a few gig of on-line stuff for downloading, etc.). As of now, the sites which either carry these groups now or will soon (that I know of) are: attcan, becker, masnet, telly, tmsoft, utgpu. After a few days' worth of postings, here are some observations: ORIGIN: As I understand it, CanConfMail is a network of a number of Canadian and U.S. PC-based Bulletin Boards that have not gone into Fidonet. It appears that the largest member (by far) is Canada Remote Systems. There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern: Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the connections - or the differences - between them). Here is a grep of originating systems, based on what's been sent here so far. (There are only 70 sites identified in 915 articles.) You'll notice the \xxx notation in places, noting where they have used 8-bit PC graphics characters in their "sig": << CHARLIE >> (517)790-0598 1+Gig 9 Nodes Animation Station -- (416) 443-8671 Bert's Bulletin Board. Brandon, Man. Can. (204)763-4684 Bit Systems ~ Guelph ~ 519-767-1755 HST Bits & Bytes BBS *(416) 532-1784 * Toronto, O CHIPS+ Connection * Newport Beach, CA 714-760-3265 Canada's CAPital BBS -Ottawa- (613) 233 4774 {view node} Canadian-Micro BBS (519)681-3113 London, Ont. Channel 1 (TM) * 617-354-8873 * 26 Lines * Computer Buy/Sell 713-694-5399 Hou TX Crystal Palace * Toronto * (416) 925-5742 * DAT-A-REA - St-Bruno,Quebec (514)441-3229 DPS, Pacific Palisades, CA. (213)459-6053 Data Bit Network 703-719-9648 Running Board 301-229-5342 DataGate (202) 948-8332 HST Data World BBS - Knoxville, Tn. - 615)966-3574, 9600V Exchange BBS (804) 340-5042 * 9 NODES ! FRONTLINE! BBS 416-840-5269. FoxNet PCBoard ~ Grand Falls, NF ~ (709) 489-4758 Gateways * New York City * [212] 219-8824 Gil Tennant - SSH 416-288-9412 HUB BBS Arlington, Va. 703-685-0019 HST HYMAN INDUSTRIES BBS - Winnipeg, MB - (204)4 Haley's Comment BBS - Innerkip. Ont. - (519) 469-3028 * Harred On-Line- South Jersey Smartnet from Millville N.J. Hillside BBS, GUELPH,ON. (519)821-6389 & 654-9657 K-W AMATEUR RADIO BBS* >(519)-578-9314< (1:221/177) Lake Erie Vineyard 814-459-4631 Hayes V.42 * 814-455-9860 HS Little Angels PCB * (213)387-5901 HST D/S * Los Angeles, CA MSW BBS, Winnipeg, Mb. (204) 663-8490 MUI-Net . Sydney, Nova Scotia CANADA . (902) 564-5022 * Media Shack ~ Toronto ~ (416)699-1846 * MegaByte / Comox, B.C. (604)339-0522 Microwave Research BBS (813) 442-4286 HST MoonDog BBS Brooklyn,NY 718 692-2498 9600-V Next Generation <..Smartnetting at Warp Speed...> Oasis BBS (613) 236-1730 Ottawa, CANADA Odyssey Morris Plains,NJ (201)984-6574 Omaha Network* 4.3beta GAP (402)453-1504 HST One Thousand BBS ~ (416)236-3209 ~ Toronto * Party Line - Memphis - 901-873-2328 - HST PharmStat Systems Bayside, N.Y. (718)(217-0898) Pokey's Place Winnipeg, MB (204) 253-1342 (HST) <> ProData Exchange * Tampa, FL * (813) 920-8820 Programmer's Exchange, Toronto, (416) 787-1965 Quarterdeck Tech Support (213) 392-9701 Rall Computers, Seal Beach, CA (213) 594-5528 Role-Players Haven (613)824-0059 "The Origin of Gaming" Ron S.. SysOp London PCUG-BBS-(519)472-9471 S.I.T.E. Contrecoeur QC, 514-587-5154. SCAN/IS Toronto's Business BBS (416)265-8724 SUPER 88 enr. Laval, Quebec (514) 622-6024 Santa Software Associates VA:(703) 349-0135 Sasquatch BBS, Terrace, B.C. (604) 635-2184 Shadow RAM BBS Ottawa, CANADA Skeleton Crew =-818-718-9219 Chatsworth CA SoftNet London, CANADA 519/685-5306 Spartan BBS. Etobicoke, ON. St Pete Programmers Exchg *HST* 813 527-5666 Synapse BBS - Gatineau PQ - (819) 561-5268 System EX-10 Canada * (416) 275-4248 * T.N.M.C. Buckeystwn Md 301-698-0212 HST 38.4k TAVERN BBS Chazy NY {{{{ A SMARTNET Board }}} ULITMATE LINK (201) 680-9718 - Hayes v9600 WINNING EDGE - (416) 277-8253 - PARADOX USERS GROUP Wildfire BBS Woodstock, Ont (519)-539-0523 Windsor Spitfire BBS ~ USR HST ~ (519)735-1504 ~ Ye Olde Bailey - 1 713 520 1569 - SMARTNET - Hayes 9600 Zooman's Zoo BBS * New York Cty * (212) 432-1992 dBored/HUBSD - San Diego - 619-748-3644 (HST) HEADERS: Regardless of where the message actually came from, the return address and "Organization:" header (for the purpose of Usenet) reads only Canada Remote Systems. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS. The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if Usenet postings to these groups will get back into CRS. It is a serious drawback that messages coming in from this network has no distribution. This makes it more difficult to alias ccm groups into their equivalent Usenet groups (why should a person reading news have to choose whether to post to comp.dcom.telecom or ccm.hayes?) My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult? CONTENT: The jury's still out. There's a lot of garbage and some pearls. It shudders to make me think that looking at a few hundred CCM postings would have be *missing* recent ravings in news.groups, alt.sex and can.general. There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal policy statements or the CRS sysop telling a questioner "yeah, I can get that for ya cheap." Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if nobody wants to know. There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles and sparse use of quoting. Big - no make that HUGE - chunks of messages are of the kind that on Usenet would be ghettoed in comp.sys.ibm.pc.questions. Someone actually sent out a message asking what the going price of an EGA card was, and another had a "sig" of "Microsoft products are tops!". A guy from Quarterdeck answers any Unix-related questions with "Well, why not just get Desqview?" There's a lot of stuff that I would say is more appropriate as e-mail rather than broadcast, but in fairness, that also applies to much of Usenet :-|. On the plus side, for IBM PC/286/386 postings, I find some of the writers more knowledgable than the average comp.sys.ibm.pc poster. There is more specific coverage of applications like spreadsheets or accounting. CONCLUSIONS: There's some stuff here that I'd genuinely like to see gatewayed into mainstream Usenet. With ccm groups getting to tmsoft, attcan and utgpu, it would be trivial to get this stuff to uunet and NNTP. But there is much to do first. There are a number of these groups that have no business being broadcast at all. The others need better headers. I'm still not sure if they deserve their own hierarchy or a merger (via aliasing) into conventional Usenet groups. I hear CRS is getting some Usenet. Is it ready for the deluge that a full bidirectional gateway would bring? -- Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing, Why can't they put 'em all there? | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario - CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan -- Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing, Why can't they put 'em all there? | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario - CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan