Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: Time for 8 bit news, isn't it?????. Message-ID: <15710@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Date: 30 Jul 90 06:36:15 GMT References: <14W43HC@xds13.ferranti.com> <9SQ&.FC@splut.conmi Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Lines: 28 In article jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes: >...except that your point doesn't port to the IBM-PC environment, where >binaries are useful; the mountain of PC packages delivered in object >form, often in some compressed archive format with documentation in a >neat little bundle, is an existence proof. > >Usenet is more than Unix. Oh yeah, but much less (and more) than a BBS. Binaries *WILL BREAK OUR BACKS* if we open the doors wide! And they are intrinsically parochial, where text and source are ecumenical. It doesn't matter how many new kinds of computers join: the net's ESSENTIAL CHARACTER needs preserving. This is a lesson it would be unfair (unrealistic anyway) to expect PC BBS refugees to understand right away. A lot of them show up and want to chat the sysop, as it were. Post three revisions a week of those DR. FILEGOOD binaries, the Bart Simpson pictures, and Zeke's Montly List of 3,000 BBS's in ZIP form to preserve every superfluous ^M. The "existence proof" of all the PC binaries carried on BBS's and services is also a sufficiency proof. These folks HAVE their BBS's already, and CompuServe, and GEnie, and BIX, etc, etc. They don't need to turn Usenet into another one. -- If the human mind were simple enough to understand, =)) Tom Neff we'd be too simple to understand it. -- Emerson Pugh ((= tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM