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From: lunnon@qut.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: comp.os.minix splitup
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.112315.27146@qut.edu.au>
Date: 16 Apr 91 16:23:14 GMT
References: <49233@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <1991Mar29.143439.2027@escom.com>
Organization: Queensland University of Technology
Lines: 70

In article <1991Mar29.143439.2027@escom.com>, al@escom.com (Al Donaldson) writes:
> Bill Bogstad brackets the following in [sarcasm]:
>> 	Huh?  You have to read a WHOLE 'nuther group.  This generally
>> requires hitting "y" or maybe the return key when your news reading program
>> presents you with the name of the "other" group.  You might also have to
>> edit your .newsrc file once in order to put the two group names next to each
>> other so you are sure to read both of them at the same time.  This is
>> obviously more complicated then typical users of Minix are capable of
>> managing.
> 
> My main objection to a split, any split, is that it requires posters
> to make a decision:  which group do I post to?  The answer is often "both." 
> And, all too often, instead of cross-posting, the user separately posts 
> the message, once to group A and a second time to group B.  Two distinct
> messages with the same content.  The result is (a) that the net carries 
> the message twice to all sites and (b) we have to read the message twice.  
> Someone has to pay for (a), and each of us pays for (b).

I think we are worrying too much, from what I understand cross-posting
results in a few extra bytes tacked on to a message header, I don't think
this level of extra traffic would cost too much, remove your subscription
to alt.warm.fuzzies instead :-)

< Stuff removed > 

> It's not a problem with the additional group.  I'll edit my .newsrc 
> so I can read both of them together, as I suspect everyone else will.
> The problem is that I have to read through probably a time and a half
> the traffic to get the same content.
> 
> Al

I don't know about you but when I look at comp.sources.atari.st and
comp.binaries... _I_ only read the message headers to determine which
Items are of interest. The rest flow past and are captured by some archive
or other. This way I have some inkling of what has flowed past and what
has not with a clear impression that it was probably a source or fix
and not someone (like me) complaining about the lack of multi-threading.

What this means is that this split would save _ME_ time as I would not
have to read the start of the message find out it was a source, think
about whether I should archive it. Decide I will get it from an archive
(maybe - if the archiver didn't miss it by accident in amongst the
discussion on PDP-8 memory management) type 'next' ( We use VMS )
and wait for our overloaded vax to give me the next message. Personally
then I can say from this _end users_ point of view this would save me
a fair bit of reading and simplify the memory work required.

In fact in the old days, I used to capture news in batches, download
it at 2400 baud to my ST then read it and split it up, just the
downloading took 2 hours each week (our VMS site has not heard about
kermit with big packets :-) then it was a really nasty job to
sort out the good bits (sources) and archive them. All this was needed
because the VMS news program had a nasty bug to do with the extract
command and that as a student _I__HAD_NO_ACCESS_TO_FTP_ (ouch) and
even mailing off campus required extra privs. Thus there was no way
to get patches and sources other than carve up this newsgroup and 
archive. In my estimation there are probably thousands in this boat,
that would benefit from the fact that sources are lumped together
and can be archived conveniently ( indicate your presence by sending
a yes vote - oh you can't do that - ???? no external mail access ?? well
ask your postmaster to send it to /dev/null for you so you don't feel 
too bad )

#undef sarcasm

		In defense of those not (quite) with us

			BOB
			R.Lunnon@qut.edu.au