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From: vishniac@wanginst.UUCP (Ephraim Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Reed College maturity
Message-ID: <1548@wanginst.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jan-86 08:20:20 EST
Article-I.D.: wanginst.1548
Posted: Tue Jan 14 08:20:20 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jan-86 04:59:26 EST
References: <21100021@orstcs.UUCP>
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 38

> While we're on the subject of excessive net traffic, it seems a good time
> to discuss the behavior of people at Reed College.
> 
> Specifically, the Mac community's first contact with them (that I know
> about) was the distribution of a fraudulently-labelled stolen copy of
> Lonnie Abelbeck's VersaTerm product.

...which was the work of a vindictive *individual* and could have happened
anywhere.  The copy, you'll recall, was mislabelled with the name of someone
whose reputation the perpetrator wished to damage, not the perpetrator's own.

> Since then, we've seen at least a megabyte of piddly, useless programs and
> desk accessories written in Rascal.  It may be that Rascal itself is a 
> useful product, but the evidence so far is that its primary function is
> to consume net bandwidth for the aggrandizement of Reed students.

...some useless, some useful.  I've also received from *individuals* at
Reed a substantial amount of technical assistance, initially unsolicited,
on Mac programming problems.

> To the people at Reed: I'm sorry to come down on you so hard.  Perhaps you
> could check with disinterested others to make sure your stuff is 
> worth posting before you do so.
> 
> 				Nathan C. Myers
> 				hp-pcd!orstcs!nathan

On the whole, I'd say their noise/signal ratio is no worse than that of
the net as a whole.  It's clear that there's a lot of enthusiasm for the Mac
at Reed, and that may make them over-eager to share their work.  But I'd
rather have them on the net, noise and all, than condemn them for an excess
of enthusiasm.

-- 
Ephraim Vishniac
  [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac
  vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay