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From: jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Reed College maturity
Message-ID: <1307@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jan-86 11:22:12 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1307
Posted: Tue Jan 14 11:22:12 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jan-86 01:35:37 EST
References: <21100021@orstcs.UUCP>
Organization: CACI, Inc - Federal, La Jolla
Lines: 32
Summary: source code is double-plus good

> 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.

Wrong.  They offerred free beta testing of Rascal on the net, and
several dozen netters took them up.  This predates the VersaTerm
piracy by 6 months.

> 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.

It is generally considered that source code -- ANY source code -- is
of educational value.  That's why these newsgroups exist.

> 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.

I'm a "disinterested other", and I think what they've done is of value.
What have you done for the net recently?

Or, to quote the Terminator...no, I can't, the net would be shut down
for obscenity violations.

        Joel West       CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o UC San Diego)
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        jww@SDCSVAX.ARPA