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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!bbnccv!bbncc5!krossen@bbnccp.ARPA (Ken Rossen)
From: krossen@bbnccp.ARPA (Ken Rossen)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: The most expensive bug in the history of Usenet?
Message-ID: <3505@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 10:52:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.3505
Posted: Thu May 15 10:52:36 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 16-May-86 05:46:09 EDT
References: <221@epimass.UUCP> <553@gould9.UUCP>
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Reply-To: krossen@ccp.bbn.com (Ken Rossen)
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Summary: Don't blame it on notesfiles.

In article <553@gould9.UUCP> joel@gould9.UUCP (Joel West) writes:

>     I'd previously heard claims that Notes was superior in some aspects,

It is.

>     but it seems apparent that it is unable to keep up with the demands of
>     the current net traffic.

I'm as annoyed with this ridiculous behaviour on the part of HP as almost
anyone (except perhaps the backbone site administrators, bless 'em), but
the latest round of notesfiles-bashing it has prompted is misguided.  Many
sites run notesfiles on USENET quite transparently and without incident.
Notably, University of Illinois, NYU, Intermetrics and Convex.  The
extremely poor citizenship of some notesfiles sites shouldn't lead
clear-thinking people to make generalizations about the program.  You don't
see Orphaned Responses from U of I any more.

I suppose it's time to remind people that, with notesfiles, you're ALWAYS
shown your article right after it's submitted, that you generally have to
be looking a group before you post to it, that cross-posting to a ton
of groups is much more complicated in notesfiles.  These are benefits to
the net, not to mention the additional benefits to the notesfiles
reader, which are many.

When people bash notesfiles by whining that they gave us "Orphaned
Response," I wonder why nobody recalls who gave us entire articles of
quoted text and "REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE," or postings to
net.general about lost earrings in the West Parking Lot.

I have to use news now, and there are certainly things I like about it,
notably support for regional distribution in non-regional newsgroups.  Rn
makes things much more palatable, of course.

But brain-damage on the part of HP (and Gould Ft. Lauderdale -- guys, clean
up those articles from "daemon@houligan"!) nonwithstanding, I think we'd be
suffering less from information overload if we were all using notesfiles.
--
Ken Rossen	...!{ihnp4,harvard,seismo}!bbnccv!krossen
____or____	krossen@ccp.bbn.com   -or-  krossen@bbnccp.arpa