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From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: soc.women,news.admin
Subject: Re: Berkeley news
Message-ID: <20887@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 01:27:31 EDT
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Posted: Mon Sep 21 01:27:31 1987
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Followup-To:


Software does deteriorate when it is not maintained, because the
environment around it changes. A computer program is a kind of
model of the environment in which it operates, and when that model
ceases to accurately reflect the environment it operates in, it
ceases to work. Netnews has certain periodic manual maintenance
needs, which, if they are not attended to, will cause the software
to eventually break.

Netnews doesn't have an authentication mechanisms in it because
authentication in a network environment is a hard problem. If Mark
Ethan Smith has an original thought about how it can be done, there
are lots of people who'd like to hear it, myself included.

Netnews in the UCB Computer Center (where violet.berkeley.edu is)
is an unsupported software system, maintained by some members of
the staff in their spare time. If it does not get the attention or
support that Mark Ethan Smith thinks it ought to, I suggest that
he petition Academic Computing Services (ACS) to officially support
it. The user consultant people will be happy to tell him who to
contact, however it might interest you to know that the vice
chancellor in charge of the computer center was recently fired for
having overspent his budget to the tune of between four and seven
million dollars. I don't think they're hiring anybody just now.

Regarding the thinly veiled accusation that I have allowed the
netnews system on ucbvax to deteriorate soley for the purpose of
censoring Mark Ethan Smith, I refute that. I work very hard to make
sure that Berkeley has the best netnews service that can be had.
We run the most current version of the software, with all patches
applied, closely maintained by me. As for the computer center, if
something isn't working there, it isn't because they want to censor
Mark Ethan Smith; it's because they don't care about netnews. Of
course, this also works to your advantage: I would be very surprised
if they ever "pulled your password" for something you posted to
the net.

Mark, if you posted that message to get a rise out of me, you
succeeded. If you are having trouble with netnews, let me know what
the problem is, and I will try and get it fixed. If you recall your
days on the WELL, there was never a time that I didn't answer your
technical questions to the best of my ability to do so. However,
accusing someone of misogyny and dereliction of duty is not generally
the best way to get their good will.

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu