Xref: utzoo news.groups:3986 news.admin:2289 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!constance.rutgers.edu!webber From: webber@constance.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: What about when a group is obviously needed Message-ID: Date: 25 May 88 03:40:00 GMT References: <1592@looking.UUCP> <645@taux01.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 61 In article <645@taux01.UUCP>, amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) writes: > ... > In short, the backbone administrators do not owe anything to anybody > except their paying customers, which are usually not the net readers. > They spend their time and their sites' resources for our benefit; the > guideline they publish, like any good-will agreement, are valid only as > long as they are not abused. The backbone administrators have every > right to determine what constitutes an abuse, and act accordingly. Yes there is no question that the backbone have every right in a strict legalistic sense to act in the backward way they do. However, you must realize that USENET predates the backbone and that their policies reflect neither the original purposes of USENET nor current realities vis a vis communication and computer technology. > Any sites who do not like this policy, are welcome to exchange phone > numbers and uucp passwords, and set their own network. Such a net was created. It was called USENET. Then along came this bunch of big sites who now call themselves ``backbones'' and you can see what happened. Sigh. > Above all, calling these dedicated people 'incompetent', does require I guess it depends on what you view them as dedicated to as to whether they are actually ``incompetent.'' Would you prefer me to call them ``evil'' under the assumption that they are actually dedicated to creating the mess they have created or ``incompetent'' under the assumption that they are did not intentionally create the current mess? > and apology, especially coming from someone who had contributed nothing > but complaints to the net. (We are still waiting for your keyword-based > news system to replace the newsgroup system!) I have certainly contributed things other than complaints to the net -- however if you only read junk groups like news.* groups, you have probably only seen the complaints. Even the complaints a number of people have found interesting, for various reasons at various times. Vis a vis the keyword-based system, if your system has find, lex (or flex), and more (or less), you probably have all the software you need vis a vis reading keyword-based news. Probably at some point an online thesaurus would be useful. I also highly recommend the Soundex hashing scheme to defeat the problems that spelling errors cause to keyword searching. At some point a detailed investigation of spelling-correction technology would be useful, but currently Soundex appears sufficient. Of course, what you actually look for is another matter -- but this is something that requires individual experimentation and adaption. --- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber) [The Soundex algorithm was posted to the net earlier by someone else -- it was apparently patented in 1918. The algorithm begins with the substitution of b,f,p,v -> 1, c,g,j,k,q,s,x,z -> 2, d,t -> 3, l -> 4, m,n -> 5, r -> 6, and everything else to 0. this gives you an encoding of each word into a string of digits. now throw away any that are the same as the previous digit in the same sequence. then throw away all the zeros. (somehow that seems more useful that the 3k C source or the corresponding hypercard binary).]