Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-vax!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!mejac!gryphon!greg From: greg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Greg Laskin) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: The death of USENET Keywords: Read my lips Message-ID: <4499@gryphon.CTS.COM> Date: 16 Jun 88 14:16:02 GMT References: <3182@charon.unm.edu> <8547@netsys.UUCP> Reply-To: greg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Greg Laskin) Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 123 In article <8547@netsys.UUCP> len@netsys.UUCP (Len Rose) writes: >In article <3182@charon.unm.edu> cscbrkac@unmc.UUCP (Lazlo Nibble) whines: > >What I (and >presumably others) would object to is the *forced* removal of these groups >across the entire net in one fell swoop." > > What makes you think that others share this opinion? Are you so presumptuous > as to believe that you represent others? Lazlo allows that he's making an assumption. Len attacks Lazlo for making the assumption. Reading this group regularly would seem to indicate that there might be some validity to Lazlo's presumption that others might object. Certainly, I would object. Thus Lazlo's presumption is valid. The level of Lazlo's presumptuousness is not relevent to the discussion. > > Oh,you see the problem.. Very kind of you to share it with those of us who > can't see it ourselves. The crux of the situation is that while certain > groups are not considered to be useful,they are part of Usenet,and as such > should be carried.. Downstream sites have the right to receive as much news > as they wish. > Downstream sites don't have any rights at all (within the context of receiving news). AT&T, for example, doesn't officially carry rec.nude and presumably doesn't feed it downstream. So what? >"There is a >vocal subclass of sysadmins on the net who constantly complain about all the >difficulties involved in carrying {rec,soc,talk...} but who, even with the >tools at their fingertips to solve the problem, would rather have The Backbone >come riding in on a white horse and make their decisions for them." > > Constantly complain eh? I think you've got something wrong here .. I believe > that was my first posting on this issue. Then you must not be part of the class. I have noticed the constant complaints though. Others have managed, somehow, to drop the groups without suggesting that everyone else do the same. > >"I am growing increasingly tired of such people, who haven't got the initiative >to take a few simple steps on their own." > > Maybe some site upstream from you should take some initiative.. > Yes,you are pretty tired.. It does show. > I can't figure out what this was supposed to mean. >"But crying to the net as >a whole and asking (or worse, DEMANDING) that the "offending" groups be taken >away from ALL of us is asshole behavior, pure and simple." Was there any need to >use language like this? > > I don't believe anyone here has demanded anything. Several people proposed >possible alternatives to a perceived threat to the continued existence of an >extremely valuable medium. You now purport to represent "ALL" of us. This gets >better and better. By your final use of "asshole behaviour" you condemn yourself. > But crying to the net as a whole and asking (or worse, DEMANDING) that the "offending" groups be taken away from those who find them useful is presumptuous, pure and simple. Is that better? Of course, there are no rules here about being presumptuous. >us who want the rest of them to rebuild them from scratch would be an amazing >abuse of power on the part of the backbone." > > Sure,an abuse of power.. Like AT&T's decision to stop pass through mail was > an incredible abuse of power. I can't imagine someone telling me that I have > to give everyone in my neighborhood a free ride to work just because I happen > to drive a passenger van. Then when I balk, I am abusing my power as a van > driver. They pay the costs,they have the power. Join the real world , if for > just a microsecond or two and pound this through your rec'd,soc'd,talk'd brain. Len is right. Presuming to tell the backbone what groups to carry (or to no carry) would be presumptuous. I wonder, however, if Len would consider his own brain to be comp'd. > >"The net is a community. I assume you also *live* in a community. Do you >complain to your city government about the type of people who you invite to >your parties? Do you expect your neighborhood association to keep the kinds of > > As your maunderings descend to a more personal level, I will reciprocate. > The principle you expound self righteously cuts both ways. Does one put up > with graffiti artists and vandals trashing a neighborhood park,forcing it > to close it's doors because "some" people want to trash it? Does Usenet have > to die a death by smothering before some people get the message that it is > not a bbs.. I don't know what a maundering is. I'm not sure how to tell which postings are "grafitti" and which are "bbs" postings. I don't read 95% of the comp groups. Perhaps we should axe those groups too. If we axed rec, talk, soc, and 95% of comp, the traffic on the net would be very manageable, there would be almost nothing I wasn't interested in, and we could concentrate more on the news groups and these discussions. Then we could moderate the whole thing and maybe get it down to 4 or 5 articles a day. It might be difficult to get a consensus on this, though. > >"The decision is *yours*. Don't expect the rest of the world to make it for >you." > > No.. The decisions don't rest on me,they lie on the people who pay the bills. > When major companies start withdrawing their resources because of abuse,will > you still spew this trash? Maybe you will,but it may not leave the confines > of your site since there won't be an att,dec,sun,or university willing to > pay their money sending it halfway across the world. > Nope. It's yours, Len. If you want to pay the bills, you can have anything you want. Also, you don't need to have anything you don't want. Others might possibly have different values than yourself. I'm having some problems figuring out which part is the trash and which part is the abuse. > Grow Up. Are you speaking here from experience? -- Greg Laskin greg@gryphon.CTS.COM !gryphon!greg