Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Soviet Access to Usenet
Message-ID: <12660@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 23 Nov 88 17:18:52 GMT
References: <7649@well.UUCP> <8081@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <17651@gatech.edu> <8114@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 35

In article <8114@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> ajdenner@athena.mit.edu (Alexander J Denner) writes:

| 	To clarify:
| 	I think that it is great that Mr. Draper is sending bits of news
| to his Russian friends.  Such an act is good.  What I think would be bad
| is the Soviets becoming a large network connected with the West.  As I have
| said many times already, this allows the KGB to eliminate information sorting/
| acquistion operations in the US.

  I seriously doubt that any world power would have trouble getting
usenet news. They could just go buy a machine, operating system, and
news software, and there are many machines who would feed them (or
anyone else). How many sites check on security levels before giving a
feed. My impression is that a number of sites will feed almost anyone,
and the questions are more like "you pay the phone bill, right?" than
"are you a spy?"

  I think that getting some dialog going between the UUSR and the rest
of the world is really desirable. Many people think that Russia is one
big country, and only with the recent happenings in Estonia (sp?) etc,
have they realized that the parts of the USSR have more differences than
just a southern drawl vs. a yankee twang.

  I have lots of things I'd like to know about them... are they using
tools like spreadsheets, word processing, pop-ups? Can the average
professional hope to have a PC, and if so would it be a model 100, a
C64, or an AT type machine. Do they have a BBS in the USSR? Are there
any decent ales over there?


  I really hope this takes place.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me