Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:1960 news.admin:4323 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!unido!altger!blue From: blue@altger.UUCP (blue) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,news.admin Subject: Re: rnews: security hole. Too bad. Summary: usenet *does *cost *money *in *europe Message-ID: <1236@altger.UUCP> Date: 17 Dec 88 01:27:45 GMT References: <1219@altger.UUCP> <361@skep2.ATT.COM> Organization: Altos Computer Systems Munich Lines: 63 In article <361@skep2.ATT.COM>, wcs@skep2.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.[ho95c]) writes: > You seem to have a different understanding of what usenet is about than > most of us do. There isn't some "big brother" government AUTHORIZING you > to send and receive news; everyone's allowed to do what they want. > (I realize Europe is slightly different because of billing for the trans- > Atlantic link, and because your phone companies belong to the government.) Bill, Usenet in Europe is not free by any mean. If one wants to get news he must be registered on uunet, on his national backbone - which will probably forward his system name to the european gateway - and PAY his backbone for the News . In italy, specifically, prices rise from 2000 US $ a year up to.. dunno,depends on WHAT your system is up for . Same for email on usenet. I heard that in the States this service is almost free. Charges for transmission are excluded of course. I run a Xenix system in Milano, Italy, which is linked to other systems in italy and to the german . The problem of in europe is well-known, that's why a new european sub-network is borning these days . However, for people like me,students, getting on usenet is a MUST, and we are saving up money to subscribe uunet by 1989. Look from which system i am mailing this: its in Munich, W.Germany. I dont know ANY other systemin italy which can give me News. > Posting is ok, and it's a good thing. If your site wants to reduce the > amount of posting they do to reduce costs, fine. If they want to make it > difficult to new users to post because they might look like fools if they > talk before they've done some reading, fine. It's not hard to get those > features. But otherwise, why protect posting? It's like arguing against > free speech; if you don't like what people might say you enlighten them > about how wrong they are, you don't prevent them from talking. Hold on. If i send news from MY system, which is named i2ack, through altger, the postmaster here will get troubles. Although Altger kindly supports people like me, and may be would also agree for such a poor mail traffic on the net, hs backbone probably would be pointed at by the european backbone, for 2 main reasons: 1) i am not registered anywhere (yet) 2) i cannot connect through Germany. Being italian, i must use italian backbones. That's life. I know for sure that until now most of unix systems initaly used backbones abroad, however i got a LOT of troubles and as a matter of fact i cannot send/receive any email through altger. This explains why News - at least in europe - should be better protected. Now, i get the chance of this mail, asking: is there anyone around in USA running a unix (or similar) system linked on telenet, tymnet or whatever X.25 which would take me in? Not for free, i mean, just for a reasonable yearly fee. don't laugh, this is a serious problem, at least here in italy, where the whole uucp network (the official one) counts less than 40 nodes. regards, Paolo -- Mr. BlueBoy, DTE222/hck - Milano, Italy Usenet: blue@altger | Unix has no bugs. Unix itself IS a bug. Subnet: blue@i2ack | Let's use ProDos.. :-)