Newsgroups: tor.news
Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: drought?
Message-ID: <1989Apr21.081556.8549@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <423@dptcdc.datapoint.com> <1989Apr19.173049.1553@utzoo.uucp>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 89 08:15:56 GMT

> Geoff, is it time for another Toronto USENET map?

Gee, I sure hope not :-); it's a lot of work making a Usenet map: you
get stoned by mailed replies to your sendsys control message, then (in
the absence of automatic map-making software) you draw drafts and
finally draw the finished map in pain-staking detail.  During the data
collection phase, the shell's "you have mail" prompt is redundant and
novice news administrators phone you up and demand to know why you have
broken security on their machines and stolen their sys files. :-)

Then when you are done, people run around and rearrange all their
netnews connections and in three or four months your map is hopelessly
out of date and people ask you to make another one. :-)  It's such
satisfying work producing the map du jour. :-)

In the past I have made maps only twice and both times because Henry
asked for them in order to try to rationalise the Toronto news flow.
Fortunately for me, Henry hasn't needed them too often.  If this is
going to be a recurring need, I think it needs to be automated as much
as possible, which probably means someone with more spare time than me
finding or writing appropriate map-drawing software which needs only a
little advice to resolve ambiguous sys file information.  Henry has
given me an interesting paper describing how IBM draws maps of SNA
networks, but I haven't had a chance to read it in detail yet.  (I don't
have the bits so I can't e-mail it to you and we don't have a FAX.  I
can provide the reference to interested parties when I get to work.)
-- 
Geoff Collyer	utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu
It's all Henry's fault. (TM)