Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!david From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: ClariNews live electronic newswire/newspaper feed. Message-ID: <11871@s.ms.uky.edu> Date: 10 Jun 89 14:25:30 GMT References: <3493@looking.on.ca> Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences Lines: 45 A few quick points ... I'm packing & getting ready to go to Usenix .. First Brad/ClariNet isn't "making use of Usenet" in order to distribute this -- at least not in the traditional sense. Read it carefully, he's assuming control over ALL ClariNet links. These links don't have to follow traditional Usenet links. Getting ClariNet is an entirely seperate deal. Now, I wonder about enforcement? How does he plan to enforce his control over this network? The only thing which comes to mind is to somehow watch the Path: lines at lots of places and report back, somehow, ones which look strange. Well, he could also send out sendsys messages and look for unapproved links. Hmm... Second, the list of services is useful. Having access to the news wires directly on my home computer -- if desired -- would be a very very very very nice thing. And if, as he says, the newsgrid-dy stuff is really useful for broadcatching -- well, this could be a neat experience. "Broadcatch" is a term invented by people at the MIT Media Lab referring to a style of news reading where you get a stream of information in which carries keywords around with it. Then you have a filtering program which extracts out what you're interested in from the stream. We do a similar thing now with Usenet, but very primitively. The first level of the filter is the newsgroup hierarchy. The second level is the subject line and kill files in rn. It's very very primitive since the subject lines make an EXTREMELY poor source of keywords -- considering how little relation subject lines usually have to the actual subject of the article. And for that matter the newsgroup name -- sometimes. The service has useful features and doesn't cost a whole lot. -- <- David Herron; an MMDF guy <- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <- <- New word for the day: Obnoxity -- an act of obnoxiousness