From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!lepreau Newsgroups: net.news Title: Re: Proposal for USENET Organization Article-I.D.: utah-cs.1269 Posted: Sat Jan 1 01:36:01 1983 Received: Sun Jan 2 00:49:53 1983 References: fortune.710 omsvax.283 houxm.285 Oh brother. Certainly the amount of communication in this epitome of anarachy, the uucp net, is remarkable. But the amount of lost mail and unreplyable cc lists and absurdly long paths is just as remarkable. I am sick and tired of people proclaiming that standards are for the birds. That may well be fine, and certainly fun, when hacking away at software on one machine, but IT FAILS TOTALLY WHERE NETWORKS ARE CONCERNED! If you don't agree on a common protocol then you can't talk. It's that simple. And if you don't agree on some sort of standards then you will have zilch reliablity and convenience. Every goddamn uucp site between you and me is perfectly free to throw this mail on the floor (as uucp does all the time, never mind rmail) and never tell anyone. And if someone redoes uucp and mail making them reliable and functional and give them away only half the sites will install them within a year. Yeah, it's real nice having no central control. But it's not going to last forever that way. Happy New Year. -Jay Lepreau (also at lepreau@utah-cs. Where we have just converted to arpa-dictated new protocols as of this morning. And we will survive and probably even benefit!)