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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: New Newsgroup Proposal
Message-ID: <687@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Jan-85 12:52:42 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.687
Posted: Thu Jan 10 12:52:42 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 01:29:49 EST
References: <1838@wateng.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus
Lines: 30

This is in response to a proposal misposted to net.sources for a
net.sources.repost for repostings of things that some people didn't get.

I think this is a bad idea.  If you don't get a particular article,
it's probably because either (1) somebody upstream from you isn't
letting that newsgroup through, or (2) somebody along your path had
their /usr/spool/news filesystem fill up, preventing the whole thing
from making it.  In either case, reposting won't help, it probably will
do the same thing again.

There is clearly a need for a solution to this problem, however.  I have
two ideas.

(1) We set up some machines as public repositories of "things worth saving",
such as mod.sources and net.sources.  We publish UUCP dialup info for them
(probably a very restricted special uucp login) and anyone who wants can
call them up and get what's there.  We'd have to index it somehow, that is,
either publish lists of what's available regularly, or else find a way to
get a listing back to the requestor (who is probably not in the L.sys
file on the repository.)  What we really want here is something like the
ARPANET FTP with anonymous logins (which not only work better than UUCP,
and are faster, but put less load on the repository machine.)  Too bad we
can't all connect into an ARPA-like network.

(2) We post such things regularly on a newsgroup which is not transmitted
over phone lines, but only over StarGate.  Presumably this implies screening,
but I think we'd need this anyway to keep the "who has the source to rogue"
messages off.

	Mark