Path: utzoo!lsuc!ncrcan!ziebmef!becker
From: becker@ziebmef.uucp (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A counter-example for those who would eliminate PC binaries
Message-ID: <1988Jul1.043049.2418@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 1 Jul 88 08:30:48 GMT
References: <264@octopus.UUCP> <3302@s.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: becker@ziebmef.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access BBS/Unix
Lines: 41

In article <3302@s.cc.purdue.edu> rsk@s.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Rich Kulawiec) writes:
>In article <264@octopus.UUCP> pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) writes:
>>I find it interesting that there has been much talk about the need for
>>ridding the net of the evil PC binaries. Yet, something much less useful
>>is happening right now, and I haven't seen a peep of complaint!
>>Consider: The source code for the Mahjongg tiles.
>
>Let me get one thing out of the way first, and then I'll address the point
>at hand:  I'm not entirely pleased with the size of the posting that this
>particular (Sun-specific, to the best of my knowlege) game required.  On
>the other hand, I am not so displeased that I felt it necessary to complain
>either to the moderator of the group or the author.  I find myself
>thinking that this is really the first "huge" posting of this type in
>this newsgroup, and I regard it as a single anomalous data point.
>If these sorts of postings became the norm in this newsgroup, I might
>change my opinion.
>
>>But, if we're going to take the easy way out and simply ban X, we've got to
>>be consistent and ban ALL 'X', even the brand that affects us personally.
	maybe this has been suggested before here (or elsewhere), but
	it seems like the time to look at the practice of other systems -
	in specific, I am familiar with BitNet, which send out descriptions
	of available binaries (source, documents, etc), and issues a pointer
	to a thing called a "listserver" - this device (among other things)
	will mail the requested file(s) to the requestor who sends a
	standardized form to it... this is all automatic, and requires no
	human intervention once the files are made known to the server
	in an appropriate manner.

	It seems to me that this uses far less net bandwidth than the
	broadcasting method, and serves the community equally well -
	it has the drawback that some site must archive the material
	in a manner available to such a system for extended periods of
	time, but this is common practice anyway.

	If anyone requires it I would be glad to post a sample
	listserver help file for further discussion.

Cheers, Bruce Becker
UUCP: ...!unicus!becker!bdb, ...!lsuc!humvax!becker, ...!ncrcan!ziebmef!becker
BitNet: BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET