There is now a web site for the "Guide to Select BBSes on Internet (SBI)".
It is at  http://dkeep.com/sbi.htm    Connection from Grex by lynx works
fine. SBI is a very comprehensive list of privately owned (no universities
or Freenets) BBSs available via telnet and/or rlogin, which accept new
users. 

28 responses total.

I have entered an item in coop to propose that Grex enroll in the SBI List.

Are we privately owned?

No, we aren't.

Yes, we are. Grex is a private, non-profit corporation. The only
alternative is a governmental (or quasi-governmental) corporation.
It is wholly owned by the corporation (itself).

But if Grex owns Grex, then who owns Grex?
If Grex bit the mailman, who would he sue?

The members own Grex, I think.

Rane, what you said about Grex's being privately owned is quite correct.
However, it may not at all be what someone compiling a list of "privately
owned" boards has in mind.  I'm not making a call about this case, for
which I have no data whatsoever.

Grex is a corporation. That is, the law views Grex as a *person*. This
legal person has lots of internal organs, which give it life. In
particular, the members are the food gathering organels. All users
collectively constitute cells in the nervous system, although there are
brain organels also. At this point, my anatomy knowledge breaks down. The
board is one of the organels concerned with allocation of resources, and
coordination of activity. Staff combines the mitachondrial and immune
systems ;-}. Well, enough of this... 

If Grex bit the mailman (more likely, the meter reader), he or she would
sue the corporation - the Grex "person". That is why it would be desirable
for Grex to carry liability insurance, so that the meter reader would not
try to go after a pound of flesh, too. 

We will have to ascertain what SBI means by "private", which I will do.
They exclude universities and Freenets, but I don't think they are using a
legal defintion but one they have made up. However I know that it doesn't
matter whether a bbs is incorporated or not, as incorporated bbs are in
the SBI list already. 

In the past you suggested the Board member's homeowners insurance
would cover them in the event of a lawsuit.  Do you think Board
members have reason to doubt this coverage?

Its in your homeowners insurance *umbrella* policy, in Michigan. I
was speaking more to a) protecting the corporate property, and b)
compensating the public if we are at fault. Its when the corporation
can't do the latter, though, that plaintiffs tend to get nasty and
try to penetrate the "corporate shield". 

So I still am somewhat confused about what protection Homeowner's
might offer.  Would you mind giving  expamples of situations
and how compensation would be handled?

The provision comes under Exclusions, and is round-about. It reads

"We will not provide insurance:
.........
8.  for any loss caused by your act or omission as a member of
    a corporation's board of directors. This exclusion does not apply
    if the corporation:
    a.  was formed as a not-for-profit coporation; and
    b.  does not involve your business.

Hence, your insurance company will pay under Personal Liability
coverage if you are legally obligated to pay damages for a loss
(above retained limit, and not exceeding policy limit). 

An example would be a court finding the corporation without liability
insurance but a person was injured because the board failed to ensure
that visitors to the building in which the dungeon is located could
not get access to the dungeon, and someone got electrocuted (this
is a hypothetical example). 

Thanks for entering that, Rane.  It sure it better than nothing.

The coverage, that is.

Actualy, Cyberspace Communications, Inc. is a corporation, and Cyberspace
Communications, Inc. owns Grex.  Grex is a computer.

(Sigh...there's one in every crowd...and often its me...) Well, not quite.
From our bylaws: "This organization shall be known as "Cyberspace
Communications". The computer conferencing system provided by the
organization is known as "Grex"." So, Grex is the conferencing "system",
not just a computer (upon which its code resides). 

Now *that* is picky, although correct. However, "Grex" also happens to be 
the name of the computer, even if the bylaws don't say so.

Can correct things be picky? You are free, of course, to call the
computer "grex", but that an informality (I think we had an item
here once on what we called our computers), and by virtue of the fact
that that is where the grex *system* resides. In illustration of that -
what are you going to call the Sun 4, if the Sun 3 is "Grex"?

Well, when we went from the Sun 2 to the Sun 3, the Sun 3 became grex and
the Sun 2 became grexold (& hung around for a while).  That change
doesn't have to be too involved.

You have made my point...its not the *computer* that is named grex.

Perhaps Grex is what the user sees on his or her screen when dialing in.
Somtimes when I call Grex is just a bunch of garbage ASCI characters on
my screen.  Sometimes it's not.  (Garbage to me, perhaps not to you or 
Grex.)

All Unix boxes have to have a name.  The current name of the Sun 3 is Grex
(thus the name grex.cyberspace.org).  Once we go to the Sun 4, the Sun 4 will
also be named Grex (if you think something has to be exclusive to be a name,
look at all the Steves around here), and this computer's name will be changed
to something else (yes, names can change).

That's the tradition in ships - a ship sinks, and another is given the
same name if there is some nautical continuity. But a ship's name is
*more* than the name of the boat, and I think Grex is more than the
name of the hardware.

This response has been erased.

  Buddhists would probably have less difficulty with the "What is
  Grex?" question than us Western types.

It sure has a lot of Karma just now. So, what will be the form of
Nirvana for Grex - when it is absorbed into the Great Computer in
the Sky?

It will be just 0's and 1's.

Sort of a Hick's field of bits - how it all began. Amazing.

...Grex crossing the 7th data stream  = Sun 7?  So the days of a perfected
Grex are known!

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