response 50 of 75:

Mar 20 02:59 UTC 1996

trn is definitely novice-hostile.  My first experience (almost my last!) with
it was being asked, one at a time, whether I wanted to join any of 50
bazillion groups I'd never heard of, & none of the choices listed in the
prompt got me out of that situation.  Once I learned to use h-for-help at
most any prompt things got better, though the fact that it took several
minutes for all the screens this invoked to scroll by was daunting to say the
least.  (This was not 1 but 2 hardware upgrades ago, & I think mju was
personally uploading the news from mudos to the Sun-2 at 2400bps, folks.)

But people can learn to use it, & just a few hints at the beginning
would help a lot.  I doubt that we're likely to find any graphical
point-&-click-interface programs for this environment very soon.
A lot of people would like to read news here, I'd say - enough that I doubt
strongly dpc's estimates on how many people read it on M-net.

response 52 of 75:

Mar 20 06:56 UTC 1996

I can't stand tin either. I tried it, and went back to trn. I agree
about the confusing interface, though. The help menus are not as
clear as one would like, and there are too many options! I am sure
some things that I'd like to be able to do can be done, but I can't
tell from the help descriptions (e.g., saving articles in a group
to different files).

response 54 of 75:

Mar 20 09:58 UTC 1996

When we get usenet back up, trn is likely to be the newsreader we
supply. Tin is just too big a resource hog. Dpc, AOL's spiffy DOS-based
graphical interfaces to the contrary, we live in a text-based UNIX 
environment here. That means you are pretty much limited to trn, tin, and
the even more primitive "rn".

response 56 of 75:

Mar 20 11:48 UTC 1996

Heck I used to use rn, and didn't worry about it.  Then again, I use "mail",
vi, and have a guitar amp that still uses vacuum tubes.  :)

response 58 of 75:

Mar 20 15:40 UTC 1996

Right - you've got to keep those string warm, or they change pitch.

response 60 of 75:

Mar 21 00:25 UTC 1996

If we do Usenet again, I hope that the comments above about better help
utilities, wrapper scripts, etc., lead to real changes.
        I see no point in Grex offering Usenet to people who already
know how to read it and have access elsewhere.  I'd feel better if
Grex committed itself to helping people who don't know how to read
it learn how to do so.
        The estimate of 6 people reading Usenet on M-Net came from the
staff person who is (sort of) in charge of it.  He's working on improve-
ments, but has lots of other stuff on his plate that is more appetizing.

response 62 of 75:

Mar 21 20:18 UTC 1996

I have a number of reasons for thinking that we really ought to reinstate
Usenet News here.  Two of the major ones are 1) As John pointed out, we had
a member vote and unless there is some technical reason that it's impossible
we are committed unless and until those who don't want Usenet here can
convince the majority of the membership of their point of view and back that
up with another vote.
2) GREX came online, in part, in an attempt to provide a place where we could
"level the playing field".  In a world where it is ever increasingly true that
knowledge is power it has become crucial to have at least minimal access to
the vast information resevoir that is the net.  Unfortunately, the economic
'have nots" of the world aren't in a position to afford the $20 a month that
a traditional ISP costs.

I think that in order to live up to ideals GREX started out with, we ought
to provide as much access as we can.  Not necessarily the best, fastest, and
spiffiest interfaces.  We aren't trying to compete with ISPs.  But reliable
and cheap enough to be really useful to those who can't manage any other form
of access.

It may actually be an advantage to have slow and tedious interfaces.  It
encourages people to move up to real connections as soon as they can,
minimizing the load on GREX while providing a real service to those who really
need us.  I think that idea fits in nicly with the concept of GREX as a small
village on the byways of cyberspace.

response 64 of 75:

Mar 22 07:37 UTC 1996

interesting idea

response 66 of 75:

Mar 23 01:37 UTC 1996

rn, vi, mail and vacuum tubes???? I think I hear a sympathy....er, symphony.

response 68 of 75:

Mar 24 18:42 UTC 1996

No, you don't "get newsfeed".  You get telnet access, which if your a guru
like robh, you can use to find another site that lets you read news.  It's
not the same.  I've never figured out how to do it, but when GREX had a feed,
I used it daily. 

response 70 of 75:

Mar 24 22:00 UTC 1996

  You can telnet to another site and use their news reader, or you can
run a news reader like trn on Grex and access news from a remote system,
using the NNTP protocol (I think NNTP = Network News Transport Protocol
or something).  There are usually a couple dozen news servers at any time
that provide public read/write access to Usenet news via NNTP, that don't
require a login or password on that system.  With outbound Internet access,
the news readers on Grex can establish an NNTP connection with those news
servers to get their feed.  However, it's very *very* slow, since all the
data is transmitted over the Internet link.
 
  The advantage to having our own news server is that the NNTP connection
would go from grex to our news server over a local Ethernet.  Data can then
be transmitted very quickly from news server to news reader, without eating
any of our Internet bandwidth.  The news server itself needs a way to get
its data, but it wouldn't use our current Internet connection for that.

response 72 of 75:

Mar 24 23:05 UTC 1996

I think a news service is no longer seriously being questioned. These
questions had to be asked. At the budget planning, we prioritized it, and it
looks like it will make the cut for this round.

response 74 of 75:

Apr 7 04:43 UTC 1996

I'm going to mail an offer of mine to the grex staff for news.