|
Grex > Coop6 > #112: Usenet newsgroup banning | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 18 new of 92 responses total. |
marcvh
|
|
response 75 of 92:
| 
Mar 8 13:49 UTC 1995 |
BTW, this is a bit out of left field, but what would it cost for Grex to get
a ClariNet feed? Is it something people would want?
|
popcorn
|
|
response 76 of 92:
|
Mar 8 14:50 UTC 1995 |
Dunno what it would cost, but if it's affordable I'd definitely like to
get one. Neat stuff!
|
ajax
|
|
response 77 of 92:
|
Mar 8 15:10 UTC 1995 |
Both "clari" and "fido" are listed as top-level Usenet heirarchies on
a usage list I have, so I'd think that depending on the Usenet source,
we could get them along with the regular newsfeed. They're both around
2-3MB/day. (Is ClariNet vaguely similar to FidoNet?)
|
marcvh
|
|
response 78 of 92:
|
Mar 8 15:35 UTC 1995 |
ClariNet provides things like wire news (actual *news* via news!) and
street price listings and sydnicated columns and (most importantly)
Dilbert. It is totally unlike FidoNet, and requires paying money to
get. it's possible the costs would be too much, particularly since
Clari would probably be understandably hesitant to cheaply license
to a place like Grex where a potentially unlimited number of users
not connected with Grex could read the material.
If we just get a clari.* feed without paying for it, expect to get sued.
|
steve
|
|
response 79 of 92:
|
Mar 8 15:37 UTC 1995 |
ClariNet is a business service that one subscribes to for money.
I don't think we'd be able to afford them, but its been a long time
since I saw money prices.
The issue of getting our news from one source, with some hardware
outlay is a valid one, but I think this type of service is only going
to become more common as time goes on. Within 1.5 years at the most,
the net is going to outgrow a V.34 connection. Lots of people are
realizing that. For us, it completey takes news traffic off the
Internet link, which is of course absolutely needed.
If a D&B check of them proves OK, I think we should go with them.
Of course, its going to be summer before we can get to this, but
unless we find something really wrong with this system, I think it
makes the most sense to go to.
|
brenner
|
|
response 80 of 92:
|
Mar 8 16:02 UTC 1995 |
Do you folks have USENET access through your
other providers? Have the USENET groups been
banned at umich?
(Sorry for the drift, but i think I missed something...)
|
robh
|
|
response 81 of 92:
|
Mar 8 20:10 UTC 1995 |
I use a University of Michigan news feed to read Usenet on Grex,
and as far as I know, no groups have been banned. Then again,
I never read those icky groups that tend to get banned. >8)
|
ajax
|
|
response 82 of 92:
|
Mar 9 02:47 UTC 1995 |
I haven't heard of UMich restrictions, and Michigan State U's MSU-Gopher
(currently open to the general public, without authorization) seems to carry
most Usenet groups, including those that are typically banned from large
commercial services. Here's a snippit about a brouhaha at UPitt:
-----------------School to Limit Usenet Access (March 3)-----------------
The University of Pittsburgh has become the latest school to propose
limiting Usenet access.
The university says it will establish a standing committee of faculty,
students and others to help determine which of the more than 10,000 Usenet
news groups on the Internet will be carried on its computer network.
The school says the move is one aspect of a new policy that will review the
use of university computer resources to access, display, post or print
materials that may have obscene or sexually explicit content.
The school notes that the policy addresses the need to provide appropriate
protection for First Amendment rights, while at the same time adhering to
federal and state statutes governing obscenity and sexually explicit
material.
The policy calls for the suspension of computing privileges as well as the
possible imposition of additional sanctions upon anyone who is found to have
employed university computer resources to use obscene or sexually explicit
material in a way that violates university policies and guidelines.
--John Edwards
|
scg
|
|
response 83 of 92:
|
Mar 9 03:39 UTC 1995 |
When I read news (which doesn't happen that often) I use a Umich feed, but
not everybody on Grex has that access. As long as I have my umich
account, I probably won't read news on Grex, just as I don't do mail on
Grex, but the idea here is to get accesss to news for those who don't have
access to it elsewhere.
|
nephi
|
|
response 84 of 92:
|
Mar 9 05:55 UTC 1995 |
(Would I have that access, scg? I'm still looking for a good news source.)
|
srw
|
|
response 85 of 92:
|
Mar 9 08:24 UTC 1995 |
Grex permits members to use the nntp protocol to get news.
Non-members will be blocked from doing this. It's done in the kernel,
so compiling your own reader won't help.
This item is about the mythical Grex Usenet facility. Like the one
we used to have, and a lot like the one we are going to have.
All grexers will be able to read it, and verified Grexers will be able
to post. No membership dues necessary for this, as the members voted
to open it up. Now we only have to implement it and decide which
groups it will contain and decide what is verification and how
secret it is to be kept.
This item appears to be about the group selection question.
|
tsty
|
|
response 86 of 92:
|
Mar 9 09:41 UTC 1995 |
I would prefer to see the motd not keep saying "news is down." It's
off for one thing, and a sad reminder.
If or when it ever comes back ...+that+ announcement would be
fit for motd.
INteresting thing about the sattelite feed, it's a one-to-many
rather than the current system of ont-to-one-to-one ...etc, relaying
method.
The factor of losing stuff, though, is a tad scary. but, hey, it's
been over a year that Grex has been missing news, so where's the beef?
|
robh
|
|
response 87 of 92:
|
Mar 9 11:44 UTC 1995 |
Remember, tsty, the last time we took that out of the motd, I
got five help-seekers THAT DAY asking why they couldn't access
Usenet, since it was obviously working again, since it
didn't say "Usenet is down" any more. >8(
|
popcorn
|
|
response 88 of 92:
|
Mar 9 14:09 UTC 1995 |
Yeah; staff has told a lot of people that they'll know news is back
because the line is out of the motd.
|
jep
|
|
response 89 of 92:
|
Mar 10 04:25 UTC 1995 |
A lot of news can be left off without content restrictions. There
are 9000 groups, I believe on MSEN, but hundreds of them are things like
the de.* heirarchy (of interest to people in Germany or Denmark or
somewhere), university heirarchies, of no possible interest to anyone not
attending that university, and other such specialized stuff of no interest
to Grex. Lose that and no one would mind, and it would cut down the
amount to be brought in here by a lot.
|
tsty
|
|
response 90 of 92:
|
Mar 10 08:12 UTC 1995 |
re: motd - just got more info (and in #87 too) about the situation.
I withdraw the suggestion for removing the "news is down" line, it
is important.
|
lilmo
|
|
response 91 of 92:
|
Mar 10 15:19 UTC 1995 |
Re #90: Yeah, there's a number of proprietary newsgroups, but their share
of the traffic is miniscule.
|
steve
|
|
response 92 of 92:
|
Mar 10 18:01 UTC 1995 |
I wouldn't say they are miniscule, but they definately are smallish
compared to the rest of the net.
Last time I looked, thnet had a lot of sites that didn't carry
the binaries newsgroups, and groups that carried pictures, because of
their size. At one point, those two types of groups amounted to somewhere
around 24% of a full feed, hence their deletion from a lot of sites.
Back at the August '93 board meeting we decided to not carry those groups;
binaries for the lack of disk space, and the pictures groups for copyright
reasons.
Last time I checked, a full feed (or as close to one as you can determine:
what *is* a "full feed" these days--does it include de.* for example), was
around 200M per day.
If we go the PageSat route for our feed, which I think is the best
way to go, if we are satisified that they are stable, then we won't have
to worry about bandwidth for a little which. I'm not sure what the effective
throughput rate is from their box via the serial port is, but I will venture
to say that it is the next best thing to a 128K ISDN connection (and maybe
better by a little? I don't yet know).
If we went this route, we'd then be in a better position to carry the
binaries groups, if we wanted, realizing that the link would probably suffer
with increased file transfers.
|