Re: Recumbent Basketball & Other Pastimes

Leonard H. Tower Jr. (tower@ai.mit.edu)
Wed, 25 Nov 92 01:21:04 EST

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 00:22:18 EST
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@msen.com>

nntp was the death of the cabal, really - when anyone can get a newsfeed
from anyone else on the net, the idea of a "backbone" sounds a little
silly. only the statistical measures of backbone-ness (the 'top 1000'
list) has any real credence on the large scale.

--Ed

the top 1000 mixes apple and oranges. nntp and uucp sites (not to
mention bitnet, etc).

within the nntp sphere it's mostly a status/ego game of who can move
the news the fastest to the most sites. the better you do this the
higher in the list you are. the top 1000 list would be more
useful if nntp!nntp links weren't counted.

there are still some non-commercial nntp sites that send news to uucp
sites. these sites are the ones who deserve priase, not the nntp only
sites high up in the top 1000.

note that any nntp-only site in North America could drop off USENET
and no one outside the site would really notice.

-len

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