> (BT) Net goes international (Canada) (Spencer, Templeton)
Actually, if we are being picky, the first (I think) international Usenet
site was a machine whose name I can't even remember: the Unix system that
Ron Gomes ran at BNR Ottawa. The reason you've never heard of it is that
I don't think anything was ever posted from it; it was a read-only system
for all practical purposes. It faded and died later, when Ron left BNR.
Utzoo was second by a couple of months. I can date that quite precisely
if people are interested: I've still got our archive tapes.
> idea originally at our "backbone" meeting at the Atlanta Usenix.
> (Present were Horton, Pleasant, Adams, Auton, Heiby, Fair, Woods,
> Beals, Spencer?, Jackson (Curtis), and me...
Yup, I was there, although I don't think I said much.
> Here is some old mail about renaming the mod groups to mainstream.
Incidentally, a major reason offered at the time for merging the "mod"
and mainstream name spaces was that it would make it easier for other
groups to "go moderated", something that was expected to be frequent.
I was against the merger and predicted that "going moderated" would
essentially never happen. I think I can claim victory on this one.
> ... Talk was the only top-level domain
> added specifically to allow admins to not carry groups -- the pariah groups.
> This was done (if I remember correctly) because it was a lot easier than
> simply trying to make them go away.
An interesting side note on this is that almost everyone agreed that
talk.suicide -- whatever it was called in its previous life -- was dumb
and should go away during the renaming... but it was known to be the
plaything of people who were considered dangerous if hassled, so leaving
it in was the better part of valor.
> ...to do this on a Friday night before leaving for San Francisco
> Usenix 2 days later, so I didn't even know I had all that mail until
> I'd been gone a week.
Actually, this is a good example of Natalie's Law, which Ron N. enunciated
for us in Atlanta when we were scheduling the Great Renaming: "never set
major cutover dates on or near major holidays". You want to make big
changes when everybody's at work, ready to deal with the consequences.
So the original schedule, which proposed change days on July 1 (Canadian
holiday, and too close to the US holiday) and Sept 1 (right in the middle
of the World Science Fiction Convention) was delayed two weeks.
> Yes - I remember Armando's announcement of $250k/yr but can't recall
> which conference it was...
San Diego, 1983. Here's what my old notes say about it:
Speaking of Usenet bills, \fIdecvax\fR's phone bill last year
was $250\|000!
They average 13 hours a day of long-distance calls.
The main problem was characterized as ``Armando is too soft-hearted
about letting new sites connect...''.
I can't complain too much, since we were among said sites... initially
with manual dialing at 300 baud! These soft youngsters :-) have no
concept of the joy with which we greeted our first 1200-baud modem --
it had an **AUTODIALER**. By common consent, getting it installed and
working took priority over everything else...
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16