🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <slrnb8q2fu.7dm5.syl@alcor.concordia.ca>,
Sylvain Robitaille  <syl@alcor.concordia.ca> wrote:
>> I assume you mean "Managing Usenet", by Henry Spencer and David
>> Lawrence.
>> Unfortunately, it's out of print ...
>
>Hrmmm...  Well call me surprised, then.  I assumed that book would be a
>"bible" of sorts and simply continually be revised as news servers (and
>services) evolve...

That would have been nice, especially since the book was in need of an
update essentially as soon as it appeared.  (It was meant to appear well
before it actually did.)  (I should add that the late arrival was not 
O'Reilly's fault...)

Trouble is, while you could leave a fair bit of the background material
pretty much as is, the heart of the book -- the software-specific stuff --
would need a major rewrite.  C News is pretty much gone, INN has changed
significantly, and various other packages have appeared.  So the update
would be a large job. 

And in the end, no volunteers were found. :-(  Dave was off doing other
things, and hadn't been all that comfortable with writing anyway.  I'm
fine with the writing side, but I've been pretty much out of the news-
software world recently and would need to do a lot of catching up, and
I too am a bit busy.  O'Reilly sometimes uses staff writers or goes out 
and finds someone to update older books, but evidently they couldn't
find the right person for this one.  Oh well.
-- 
"Bin Laden must be laughing his beard off."             | Henry Spencer
                            -- Wes Oleszewski           | henry@spsystems.net