🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve Grimm asks what's to become of comp.[sources binaries].atari.st.  I
would suggest that it would be appropriate to supplement traffic from direct
submissions with selections from the ftp archives which are of general 
interest, even if they were not submitted.

First: I will take it as given that a small minority of those interested in
the sources and binaries can ftp directly.  In at least the case of atari.
archive.umich.edu, but I think others, dialup access to the archive (either
to a uucp login or a bbs) has been rejected (mostly, I think, for security
reasons).  The assumption is common that mailservers and ftp-by-mail are
good solutions for the great un-Internetted masses.  Here's my other view:

In the Chicago area, mail goes mostly through the heavily-burdened clout
system.  ftp-by-mail is a strain on the capacity of mail channels (which
are administered more with a view to improving speed and reliability of
delivery than to accomodating more volume).  News travels in several ways
that are not open to mail (including a direct satellite downlink to chinet).
The goals are more attuned to guaranteed eventual delivery and accomodating
volume than with the mail channels.  In the Chicago area, a modest switch
of volume from news to mail would be a move in a good direction.

I presume that the key to this situation: news has more routes available
than mail has, applies in many cases.  So I think it would be a good idea,
when there are few submissions to the sources/binaries newsgroups, for the
moderator to select a reasonable volume of items of wide interest from ftp-
only archives and post them.
                                        Steve     saj@chinet.chi.il.us