🚀 go-pugleaf

Nearly half the groups on USENET exist because they are
converted or gatewayed Internet mailing lists, including such great
hits as comp.protocols.tcp-ip, comp.ai.*, comp.theory*, etc (not to
mention all the federally supported bionet groups).  Netnews and mail
are merely transports.  The *nice* thing about netnews is that it
could be hand configured to make minimal use of the backbones, or to
not use the backbones at all.

As far as the regionals are concerned, thanks to networks such as
yours, as their seed funding runs out, it will become economically
harder for them to maintain restrictive use policies (and there are
various legal issues involved if they want to orient themselves
towards some sort of common carrier, I suppose).  You see, it turns
out that being picky about traffic and working to an economy of scale
are mutually exclusive goals WHEN THERE IS COMPETITION.
-- 
Eliot Lear
[lear@TURBO.BIO.NET]