🚀 go-pugleaf

Steven N. Hirsch (hirsch@emba-news.uvm.edu) wrote:

: I'll second that!  While I was slightly annoyed at his insistance upon
: 4th-Class "Book Rate" shipment (No, no, Mr. Bill, anything but
: that..), I think his selection was outstanding.  I picked up a copy of
: Algorithms in Modula-3 by Sedgewick.  Not only is this book rare, but
: it was about $50.00 at the local bookstore when it _was_ in print.
: Mr. Ho's offerings are certainly not your average "How to Crash
: Windows if You're a Dummy" genre that prevail in the "*.sale" groups.
: As long as it doesn't get ridiculous, I'd like to keep seeing this
: from time to time.

This is the last multi-group follow-on post I do (because of Mr. Ho's
idiotic habit of posting to everything technical on the 'net).

To cover one point, the schools and other educational institutions get a
MAJOR subsidy from the NREN on their Internet access, as long as it's used
for `education and research' purposes.  Running a bookstore doesn't count,
at least not in worldwide distribution.  Using the Usenet newsgroups for
personal aggrandizement is against the policy, intent and useage guidelines
in the bulk of the groups.  It's been that way for a very long time, and
unless cudenver.edu wants to purchase a commercial link to the 'net on their
own money (not my federal taxes), they'd better advise Mr. Ho to desist.

Whether you find it personally handy or not, over half of the groups this
thread is posted to DO NOT ALLOW commercial posts.  Period.  End of
discussion.  If you need to find a book, look in your .newsrc file for any
group with `book' in the listing and ADD IT TO YOUR LIST.

Additionally, THE WHOLE INTENT of seperating the groups up is so that we can
get on with the topics in these other groups *without* having to build
enormous killfiles to weed out all the off-topic posts (like this one) and
the advertising posts, not to mention jobs wanted/offered.  If you want to
have a 'netwide vote to for EACH DARN ADVERTISER that would like space here
to sell their (possibly) useful products, I'd give the Usenet groups about a
2 week lifespan before we ALL had to give up in disgust.  Just how many
companies do you really think there are out there that have no moral qualms
about pasting ads all over the 'net?  I'd bet on most of 'em.  Mr. Ho
regularly cross-posts to 10 or 15 groups all by himself, and that's only the
ones I catch a glimpse of.  We had a couple of (scum) lawyers here that
cross-posted to EVERY group.  Remember them?  They felt they were in the
right, as US immigrants read every group.  They got axed, too late.

The solution (already decided by the powers above on Usenet) is simple:
either disallow ALL commercial ads, or let 'em all through.  Anything else
is discrimination, and guaranteed to cause the idea of Usenet News to fold.
The rule of allowing ads ONLY on certain groups and forbidding it on all
others lets the reader decide whether to look for *real* information or
(probably misleading) advertising.

It may not be a popular attitude, but it wasn't a concern in the old ARPANET
days, and with the staggering growth rate of the 'net, it's more important
than ever before to have ground rules, and to stick by 'em.  With the
millions of users, losers and browsers here daily, the 'net can be a handy
tool for information exchange or a madhouse.  Make your choice.