🚀 go-pugleaf

As some of you may know by now, there are 70 new newsgroups floating
around in a new hierarchy, ccm.*.

This is the result of a gateway between masnet and Canada Remote
Systems, the largest BBS in Canada and likely one of the larger ones in
the world (70+lines, a few gig of on-line stuff for downloading, etc.).

As of now, the sites which either carry these groups now or will soon
(that I know of) are: attcan, becker, masnet, telly, tmsoft, utgpu.

After a few days' worth of postings, here are some observations:

ORIGIN:

As I understand it, CanConfMail is a network of a number of Canadian and
U.S. PC-based Bulletin Boards that have not gone into Fidonet.
It appears that the largest member (by far) is Canada Remote Systems.

There seem to be three or more actual nets in use that I can discern:
Quicknet, Relaynet and Smartnet (though I can't yet make out the
connections - or the differences - between them).

Here is a grep of originating systems, based on what's been sent
here so far. (There are only 70 sites identified in 915 articles.)
You'll notice the \xxx notation in places, noting where they have used
8-bit PC graphics characters in their "sig":

<< CHARLIE >> (517)790-0598  1+Gig 9 Nodes
Animation Station -- (416) 443-8671 
Bert's Bulletin Board. Brandon, Man. Can. (204)763-4684
Bit Systems ~ Guelph ~ 519-767-1755 HST
Bits & Bytes BBS *(416) 532-1784 * Toronto, O
CHIPS+ Connection * Newport Beach, CA 714-760-3265
Canada's CAPital BBS -Ottawa- (613) 233 4774 {view node}
Canadian-Micro BBS (519)681-3113  London, Ont.
Channel 1 (TM) * 617-354-8873 * 26 Lines *
Computer Buy/Sell 713-694-5399 Hou TX
Crystal Palace * Toronto * (416) 925-5742 *
DAT-A-REA - St-Bruno,Quebec (514)441-3229
DPS, Pacific Palisades, CA. (213)459-6053
Data Bit Network 703-719-9648  Running Board 301-229-5342
DataGate (202) 948-8332 HST
Data World BBS - Knoxville, Tn. - 615)966-3574, 9600V
Exchange BBS (804) 340-5042 * 9 NODES !
FRONTLINE! BBS 416-840-5269.
FoxNet PCBoard ~ Grand Falls, NF ~ (709) 489-4758
Gateways * New York City * [212] 219-8824
Gil Tennant - SSH 416-288-9412
HUB BBS Arlington, Va. 703-685-0019 HST
HYMAN INDUSTRIES BBS - Winnipeg, MB - (204)4
Haley's Comment BBS - Innerkip. Ont. - (519) 469-3028 *
Harred On-Line- South Jersey Smartnet from Millville N.J.
Hillside BBS, GUELPH,ON. (519)821-6389 & 654-9657
K-W AMATEUR RADIO BBS*   >(519)-578-9314< (1:221/177)
Lake Erie Vineyard 814-459-4631 Hayes V.42 * 814-455-9860 HS
Little Angels PCB * (213)387-5901 HST D/S * Los Angeles, CA 
MSW BBS, Winnipeg, Mb. (204) 663-8490
MUI-Net . Sydney, Nova Scotia CANADA . (902) 564-5022 *
Media Shack ~ Toronto ~ (416)699-1846 *
MegaByte / Comox, B.C. (604)339-0522
Microwave Research BBS (813) 442-4286 HST
MoonDog BBS Brooklyn,NY 718 692-2498 9600-V
Next Generation <..Smartnetting at Warp Speed...>
Oasis BBS (613) 236-1730 Ottawa, CANADA
Odyssey <SMARTNET> Morris Plains,NJ (201)984-6574
Omaha Network* 4.3beta GAP (402)453-1504 HST
One Thousand BBS ~ (416)236-3209 ~ Toronto *
Party Line - Memphis - 901-873-2328 - HST
PharmStat Systems    Bayside, N.Y. (718)(217-0898)
Pokey's Place Winnipeg, MB (204) 253-1342 (HST) <<SmartNet>>
ProData Exchange * Tampa, FL * (813) 920-8820
Programmer's Exchange, Toronto, (416) 787-1965
Quarterdeck Tech Support (213) 392-9701
Rall Computers, Seal Beach, CA (213) 594-5528
Role-Players Haven (613)824-0059 "The Origin of Gaming"
Ron S..   SysOp London PCUG-BBS-(519)472-9471
S.I.T.E. Contrecoeur QC, 514-587-5154.
SCAN/IS Toronto's Business BBS (416)265-8724
SUPER 88 enr.  Laval, Quebec (514) 622-6024
Santa Software Associates   VA:(703) 349-0135
Sasquatch BBS, Terrace, B.C.  (604) 635-2184
Shadow RAM BBS Ottawa, CANADA
Skeleton Crew =-818-718-9219 Chatsworth CA
SoftNet London, CANADA 519/685-5306
Spartan BBS. Etobicoke, ON.
St Pete Programmers Exchg *HST* 813 527-5666
Synapse BBS - Gatineau PQ - (819) 561-5268
System EX-10 Canada * (416) 275-4248 *
T.N.M.C. Buckeystwn Md 301-698-0212 HST 38.4k
TAVERN BBS Chazy NY {{{{ A SMARTNET Board }}}         
ULITMATE LINK (201) 680-9718 - Hayes v9600
WINNING EDGE - (416) 277-8253 - PARADOX USERS GROUP
Wildfire BBS  Woodstock, Ont  (519)-539-0523
Windsor Spitfire BBS ~ USR HST ~ (519)735-1504 ~
Ye Olde Bailey - 1 713 520 1569 - SMARTNET - Hayes 9600
Zooman's Zoo BBS * New York Cty * (212) 432-1992
dBored/HUBSD - San Diego - 619-748-3644 (HST)

HEADERS:

Regardless of where the message actually came from, the return address
and "Organization:" header (for the purpose of Usenet) reads only Canada
Remote Systems. Some of the messages broadcast their actual point of
origin on the bottom of the message - I don't believe it's a good
assumption that all unmarked articles (the majority) are from CRS.

The "From:" header says "firstname.lastname@canremote.UUCP", regardless
of which site originated the message. I don't know if e-mail to a person
at Zooman's Zoo BBS would get correctly routed. I also don't know if
Usenet postings to these groups will get back into CRS.

It is a serious drawback that messages coming in from this network has
no distribution. This makes it more difficult to alias ccm groups into
their equivalent Usenet groups (why should a person reading news have to
choose whether to post to comp.dcom.telecom or ccm.hayes?)

My preference would be that the Organization: header contain the name of
the system originating the message, not CRS, and that messages contain a
header "Distribution: ccm". Would this be difficult?

CONTENT:

The jury's still out. There's a lot of garbage and some pearls. It
shudders to make me think that looking at a few hundred CCM postings
would have be *missing* recent ravings in news.groups, alt.sex and
can.general. There appear to be a noticable amount of broadcast stuff
that is really not appropriate for re-transmission (like CRS internal
policy statements or the CRS sysop telling a questioner "yeah, I
can get that for ya cheap."

Other things I've noticed is shareware authors unabashedly plugging
their stuff, and lots of PC hardware discussions. Lots of people apparently
like to tell the world what they're using and why they love it, even if
nobody wants to know.

There are many "Re:..." subject lines but no references to previous articles
and sparse use of quoting.

Big - no make that HUGE - chunks of messages are of the kind that on
Usenet would be ghettoed in comp.sys.ibm.pc.questions. Someone actually
sent out a message asking what the going price of an EGA card was, and
another had a "sig" of "Microsoft products are tops!".

A guy from Quarterdeck answers any Unix-related questions with
"Well, why not just get Desqview?"

There's a lot of stuff that I would say is more appropriate as e-mail
rather than broadcast, but in fairness, that also applies to much of
Usenet :-|.

On the plus side, for IBM PC/286/386 postings, I find some of the
writers more knowledgable than the average comp.sys.ibm.pc poster. There
is more specific coverage of applications like spreadsheets or
accounting.

CONCLUSIONS:

There's some stuff here that I'd genuinely like to see gatewayed into
mainstream Usenet. With ccm groups getting to tmsoft, attcan and utgpu,
it would be trivial to get this stuff to uunet and NNTP.

But there is much to do first. There are a number of these groups that
have no business being broadcast at all. The others need better headers.
I'm still not sure if they deserve their own hierarchy or a merger (via
aliasing) into conventional Usenet groups.

I hear CRS is getting some Usenet. Is it ready for the deluge that a full
bidirectional gateway would bring?

-- 
Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing,
Why can't they put 'em all there?  | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
            - CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan
-- 
Men. They can put one on the moon. | Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing,
Why can't they put 'em all there?  | located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
            - CBC's "Street Legal" | evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan