Subject: Re: FINAL CALL FOR DISCUSSION: rec.arts.tv.twin-peaks
From: mccarty@aaet.csc.ti.com (Rick McCarty)
Date: 1990-11-14, 12:46
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <2511@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> bchurch@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Bob Church) writes:
> >
> >You might want to browse through the book "Unix Communications" by Anderson,
> >Costales, and Henderson. Among many other things it explains the reasons for
> >different prefixes such as comp. rec. alt. etc. These prefixes are there to
> >allow the easy exclusion of entire groups.  Alt. is generally the first to
> >go. In fact, the book shows a printout of the .newsrc for the authors machine,
> >the WELL ( not his machine actually, but the one he uses ) which is administered
> >by Stewart Brand. It includes the rec. groups but not alt.
> >

Are you perhaps confusing the READING of news with its TRANSMISSION?  (I'll
see if I can find the book to be sure I'm not wrong on this, but...)
In my experience, .newsrc is associated with news readers (such as rn, gnus,
nn, etc).  What I'm talking about is the software which actually manages the
news and passes it between sites (bnews, cnews, etc).

Sites don't HAVE to feed (or be fed) all groups, even within a given category.
There are some sites which must get feeds from multiple locations in order
to get all the groups they want.  There are others which limit the groups they
receive for various reasons, even though a feed is readily available.

If I want to get a feed for com.binaries.ibm-pc but not comp.sources.ibm-pc,
I can do that.  If I want to provide feeds for selected newsgroups I can do
that.  If I need a feed for a specific group, there's usually some place out
there that will help me - if I just ask.

Now I do know that it is possible for sites to wholesale say "I want all the
rec groups", AND (not that they would actually do this) sysadmins can also
say, "I want all of the rec groups except for x.  But it is through a
different mechanism than a .newsrc file.

Anyway, I still believe that what I said still stands - if any site wants
a Twin Peaks feed, they can almost surely get one from somewhere.  It does
not HAVE to become a rec group for folks to get feeds.

===========================================================================
Rick McCarty              "I'm not a Twin Peaks fan, but I play one on TV."
mccarty@aaet.csc.ti.com                       :-)~(-:
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