Request For Discussion (RFD): aus.food

This is a cross-posted response (to the cross-posted RFD).

"ausadmin" in message news:[email hidden]:
| REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION
| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food
|
| This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) ...
| . . .
| CHARTER: aus.food
|
| ...Examples of on-topic posts include:
|
| - food recipes
| - preparation
| - storage
| - drinks with meals
| - restaurant reports and recommendations (good or bad!)

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.

Taking nothing away from the constructive tone and sincere desire evident in
the proposal --

-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC). That is traditional basis for rejecting creation of
a new newsgroup (but bear with me a bit). Quoted below is the announcement
of RFC on net.general, 31 January 1982 (RFC was created then as net.cooks,
and continued as rec.food.cooking after the Great Renaming of late 1986 with
which you are presumably acquainted if you are proposing new newsgroups).

"all about food, cooking, cookbooks, recipes and other alimentary effluvia."

(This charter-overlap issue should not be news, by the way, if the proposed
new group was indeed well researched prior to this RFD. I do not know why
this issue was not addressed explicitly in the RFD.)

The real core of the problem is the prospect of a new group, even if
unintentionally, siphoning off future traffic that could otherwise appear on
RFC (and be of interest to its wider readership also). The issue is both
important and touchy because among the very long-standing newsgroups, RFC is
unusual in maintaining its identity, not fracturing into related or
competing fora despite periodic, deeply well-meaning proposals to do so
(from people who continue to arrive and depart over the years).

(The subject of international recipe translation and ingredients, by the
way, is perennial. Brian Reid talked about copha in the 1980s for instance,
though people re-ask frequently, rather than looking at past information in
archives.)

I am a friendly observer of this proposal and would like to suggest
constructively that a charter more carefully distinct from rec.food.cooking
could garner very wide support -- not just from the people who like the
existing one. Restaurant topics for instance are local, and frequently
occupy local newsgroups. (Australian wines have been discussed with fervor
for years on alt.food.wine.) Topics earlier in the proposed charter
duplicate RFC.

-- Max Hauser

Hi Max,
I think you've brought up some good points. As an Aussie I lurk here but
rarely post because I have found that most posts are way too American
focused for me. You only have to look at the map of members of RFC to see
how weighted to the US it is. I have found it mildly interesting to read
about okra, chipotle and gumbo but these are not things I could cook or be
able to get ingredients for. A lot of recipes by and large contain
ingredients we can't get here and it's a pain to have to adjust the
measurements all the time. I doubt I could achieve the required result in
any of the baked recipes for example. Sometimes I just want to ask a quick
question about what to cook for dinner tonight and at the moment I do that
in another non-food related group where it is acceptable but still off
topic.

My feeling is that by having aus.food I would still lurk here but I would be
more likely to post there for feedback about recipes, ingredients and
kitchen implements because if I talk about a particular brand of something
the others will know what I'm talking about.

Liz

"Max Hauser" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

This is a cross-posted response (to the cross-posted RFD).

"ausadmin" in message news:[email hidden]:
| REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION
| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food
|
| This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) ...
| . . .
| CHARTER: aus.food
|
| ...Examples of on-topic posts include:
|
| - food recipes
| - preparation
| - storage
| - drinks with meals
| - restaurant reports and recommendations (good or bad!)

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.

Taking nothing away from the constructive tone and sincere desire evident
in the proposal --

-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC). That is traditional basis for rejecting creation
of a new newsgroup (but bear with me a bit). Quoted below is the
announcement of RFC on net.general, 31 January 1982 (RFC was created then
as net.cooks, and continued as rec.food.cooking after the Great Renaming
of late 1986 with which you are presumably acquainted if you are proposing
new newsgroups).

"all about food, cooking, cookbooks, recipes and other alimentary
effluvia."

(This charter-overlap issue should not be news, by the way, if the
proposed new group was indeed well researched prior to this RFD. I do not
know why this issue was not addressed explicitly in the RFD.)

The real core of the problem is the prospect of a new group, even if
unintentionally, siphoning off future traffic that could otherwise appear
on RFC (and be of interest to its wider readership also). The issue is
both important and touchy because among the very long-standing newsgroups,
RFC is unusual in maintaining its identity, not fracturing into related or
competing fora despite periodic, deeply well-meaning proposals to do so
(from people who continue to arrive and depart over the years).

(The subject of international recipe translation and ingredients, by the
way, is perennial. Brian Reid talked about copha in the 1980s for
instance, though people re-ask frequently, rather than looking at past
information in archives.)

I am a friendly observer of this proposal and would like to suggest
constructively that a charter more carefully distinct from
rec.food.cooking could garner very wide support -- not just from the
people who like the existing one. Restaurant topics for instance are
local, and frequently occupy local newsgroups. (Australian wines have
been discussed with fervor for years on alt.food.wine.) Topics earlier in
the proposed charter duplicate RFC.

-- Max Hauser

Max Hauser said:

"ausadmin" in message news:[email hidden]:
| REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION
| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food

Quoted message said:

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.
-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC).

aus.* is a regional hierarchy and as such its charters need to
be consistent only within the hierarchy. Overlap between charters
of international groups or other regional hierarchies is irrelevant.

You're saying something like "you can't have an aus.computers.linux
because there are already comp.os.linux groups". That's not the way
regional hierarchies work.

Nick.
--
http://www.nick-andrew.net/ http://aus.news-admin.org/
I prefer USENET replies. Don't send email copies. Drop the spamtrap to reply.

In article said:

Max Hauser said:

"ausadmin" in message news:[email hidden]:
| REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION
| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food

Quoted message said:

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.
-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC).

aus.* is a regional hierarchy and as such its charters need to
be consistent only within the hierarchy. Overlap between charters
of international groups or other regional hierarchies is irrelevant.

You're saying something like "you can't have an aus.computers.linux
because there are already comp.os.linux groups". That's not the way
regional hierarchies work.

Well, that seems clear enough. :-)

But continuing... What happens to regional proposals, such as this
one, if the good denizens of the parallel international group decide
they don't like the "competition" and vote against it in numbers?
Do you only count "local" votes, or are votes from anywhere valid?

Cheers, Phred.

--
[email hidden]

"Nick Andrew" in message news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

That's not the way regional hierarchies work.

Good point, I am accustomed to this arising on the "Big Eight" hierarchies
(which include RFC), and the same flow seemed present here.

I was reading some (offline) archives of newsgroups where related
discussions arose, around genuine perceived needs whose solution might be
two-edged. Example to hand, in 1991 there was a single drinks newsgroup
rec.food.drink, which before the Renaming was a wines group (net.wines).
Some posters demanded in 1991 a separate newsgroup on home beer brewing.
One of them, arguing for such a spinoff, posted:

Quoted message said:

I don't really mind the liquor posts but these wines posts get real old.
It's hard to relax and have a homebrew when you have to sort through
massive amounts of extra stuff ...

(That, remember, appeared on a newsgroup created for wines.) There had not
been nearly enough homebrew postings earlier to argue for a group on the
subject, so they ended up on RFC or rec.food.drink. (Actually in early days
there were barely enough wine postings even; circa 1983-84 Steve Pope and I
would "seed" the wines group with them, to keep it active.) A new group was
not much of an issue in 1991 though, because the subject matters were
distinct in this case.

Extend the concept of regional spinoffs from rec.food.cooking: Imagine a
dozen major regional food newsgroups. (Not just restaurant fora like
existing localized *.food and *.eats.) This would surely affect RFC. The
effect would defy newsgroup decorum (however formally legal the regional
formations might be by their own rules).

And now, in high fidelity ASCII, it's Phred with some words for
aus.net.news:

<followups set to aus.net.news, since I suspect it's only on-topic for RFC
as a meta thread>
<snip>

}But continuing... What happens to regional proposals, such as this
}one, if the good denizens of the parallel international group decide
}they don't like the "competition" and vote against it in numbers?
}Do you only count "local" votes, or are votes from anywhere valid?

It's not immediately clear to me how you'd (a) define "local" (do you
include New Zealand as covered by the aus.* hierarchy? South Africa?
Brazil?); and (b) distinguish between local and foreign voters where
someone is minded to keep their geographical location secret?

I don't believe the latter can be done in absolute terms, but you could
certainly make aus.admin hit an unfavourable cost/benefit ratio fairly
rapidly, in trying to work it out.

If the RFD is going to be spammed to groups off the distribution list, as
it has been, then I see no merit in disenfranchising regulars in groups
which may well be affected.

--
Brett

"I'm a Greek God, you're Nick Giannopolous
I'm Julio Iglasias, you're Tommy Raudonikis"

(Phred) said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food

Quoted message said:

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.
-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC).

aus.* is a regional hierarchy and as such its charters need to
be consistent only within the hierarchy. Overlap between charters
of international groups or other regional hierarchies is irrelevant.

You're saying something like "you can't have an aus.computers.linux
because there are already comp.os.linux groups". That's not the way
regional hierarchies work.

Well, that seems clear enough. :-)

But continuing... What happens to regional proposals, such as this
one, if the good denizens of the parallel international group decide
they don't like the "competition" and vote against it in numbers?
Do you only count "local" votes, or are votes from anywhere valid?

Cheers, Phred.

The administration of usenet and specifically the inclusion or exclusion
of new groups is not contingent upon a general vote. That is, there is
no one to tally votes and thus authorize or deny a new group. The
purpose of the RFD is to provide the identification of a proposed new
group and to identify the pros and cons for such a group. The ensuing
discussion will allow the OP to further refine his/her newgroup
proposal pursuant to posting a formal 'newgroup' message. Providing
the 'newgroup' message meets various usenet criteria, it will likely
not be 'remgrouped' by one or more of the existing usenet administration
contributors. Who are the administration contributors? This is usenet
therefore there isn't a formally organized administration. Nevertheless,
it is pretty well managed by a number of IM professionals, typically
managers of major information systems such as universities.

In actual practice, anyone can post a 'newgroup' message, just as
anyone can post a 'remgroup' message. Generally speaking a 'newgroup'
will stand unless or until it is challenged with a 'remgroup' msg. Any
valid 'remgoup' will include the reason for posting it. In which case the
OP may correct or otherwise overcome the reason for rejection and
repost a 'newgroup' msg.

Case in point; we just read here that the posted objection to aus.food
stating it's comparison to rec.food.cooking is invalid due to aus.food
and rec.food being like apples and oranges. This the reason and
validation for the RFD. One does not have to be an expert to initiate
a new group. Plenty of experts will help if the request is valid. Beware
that the OP will have to present convincing evidence that the new
group will attract enough traffic to make it realistic. (That's one of
the requirments for a 'newgroup' msg.) Ultimately, individual ISP's
may carry or ignore group(s) at will.

--
The Brick said that (Don't bother to agree with me, I have already changed my mind.)

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Nick Andrew said:

Max Hauser said:

Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.
-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
rec.food.cooking (RFC).

aus.* is a regional hierarchy and as such its charters need to
be consistent only within the hierarchy. Overlap between charters
of international groups or other regional hierarchies is irrelevant.

Quite right. However, the objection, as I read it, isn't really about
legalities, it is about practicalities. If the charter of a proposed
regional newsgroup duplicates that of the global one, some of the
denizens of the latter may just decide that this is damaging to their
newsgroup, creating a de-facto split. As a result, some "no" votes may
be forthcoming.

Personally, I happen to be basically sympathetic to this particular
proposal and just wish to be persuaded of its merit and of the viability
of the proposed newsgroup. Some hard statistics on the actual interest
in the newsgroup, such as that of food-related postings specifically in
the Australian context on other newsgroups over the recent years would
be welcome and even necessary, as far as I'm concerned.

I notice that Staycalm provided two good reasons:
1. Problems of recipe conversions
2. Australian-specific food brands used in recipes.

Victor

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:23:53 -0700, Max Hauser <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[...]

Quoted message said:

The real core of the problem is the prospect of a new group, even if
unintentionally, siphoning off future traffic that could otherwise appear on
RFC (and be of interest to its wider readership also).

It is normal and natural for regonal newsgroups to overlap with
international ones. The only good reson for a regonal newsgroup to
not overlap with an international one is if it can be argued that the
local one would not be diffrent to the international one.

However food perhaps more then anything else is highly localized and
the product of local culture and ingredients. I'm quite sure that
aus.food will have a totally diffrent flavour to RFC (forgive the
pun).

RFC for all its virtues has a tendency to be US focused, this is
natural because the majority of english speaking usenet user's reside
in the US.

--
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia. See
http://dformosa.zeta.org.au/~dformosa/Spelling.html to find out more.
Free the Memes.

G'day Brick,

In article <[email hidden]>, "Brick"

Quoted message said:

(Phred) said:

Quoted message said:

>| Creation of Unmoderated newsgroup aus.food

>Wait a minute, there is a basic problem as the proposal is stated.
>-- the charter above overlaps existing international food newsgroup
>rec.food.cooking (RFC).

aus.* is a regional hierarchy and as such its charters need to
be consistent only within the hierarchy. Overlap between charters
of international groups or other regional hierarchies is irrelevant.

You're saying something like "you can't have an aus.computers.linux
because there are already comp.os.linux groups". That's not the way
regional hierarchies work.

Well, that seems clear enough. :-)

But continuing... What happens to regional proposals, such as this
one, if the good denizens of the parallel international group decide
they don't like the "competition" and vote against it in numbers?
Do you only count "local" votes, or are votes from anywhere valid?

The administration of usenet and specifically the inclusion or exclusion
of new groups is not contingent upon a general vote. That is, there is
no one to tally votes and thus authorize or deny a new group. The

As Nick pointed out to you in aus.net.news (the group you cut out here
in a fit of mindlessness) that is not the way it works for the aus.*
regional hierarchy. (In fact I'm not even sure that is the way it's
*supposed* to work for the Big Eight either -- but it's 15 years since
I took much interest in those international CFVs, so things may have
changed behind my back. 🙂

In aus.*, once the votes are tallied (and they are) and if the new
group "passes" then Nick, acting as ausadmin, sends out the 'newgroup'
message and USENET admins here in Oz automatically execute it. They
won't respond to other sources of 'newgroup' (or 'rmgroup' come to
that).

Quoted message said:

purpose of the RFD is to provide the identification of a proposed new
group and to identify the pros and cons for such a group. The ensuing
discussion will allow the OP to further refine his/her newgroup

Yep.

Quoted message said:

proposal pursuant to posting a formal 'newgroup' message. Providing

Actually, before the formal Call For Votes.

Quoted message said:

the 'newgroup' message meets various usenet criteria, it will likely
not be 'remgrouped' by one or more of the existing usenet administration
contributors. Who are the administration contributors? This is usenet
therefore there isn't a formally organized administration. Nevertheless,
it is pretty well managed by a number of IM professionals, typically
managers of major information systems such as universities.

In actual practice, anyone can post a 'newgroup' message, just as
anyone can post a 'remgroup' message. Generally speaking a 'newgroup'
will stand unless or until it is challenged with a 'remgroup' msg. Any
valid 'remgoup' will include the reason for posting it. In which case the
OP may correct or otherwise overcome the reason for rejection and
repost a 'newgroup' msg.

Though true in theory, it's not really done in practice AFAIK (but see
above disclaimer). The main reason for the alt.* hierarchy is (was?)
the difficulty of getting new Big Eight groups approved though the
formal RFD/CFV process.

Quoted message said:

Case in point; we just read here that the posted objection to aus.food
stating it's comparison to rec.food.cooking is invalid due to aus.food
and rec.food being like apples and oranges. This the reason and
validation for the RFD. One does not have to be an expert to initiate
a new group. Plenty of experts will help if the request is valid. Beware
that the OP will have to present convincing evidence that the new
group will attract enough traffic to make it realistic. (That's one of
the requirments for a 'newgroup' msg.) Ultimately, individual ISP's
may carry or ignore group(s) at will.

Yep. And that would still apply here, but the "automatic" approval of
new aus.* groups coming from the correct source is very widely
implemented (though I hesitate to say "universally" -- there could be
one of those white crows out there. ;-).

Cheers, Phred.

--
[email hidden]

"Phred" in news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

The main reason for the alt.* hierarchy is (was?) the difficulty of
getting new Big Eight groups approved though the formal RFD/CFV process.

Russ Allbery, 23 May 1999:
| I think people have lost track of what alt.* was *for* in
| the first place, and exactly what ticked off Brian Reid
| enough to create it.

Brian Reid in news:[email hidden]:
| Remember that alt.gourmand is in alt.* (in fact, alt.*
| was created for the purpose of carrying alt.gourmand)."

More Net history from Lee Bumgarner's review of it, 5 June 1996:

Quoted message said:

At some point, Net.Legend Brian Reid, a member of the Cabal, decided he
didn't like how things were going. So he, John Gilmore, and Gordon Moffett
discussed the creation of an "Alternet" over dinner on May 7, 1987 at
G.T's Sunset BBQ in Mountian View, California. An "alternative"
distribution system was organized by this group that didn't use the
"backbone" links. A new top-level hierarchy name"alt.*" was created for
this distribution. . . .

Reid created the first alt.* group, alt.gourmand, because the Cabal wanted
to put his recipe group under rec.food.* Reid, who was moderating
mod.recipes, objected to the name rec.food.recipes because there were
non-food recipes. Gilmore objected to the Cabal's dropping of net.flame and
the refusal to create rec.drugs. (Moffett just wanted to help.)

Further history of alt.gourmand (and the first "cookbook" spun out of this
newsgroup), from Ken Herron in news:[email hidden], 7 Feb 1995:

Quoted message said:

. . .
Pardon me while I show my age... [! --MH]

Back before the great renaming, Brian Reid presided over the moderated
group mod.recipes. This was a recipes-distribution group, but (with all
due respect to Stephanie and the other r.f.r moderators) much more
sophisticated. Reid distributed his recipes as nroff/troff source, using
a custom macro package based on the man-page macros. Between this macro
package and his editorial standards (instructions had to be clear, mention
all the ingredients, etc.) he usually had to completely rewrite each
recipe for posting. He also supplied ingredient quantities in both US and
european measurements, which is much more difficult than you'd think; his
formatting macros had a switch to select the desired measurement.

On top of that, he had a formatting kit available to format batches of
recipes into a complete cookbook, with an introduction and keyword index.

As you can imagine, this was quite a bit of work; as I recall, Reid
distributed about 5 recipes per week. They were of extremely high quality
though; I built the cookbook once, and consider it quite valuable.
(Favorite line: "Precision: count the muskrats."😉

Besides this, I think Reid was running the arbitron system and doing
various other things which made him something of a net.VIP; his site,
decwrl.dec.com, was a rather important site but I don't know how much of
that was directly due to him (I was a newbie at the time).

So, the great renaming comes around and it's decided that the new name for
mod.recipes would be rec.food.recipes (I think). Reid didn't like that
decision; as I recall, he felt that this name trivialized the group as
merely a recipe-distribution system; he viewed his group as an online
cooking magazine and wanted it under rec.mag (I think). I don't think he
ever posted anything to the new group, other than perhaps a goodbye
message.

Then, not long after the great renaming, the alt hierarchy was created;
Reid was instrumental in this. He created alt.gourmand shortly thereafter
with the intention of continuing his cookbook there, but I think he only
published a handful of recipes there. I've seen something from him since
then saying that he just didn't have the time to continue recipe
distribution; I suspect another reason might be that, after the big fight
about the group name, he just didn't find it enjoyable any more.

The old recipe archive--over 500 recipes--and formatting software is still
available on ftp.dec.com under /pub/recipes; if you have the necessary
formatting software (troff, or groff I suppose) and some savvy about using
it, it's well worth the time and tree needed to print the cookbook.

(I witnessed much of this at the time. Not the dinner at Sunset BBQ. Which
no longer exists, alas. -- Max)

G'day Max,

In article <[email hidden]>, "Max Hauser"
<[email hidden]> wrote:
[...]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The old recipe archive--over 500 recipes--and formatting software is still
available on ftp.dec.com under /pub/recipes; if you have the necessary
formatting software (troff, or groff I suppose) and some savvy about using
it, it's well worth the time and tree needed to print the cookbook.

(I witnessed much of this at the time. Not the dinner at Sunset BBQ. Which
no longer exists, alas. -- Max)

Thanks for posting that historical stuff -- if I ever get time to look
through my floppy disk archives I might find something about it too.
;-)

Did you try accessing that ftp.dec.com site? I suspected it would be
as dead as DEC now, but out of curiosity I tried.

It still resolves to an IP number (204.123.2.25) but WS_FTP failed to
connect. Tried PING, but it simply timed out.

So it is dead but still in at least some of the DNS lists?

Cheers, Phred.

--
[email hidden]

"Phred" in news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

G'day Max,

G'day

Quoted message said:

Thanks for posting that historical stuff ...

Did you try accessing that ftp.dec.com site? I suspected it would be
as dead as DEC now, but out of curiosity I tried.

It still resolves to an IP number (204.123.2.25) but WS_FTP failed to
connect. Tried PING, but it simply timed out.

So it is dead but still in at least some of the DNS lists?

Cheers, Phred.

I see what you mean. Like DEC itself, it saw better days. But stands
instead as a mute tribute to pioneers. DEC sites especially decwrl (DEC
Western Research Lab as I remember, where Brian Reid worked around the time
he edited that recipe collection and started the "alt" groups) were central
in the history of these newsgroups just as DEC was central in the history of
computers. DEC's small, approachable minicomputers were the point of
departure from the longtime stereotype of computers costing millions and
filling rooms and flashing their lights and spinning their magtapes (one set
of friends wrote code just to do that on IBM machines, it was called ITL for
impress-the-laymen), and constantly threatening to become self-aware and
take over the world, according to movies.

DEC, practically speaking, brought computers to mankind. Not as important
as fire, but something. The firm made small cheap ones in the 1960s that
you could put on a table and approach. DEC used colorful front panels with
rocker or paddle switches copied deliberately from home appliances.
Successfully: These minicomputers did actually take over the world. After
30 years of electronic computers that filled rooms, the minis took over. By
1973 a good part of the world's computers were from DEC. One third of all
installed machines (according to DEC advertising at the time) were PDP-8s,
the classic mini. (The cheapest and slowest original, the
serial-architecture PDP-8S, had premiered at under USD $10000 which was
unprecedented.) Within a few years they'd evolved to the larger VAX class
that, circa 1980, became a de-facto standard for what in the US had just
been renamed the ARPA "Internet."

[If anyone is interested or forgot, PDP = Programmed Data Processor, VAX =
Virtual Address eXtension, DEC = Digital Equipment Corporation.]

So DEC was a parent of modern computers. Sort of like Steve Upstill and
Brian Reid were parents of food on the Internet. Steve for starting this
newsgroup in 1982, Brian for promoting recipes and other things a few years
later.

Cheers -- Max.

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 23:47:31 +0200, [email hidden] (Victor Sack)

Quoted message said:

Personally, I happen to be basically sympathetic to this particular
proposal and just wish to be persuaded of its merit and of the viability
of the proposed newsgroup. Some hard statistics on the actual interest
in the newsgroup, such as that of food-related postings specifically in
the Australian context on other newsgroups over the recent years would
be welcome and even necessary, as far as I'm concerned.

This would be extraordinarily difficult to do. Most of the posts
relating to food or recipe requests in Australian newsgroups would not
be under headings that would be easily identifiable in Google until
recently (approx the last 5 months) when Ms Leebee started the whole
discussion about whether or not to request an aus.food group.
Generally any group which has a bunch of women posting in it will
inevitably end up with a "what's for dinner?" discussion, and this is
not just just for the usual interest reason but because it has turned
out to be a great way of deflecting trolls.

In alt.mothers, misc.kids.pregnancy, misc.kids and
misc.kids.breastfeeding there are Australian posters and all of these
groups have had recipe posts and recipe requests over the 3-5 years I
have been reading/posting. Going back and looking for these posts
would be time consuming as particularly in alt.mothers topic drift and
cascades are common.

Cheryl

Cheryl said:

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 23:47:31 +0200, [email hidden] (Victor Sack)

Quoted message said:

Personally, I happen to be basically sympathetic to this particular
proposal and just wish to be persuaded of its merit and of the viability
of the proposed newsgroup. Some hard statistics on the actual interest
in the newsgroup, such as that of food-related postings specifically in
the Australian context on other newsgroups over the recent years would
be welcome and even necessary, as far as I'm concerned.

This would be extraordinarily difficult to do.

Why, pray, do you think so? Even with rudimentry search skills this
shouldn't so extraordinary difficult. I know that such statistics are
compiled with some regularity by the proponents of new Big-8 newsgroups.

Quoted message said:

Most of the posts
relating to food or recipe requests in Australian newsgroups would not
be under headings that would be easily identifiable in Google until
recently (approx the last 5 months) when Ms Leebee started the whole
discussion about whether or not to request an aus.food group.

No one in his right mind would do it this way. Instead, if you were the
proponent, you would compile a list of keywords relevant to food from an
Australian perspective, refine it with Boolean operators, and limit it
all to newsgroups you consider relevant. You could get your results in
one fell swoop and they would provide you with enough details to refine
the search still further. Do this a few more times and you are there.
It doesn't really take very long or require all that much effort. If
the proponents don't know how, they ought to ask for advice and help -
and I have said this several times already. David has agreed to provide
advice (thank you again, David!) and if he can't help in this particular
matter, maybe he can point to someone who can.

Victor

Max Hauser said:

"Phred" in news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

G'day Max,

G'day

Quoted message said:

Thanks for posting that historical stuff ...

Did you try accessing that ftp.dec.com site? I suspected it would be
as dead as DEC now, but out of curiosity I tried.

It still resolves to an IP number (204.123.2.25) but WS_FTP failed to
connect. Tried PING, but it simply timed out.

So it is dead but still in at least some of the DNS lists?

Cheers, Phred.

I see what you mean. Like DEC itself, it saw better days. But stands
instead as a mute tribute to pioneers. DEC sites especially decwrl (DEC
Western Research Lab as I remember, where Brian Reid worked around the time
he edited that recipe collection and started the "alt" groups) were central
in the history of these newsgroups just as DEC was central in the history of
computers. DEC's small, approachable minicomputers were the point of
departure from the longtime stereotype of computers costing millions and
filling rooms and flashing their lights and spinning their magtapes (one set
of friends wrote code just to do that on IBM machines, it was called ITL for
impress-the-laymen), and constantly threatening to become self-aware and
take over the world, according to movies.

DEC, practically speaking, brought computers to mankind. Not as important
as fire, but something. The firm made small cheap ones in the 1960s that
you could put on a table and approach. DEC used colorful front panels with
rocker or paddle switches copied deliberately from home appliances.
Successfully: These minicomputers did actually take over the world. After
30 years of electronic computers that filled rooms, the minis took over. By
1973 a good part of the world's computers were from DEC. One third of all
installed machines (according to DEC advertising at the time) were PDP-8s,
the classic mini. (The cheapest and slowest original, the
serial-architecture PDP-8S, had premiered at under USD $10000 which was
unprecedented.) Within a few years they'd evolved to the larger VAX class
that, circa 1980, became a de-facto standard for what in the US had just
been renamed the ARPA "Internet."

[If anyone is interested or forgot, PDP = Programmed Data Processor, VAX =
Virtual Address eXtension, DEC = Digital Equipment Corporation.]

So DEC was a parent of modern computers. Sort of like Steve Upstill and
Brian Reid were parents of food on the Internet. Steve for starting this
newsgroup in 1982, Brian for promoting recipes and other things a few years
later.

Cheers -- Max.

I couldn't figure out how to snip the quote without losing the context.

Enjoyed the history lesson Max. Now can you verify where CPM came from.
I'm thinking it was from DEC. That was the OS on my Heathkit H-89. Now
there was a 2Mhz marvel. It weighed only a little less then an anvil, but I
loved it.
--
The Brick said that (Don't bother to agree with me, I have already changed my mind.)

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Max Hauser said:

"Phred" in news:[email hidden]:

<snipped this time>

Quoted message said:

[If anyone is interested or forgot, PDP = Programmed Data Processor, VAX =
Virtual Address eXtension, DEC = Digital Equipment Corporation.]

So DEC was a parent of modern computers. Sort of like Steve Upstill and
Brian Reid were parents of food on the Internet. Steve for starting this
newsgroup in 1982, Brian for promoting recipes and other things a few years
later.

Cheers -- Max.

Oh, I forgot. DEC published the first (I think) graphical environment interface
(GEM). While it was Zerox that actually pioneered the graphical interface,
it was DEC that first made it public, but even they never pushed it enough
to gain wide acceptance. It took Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to push computer
graphics into the 21st Century.
--
The Brick said that (Who worked with Word Processing Computers before they
were considered to be computers.)

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Brick said:

Enjoyed the history lesson Max. Now can you verify where CPM came from.
I'm thinking it was from DEC. That was the OS on my Heathkit H-89. Now
there was a 2Mhz marvel. It weighed only a little less then an anvil, but I
loved it.

It was developed by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. It ran on
a number of 8080 based machines. Those were the days...

The company and the man have a very interesting history.

http://www.cadigital.com/kildall.htm

--
Reg email: RegForte (at) (that free MS email service) (dot) com