[rescue] Old school usenet

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 04:38:02PM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>Requiring real names would go a long way towards keeping most abusers 
>out, IMHO - coupled with the knowledge that the newsgroups are 
>'google-able' by future employers, potential spouses, parents, and 
>voters ;^)

When I got onto USENET everyone was encouraged to:

1. Sign their real name. In fact you were not supposed to give anyone access
    unless they had a real userid on your real system which required a password
    or some other form of authenication.

1a. While you were encourgaed to forward your news feed and articles back
     from people you fed, you were supposed to ask them if they checked users.

This was before NNTP, news was fed with UUCP. 

2. Get your own domain name. When I got mendelson.com, it was free, but I
    had to pay UUNET $35 (one time) for the paperwork.

    uunet!gsm001!gsm was just so unwieldy. I had to upgrade my mail client
    from UNIX mail to ELM to get it to use the domain name format addresses
     properly (I think it had to do with reply to addresses).

3. Get your own IP addresses. Class C networks were easily avilable and free.

All of this was back when good net ettiqute was to have an open relay for
email. :-)

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. 
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.