I got some email responses to my SAIC info. Here's a little more fun on a Sunday evening. All the statements below are true. Among the first two (possibly the very first two) MX records for not-connected sites desiring Internet-style names were: att.com and mirror.tmc.com. That is, the phone company, and a small subsidiary of the Times-Mirror corporation. It was from mirror that mod.sources/comp.sources.unix was moderated -- for many years, the only source of free software available to Usenet. Seismo was the forwarder for both ATT and TMC (via special-case lines in Rick's sendmail.cf file). ATT, through ihnp4 in Chicago (site of the Democratic convention), vied with seismo for the we'll-call-anyone philosophy that a few sugar daddies (er, backbone) sites had that kept uucp Email and Usenet running back then. Under the auspices of the curiously-named "Network Action Central" many ATT sites did dialup UUCP to mirror on a daily basis, ostensibly to pick up mod.sources. I was the administrator of mirror.tmc.com; the tmc.com domain "conflicted" with tmc.edu, the Texas Medical Center. The NIC back then asked me to ask tmc.edu to "reconsider." Do you know where their book depository is/was? Rick started Alternet, now "Shared" with Microsoft. Unlike Sprint and MCI, ATT "curiously" decided to *not* become a network service provider, but instead allied with BBN and sells their technology, equipment and services. I worked at BBN for five years, in the same department that became BBNPlanet, the global ISP and ATT's partner. I also wrote INN, which now handles essentially all the Usenet traffic in the world. So who cares about the latest media mega-deal of Eisner or Time-Warner-Turner? We already control the Internet media; the Web is merely~~~~#@ NO CARRIER