Newsgroup?

[Matthew B. Landry]

        I still think that people are looking at this idea wrong. If we made 
the list->news gateway work one-way, so that news traffic wouldn't end up on 
the list, all of the stated problems could be solved. Except, that is, for TC 
May's theory about archived postings being grepped by spooks.
        Personally, I think that this is a rather far-fetched idea. If the 
spooks thought we posed a real threat to them (they might; I don't know), they 
would have very little trouble grabbing every single character sent to the list 
now and archiving it all with the best dossier-style cross-indeces in the 
business. I just think that a newsgroup wouldn't affect that one way or 
another.
        On the other hand, if the Extropians software is as good as it sounds 
(and if we actually start using it here), we might not need to have newsreaders 
to get the same functionality. Sending an "ignore" message to the list software 
to be processed at the source is a kludge, but it seems to be a Politically 
Correct kludge, so we might as well use it.
--
Matthew B. Landry
ml7694a at american.edu
(Finally!) mbl at ml7694a.leonard.american.edu