[11617] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Archie and the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Deutsch)
Mon Apr 11 18:24:32 1994
From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 11:52:07 -0500
In-Reply-To: Russell Nelson's message as of Apr 8, 16:46
To: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson), com-priv@psi.com
Cc: archie-group@bunyip.com
Hi,
[ Russell Nelson wrote: ]
> Johna Till Johnson, writing in Data Communications Magazine sez, on
> page 76 of its April 1994 issue, that "Archie is run by McGill
> University". Betcha didn't know that.
Sigh... For what it's worth, I understand McGill is still
getting something like 3,000 queries a week to the original
archie host "quiche.cs.mcgill.ca", even though there had
not been an archie on that machine for a couple of years
now and McGill has not been directly associated with archie
during most of this time (they recently reestablished an
archie for their own use on another machine, but they still
see lots of traffic to the original host from outside).
One reason for this apparent extended Internet corporate
memory might be that on the Internet documentation never
dies, it just parks itself onto ever more remote info
servers and waits to be found by the unwary. We still get
lots of forwarded mail from people quoting the original
"What is archie" piece I wrote back in 1991 or 1992 which
names "quiche" as the host, even though we went with an
"archie.mcgill.ca" CNAME record reasonably soon after
things took off and then incorporated a company in
January, 1992 to provide commercial support for the
system. I gather there's still lots of stale copies of
that original article on miscellaneous gophers and
what-not all over the place and I suspect journalists are
not doing much homework here when looking for a quick
story.
In any event, we're about to release an upgrade of the
archie system to the archie sites in the next couple of
weeks that will include gopher index support (among other
things) and this is scheduled to include an update of all
the user documentation. If anyone out there has
archie-related material in their info system, please send
email to "info@bunyip.com" at the end of the month asking
for updated versions of the docs. We'll be happy to
provide, along with a list of those sites that will be
operating gopher index servers.
> But that's okay, cuz they also say on page 74 that "The Internet as a whole
> will be run on a for-profit basis by ANS". Betcha didn't know that
> either.
I remember Laura Fillmore of Online Book Store being a
little surprised to find out that _she_ was the person who
created the Internet, as quoted in a rather enthusiastic
piece on OBS last Fall. I guess success has many parents,
failure is an orphan... :-)
...
> Somebody needs a reality check and boy, I hope it's not me.
As we like to say around here, the Reality Check's in the
mail...
- peterd
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My proposal for funding the Internet is pretty simple. I vote we institute
an "Information Superhighway" tax, the proceeds of which will be used to
fund network infrastructure. The way this would work is simple - every time
someone uses the words "Information Superhighway" or any of its derivatives
we strike them with a sharp object and make them pay a $10 fee (of course,
the sharp object is not actually needed to make this scheme work, it's just
in there because it seems an appropriate thing to do...)
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