[276] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: pointless bickering
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Edward Vielmetti)
Mon Mar 4 21:01:14 1991
To: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot)
Cc: jsq@tic.com, com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 04 Mar 91 14:31:28 -0800.
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 91 20:25:30 EST
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@ox.com>
> automatic archiving and retrieval by mail
Several tools are available to do this. Some of them have been
tuned for sources newsgroups, that is to say they parse all of
the mutually agreed upon headers that comp.sources.unix and
comp.sources.misc et al put on the articles and store them
automatically in an appropriate spot. They are most suited for
moderated newsgroups. "rkive" is perhaps the best known.
There are some projects underway on a more research oriented note, not
funded by DOD grants or NREN money but making progress none the less.
One that I am working with involves putting incoming articles into a
full text searchable database, so that you can go back later and pick
out (e.g.) all of the LISTSERV discussion in com-priv even if the
subject says "pointless bickering". The current alpha test stuff uses
comp.archives as its source text. This full text index is wired up to
a server, and a client on the other end manages a local cache of which
articles fit which searches.
Contact me for more information or if you want to fund it. :-|
I think it would be a real useful approach for dealing with
lists like com-priv or RISKS or sun-spots where the information
density is relatively high but searching old articles (tar files,
bleah) is painful.
All that I have seen from NSF in this regard was a system that they had
(have still? I don't know) set up a system running the very expensive
TOPIC software by Verity, which would be suitable for at least some of
these tasks. The system was set up to provide access to some NSF grant
proposals, so you could do searches et al on them. Not very impressive
the way it was laid out, hard to use and didn't show too much
imagination.
--Ed
emv@msen.com
