70 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
70 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
PLTS Announces "netnews by fax"
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"It's not vaporware anymore!", said Tom Limoncelli, President of
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PLTS. And with that PLTS announced their plans this week to provide
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the first feed of Usenet news by fax. Usenet is a network of more than
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5 computers that exchange over 200 messages a day on topics ranging
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from which is the best text editor (vi or cat), to how to delete files
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with funny charactors in them, to jokes about Brad Templeton walking
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into a bar and not being stringed.
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The service, at a cost of just $50 per page, will fax you all the
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messages that come across the Usenet bboard system. There will be an
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extra for certain "adult" newsgroups like comp.mail.sendmail. "We
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don't believe in censorship", said Enrique Flaire, public relations
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director of PLTS, "so we will not provide any filtering. You take
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every message or nothing!"
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Some Usenet regulars have complained that this was not how Usenet
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was meant to be. "This was not how Usenet was meant to be!", said
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Mathew Mantis, grand poohbah of the "news.admin" bboard. "When I
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created Usenet, oh so many years ago, it was so that people could come
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together and argue about just about nothing, and so far we've been
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arguing about nothing ever since! Faxes are one-way. Nobody can have
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a one-sided argument!" Critics have challenged this statement and
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called it "hypocritical". They offer the fact that Mathew is the king
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of one-sided arguments himself as proof. PLTS Spokesperson commented,
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"Mathew needs to get a life, but as long as he sticks to news.admin and
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doesn't post any of the newsgroups we read it's ok for him to say
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anything he wants."
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The "NewsFax" software can only be used in the United States,
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since it uses special magical beans that if foreigners were to get
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ahold of, could grow gigantic beanstalks capable of growing up into the
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clouds to the castle of the giant with the Golden Goose who's eggs are
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so valuable it would destroy the American economy at least according to
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the NSA and ETARS (Engish Teachers Against Run-on Sentences).
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The "sources" newsgroups will be faxed as are all the other
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newsgroups. Sources are posted as examples for good programming,
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nobody would actually use that stuff.
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PLTS has placed certain restrictions on the NewsFax customers.
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For example, they may not use OCR software to turn the messages into
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ASCII files. Users also may not re-fax the pages to anyone else.
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"Since each fax generation is more blury than the previous, we don't
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want our reputation to be ruined by people seeing third and fourth
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generation faxes."
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Environmentalists have begged the company to only set up feeds
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to people with computerized fax machines that display the incomming
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faxes on a computer screen, rather than printing out every single message.
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Rich Dollaraltz, product manager, responded, "Hey, those customers are
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payINNg for the paper, what's you beef? INN fact, we have a new service
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where you pay for a feed and give us the fax number of an environmentalist
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that you really hate... and we send the newsfeed to them! Best of all
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we donate 10% of the money to either of the followINNg charities:
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'Wetlands? Who Needs 'Em?', 'Kill The Spotted Owl, That's HOO HOO',
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'I Hate Trees', or the company's personal favorite, 'Anti-Abortionist
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Republican Carnivores For A Plant-Free, Over-Populated Planet'."
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Customers also may not cancel their subscription. "It would be too
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much paperwork, and we don't want those environmentalists to have Yet
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Another Complaint about us."
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The service can be ordered by calling "1-800-FAX-NETS" and asking
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for department 23003bf9.
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Tom
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