Well Andy, I  won't give you any B.S.  but I will however remind  you that you
are part  of the NIC and  that, as such, you  are in an excellent  position to
give a phone call to the  offending TECHREP's, notify them of the obsoleteness
of their BITEARN NODES and help them  to understand how to update it or obtain
a more recent  copy. Since LISTSERV (1.6)  is sending a mail  message to these
people  every day  to remind  them that  they're running  an outdated  BITEARN
NODES, and the situation apparently persists, there are only 3 possibilities:
 
1. The  LISTSERV maintainer doesn't  know how to get  a new BITEARN  NODES and
   doesn't know  whom to  ask (or  maybe he  did ask  but his  question wasn't
   answered). The NIC can indeed help him in that case.
 
2. The LISTSERV maintainer is really lazy,  and here again the NIC can help by
   calling the individual  in question and convincing him that  what he is not
   doing is something very necessary.
 
3. There was  a change in LISTSERV  maintainer, the old one left  the shop and
   the new one doesn't know there is such a thing as a 'LISTSERV' in his shop.
   This is a situation that has to be straightened out, and here again a phone
   call can help.
 
So, my constructive suggestion is that you  should make a list of these sites,
or rather 2 lists, one for EARN nodes which you should send to Turgut, and one
for BITNET nodes. Then, call (or have whomever at the NIC is in charge of this
kind of things call) the corresponding  postmasters, using the phone number in
the :contact tag of the site's PEERS NAMES entry. This may sound like a lot of
work, but  if the end result  is that all  these sites will then  update their
tables on a regular  basis, it's worth it. You'll probably ask  why I don't do
that myself.  Because it's not  my job, because it  would take too  much time,
because  I don't  hear anything  on the  phone (because  my office  is in  the
machine room), and because long distance phone calls are expensive.
 
  Eric