From BITNEWS MAY87, regarding BITNIC's move to NJ:
> - LISTSERV@BITNIC will not be on the peer backbone; this is being
> coordinated so that appropriate temporary tables will be distributed.
(This was not in the message sent to LINKFAIL)
This reminds me of what we call "recensement" in France. As you may know,
every male french citizen owes one year of his life to the army, and must
"register" before the age of 18 (which doesn't mean you'll perform your
military duties at 18, but that you have to enroll). They post news on the
wall of the "Bureau du Service National" you have been assigned to, saying
"people born from xxx to yyy must come in and register", and wait for you to
come. They don't send you anything at home (but believe me, they DO send you
all kind of advertisement about how great it is to become a National Trooper,
what with the Responsibilities you'll have during your Glorious Career, etc).
I didn't even know about that and never saw the news when it was my turn to
go, and therefore failed to register in time. 6 month later my parents saw
that my registration was overdue and told me I had to go to the BSN. The
people there were very angry: "Sir, unless I'm mistaken, news have been posted
during *three* months. How come that you didn't see them???" - "Geez, I don't
live precisely next to the wall you post news to, and have other duties to
attend than just coming in to see what's new" (it's usually near the new
marriage announcements and suchlike).
BITNEWS MAY87 just sounds like this news wall. It clearly indicates that
LISTSERV@BITNIC's removal from the backbone is being coordinated so that
appropriate tables are being distributed. I don't know who's coordinating that
(it's probably going to be *me* besides since a global change in PEERS NAMES
is required), but this person has not notified me. Nor do I think the list was
notified. This is more important than you think, because if I have to do a PUT
PEERS NAMES while I'm in Heidelberg or Geneva, I must modify the LMC FAC
beforehand to authorize the userid I'll be using there (FRECP11 will be down
from 1-15 august, and will run unattended from 1-31 July due to a stupid
recommendation from the Management that employees try to take their vacations
in july to avoid having the same problem as last year -- 80% of the staff was
in vacations in august; now we'll have 100% of the staff in vacations in
july...) Since it is a hardcoded FAC, it can't be done without sending a new
version of the software, and it will take 2 weeks before we can warranty that
the backbone has installed the new version. Okay, there is still time, but
what if I had not seen the NEWS87 file and had been notified 2 days before the
move? Who would have been blamed, explicitly or implicitly, because he's not
able to update the tables?
Obviously EDUCOM has a very peculiar concept of "coordination".
Eric
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