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News from:
M V C o m m u n i c a t i o n s , I n c .
P.O. Box 4963
Manchester, NH 03108-4963
(603) 429-2223
February 1993
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be found
on mv in the public archive; look in /news2/pub/mv/inews.
Announcing U-Feed
For some time we've been feeding usenet news via a system called
dynafeed. In the past we've identified and reported a few drawbacks
to dynafeed, at least as we use it, and mentioned our intention to
replace it in time. That time has arrived; we've written and
installed a new usenet feed mechanism called U-Feed, or ufeed.
U-Feed gives you better control over your newsfeed. Its capabil-
ities include the following:
* You can now control the permanent commands that modify your
subscription and your subscription requests. These per-
manent commands affect your subscription whenever you send
in a change request, or once per day if you don't send in a
change.
* When new groups are added to your feed (e.g., automatically
by one of the permanent commands), they can be added sub-
scribed or unsubscribed, as you choose. And, ufeed will
send you mail about these additions, so you'll know about
new groups and will be able to account for them.
* You can send in an entire updated subscription, or make
incremental changes.
* You can subscribe to a newsgroup in summary mode. Instead
of receiving all of the articles in a newsgroup, a summary
of new articles (size, subject, sender, message id) will be
sent to you by mail or fed to a newsgroup of your choosing.
* You can fetch a specific article by its message-ID. So, if
you subscribe to a newsgroup for a summary (e.g. a source
group) and something catches your eye, you can obtain it.
There's more. To find out more about ufeed, send mail to the mv
server and ask for general help, and for specific help about ufeed.
Send mail like this:
MV Communications, Inc. February 1993
- 2 -
To: server@mv.mv.com
Subject: help
and
To: server@mv.mv.com
Subject: help ufeed
We'll switch everybody that's currently getting a newsfeed over
to ufeed eventually; right now you can elect to use it in its initial
release form (considered a beta mode) if you wish. To start using
ufeed now, please send mail to mv-admin@mv.mv.com and request the
switchover.
New services
Along with U-Feed, we've introduced a general server mechanism.
If you retrieve the general help file as outlined above, you'll find
out about it. The server allows us to offer various functions by
mail, as we identify them and as they are requested. Right now the
main services offered relate to ufeed, but we've also installed a
whois service (by which you can access the central WHOIS database at
the Network Information Center), and a finger service (which lets you
run a finger command to find out about a user, a site, or access a
finger-based service on the Internet).
Taylor 1.04
The latest version of Taylor UUCP, a robust uucp source package
for UNIX systems written by Ian Taylor and adopted by the GNU project,
is now available for download in the MV archives. It's in the file
/news2/pub/uucp/taylor-1.04/tay1.04.tar.Z on mv, just shy of 1 mega-
byte in size. Taylor UUCP supports many protocols, including a
bidirectional protocol that lets you transfer files in both directions
at once, and also supports file restart in case a transmission aborts
in the middle. It comes in source form and is relatively easy to
install. We've been using it on MV for over a year. This is version
1.04, which has been in extensive gamma test for several months.
Telephony and the PUC
The Public Utilities Commission in NH is addressing a couple of
interesting items with regard to telephone charges. First, it seems
that they are in the final rounds of a hearing on competitive in-state
long-distance service. When this ends, they will be looking at the
local dialing areas, to see if they are currently defined "in the pub-
lic interest", and to see how the definitions might change to make
them so. Local dialing areas serve the public interest if there is a
broad community that has need or desire to call within a particular
locality. For instance, if a region experiences growth such that one
town has become effectively a suburb of another, there is sufficient
MV Communications, Inc. February 1993
- 3 -
reason to move the pricing of telephone service within that region
into the monopoly area, i.e., local rates. Same for commuting and
educational areas (people living in one town and commuting heavily to
another, people living in one town and sending their children to
school in another). This should be under review sometime this year,
sooner or later. Our thanks to steve@alex.mv.com for bringing this to
our attention.
Software SIG meeting March 2
A reminder that the Software Special Interest Group will have its
second meeting on March 2 at 7:00 PM in the Clarion Hotel in Nashua
NH. Formed by Mike Ballantine and Forrest Milkowski, the group had an
impressive turnout for its first meeting in January. Its goal is to
bring together software entrepeneurs in the Nashua vicinity in order
to help them through mutual cooperation and presentations. Contact
Mike at mikeb@world.std.com or (603) 889-2682 or Forrest at (603)
886-9050.
NNEUUG
While we're on subject of meetings, we'll remind everyone of the
Northern New England UNIX Users Group, which meets 10 times a year at
various places throughout northern New England, mostly in New
Hampshire, but sometimes in Vermont and Maine. The February 25 meet-
ing will be at NSS Corp in Bedford, NH, and will feature Mike Godwin
who will speak about the mission of the Electronic Frontier Founda-
tion. Send mail to
nneuug-contact@coos.dartmouth.edu for more information.
MV Communications, Inc. February 1993