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From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor)
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To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #657

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 12 Dec 96 00:26:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 657

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News (H. Gorman)
    Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News (John Levine)
    Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News (Randy Miller)
    Re: The Opposition Point of View:  My Response (TELECOM Digest Editor)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: hillary@netaxs.com (Hillary Gorman)
Subject: Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:20:36 -0500
Organization: Packet Shredders Anonymous


In article <telecom16.652.2@massis.lcs.mit.edu>, TELECOM Digest Editor
noted in response to article forwarded by monty@roscom.COM:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I in general support the CDA although
> I see some problems with the way it is written  and wish that instead

[snip]

> I hope this does not turn out to be a situation where 'a battle is
> won but the war was lost'. I see some real problems with CDA as it
> is written, but I can sympathize with the views expressed by its
> proponents as well, and frankly, the intellectual dishonesty (and
> I will suggest) fraud perpetrated on the Court by the opponents of
> CDA in Philadelphia almost has me to the point I hope CDA is ruled 
> to be constitutional.  Honestly, I wish Monty Solomon and others 
> would quit sending me this junk-email ... and that is what it is.
> All it does is make me more angry each time I read it.   PAT]  

Wow. I'm shocked. I echo your final comment -- but about what YOU have
to say! It makes me more angry each time I read it!

In all seriousness, no flames, I'm a civil type of person, I try to be
friendly - could you please advise me as to how *exactly* you believe
the ACLU demonstrated "intellectual dishonesty" or "fraud"? And
exactly what technical solution you have to offer, with regard to how
we [we=ISP admins] are supposed to monitor everything flowing through
our network for content? 

I would absolutely *love* to hear of a software solution which would
allow monitoring for content which would a) work, b) not require us to
hire 10 new people c) not require us to dedicate several entire
machines simply to do the work of checking through the MASSIVE amounts
of traffic that flow through our several T3s on a daily basis. We're
not a huge company - 3000 or so dialup users - but we have something
like 20 or so downstream ISPs who buy T1s from us ... we'd have to check
everything THEIR users came up with also ... insanity, in my
mind.  

Please.  Enlighten me.  I'm dying to hear how this could work. So far,
I haven't heard one solution that sounded feasible for a small company
with only about ten employees, or that would actually WORK even 90% of
the time without also blocking traffic related to medical or
psychological/psychosocial issues.


Thanks!!!

hillary gorman     http://www.hillary.net     info@hillary.net
              "to err is human; to moo, bovine."


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See my response at the end of this
thread in this current issue.   PAT]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Dec 96 19:21:00 EST
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y.


> What was really insulting in the earlier litigation regards CDA was
> how the ACLU instructed their witnesses to just get up in court and
> lie about the technical aspects of the net, making all those outlandish
> claims about the technical difficulties involved in affording some
> modicum of policing.

Uh, could you refresh our memory about those lies?  I recall an
ill-prepared government witness with an impractical proposal to tag
each packet with a "decency bit".

I have a small daughter, and I certainly have no interest subjecting
her to pictures of people copulating with farm animals or whatever
this week's scary example is, but the CDA is the wrong answer to the
wrong question.


John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - MIT econ prof


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll also respond to you shortly.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: miller@compex.com (Randy Miller)
Subject: Re: The Opposition Point of View:  FRC on Supreme Court News
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:31:12 GMT
Organization: Erol's Internet Services


On Sat, 7 Dec 1996 03:18:51 -0500, our esteemed Moderator wrote:


> There *are* technical solutions to the problems FRC sees with the net,
> and there are relatively easy ways to implement some changes which
> ought to appease FRC while at the same time posing little or no addi-
> tional burden on the net. We do have to co-exist with the rest of the
> world you know. Other people have a right to use the net also, you
> know. That may come as a complete surprise to the folks at the ACLU
> and all the librarians, but other users of the net actually have the
> right to enjoy the web and not have to worry about their kids getting
> into territories they should stay out of.  

This is one time I, as a librarian, have to disagree with you, Pat.
Granted, I'd rather not put something like Madonna's Sex or Lady
Chatterly's Lover on the shelf (After working as a DoD contractor for
almost 4 years, CYA and CYOFA are my motto.)  However, from my
experience (since I normally don't agree with the femiNazis (to borrow
from Rush Limbaugh, who I also loathe)), I make two conclusions:

1.  We in the library profession have always had the attitude of
"we're doing this because it's for your own good!"  Most of the furor
that gets created is because the librarians do not take into
consideration the clientele they are serving.  For example, I lived in
Marengo, IL for almost four years.  After being around Marge Smith at the
district library for that period of time, I've come to the conclusion
that what they teach us in graduate school (which is another farce in
itself), is mostly irrelevant when it comes to serving the needs of
the community.  

The biggest mistake we make, as a profession, is NOT doing any kind of
(perish the thought, a big business concept) market research.  What
passes for normal in New York City, doesn't necesssarily pass for
normal in Paradise, PA.  Too many of us library professionals (myself
included) have gotten into the habit lumping obscene and controversial
together.  As my old clarinet teacher said, "what's music to one
person, is noise to another."

2.  I do agree with you that there are others that use the net.
However, I do believe that the parents should control what their
children see.  The big problem is that most parents either 1) have
massive technophobia (like my mother, who even refuses to have a touch
tone phone in the house, even though GTE no longer has rotary service
in her area.  I still get the major bitchout job about having a PC in
the house, for better or worse.  I won't even bother trying to show
her the web, since she has completely bought the mass media line of
porno on the web.  Besides, to her, anything she doesn't understand is
stupidity, and is to be trashed on sight.), or 2) they don't give a
damn what the kids are up to.  Many are the times I told the stories
here of the private music studio I used to run.  Most of the students
I considered of "not being worthy of learning an instrument" tended to
come from homes where the prevailing attitude was "gimme my beer, my
TV, and screw everything else."

In short, the net should be free from this garbage they call the CDA.
Unfortunately, very few parents want to take responsibility for their
children, from my experience.  Remember, as the old saying goes, with
freedom, comes responsibility, which I find very few people taking on
nowadays.


Randy   miller@compex.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for a great reply. What you
say makes a great deal of sense. I'll comment more in the next
message to follow.    PAT]

------------------------------

From: TELECOM Digest Editor <ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
Subjedt: The Opposition Point of View: My Response
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 00:15:00 EST


Thanks to one and all who wrote rebuttals on this topic. The three
above are typical of them all. To start my response, I think I should
make a few of my beliefs clear:

1) Indeed, the first and primary responsibility falls on parents. The
parents should take control. Many do, some do not.

Therefore, in our society we pass certain laws pertaining to the
protection of children, not leaving any option available to parents.

We insist that children go to school. Some school, any school, but
they have to attend until a certain age. We assume most parents would
feel the same way, but nonetheless we have it as a law. The fact that
some will be absent quite often ('play hookey') and the fact that some
will be disruptive or learn little or nothing in the process does not
deter us from formally stating the public policy of our society by
codifying our requirements that children be in school. We hope that
they become educated as a result.  A good policy I think.

We have laws against minors having the ability to purchase or be
served alcoholic beverages.  Again, we assume most parents would feel
the same way, but nonetheless, we have it as a law. The fact that some
minors will (1) acquire false identification to use in deceiving a
merchant; (2) visit merchants willing to violate the law; (3) engage
the services of an older adult willing to make the purchase for them;
(4) have parents who do not care and allow their children to drink
does not deter us from stating the public policy of our society by passing
a law saying 'minors may not purchase or drink alcoholic beverages.'
Now, do teenage boys like to drink beer they convinced their older
buddies to buy for them?  Do they get drunk, and as a result get
into automobile accidents, etc?  Of course. But we still have the
law; we assume most parents help enforce the law by supervising their
children as best they can, etc.  I think it is a good policy that
we as a society make the statement we do about minors and alcohol.

Ditto with cigarettes ... we have parental disapproval (in many cases
but certainly not all) ... we have laws against it which were passed
as a reflection of our beliefs as a society.  Do kids smoke? Do
they buy cigarettes with the help and connivance of merchants who
wink at the law about checking identification for age? Do they go
home and hide their cigarettes from their mother? But we still put a
law out there which we say is our goal and desire as a society.

We do not allow minors to patronize 'adult' places of business such
as 'adult' book stores. For the uninitiated, those are places where
one seldom buys books (although you can) but rather one usually gives
the cashier a few dollars in exchange for tokens to use for
admission to little private stalls where one can sit and view sex
movies at the rate of a minute or so per token. Whatever else occurs
in the privacy of the little stall is, I suppose, the business of
the occupant, although some communities like Chicago even have a few
ordinances on the books governing one's behavior while seated therein,
and the ordinances are plainly posted inside each stall: "You will not
engage in X, Y or Z while in this booth. Offenders subject to fine."
Do teenage guys get 'dirty books' to look at?  Of course. Do they
hide them from their mother? Of course. We assume parents are doing
what they can (perhaps a broad assumption) but we still express our
society's goals by codifying them, or making them into laws.

No amount of laws or parental guidance has ever prevented a child from
getting into trouble. No one has ever claimed that a law will do it
all, or that parents are doing nothing to help. 

2) Second belief of mine: in the current context, no single act by any
ISP or network is going to cure the problems with the net as seen by
groups like FRC.  No group of actions or concerted effort by ISPs and
networks is ever going to catch every single instance of malfeasance.
All that will ever happen -- assuming a community effort by netters to
work along with the rest of the world -- is that a large number of
stumbling blocks will make it **much more difficult** for minors to
be *routinely exposed* to those things on the net which FRC, some
(perhaps most) parents, and society in general believes are not good
for children to see/read.

Will teenagers who want to flaunt the rules find ways to do so?  Of
course they will. I am assuming however just as there are a large
number of kids who do not drink/smoke because it is against the law
for them to do so, there will be a large number who obey a law about
what they are and are not permitted to access on the net. Parents who
do try to govern their children will be encouraged by the support
given by society and parents who are marginal in this way may become
somewhat more concerned and active also. 

3) My third belief: Yes, CDA was not well written. They should have
never touched on 'indecency' and instead used the term 'obscenity'
since the latter is already defined and has no constitutional protection.
As many have pointed out, 'indecent' leaves things pretty wide open.
I'll grant you that the Supreme Court has no business writing the
laws; their job is merely to interpret the laws already written and
rule on them.

                     -------------------

Now with that in mind, let us continue.  Remember, none of these
things *by themselves* will cure anything. All of them put together
will not totally eliminate the problems the FRC wants to cure. All
of them put together will however be of much help.

Hillary wants to know what is a poor sysadmin to do? She suggests
hiring ten additional people to 'read everything' in the news every
day. No, not at all ... instead, try the appproach suggested by 
mcs.net here in Chicago, which they are publicizing widely in their 
advertising: they do not carry newsgroups which *on their face* are
intended as ways to exploit children; ie the newsgroups which by their
title suggest advocacy of pedophilia. The recent advertisement by
mcs.net lists about a dozen newsgroups. I suppose it would take
Hillary thirty seconds to call up an editor and cut a few lines out
of the system-wide .newsrc file. What you are saying is your site
does not receive those groups and does not pass them along. There is
no censorship involved; the computer is private property, and if your
downstream wants those groups they are always free to go get them
somewhere else. And don't worry, they'll still be around; there will
always be sites willing to carry them. As mcs.net pointed out in its
advertisement, a survey of a few dozen ISPs found that about half
said they never 'censor' newsgroups in any way, shape or form. But
you say, not at this site. Go elsewhere. That is the stance mcs.net
has adopted. 

Common rebuttal: if deprived of mass circulation of their newsgroup,
'those people' will start posting in other groups. Okay, so what?
That's not your problem. Let them deal with the flame war sure to
result when they post in some totally unrelated group. 

Kids don't have to go in taverns -- where they are forbidden by law
to be -- in order to find some beer to drink. They don't have to go
to an adult bookstore in order to find a 'friendly' adult willing to
explain the facts of life to them. But that is not the problem of
the tavern owner or the bookstore manager who work to keep those 
situations from occuring *on their own premises, in situations under
their direct control*. 

Another rebuttal: new groups will start all the time. We will have
to examine every new newsgroup that is started. As 'newgroup' control
messages come along, either they would appear to be acceptable or
they would appear to not be acceptable. Either you honor the 'newgroup'
message or you do not honor it. Again, not a major undertaking. You
do not literally read every single message in every single group any
more than you need to go into a tavern to see if they sell ginger ale
or potato chips as well as booze. We just say on its face, we do not
want to distribute this to an unregulated, uncontrolled subscriber
base which includes children. 

                       --------------------

Am I the only person who knows the purpose of, and how to use .http-access
files in connection with a web page? The presence of such a file in a
directory causes various things to happen: depending on what you put
in the file, you can deny access to a given user and/or site; you can
deny access to all but a select few users/sites, etc. So Hillary and
other sysadmins, why not teach your web customers how to install and
use .http-access files as a way to control who gets to see their page?

For instance, suppose you denied access to '@u18.' wildcard ... meaning
any site that had '.u18' as part of its name was denied viewing. Now
suppose on the flip side of the coin, you (if you even have the
possibility of underage subscribers) take one of your machines and
give it -- in addition to its regular name -- an *alias* of 'u18', and
anytime that machine makes any outbound connection anywhere on the
net it introduces itself as 'u18.the.rest.of.its.name' ... actually
I think you would name the machine 'u18' and its 'alias' would be 
the regular name it has had all along, so that your users need not
know anything at all about the 'u18' part ... 

Now, starting with your next billing cycle, and continuing over a
period of several months with *existing users* and from the start
with *new users* you require your user to certify to the following:
"I am of legal majority age in the state in which I reside". In other
words, the person is 18 years of age or older. With new users, you
might decide to have them submit a photocopy of a driver's license
or birth certificate. With existing users, do something; do not 
inconvenience your admins and do not unduly annoy your users. Just
phase them in over a period of time. 

Those who do not certify or offer proof, etc get placed on the
'u18' machine. Those who do get placed elsewhere. Now we no longer
have to worry about 'decency bits' or whatever they called them. You
decide which of the web pages on your site should be restricted in the
same way you decide which newsgroups will not be carried: a cursory
glance through the page at the time it is installed. If it appears
*on its face* to have adult content and appeal to an adult audience
you require that user to implement an .http-access file. Or maybe you
default all web pages at your site in that way and only back them
out into a general category on specific request of the web page owner.

I hear the objections rolling in already: 

(1) the web page owners will cheat and not deny access to u18. Of 
course some will. There are merchants who sell cigarettes to minors
knowing good and well the kid is not old enough.  There are bartenders
who do not bother to check identification. Sometimes they get caught,
sometimes not. That's not your problem. You have set the rules for
your site; you reserve the right to audit your users and drop those
who by their activities jeopardize your site.  Hey ... many a sysadmin
has dropped a user for spamming and junk-emailing; many times the
admin found out about it when a million netters wrote to tell him.
It was not called 'censorship' by anyone except the offensive user.
Why not try dropping those users who refuse to categorize themselves
as 'adult' when such is the case? ***Note I did not say drop those
who operate adult web pages; I said drop those who refuse to lock
out minors from viewing adult material or who lie to you (the admin)
and claim they are not when you find out they are, etc***. Is the
goodwill of one user worth having the authorities come down on you
and possibly hassle your entire site?  I think not.

(2) not only will the web page owners cheat, the kids will cheat.
See, says Hillary, (and don't take it personally, I am using her
as a generic example), I told you there was nothing we could do
about it!   <grin> ...

Well gosh then let's drop all the liquor licensing laws and the
laws about being of a certain age to smoke or drive a car or drop
out of school ... after all, clever, mischevious children will
always find work arounds ...

  a) they'll sign up with false identification ... sure, and kids
     never use false id to buy beer do they?

  b) they are too clever! They'll find ways to hack right into the
     stuff they want to see. Yep, that's right, and its not your
     problem as long as you took reasonable efforts to prevent it.

Some assumptions are being made by me here. One is that *most kids*
obey the law. Another is that *most parents*  want to see their kids
obey the law and will aprreciate having the law to 'back them up'
in their own governance of their children. A few parents won't care,
and a few kids will cheat. But parents who don't care has never
stopped dedicated school teachers from trying to do their best to
educate kids, and it should not stop a dedicated sysadmin who
generally accepts the community's policy that children should not
be exposed to certain things before a certain age, etc. You cannot
help what parents do, and you cannot help what kids may do. All you
can be responsible for is having your own technical safeguards in
place in cooperation with other sites and doing what you can to
police the conduct of your own users and visitors to your site. 

And you see, I've a feeling that *good faith* will go a long way toward
creating some good will between the net and groups like FRC. 

                     --------------------

Speaking of good faith and good will among people I believe very
strongly that none whatsoever has been shown by netters in this
matter. At least not by those who have self-appointed themselves
as our leaders.

Remember Senator Exxon? Way back then ... more than two years ago
or so, when all this hullabaloo was first coming up ... the net's
response was to protest, to demonstrate, to throw tantrums, to
mail bomb everyone involved. We were told to turn our web pages
black, all sorts of responses and schemes were devised to 'get
even' ... not once did anyone say let's go over and talk to the
man and see what it is exactly he wants and try to find some way
to appease those people. 

Why did no one go to Exxon (again, I am using him as a generic
example) and say something like this ...

  "Look, technically what you are asking is very difficult; almost
   impossible to do while still keeping some semblance of the net
   as it has always operated. But senator, a lot of us do agree
   with your basic premise that young kids are getting exposed to
   a lot of stuff on the net which isn't that wholesome or good
   for them. None of us who have been around for years on the net
   ever really concieved of the way it would grow and the kinds of
   things that would get transmitted over it. None of the protections
   you are talking about now were ever built into the Internet, and
   to try and retrofit it now would be very difficult. As you may
   have heard senator, originally we on the net all operated with
   trust and a lot of good will; sadly that's been gone from the
   net for a long time now.

   "What we can do senator is this: we can pretty easily phase in
   some of the protections you are looking for. Over a period of
   two to three years, we should be able to identify parts of the 
   net which are adult in nature and pretty well segregate it from
   view by young children. There are ways to restrict sites on the
   net from contacting other sites on the net and instead of trying
   to identify the adult sites -- because we get into a lot of
   First Amendment hassles -- we will probably begin moving the
   kids onto machines which are restricted in the contacts they
   can establish. We'll ask the adult sites to deny access to
   machines used by kids, and there will be a lot of peer pressure
   from within the net commmunity to obtain cooperation. 

   Senator, suppose we use the term 'obscenity' instead of 'indecency'
   as the cut-off point. It has already been defined, it has no
   First Amendment protection and it will make this job easier for
   all of us. You are really trying to mostly target child
   pornography, aren't you senator?  A lot of the people on the
   net would strongly agree with you on that point. If we could
   take aim at specific areas that you feel need review instead
   of just using the broad and poorly-defined term 'indecency'
   it will wind up saving us a lot of litigation and debate and
   red-herrings being tossed into the pot as we go along.

   Now senator, the Unix gurus on the net and the software experts
   with Netscape and things like that would probably take this
   seriously and start putting together something that would have
   the effect of eliminating about 85-90 percent of the problems
   you perceive *as long as everyone played by the rules*, but
   there are some things the net can never control. We need the
   parents to take an active part in this. Computers need to be
   located in family rooms where the entire family can participate
   rather than in a child's bedroom where he can sneak into places
   on the net where he should not be after everyone else in the
   family is asleep. Parents need to know about the friends their
   children are making on the net the same as they need to know
   about adults who have allowed their children to visit their 
   homes. You see senator, the net is getting pretty realistic
   these days. Some call it a virtual reality. Some say the net
   is getting to be as dangerous as the rest of the world is in
   realtime, but a lot of us think the net is just as good and
   honest and decent as the majority of the population. 

   Some long time, very well respected netters would probably begin
   promoting a system of 'virtual licensing' for web pages and news
   groups similar to the sale of alcohol and cigarettes and dirty
   books in the real world -- where kids are not allowed to be
   part of it -- as long as they had your word that you would work
   on the parents. There has to be voluntary cooperation by the kids
   you know; the best software in the world can put up obstacle
   courses the same way the police in real life can deter crime to
   a point; but the citizens have to agree to voluntarily obey.

   And one other thing senator. A lot of the 'cogs in the wheel'
   of the net, people like the ISPs, the sysadmins at various sites,
   the people who assist users at the local level; it will be a lot
   easier to get their cooperation in this reform of the net --
   which many of them agree is needed -- provided they know for sure
   that enforcement of any laws passed is directed to the end users
   on both sides; that is the kids at their computer who violate
   a law pertaining to what they can and cannot access as well as
   the users who wilfully allow the kids to access the sort of 
   information so many of your constituents have found objectionable.  
   You don't go after the phone company because two users on either  
   end of the wire talk dirty to each other. Well senator, it is
   a lot the same with ISPs. No, they are not legally common
   carriers, but for all intents and purposes they are. It really
   is hard for them to police everything passing through in a day's
   time. A lot of them will be glad to work along with the rest of
   the net community on what we are proposing here as long as they
   are assured they personally are immune to prosecution on stuff
   passing through their site. They are very defensive right now
   senator, because they think you are going to 'get personal' with
   them. 

   So senator, if we put up some obstacle courses making it harder
   for kids to see stuff that's obscene, can we depend on you to
   help us publicize it? Can we depend on you to write the law so
   the ISPs and system admins don't get stuck in the middle everytime
   some kid figures out a loophole or some crafty pedophile manages
   to hurt some child? And senator, we will even let you take the
   the credit for it all. <smile> ... everyone will realize that it
   was through your expert leadership that America's children are
   a lot safer than they were before. Allow two to three years for
   the project to be finished senator. There is some software to
   be written and installed, and a re-alignment of users from one
   machine to another. In the meantime, maybe your staff could
   get started on the parents and the kids; get them primed and
   prepped and understanding how important it is that they follow
   the new law, etc. "

                  =============================

So instead of the net taking control of this situation from the very
beginning when the handwriting was seen on the wall, instead we
blew it. Some would say that we catch more flies with honey than
we do with vinegar. Others would say that you do not 'fight fire
with fire', you fight fire with a fire extinquisher ...  

And *we* (yes I mean we, the net) could have participated in drafting
a law which would have been very favorable to us, or indeed maybe
no law would have been written at all. Now instead we have to hope
for the best with the developments at hand. If they win, we lose;
if we win, we still lose. Because if we win, then they start on 
the next issue, which I believe will be copyright.  

This is what I mean by the intellectual dishonesty of the people who
led this from the beginning. They knew all they were doing was just
screwing up the net ... with their bogus arguments and theories.
Very few of you have any business talking about censorship for the
same reason I have little business talking about it; I do not own
the computer upon which this is published and very few of you have
any property rights where the network or your local site is concerned.
You are there with the blessings of your corporate employer who will
let you talk smart and sassy until he finally gets tired of it and
then fires you.  Same here ... let's not kid around with censorship.

It is true the government witness was just terrible. Very poorly
informed, etc. But then instead of presenting an *honest* picture
of the net, *our side* (well they did not represent me!) presents
this total fabrication of how things work with the end result
being that a semi-retired prissy old-maid librarian who helps some
child log on to the net only to have the child do a search on 
Alta Vista and turn up some string with a four letter combination
in the middle somewhere considered 'indecent' gets sentenced to
life in prison. All the librarians are now frantic.  So the soloists
of the American Civil Liberties Union assisted by the choir of the
American Library Association and others perform this tragic opera
for the court. What the judges know about computers could be written
on the head of a pin. Being respectful of the First Amendment, they
go out of their way to avoid violating it. 

To John Levine, I agree the way it is written is not very good. So 
damned if the court approves it and damned if they don't. You are so
good at teaching things to Dummies (your book was great by the way),
how come you did not get Exxon and his buddies straightened out a
couple years ago?  Why didn't you counter him; shall we say match his
bid and raise it?

To Hillary, all I can say is we went through this before, you and I.
Get in your system .newsrc file today and go snip-snip here and
snip-snip there. Then forget about it. Just do that little bit to
help, okay?


Patrick Townson

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End of TELECOM Digest V16 #657
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