From garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/hist94.zip by Timo Salmi Sat 31-Dec-94

Here is my very subjective look back at 1994 from an archive site
maintainer's, a newsgroup's co-moderator's and UseNet newsgroups'
reader's point of view.

   January: A discussion in comp.archives.msdos.d about "Illogic of
CD-ROM restrictions". The CD-ROM distribution restrictions of some
programs caused them to be deleted from SimTel, and Garbo too. The
discussion was fairly heavy for a spell, but then ceased rather
abruptly.
   The vote was initiated by the moderator Brian O'Neill to decide
whether comp.binaries.ibm.pc should move from .zoo to .zip format.
   Garbo finally got a new FTP daemon allowing among other things
welcoming messages and automatic advice to users during sessions.
   Garbo and Vaasa FreePort BBS were divorced, that is the latter
got a SPARCstation of its own. The lifting of the load speeded up
Garbo considerably and radically decreased Garbo's crashes.
   A "Global Alert For All: Jesus is Coming Soon" crackpot message
was posted individually to some 5500(!) newsgroups. A furor ensued
with some 1200 complaints to the system administrators of the
originating site. This resulted in a week-long suspension of the
culprit from his office.
   The final results of the comp.binaries.ibm.pc zoo/zip vote were a
veritable landslide for zip. There were 998 yes votes for the switch
over to the zip format and only 80 no votes.
   Some semi-disciplinary measures were required at Garbo for
excessive overseas gopher usage on the other hand, and the trying to
bypass Garbo's rule requiring giving one's email address as the
anonymous FTP password, on the the other. The new ftp system made it
possible to block these connections.

   February: I had been gathering and editing users' reviews about
the distributed MS-DOS PD and shareware programs, but I decided to
drop it and remove the rev*.zip reviews from Garbo after they took
too much of my time by creating a rare disagreement between me and
Keith (the SimTel moderator).
   Finally the changeover of comp.binaries.ibm.pc from the zoo to
the zip format. The first file that appeared in the new format was
disp104.zip, DIS Plus directory manager.
   The welcome uploads to Garbo became in so thick and fast that we
had no alternative than to curb our incoming directory for the
weekends to be better able to cope. In fact we had to temporarily
close it for an entire week at one stage.
   The long-awaited update of the QEdit shareware editor qedit3.zip
came out, but the reaction was somewhat of a dud.
   The Info-ZIP programming group released a new portable unzip
version with many improvements.
   Nagware tactics were debated in comp.archives.msdos.d. The Telix
ending screen was one of the catalysts. PC-Magazine's benc80.zip had
to be withdrawn because of distribution limitations. These all the
more common trends are disturbing. I do not think they are fruitful
for the world-wide distribution of shareware and PD MS-DOS programs
and for the image of shareware.

  March: Overflowing Garbo upload queues again. Otherwise just
established routines. It is nice to have things settle that way for
once.

  April: I was cross-country skiing on an extended Easter holiday
totally away from computers for the first part of the month. Garbo's
incoming directories were closed during that time for some ten days.
   The big topic of the month was the "Green Card Lottery- Final
One?" scam sent all over the Usenet to about 5500 newsgroups and the
subsequent threats of a lawsuit with huge compensation claims by the
perpetrators! An absolute pandemonium ensued, especially in
news.admin.misc. The case became known as the "Green card lawyers"
making New York Times, later Time International in July (and what
not). It did not remain the only such posting. The next incident was
the 'market survey', fortunately with less extensive coverage. Part
of the discussion on news.admin.misc soon deteriorated to unrelated
repartee (yes, repartee, rather than the run of the mill flames)
between a few individuals. But the principal discussion went on and
on for many months. In fact the infamous green card lawyers were
still debated as heavily as ever at the end of 1994.
   Due to a heavy effort at Garbo we managed to have the Garbo
incoming submissions queues totally empty Fri 15-Apr-94. This is the
first time must be in a year. The bliss of empty queues could be
enjoyed about for three hours. We continued the practice of closing
our incoming directories for the weekends, since the uploads kept
piling more and more.
   A user from an account on @delphi.com solicited for a pirated
game on comp.os.msdos.apps, for his/her pirate BBS, flaunting the
fact, to boot, as a flame-bait for unexperienced users. Phew!
Fortunately it seems that the administrators finally took measures.

   May: After a very long lull, four different producers contacted
our Computer Centre to discuss the possibility of publishing a Garbo
CD-ROM. As it sometimes is, things can come in bursts.
   New "spams" on the net. Spamming means sending the same message
(often a scam) separately across a wide range of newsgroups. The
latest spam was called the "skinny dip spam". Of course the
perpetrator got his account suspended as a consequence. There there
also chain letter attacks. This kind of unwelcome behavior on the
net seemed to be on the increase.
   Some minor hassle caused by someone posting a 81Kb source to
comp.lang.pascal three times almost in succession at that.
   Mon 23-May-94 saw the rare occurrence of in fact three of my own
files making it to the top of the daily download statistics at Garbo
archives. Of course I was pleased. I do not know if it was directly
related, but after a long pause I was accused of having "a real ego
problem" by a North American system administrator with ">4 years
experience on the news". Well, why not, and so what? What else is
there in this for me.
   The question "Will my PC crash in 2000?" induced some
benevolently hilarious replies in comp.archives.msdos.d.

   June: A seemingly unending and partly misplaced debate about
MS-DOS vs Windows in the programming newsgroup. Rather a case for
the advocacy newsgroups.
   Both Garbo moderators on vacation and incoming directories were
closed for two weeks. An influx followed when they were opened again
at the end of the month.
   Got involved in a question about a trademark clash between two
authors in a file at Garbo, but fortunately the matter was settled.
   The comp.binaries.ibm.pc moderator Brian O'Neill (again)
announced this intentions to retire and to look for a new moderator.
   A case of flame-baiting the new users in news.newusers.questions.
What a despicable way of greeting the neophytes.
   Some negotiations on the Garbo CD-ROM front, but mostly a lull
after the initial burst.

   July: The month started as badly as can be. The editorial of
PC-Magazine by Robin Raskin in her column publicly cited FTP sites
for distributing their programs illegally. As a result all PC
Magazine utilities were withdrawn from SimTel and Garbo, but
restored after a editor Raskin recanted in a posting on the net at
the end of the month. I understand that by then she had had about up
to a thousand messages from the disgruntled SimTel and Garbo users.
I am pleased that despite this, the matter was settled amicably.
   Wuarchive was off the air. It seems that someone broke into
wuarchive.
   Some discussion about comp.binaries.ibm.pc situation and the idea
of co-moderators for Brian.  Nothing came of it.
   I was away from Vaasa trying to have a holiday, with varying
degree of success and failure because of what was going on on the
net.
   One of my own big favorites for the month were the Shoemaker-
Levy 9 Jupiter collision gif images which coincided with the
25-lunar landing anniversary. The images were a huge success on
Garbo's download statistics.
   Ari Hovila was busily testing Garbo's own announcement emailing
list to parallel SimTel's msdos-ann mailing list, which had so far
carried both sites' announcements.

   August: Garbo's own garbo-ann mailing list to offer the upload
announcements in emailed digest format was started with initially
exactly the same 3000+ subscribers as SimTel's msdos-ann mailing
list.
   A protracted and occasionally heated advocacy debate about the
alleged merits and dismerits of Pascal versus C in comp.lang.pascal
and comp.lang.c. This is a recurring subject that always seems to
pop up after lying dormant in the wings. More often these "feuds"
have been initiated by C proponents, but this time it was the other
way round.
   Again a stupid chain letter posting. This time a flame-bait
forgery of "MAKE.MONEY.REAL.FAST!!". Sigh.
   Walnut Creek's Garbo CD-ROM came out.

   September: Started a major overhaul of Garbo's Turbo Pascal
directories. It took the whole month to get it done, but I think is
was worth it.
   Ari started experimenting with Linux for a future transfer of
Garbo to a new machine.
   Away from Vaasa to Helsinki for a week. Problems with the traffic
load and links between Helsinki and Vaasa.
   The moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc Brian O'Neill again
announced his resignation once again.
   Columbia University's Kermit was withdrawn from SimTel and Garbo
because of the material's distribution limitations. A heavy but with
one exception a civilized discussion followed in the newsgroup
comp.protocols.kermit.misc.

   October: Garbo was closed for uploads for most of the month
because the university was moving to a new campus and because
Moderator Ari Hovila was on holiday after having a daughter.
Congratulations!
   I resubscribed to news.admin.misc after two months absence from
the list. Amazing It was like one had not been absent one single
day. The same subjects the same arguments.
   The Kermit comp.protocols.kermit.misc distribution debate died
down by the middle of the month.
   On the lighter side of things adopted the aka Prof. Pundit to
participate in rec.humor.

   November: Garbo moved to the new campus and got a new IP number
193.166.120.5.
   Nagbusting was debated in comp.archives.msdos.d.
   Comp.binaries.ibm.pc finally found a new moderator Vinit S.
Carpenter (carpenterv@vms.csd.mu.edu).
   Got flamed for posting Garbo's download statistics of my own
files.
   One of the uploads to Garbo had a computer virus in it.
Fortunately I caught it in time. The incident was clearly
unintentional from the part of the uploader, but it goes to show
that it always pays to be extra careful.

   December: Jouni Ikonen's apprenticeship period at the University
of Vaasa ended and he went back to his computer studies. He had
helped to carry much of the Garbo's load of submissions from the
uploaders. Since Ari Hovila and yours truly have many other duties
beside Garbo's maintenance at the university, for the time being we
had no other choice than to decline any new Windows programs
submissions, in order to cope.
   The Vaasa FreePort BBS project was concluded replaced by a new
one (Walli) designated to paying, domestic users only.
   The second anniversary of the comp.archives.msdos Usenet
newsgroups was on Thu 15-Dec-94.
   To enhance the Garbo users' interest in science and exploration I
obtained a number of space related gifs to Garbo including 60
classic images from the Apollo moon missions. They seemed to be
quite a success among the users.
   My long time net friend and joint maintainer of the list of
MS-DOS ftp sites (/pc/pd2/moder*.zip) Rhys Weatherley stepped down
from his part because of the time pressures of his work. My best
thanks to Rhys for his cooperation and all the help he gave to
maintaining the list while he still could afford the time.
   Maintaining Garbo on the side of an interesting teaching and
research job and a time-consuming administrative position is not
always easy. Fortunately, my term as the dean of the Faculty of
Accounting and Industrial Management at the University of Vaasa
came to an end at on Sat 31-Dec-94. That is a very big relief.

   The by far biggest disappointment for me in looking back at 1994
is that the scientific working paper library at Garbo in the
/pc/research directory got practically nowhere. At the very least I
would have expected a semblance of activity from our own university.
   I approximate that at the end of the year there were some sixty
ftp sites which you could call MS-DOS ftp sites. Of these SimTel and
Garbo have totally dominated the publicity, with occasional, welcome
interjections from the games site ftp.uml.edu and a programmers'
site x2ftp.oulu.fi.
   The newsgroups comp.archives.msdos.announce and CAM.d have
settled to a steady rhythm as has comp.binaries.ibm.pc.wanted while
comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d continued to be mostly off-balance all year
long.
   The Garbo statistics for 1994 show 1,454,142 calls and 6,211,981
downloads for the year on Fri 30-Dec-94, which means a growth of
about two million downloads compared to 1993. And these are from
Garbo alone. The downloads from the nine Garbo mirror sites
worldwide are not in the figures.
   The scope of the Garbo archives at the end of 1994 was
      /pc         450 Mb    4276 MS-DOS files
      /windows    150 Mb     780 Windows files
      /unix        60 Mb     307 Unix files
      /mac         35 Mb     185 Mac files
      /ql           1 Mb      97 Sinclair QL files
      /next        40 Mb     135 Next files
      /X11         10 Mb      92 X11 files

Finally, I wish a all the Garbo users A Happy New Year.

  All the best, Timo

..................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi      Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives  193.166.120.5
Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa
Internet: ts@uwasa.fi   BBS +(358)-61-3170972; FIN-65101,  Finland
