[aclug-L] [rec.humor.funny.reruns] About comp.protocols.time.ntp: life imitates art

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Might get a chuckle out of this tidbit from the history of our fabled
Internet.

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
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Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny.reruns
From: reid@xxxxxxxxxxx (Brian Reid)
Organization: DEC Western Research
Subject: About comp.protocols.time.ntp: life imitates art
Keywords: usenet, chuckle, originally appeared in third quarter, 1990
Followup-To: rec.humor.d
Message-ID: <Se73.4c60@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 19:20:00 PDT
MIME-Version: 1.0



Now that the ntp mailing list is being gatewayed to USENET, it makes it
possible for life to imitate art, in the following way.

Back when USENET was young, and had only a thousand or so nodes, there
was constant bickering on it about what it was good for and what it was
appropriate to use it for.  People were constantly ridiculing others'
usage habits.

One habit that came under constant and vicious ridicule was the habit
of using the net to ask questions whose answer was available in any
library.  In the early days, there was a group called "net.general",
whose description said "topics of general interest".  net.general was
full of questions like "what is the capital of Idaho?"  or "can anybody
out there tell me what city the American Embassy in Belgium is located
in?"  or "What is the weather like in Peru at this time of year?"

At one point, sometime in 1984, Peter Honeyman posted a note to
net.general that said "Does anybody know what time it is?".  [Ed:  Note
-- many people responded, "does anybody really care, oh no."]

This was pure Honeyman, dry and vicious, and it stopped the foolish
questions in net.general for at least two weeks.

But now, in fact, there is a newsgroup for posting such questions....

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