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Posted to %afda and %alfafda by pieceoftheuniverse on 2nd November 2000The Froup That Shall Not Be Named
(and how to post to it)
Matt wrote:
> How do I get my news provider to carry it?
- Take a very large mallet, and wack your service provider about the head until he/she/it/they decide what the hell, they like you anyway, and give you access.
(There are several problems with this, one of which is actually finding out where your service provider resides. Most do not, despite rumours to the contrary, have any sort of central location that you could actually get in a car and drive to. That would be too easy. Instead, it is entirely possible that there is a large network of interconnected servers across the globe that just happen to be under the same company. These servers get traded from corporation to corporation at an astounding rate, and indeed any published medium attempting to keep up with that kind of progress would most likely collapse under their own weight, taking whatever planet they happen to be on with them. It is far easier to use a virtual mallet and e-mail it to tech support.
"Here," you can write to them, "hit yourself over the head with this, if you would be so kind."
"And," you might want to add, just for fun, "could you give me access to the Usenet group xxx.xxx.xxxx?")
- Go onto deja, register, then berate your news provider constantly from that e-mail saying that they suck because they don't carry the best froup in the whole of Usenet. Use swear words.
(The main problem with this sort of approach is that you will utterly fail in several respects. For one, if you don't have access then you can hardly claim that it is the best newsgroup ever, even if you say you've seen snippits of conversations on alt.humor.best-of-usenet. ALL groups are featured there at one point or another -- it's just a matter of time.
For another, you may find that quite soon after your seventeenth or so message has been received that your deja account no longer works. Service providers of every size, shape, and description often know people that work elsewhere, and can very quickly and easily remove your soap box while you're still protesting at the top of your lungs. In fact, a better metaphor might be that they can remove your lungs while you're still standing on top of them, for without a public forum to announce your grievances there's just really no point.)
- Go to the froup you wish to be carried and post there until your provider can no longer denounce it as a passing fad. The added traffic will make it practically a necessity.
(The most obvious fault to this sort of logic is that in order to post to the newsgroup one must actually be able to verify that it exists, namely by accessing it. If one has no access, one cannot post, and therein lies a nice little catch-22. From here you have two options: enter a temporal anomaly, appear several years in the future and spam like mad OR use another account. The second option is hardly ever used due to its simplicity, and thus many a misguided surfer of the chrono- stream has ended up being burned at the stake, starting a war, or vaporizing neighboring towns rather than spend the twelve pounds it would probably take to switch. (This would also go far in suggesting why there are so few actual posters in TFTSNBN than there probably should be.))
- Hold the planet hostage.
(The only real disparity here is finding a place to hide while whatever you have is pointing at the earth -- be it a missile, a ray gun, a Vogon Constructor Fleet, or a giant mutant stargoat -- for one thing's for sure: if no one pays up, you're going to have to demonstrate that you were serious all along. A major downside of that kind of rash action would be a severe drop in the number of posts across Usenet in general, but there would still be plenty of spammers to keep you busy.)
- Create your own froup. Exclude all posters to TFTSNBN.
(Then, of course, you've got a serious problem when your news provider doesn't want to carry your newsgroup, either. It's very hard to monitor traffic and mediate a froup when you can't see it...)
Hope that helps!
(although I'm sure it won't...)
