I am the anti-Ch<fnord>

[Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org>]

I got some email responses to my SAIC info.  Here's a little more fun on
a Sunday evening.  All the statements below are true.

Among the first two (possibly the very first two) MX records for not-connected
sites desiring Internet-style names were:  att.com and mirror.tmc.com.
That is, the phone company, and a small subsidiary of the Times-Mirror
corporation.  It was from mirror that mod.sources/comp.sources.unix was
moderated -- for many years, the only source of free software available
to Usenet.

Seismo was the forwarder for both ATT and TMC (via special-case lines in
Rick's sendmail.cf file).  ATT, through ihnp4 in Chicago (site of the
Democratic convention), vied with seismo for the we'll-call-anyone philosophy
that a few sugar daddies (er, backbone) sites had that kept uucp Email
and Usenet running back then.  Under the auspices of the curiously-named
"Network Action Central" many ATT sites did dialup UUCP to mirror on a
daily basis, ostensibly to pick up mod.sources.

I was the administrator of mirror.tmc.com; the tmc.com domain "conflicted"
with tmc.edu, the Texas Medical Center.  The NIC back then asked me to
ask tmc.edu to "reconsider."  Do you know where their book depository
is/was?

Rick started Alternet, now "Shared" with Microsoft.  Unlike Sprint and
MCI, ATT "curiously" decided to *not* become a network service provider,
but instead allied with BBN and sells their technology, equipment and
services.  I worked at BBN for five years, in the same department that
became BBNPlanet, the global ISP and ATT's partner.  I also wrote INN,
which now handles essentially all the Usenet traffic in the world.

So who cares about the latest media mega-deal of Eisner or Time-Warner-Turner?
We already control the Internet media; the Web is merely~~~~#@

NO CARRIER