At 06:04 AM 11/4/97 PST, Tim Bowden wrote:
>Linda Kennedy <lindak@netxn.com> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>> I am Linda and I am new to the list manager's list.
>She came into Nerdnosh [...,] caused a series of
>odd childish uproars and then she quit in a public snit. She then
>proceeded to set up a copycat travesty of the Nosh [...]
>
>Now, I have more pride and a touch more creativity than to be satisfied
>with a mindless clone, and anyone with more soul than the average hyena
>would agree with me.
I indeed have less soul than the average hyena, but at least I recognize
and accept that lists split and get cloned all the time. Just a few weeks
ago, for example, a fellow got pissed that the content wasn't following the
lines he wanted, so he created a clone of one my busier lists. Does that
hurt me? Not at all. In fact, when another list member asked about it, I
posted an announcement about his list on my list and subcribed to it
myself. If his list turns out better than mine and replaces it, more power
to him; it would certainly save me some work. If his list is worse, it
will die. Most likely, I suspect his list will find a different audience,
and will ultimately serve a different purpose. All of these things are fine.
If the issue is violation of copyright law, that's something else entirely.
However, I question whether a list concept is copyrightable or not. If it
isn't, learn to live with the "clone". In the business world, it's called
"competition."
As for the original question about searchable archives, here's what I did:
I set up a Windows NT machine (already used for other things) with
Microsoft Internet Server and Microsoft Index Server. Then I installed the
freeware EMWAC mail transfer agent on the NT box. I set up a mail account
on the NT box for each list I wished to index, and subscribed the mail
accounts to the daily digests of my lists.
By design, EMWAC stores the incoming digests in a directory. In the wee
hours of the morning, the NT "at" facility wakes up a utility that I wrote,
which reads the digests stored by EMWAC and converts each message to an
individual HTML file in a destination directory. This allows the messages
to automatically be indexed by Microsoft Index Server.
Finally, I modifed the canned HTML that came with MS Index Server, and
stamped it "finished." An example can be seen at
http://www2.armchair.mb.ca/wings. While by no means the fanciest or
slickest searchable archive, it was the best solution given the resources
available. Prior to using this method, I used Glimpse running on a Linux
machine, but found it consumed all available memory during reindexing, as
well as using up hard drive space needed for something else.
Dave Voorhis
mailto:dave@armchair.mb.ca
http://www.armchair.mb.ca/~dave
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