Conference bookie::movies

    The old conference was not archived; it was lost completely, due to the
    catastrophic failure of the disk on which it resided. 
    
    Because of its size, it was not backed up regularly.  If any backup
    _is_ found, and if someone offers to give it disk space, I'll place a
    pointer to it in this conference, but for the time being I'm afraid the
    word is "Gone".
    
    But if there's a movie you're interested in, feel free to start a new
    topic asking for comments; odds are _somebody_ in here has seen it.
    
    -b

>    Because of its size, it was not backed up regularly.  If any backup
>    _is_ found, and if someone offers to give it disk space,

	About how big was it so in case a backup (no matter how old
	it will be worth it) is found, we'll know whether we can
	offer to store it?

	There must be a backup somewhere, no one could of been that
	optomistic that an accident would never happen :-)

    _IF_ a backup is found, its size and availability will be made known,
    but that's not something I have any control over. [A rough estimate put
    the old conference at about 100K blocks, give or take a few tens of
    thousands...]
    
    -b

> Note: 27.2
> Author: 12368::michaud "Jeff Michaud, DECnet/OSI"
          ^^^^^

	BTW, how about updating your DECnet nodes database? :-)
	NETRIX (12.80, ala 12368) has had its address for
	at least a year ....

    Apologies to those who don't like seeing numbers in front of their
    names on their replies, but no way am I going to inflict the entire
    network database on my workstation, which has enough to do as it is.
    
    Now - if someone were to enter some startlingly entertaining reviews,
    so as to become a shining light in the new conference, why, I might
    consider adding that person's node to my local database by way of
    recognition. ;-) As it is, only nodes in ZK and those to whom _I_ send
    or post things will appear here under their proper names. 
    
    -b

> Apologies to those who don't like seeing numbers in front of their
> names on their replies, but no way am I going to inflict the entire
> network database on my workstation, which has enough to do as it is.

	Yes, brain dead Phase IV implementation of the nodes
	database.  Why not consider installing DECnet-VAX Wave1
	(ala DECnet Extentions).  This allows the functionality
	of using the naming service (DECdns) while still running
	good old dependable Phase IV, w/out having to populate
	your local nodes database.

	If only we had a NOTES Server on OSF1 or ULTRIX .......

    If no backup is found, how about asking noters to repost notes? 
    I'm sure some vain souls kept copies of what they wrote...
    
    Or is this a senseless waste of human life and disk space?

    
    
    Seems a fitting end... the old Movies Conference was in my opinion
    "over-moderated" and not very well handled.
    
    I'm not surprised that it's all gone. You get what you give in this
    world.
    
    -James
          

    The old conference is gone.  There are no backups to search for because
    there are none to find.
    
    The disk on which the conference was placed while the conference was in
    transition was taken from my lab bench and used for testing.  I was not
    around when this happened (I happened to be in San Francisco at the Mac
    User Eddy Awards ceremony receiving for DEC the award for the disk on
    which the conference happened to be residing).  I will not assess blame
    for this, it was an accident.  Leave it at that.
    
    When it was moved the conference file was somewhere around 120,000
    blocks. The reason no backups exist was only partly due to the size. 
    As a recreational conference with no business reason to exist, no 
    justification existed to waste cost center budget money for facilities
    to maintain the system.
    
    Copies of some of the later notes may be found in the internal Usenet
    newsgroups archives.  MOVIES and TV were both cross posted there.

    Thanks for the update, Tony. (And for the reminder about the usenet
    groups - although it looks like the dec.notes.personal.movies articles
    are no longer available...)
    
    -b

    Actually, it depends on the server you use.  The USENET server keeps
    old news postings around for along time.  I just checked, and quite a
    few of the notes in dec.notes.personal.movies are still available from
    that node.
    
    You could even use the NEWS-NOTES utility to extract them into
    this notes file.
    
    -- Mike

    Aha! Yes, the server on USENET has the old MOVIES notes back to
    November 18th. (Alas, this doesn't include my Caltiki review. Humph.)
    I'm not going to do any mass re-postings, but anyone who would like to
    retrieve something that they wrote since last November might want to
    take a look. [Please don't try to reconstruct whole strings of
    discussion. If you find an old review you're proud of, go ahead and
    re-post; if you see something that makes you want to start a new topic,
    go ahead; but don't re-post other peoples' entries (without
    permission).]
    
    -b

>    Seems a fitting end... the old Movies Conference was in my opinion
>    "over-moderated" and not very well handled.

	I won't make any accusations publically, I can only
	say that that topic has come up several times in the past
	and the offline feedback I got would agree with you.

	It is still hard to believe there is no backup, no matter
	how old, available.  Sigh :-((  Hopefully if this new
	incarnation takes off that someone will "care" enough
	about it to back it up at least once a year :-)

    Well, _this_ dictator would prefer it if people did not discuss the
    actions of _other_ moderators here. [Comments or suggestions about _my_
    policies are fine, as long as you keep in mind that the management
    reserves the right to ignore them. ;-)]
    
    I offered to host this thing so we'd have a forum for those sparkling
    and witty reviews for which the conference membership is so famous; so
    get cracking, people! Go _watch_ those movies!
    
    -b

    I have a copy of note #2222 from the old MOVIES conference that was
    last updated 1-AUG-1992.  This was the one that had an alphabetized
    list of movie titles that were reviewed in the conference.  
    
    I also have a list of all the topic titles, unedited, in sequential
    order.  The latter list includes all the general topics, such as
    "Favorite John Wayne Film", etc.  I see no point in posting it in this
    file, but if any of the noters who wrote in that file want a list of
    the topics that they initiated up to that date, send me MAIL.
    

RE .15 -- FYI, Dennis Ahern is no longer with Digital (sigh), so no one will be
able to take him up on his offer.

RE 2.8 (which was pointed here by 2.9) - Before she left Digital recently
(sigh again), previous MOVIES moderator and host Beth Rust made available
to me a file that contains a text extract of *part* of the old MOVIES
conference.  According to Beth, it contains the first 459 topics (topic 459 was
written in 1986, so that gives you some idea how much *isn't* included), plus
all the replies to those topics through, roughly, March of '92.  I haven't had
a chance to look at it myself.

The file is 17,900 blocks in size (!).  It's currently residing in my account
on another system.  I haven't had time (and won't, for the forseeable future)
to extract anything out of it into this file, if anything is worth extracting.

If someone is interested in copying this archive and doing something with it,
let me know (by mail, please).  You'd be more than welcome.

-- Nina