Subject: CND-EP Special for Australia, August 9, 1990

From: Bo Xiong <yawei>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 90 01:46:10 -0500

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=====================  Europe / Pacific Section (CND-EP)  =====================
                                August 9, 1990

            (This Is A Special Issue Distributed to Australia Only)

---------------------------- Table of Contents ---------------------------
No. Subject                                                     # of Lines

1. Urgent Notice of Demonstration in Canberra...........................20

2. Call for Resuming the Transmission of soc.culture.china in Aus.......45

3. Introduction of Usenet Newsgroup:  soc.culture.china.................80
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**** To contact CND-EP, see the table at the end of this news package ****

1. Urgent Notice of Demonstration in Canberra
====================================================================(20 lines)
>From:  CND Correspondent in Australia  ******@****.anu.oz.au

                ************************************
                *  URGENT NOTE ON DEMONSTRATION    *
                ************************************
Dear fellow students:

  The National Union of Chinese Students and Scholars is going to organize a 
demonstration against the coming of the vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of 
China and the opening of the new Chinese Embassy. 

  Time: 11:20 a.m., 10 August 1990 (Friday)
  Place: Front of the New Chinese Embassy (Yarralumla)

  Please prepare some cards with slogans like 
  "Release fellow students"
  "Release activists of 1989 democratic movement"
  "......"

  Please join us and keep the fire going for a democratic China!!!

National Union 
9 August 1990
==============================================================================

2. Call for Resuming the Transmission of soc.culture.china in Australia
====================================================================(45 lines)
>From: A CND Reader in Australia   Aug. 8 05:50:13 1990

Dear Editor,

The newsgroup soc.culture.china was once available in Australia.  However, it
was cancelled a few weeks ago and I do not know what's the reason.  However,
the cancellation seems to coicide with the creation of the newsgroup 
'aus.culture.china'.  A few of us are 'lobbying' to get SCC back and issue is
being discussed among the system programmers.

I was informed that SOFTWAY imports the soc.xxx.xxx newsgroups and the
person-in-charge is probably 'Chris' (e-mail: [email-masked]).

It would be helpful if people can send e-mails to Chris or their local
systems programmer and ask for restoring soc.culture.china.

The hot discussions on SCC have attracted a large number of people.  It would
be excellent if we can have it in Australia. Now is the critical stage whethre
we can get it. I would suggest CND-EP publish this letter plus an introduction
article about SCC and the current topics of SCC (you may use the SCC article
published in CND-G last year in the 'Introduction of Organisations' series).

It would be helpful if people can send e-mails to Chris at the above mentioned
e-main address or their local systems programmer and ask for restoring SCC.

Could you publish this letter as a CND-EP special issue?

Following is a sample letter for this purpose, people may use it as it is or
do some minor changes.

-----------------------
Dear System Programmer,

We appreciate the creation of the newsgroup of auc.culture.china (ACC) on the 
Australian computer network.  However, we are disappointed that the other 
china-related newsgroup, soc.culture.china (SCC), has recently been cancelled.

There seems to be a mistake treating ACC as 'redistribution of 
soc.culture.china' at least in some institutions because ACC does not contain 
any items directly from SCC. It would be greatly appreciated if the SCC can be
restored.SCC collect news on china affairs from around the world, while ACC is
only Australia based.  There are a number of similar news groups as SCC, i.e.,
soc.culture.xxxx, on other countries.  We do not see any reason to kill SCC 
which was on the net while others remain.

Thanks.
==============================================================================

3. Introduction of Usenet Newsgroup:  soc.culture.china
====================================================================(80 lines)
Provided by CND Editor Xu, Gang <[email-masked]>
This is an excerpt from CND Series "Organization Introductions" posted
in Nov. 1989.

           A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SOC.CULTURE.CHINA NEWSGROUP 
 
                    By Sun, Kang ([email-masked])
 
1. What is S.C.C.?
 
S.C.C.  (stands for Soc.Culture.China) is a  NEWSGROUP  on  the  world-wide
computer network USENET.    It was created on November 17, 1987.  Since the
beginning, there have been many articles of  different  subjects,  cute  or
not,  poured  into  this  newsgroup, which engender many debates as one can
imagine.  All kinds of discussions,  debates,  information  exchange,  news
update  happen  on  SCC. It reaches to countries like USA, Canada, England,
Australia,  West  Germany,  Japan,  France,  Norway,  etc.  Its  readership
accounts  to  about  9,000 worldwide, and its traffic is about 100 articles
daily in average.
 
2. Brief history
 
Early in 1987, a project under the the name "ChinaNet" was  proposed  by  a
research  group  at  Texas  A&M University to connect BITNet to China. This
project immediately attracted many  Chinese  students  and  scholars.  They
tried  their best to help with the project. Meanwhile, a mailing list, also
called ChinaNet, was created to coordinate the efforts. As  more  and  more
people  signed  up  to  the list, ChinaNet's popularity increased daily. It
played an important role in coordinating  the  1987  Open  Letter  Campaign
simply  because  it was then the most convenient way to reach large Chinese
population. The mailing list soon became  moderated  because  of  too  much
irrelevant  debate  through it. It was clear then that a media dedicated to
China and Chinese affair was in demand. Most of the ChinaNet readers  voted
"yes"  to  the  motion of forming a newsgroup. So came S.C.C.. Although the
ChinaNet project was aborted for ridiculous reasons, S.C.C. stands  active.
Note that the "ChinaNet" mailing list in this article has little to do with
the "China-net", which is a relative young mailing list based on Stanford.
 
3. How a newsgroup differs from mailing list.
 
Consider the two ways of getting information: post mail and bulletin board.
If  you  happen to be on a mailing list, (junk mail) comes to your mailbox,
which you either have to read or discard. If you don't  do  anything,  your
mail will soon pile up in your mailbox; while you go to read bulletin board
as you wish. Basically, a newsgroup is a like a  column  on  an  electronic
bulletin  board.  In  particular, S.C.C. is a column dedicated to China and
Chinese affair on the world-wide bulletin board named USENET. But you don't
have  to  live  in the same town or nearby to read the same bulletin board.
Electronically, living in the same town means having access to or "residing
on"  the  same network. Newsgroup articles are stored in a public area of a
nearby computer shared by many computers  and  users.  A  program,  usually
under  the  name RNews, NetNews, News, etc, is designed to read and to post
news articles. You can usually decide if  you  want  to  read  or  to  skip
articles of particular subjects or columns (newsgroups).
 
4. For Non-USENET residents
 
For  those  non-USENet  residents,  a  voluntary  rebroadcasting service of
S.C.C.  has been established in the form of a  mailing  list.  The  service
first  started  in  Cornell  University,  then  moved  to  Carnegie  Mellon
University  and  now  is  stationed  in  Yale  University  with   automatic
rebroadcasting  mechanism.  (The  mailing list is still handled in CMU.) If
you sign up to the service, you will get archived article packages daily in
your E-mailbox. Make sure you don't have direct access to USENET before you
sign up to our service, so to avoid unnecessary overflow in your mailbox.
 
To   subscribe  to  S.C.C   rebroadcasting   service,   send   E-mail    to
[email-masked] with Subject line: Sub SCC-L full_name.
 
And  to  cancel  your  subscription,  send  E-mail to the same address with
Subject line : Signoff SCC-L.
 
For readers from Canada, send your subscription and unsubscription  request
to [email-masked].
 
Happy networking :-))
 
-----------------
Disclaimer:  Part  of  this text is taken from an old and longer version of
"Introduction to S.C.C.", which  was written  jointly by many  people. This
author likes to acknowledge their efforts.
 
-----------------
About  the  author:  Mr.  Sun,  Kang,  Vice President of the Association of
Chinese Students and Scholars at  Yale  (ACSSY)  for the 1989-90  term,  is
currently  working  for  his Ph.D degree in Robotics. In his spare time, he
enjoys hacking on computer networks and his Mac+. His well-regarded work on
network includes  the S.C.C. broadcasting  service  and a Survey on Chinese
Word Processors.
==============================================================================

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