ilar fashion, which is also beyond the
| scope of this FAQ. See your mail program's documentation.

1.3 What we don't post

We do not post:

	* non-binary items. Spam is deleted. Discussion is deleted. People
writing us about why no one discusses anything in this group get deleted.
Et cetera.
 	The exceptions are the FAQ, naturally, and moderator announcements.
	So where should you post if you want to talk about Commodore 8-bits?
A good question. Refer to:

	comp.emulators.cbm
	comp.sys.cbm
	alt.c64

	All of these, in particular the first two, have active discussion.
Talk on them. We'd love to hear from another 8-bit fanatic.

	* binary items not relevant to the 64. UUencoded JPEGs of your pet
wonderdog Snotbrain whizzing on Mrs. Eagleson's petunias get deleted. And so
on.

	* 'warez'. Cracks, hacks, etc. are NOT allowed. The old argument
that 'it's 10 years ago, the copyright doesn't matter' is hogwash. Someone
still has the copyright, even if they're not enforcing it, and we don't want
to be on their lawyer's target list if they decide to enforce it suddenly.
(Want an example? Okay. Three words: Activision fifteen pack. Case closed.)
Freeware and shareware versions of products are exempt because they are
explicitly freely distributable, in contrast to ...

	* restricted distribution products. This is a fancy way of referring
to 'stuff that shouldn't be publicly distributed', and includes things such
as registered versions of shareware or beta tests that are not intended for
the public. Moreover, if there's a restriction on the software's distribution,
it's probably heavily copyright-protected too ... see 'warez'.

	* programs not intended for all audiences. For example, posting a
nudie slide show for the 64 here would not be appropriate, and it would
never be approved, even if it *were* in the public domain and freely
distributable. This is not comp.binaries.erotica.cbm. You may think this is
a silly thing to say, but there are some of these demos around.

	* things that don't work. Garbled submissions don't work. Make sure
your uuencoded file didn't get truncated. Make sure your mailer didn't eat
characters or add new ones, because on our end it looks like hell. IF YOU MUST
MAIL US YOUR POST, PLEASE see the section on 'How to post by mail' to get
around this problem.
	Most importantly, however, if it don't work, it don't post. If we
can't get it to run, odds are most people who read this group won't either.

	* anything we decide not to post, at our discretion. Some people have
claimed we're ignoring their posts because we don't like them. Tough orange
peels.

1.4 What happens if you post something we don't post

Nothing.

Yes, nothing. You will get no response from us, ever.

In the past, the response was to notify you that we did not accept your post,
and to send you some appropriate reason why. In this day and age of rampant
spammage and people who blindly post insulting things instead of reading FAQs,
that is an insurmountable task. Therefore, if you do not get a response to your
post WITHIN A SUFFICIENT INTERVAL and/or your post never appears on the group,
we did not approve it.

If you have trouble with your newsreader, and want to know if your post
came through, please state you want confirmation in the message body. We will
confirm only in cases where we have a serious posting. If you post 'why aren't
my messages posting somebody please respond' you will get a resounding fat
load of nothing returned to you. However, if there's a possible submission
attached to your polite and understanding request, we would be happy to tell
you that it got there in one piece. Do not, though, assume that a lack of
response indicates bad connection and therefore multiple reposting, because
this will not endear yourself to the moderators and collect you many four-
letter words. Ask first before you send that 2.5MB file again.

If you do get a message back from us, we probably just need a small extra
thing from you, like a description. Please read the note and comply; upon
your doing so, you will be the proud parent of a new post.

The phrase 'WITHIN A SUFFICIENT INTERVAL' has been cap'ed for a reason. It
takes time to check through a submission, first to receive it, then to test
it and then for the final post (if any) to percolate through the fibrous
wire mishmash of Usenet. Please respect the fact it may take as long as a week
to finish this process -- we have lives of our own, and we do this out of
our free time. Therefore, not seeing your post immediately does in no way
imply open and extremely prejudical rejection.

1.5 What happens if you post something we post

We post it.

If appropriate, we will notify you (usually 'thanks!'), but in most cases
you will know your post has been approved when you see it in the group. It is
| good form to make sure your newsreader does in fact see this group. You
| might also subscribe to the mailing list echo.

If you want confirmation, say so. See above for conditions on that. Remember
that sending confirmation messages is not guaranteed.

1.6 c.b.c courtesy

| Good things to do that make things easy for the moderators (and also, I
| hasten to add, make things easier on the viewing audience):

	* Use .sda or .sfx, or any other self-dearcing format. It's easy
for us because we don't have to crank up the dearcer. Lynx is especially bad
on this point, since there's so many versions, a lesson I have learned the
hard way with many people asking me why Ultimate Lynx doesn't understand
CWI's Lynx archives. (Answer: We use Lynx IV, and they're mutually
incompatible.) Failing that:

	* Use a standard emulator disk or tape image (compressed would be
nice -- .zip okay, .gz even better!). With modern code, even zipped and
GZipped .d64s can be handled directly on a C64, and for those mods that
do quick testing on an emulator, we can drop the image right in. .d64 is
now so ubiquitous that it has supplanted most .arc and .lnx formats as the
preferred method of archiving floppies and files, despite its disadvantages.
	  Failing that:

	* Use a standardized arc format. I like .lnx best, but can tolerate
.arc. I find .lzh slightly exotic and .rar even more opaque. If you post using
Fritz Fluegelwagen's RLE-LZW-Huffman-Lynx encoder, something three people on
the planet use, the chances of my hitting delete in the mailreader increase
exponentially.
	The one standard arc format you should avoid, if at all possible, is
ZipCode (the 1! .. 2! .. files.) These cause some irritation on my part, mostly
because I have to deal with four files instead of one. There are some
circumstances where ZipCode is needed, but most of them involve copy-
protection, which you find on (surprise!) copyrighted warez. See above.
	If these are PC binaries, please please PLEASE use .zip. I HATE
unarj with a passion, and I don't like DOS tar or gunzip. I suspect the other
moderators have similar preferences.
	But best of all:

	* Don't arc. If you can avoid it, don't! That's best of all. Then
we can just run the stinking thing.

For clarity, preferred formats, from most preferred down, for Commodore:

.prg/.bin, .sfx/.sda/.spy/.sdl, .d64/.t64/.p00, .lnx, .arc/.lzh, .rar/.lbr

For PC/Mac/UNIX:

.zip/.infozip/.gz/.tgz, .Z, .sit, .arj, .rar/.lzh

These are my preferences only and should not be construed as support for
any format or having any rational basis in fact. :-)

	* UUencode. Don't Base64. This means refrain from using attachments.
Most Unix newsreaders don't understand MIME, and most of us use a Unix
newsreader. If you don't, please be kind to the large majority that do.
The only exception to this is if you use a MIME-enabled mailer, and in that
case you should read the section on 'How to post' BEFORE YOU POST!!!

	* No yEnc, please. There is no native C64 yEnc decoder, and we'd
prefer they can access all postings even if you think the target shouldn't
be a real machine. Furthermore, the autobots that handle automatic posting
and processing all expect documents to be in uucode.

	* Document! You don't need to tell us how to turn the computer on,
but please do tell us what we're looking at, and what we can expect when
we run it. We can probably guess the rest. Accuracy helps. :-)

	 A NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION: Some people believe that documentation
consists of a single sentence saying 'this is a program for the (648|+4)'.
We can see that already. Documentation is telling us what the program is
supposed to do and what it needs to run, and this information is vital!
Steve Judd writes particularly nice documentation. Look for some of this
previous posts, if your news spool goes back that far (!).
	If you are sending an archive of programs, like a freeware
archive, please describe each program individually and completely as if
you had posted each one separately. A nice paragraph about the archive
itself will probably not suffice. :-)

	* Post your post instead of mailing to us. The reason is not that
we care how the post arrives, but that most modern mailers fiddle around with
files and add metacharacters and 8-bit encoding and the like. Most news
programs don't. Therefore, a post arrives more cleanly in general than does
the mail.
	IF YOU MUST MAIL, PLEASE see the section on 'How to post by Mail'.

	* Above all, remember that your post must be readable by the lowest
common denominator. Usually, that's us.

1.7 Things you should *never* do

	* Crosspost. Never ever crosspost. Announcements about your web site,
whether or not it will resurrect the 64 to millions of waiting fans
worldwide and usher in a new computing paradigm renaissance, are not binary
and therefore not germaine. Announcements about service offerings you may
be providing, or the software opus you're writing, are not binary and
therefore not germaine. (But if you have a demo, why not post that?)
Why am I picking on announcements? Announcements are, bar none, the single
most crossposted crud I can think of. STOP IT.
	Moreover, it s a waste of time for you, because if I don't approve
the post, or any of the other moderators, it won't appear in any of the other
groups you've crossposted to either. And we're not going to strip the c.b.c
group and and repost it for you. It's not our job.
	The problem is now of such an extent that c.b.c no longer accepts
crossposts, even if they *are* on-topic. Sorry. See section 2.1.1.

	* Mass post or autopost. In the past six months or so I have had two
incidences of nearly several hundred megabytes of warez end up in my mailbox
with more on the way, to the point where I had to complain to the offender's
ISP to get them to stop before my server's mail spool got overrun.
 	Not only is this unspeakably rude and impossible to process in a
timely fashion, but it also can cause denial of service problems for
moderators' ISPs and systems. Do NOT load your programs into an autoposter
and let your program blast us on autopilot. Do NOT pack everything into a
gigantic archive and bolus us at 5 gigs a post. If we can't contact you to
turn it off, we *will* make sure you're disconnected one way or another.
Please don't forget there's a human being looking at every post you send,
and that not everyone's hard disk is as big as yours.

	* Use a hopelessly munged address. We're a fairly astute bunch of
guys, and most mail munges are creative enough to be bot-foolers but still
humanly decipherable, and we have no problem with munging per se. (Heck, I
used to regularly munge mine.) However, we have received submissions from
"G@RT" (actual from address) that we needed more information on. Guess what,
bucko? Into the bit bucket. If we can't contact you about your post, we will
reject it.

	* Bite your nails. Don't do it, it's a nasty habit and you look funny
gnawing on them like that.

2. Talking to c.b.c

2.1 How to post

2.1.1 The anti-spam bot

In days gone by, the c.b.c moderator job had become increasingly difficult
because of large amounts of spam to both the group and to the submission
addresses, as well as large and frequently lengthy and repeated crossposts
to groups where things should not be crossposted. This has meant many mod
mailbox overflows and many ruined keyboards bouncing on whatever delete
key is defined.

Seriously, it really has been a problem, and only because of the magnitude
have more drastic options been applied.

On August 1, 2005, this policy went into effect (which is also given in the
mini-FAQ). To successfully submit a formal submission or a question through
the request address, your post or E-mail:

 - MUST HAVE: either the words 'commodore' or 'comp.binaries.cbm',
   spelled correctly, in upper/lower case, in either your MESSAGE BODY,
   MESSAGE SUBJECT, or both. No other headers will qualify. Odds are
   your message contains these key terms already! If it doesn't, it
   will be silently DELETED.

** Simply having comp.binaries.cbm in the Newsgroups: header is not enough! **

 - MUST -NOT- HAVE: newsgroups *other* than comp.binaries.cbm in the
   Newsgroups: header, if one exists. If you crosspost, it will be
   silently DELETED. (If you do not have a Newsgroups: header, then
   the first rule applies.)

I'm sorry about the onerousness of the requirements, but they are a needed
measure to keep c.b.c running smoothly, and most legitimate submissions
should not be affected by this policy. Please note that messages that are
trapped by the anti-spam filter do not reach the moderator, so we will not
see them if your post fails any of these conditions.

2.1.2 How to post by newsreader (MOST preferred)

Simply point your newsreader to comp.binaries.cbm and post your document.
You should refer to your newsreader for the appropriate documentation. Make
sure it is uuencoded -- raw binaries never make it, and yEnc or MIME may be
eaten by our pre-processing bots.

What will happen is that your post will be sent by UUnet to the moderators,
who will then review it. This method is most preferred because mailreaders
screw around with mail they send, particularly MIME-enabled mailers. Most
newsreaders don't. See above for the rest of the process.

Please remember that your posts are pre-filtered! Read section 2.1.1.

2.1.3 How to post by mail

While we don't really encourage this, people do have trouble posting through
Usenet, especially if your only access is through Google Groups or the like.
If you really can't post by news, send your document to:

comp-binaries-cbm(at)floodgap.com

which is a mail alias maintained by Cameron Kaiser. If you use a
MIME-enabled mailer, DO NOT UUENCODE IT BECAUSE THE MAILER EATS IT! In this
case, and this case only, SEND IT AS AN ATTACHMENT. If the mailer is not
MIME-enabled, like mailx or many Elm versions, send uuencoded files as
usual.

| Even if you subscribe to Spiro's mailing list (1.1.4), you can't submit
| through it as posts do not enter the c.b.c moderation stream (and the
| list is configured to block posts except from administrators anyway). Use
| the submission address above instead.

As a point of clarity, if you intend to send your program as an attachment,
do NOT uuencode the program and send the *uucode* as the attachment. SEND
THE BINARY ITSELF! Also, try to give the attachment a semi-descriptive name.
We often strip out attachments in one big bunch, and a whole lot of similar
looking files makes it tough to match files with posts.

CompuServe seems to be problematic with uuencoded attachments. If you can
use 'NewMail', please do so. If you can't, please alert the moderators in
the message body that you're using CompuServe OldMail and we will try to
rescue the post. (Thanks to John Iannetta.)

Please remember that your posts are pre-filtered! Read section 2.1.1.

2.2 Contacts

As mentioned, it is better to mail the moderators collectively. Posting
will have the same effect as mailing, but it's better to mail because we
can differentiate between the two.

The alias

cbc-request+at+floodgap.com

will send to all members of the moderation team, including me.

If you wish to contact me personally regarding the FAQ or the large check
you'll send me or the attractive, unmarried sister you have, send mail to

ckaiser{at}floodgap.com

and I promise to ignore it for as long as I can, unless I really like your
sister or the check is good.

John Iannetta has promised me an attractive sister, but I think someone at
| Federal Express routed the crate to the Sultan of Brunei. Spiro Trikaliotis
| has not sent me one yet.

2.3 Troubleshooting

2.3.1 'My post was approved, but it hasn't appeared yet'

If you know that we approved your post, there are several reasons why it
hasn't appeared yet. The only reason under our control is that we simply
haven't injected it into the Usenet stream yet.

Normally, we post things as soon as we approve them, just to get them out of
our hair, so most of the time these reasons below apply. In such cases,
there's no one you can blame, unless you have contacts at WorldCom. Usenet
is a very haphazard mish


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