[no subject]

I am probably to person to respond, because I wrote the anouncement.  But I
am trying to stay out of the 'politics' so I can't offer a lot of incite.
ISCA stands for Iowa Student Computing Association (or something close).  It
is funded by student fees at the Univ. of Iowa.  Since its inception (late
80's or early 90's), ISCA was dominated by students in the Engineering
College.  Well, many students were also employed part-time and then full
time after graduation in the engineering school.  The computing facilities
of the engineering college are handled by ICAEN (Iowa Computer Aided
Education Network, or something close to that).  Over the years even the
ownership and administration of the computers used by ISCA became intermingled
with those of ICAEN.  Meanwhile the former ISCA students continued to run
ISCA computers while new students had more minor roles.  A rebellion, of
sorts, occurred this summer when new student leaders demanded control of
ISCA.  At first, the new ISCA leaders, didn't know of 'ground', and ICAEN
kept it running.  Eventually, ISCA learned about ground, and demanded that
the computer (owned by ICAEN) and the drive (owned by apple2 users) be
turned over to ISCA ownership and control.  ICAEN refused.  ISCA removed
ground from its DNS server.  I was out of state on vacation and oblivious
to the matter.  I returned, found ground missing on the net.  After listening
to the new head of ISCA explain he couldn't support a site that he didn't
own and administer, that he had to pull my DNS service, etc., I agreed to
find a new DNS server.  Well, ICAEN was and is our true service provider.
They temporarily put ground.icaen on their DNS server (actually they saw
this coming and did it even before ISCA killed ground.isca).  While this
arrangement could of continued, ICAEN suggested that ground be known as
ground.ecn.uiowa.edu.  Even now, I have NO idea what 'ecn' stands for.  I
don't think it is unique for ground, but probably some other computer
network in the engineering school.  While talking to ICAEN, I also quickly
learned from the expletives in the language that there is no common ground
between the current ISCA and ICAEN/ECN/Engineering school.  

Perhaps I erred in describing the changes as 'politics', but there is no
logical reasoning behind the change that I know about.  I can't even give
a real factual description of what has happened.  Suffice it to say, the
only real change that has occured on ground is the name change. 
Liquefy.isca, which mirrored ground, died/was killed/whatever, in the
transfer of control.  If ISCA does ever get liquefy running (it is not a
high priority), I doubt it would have a mirror of ground on it :-(
The same people who adminstered ground as ground.isca are the same ones
who are administering ground as ground.icaen and ground.ecn.  I have been
happy with their service and help in the past, and we can count on their
support in the future.

Thanks for asking, but I don't have a real good answer, and I don't think
it is a major concern for the csa2 comminity.  At least I don't forsee any
new problem ...  I am curious what 'ecn' means.  I need to find out.
I'll guess 'Engineering Computing Network' is pretty close.


-- 

 --Steve  (apple2pd@ground.ecn.uiowa.edu)