Seeing that ORBS and the various MAPS lists are a topic of discussion at 
next month's meeting I thought it would be worthwhile pointing out that 
Alan Brown is making some substantial changes to ORBS.

The zone has apparently gotten too big and relays.orbs.org is going away 
after Feb 1, 2001.  The result, if I'm reading the announcement correctly, 
is that it will be necessary to do 7 lookups to get the results which are 
currently generated by the single lookup at relays.orbs.org. This also 
means you can decide which lookups you are interested in doing, provided 
your server and bandwidth are willing and able.*

See:
http://www.orbs.org/usingindex.html

*I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing -- just different.**

-Mike

** I work for MAPS, but I don't speak for them. Standard disclaimers and 
whutnot.