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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!jonab
From: jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Biggar)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: "stargate" exists! & mudslinging
Message-ID: <1550@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 15:07:36 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1550
Posted: Thu Dec 13 15:07:36 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 02:48:57 EST
References: <463@vortex.UUCP> <271@bragvax.UUCP> <1422@ritcv.UUCP> <273@bragvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Biggar)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 36
Summary: 

In article <273@bragvax.UUCP> david@bragvax.UUCP (David DiGiacomo) writes:
>You're right -- I'm a cheap person and I think that broadcast Usenet
>decoders should also be cheap.  For me the $500-650 price quoted is a
>warning that something is screwed up.
>

Don't quibble over the price of the decoder box until you know what it does.
I don't know all of the features, but I know it isn't just a simple
cable decoder box that you can get for $49.95.  A little back of the
envelope calculation reveals that the date is going to be coming into the
box at at least 600 characters per second assuming only 10 characters per
video frame.  It is possible that the rate could be 6000 or 60000, I don't
know how many characters per video frame.  How many of you have machines
that can handle news coming in at 6000 baud all day?  60,000 baud?  600,000
baud?  

This box HAS to contain a non-trivial amount of buffering memory and
hardware.  If you thing that duplicate article rejection in rnews is slow
now, what happens when your machine receives the save article 3 times per
hour, 24 hours per day?  Your machine will be running rnews all day, and you
will get NO work done.  This box needs to have a cache of recently received
message-ids so that the machine need not handle duplicates.  

This box is going to need about 64k of memory or more, a video decoder,
some fast pattern matching hardware, and an RS-232 port.  Probably needs
to containt its own 68000 class cpu and a good real-time software package.

You just don't get that for $49.95.  $500 is probably too cheap, but I would
be willing to pay that once, plus $10-20 per month to replace $2000/month
phone bills.

So give Lauren a break.  If you can't trust USENIX to protect our interests,
who can you trust.  Besides, Lauren does deserve to be payed for the work.
You can't expect him to donate 100's of hours of time for free?
Jon Biggar
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3}!sdcrdcf!jonab