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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west
From: west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Need for Stargate screening?
Message-ID: <761@sdcsla.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 23:15:27 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsla.761
Posted: Tue Jan 15 23:15:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 01:18:32 EST
References: <494@vortex.UUCP> <702@cbosgd.UUCP> <831@hound.UUCP>
Reply-To: west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West)
Organization: UC San Diego: Institute for Cognitive Science
Lines: 68
Keywords: cost long-distance phone news stargate moderated newsgroups
Summary: trotting out the same old story again...

In article <831@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes:
  > [.]
  > . . .
  > What is this stuff about the people who pay the bills having the say?
  > Of course that's true.  But who are these people? As I understand it,
  > they are we.  Each of us has an account with our comp center. Ultimately
  > that account is billed to some other account belonging to some corporation
  > or gov"t agency or whatever. We have an amount authorized for our
  > account over some period of time, like a year. One of our supervisors
  > has approved that amount. We ourselves are intrusted with how we go about
  > spending the account and for what. I know of no manager who wants to closely
  > follow just how each of his/her people are spending their money.
  > As long as we feel we are spending it in worthwhile ways, and as long as
  > our supervision has confidence in our judgement, then  are, in effect,
  > the ones spending the money, not some comp center person who feels overly
  > self important.

I'm surprised that someone actually thinks the Net is this homogenous.

The immediate, local problem with this is that there is probably no
accounting (at your site) for the cost of the articles you post,
other than the CPU & I/O & disk space to get the thing to "inews"
(or whatever).   I seriously doubt anyone on the Net has an account
that gets charged directly for phone calls.   (And don't forget the
cost of storing all that "news" on disk -- another motivation for
moderated groups.)

The second problem is that, of course, many sites could never
run on those lines.   Accounting is anathema to sites like these,
where the whole computer is viewed as a resource like mailboxes
and blackboards and xerography machines, etc.   But these sites
still have costs that need to be cut.

  > For myself, I feel that perhaps 10 to 20 percent of my account for
  > usenet and similar activities (e.g., electronic mail, games)(note
  > seemingly strange admixture) is quite reasonable.  If someone can cut
  > these costs while preserving the unique facility, swell. Let them do
  > it.  If someone wants to change the facility radically, lets examine
  > his/her authority for doing so. Let's let the bill payers speak for
  > themselves, all thousands of them.

The third problem is that you are seeing only the tip of the iceberg,
even if you include all the costs at your local site.   Those sites
which transmit the entire netnews traffic every night over phone
lines (say from Denver to Chicago) pile up big phone bills.   Currently,
they are providing a free service to everyone who uses the net.   These
backbone sites are the likely candidates for stargate.   And it seems
that stargate would be much more likely to succeed were it to start
cautiously --> i.e., moderated newsgroups.

So, that's where the cost comes from.

The entire idea of stargate is to cut the big costs, while preserving
or improving the heart of the news.

Again, those who do not wish to receive stargate need not do so.  And
you need not read nor submit to the moderated groups.   You can still
pass news around the old-fashioned way, as long as the administrators
at your site and those you feed from deem this a worthwhile enterprise.

--|  Larry West, UC San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science
--|  UUCP:	{decvax!ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west
--|  ARPA:	west@NPRDC	{ NOT:  }
-- 

--|  Larry West, UC San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science
--|  UUCP:	{decvax!ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west
--|  ARPA:	west@NPRDC	{ NOT:  }