Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/3/85; site decuac.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decuac!avolio From: avolio@decuac.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: Is anyone else offended..... Message-ID: <546@decuac.UUCP> Date: Sat, 29-Jun-85 09:46:24 EDT Article-I.D.: decuac.546 Posted: Sat Jun 29 09:46:24 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 30-Jun-85 03:10:01 EDT References: <266@timeinc.UUCP> <2908@nsc.UUCP> <270@timeinc.UUCP> <2918@nsc.UUCP> Organization: ULTRIX Applications Center, MD Lines: 41 Summary: costs Some folks have no idea of the costs -- phone, disk space, cpu cycles, etc. -- of moving news around the world. Might be interesting for some of the "backbone" systems to post this information. (Seismo does -- take a look at the stats they post and figure how it would affect *your* site.) It might sober those who insist that a site must pass all the news through even if people on it don't read it. No one is stopping a site 30 hops away from a backbone to call other sites farther away who still would be willing to send certain groups. This is not fascism. This is not censorship. It is practical. [Digression: To many people their own company's, let alone other people's company's -- phone bill is totally insolated from them. I know someone (his initials are F.A.) who was using -- with his manager's okay -- his telephone charge card to charge the long distance calls from his home terminal to the machine at the work site. It wasn't until the company finally started breaking out individual charges by person that this person found out that over a 3 month period the monthly average was around $500.00 in calls. Needless to say said person now has -- for $26/month -- a work-local exchange in his home!] I agree that if a SA is going to disappear a new group he/she does have a responsibility to poll the folks downstream from that site and, as Chuq mentioned, trying to help them find another source for a particular group or groups (if they indeed want them). And I think it would also be smart for folks to start off with a subset of the net -- only things users on their site want. Groups can be added if their is a demand for them. This makes for much less traffic (but a much messier -- now that word looks funny -- much messier news/sys file... as cvl!andie and dolqci!mike could tell you). Finally, yes, net.flame should go away. I does not serve a useful purpose. If one needs to argue with another it is best carried out one to one via mail. At the very least, postings to net.flame should be forced in the software (I know it is easy to get around!) to go *only* to net.flame. (One of the sillier things people write in postings is "Send flames to /dev/null." That is exactly where *all* flames should *always* go.) -Fred