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From: reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The sky is falling!
Message-ID: <10827@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 13:58:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.10827
Posted: Fri Jul 10 13:58:39 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 12:45:13 EDT
References: <288@inco.UUCP>
Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 27
Keywords: no more seismo

In article <288@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>
>Well, folks, for those of you who haven't heard yet, seismo will be
>dropping out of the backbone as of Sept. 1, 1987. If you thought the
>Great Newsgroup Purge caused problems, wait 'til you try to get mail
>around the East Coast this fall. (Unless we all subscribe to UUNET
>instead, I guess.)

I think that seismo dropping out is wonderful, and I am very impressed with
how gracefully and smoothly Rick is engineering that dropout. Seismo provides
a wonderful service, but the problem is that they provide it for free.
One of the basic laws of nature is that things that are free and valuable are
inherently unstable. By moving the load from seismo to uunet, Rick is
ensuring that there won't be some catastrophe causing sudden loss of seismo
services. Remember that seismo is a U.S. Government-owned machine, and all it
would take is a couple of congressmen--a Proxmire, perhaps--to start making a
stink about seismo, and boom, it would vanish in a weekend. By moving the
load to a commercial machine, it is immune from this kind of sudden death.

It is not immune to a slow financial death caused by not having enough
customers, but that is something you and your friends can fix yourself, by
subscribing. If electronic mail service is really so valuable to you that you
think the sky would fall if you were to be cut off, then you really ought to
be willing to pay a little bit of money for it. I certainly am.

Brian Reid
DECWRL