Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!encore!pinocchio!cook
From: cook@pinocchio.Encore.COM (Dale C. Cook)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Results of sci.aquaria vote
Summary: Who calls the shots?
Message-ID: <10397@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 17 Nov 89 20:14:48 GMT
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Reply-To: cook@encore.com
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Organization: The Woodville Irregulars
Lines: 43

Boy, I usually don't take on the net.pharts, but this must be my day
to get lucky.  :-)

[chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) recently posted that: 
|
|Point of order. Most folks have a 'right' to participate in USENET decisions
|only at the sufference of the people in charge of USENET. The people in
|charge of USENET are the people who maintain the software, sites and
|connections that make the net possible. Those are the people who have a
|right to make decisions about USENET. The people who are passengers have no
|'rights' (just as a passenger on a bus has no 'right' to tell the bus driver
|to go somewhere other than where the bus route says it should go). That the
|bus drivers give them the ability to make some decisions doesn't imply that
|those decisions are somehow 'rights'.
|
This is probably accurate for the situation at the moment, but it is
pretty unrealistic to project this much into the future.  Look at the
trends away from large mainframes towards small but powerful workstations
(that network just fine, thank you.)  Couple this with the trend towards
users having independent home stations.  And then throw in a dash of
public access feeds available at increasingly reasonable rates.  Chuq,
you may fly this tattered flag a few more years, but it's days are
definitely limited.

Point two: the deplorable lack of any kind of loyality towards employees
or companies is driving people to become independent contractors --
emphasis on INDEPENDENT.

Point three: (this is really reaching but, hey, it's late Friday
afternoon...)  If the recent experiences in Eastern Europe say anything,
they say to me that you should never count out the (seemingly)
disenfranchised will of the majority.  USENET may not be a democracy,
but it too must exist at the sufference of its users.  Take away the
people and you've got a useless collection of modems and wires with
"great potential" to do something!

        - Dale (N1US)   Encore Computer Corporation, Marlborough, Mass.

INTERNET:  cook@encore.com	"Clever people seem not to feel the natural
UUCP: buita \			 pleasure of bewilderments, and are always
    talcott  } !encore!cook	 answering questions when the chief relish
   bellcore /			 of life is to go on asking them."
				 	- Frank Moore Colby