Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!eci386!jmm
From: jmm@eci386.uucp (John Macdonald)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Results of sci.aquaria vote
Message-ID: <1989Nov21.003005.1693@eci386.uucp>
Date: 21 Nov 89 00:30:05 GMT
References: <10397@encore.Encore.COM>
Reply-To: jmm@eci386.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Distribution: na
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 54

In article <10397@encore.Encore.COM> cook@encore.com writes:
|[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.   [...]
|| [...]
||
|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.

Why does this change things?  People having home work stations does not
automatically provide free long-distance access to other people having
home work stations.  It doesn't matter how many hangers-on there are
in the "local calling area", someone has to pay to move the bits if you
are on "the net as we know it".  Maybe people in a few areas will get
together to share costs - fine, in that area they *are* the people in
charge of USENET and (within their area) they make the net possible.

The fact that they don't run on a mainframe has nothing to do with the
fact that some (usually small) group of people/organizations do the
work and spend the money to provide USENET to (usually many) machines
in their area.

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

And if these independent contractors want USENET, they either find a local
feed, or they spend the money to import it.

|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!

Take away the people paying the bills and you've got a bunch of local
bulletin boards with potential largely related to the size of your
local calling area.
-- 
80386 - hardware demonstrating the fractal nature of warts.   | John Macdonald
EMS/LIM - software demonstrating the fractal nature of warts. |   jmm@eci386