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From: westerm@aclcb.purdue.edu (Rick Westerman)
Newsgroups: bionet.general,sci.research
Subject: Re: Electronic publication
Message-ID: <0093DA2A.8D85BC60@aclcb.purdue.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 15:23:07 GMT
References: <1990Oct3.143902.1013@phri.nyu.edu>
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Reply-To: westerm@aclcb.purdue.edu (Rick Westerman)
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Organization: Purdue AIDS center
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>	Think about it.  Do you think it's a good idea?  Do you think it
>could be made to work in a year?  Two years?  Five?  Ten?  Twenty?  What if

10 years, at least.

>the technical problems could be solved today, say by magically putting a 10
>MIPS Megapixel greyscale X terminal on everybody's desk, with universal T1 or
>better connectivity?  

A major problem is the connectivity and recovery of costs. Until the USA
has a fast universal network (such as Internet) where commerical interests are 
allowed to recover costs (like CompuServe, Genie, etc.) -- and a commerical 
interest is needed for a good journal; someone has to pay for the 
editing/layup/etc. -- the journal won't be feasible. True, there is the 
technical problems of a univeral format for figures and technical problem 
of displaying the journal, but in my opinion, these problems pale in 
comparision of the political problem of universal, cost-recovery, networking.


-- Rick

Rick Westerman                        AIDS Center Laboratory for Computational
Internet: westerm@aclcb.purdue.edu    Biochemistry, Biochemistry building,
(317) 494-0505                        Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN 47907