Autzoo.760
hacknews
utzoo!henry
Thu Jun 18 17:52:48 1981
honeymoon ends
As an experiment, for our first month on Usenet, recently completed, we
have been getting all the news etc. that Usenet has available.  Alas,
this has a price, both in phone bills and in my time spent babysitting
the link late at night.  I have been doing some arithmetic about the
costs involved, and the answer keeps coming out as Too Much.  For a
one-month experiment, ok, but on a continuing basis, no.

If all this stuff were vital and important, that would be different,
but much of it is fascinating but essentially trivial gossip.  At 300
baud, this is a luxury we can't afford just now.  So we are going to
have to stop getting some newsgroups.  Precisely which ones will get
the axe I haven't entirely sorted out yet, but I must regretfully
announce that human-nets and sf-lovers will be the first to go --
they are just too bulky.  The detailed hit list will appear soon.

Anyone wishing to keep a particular "axed" newsgroup alive may do so
by committing to pay for it (phone charges plus a surcharge for human
hassle).  This must be real money, folks.  If your driving passion is
to keep sf-lovers open, be warned that sf-lovers costs AT LEAST one
hundred dollars a month.  People interested in keeping a particular
newsgroup open may contact me for an estimate of costs (but you are
committed to pay even if it overruns the estimate).

At such time as we acquire 1200-baud dialout capability (a desirable
thing to have in any case:  it's not that expensive and would greatly
cut phone charges), the possibility of getting everything will be
reconsidered.  Ditto if we find some much cheaper connect path than a
long-distance call to North Carolina.