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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!bu-cs!root
From: root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The politics of groups (of people)
Message-ID: <626@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Sep-85 21:37:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.626
Posted: Sun Sep  8 21:37:07 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 04:06:16 EDT
References: <1996@amdahl.UUCP>, <791@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 41

just a few thoughts.

First, I think Lauren was a little gloomy the day he announced the death
of the USENET, it's certainly reached an annoying level in many ways,
but, as the old expression goes, 'the reports of my death have been
greatly exagerrated'.

Second, I think a major problem we are facing is the technology we are
using, that is, 1200 baud links. Networking technology is progressing
quickly enough that I doubt this will be a problem for long. A simple
thing that would help would just be to figure out some way to get a
little more 'star' configured, with two sites setting up a fast link
like a 9600B leased line and feeding their local sites. I think this
kind of thing is not explored enough, certainly not by me but I will
(the B.U. == Harvard link is still 1200b.) Processors are getting so
cheap that I doubt it will be long before active sites can just absorb
the cost of a dedicated box for feeding/receiving news. I think the
current cost to us for an AT&T UNIX/PC (nee 7300) with SYSV, 1MB mem,
20MB disk is now about 4-5,000, and for these kind of problems will run
neck and neck with a VAX750. Once we have these silent little servants
sitting in the corner taking care of things, and higher baud rates, how
many problems are left (I know, wading thru the stuff!) What I really
need to do this is ethernet+tcp/ip for internal distribution (or better,
NFS and just leave it on the little thing.)

I still like some way of adding automatic feedback to a system, like
readnews somehow recording and collecting whether people are actually
reading the stuff and using that as at least a partial factor in the
worthiness of a group.

Hell, what would someone deduce if I wrote a little 'find' thingy that
went around and reported the subscribed/unsubscribed newsgroups at my
sites? What about if we had those numbers for lotsa sites?

I know, a list of exceptions will follow (if ya got lots non-programmers
they probably all unsubscribed net.sources, does that mean...) We assume
this is just info for human beings with common sense at this point.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

I know, talk is cheap.