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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Stargate
Message-ID: <792@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Sep-85 05:35:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.792
Posted: Sun Sep  8 05:35:35 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 03:04:34 EDT
References: <30643@lanl.ARPA>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 57

Thanks for your support of the Stargate work.

As I view the project, there are several key elements:

1) It exists on one of the most widely available services in the
   country.  WTBS is consistently one of the top 2 services in
   terms of basic cable penetration.  Where satellite WTBS is available
   on cable, no need for purchasing satellite receiving equipment
   will normally exist.

2) The WTBS carrier has been exceptionally understanding about helping
   to support Stargate, which they view as a one-of-a-kind, unique,
   non-profit project, and thusly they have been willing to negotiate
   very favorable rates with us, and have offered to help us in 
   other ways as well.  They are as excited by the project as I am, it seems.
   Their expertise and work in vertical interval systems (making
   it unnecessary for us to make a capital investment in uplink video interval
   equipment) combined with their enthusiasm for this unique project
   and willingness to work with us is what has helped make the continuing
   experiment possible.

3) I think that the majority of Usenet would now agree that simply
   providing a high-tech means of transmitting the current mass of
   Usenet materials is not enough.  For the sake of the argument right now, 
   let's ignore the legal issues surrounding the transmission of unmoderated
   materials through a centralized "broadcast" environment.  I strongly
   feel that it would not be desirable, under any conditions, to transmit
   other than moderated materials through such a system.  Stargate gives
   us a chance to avoid many of the pitfalls that have befallen the 
   existing Usenet.  We have a chance to set up a form of distributed
   moderation that could help to assure that the most abrasive and
   obvious of the Usenet abuses (both purposeful and accidental) do
   not occur in Stargate.  In a large and growing network, even if only 1%
   of the postings are "inappropriate" (misplaced, duplicated content, 
   harrassment articles, etc.) it can still add up to a tremendous amount
   of material.

   By moderating Stargate materials, we have a chance to have a "parallel"
   network with a different sort of content for people and sites who
   no longer have the resources and time to deal with the growing 
   flow of "everything" from Usenet.  The all-points-at-one-time
   broadcast nature of Stargate removes one of the major problems
   with moderated groups--the issue of double delivery latency.  In fact,
   it appears that moderated topics are ideally suited for the
   Stargate delivery mechanism.  Given the available bandwidth, which
   will probably increase over time as hardware is improved, there
   is a lot of potential for useful and purposeful future growth in
   Stargate.

In a future message I'll summarize the current state of the project.
Briefly though, we're pretty much hanging on hardware availability
and implementation right now.  Everything is on track, but of course
when you're dealing with big companies and lots of fairly new 
technology things don't always happen as fast as one might wish.
Things are moving along nicely, however.

--Lauren--