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From: fair@styx.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Re: abuse of the net
Message-ID: <20655@styx.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-May-86 21:27:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: styx.20655
Posted: Wed May 14 21:27:03 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 16-May-86 06:39:53 EDT
References: <306@sdcarl.UUCP> <779@hoptoad.uucp> <360@imagen.UUCP> <254@dmcnh.UUCP>
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore, CA
Lines: 41

In article <254@dmcnh.UUCP> mark@dmcnh.UUCP (Mark Roddy) writes:
>
> [John] Gilmore is under the impression that the Atari is a toy, i.e.
> not a real computer, and therefore not a candidate for the free
> exchange of information on the net. I'm curious if he feels that the
> Mac, Amiga, and, what the hell, the IBM PC should also not have net
> bandwidth allocated?

John Gilmore to the best of my knowledge does not hold this opinion.
In fact, he was once a part of a very ambitious project to bring real
networking to very small micro computer systems, called PCNet.
Unfortunately, the PCNet effort collapsed about two years ago and I
haven't heard anything about it since.

To the here and now: at one time, I was administrator of a backbone
site (dual). There are no macintoshes, ataris, or amigas anywhere
around the Dual manufacturing shop, and I expect that there never will
be. How can you justify spending Dual's money on moving around the
*.mac *.amiga and *.atari newsgroups, when there is no direct,
quantifiable benefit to Dual? Remember that you can't impress the
company bean-counters with arguments based on ``altruism'' or ``duty
to the network community'' because they'll laugh at you and cut the
phone budget.

What has been said, time and time again, which I will repeat for the
benefit of those who *still* haven't figured it out yet:

	1. We're (the backbone sites) doing you all a big, expensive,
		time-consuming favor.
	
	2. If you don't like it, you are completely free to form your
		own backbone with like-minded folks elsewhere, and
		spend your own (collective) money on it.

Please find your fellow atari owners, port the netnews software
(and write some communication protocol software), and you can call
each other in the dead of night at lowest phone rates, and exchange
netnews articles specifically about atari computers. After all, if
FIDOnet can do it with IBM PC's, why can't you?

	Erik E. Fair	styx!fair	fair@lll-tis-b.arpa