Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!cit-vax!usc-oberon!sdcrdcf!trwrb!desint!geoff From: geoff@desint.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix,news.groups Subject: Re: Request for special USENIX Meeting Message-ID: <304@desint.UUCP> Date: Thu, 26-Mar-87 22:04:49 EST Article-I.D.: desint.304 Posted: Thu Mar 26 22:04:49 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 11:09:11 EST References: <1486@hplabsc.UUCP> Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) Distribution: world Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA Lines: 192 Xref: utgpu comp.org.usenix:95 news.groups:546 In article <1486@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabs.HP.COM (Dave Taylor) writes in incredibly long tirade of old rehashes. What a crock. I hate to break it to you, Dave, but neither uucp nor usenet is free, nor have they ever been. It *is* true that some of us (e.g., me) don't pay a cent for these services, because people like TRW are willing to pay my share of the load as a favor to me. I try to return the favor by using my hookup responsibly, and by being a generally good person on the net. But I never, never, NEVER forget that somebody else is paying the bills. Now you are getting all upset because some of these sites are getting tired of the costs, and are taking some actions to help control costs, spread them out a bit more, and make it possible for net.idiocy to be limited to those sites who find it worth the cost. In response, you scream about how people are taking away your "rights", and in general are mouthing off with a lot of allegations that are totally unsupported by the facts. Here's a fact for you: you can register for a uucp domain name for $50 a year. Here's another fact: you can't connect to usenet without a modem that costs at least $150, and a phone line that costs you at least $8 per month (true, you can share the line, but on a time basis Usenet clearly should be allocated most of the costs). In light of those costs, and the cost of the computer you need to read news, I don't think it's really very reasonable to complain about a fee for registering in a database. BTW, I fully expect that there will come a day when TRW asks me to start paying my own share of communications costs. When that day comes, I will naturally be unhappy, but you can bet your sweet bippy that I won't be crybabying about some cabal's conspiracy to defraud me. > Similarly, the original idea of Stargate was... > ...Instead, what has arisen from the work is a system that > will involve thousands of dollars per site... Is this meeting the goals? This falls into the "stupid question" category. If, as you claim, you have been reading the net for five years, you should know by now that the large sites are paying tens of thousands of dollars in phone bills. A mere $5k to cut that back is a bargain. The proof is in the pudding: Brian Reid, for example, is obviously eager to get his satellite dish going. HE doesn't wonder whether it's cost-effective; he KNOWS. > Similarly, it is quite disturbing that the UUCP Mapping Project... > [is] expecting quite a bit of money from people. This is > *not* at all in the best interests of the membership. The hell it's not. What you miss is that some of us use this network for business that matters to us monetarily. I am perfectly willing to pay $1000/yr (hear that, Mark? that's not a typo; a thousand dollars is CHEAP) if it will give me reliable electronic mail. If you're too cheap to pay for reliability, I suggest you stick to the current scheme -- it'll have to hang around for years to handle obsolete sites and recalcitrant fools. > I think a special meeting of the USENIX Association is in order, Give me a break. You purport to be worried about money. Do you have any idea at all what that would cost? Or is HP planning on paying everybody's airfare and hotel bills? Not to mention the time we could have spent on productive, paying work. > Further examples of the perversion of the Unix community... > Five years or so ago when I started reading Usenet, it was > a free-wheeling teleconferencing system, quite fun, quite strange, and > generally, a good way to spend a small bit of my time. Funny, I started about five years ago, too, and I think it's still freewheeling, fun, and strange. Bigger, too. I used to get news at 300 baud, now it's 2400 and my transfers take longer than they did at 300. Funny how combinatorial explosion generates bigger numbers. > In the past > few years, however, a so-called Backbone Cabal has arisen that has > more-or-less taken over the network and imposed their own ideas and > beliefs upon it. Wrong again. It was by vote. Just like Irwin Feerst, the fact that you lost the election does *not* mean that the winners are some sort of evil conspiracy. And frankly, Dave, I'm a little peeved at this pejorative terminology. You have used "perversion," "conspiracy," and "cabal". Even if your general opinions were true, it is entirely incorrect and GROSSLY unfair to attribute evil motives to the people involved. I expect this sort of thing from net newcomers, but from someone of your stature it's a bit disappointing to see namecalling and unsupported accusations. I think you owe some people a public apology. > I really feel that the actual purpose was for the cabal to stretch > their muscles a little bit - to see if they really could change the > entire USENET. And they did. Frightening. Give me a BREAK. Have you been reading LaRouche literature or something? [with respect to "forcing" (Dave's words) out-of-date sites to update:] > Totally regardless of whether they are actually willing and able to > do it...If they don't change, tough luck. Let 'em die. You got it, friend. Some (most) of us would like to move forward, and we are going to do so. There are around 10,000 (!) sites on the net; about 100 of them are running software that is grossly out of date. The other 9,900 sites are going to update to new software. People like Rick Adams have put in a lot of work making it possible for those other 100 sites to upgrade, and now they are putting in a lot of work to give them warnings so that they would know it's time to update. Should we really hold back the 9900 because the 100 are out-of-date, and possibly don't even have a news reader on them any more? And your response to this is to complain about minorities forcing their will on a majority? Give me a *BREAK*! > This is the kind of people that USENIX is funding to the tune of many > thousands of dollars a year. Wow! Many thousands! Perhaps even as much as TENS of thousands in a whole year, being split among only a few people! (How much is your annual salary? Do you know what your departmental budget is?) > An important question at this point is ``why is this happening? If > the Unix community is indeed a democracy, why are people letting this > transition take place?''. Because we voted for it. > The crux, here, is that there is no reason why we can't have either > free or minimal cost systems...If there is interest I can outline solutions > ...that would involved *zero* cost to the end user... I'm waiting with bated breath. Am I going to steal my phone services from GTE (I confess it *would* be satisfying to get back at that company :-)? Or maybe you're going to give me a free satellite dish? My perception is that every single person working on either Stargate or the UUCP project would be OVERJOYED to have you volunteer you help. However, I suspect most would appreciate it if you took the time to investigate all the aspects of the situation before offering an unschooled opinion. In other words, put up or shut up. > Moves like the spinoff of a new magazine for the association, a glossy > with high-quality technical publications, is excellent *because it > will be part of the membership fees*. IF it were to become a separate > publication with a separate subscription price, however cheap, it would > be a bad thing. You are saying that all unbundling is inherently bad. What a crock. Do you think ACM and IEEE should raise their membership fees to $2000 each so they can mail you every publication they put out, regardless of relevance? > And again, to pound on the same points again, Indeed, your posting was both repetitious and excessive. You should have edited it with a chain saw. > We must keep in mind that the very foundation of the Unix community > is anarchy. No rules and no rulers. And there is no reason that we > need change. Double crock. While it is true that the UNIX community is anarchistic, it is not at all clear that anarchy is its foundation. And I can see lots of reason why we should change. Anarchy is a great way to run a small society (whether company, USENET, or whatever) but breaks down rather badly in large groups. (People who want to argue that point should move their discussion to mod.philosophy or some other talk-oriented group). > support of a power-hungry group of people active on the net. The only people who are power-hungry are those who are screaming that the wishes of the majority of the net are a conspiracy. They desperately want to force their own narrow view of the world on the rest of us, even after we have overwhelmingly voted in favor of moving into the future. > I apologize > for the length of this message, but it really is vital that we discuss > this openly. No it's not vital. This issue has been beaten to death endlessly, and I for one am tired of having to waste good disk space on such noise. -- Geoff Kuenning {hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff