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From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cost of posting to the net
Message-ID: <29937@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 4-Oct-87 00:59:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.29937
Posted: Sun Oct  4 00:59:30 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Oct-87 04:07:05 EDT
References: <8200@felix.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 30

>I recently sat down and computed the cost of posting one byte to the net,
>based on the figures in Rick's and Brian's articles in news.lists.

>	1 byte * .15/minute @800 baud * 7700 sites = .24

>I found this pretty amazing, especially considering the number of people who
>are intent on ignoring the 4-line signature limit and reposting entire
>articles.

This is nice, but I also think it takes the cost out of proportion. If that
byte is part of an excessively long signature, it might be considered
expensive. At the same time, if that byte were part were part of a piece of
code or a Mac program you really needed, it would be a cheap bargain.

Look at it in context. OtherRealms had ~200K in the last issue. At $.24 per
byte, the total cost to deliver OtherRealms was about $48,000. That seems
like a LOT of money. If you look at it as a cost per reader, though,
OtherRealms cost $0.23. Not per byte, but per reader. This means that my
entire magazine cost each reader less than your byte cost the entire net.
And it's an amazing bargain when you consider that the street price of
OtherRealms is $2.50, or an order of magnitude higher.

Numbers are great, but lets keep them in perspective. 

chuq

Chuq Von Rospach					chuq@sun.COM
Editor, OtherRealms					Delphi: CHUQ

Bye bye life!  Bye bye happiness! Hello, loneliness, I think I'm gonna die.