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From: reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.config,news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: Cost-per-reader bug found
Message-ID: <230@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Date: 9 Jan 88 04:13:57 GMT
References: <2802@arthur.cs.purdue.edu> <14191@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <19509@clyde.ATT.COM> <1270@looking.UUCP> <2663@killer.UUCP> <1284@looking.UUCP> <228@bacchus.DEC.COM> <12330@oliveb.olivetti.com> <2350@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 17


I used 10 cents/minute for arbitron because that's the same number that Rick
Adams used (and uses) for his "Traffic for the last 2 weeks " postings, and I
wanted people to be able to compare the numbers for accuracy. (The programs
were independently written and work on slices of USENET taken across the
country from one another, and any discrepancy was interesting to me).

The true cost of carrying a newsgroup is more than just the transfer
charges; there is disk space, CPU time used to run the news software, time
spent expiring it, and so on. Maybe 10 cents per minute is the wrong metric,
and maybe using dollars is the wrong metric, but the *relative* values of the
numbers are quite accurate and it is appropriate to have some non-zero cost
per kilobyte of news. I think I'll start labeling them not in dollars
but in Zlotys or Yuan (two currencies without officlal exchange rates into
dollars).

Brian