Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:14826 news.admin:2005
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,news.admin
Subject: Can something be done about 770K waste of time postings...
Message-ID: <1574@looking.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 88 00:35:26 GMT
Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo Ont.
Lines: 41

As some people may have noticed, a person named cgs@umd5.umd.edu
(Chris Sylvain) recently posted an ARC file entitled "PSPICE demo"
to comp.binaries.ibm.pc.  The uuencode of this ARC file, in 14 parts,
was 770K in size, approximately.  As uuencoded material, it would
reduce to about 580K when compressed, but not a lot further because
it is already compacted.

And of course, to hit one of my pet peeves, the posting was made
with no identification of what the program does or is for, as if
I'm going to put together a 14 part megabyte package and process it
just to see a demo of something that I don't even know the purpose of.

But the 770K strikes a new and amazing level for what is reportedly
a demo version of a commercial package.

There are 8000 sites on this net.  Let's say there are 400 non-local
links.  These links range in price from .3 cents/K to 15 cents/k,
for telebit-at-night to 1200 baud by day.  A good average might be
2.5 cents/kilobyte, which is just better than the 1200 baud by night rate.

This means that each K posted to the net costs $10 over all the links.

But this idiot posted something that cost $5,800!

Now ads on the net are fine.  People want to see product announcements,
support and info from companies in the industry, that's clear.

But a demo copy at this price is ridiculous.  My personal feeling is that
this person should be required to come up with around $5,000, and
contribute it to running the UUCP map project or reducing UUNET fees
or something.  Even staunch "right-to-post" types might even see the
logic for booting this sort of fellow off the net.

This passes all the limits, folks.  (Yes, this posting cost $17, but
that's less than .1 cents/reader, which is actually quite efficient.)

And let's get comp.binaries.ibm.pc moderated IMMEDIATELY.  It was voted
on ages ago.  I'm going to change it to moderated tonight and let's
Mr. Dehsi start his task.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473