Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The death of USENET
Message-ID: <944@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 88 13:09:50 GMT
References: <7475@swan.ulowell.edu> <2645@rpp386.UUCP> <56228@sun.uucp> <2350@inco.UUCP>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 31

In article <2350@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>
>1) Require that each site that accepts a feed to pass the groups it accepts
>   on to at least one other *long-distance* site. (Please think hard about
>   this one before flaming. Darwinism at its purest.)

I thought hard.  Still think it's unneeded and dumb.  I would venture a
guess that more than 90% of the existing connections used for Usenet are
local.  You want to get rid of all those?  I, for one, couldn't AFFORD
a long-distance feed. 

>2) Store the articles on disk in a compressed (possibly batched or tarred)
>   form. Hack the newsreader software to accomodate it.

And, while you're at it, hack your hardware to give you the extra cycles
to allow this to happen without bringing your system to a standstill.

>3) Get rid of uncompressed transmission for both news and mail. We would
>   probably have to tack on some form of ECC.

Depends.  Transmission of individual pieces of mail would not benefit
particularly greatly by this - compression efficiency is pretty much a
function of file size.  Most sites already do send news batched and
compressed.  And with Trailblazers, you might not even want to send
compressed, if the modem will do it for you more efficiently.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame