Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Scrap the current NG creation procedure, invent a new one
Message-ID: <486@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 89 08:27:53 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <4833@inco.UUCP> <297@ubbs-nh.MV.COM> <11250@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend)
Organization: Cold Lampin With Flav'
Lines: 43

In article <11250@well.UUCP> tneff@well.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>There seems to be an unquestioned assumption here that sysadmins are
>the ones who foot the bill for Usenet.  Is this really the case?  I can
>think of one class of site where this is so - the "basement 386" where
>someone posts from home.  Almost no one else would seem to qualify.  At
>a big university site, the alumni, tuition payers and grant sources
>(including Uncle Sugar) are footing the bill.  At a corporate site, the
>revenues of the firm are used.  Public access sites use the users'
>(i.e., newsreaders') fees.  In all these cases, the sysadmin is
>effectively the *employee* of those who actually foot the bill, and who
>[putatively] derive the ultimate benefit from net participation.


Following your train of thought, the $5.67 in my pocket isn't really my
money, but it's money given to me by my employer, and I'm not really
responsible for how it's spent -- I have to think about the people that
gave it to me and realise that my $5.67 doesn't mean I'm anything
special.  Once University of Bucketheads gets M. Alumni's money, it's
theirs.  Unless they made a prior agreement to spend it on a specific
item, they can bloody well buy nerf footballs for undergraduate
Russian Studies students if they want.

I think you're being purposely silly to prove a point.  When I worked
as a sysadmin at my last job, they didn't really care about usenet.
If our phone bills had gone way up, or lots of processor time was
tied up by uucp/usenet, they'd have come to me to see what was going
on.  They wouldn't say "Hey, you're spending a lot of the investor's
money on this stuff", they'd say "Hey you moron, stop wasting money
on that usenet garbage."

Some of the money, once in the hands of a business, university or whatever,
will be spent on data communications.  If the site/communications admin
doesn't toe the [whatever] line, they'll be fired.  They are in a
position of responsibility in regards to how they spend the [organization]'s
money.

This is really unrelated to news.admin at this point, I believe. :-)

-- 
J. Eric Townsend | "Enter, oh seeker of knowledge... That's *YOU*, fathead!"
 uunet!sugar!flatline!erict 
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