Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!charlie!edguer
From: edguer@charlie.CES.CWRU.Edu (Aydin Edguer)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Summary: USENET as a broadcast
Message-ID: <305@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 18:51:45 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM> <3400@looking.on.ca> <3254@epimass.EPI.COM> <3407@looking.on.ca>
Sender: news@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu
Reply-To: edguer@alpha.ces.cwru.edu (Aydin Edguer)
Organization: CWRU Dept of Computer Engineering and Science, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 37

In article <3407@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
 > Usenet is essentially broadcast.
The key word here is essentially.  USENET is not a however a true broadcast
media.  All jokes aside, the source of 5 MB of data a day is not some big
artificial intellence project.  It is thousands of little sites around the
country who contribute to the flow of news the way small creeks contribute
to the big flow of rivers.  Broadcasts imply that there is a one way link,
from a single source.

 >A satellite that can send from one point to every single place
 >on the continent is clearly far more efficient than any other route.
Yes, if you never want to interact with the broadcast.
But think of a major broadcasting firm.  They have to pay for more than
just a transmitter and satellite.  They also have to pay for the newswires
to bring the news in.
Stargate [as far as I know] never did this.  They wanted the net to "pay"
for the newswire that they were broadcasting.  If they only broadcast 
information local to the sites directly connected to them, they would not
have seen as many objections.

 >I was just pointing out that it was sad that an idea that did make sense
 >at the time was stifled not just for technical reasons but for odd political
 >reasons as well.
The copyrights placed in articles were in my opinion not stifling in number
or difficulty to obey.  A quick and dirty filter should have been sufficient.
But, I don't know why Stargate failed.  Why not ask the Stargate Project
people?  They are still on the net.  All this speculation gets us nowhere.

 >Satellite is still clearly the cheapest method for a net like usenet, even
 >today.  Everybody who does any kind of large volume multi-point broadcast
 >is going satellite, unless they are completely security conscious or too
 >small.
I do not think it is clear.  I used to live in Missouri,  SHOW ME!
Just for thought: Why are people bothering to invest in fiber-optic land lines?

Aydin Edguer		+1 216 368 6123		edguer@alpha.ces.cwru.edu
Department of Computer Engineering, Crawford Hall, Case Western Reserve Univ.