spaf@gatech.UUCP (Gene Spafford) (01/13/85)
Folks, "net.news.stargate" is out there now. Please direct all further
discussion about satellite netnews transmissions to that group,
including the censorship issue, coverage, technical questions, etc.
Thanks.
--
Gene "7 months and counting" Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!spafmark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (01/14/85)
Jack Jansen says: >Before you can connect to stargate (as a *sender*) you have to sign >a contract, that makes you responsible for all news to goes >to stargate through your site. >Now, when a site wants to send it's news via stargate, it starts >asking it's neighbours to sign a similar contract *with them*. Aside from the obvious upward compatibility problem, and what to do about hosts that haven't signed anything yet, the basic flaw in this plan is that it transfers the responsibility from the individuals doing the posting to the organization that owns the machine. If you carry this out to its natural conclusion, you'll quickly find that any orginization that has signed such a contract will immediately take steps to prevent anyone who has access to the machine from posting anything which might cause trouble for the organization. This will usually mean that either (a) nobody will be allowed to post anything, or (b) all postings will have to be approved by a local moderator first. It will prevent any participation in any nontechnical groups at companies, and given the lack of control universities have over their students, it will probably prevent all postings at universities. Frank Adrian (responding to Brian Reid) says: >>Stargate offers something new, and I think we have almost a moral obligation >>to exploit it appropriately. >As I've said before, no problem with that. I do want to have an unedited >channel, though. You want an unedited, free-for-all channel. It's clear that there are lots of others out there that want this too. And in principle, most people on the net don't mind you having such a channel. However, you (collectively, that is, all the people screaming for unmoderated news) also seem to feel you are entitled to have this at somebody else's expense, that is, you don't want to pay any of the phone bills. I must point out that there is a very significant volume of people who want either (a) lower phone bills, (b) higher quality netnews, or both. Both of these groups are very interested in stargate, moderation, and other ideas that may help meet these goals. The complaining that I'm seeing seems to follow the logic below: (a) The current state of Usenet is high phone bills, high volume, little or no moderation. (b) Ideas for saving money and moderation involve moving a significant volume of the traffic to moderated newsgroups. (c) This would in turn cause some of the organizations that are paying the bills to turn to moderated, possibly broadcast, newsgroups as a cost saving measure. (d) Your free forum that currently exists would dry up. I must point out that the people paying the bills get to make the decisions. The people going along for the free ride can shout all they want, but if the bean counters say "shut it off" or "restrict it to certain things", the rest of us will have no choice but to go along. (I am not a bean counter - they could cut me off just as easily as the rest of you.) So it comes down to this. If the idea of completely unmoderated newsgroups is really worthwhile (to the bean counters), then it will stand on its own merit. That is, if people who pay phone bills are willing to spend them on net.all, even when mod.all exists, they will do so. If the stuff on net.all is really worthless drivel, they won't. If some of you people out there feel wronged that the other guy won't pay for your drivel, you still have the option of paying the phone bill yourself (depending on the circumstances, you may have to buy your own UNIX machine, but these are getting cheaper all the time; right now a news-worthy IBM PC costs about 6 months worth of typical phone bills) and continuing to transfer drivel. Unmoderated net.all will continue to exist as long as there are people out there willing to pay for it. Those of you bitching and moaning about mod.all existing apparently are unwilling to pay for net.all yourselves, so you're effectively agreeing that it's worthless drivel. Now, for the rest of us, we want a higher quality service. Your bitching and moaning about how you think our higher quality service might lead to you losing your freebie drivel channels just adds to the drivel level. It isn't going to stop the rest of us from proceeding with this new technology. Lauren will proceed with the StarGate experiment; I will proceed with the mod.all experiment, and you won't stop us. >If people are worried about possible legal action, consider >this. The phone company acts as a carrier of information and disinformation. >If someone libels someone else on that "network", it is the libelous person >who is arreigned, prosecuted, etc. If message contents is not controlled, >then the carrier is NOT responsible for content. I strongly urge all people interested in the legal issues to either read the current issue of login (the Usenix newsletter) or else attend the second talk at Usenix in Dallas (the one by the lawyers.) Usenix has just had them research this entire issue. I'll summarize my reading of it here, but don't just believe me, get the details. (Perhaps the article can be posted to the net?) Basically, they point out that there are no court decisions about things like Usenet yet, but there are three possible ways a court would rule: (a) Usenet is a common carrier, like the phone company. It has no control over what it carries, so it is not liable for the content. (b) Usenet is a broadcaster, like a TV station. It has control over what it carries, so it is liable for the content. (c) Usenet is some new thing, and new interpretations of the law are needed. In my opinion, we are now facing a crossroads and can proceed down either path (a), by pursuing net.all, or path (b), by pursuing mod.all. If our only goal were to make sure nobody sues us, obviously (a) is better. If we also want to get some work done, and keep our costs to a reasonable level, we have to consider option (b). It seems to me that both paths should be explored. My own guess at where we'll eventually wind up is with a large number of moderated newsgroups, and a small number of unmoderated groups. It's similar to TV: there are lots of channels that have reasonably high quality (and some control over what gets on) and people watch them. There are also a few public access channels over which anyone can do anything; there aren't many people who watch them. The demand and the willingness of people to pay the bills will determine what happens. Mark Horton
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (01/14/85)
[.] I guess drivel is in the eye (ear?) of the beholder. I have intentionally not read anything about "Stargate" until now because it sure sounded like it was going to be a lot of drivel. But when I saw a pronouncement from Mark Horton, I figured I better read it. Wish I hadn't. People who want to censor the activities of others always have good reasons for doing so. What is this stuff about the people who pay the bills having the say? Of course that's true. But who are these people? As I understand it, they are we. Each of us has an account with our comp center. Ultimately that account is billed to some other account belonging to some corporation or gov"t agency or whatever. We have an amount authorized for our account over some period of time, like a year. One of our supervisors has approved that amount. We ourselves are intrusted with how we go about spending the account and for what. I know of no manager who wants to closely follow just how each of his/her people are spending their money. As long as we feel we are spending it in worthwhile ways, and as long as our supervision has confidence in our judgement, then <we> are, in effect, the ones spending the money, not some comp center person who feels overly self important. For myself, I feel that perhaps 10 to 20 percent of my account for usenet and similar activities (e.g., electronic mail, games)(note seemingly strange admixture) is quite reasonable. If someone can cut these costs while preserving the unique facility, swell. Let them do it. If someone wants to change the facility radically, lets examine his/her authority for doing so. Let's let the bill payers speak for themselves, all thousands of them. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts." Dick Grantges hound!rfg
mjs@alice.UUCP (M.J.Shannon,Jr.) (01/14/85)
To Dick Grantges:
You say it is each individual who is paying for USENET. Fine, but that
argument cannot be applied to Stargate. You are not paying for the
satellite uplink, either directly or indirectly. The folks who are
providing it ARE, thus by your argument, they deserve the right to ban
anything from satellite transmission. I think that you will find that
they will exercise that right.
--
Marty Shannon
UUCP: {alice,research}!mjs
(rabbit is dead; long live alice!)
Phone: 201-582-3199msc@qubix.UUCP (Mark Callow) (01/15/85)
> Ladies & Gentlemen of the net: > > The moderation of Stargate vs. the unmoderation of the rest of USENET is > completely analogous to what you may view on commercial TV vs. what you may > view on cable TV. Commercial TV is broadcast (this is THE KEY WORD) into the > homes of people who expect to see things having some modicum of taste; This is a complete red herring. The stargate data is only visible if you misadjust your TV set and then it only appears in the form of white dots running along the top of the picture. People could not accidently see the *content* of the stargate broadcasts. -- From the TARDIS of Mark Callow msc@qubix.UUCP, qubix!msc@decwrl.ARPA ...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!qubix!msc, ...{amd,ihnp4,ittvax}!qubix!msc
dave@soph.UUCP (Dave Brownell) (01/15/85)
In article <BUG> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: > ... > What is this stuff about the people who pay the bills having the say? > ... > For myself, I feel that perhaps 10 to 20 percent of my account for > usenet and similar activities (e.g., electronic mail, games)(note > seemingly strange admixture) is quite reasonable. > ... The crux of the matter is that even just 10% of a $5000 account is a sizable sum, and whoever gives the money in the first place (employer, university, etc.) has the right to say they don't want their money spent that way. USENET costs -- disk blocks, phone bills, and employee time -- are beginning to be accounted for. Some people are reacting to news of Stargate like kings used to react to messengers with bad tidings, pretending that by killing the messenger the bad news will go away. It's time to face some facts about where USENET may have to go. -- Dave Brownell EnMasse Computer Corporation enmasse!dave@Harvard.ARPA {genrad,harvard}!enmasse!dave
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/16/85)
Reply to R. Grantges at AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel: We are going to have to get some things straight. You may be paying enough money to make usenet affordable *for you* and *your site*, but there are a lot of sites out here who already think that we are paying *too much money* for *too little worthwhile news*. Now we have a wonderful chance to see if we can do something better, and you are screaming censorship. Hmm. Censorship is lousy. Censorship is lousy because it lets one group of people enforce its particular idea of ``what's right'' over other people who have dissenting views, right? Do you have any other reason for thinking that censorship is wrong? Because, unless you do, you are guilty of an ethical inconsistency -- it is the will of the people who are setting up stargate to have moderated news, and you want to enforce your particular idea of ``what's right''... Bother! Since we are going to do this, we had better keep some things in mind. These are the ones I can think of -- everybody feel free to add. 1. Usenet (as is) is not getting retired. It may die a natural death, however -- at least in some areas. 2. Moderation should not be the same thing as censorship. Moderation is a fine way to keep 40 responses of ``that should be an off_t, not a daddr_t'' down to one. However, moderation could be a fine way to keep an interesting discussion from arising. This seems more likely in the non-technical news groups (say, with a mod.politics administrator who only accepts stuff he finds ``politically correct'') than in the technical ones, but even there -- what about the ``AT&T are schmucks for giving unix source to universities -- unix is *de facto* public domain software'' discussion? Was it appropriate? Maybe. Assume that the moderator thought that it was not and rejected it. Now what? There are several courses of action here. the first is that we could all vote for a new moderator. (if we knew that an injustice was being done, that is, and if we could find someone willing to run, and if we ever could get the rules set on who could and could not vote, and how to see that noone is voting 42 times on accounts made for the purpose, and if we could do it in reasonable time...) Nope. Elections are cumbersome. Always go for the supermarket-solution over the ballot-box solution unless unanimity is *essential*. What we need is a way to create *competing newsgroups*. We may never need them, but we had better get the mechanism set up *now*, 'cause if we ever need them we are likely to be so very angry and rushed that we won't do a very good job. What we need is a relatively straightforward way to ask ``shall we create this group?'' followed by ``who's going to moderate it?'' and, if there is sufficient [this one had better be #defined somewhere] interest, a relatively easy way to set it up. This will also keep the whole thing from becoming centrallised. This is a very good thing -- because this is my number one fear about the whole thing. (Am I reading the wrong newsgroups? How come nobody else has mentioned this explicitly? right -- it was in net.flame...). Centralised *anythings* have design flaws. The first is related to the censorship problem -- if you want to censor (as opposed to moderate) the first thing you try to do is centralise things. The second is, when something happens to the central node, all things drop dead. (ihnp4 crashes and nobody gets any mail...) The third is a matter of appearances. To an awful lot of people, ``central'' implies ``authority''. If we decided that Lauren is a nice guy, and not likely to be a censor, aand thus should be lord high central moderator and administrator, we will be setting him up as a target for lawsuits, hate mail, and other hassles which he can do without. Remember the registry problem? Once *it* got centralised people started saying ``and if you use my trademark, acronym, mother's best friend's cousin's first name, I will sue you...''. Such things make certain lawyers very happy, and very rich. But I'd rather keep my money in my pocket, and I figure Lauren would as well... Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West) (01/16/85)
In article <831@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: > [.] > . . . > What is this stuff about the people who pay the bills having the say? > Of course that's true. But who are these people? As I understand it, > they are we. Each of us has an account with our comp center. Ultimately > that account is billed to some other account belonging to some corporation > or gov"t agency or whatever. We have an amount authorized for our > account over some period of time, like a year. One of our supervisors > has approved that amount. We ourselves are intrusted with how we go about > spending the account and for what. I know of no manager who wants to closely > follow just how each of his/her people are spending their money. > As long as we feel we are spending it in worthwhile ways, and as long as > our supervision has confidence in our judgement, then <we> are, in effect, > the ones spending the money, not some comp center person who feels overly > self important. I'm surprised that someone actually thinks the Net is this homogenous. The immediate, local problem with this is that there is probably no accounting (at your site) for the cost of the articles you post, other than the CPU & I/O & disk space to get the thing to "inews" (or whatever). I seriously doubt anyone on the Net has an account that gets charged directly for phone calls. (And don't forget the cost of storing all that "news" on disk -- another motivation for moderated groups.) The second problem is that, of course, many sites could never run on those lines. Accounting is anathema to sites like these, where the whole computer is viewed as a resource like mailboxes and blackboards and xerography machines, etc. But these sites still have costs that need to be cut. > For myself, I feel that perhaps 10 to 20 percent of my account for > usenet and similar activities (e.g., electronic mail, games)(note > seemingly strange admixture) is quite reasonable. If someone can cut > these costs while preserving the unique facility, swell. Let them do > it. If someone wants to change the facility radically, lets examine > his/her authority for doing so. Let's let the bill payers speak for > themselves, all thousands of them. The third problem is that you are seeing only the tip of the iceberg, even if you include all the costs at your local site. Those sites which transmit the entire netnews traffic every night over phone lines (say from Denver to Chicago) pile up big phone bills. Currently, they are providing a free service to everyone who uses the net. These backbone sites are the likely candidates for stargate. And it seems that stargate would be much more likely to succeed were it to start cautiously --> i.e., moderated newsgroups. So, that's where the cost comes from. The entire idea of stargate is to cut the big costs, while preserving or improving the heart of the news. Again, those who do not wish to receive stargate need not do so. And you need not read nor submit to the moderated groups. You can still pass news around the old-fashioned way, as long as the administrators at your site and those you feed from deem this a worthwhile enterprise. --| Larry West, UC San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science --| UUCP: {decvax!ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west --| ARPA: west@NPRDC { NOT: <sdcsla!west@NPRDC> } -- --| Larry West, UC San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science --| UUCP: {decvax!ucbvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west --| ARPA: west@NPRDC { NOT: <sdcsla!west@NPRDC> }
tli@uscvax.UUCP (Tony Li) (01/16/85)
Mark Horton: > I must point out that there is a very significant volume of people who > want either (a) lower phone bills, (b) higher quality netnews, or both. > Both of these groups are very interested in stargate, moderation, and > other ideas that may help meet these goals. Add my vote. This will definitely become a large factor. Consider what happen when USENET doubles in size again. The traffic that you now get will double. Are you ready for that? I'm not sure that I am. I'm also spoiled. I started reading the moderated groups on Arpanet, and have read and contributed there for quite a while. I'm much happier with the content of the newsgroups/mailing lists there, not to mention the reduced overhead and reduced volume involved. For those who equate moderation with editing and censorship, I think you're not quite understanding how a moderator functions. The moderator is there not to restrict the discussion, but to remove the flames ("You're so F*cking wrong, your *ss is coming out your nose.") and the gross amount of redundancy that appears as a result of the propagation delay in the net (2000 * "Hey, can you send me a copy of that?"). I don't see the moderator as even an editor. The moderator is not there to improve your articles. They're sole purpose is to combine the received messages, less the flak, into one posting. Sad to say, I'm not enthused about the way moderated groups on USENET are working out. At this site, I'm very sure that no one even knows how to post, much less route something out to a moderator. Then again, I'm told that 'pathalias' stuff will cure some of this problem. Well, I'm not the local administrator, and there's not much I can do about it. The current moderated groups, though, are not setting a real good example. Mod.motss seems to be a compendium of one-liners of what's in net.motss. If you want something important, you have to get mod.motss. Most of the others aren't doing anything, as far as I can tell, with the exception of mod.std-c. On to more important matters - I'm quite in favor of this project, and I wish Lauren all of the support in the world in doing it. I've been turning over the idea of getting a hook-up here, and I guess the one question left is this: what kind of assurance do we have from the transponder folks that we'll be allowed to continue this experiment for a while? In other words, laying out the $$$ for dish, decoder etc. is not small potatoes to me. I'd like to know that I'm going to pass the break-even point on the investment. Now I know that we can't get any written guarantees of how long we'll have the bandwidth, but I would like to hear some idea of how long this experiment is supposed to run. Lauren? How long do I have before this equipment is useless and I'm back to phone links? Cheers, Tony ;-) -- Tony Li ;-) Usc Computer Science Uucp: {sdcrdcf,randvax}!uscvax!tli Csnet: tli@usc-cse.csnet Arpa: tli@usc-ecl
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/17/85)
Just an idea tossed out to see... Would we significantly reduce the chance of getting an obscenity-type lawsuit if we encrypted all the news? Would the same argument used for rotated jokes in net.jokes work when dealing with the sorts of people interested in ``protecting us all'' from such things? [for those of you who stopped reading net.jokes before rotation, the argument goes, you can't object to it 'cause you rotated it. Sort of like the magazines which come in the plain brown wrappers...] Would it even let Lauren sleep better at night? Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
scw@cepu.UUCP (Stephen C. Woods) (01/17/85)
In article <377@hercules.UUCP> franka@hercules.UUCP (Frank Adrian) writes: >In article <425@cepu.UUCP> scw@cepu.UUCP (Stephen C. Woods) writes: >> >>As I see it now, the net [... deleted comment about local groups...] >> ...reasonable, from a content view are >>totally out of place (E.G. net.flame). >>-- > Again, I reiterate... [...]s I can see, the basic scenario goes like >this: > Stargate is implemented. > > Certain groups are moved there (net.unix-wizards, etc.) and > moderated. > > Certain other (unpopular, unmoderatable without changing their > character) groups remain on phones (net.flame, net.motss, > net.abortion, etc.). > > Backbone site A (followe[...]phone nets, anymore." > > And now only those subjects which a small elite group of > "moderators" (censors, Facists, *ssh*les) think are ac- > ceptable are discussed. I really resent the implication that moderators have to be censors, Facists and/or Assholes. Personal attacks will prodouce nothing but an unwillingness to listen to your side of the story. > > And what we have is no longer USENET. What you have is a form >of ARPANET digested materials. Not[...]ts to de facto censorship without >recourse. > Again, if you will tell me how "politically unpopular" news >groups will survive, I will stop making such a big issue of it. Somehow is suspect that you'll never be convinced but... > But it seems that you people want to have stargate, regardless. >Well, who out there is in favor of getting around the current people who >run this net and forming a new one. I suggest the name ALTERNET and a >new newsgroup called net.alternet to discuss it. I do like that name, perhaps thats what you can call: YOU CAN ALWAYS CREATE A NEW NET!!!!!!!!!!!!! MAJOR ASSUMPTION, the backbone sites will drop the net. (they might, then again they might not) How do you get around it? Well you connect you site to someother site (that is willing to connect to you and exchange net.flame (or whatever) (Gee, sounds just like usenet to me). Just because the backbone sites don't exsist doesn't mean that the net will wither away. REMEMBER they didn't always exsist!!!!! YOU CAN ALWAYS CREATE A NEW NET!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just how in the [explitive deleted] do you think USENET got started in the first place? It didn't spring full grown from the forehead of AT&T you know. -- Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology) uucp: { {ihnp4, uiucdcs}!bradley, hao, trwrb}!cepu!scw ARPA: cepu!scw@ucla-cs location: N 34 3' 9.1" W 118 27' 4.3"
west@ru-cs44.UUCP (west) (01/18/85)
In article <831@hound.UUCP> rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) writes: >What is this stuff about the people who pay the bills having the say? >Of course that's true. But who are these people? As I understand it, >they are we. Each of us has an account with our comp center. Ultimately >that account is billed to some other account belonging to some corporation >or gov"t agency or whatever. We have an amount authorized for our >account over some period of time, like a year. One of our supervisors >has approved that amount. We ourselves are intrusted with how we go about >spending the account and for what. This is not so for two major groups of users, firstly and most obviously, the Universities and other academic institutions. Students tend to be fairly cavalier in their attitudes (present net company excepted :-}) and most certainly have no say in the financing of their department or university facilities. In the UK, at least, many academic sites are only now receiving Usenet through a (govt funded) X25 network, Usenet being previously regarded as of insufficient value to justify expensive phone bills at a time of cost-cutting. Secondly, not all corporations bill individual users, writing general costs off as 'overheads'. These sites may include the most important 'backbone' sites which are the only source for many other sites who then only pay for local phone calls. Massive long distance phone calls are a sure way to bankrupt many small companies or individual users (and several 'fred@home' sites have appeared on the net.) I believe that StarGate will arrive (and welcome) and that as a broadcast medium it will suffer from the strait-laced oppression of a hypocritical society. Thus it will HAVE to be moderated to get off the ground (pardon the pun) -- but, let's face it, how much of the current input to the Net is actually libelous, obscene or an incitement to crime? The seperate problem of "one voice reflecting an organisation's views" will be with us even after StarGate has proved the success I hope it will. An individual may not like the idea that what they say may not be broadcast, but until society as a whole accepts the right to say what you like to whom you like (and with all the consequences that may entail) StarGate will have to be moderated. Of course, there's no need to create a StarGate if sites are prepared to stump up the cash. Unfortunately, sites have already said that either costs come down or they will leave. This includes at least one major 'feed' site on whom many others rely. In a fight between Money and Principle, I know which one I'd back. -- Jerry. !ukc!ru-cs44!rdg-cs!west
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (01/18/85)
Actually, the new data encoding/decoding system that would be used in a real service (as opposed to the older equipment being used in the current experiment) will already be providing a form of encryption. Encryption, unfortunately, does not alter the fact of useless, repetitive, libelous, or illegal (e.g. credit card numbers) postings that could still appear without screening. In other words, the fact that you've encrypted a libelous message before sending it out to N thousand people who can decrypt it doesn't change the fact that the message was sent. All that encryption does is protect against unknowing people accidently stumbling across something they might find offensive. This might be adequate in net.jokes in the current network (though I doubt if it would stand up if tested) but it is certainly not of any significant value in a national/international broadcast situation, at least not in the context under discussion right now. If a newspaper published a list of stolen credit card numbers but said, "you can only read this article if you add "13" to each character," they'd still be in the same trouble that they'd have been in if they published the text in the clear. --Lauren--
bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery (the tame hacker on the North Coast)) (01/20/85)
> Article <3281@alice.UUCP>, from mjs@alice.UUCP (M.J.Shannon,Jr.) +---------------- | You say it is each individual who is paying for USENET. Fine, but that | argument cannot be applied to Stargate. You are not paying for the | satellite uplink, either directly or indirectly. The folks who are | providing it ARE, thus by your argument, they deserve the right to ban | anything from satellite transmission. I think that you will find that | they will exercise that right. Understood that we may get {fascists, communists, --you name it--ists} running it. So we add regulation (quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) of the moderators. Another solution if backbone sites drop is to find new ones. Maybe we can work out a system whereby a link of local calls (or nearly local calls) will stretch across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (are they on the net), leaving non-North-American links as the expensive links. There goes the international network, but we still have a working net. Of course, this depends on local telco practices. Maybe you can't chain enough machines together cheaply in this way. Maybe there aren't enough willing machines. But it's an alternative, IF WE NEED IT. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ --bsa (P.S. Personally, I trust Lauren.) -- Brandon Allbery @ decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!bsa (..ncoast!tdi1!bsa business) 6504 Chestnut Road, Independence, Ohio 44131 +1 216 524 1416 (or what have you) Who said you had to be (a) a poor programmer or (b) a security hazard to be a hacker?
bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery (the tame hacker on the North Coast)) (01/20/85)
> Article <1592@qubix.UUCP>, from msc@qubix.UUCP (Mark Callow) +---------------- | > The moderation of Stargate vs. the unmoderation of the rest of USENET is | > completely analogous to what you may view on commercial TV vs. what you may | > view on cable TV. Commercial TV is broadcast (this is THE KEY WORD) intothe | > homes of people who expect to see things having some modicum of taste; | | This is a complete red herring. The stargate data is only visible if you | misadjust your TV set and then it only appears in the form of white dots | running along the top of the picture. People could not accidently see | the *content* of the stargate broadcasts. What are you *talking* about? What he said is: Stargate moderation is to the Usenet net.all as Commercial TV is to Cable TV. He did NOT say that you can watch the Usenet on TV. --bsa -- Brandon Allbery @ decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!bsa (..ncoast!tdi1!bsa business) 6504 Chestnut Road, Independence, Ohio 44131 +1 216 524 1416 (or what have you) Who said you had to be (a) a poor programmer or (b) a security hazard to be a hacker?
bane@umcp-cs.UUCP (John R. Bane) (01/22/85)
Maybe I'm being foolish, but here goes. As I understand it, the
objection to Stargate is that it will have to be moderated to limit the
legal responsibility of sites who pass on news as regards libel, etc.
Is there any way we can find out for SURE whether or not this is a danger
short of a test case? I know you can get the IRS to rule on questionable
tax practices before you do them. I suspect the net could raise the money
to get this tested if it is possible. Maybe this should move to net.legal
(which I don't read; oh, well...).
--
ARPAnet: bane@maryland
CSnet: bane.umcp-cs
Uucp:...{allegra,seismo}!umcp-cs!banepeter@tmq.UUCP (Life gets very Weird) (01/30/85)
Mr. Grantages seems to imply in his article that his access to USENET is paid for by his discretion to use his computer account to run readnews. I would disagree. USENET is actually paid for by organizations who donate their computer resources and telephone charges to forward news to other sites. It is the administrators and managers at these sites that make USENET possible, and who will determine the future of USENET. I do not forward news to other sites. I am fortunate enough to have USENET at my site because: A) I had existing, sufficent resources (CPU power, disk space, phone lines, modems, etc.) to devote to USENET B) There is another site (Tellabs) willing to forward news to me without charge (Having ihnp4 within the local call area helps) C) Our current accounting setup does not closely budget computer time. If I had to pay for USENET, i.e., poll all the backbone sites via long distance, I could probably not justify to my management how having USENET benefitted my organization (in $$$). I do not think that the day is far off when backbone sites will not be able to afford to forward certain newsgroups (especially when one hears about layoffs, cutbacks and such at AT&T, which provides most of the backbone sites). Stargate is a responsible and commendable effort to lower the cost of USENET, and to distribute its' cost more fairly. USENET started, and continues as an experiment and a do-it-yourself project. If you want some feature/service, it's ultimately up to YOU to provide it. Remember: There is such a thing as a free lunch, but only for a while. -- Peter Kerrigan -- ..!ihnp4!tmq!peter
gjm@ihnp4.UUCP (Gary J. Murakami) (01/31/85)
My thanks to Peter Kerrigan for a clear and constructive statement of why Usenet functions and flourishes inspite of entropy, chaos, and even abuse. I keep a very low profile on the network -- mostly because I am just too busy with real work plus just keeping things working around ihnp4. Here are some stats that might be of interest: Name: ihnp4 (Indian Hill Network Processor 4) System: AT&T 3B20S, UNIX SVR2p Org: AT&T Bell Laboratories Remarks: AT&T mail gateway Networks: NSC HYPERchannel, AT&T Datakit(r) VCS, RJE, ACUs (3BNET pending) News links: 74 (58 IH + 16 non-IH) (includes 7 backone feeds; 8 non-AT&T feeds) Mail links: 1055 (about 60 broken) Daily Mail: 1500 messages (average weekday, 1/3-1/2 to non-AT&T sites) Daily UUCP: 20 Megabytes (average weekday) Daily network: 40 Megabytes (includes 20 M UUCP) Weekly phone: $ XXXX (guestimate) Monthly phone: $ XXXX (guestimate, decvax pays more due to mcvax) Peter Honeyman wants me to be more "responsible" (friendly suggestion), but I'm having a rough time just keeping my head above water. ihnp4 sends out regular test messages; I know which links do and dont work. However it is impossible to call all of the contacts to fix the broken links (Action Central people try to fix the AT&T problems). It is impossible to force the cooperation of administrators (even just within AT&T when you give them COMPLETE information!). So, if you have a link with ihnp4, please check to see that it is working! Our UUCP information has not changed over the past 2 years -- there is no excuse for not at least sending us a note with the right UUCP infomation, especially since we're currently willing to foot the bill. Thank you to those that have cooperated. The point of all this is: It takes friendly people, friendly management, and hard work to set up and maintain Usenet. Remember "harpo"? I think that both "harpo" and Brian are doing profitable work - now that they are out of the backbone business. Where permitted by friendly management, sites function due to the people that care enough to make things work. The administrative burden is already high, and any project like "stargate" that holds the promise of easier distribution and administration also holds the promise of making netnews work much better in the future (not to mention the cost benefits). My appreciation extends to all those wonderful people that have kept Usenet functioning for so long (thank you Brian for harpo when we had it), and to the current set of administrators, supporters, developers, and dreamers that contribute constructively to the flourishing of Usenet. A special "Thank You" to cbosgd!mark, princeton!down!honey, bellcore!ber, decvax!aps, seismo!rick (and many others) for their long term contributions (I'm not sure that I can last as long). A very special "Thank You" to vortex!lauren for preseverence in the face of adversity and for his foresight into the future. Go stargate! -Gary
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (02/02/85)
In article <133@tmq.UUCP> peter@tmq.UUCP (Life gets very Weird) writes: >Mr. Grantages seems to imply in his article that his access to USENET is >paid for by his discretion to use his computer account to run readnews. I >would disagree. USENET is actually paid for by organizations who donate >their computer resources and telephone charges to forward news to other >sites. It is the administrators and managers at these sites that make >USENET possible, and who will determine the future of USENET. > >If I had to pay for USENET, i.e., poll all the backbone sites via long >distance, I could probably not justify to my management how having USENET >benefitted my organization (in $$$). There are a number of things that can be used to help justify Usenet. There is the simple fact that you have access to a lot of relatively cheap consulting labor (ask Rob Kolstad what a REAL guru costs nowadays...) to help you maintain your systems. A big win here at National has been recruitment-- we've picked up a couple of really good people from our contacts on the net, and we've been able to get a few others to actually come to work for us because they viewed the net and our attitudes about it as a strong perk (not the deciding factor, but a strong incentive). We've had a LOT better record of finding people to fill empty slots here, and good people at that, through the net than through other recruitment efforts (National, BTW, is looking for a few good hackers -- advertisement *grin*). As far as I can tell it costs us less for Usenet recruiting than it does for standard recruitment tactics such as newspaper ads (although we do that as well) and get better results, mainly because Usenet targets very closely the audience we are looking for. A third and less tangible effect is PR-- people and sites who dedicate positive resources to the net become known on the net, and it seems to improve both company and individual reputations (which help recruiting, which ...). it CAN actually be broken down to dollars and cents, if you want, although it is harder to do than other things. there are, of course limits, too... >I do not think that the day is far off when backbone sites will not be able >to afford to forward certain newsgroups (especially when one hears about >layoffs, cutbacks and such at AT&T, which provides most of the backbone >sites). When I was at Usenix, I talked to someone at Dec who pointed out that Decvax has gone over ~100K a MONTH in phone bills, and that it has become impossible to do any development on that machine. They are going to be switching decvax to a 750 dedicated to only mail and news and cutting back on some of their connections to try to get things back under control. Their phone bill for last year was over $1 million dollars. Think for a minute what that means-- many companies entire R&D budget are less than that figure, and we are talking about a phone bill. Please don't think that Usenet is free... chuq -- From the ministry of silly talks: Chuq Von Rospach {allegra,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA Life, the Universe, and lots of other stuff is a trademark of AT&T Bell Labs