david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (01/24/85)
[Sorry about this being so long, but this is a BIG subject.]
Ok. Good. Something IS being done about the traffic on this here net.
(You may recall that I was asking questions about this a couple of
months ago when I was still "just an egg").
You people screaming about censorship? Take a quick look at fa.info-kermit.
Do you see rampant censorship there? (Or any of the other arpa-net mailing
lists which are moderated). What you see instead is similar to a small
magazine or newsletter. You see discussion, news, questions. All the
stuff the documentation says Usenet has. (We have it but it is buried
amongst picky squabblings....people can't hardly speak in net.lang.c
without generating religious arguments from net.lang.pascal people ...)
I look forward to having a cheap source that has a high bandwidth.
I was interested in Mark Hortons' last article. His arithmetic is
compelling (and also something that has been running through my mind
these last couple of months. I sometimes stop and think about how
much money some of those STOOPID articles cost to transmit to everywhere.
It staggers the imagination.)
I also expect the unmoderated net to continue, though somewhat shrunken.
I for one don't want to see it go away. I happen to like these
undisciplined ramblings (if they are intelligent. Nothing more BORING
than a bunch of STOOPID ramblings:->).
I am new to the net as well. I came on to it expecting something like
what was described in the documents that came with the distribution.
A comfortable, good-natured free-for-all. I see now that the documents
are out of date and that the golden age of usenet has passed on. Its
a shame I missed it. (Not that its very bad now, but I can see some of
the rot...)
Even if the unmoderated net disappears as a unit whole, the software
still exists and can be used locally (If there are enough machines
to generate a good user base).
What I would REALLY like to see happen though (I do have some reservations
about this stargate deal, more about that in a moment) is to better
use this distribution scheme. If we had a larger base of systems around
here I might set this up locally. But 5 machines do not make an adequate
user base. I was doing some thinking along these lines last summer and
fall. My general idea was to do something similar to one of Laurens'
projects. (His IBM-PC/Usenet interface program). The outline goes something
like this:
1. Each user has a machine on the order of what the PC/AT
*should* be. (A vax-speed CPU with about 40 megs of disk
space, good interrupt driven software, multi-tasking
(UNIX) operating system, etc).
2. On each machine is a mailbox and a public access area.
The mailbox is private and is bi-directional, and provides
electronic mail. The public area could be used as something
similar to net.sources. Somebody has software to distribute
so they announce that their public area contains <x>. People
that are interested call up and get it.
[BTW, I am envisioning all this for sometime about 5 years from now].
3. Domains would be on a city/state/country level. Most news
traffic would be within one city. (Part of what I envisioned
here was a replacement for bulletin board systems). There
could be a central administrative system. It would take
care of gatewaying news to higher domains, providing normal
mail to people in other domains, etc. It would also take
care of the local network topology. (Keeping individual
people informed as to the phone numbers/etc for everybody
elses' systems). It could even be the news buffer between
all the other systems, but this could be handled like usenet
currently is.
It goes on in this vein. After seeing how well Usenet runs though, I
have my doubts. A certain portion of society simply cannot keep their
actions reasonable. They are told that their society has these conventions,
and is even told WHY these conventions are as they are, but s/he STILL
cannot pay attention to them. I don't know if I'll ever understand this
fully.
A simple solution that just occurred to me. Limit per-month traffic
out of the local domain to x messages per person. Limits could possibly
be changed (raised or lowered) by a vote of the people within the local
domain and the people in the next higher domain. (How do non-votes
count here?) The idea is to be able to shut up people that constantly
say stoopid things, and allow intelligent people to speak more freely.
(Though, can a group of people decide intelligence (or lack thereof)
by reading the ramblings of this person? Thats a good question too).
[Come to think of it, this last is similar to the current discussion
in net.flame about Bernhard Goetz. A society must have some means
of disciplining its members, or you just end up with a rabble. Our
current method of disciplining is basically a slap on the hand. Though
some of those flames can get awfully "roasty" :-). Maybe the simple
solution will work? Or will software bugs always get us in the end?]
Another thought:
Does the net stay the net if one is limited in how much one may say?
-:--:-
David Herron; ARPA-> "ukma!david"@ANL-MCS or david%ukma.uucp@anl-mcs.arpa
(Note the quotes on the first. Try the second please.)
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