geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (01/22/85)
[No, no, Lauren -- go back to sleep. You deserve a rest.] Some people getting into this late are asking what the noise is all about. A quick summary for the Rip van Winkles: Stargate is an expirement (Point number 1). It involves broadcasting news during the vertical interval of the WTBS "superstation" in Atlanta. (Point number 2: WTBS buys its satellite feed from another company. We deal with the other company. They are doing this FREE.) News will be fed into the satellite from an Atlanta site to be known as "stargate". Stargate will be fed from several sites nationwide, selected on various criteria but primarily for quick news feeds. Since the WTBS signal is available on cable in most large cities, a site can have a cable feed installed quite easily and cheaply. A decoder will be made available at or near cost, less than $1000. Since any site that gets or sends news long distance (most backbones, for instance) is currently spending that much or more every month or two, this will be a big cost winner. News will come at a variable rate, depending on time of day -- perhaps 1200 baud during prime time and 9600 at night. All of the little details have been thought out so you won't miss news, yet the cost of the net will go down. The big flap right now is over moderation. A quick check with people who know (lawyers) and people who are risking their necks (the satellite people) shows that we just ain't gonna be able to shove all the current junk across the satellite. In the first place, the satellite people aren't interested in repetitious material (like this article) -- they are interested in promoting technology. Remember, they are doing this FOR FREE because they believe in it -- they're hi-tech types just like us. In the second place, the satellite people are worried about being sued. They're a big $$ company (you have to be in the satellite biz), so they're vulnerable to anybody with a lawyer. There are lots of postings on the Usenet that could get a rich company sued. (The legal issues are complex; ask by mail if you are interested.) So, to make stargate work, we can only send part of the net onto it. The rest of the net material will have to go via private phone lines, just as it does now. This will be less of a cost savings, but it is hoped (and remember that this is only an experiment) that it will still be enough to pay for the decoders and the costs of running stargate itself. Of course, there still has to be a way to decide which news can be distributed across stargate and which is "dangerous" (not politically, but legally) or wasteful. Right now, there are two ways to post to the net: you can post directly, or you can mail to the moderator of a moderated (or Arpanet) group. If stargate ever becomes a full-fledged member of the net, there will be a third way of posting: you can mail to the "gateway moderator" for that group. If that person thinks your article is ok for stargate, it will be posted. If he thinks your article is too similar to one he just posted fifteen minutes ago for somebody else, he will mail it back to you with a comment. If he thinks it is offensive, libelous, or he doesn't like the way you spell your name, he will mail it back to you with a comment. Or maybe the wonderful uucp mailers will drop it on the floor, and he will never see it, or you will never see the reply. In all these cases, you can still post to the phone net in the old way (though hopefully, if your article is mere duplication, you won't). Your article will go out anyway, but more slowly. Nothing is going to change. There will be no censorship. However, there will be a faster, cheaper way to get news out, which will be subject to the decisions of a moderator. If the experiment is to work, we will all have to get into the habit of posting through a moderator; this will take some changes in the news software to make it easier among other things. I suspect that it two years everybody will have forgotten the fuss. There will still be obscene libelous flames, but the number of useless duplications will have gone way down. -- Geoff Kuenning ...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff