[news.sysadmin] Actually *defending* Portal's abuse of the net???

tmanos@aocgl.UUCP (Theodore W. Manos) (05/30/88)

In article <6040@cup.portal.com>  thad@cup.portal.com writes:
>
>    ....a rather incomplete defense of Portal management's action of
>    posting JJ name and number, and an overly extensive extollation of
>    "the wonders of Portal" (read: ADVERTISEMENT) deleted......
>
> I'm with a multi-million $$$ a year company, and we CANNOT afford our own
> Usenet "node", and I and thousands of others NEED the communication facilities
> provided to us at a fair price by PORTAL.

Awww...isn't that just *too* bad?  The poor little "multi-million $$$" a
year company just "CANNOT afford" the *extremely expensive* hardware,
software, and telephone bills to set up their own Usenet "node". ;-(
Doesn't your heart just pour out to them? ;-)  I guess that you have to
have a *really big* company like mine (couple hundred K a year) in order
to be able to afford and justify such an *extravagance* as USENET.  They
must really "NEED" that access badly.

> As a satisfied customer of PORTAL, I believe you owe PORTAL Communications
> an apology.

As a satisfied (*you* figure out what I'm satisfied about :-) )
EX-customer of Portal, I believe that Portal owes the whole USENET
community an apology.  In fact, several apologies.  If you can't figure
out what for, it would explain volumes about how you think.

However, from a strictly *personal* standpoint, I'm very happy that they
*did* post that jerk JJ's real name and phone number.
---------
Ted Manos   tmanos@aocgl.{COM,UUCP,UU.NET}  or ...!{uunet,mcdchg}!aocgl!tmanos

henrik@blblbl.UUCP (Larry DeLuca) (06/02/88)

In article <23.UUL1.3#935@aocgl.UUCP>, tmanos@aocgl.UUCP (Theodore W. Manos) writes:
# In article <6040@cup.portal.com>  thad@cup.portal.com writes:
# >
# > I'm with a multi-million $$$ a year company, and we CANNOT afford our own
# > Usenet "node", and I and thousands of others NEED the communication facilities
# > provided to us at a fair price by PORTAL.
# 
# Awww...isn't that just *too* bad?  The poor little "multi-million $$$" a
# year company just "CANNOT afford" the *extremely expensive* hardware,

I don't think you're being quite fair here.  A number of companies won't let
themselves be convinced of the benefits of having a USENET connection.  At
previous jobs I have taken the issue up several levels of management only to
have it rejected because of phone costs, potential usage of disk space,
requisitioning a modem, or even because someone chose to mention that there
were non-computer related groups.  At the last place I worked they were so
security-paranoid that they wouldn't let us hook up to the USENET despite the
fact it posed no risk to them.

					larry...

friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) (06/03/88)

In article <534@blblbl.UUCP>, henrik@blblbl.UUCP (Larry DeLuca) writes:
> In article <23.UUL1.3#935@aocgl.UUCP>, tmanos@aocgl.UUCP (Theodore W. Manos) writes:
> # In article <6040@cup.portal.com>  thad@cup.portal.com writes:
> # >
> # > I'm with a multi-million $$$ a year company, and we CANNOT afford our
> # > own Usenet "node", and I and thousands of others NEED the communication
> # > facilities provided to us at a fair price by PORTAL.
> # 
> # Awww...isn't that just *too* bad?  The poor little "multi-million $$$" a
> # year company just "CANNOT afford" the *extremely expensive* hardware,
> 
> I don't think you're being quite fair here.  A number of companies won't let
> themselves be convinced of the benefits of having a USENET connection.

I don't think so either.  Please keep in mind that for many
sites, the "visible" costs of Usenet are the smallest portion of
the entire cost.   Staff productivity lost (on trash like this)
can be very, expensive, not necessarily gained back by the
information learned.  I enjoy Usenet as much as the next guy, but
taking an hour or two *every day* is expensive when every staff
person does it.  We charge for our time, and "billable hour" is a
key term here: customers don't pay for me to read news.  We tried
to say "no news during work time" but it just didn't work.  We
recently cut groups out of comp.* and news.* for this reason.

Not everybody is in college with lots of free time, disk space,
and net access.  There are more costs than you can see.

-- 
Steve Friedl    V-Systems, Inc. (714) 545-6442      3B2-kind-of-guy
friedl@vsi.com     {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl    attmail!vsi!friedl

Nancy Reagan on ptr args with a prototype in scope: "Just say NULL"

henrik@blblbl.UUCP (Larry DeLuca) (06/06/88)

In article <700@vsi.UUCP>, friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
 I don't think so either.  Please keep in mind that for many
 sites, the "visible" costs of Usenet are the smallest portion of

 I enjoy Usenet as much as the next guy, but
 taking an hour or two *every day* is expensive when every staff
 person does it.  We charge for our time, and "billable hour" is a
 key term here: customers don't pay for me to read news.  We tried
 to say "no news during work time" but it just didn't work.  We

Well, I guess the question is one of responsibility.  I read my netnews at home
(blblbl and its two modems sit in my bedroom).  Even if I didn't, I also work
for a living and don't consider paging through rec.humor for two hours to be
the best use of my time.

					larry...