werner@molokai.sw.mcc.com (Werner Uhrig) (06/27/89)
In article <1444@laura.UUCP>, jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: > In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: > >Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. > > Wrong. We don't make profit. > In fact, our laws in Germany do not allow universities to make profit. well, there are many ways of "not making a profit". The question is: can the service be provided better and cheaper somewhere else? > The money we raise is used for maintenance of our equipment and > for paying (small) wages to the students running the backbone, > and last not least for paying our share of transmission-costs > to the European backbone mcvax. several parties have raised the question of "how are the $42k spent?" (or whatever the figures may be) one would think that this information should be freely available and the figures should be your best defense (they better be). > We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a > computer on which we can do serious work, because our university > is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone > is donating us anything. obviously, if the university does not support the effort, one has to ask why it should be there in the first place? Of course, I could think of a few good reasons, but I'd rather hear the "real reasons" ... and just as obvious is that if someone uses his own (free?) equipment and time to call the US with a Trailblazer (illegally skirting Postal regulations) and feeds several other sites (I assume with several other illegal modems) for free (or sharing the cost of the phones, which makes everyone a partner in crime - and the BP will come and sweep you all up sooner or later), well under such circum- stances I can see how things can be done cheaper than at unido. I have no sympathy for BP and their rules and prices, but comparing cheaper cost of illegal activities with those of unido is obviously absurd (if that is what is actually going on here ?!) is it unrealistic to assume that at this time only a site like unido can get "experimental" permissions to use fast modems (such as Trailblazers)?! > We like to have as much users as possible to minimize the costs for everyone. I think, what you have to do is publically account for the costs that you need to recover. and present a plan, where, if someone imports the news for you and allows you to redistribute to the sites that depend on you, you will be able to lower your charges appropriately. without figures, we cannot tell if unido is getting a bum-rap or deserves to be scolded. overall this topic has turned into a nuisance discussion which lacks useful information, information which only unido seems to be able to supply (but doesn't?!?) > >I have a friend with a Telebit who is trying to set up a direct call > >to me to receive a few groups and then pass them around. > > No problem in germany too, as long as 1 is paying and the rest does > not want to appear explicitly in the maps. shouldn't it be made possible to distinguish between "appearing in the map" and "having to pay for services rendered"? excuse me for living but ... yours sounds like, forgive the expression, damned arrogant an attitude. could this site not request payment from you for the same reason? what if an alternative organization springs up with a significant number of sites. can't you find a way to balance things? does it really have to be like here in the US where the different phone-companies may have a way to talk to each other, but the electronic mail-services simply ignore each other (to a large degree) forcing everyone to get a separate account on each service or create clandestine or unannounced gateways (which are a pain).... or exist only on one section of the electronic universe ... you can force the mail to go via the US if that is where a European site wants to get its news and mail, and you can force them to register their own domain and not provide domain services, but you have no right to tell any site that they cannot register, IMHO. -- --------------------------> please send REPLIES to <------------------------ INTERNET: uhrig@mcc.com (if unavailable: werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu) UUCP: ...<well-connected-site>!milano!werner ALTERNATIVE: werner@astro.as.utexas.edu OR werner@utastro.UUCP