dorn@fabscal.UUCP (Alan Dorn Hetzel) (09/20/88)
It occurs to me that if everyone who is sending these nearly identical
tirades concerning portal is really serious, then maybe the next course
of action, assuming things don't improve as a result of portal admin
efforts, would be to lean on the sites feeding portal ...
I am wondering, what is the feeling of the administration of the sites
adjacent to portal, who support their existence within the net, as
relates to traffic from portal?
Of course, maybe the real solution is for somebody to generate a filter
capable version of vnews/rn/etc. The idea of this would be to make news
capable of bypassing messages from specific sites and/or users as if the
group was unsubscribed. By doing this, portal users, or any group or
individual for that matter, may be ignored completely and painlessly,
no matter how much they flame on.
On another note, I presume that if 15,000 flames originate from portal,
as some of their users have threatened, that this would have effects
as follows:
1) Assuming about 1,000 to 2,000 bytes of traffic per flame (maybe low),
we are talking about some 20 to 30 Megabytes of outbound traffic.
I figure this at equal in volume to five to seven days of ALL NEWS
WORLD WIDE in volume. i.e. this would double the cost of operation
of the net for a week. Also, since portal traffic probably goes
out through uunet, somebody WILL pay for this traffic. I don't know
if uunet pricing is flat rate or usage sensitive, but:
A) if uunet charges flat rate, they are going to be (i feel) a little
upset at the additional costs they will incur moving this mountain
of inane data.
B) if uunet pricing is usage sensitive, then portal will get a large,
and well deserved, bill for this traffic; they (the admin of portal)
can feel free to take this issue up with their, err, clients...
2) Conclusion: I feel that if the users at portal engage in a large scale
flame war, it will be only to their detriment, and not seriously to
ours; therefore, their threats are either:
A) empty or
B) empty headed
I remain,
Alan Dorn Hetzel, Jr.
gatech.edu!fabscal!dorn
P.s. I, personally, read news at the full speed of my compaq VGA, and
so I can skip as much as they can send with no pain at all. These
observations, therefore, aren't colored by emotions resulting from
being tortured by this crud.