roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (11/24/85)
I recently read somewhere that if Rich Rosen were a site, he would be number 2 in total volume. Well folks, it seems that he *is* a site. Over the past two weeks, he produced every single article to come out of pyuxd, which is indeed the number 2 site. Can't we loose this clown? From the latest mod.newslists postings by seismo!rick: +--- | No. of % of | Rank Articles Kbytes Total Site | 2 96 226.5 2.3% pyuxd.UUCP (Bell Comm. Research, Piscataway (PY)) | | No. of % of | Rank Articles KBytes Total User | 2 96 226.5 2.3% rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) +--- Assume the typical site expires news in 1 week. Rich is thus using an average of 113 kbytes at every site. Last time I counted (14-Sept-85), there were 3897 sites in the uucp map; call it an even 4000 by now. That's a total of about 450 Mbytes world-wide. I've been pricing disks lately; a 380 Mbyte (formatted capacity) eagle from a "discount" supplier for $8k is the best buy I can find, which works out to about $21/Mbyte. Thus, the net has collectively donated some $9500 to Rich so he can spew forth all that crap. The 7 day average expiration is probably low; the default value in the 2.10.2 distribution is 14 days. Most sites probably don't get that good a deal on disks; RA-81's for example, or Eagles bought from Sun, list at about $40/Mbyte. Sites with smaller or older disks probably paid much more. Thus the cost is probably much higher, and I havn't even considered the biggie: phone bills. Is he really worth it? Maybe we should start a new group: mod.rosen. :-) -- Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy> System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Kenneth Adam Arromdee) (11/24/85)
In article <2028@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > I recently read somewhere that if Rich Rosen were a site, he would >be number 2 in total volume. ... >| No. of % of >| Rank Articles Kbytes Total Site >| 2 96 226.5 2.3% pyuxd.UUCP (Bell Comm. Research, Piscataway (PY)) >| No. of % of >| Rank Articles KBytes Total User >| 2 96 226.5 2.3% rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) > Assume the typical site expires news in 1 week. Rich is thus using >an average of 113 kbytes at every site. Last time I counted (14-Sept-85), >there were 3897 sites in the uucp map; call it an even 4000 by now. That's >a total of about 450 Mbytes world-wide. I've been pricing disks lately; a >380 Mbyte (formatted capacity) eagle from a "discount" supplier for $8k is >the best buy I can find, which works out to about $21/Mbyte. Thus, the net >has collectively donated some $9500 to Rich so he can spew forth all that >crap. The 7 day average expiration is probably low; ... Most sites probably >don't get that good a deal on disks ... and I havn't even considered >the biggie: phone bills. Is he really worth it? Maybe we should start a >new group: mod.rosen. :-) >Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy> Use of already-purchased disk space that would otherwise have been empty doesn't really cost the news-subscribing organization anything. Therefore, claiming that Rich Rosen's postings have cost people $9500 is no more logical than saying that, for example... each site has disks which average 380 Mbytes each and on the average has one disk which is incompletely filled. Some have this last disk almost full and some almost empty; the average is a wasting of 1/2 a disk. 1/2 disk per site * 4000 sites * $8000/disk= $16000000 wasted by the net on blank disk space, or $2000 PER SITE. If it was possible to buy storage space by the megabyte as needed, and sell it back as needed, at a price exactly proportional to the price of a full 380M disk, then your argument might have some merit, because Rich Rosen's postings would mean that the net would have to collectively have $9500 more in disk space to hold his postings. But in fact storage space is not sold that way, and the sites have an average of $2000 each in wasted disk space, or $16000000 total, which is more than enough to cover Rich Rosen's postings. -- If you know the alphabet up to 'k', you can teach it up to 'k'. Kenneth Arromdee BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM and INS_AKAA at JHUVMS CSNET: ins_akaa@jhunix.CSNET ARPA: ins_akaa%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!aplcen!jhunix!ins_akaa ...allegra!hopkins!jhunix!ins_akaa
ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (11/27/85)
> > I recently read somewhere that if Rich Rosen were a site, he would > be number 2 in total volume. Well folks, it seems that he *is* a site. > Over the past two weeks, he produced every single article to come out of > pyuxd, which is indeed the number 2 site. Can't we loose this clown? From > the latest mod.newslists postings by seismo!rick: > Rosen makes very good use of his bandwidth. People actually read what Rich posts. What bothers me more and is the decline of usenet is not these people but the people who insist on posting multiple copies of things, encapsulating the entire item just to say "Hello", not trimming the headers. In addition, as far as my time is concerned, not editing the subject appropriately after the topic of conversation has been changed. Better use of the net could be made if we forced regional distributions. There are enough people in any one area of the world to hold a really good discussion in most of these groups. Sites supporting real news-lovers would pay the long distance bills to put their machine in more than one region. Other large posters such as the Guy Harris's, etc...do the network a favor. These people are articulate and knowledgable. By rapid reply to net inquiriesthey help forstall the rash of repetative and sometimes wrong answers that usually follow. -Ron [Rich Rosen for Net President]
lear@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (eliot lear) (11/28/85)
Gee... I wonder how much the flaming in net.news.group costs the net?
radzy@calma.UUCP (Tim Radzykewycz) (11/28/85)
In article <1282@jhunix.UUCP> ins_akaa@jhunix.ARPA (Kenneth Adam Arromdee) writes: > 1/2 disk per site * 4000 sites * $8000/disk= >$16000000 wasted by the net on blank disk space, or $2000 PER SITE. Um. Uh. .5 * 4000 * 8000 / 4000 = .5 * 8000 * (4000 / 4000) = .5 * 8000 * 1 = 2000 Whups! Either I've forgotten most of my upper-elementary-school level algebra, or you did something wrong. I think this makes much of the original posting invalid. If Kenneth makes this kind of mistakes so easily, I wouldn't trust his verbal arguments much either. In fact, I think his arguments aren't valid anyway: 1. many of the sites which are on USENET wouldn't have the same disk configurations if they weren't on it. 2. The assumption that the average amount of disk space which is wasted is 50% of one disk is stupid. (no ":-)" here) 3. Kenneth ignored (or perhaps didn't understand) the idea behind the original posting, which was to say that people should constrain themselves to posting only original material. -- Tim (radzy) Radzykewycz, The Incredible Radical Cabbage calma!radzy@ucbvax.ARPA {ucbvax,sun,csd-gould}!calma!radzy
ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Kenneth Adam Arromdee) (12/02/85)
In article <81@calma.UUCP> radzy@calma.UUCP (Tim Radzykewycz) writes: >> 1/2 disk per site * 4000 sites * $8000/disk= >>$16000000 wasted by the net on blank disk space, or $2000 PER SITE. >Either I've forgotten most of my upper-elementary-school level algebra, >or you did something wrong. >I think this makes much of the original posting invalid. If Kenneth >makes this kind of mistakes so easily, I wouldn't trust his verbal >arguments much either. In fact, I think his arguments aren't valid >anyway: OK, I goofed. $4000 per site. However, saying you wouldn't trust a verbal argument of mine, not because you have found anything wrong with the verbal argument, but simply because I once made an arithmetical error, does not itself seem to be a very valid verbal argument. >1. many of the sites which are on USENET wouldn't have >the same disk configurations if they weren't on it. I can only go by what you said, which included no evidence for this. >2. The assumption that the average amount of disk space which is >wasted is 50% of one disk is stupid. (no ":-)" here) Assuming it's evenly distributed between 0.000000<n decimals>1 % and 99.999... %, 50% is the average. It's only an order of magnitude calculation anyway. OK, let's say it's 90%, not 50%. Then the cost to the net is .1 disk/site * 4000 sites * $8000/disk=$3200000 for the net. The point is that calculating the disk space "wasted" by Rich Rosen is meaningless because it's swamped by the "wasted" disk space which would have been there anyway, but now holds Rich Rosen's (or any other user's) postings. >3. Kenneth ignored (or perhaps didn't understand) the idea behind >the original posting, which was to say that people should constrain >themselves to posting only original material. >Tim (radzy) Radzykewycz I was well aware of this; I was just responding to one fallacious argument. -- If you know the alphabet up to 'k', you can teach it up to 'k'. Kenneth Arromdee BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM and INS_AKAA at JHUVMS CSNET: ins_akaa@jhunix.CSNET ARPA: ins_akaa%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!aplcen!jhunix!ins_akaa ...allegra!hopkins!jhunix!ins_akaa