lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (12/18/84)
There's no practical way to charge people for sending messages INTO the stargate, and I think we've determined in past discussions (in many of our opinions, anyway) that this could discourage much useful information input and is a bad idea anyway. The "receiving" side can be controlled through addressing. However, since there will always be human screening of materials, both to sift out obvious repetitive messages and to meet broadcast standards, the overall information content level of the material broadcast should be quite a bit higher, overall, than we see on the dialup network. It might be best to call the material coming from stargate the "'best' of Usenet" -- where a large number of netnews screeners will help to ensure impartiality in the definition of "best." Or maybe "best" is the wrong word. Perhaps "non-trash" would be a more useful description. Those who want to receive all the other stuff will of course be free to do so by phone just as they do now--no problem. I've always assumed some sort of monthly fee for receiving the data, simply because ultimately, the satellite time has to be paid for, at least by the satellite carrier itself. (Even if we're not being charged the rates that a "normal" customer would pay for sat time, it still is costing *something* to the carrier.) There are also ongoing expenses, equipment (computer and satellite) maintenance and changes, etc. However, I visualize (for whatever my guess at this point is worth) the fee at being no more than about $30/month, and maybe even less. These are guesstimates of course, but as I keep emphasizing we are only an experiment now and not a production system. The satellite carrier is NOT going to keep giving us everything completely for free forever! And what's wrong with them making some money on the operation? They're going along with this purely on speculation when nobody else would touch it. Many Usenet sites are sending hundreds of dollars a month to long distance services for their netnews phone calls now -- and those services are certainly making money on those calls! What's wrong with the satellite carrier making a little money (and far less per site than the long distance services do!) instead, especially when they've taken most of the risk. I think if you polled the Usenet sites and asked them how much they spent on netnews, you'd find that most spend far more than $30/month on netnews phone calls -- some more than 10 or 20 times that a month. And the amounts are going up rapidly. If some people's management feel better spending $600/month for netnews phone calls than $30 month for a netnews cable-delivered service fee, then there is little I can say, other than that there's a lot of pretty narrow-minded management floating around. Such sites can keep spending their money on phone calls and get netnews the current way. Oh yes, about the netnews flow -- the WHOLE POINT of the buffering board I keep talking about is that IT would handle the mass of data flowing in from the decoder and pick out the articles of interest, only feeding THOSE to the mainframe. It would be handling error correction and other functions as well. That's why this board is such an important part of the overall system. --Lauren--
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (12/19/84)
I think there are still a couple concepts about the satellite-fed netnews project that remain vague in all our minds (at least they are so in mine!); these are: a) As has been asked by other posters, what about the posting of netnews? Will not each site still have to have the same existing telephone line connections simply to OUTPUT their site's generated netnews items? I can see that many micro sites may just operate in a receive-only mode; it would be well worth the costs for any company involved in UNIX software simply to scarf up whatever appears on net.sources and net.unix-wizards, I would think, and the rest is just a side benefit. But any site currently involved in two-way netnews will undoubtedly want to continue to generate inquiries and participate in dialogs; for this, the telephone connections will be necessary. b) If a site still has to have telephone connections, the obvious improvement to look for is to be making SHORTER telephone calls. This is how Lauren has stated the cost of the decoder & etc. will be justified; in the savings off existing phone bills. However, there is a point here that has not been covered -- the stargate-distributed netnews is explicitly NOT complete; the call for "screeners" has been public. Therefore, what comes over stargate will be some percentage of netnews. Will not the rest of netnews continue to be sent via telephone call distribution? And will not each site's software have to compare posting-ID's to eliminate duplicates, just like it now does for telephone-distributed netnews? Therefore, the calls will not have to carry the actual text of the the items previously gleaned off the satellite distribution, but the overhead information of this rejection of duplicates and back-and-forth dialog will remain. As the sheer volume of netnews increases, as it has steadily done, will not the telephone-call expenses return to their present high level (and even exceed that) just from this cause alone? There would be an initial drop in costs, of course, but the costss would then begin to rise after that drop. Or are we assuming that, once the stargate satellite distribution is in place, the only netnews that will get national distribution will be that approved of and passed by the screeners? Anything could get local distribution, but no backbone or major site would promulgate anything not satellite-distributed? (This may be a good thing, so I'm not flaming about it -- I'm just trying to understand the concepts.) I know I'd appreciate it if Lauren would address these specific issues for all of us. Regards, Will Martin USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
berry@zinfandel.UUCP (Berry Kercheval) (12/20/84)
In article <472@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes: >... >If some people's management feel better spending >$600/month for netnews phone calls than $30 month for a >netnews cable-delivered service fee, then there is little I can >say, other than that there's a lot of pretty narrow-minded management >floating around. Such sites can keep spending their money >on phone calls and get netnews the current way. >... The problem in some companies is that the phone costs can be absorbed in overhead, while buying a decoder would be a capital equipment purchase -- a whole 'nother barrel of fish! But let me know when these suckers are available -- if I have to I'll take up a collection here! -- "Take this //JOB and run it!" Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (12/29/84)
> Or are we assuming that, once the stargate satellite distribution > is in place, the only netnews that will get national distribution will > be that approved of and passed by the screeners? Anything could get > local distribution, but no backbone or major site would promulgate > anything not satellite-distributed? (This may be a good thing, so I'm > not flaming about it -- I'm just trying to understand the concepts.) This situation is coming whether we like it or not. The current phone bills are already reaching the point where they are very difficult to justify on a long-term basis. And they are still rising. The collapse of the nationwide news-by-phone network is coming. Our only hope is to get something like Stargate going before the axe falls. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry