trb@floyd.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum) (07/31/83)
I have suggested this in private communications, but I don't think I've mentioned it on the net. Whaddya think: People are complaining about the cost of sending netnews over long distances, particularly across the Atlantic. Luckily, there are only two or three feeds to Europe, philabs, decvax, vax135. So, tell ya what we should do. Hack readnews to allow a *moderator* on each of those systems to approve each article that gets enqueued to get sent to Europe. The moderator would just type y/n after reading each article. With moderators at two or three different sites, the effect of personal preferences would probably be eliminated, but Europe wouldn't have to see our used car ads or multi answers to queries about the true meaning of foo. This would make it a bit slower for the moderator to read netnews, but not terribly much, and the benefit of the service should outweigh the inconvenience. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491
brucec@orca.UUCP (Bruce Cohen) (08/02/83)
And here I thought floyd!trb was an AI project rather than an extraterrestrial. I do agree that the cost of sending news to places like Rigel is prohibitive (though if we send them net.flame they'll see how fierce we are and decide not to invade). Not afraid to let my tentacles show, Bruce
jim@mcvax.UUCP (08/03/83)
Well, as an alien, perhaps I should use my zap-gun on those
HILFs who break the rules and then there would be no problem?
But, lets look at the current situation. In all the recent debate,
no one in Europe has complained about the supposedly imminent
collapse of the net, or about the number of articles which are just
so many bytes in the wind (at least I haven't seen any, perhaps
Andy is moderating us already?).
Why is that? Well, the net isn't collapsing over here, and is already
run on a pay-as-you-read basis. I can't speak for the UK, and I am sure,
as in all things, the UK would not like somewhere else in Europe to
speak for her (the UK is only GEOGRAPHICALLY close to Europe), but the
UK gets it's news free from vax135; I don't know how much they get.
And we get a small number of groups through philabs, ones which people
asked us to get, not a blanket coverage anymore. Hopefully we will soon
be getting some more news groups from decvax, and to those sites which
ask for them, we will re-distribute. Another major manufacturer has
offered some free satellite time, which we are investigating.
So where is our problem? I think only you have a problem. We are in the
fortunate position of starting up late and having someone (Teus Hagen)
who put things on a nice footing. There is a Dutch saying, there is no
point in filling in the hole after the cow has drowned, and that is
what Usenet Inc. would be. And, as pointed out, you would really run into
problems when if you tried to expand it over more than one country, the
sum of the bureaucracies of 12 countries is MUCH more than the individual
parts.
As to moderating, that is already being done here on a communal, per-group
basis, witness the fate of net.general. But it means we have to keep trying
to find cheaper ways to obtain the groups, so we can afford to make some
mistakes and chuck them later. However, the real problem is that the
(soon to be) 3 news feeds supply different groups, and there is no
net.anything passed between the UK and Europe, so we would perhaps not get
a fair and unbiased choice. And anyway, how could you possibly ask even
a HILF like Andy Tannenbaum to waste his time doing that (Hmmmm, perhaps it
would keep him quiet?)?
I don't know how this panic started, perhaps it was just someone who
wondered how a thing could be so large without any organisation.
Maybe he should look at US foreign policy as an example.
Jim McKie Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam ...{decvax|philabs}!mcvax!jimecn-ec:ecn-pc:ecn-ed:vu@pur-ee.UUCP (08/04/83)
It may be a good idea. But instead of reading the whole news article, the *moderator* will only have to read the title, if the author is kind enough to make his title clear and explicit. Hao-Nhien Vu.
silver@csu-cs.UUCP (08/06/83)
No... no... I can't help but point it out... augh... If we started shipping news around by satellite then we WOULD be sending it to aliens, yes? I mean, REAL aliens. (Which would you rather have them see, old TV sitcoms, or net.religion?????) ::re-establish horizontal control::
msc@qubix.UUCP (Mark Callow) (08/08/83)
On "Bytes in the wind"
The recent Usenet user survey from sent out by Gene Spafford at
at Georgia Tech. came to me via the path
..philabs!mcvax!decvax..
That's right, it went all the way to Holland and back....
--
Mark Callow, Saratoga, CA.
...{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!
...{ittvax,amd70}!qubix!msc
decwrl!qubix!msc@Berkeley.ARPA