lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (01/21/84)
Just a point of information. The reason net.vvs is rather inactive is that it is not a DISCUSSION newsgroup, it is an announcement channel for new indices of video images. These are currently appearing at rare intervals, since I haven't had a lot of time to put into digitizing lately. However, when I have a new list, there is no other reasonable way to reach the fairly large but scattered group of sites that are participating in viewing Vortex Video System images. The criteria for maintaining a newsgroup should not necessarily be a continuous flow of traffic, but rather the convenience that having that group around creates when traffic DOES appear. The alternative is a continuous cycle of deletion and creation, and of clogging up inappropriate newsgroups with unwanted articles. As for fa.telecom -- the ARPA TELETEXT list is currently dormant, but I will be restarting it soon, along with a new list to be called VIDEOTECH which will concern all aspects of video technology. I've been holding off on the restart of these lists to give the various changes on ARPANET a chance to settle down somewhat. There is no denying that a major redesign of the network is in order, and there are those of us who are currently working on this problem. Within a few years there are going to be so many sites that the current structure will break down totally. Some sort of hierarchical system will have to be established, along with stricter controls on the use of "network-wide" control messages. In a 100,000 site network (yes, I said one hundred thousand) our current behavior patterns will be totally inadequate. --Lauren--