Again ... What is it going to COST?????

[bass at dmsd.UUCP]

In article <945 at vortex.UUCP>, lauren at vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes:

> 
> Many of the details of Stargate, including organizational, cost,
> and some technical issues, are proceeding behind closed doors right now,
> of necessity.  We're releasing as much information as we can, whenever
> we can, and we expect to be able to make some definitive statements
> regarding organization and cost issues at the next Usenix conference.

Lauren ... there is no reason in (*&^(*&^ that the basic outline of
a Comercial Stargate should remain behind closed doors at this point ...
you have been playing with the basic issues and estimates for nearly
more than a year, and approaching two. You should be able to summarize the
proposed organization, it's staffing, and budget within 50%. And you
darn well should be able to give some statement about the subscriber
base demographics and the assumptions behind it. I had substantial questions
about how this might work when you started a year and a half ago and
under presure was quiet eagerly awaiting the soon to be released details
at the next meeting (a year ago). The time to wait is past ....

> Given the lack of details, it is only natural that some persons might
> get false ideas or operate under false assumptions if they speculate
> upon what we're trying to accomplish.  And that's what's happened
> with John--he's speculating, and his message is incredibly full of
> false premises and inaccurate information.

You betcha and it's going to get worse ... I don't think I'm working under
false assumptions and we are free to speculate until you make the info
public.

I've been in and around this business more than 15 years and know what
it costs to run an organization to support such a service.

What I DON'T want is to have Stargate give their service away cheaply for
a year to kill the existing net, then say "Opps we (really you) made a mistake,
the prices are going to have to triple to make it pay for itself".
It is VERY important for usenet members to understand budgets, costings,
and proposed subscriber base information prior to thinking about switching
from uucp based phone service to Stargate. You should be able to outline
several possible senerios now based on the deals that various bidding companies
are presenting ... or is this a single source deal???

I have spent many hours in multiplan tossing about possible subscriber
base demographics played against estimated budgets and THE CURRENT
estimated USENET costs --- MY GUESS (and thats the best one can do
given your long silence) is that the TOTAL Cost of news service will
go up by between 3 (no restrictions on multiple sites or local uucp
retransmission) and 10 (every site/machine must pay a fee) times
depending on how the costs get spread and what the real service costs are.
spread.

If the TOTAL cost is the same ... no big deal. If it is going to go up,
then lets make sure that we CHOOSE (not have ramed down us) the proper
replacement for tele/uucp based news service.

> 
> His message shows that he does not know what we are doing with
> Stargate, what our goals are, how we are organizing, or what
> sorts of entities and organizations are involved.  Nor does he seem 
> to understand many of the fundamental problems of Usenet and the critical
> fact that faster machine-to-machine netnews transmission, even if FREE,
> does not significantly help the systemic problems of the existing network
> which is attempting to broadcast articles to a very widespread collection
> of points, articles which currently exhibit an ever increasing proportion
> of what might be politely termed "extraneous" material.

This is a cheap shot ... I do understand the problems ... and much more
objectively than those who can't see past Stargate as the answer ....

I have been involved in the net for many years, watching it grow first
as a technical forum, then as a flaming forum, and then as a social issues
forum. These last two areas are the usenet down fall. Without this
traffic uucp based usenet can return to a cost effective medium by
using existing technology and services.

I have been paying our usenet long distance bills (from SF where our feed is,
to SLO is about 200 miles). I KNOW what usenet costs, I KNOW what the machine
resource requirements are, AND I can see that Stargate is or will be
just another information network like The Source, Compuserve, etc ...

and will be just as expensive ....

Tell us why we should help you start another commercial communications company
to service the usenet community based on closed door discussions and that old,
old line ... Trust me .... 

We have for more than a year ... now the clock has run out ...
put the facts on the line ...

What we ask is: Put the facts up NOW and prove us dead wrong if Stargate
REALLY is cheaper ...... OR let the community judge this creation with open
eyes and have the chance NOW to explore other alternatives to a Stargate
monopoly.

This posting is too long already ... I have complaint with nearly
every assertion that Lauren made in his Non-informative reply....

-- 

John Bass (DBA:DMS Design)
DMS Design (System Design, Performance and Arch Consultants)
{dual,fortune,polyslo,hpda}!dmsd!bass     (805) 541-1575