From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 94 13:50:41 PST
To: srikar@netcom.com (Shrieks)
Subject: Re: calling all cpunks on netcom
In-Reply-To: <199412131946.LAA26053@netcom20.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199412132147.NAA13766@netcom12.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Shrieks wrote:

> Just floating a trial balloon. Are you tired of the high traffic on
> the cypherpunks list and having to wade through a ton of mail every
> day? Any of you folks approaching your 5M limit from archiving too
> many messages? Well, I am and I don't really want to start paying
> for the extra memory.

I ruthlessly cut out messages I don't want to keep, but still have
accumulated about 60-100 MB of Cypherpunks mail that I wish to keep
(not as mail qua mail, but as articles, essays, comments on crypto
points, forwarded items, etc..

Obviously I have this stuff on my home machine.

My point? Netcom's "5 MB" limit is useless for actually archiving
articles, as it probably should be. At some point one has to download
the accumulated stuff. A 5 MB buffer is better than a 1 MB buffer, but
not in the steady state solution.

Conclusion: The remote vs. local storage problem has to be resolved in
any case, so why not solve it sooner rather than later?

> I was wondering if it might be worth petitioning the netcom sysadmins
> to start up a local newsgroup (eg. netcom.cpunks) that serves as an
> archive for the mailing list. That way one gets to use the abilities
> of <insert favourite threaded news browser here>  to keep threads together 
> and so forth. I'm sure there are enough netcom subscribers to warrant this.

Netcom expires _all_ newsgroups, even its own ("netcom.*" local
discussion groups), in the "normal" period of 2-3 weeks. There is no
reason to expect them to make an exception for our group. If this is
not made an exception, then a 3-week hang around period will hardly
constitute an "archive." (Yes, it will reduce _some_ storage, by a
shared pool, but only temporarily.)

Netcom might be persuaded to create a persistent storage for a
discussion group like ours, but I know of no precedents (at Netcom).
They would want to be paid somehow for the space used, and arguments
that users would not have to pay extra for the above-5MB storage would
not be very persuasive to them. (Unlike MIT, for example, Netcom has
little incentive in this area.) Convincing them to create another
class of service or pricing would be tough, I think.

I have no objection to the idea of this, and the general idea of
converting the list into a newsgroup (alt.cypherpunks, or
soc.cypherpunks, or even rec.flame.cypherpunks) comes up.

I just don't think the argument that it saves disk space is very
persuasive. At some point the stuff one wants to keep needs to be on
one's own machine, right?

(There may be some list members who lack a computer, and are accessing
solely via terminals. Can't do much for them.)


> Just a thought. Pheedback? 

--Tim May, in his third year of using Netcom with the Cypherpunks list.


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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