Re: [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> (fwd) Re: Deja move 'complete' (sequel to "huh?")

[rick tait <rickt@unixlabs.net>]

And it came to pass that Ronda Hauben wrote: 

[ snipped for brevity ]

>                             The Gods of the Internet hath not
> >decreed that Deja be the one and true repository of Usenet now
> >and forever, especially as a free service.  

They have? Not since I last checked... Anyone can start their own
archive, no-one is stopping you - no-one can stop you. Go ahead,
start your own! 

> Another example of how "business" decisions are not public 
> decisions and the fact that governments like the US are pouring
> money into supporting "businesses" in their use of the Internet
> leaves the public and the technical and scientific community
> with nothing in the end.

I love your argument, and support it - I laud it!

But.

Do you have any idea how much money a Usenet archive costs? Just
the 5-year archive from 95 to 2000 would require about a terabyte
and a half of disk. Think about that. And you can't just say "run
down to Staples and get a few 50GB IDE drives". It doesn't work 
like that - you have to buy high-end disk arrays from folks like
EMC, Hitachi etc. And then you have to connect them to expensive
UNIX boxes, multiple servers. Which are connected to multiple,
redundant very large pipes to the Internet to serve the multiple,
hungry, greedy Usenet archive website users, because they'd get
pissed off if it was slow.

Do you get my point?

Deja.com has enough problems of their own - ie, trying to make
money (which generally is a fair concern for a BUSINESS). 

It's not fair to be pissed at a corporation for dropping the 
Usenet archive. To be frank, Deja.com (or dejanews.com as they
were at the time) only started the Usenet archive basically so
they could potentially leverage it as hitcount etc. Now that they've
"found themselves", and realise it's too costly to continue
as a going concern, they drop it. Fair enough!

If anything, we should look towards some Gov. agency. There should
be something like a Library of Congress for the Net. 

Or maybe not.

R.

-- 
main(v, c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="rick tait <rickt@UNIXLABS.NET>\n)";(!!c)[*
c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c));**c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);}


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