Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 18:56:48 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Message-Id: <199310062256.AA09800@world.std.com>
To: raisch@internet.com
In-Reply-To: "Rob Raisch, The Internet Company"'s message of Wed, 6 Oct 1993 07:21:34 -0700 (PDT) <Pine.3.03.9310060733.B10429-d100000@hmmm.internet.com>
Subject: MTV and Panix .plan file dispute? --Panix replies.
From: "Rob Raisch, The Internet Company" <raisch@internet.com>
>I would like to suggest that this problem goes away by deploying a
>scalable, distributable mechanism to share the load. And even further
>that an incredible amount of data flowing across our wires is there
>because of ill considered or redundant retrievals.
As I said in an earlier message to someone else: Of course.
Baking more bread will shorten the bread lines, the question is who's
dough is gonna be used?
Given arbitrary budget I can solve this thing drunk and watching MTV
at full volume.
>We need some mechanism in place -now- to allow a user to make an informed
>retrieval decision.
But this assumes something to be informed about, that freebie systems
to distribute *to* are going to grow commensurate to demand growth.
I don't know if that's true. Mebbe so. Mebbe not.
>Unfortunately, I fear that we are really quite far from ubiquitious
>deployment of this most needed technology. We cannot tell who people are.
>We cannot tell what they are interested in. We cannot find information,
>and we cannot make the proper choices to retrieve it for the lack of a
>generalized method of sharing the meta-information we require.
Bingo, that's one set of variables I can go along with.
>Please don't misunderstand. I am the last to descry someone from making
>an honest buck, but let's face it. There are some technologies which
>simply must be freely available and trivial to use. These are the
>enabling technologies -- those which allow us to build real services. If
>there were no printing presses, there would be no books.
I agree, and I'll bet we're (world.std.com) way up there on the free
service end of things, so it's not idle talk, we live this issue. I'd
be surprised if we're not in the top 10 or 15 sites on some key free
services, maybe higher. So we're doing our part, and we're really
dealing with the issues. The question is what happens when/if we're
swamped, and so is everyone else like us?
-Barry Shein
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