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

[lauren at vortex.UUCP]

My initial temptation upon reading John's 8K message where he
attempts to prove that Stargate can't work was to generate a point
by point explanation and refutation.  But upon reflection, I realized
that such a message could easily exceed 100K bytes, and frankly, I
don't have the time for that right now.  And the result would be
even longer messages bouncing back and forth as the argument went
on and on and on....

It is because of this that we are avoiding trying to carry out our
Stargate work in the "fishbowl" of netnews.  We could easily spend
most of our time generating netnews messages to try explain everything
rather than working on the project itself.  And much of what
we're working on simply cannot proceed with publication of every
detail at this stage!

So instead, I'll just make the following "simple" statements.  I hope
people will excuse me if I don't have the time to publicly answer every
replying article that might result from this one.

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.
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.

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.

Frankly, virtually every one of his assumptions was either seriously flawed 
or totally incorrect, ranging from his idea of what sorts of services we
plan to provide, to who we would be providing services to and on 
what basis, how we would be organized, technical assumptions, cost
assumptions, etc.  And as I mentioned above, he also seems to misunderstand
the fundamental structural and operations problems of the existing Usenet.

Now, admittedly, John does not have access to the "inside scoop" concerning
what we're doing with Stargate.  It isn't any kind of top secret--but
we have been restricting some details to those persons who are directly
involved during this formative period.  Given his lack of information,
it is unfortunate that he chose to set forth inaccurate
assumptions about the project and then proceed to draw inaccurate 
conclusions based on those assumptions.

Assume that we are not idiots!  This project does not consist only
of a bunch of techies working with high-tech toys.  Oh yes, the
toys are there--but a lot more is there too.  We are working closely not
only with technical people but with communications and networking business,
cable industry, and other entities who have a broad backround
in understanding the complex issues involved in bringing something like 
this to fruition.  We also understand the issues surrounding the 
current Usenet, its history, growth, and operations.  To put it
bluntly, we have a pretty good idea of what we're doing.

This isn't to say we'll definitely succeed, of course.  But things
are looking good, and I think we have a very good chance of 
providing a range of useful and economical services that will be
of benefit to a vast number of organizations and persons.   

As always, I wish to express my appreciation to those of you who
have actively supported this project, and I want to assure you that
the work, both technical and organizational, is proceeding well.
Thanks!

--Lauren--

P.S.  As I warned above, I may not (in fact, almost certainly will not)
have the time to respond to every article on this topic that may now
appear in netnews.  Please do not consider my silence to be anything
other than a budgeting of my available time!  Persons who are
interested in the reality regarding the project, or who are interested
in future participation in the evolving project are of course invited
to contact us directly.  Thanks again!

--LW--