BD: Re: SCN: "Free-Nets" in Los Angeles Times

[patrick]

JJ,

I wasn't advocating that SCN provide standard PPP service. I said it
would be "nice" if SCN had a low-cost service. I realize there are a
million other things ahead of that, so I wouldn't even speculate
about SCN providing PPP dial-up service. That is what I meant:
Affordable, "regular" dial-up service like Eskimo or Wolfnet. A
not-for-profit service. Like a co-op. 

To speculate, it would probably be much more affordable for a
not-for-profit ISP to not have an expensive Usenet feed. That would
cut down on paying for that service and tons of hard disk space and
zero maintenance since there would be no Usenet. If people wanted
Usenet, they could either pay extra for it from another service or go
to Google, which now has a 20-year archive of the Usenet available.

And if there were limits on disk space and email space, that would
keep costs down. People would have what most people use: a graphical
web browser like IE and POP mail. Those are essential services for
many people.

But that is all speculation on what I would think would keep some
costs down. But please don't assume that I wished that SCN would have
that. I never said that.

Before SCN even consider that, it needs to have someone who can
effectively communicate among the volunteers and orchestrate those
volunteers so that energy is well spent. As it now stands, the
'brain' is not informing one leg of what the other leg is doing.
Things could flow a lot better at SCN and SCN could retain volunteers
better if it had an effective human being organizing that effort.
That really requires no technology, only someone who pays attention,
keeps people informed and makes the best use of SCN's talented
volunteers.

Its' sad: A lot more could get done at SCN with that orchestration.

Patrick

--- "J. Johnson" <jj at scn.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Dec 2001, patrick wrote:
> 
> > [....]
> > Again, it would be "nice" if SCN could find a way to provide
> low-cost
> > ISP service. 
> > 
> > That is my only point.
> 
> Patrick, you need to get your thinking straight here.  We DO
> provide
> "low-cost ISP service".  I.e., we provide e-mail and web access
> (which
> certainly are Internet services) for free (which is certainly
> "low-cost").
> 
> We do not provide "full" Internet services, but then neither do
> other
> ISPs.  And as we are free of advertising we are even "more free"
> than some
> other "free" service providers.
> 
> Of course it would be nice to have more services.  But dealing with
> why we
> don't have more services is not helped when you can't even
> articulate what
> you want.
> 
> === JJ
> =============================================================
> 
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