[1357] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
SIMTEL20 task terminated
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Vielmetti)
Tue Sep 17 23:29:11 1991
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 91 20:41 EDT
From: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti)
To: com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: w8sdz@rigel.acs.oakland.edu's message of 17 Sep 91 21:41:15 GMT
I originally posted this back in June; this version is properly
capitalized and edited somewhat. Three months to the day after I
originally wrote it, it's clear that things are getting worse, not
better.
Subject: building an interstate (data) highway with no roadmaps
Date: 17 Jun 91 07:50:02 GMT
Do you ever get the feeling that all this NREN stuff is going to
build us a network that's extraordinarily fast but impossible to use?
Mitch Kapor, in his "Building the open road: policies for the national
public network" , compares the existing mess in the current state of
the art at cataloging and describing the services available on the
net today as "like a giant library with no card catalog".
Who is going to provide the moral equivalent of the Rand-Mcnally road
atlas, the Texaco road maps, the AAA Trip-tiks? What we have now is
much more like the old Lincoln Highway, with painted markings on trees
and oral tradition that helps you get through the rough spots on the
road.
From: w8sdz@rigel.acs.oakland.edu (Keith Petersen)
Date: 17 Sep 91 21:41:15 GMT
Followup-To: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives
My task of maintaining the WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL archives will be
terminated effective September 30, 1991 because there is no funding
for it in the fiscal year 1992 budget which begins on October 1st.
There will be no one to catalog the MS-DOS, CP/M and MISC repositories
or to accept and review new files. My last work day was yesterday
because I am on vacation until the end of the month.
I am now actively seeking new permanent employment.
Questions about the SIMTEL20 archives or problems with FTP should be
directed to Action@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL.
Keith
--
Keith Petersen
Maintainer of the MSDOS, MISC and CP/M archives at SIMTEL20 [192.88.110.20]
Internet: w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil or w8sdz@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Uucp: uunet!umich!vela!w8sdz BITNET: w8sdz@OAKLAND
That's not to say that there aren't skilled people out there, it's
just that they're generally not supplied with resources adequate to
the task they're facing. You aren't seeing organizations like ANS,
which seems to be flush with cash and hiring skilled people left and
right, hiring anyone with the archivist skills of a (say) Keith
Peterson. You aren't seeing innovative applications like "archie", a
union list catalog of FTP sites around the globe, funded as part and
parcel of NSF infrastructure; it's being done in Canada, with no
guarantee to continued existence if it starts to swamp their already
soggy USA-Canada slow link or if they need the machine back.
--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
MSEN, Inc. 628 Brooks Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120
for information on MSEN products and services contact info@msen.com
