An apology, and a question (about uucp in Germany)

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <4679 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <16720 at rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>, jfh at rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>> My phone bill runs $60 to $100 per month.
>
>Your phone bill covers a whole lot more than regular Usenet access. You're
>a long-distance-link-junkie. Admit it.

That doesn't cover long distance charges for news links, that's long
distance for MAIL links.  You forget, the first rule of this system is
[ was, I don't have any rules now ... ] you call me, I don't have the
$4,000+ I figure it would take to service 450 hours off hook a month.

>Altruism or ego-boosting, it's not an expense that most Usenet sites require.
>There are lots and lots of people who just get a local feed and feed local
>sites... and probably end up spending $30 a month for all the groups they
>care to get.

Well, gee.  Butchaknow, if SOMEONE didn't take the effort to truck the
news into wherever, there wouldn't be the individual groups for someone
to pay $30 a month.

And you can't get the lines required to service 450+ hours / month of
dialtone for only $30 a month.

>Not everyone on the net is a 'big boy'. It's just that in Europe, the little
>boys pay big-boy rates.

No, it's just in Germany they expect everyone to truck news articles
around when the item should have been mailed.

Our dear friend Axel Fischer(sp) requested that I _post_ patches to
login which he had missed because they were [ and obviously did ]
going to charge him $35 for the 35K patch I sent him.  Apparently
this type of behavior is quite common in Germany - several other
Germans have made identical requests - post, don't mail.

>Perhaps the hobbyists in Germany need to form an alliance independant of
>the backbone. From what I understand, they're doing that in Italy.

Yes - I've heard about what is going on in Italy and agree 100 percent.
I think what unido is doing should be stopped as well.  However, posting
thigs which should be mailed because Axel doesn't want to pay his fair
share appears to be exactly the problem which is causing EUnet to have
to take such fascist measures - namely EUnet spends their money to truck
news into Europe and the recipients don't want to reimburse them.
-- 
John F. Haugh II                        +-Button of the Week Club:-------------
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