J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

Jack Stein wrote:

Really? How much does Comcast spend as a percentage of the
administrative and hardware expenses by providing free Usenet access
to all their customers?

If they save two cents a millennium it's still a saving. Geez.

If they lose two cents a millennium it's still a loss. Geez.

So what is the relevance of your PC? You seem to be laboring under
the misconception that serving up large volumes of stored binaries
is just a matter of sticking a consumer drive in a machine.

The relevance has been made clear, but you choose to ignore what you
don't like or doesn't fit in your views. Lets see if I can waste
some time explaining it to you again.

No, it hasn't been made clear. The fact that a cheap drive can hold
a lot of data does not mean that that same cheap drive can deliver up
that data at a transfer rate high enough to satisfy the needs of a
large number of simultaneous users.

Well, besides the fact that just the HD storage on my personal machine
would have cost $22 MILLION in the 80's, something you choose to ignore,
"delivering up the data" is an even MORE amazing reduction in cost per
thousand bytes.

Vincent said:
"Usenet has changed considerably since the late 1980's... more
newsgroups, more content, larger files, etc..."

I said this stuff has gotten much cheaper, you insist on arguing
about
that.

"Stuff" has gotten cheaper but volume has also increased. How many
binaries were transferred in a week on USENET in 1980? How about now?

Advanced equipment today is like 2 BILLION times faster today than even
in the 90's, let alone the 80's.

Storage isn't if all they have to do is store it. What you don't seem
to be able to grasp is that they also have to be able to deliver that
data to the user in a timely manner. And your cheap consumer disks
can't do that. It's not a matter of network bandwidth, it's a matter
of the bandwidth of the individual drive itself.

It is a matter of the bandwidth, and it is billions of times faster than
it was in the 90's, let alone the 80's. Routers today can push upwards
of 92 TERABITS/sec. as opposed to the 56k of the 90's.

Usenet has always been a loser for the ISPs.
Numbers please? I doubt even Comcast knows the exact value of
Usenet service to it's subscribers.

So how much profit do they make on something for which they don't
charge anything?

Depends on how many customers it brings them. They do charge for their
services you know, just that the free web pages, the free multiple email
accounts and free Usenet are included in the base fee with no extra
charges.

It's not really enough of their business to warrant the expense.

How about free web space, is that enough to warrant the expense?
How about 6 free independent email accounts so a family of 6 can all
have their own separate email accounts? If you know all this about
Usenet, then I guess you know the answers to all these Questions...

OK, genius, why _are_ they cutting USENET then?

First, Comcast has not cut ANYTHING yet. I still get all the same
groups, including binaries I have always gotten. They have agreed to
look at all the web traffic, including newsgroups to try to limit PORN,
has nothing at all to do with storage expense or bandwidth.

Comcast was AT&T? Sorry, but Comcast is a cable television company
and they have never been a part of AT&T.

AT&T sold there internet service to Comcast.

In what universe was that?

Every one's universe but yours I guess?

No, no matter what delusion you might be under, Comcast did not come
from AT&T.

No matter what delusion you might be under, AT&T sold there internet
service to Comcast.

If running USENET is as cheap as you claim, then why can't you run it
out of your basement with your PC?

If it's as expensive as you claim, why does Comcast provide it with no
extra charge?

My guess is Giganews gets a ton more money from Comcast than all
the individual subscriptions combined.
When you know for sure get back to us.

It was just a guess. Get back to "us" when you know the value of
free Usenet, free web space, and multiple email accounts to Comcast vs
the expense of providing all that free with your basic Comcast account.

So again what do you believe to be Comcast's reason for reducing
USENET service?

First, Comcast has not reduced service at all. Second, they are looking
at blocking various sources of PORN, mainly web sites but possibly
binary groups and who knows maybe Usenet and email itself, is the US is
getting sick of looking at porn, and most of the major carriers have
agreed to attempt to do something about all the child porn flying across
the internet. It has NOTHING to do with storage or transmission
expenses. In fact, the next thing they will be moving and storing
(already do) is movies, far more bandwidth there than a few funky
pictures on ABPW.

This may come as a shock to you but neither Verizon nor Comcast is
the world.
Nothing shocks me, you must have me confused with someone else.
More over, I don't think I ever suggested Verizon or Comcast is the
world. I do think they are very big providers of internet service in the
US. If you know differently, please let "us" know who the bigger
providers are.

You are the one going on about how if Comcast and Verizon drop USENET
then it will cease to exist. So tell me, exactly how many Comcast and
Verizon subscribers are there in Europe, Japan, India, and China?

I don't know, what percentage of pictures posted in ABPW or ABPO or APBF
do you think come from other than North America?

Geez, a couple of ISPs in New York take an action and according to you
the sky is falling.

According to you, a few dollars to store and transfer a couple of
pictures is killing the big providers, despite the fact the cost of
storing and transferring has fallen through the floor, and the fact that
the high speed providers like Verizon and Comcast are sending tv and
movies over their lines with out blinking an eye.


I guess you are saying if I ever saw a server farm, I'd know that
the cost of storage since the 80's has NOT gone through the floor.

No, you'd know that the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and operating
a server farm is not negligible.

It is negligible as far as moving and storing a few binary pictures is
concerned.

You
would be wrong at any rate... The cost of storage has gone right
through the floor in just 25 years, to the point it is a non-issue
to
large ISP's like Comcast and Verizon as far as Usenet is concerned.
That's why they can offer free web pages, multiple email accounts,
and fee Usenet to all their customers.

If they could serve USENET from a 50 buck consumer drive you would be
right, but they cannot provide the kind of volume required by the
method of sticking a cheap drive in a PC. They still need arrays that
can provide the required bandwidth. Drives, no matter how great their
storage capacity, remain SLOW AS ****ING CHRISTMAS compared to
everything else involved with moving data. That's the point you
consistently fail to grasp.

I don't think so. Comcast and verizon send all TV over the same lines,
including a ton of Movies and so on. They have no problem with a few
freaking photo's, or web pages, or email accounts.

It's about the child porn, nothing else.
--
Jack
http://jbstein.com