From: zeus@vxcrna.cern.ch
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy,news.admin.misc,alt.censorship,alt.culture.usenet,comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Desperately seeking advice: How do you justify news?
Date: 22 Nov 92 15:45:43 GMT
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics

In article <CKD.92Nov17170306@loiosh.eff.org>, ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis) writes:
> Dave> == Dave Shaver <shaver@convex.com> 
> 
>  Dave> The question: If your management questioned the value of your news,
>  Dave> what would you say?  What if they said they wanted to turn the whole
>  Dave> thing off or eliminate 90% of it?  (The "non-business" newsgroups.)
>  Dave> What arguments would you use to maintain your feed?
> 
> Certain companies have basically "made" their reputation with me by
> having highly technically literate members of their staff participating
> in USENET.  Convex (in the person of Tom Christiansen) is one of those.
> This is an argument to keep at least the "business" newsgroups.

Also it is a good way of seeing which way the market is going, what 
products people are buying etc etc.

How do you find out other people's experience of using some software
tool you are about to buy? 

Is there any other way of finding out whether C++ (say) is merely
the latest bandwagon that academics have dropped onto and people
go round nodding their heads saying "oh yes we use it" or if it really 
is a useful product. Some of us remember the days of flowcharts,
everyone used them, or so they said at the time. Now they all say
``Oh we only ever used them for documentation''.

Question: do people actually use C++ as an object oriented language
or do they just use it as its name implies, increment the variable C
and use the *old* value.

How to find out the answer: Look at the questions in the comp.lang.c++
group, look at the FAQ. Apply the cynicizer at level 2(b) and get the
result "Yes they do, but half of these people will use Eifell next year
and Blodkin V, which has inline coffee percolation methods as builtin
functions."

How do we find out about Blodkin V? Well we go to comp.lang.blodkin
and look at the FAQ which list the best coffee bean suppliers.
 
> That said, the kind of person that is likely to participate heavily (and
> meaningfully) will probably want a full newsfeed (in fact they are
> likely to choose their employers based on net access).  These people are
> invaluable technical resources, both because they export technical
> knowledge to the net (returning goodwill) but also because they import
> technical knowledge (and sources, and techniques) *from* the net.

One of the disadvantages of small companies is the lack of a wider social
circle that joining (say) IBM would provide. One of the disadvantages of
large companies is the incestuous nature of the social circle and the
complexities caused by the importation of private affairs into the office.

Fact is that net news is just about the only mechganism that is practical
for making a widely distributed company with large numbers of out workers,
work from a socialogical point of view. $7500 is probably a reasonable 
investment in an important future social technology.

Hell what do companies think they exist for anyway? Most of them are
ultimately owned by their employees through pension funds. Macho 1980's
style neo-Manchester school capitalism may seem attractive from a financial
setting, only what is the point in screwing the workforce when they are the
shareholders?

There is a place for examining the harsh ecconomic realities and a place
for ignoring them. Most companies work from the wrong angle, it is
easiest to cut out the obvious `pork', the free coffee trolley and cakes
at break time, the creche and the net-news.

Then these same executives will decide not to purchase a machine to 
automate the production line because they don't want to have to give
their workers their cards. They miss out on the major savings but look
for the minor ones, then they suddenly realize that the operation
down the road or over the water has mechanized and will beat them and it's
panic stations so they sack half the workers.

If they had planned ahead they could probably have managed to gradualy
introduce new technology and use it to expand output and not needed to
sack anyone.
 
> Netnews is a cheap draw for some *very* good staff.  The cost of a 3/60
> and a couple gig of disk is pretty far down there; even if you buy, say,
> a SPARCstation ELC and a couple gig of disk that's only going to run you
> $7500, and it'll last for years.

No! don't *buy* a machine for news. Use an old Vaxstation 2000 or Sun-1
or whatever that isn't much use for interactive work. All you need is
a processor and a lot of disk, SCSI helps make the disk cheap.

You buy the nice new machine for yourself - eg just a box upgrade and the
old box serves news.

Hell you can often even manage to "trade in" the old machine as well :-)