From: max@underg.ucf.org (Max Cray)
Newsgroups: austin.public-net
Subject: Re: Let's do it NOW
Keywords: public net austin free
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 23:11:41 CST
Organization: Underground Computing Foundation

fmayhar@altair.mpd.tandem.com (Frank Mayhar) writes:

> Disclaimer:  I'm not a principal here, I'm just an interested party who has
> offered technical expertise, and who was at the meeting on Saturday.  Any fac
> I offer should be taken with a grain of salt, unless Chris or one of the othe
> principals confirms it.

Too late! You posted. Now you are a principal. Heheh. :)
 
> I don't know where Chris (alias Max Cray) is, but he was supposed to have
> posted a summary of Saturday's meeting, as well as a summary of what went on 
> Martin Brothers afterward.

I already posted a quick summary of the meeting. Hopefully it gets to your
machine before this post. If not mail me. I did not post a summary of the
Martin Brothers discussion since I sat on the end and only caught about
1/2 the conversation, but I did announce the working group meeting Saturday.

> It's my understanding that there are two major things that will be happening
> this week.  The first is that Chris will attempt to finalize things with Dell
> Dell apparently wants to offer us an Internet (IP) connection, floor space in
> their computer center, and as many dialup lines as we need.  I don't know the
> speed of their connection, and understand that all of this is still very up i
> the air.  At any rate, Chris will be contacting them this week to confirm the
> offer, and to find out what we need to do to accept it.  (Like, incorporate, 
> whatever.)

To clarify things, I spoke with Steve Blair (sblair@dell.com) who is apprently
the system manager at Dell and is very much interested in this project and
providing the Internet connection. He said he still needed to get approval
from one of the VPs. I did not speak to him about the phone lines. The 'as
many dialup lines as we need' is a rumour that comes from what Dell was 
supposedly going to provide CACTUS. I have no knowledge of this, but I
will try to get more details when I call Steve tommorrow. I called late
today, but only got machine. I will call earlier, tomorrow.
 
> That leaves us needing a system to connect to Dell's IP link, and modems to u
> those phone lines.  Cactus has been offered one or several Sparcs, from what 
> understand, and if that comes off, we will probably be able to use one of
> those.  This is supposed to be looked into this week by Bob, whose last name 
> didn't make a note of, and forgot.  (Sorry, Bob.)  He's a member of Cactus,
> apparently, and is in on the deal.

CACTUS has hundreds on old IBM RT's apparently. I thought the Sun donation
was Chris P's personal project, but I may be mistaken since that was probably
the conversation at the other end of the table that I was not privy too. The
Bob you are refering to is undoubtedly Bob Izenberg (a known associate of
practicing hackers).

> The final piece of the puzzle, at least at this stage, is modems.  These will
> have to be donated or bought, and no decision had been reached on Saturday. 
> Someone chimed in and said that they had a spare modem that they would be
> willing to donate, so maybe we have one to start with.
> 
> Once we get the system and the connection, I volunteered to configure things
> so that they all work.  I also suggest that we go ahead and apply for an IP
> address range and a domain name.  The latter means that we need to decide wha
> the organization's name is, asap.

It seems clear that I need to develop an agenda for the working group meeting.
Please post the questions that you think need to be resolved for the meeting.
If you have multiple things that you think need to be resolved please suggest
a priority. Thanks.

> Finally, the real principals, the doers, are to meet at Chris' house on
> Saturday.  Chris will post an official announcement of this soon, but, please
> if you are just curious or just want to kibitz, although you are welcome to d
> so at other times, this will be a working meeting, not so much of a planning 
> organizational meeting, as I understand it.

Well planning and organizing in so much as we need to to get the work done. :)

> Now for opinions.  I agree with Jay, let's do it NOW!  The important thing at
> this point is to not get too greedy, nor should our plans be very grandiose. 
> Our proximate goal, IMHO, should be to get a system connected to the Internet
> with at least one modem connected to a dialup line.  That would give us an
> existing system, and something to build on.  Plus, if prospective supporters
> want to know what we've done so far, we'll have something concrete to show th

It seems clear that we need to do what we can now, even if it is only a single
machine with a single line, and then work on expanding it, increasing lines,
bandwidth, services, training, etc.
 
> There were some fairly grandious ideas expressed, including one to use existi
> cable television channels to provide the downlink to subscribers.  These are
> probably good ideas, too, but let's wait a year or two before committing
> ourselves to something that has no existing hardware or software support.  We
> need good, simple, easy goals, that we can achieve quickly, and that build
> upon each other.  I think what I've written above meets that criterion.  Now
> all we have to do is DO IT!

We should not rule out anything. Who proposed this again? The first officer
position needs to be the secretary so someone will start taking notes. Anyway
whoever proposed this getit together and lets see a demo. Meanwhile we know
we can set up a dial in system almost as soon as we gather the resources.

                                          -= Max =-

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