On Wed, 15 Feb 1995 08:13:52 CST Patrick Douglas Crispen said:
>Alright, I'll bite ...
>
>I'd really like to know the reasons behind Penn State's and Georgia Tech's
>recent decision to turn off (or at least severely curtail) their sites
>mail distribution lists. I just can not understand why any site would do this.
>
Try COST.  At usc, we axed the non-USC staff/faculty owned lists (i.e.
external lists), and generally reject non-academic interest lists.
We did this because listserv traffic (mailer, smtp, rscs, vmnet) was
consuming 1/3 of our cpu, especially during prime shift.  All this,
without contributing a dime.  This was because of the high volume
of data.   (If you care to donate, say $50k or so,  I am sure my manager
will reconsider).  Have you ever tried to explain that the professors
research job is running slow because of an application that isnt
doing a thing for the university?
 
>It seems to this newbie (who does not know the whole story) that these sites
>are taking the "scorched earth" approach to this problem ("We only have
>24 modem lines, the lines are always busy, and the people are complaining?
why dont you personally pay for more?
 
>Hell, I have a solution : unplug the mainframe from the wall. That will
 
We did.  We axed MVS about a year and a half ago.  Our VM system will
most likely go the same way, in about another year or so.  Why?  Cost!
 
 
jr
(john riehl)
(There still is no free lunch)