response 94 of 121:

Dec 9 21:05 UTC 1996

With our margins, that quickly becomes untenable.

response 96 of 121:

Dec 9 22:14 UTC 1996

Read resp:93 and concentrate on the first sentence very carefully.
Now lets talk about partitioning Grex.

response 98 of 121:

Dec 10 00:38 UTC 1996

Not if they take visa and mastercard.  Amoco was the last holdout, and now
even they have the same price for cash and credit.  

response 100 of 121:

Dec 11 06:21 UTC 1996

  
        HEY!
  
this is about the partitioning of grex! i am trying to unashamedly recruit
a guest who justifiably describes himself as, "a cronic non-member." 
  
re-read #90/#91.
  
grex is already partitioned and that is *the* problem.
  
and additional partition is the primal negativity to some/many/most/all
(chose you own particualr modifier to suit) non-inner-circle thoughts.
  
adn that was even slightly joined (?!???) by a brandnew loginid e4808mc.
  
nothing, NOTHING typed was positive - everything started slightly negative
and whent to hell from there.
  
WECAN'T WECAN'T WECAN'T WECAN'T 
  
i stand behind #91 *as typed*!
  
partition discussion? continue, please.

response 102 of 121:

Dec 11 14:39 UTC 1996

TS, I think you misunderstand the proposal in this item.  The item is
specifically about splitting Grex into two computers, one to handle e-mail
and one to handle everything else.  The idea is that right now Grex processes
so much e-mail that mail is swamping everything else Grex does.  We have
really neat conferences, maybe some of the neatest on the Internet, but when
people from elsewhere look at the conferences, they only see "slow".  If
e-mail were on a separate computer, that would free up the main Grex computer
to be better at conferencing, which would in turn strengthen Grex.

Nobody's ability to access the system would be changed.  When people connect
to Grex, it would ask "do you want to use the mail computer or the main
computer?"  *Every user* would have an account on both computers.

response 104 of 121:

Dec 12 06:45 UTC 1996

<ehmmm, i realize the initial partitioning discussion centered on
the machine, grex. partitioning, itself, applies to other areas as well.
  
after setting shamelesspoliticalplug=off,  the following *seven* responses
forgot aboutthe machine. so, i picked up on the "partition" theme and 
threw it around a little bit. the mechanical partition requires either
an angel or more members. yuo look for angels i'll look for members and
angles to recruit them.
  
the current ratio of ~100 members to ~14,000 logins is untenable if grex
is gonna try to spend money it doesn't have for hardware to benefit,
*mostly* the non-member. 
  
~13,900 logins are benefitting and !100 members are benefitting.
  
that sort of mechanical partition is divisive for the ppl fromwhich
grex requests support, imo. i would suggest that the extra costs (in
allterms) are not justified. maybe if we had 200 members and ~13,000
non-supporiting logins, i could support the dissipation of resources.
  
what is being partitioned is not only the machine, but also the membership>

response 106 of 121:

Dec 12 07:42 UTC 1996

TS, you keep pointing out, both here and in your recent mail spam, that Grex
doesn't have enough members.  That's not exactly news to anybody.  What you
keep neglecting to mention is that you are one of the non members you keep
complaining about.

response 108 of 121:

Dec 12 19:33 UTC 1996

Grex's staff last night voted to ask the board to allocate money to buy a Sun
4/400 cpu card and two 128Meg memory cards.  Our guess was that this could
be done for $1200-$1500, and quite possibly less.  The actual upgrade will
be simply a matter of pulling out the current CPU and memory cards, plugging
in the new ones and rebooting.  This probably doubles the CPU spend and
doubles the amount of memory and should give a very noticable improvement
in Grex's performance.

It also means that we will have pretty much a whole spare Sun/4 (actually
close to two spare Sun/4's if you count all our other spare parts).  So
actually purchasing another machine should be unnecessary.  The real cost of
starting up a mail machine, money wise, is going to be the electricity cost.
This might be something like another $50 a month (very rough guess).  The
hardware costs for any of the plans described here just aren't that
significant.

TS is very right to be concerned about the fact that Grex still has about the
same number of members that it had a year ago.  Addressing that problem is
one of the reasons I am promoting this idea.  Our money has always, and I
believe will always, come from the conference users much more than the E-mail
users.  That's because people who conference get involved in the Grex
community and feel a much more personal attachment to Grex and are thus much
more willing to help it out.  I believe that a key part of the reason that
our membership isn't growing is that the conferencing activity isn't growing.
All the growth in our resources is being absorbed by mail users who don't
donate.

My plan is to continue the growth of the our free Email service, which is a
really great service, but to stop letting it grow faster than the conferencing
system, which is the source of all our "Grexness" and all our community and
almost all our support.  Free Email should be a gift of the Grex community
to the world, but not a unsupportable burden that grinds the Grex community
to dust beneath it's weight.  We need to partition the system simply to give
the Grex community room to grow, and as it grows we will be able to support
the cost of giving even more free access to more people.  Our on-line
community mission is the source of support of our charitable service mission.
We must take care to protect it.

Some people have been suggesting that we respond to our problems by retreating
and restricting.  Cut back pty's, cut back backtalk access, restrict mail,
turn off newuser, etc, etc.  I think that is the *wrong* solution for Grex.
I think we have the capacity to grow out of our problems, to become better
and stronger by offering more access to more people.

response 110 of 121:

Dec 13 16:10 UTC 1996

yeah well put Janc, you are completely correct...too bad you arent onmnet's
board because IMO they are doing the"retreating and restricting" you
describe.  They are cutting their ptys, slowing their net connection .etc
Doing a textbook job of trying to stop a disease by cutting off all the limbs
from thebody rather than looking for a way to treat the disease and keep
the body intact.  Iknow this item isntabout mnet,but I wish the sort of
thinking
jan espoused was a little more prevalent over there.  \

response 112 of 121:

Dec 16 05:49 UTC 1996

janc's #108 is excellent. 
  
the capital expenditure of ~$1k needs members or angels. the ~$50/mo needs
fewer members and smaller angels. 
  
and, the critical analysis in #108 indicates that grex *might* be able
to sustain conferencing ifthe email is off-loaded.
  
fine - that is grexian in spades. now, let's find the $$. 

response 114 of 121:

Dec 16 10:17 UTC 1996

I think Grex could definitely afford a $1500 expenditure right now, but 
I'm a bit more concerned about having to make two of them, as in a 4/400
and an ISDN connection.  Still seems like a basically sound plan, though.

response 116 of 121:

Dec 17 17:22 UTC 1996

  Yeah, though by spinning off a separate mail server, the "need" is
lessened.  But faster's always better :-).  I think in terms of fund
raising, the CPU may or may not be available for a while, and if one
becomes available, Grex will want to act quickly, so it doesn't lend
itself to pre-purchase fund-raising quite as well as an ISDN line
would, where we could drag our feet a month or two before taking the
plunge.  (I'm not sure if staff has any leads on 4/400s with 128MB
cards, but they don't seem very common, and I could easily see board
approval to final installation taking a year).

response 118 of 121:

Dec 19 14:50 UTC 1996

Possibly because it's not actually non-secret.