response 50 of 110:

Oct 24 20:18 UTC 1994

Yes, I like Picospan too.  Is there a simpler DOS variant available?

response 52 of 110:

Oct 24 21:46 UTC 1994

(Actually, I've seen a bbs program for DOS whose interface is very
Picospannish and which was inspired directly by Picospan...)

response 54 of 110:

Oct 25 11:51 UTC 1994

(Perhaps one/several of our software hackers out there would be inspired
to create such a beast?)

response 56 of 110:

Nov 7 16:10 UTC 1994

        Regarding the training members to be operators.. I'll admit, I'm DAMN
new, but I do have a will to learn, and I am a notoriously fast learner. I
don't know much (at all) about unix, but I DO want to. I get this odd feeling
that, by the time I get to the level of knowldge required, that I will be
needed..

response 58 of 110:

Nov 8 02:36 UTC 1994

   I is working on the class outline.  More when thats done.

response 60 of 110:

Nov 8 13:52 UTC 1994

  You is.

response 62 of 110:

Nov 9 20:44 UTC 1994

Students 'R MeToo?

response 64 of 110:

Dec 1 18:55 UTC 1994

While browsing in coop I revisited this item, and it occurred to me to
inquire to what extent the candidates for Directors of Grex based their
statements upon the purposes of Grex. You can read those purposes in
ARTICLE 2 of the Grex Articles of Incorporation, which is reproduced at
the beginning of this item. 

If I had thought of it in time, I would have asked the candidates what
they would propose to further the purposes of Grex, as stated in ARTICLE
2. Instead, I can measure that by what they did say without being prompted
by the question. 

Since I support ARTICLE 2, if I had found differences between the
candidates, my disclosing differences in their statements with respect to
ARTICLE 2 could be considered partisan politics. Happily, I am not
confronted with that dilemma. 

Among the key words in the purposes of Grex are (in alphabetical order)
"charitable", "education", "information", and "scientific". 

No candidate used any of those words.

Perhaps this was to be expected, at a juncture when the *problems* facing
Grex reside in hardware, and software, and growth. Candidates should
obviously address the problems and how they would approach them. 
Nevertheless, there needs to be some consideration of why all this is
being done, and where it is leading - vision, it is often called. 

What do we want for Grex?

response 66 of 110:

Dec 2 01:52 UTC 1994

Yes we do have problems at the moment and it does tend to get us to focus
on those rather than the long term path for Grex. I very much want Grex
to qualify under 501(C)3, and I support charitable and other activities that 
are compatible with that. I would like to see computer conferencing on Grex 
play an important role in providing useful information to the public on matters
 of general interest, science and computer technology, etc. I believe Grex
serves an educational purpose to all of us right now, and want to enhance that.

I support the opening of the internet connection as passed by the membership
in their vote this summer, and not yet implemented. I would like to see
Lynx be usable at least to browse gopher and hypertext on the web as well.

We also need to make it easier for folks to use Grex. Right now it is just
plain hard, because our internet link needs to be better. We can do some things
to improve the link that we have, but if we are successful in our other goals,
then usage will grow, and eventually we will have no choices
other than to either limit access or widen the link. The latter is my
strong preference but it will cost money. We cannot afford ISDN at our
current membership level, but we could if it were around 110-120 members.

I am very pragmatic about this, and I believe that we should withhold
some services from the non-paying users as a carrot to encourage them to 
join the bandwagon (Grex) and help us boost membership to a level that
will support a better system. I do not want to open the internet to ftp
and telnet for non-members for precisely this reason. I feel certain that
it will decrease membership levels rather than increase them.

response 68 of 110:

Dec 2 04:55 UTC 1994

        I see Cyberspace Communications as providing a valuable public
service by making Grex available to the public.  Grex has allowed the
general public, without having to pay a cent, to access our conferences
and the ideas of all their fellow Grexers, as well as providing e-mail,
shell access, and lots of other really great resources to the general
public.  I would like to see Grex continue in that direction, keeping as
much as we can afford to open to the general public.  In the future, I
hope this could include everything we are providing now, as well as some
of the services that are currently off limits due to bandwidth concerns
(this would require a faster link, but that's on my wish list), as well as
probably some other services that nobody has even dreamed of yet. 
        Another area of community service that Grex has been getting into
lately is the computer rehabilitation project.  It sounds like this
project has been doing some good things, and as long as Grex doesn't have
to put very much money into it Grex should keep lending its institutional
support to the effort.  If it starts costing money I would have to think
more about it, since with Grex's limited money supply we should be careful
about spending large amounts of money on things that don't improve the system.
        I do have to take exception to the notion that memberships will
drop off significantly if we start opening up more Internet access to
non-members.  Grex has been getting a fair amount of members from other
places lately, and I find it rather hard to imagine that all these people
who are telnetting in and sending us money to support us are really doing
it so that they can telnet and ftp over our saturated link.  We don't have
the bandwidth to open stuff now, and it may be a long time before we get
that much bandwidth, if ever, but I'm not willing to pronounce the idea of
people supporting Grex because they want to dead before we try opening
things up and see how it works.

response 70 of 110:

Dec 2 05:21 UTC 1994

It would really have to depend on what exactly Grex's financial state was
at the moment, and what other needs there are.  The rehabilitation
committee is a really great program, but Grex has to come first.  That
said, it is my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that the
rehabiliatation committee intends tobe self supporting, buying new
computers with the money they get from ones they have already worked on. 
I was using the rehabilitation committee only as an example of a community
outreach project not related to conferencing.

response 72 of 110:

Dec 3 14:41 UTC 1994

I agree with Steve above. I would like to see us improve the quality
of the link for incoming telntet. Netlag is a definite problem, to
which we should allocate resource.

response 74 of 110:

Dec 12 17:44 UTC 1994

First of all, I think it's time we admitted that conferencing, while a
wonderful part of Grex and a valuable source of information, can not be
the heart and soul of an organization truly dedicated to the dissemenation
of as much information as possible.  Even granted that we are all
representatives of the best and brightest the world has to offer, we
<gasp> do not possess all knowledge, and thus can't put it in our
conferences, even if there were an eassy-to-use search engine to find it. 
Also, even if we had 50G oof online storage, we couldn't store it all. 
The future is the Net, whatever that will turn out to be.

This confocentrism manifests itself every time a new service is debated. 
I saw it most recently in the POP server debate.  The argument went
something like, if we make it possible for Grex to be used as a mail drop,
then everyone will do so and no one will use the precious conferences. 
I'm sorry, I'm getting a bit carried away, and I don't underestimate the
value of the cfs.  But they aren't the heart of the system anymore imho. 
Folk who know me will have remarked that I've not been conferencing much
in the last six months.  I have in fact been using Grex only as a mail
drop, because that's what I had time for.  I didn't want this, but for
information I needed, Grex was not a time-efficient source, so I had to go
elsewhere.

Now I'm still a member, because I support the idea of a computerized
public service organization, just as, and for the same reasons as I am a
member of WDET.  So, when technical considerations allow it, I want full
access to everything for anyone who needs it.  (Ok, not root and such, but
if we are an info source, let's be an info source to the extent possible
without regard to race, creed, color, national origin or membership status.)

To specifics.  I'd like to crate a clearinghouse of information about
government at all levels.  My current thought for this is a series of HTML
pages, (now that I've started learning HTML).  Maybe I'll even have the
time to start working on them.  

I proposed in September that Grex should seek a liaison with a public
school system to educate students in the use and potentials of Internet
sources for information.  When last I saw the discussion, people were
interested in theory, but then I ran out of time to follow the
conversation.  What if anything hapened to that idea?  If it merely needs
someone to pick it up again, then I'm your man.

In summary, I'd like to see Grex add real information gateways to its
wonderrful social environment and already-existing people-base.

     Chris