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Grex > Coop11 > #110: Cyberspace Communications finances for June, 1999 |  |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 78 responses total. |
senna
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response 7 of 78:
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Jul 4 06:33 UTC 1999 |
I'm not a big fan of investment, since I'm not sure what we'd do with
the money anyway. I'm uncomfortable as it is having the money just
sitting around like this. It might be prudent to attempt to anticipate
future large expenses so we can squirrel money away for them. This
seems moot now, but this is the sort of time when moving to a new
permanent location or replacing hardware is highly practical. I'm not
advocating this sort of expense, but it's a thought.
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tpryan
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response 8 of 78:
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Jul 4 16:21 UTC 1999 |
It's the fact that an emergency can emerge at anytime that Grex
would want a comfortable surplus. Also haveing 3 months operating
expenses worth of cash in the bank is a good idea.
So, a self re-newing Certificate of Deposit with a short term
may be something to look into. That way, any time there may be a need
to reach that money, the early withdrawal penalty would be minimal.
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pfv
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response 9 of 78:
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Jul 4 19:22 UTC 1999 |
You COULD, however, look at certain certificates and Bonds for
say.. Half the fundage.. for like.. 6 months..?
This would yield ther Evil Profit that could itself be rerouted
back into the the pay-stream.
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kaplan
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response 10 of 78:
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Jul 6 17:45 UTC 1999 |
What about investing a few hundred in a large, modern hard drive? The
return on investment in terms of both additional storage capability and
power savings would be significant. We could take the current 2 gig
hard drives off line and save them for a rainy day rather than paying
Detroit Edison every month to keep using them. A new drive would be
more reliable as well.
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richard
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response 11 of 78:
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Jul 6 21:38 UTC 1999 |
grex can now afford to add more phone lines and more telnet ports if
it wants-- that would be a quality service improvement
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jiffer
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response 12 of 78:
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Jul 6 21:47 UTC 1999 |
Naw, we need real queality service improvements.
hone lines and telnet ports are not that needed.
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steve
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response 13 of 78:
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Jul 6 23:59 UTC 1999 |
I agree with Jennifer--'real' improvements are needed. We need to
figure out how and what they really are. I suspect they run along the
lines of a faster net connection and more CPU or starting the move
towards distributed services, but thats fodder for another item.
We probably don't want to buy any disks right now, because we have
2G disks galore right now, and we could spin *10* of them for a year
at a cost of buying one new big one. Given that load is far better
balanced among several different disks than one, we'd see a real
performance hit in doing that.
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senna
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response 14 of 78:
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Jul 7 05:44 UTC 1999 |
"Telnet Ports" are a slave to system speed and bandwidth. We cannot
"buy" them the way we buy phone lines.
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cmcgee
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response 15 of 78:
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Jul 7 12:29 UTC 1999 |
As a regular dialer-in, I personally don't think we need more phone lines.
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dpc
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response 16 of 78:
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Jul 7 15:25 UTC 1999 |
Me, neither.
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mcnally
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response 17 of 78:
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Jul 7 16:43 UTC 1999 |
I can't recall the last time I got a busy signal on the local dial-ins..
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janc
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response 18 of 78:
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Jul 8 20:05 UTC 1999 |
I think the only way adding dialins would be interesting would be if
they were added in some other city.
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toking
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response 19 of 78:
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Jul 8 20:11 UTC 1999 |
resp:18 that would most deffinately be cool
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ryan
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response 20 of 78:
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Jul 8 20:24 UTC 1999 |
This response has been erased.
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lilmo
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response 21 of 78:
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Jul 8 21:08 UTC 1999 |
Add one in Blacksburg, and I'll call in every day. Hmm... maybe that's not
such a good idea; I do need to get SOME sleep. At least the library closes
every night, and I *have* to leave.
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richard
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response 22 of 78:
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Jul 8 21:20 UTC 1999 |
could add a dialin in columbus for grexohio...or perhaps in upstate
michigan somewhere
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aruba
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response 23 of 78:
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Jul 9 04:05 UTC 1999 |
I wonder how far afield we could add lines and still have them be on our
Centrex system?
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hhsrat
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response 24 of 78:
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Jul 9 04:33 UTC 1999 |
Probably not too far, but I don't know anything about centrex or phones.
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krj
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response 25 of 78:
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Jul 9 04:37 UTC 1999 |
I think it's called OPX Centrex, Off-Premises Extension. MSU, my employer,
has some scattered around. The problem is that there is a per-mile charge
every month.
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mdw
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response 26 of 78:
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Jul 9 05:40 UTC 1999 |
If we wanted to do dialups elsewhere, there are 2 ways that make the
mose sense to consider: (1) locate some sort of terminal server with the
modems, buy an extra phoneline or ISDN line, and connect it up to the
internet, (2) make a deal with some ISP (such as merit) to share the use
of their dial-ups. Both of these cost money. It's not clear to me that
the economics of operating dialups is all that compelling.
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jep
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response 27 of 78:
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Jul 9 13:34 UTC 1999 |
I don't see why there's any need for Grex to add dial-ups anywhere else.
How many people could be expected to use them? The people we'd be
trying to reach would be people with computers and modems, who want to
use Grex, but aren't interested in using the Internet (or who can't for
some reason -- incapable computers, insufficient available money to have
an ISP account, etc.)
I don't believe there's any place in the state where no ISP is
available, and darned few where there aren't multiple ISPs, so we
wouldn't be offering anything to people that they couldn't get another
way.
What's the point of this?
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janc
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response 28 of 78:
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Jul 9 16:26 UTC 1999 |
I'm not at all sure it would be a good idea - but like I said, it would
be interesting to consider.
It would offer something to people that they couldn't get other ways -
free internet access.
Grex's support is strongest here in Ann Arbor. Maybe we'd get more
support in other places if we had dial-ins in other places.
Probably we'd need someone with a full-time internet connection at some
remote place who was eager enough to do this to be willing to set up a
terminal server, and one or more modems and phone lines at their
location, and maintain them.
Not at all sure that it is useful or feasible, but it is certainly more
interesting that adding more Ann Arbor lines.
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janc
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response 29 of 78:
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Jul 9 16:36 UTC 1999 |
Actually, it would be an interesting idea for "the future of Grex".
Establish presences in other cities, maybe focusing at first on places
like Madison, Ithaca, and Austin. Not the major metropolises where
there are already so many services available, and not the small towns
where it would be hard to find a large enough core of people who'd be
interested in doing something like this, but the medium-sized college
communities.
It'd be challenging to try to make this work. We'd need to recruit
people in those places to seed things, and we'd need to raise seed money
to start setting things up. We'd need to find ways to do more of our
governance on-line so that we could involve people at remote sites.
You'd need to do better publicity than we ever have before to attract
users in those new cities. But it's been a while since Grex faced any
challenges. It could make Grex more fun to try something new.
It's kind of sad that the whole Grex/Arbornet concept never made it out
of Ann Arbor, and isn't very well known to the rest of the Internet.
This could be a way to push the concept of open access systems to a new
level.
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jazz
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response 30 of 78:
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Jul 9 16:49 UTC 1999 |
In the case of the WELL, it did.
The WELL changed considerably more with the times, however.
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aruba
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response 31 of 78:
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Jul 9 17:24 UTC 1999 |
The WELL was always a for-pay system, though, which attracts a different set
of people than Grex/Arbornet has.
While still considering the notion of setting up phone lines in other cities,
maybe it would make sense to set up whole other conferencing systems in other
cities. Perhaps Grex could loan money to make that possible. In the end it
might be good for us (not to mention good for the world in general) for Grex
to have more peers.
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