In <920604105803.21e01083 at ntet.nctr.fda.gov> WMELCHIOR at NTET.NCTR.FDA.GOV writes:
> >Yes, yes, yes... why encumber yourself with disk quota problems... imagine
> >
> >...
> >
> >Yes my friend. Your need a newsreader. Speak to your systems administrator
> >today... demand your networking rights.
>> I have been speaking to my sysop and others for a year, but we have a number
> of problems. Among the questions is the disk space required by a usenet feed.
> We currently have few Internet users on-site, so the powers-that-be feel that
> e-mail for the few of us would use less space than the feed. I'd appreciate
> some feedback: 1) What kind of expiration periods are common? 2) How much disk
> space is used by a typical usenet site? (I assume we'd not be subscribing to
> many of the groups, (.alt, etc?) but since I've never seen usenet, I'm not sure
> what's out there or what the volume is.)
>> Thanks, Bill
First of all, it's not necessary to have news items locally. If you or your
sysadmin set up an NNTP client, which gets its info from a remote server (where
they have invested in disk space for news), you can read news without worrying
about answers to the questions you pose above. Of course, this means you have
no control over those issues. However, since a client setup can be done
without allocating much in the way of system resources, you also get a way of
becoming involved with usenet before deciding to go 'the whole nine yards' of
becoming a news feed.
MJW
PS. RE: Netnews vs. Email subscriptions to newsgroups - If you don't read the
net frequently, you might miss something when items are expired and no longer
seen in the items list. With email, you get everything - so you can always
play catch up (no problem, right?) - but if you don't read the stuff, you have
to throw it out yourself. So pick your poison: read the net (with some
frequency) or get the info via email (and be your own housekeeper).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
/ Michael J. Weise, Ph.D. \ Univ.of Ga. BioScience Computing Facility \
( weise at bscf.uga.edu \ Dept.of Genetics UGa, Athens GA 30602 )
\ _ _ _'Tis_only_me_speak'n._ _\_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (706) 542-1409_ _ _ _ _ _ _ /
