🚀 go-pugleaf

In <19960428.7251F30.C168@Jadzia.OzEmail.com.au>, Jadzia Dax Fan <dax@OzEmail.com.au> writes:
>
>Some thoughts for the "Electronic Freedom March on NSW Parliament" leaflet:
>
>>The Carr government doesn't understand this. It wants to spend hundreds
>>of millions to put in policemen with eavesdropping equipment all over
>>NSW.
>
>I think that you should really play up the costs involved in attempting to
>police this sort of legislation, both the technology required, and the man
>(sorry that should be person) hours required to scan/read through the
>hundreds of mega bytes of information added to the net daily looking for
>"offensive" material.

I did this, as a quick exercise, based on Alta Vista's figures of number of Web 
pages, growth rate exteapolated from there. the results were rather fun (!).

Allowing 1minute to address the URL, have the page d/l, and read it (rather 
optimistic, but to err on the side of caution is a good idea), I came up with:

There were at the time approx 22,000,000 pages registered with Alta Vista, 
and the 3 monthly growth rate was approx 12%, as has been reported elsewhere.

The initial 22,000,000 pages, at 10 minutes each, would take:
3,666,667 hours to read
or 97,778 man weeks at 37.5 hours/week.

To read them all in 3 months would take a staff - working the full 37.5 hours, 
with no breaks, no sick leave etc - of 7520.

This means 7520 terminals, no breakdowns, no problems, as well as the indians.
It would also require a number of Chiefs, of course, bu thte formula used in
public service is unkown to me, so I won't try to estimate that.

Now that would allow the pages to be read. Clasifying them may take a little
longer, of course - isn't it a good thing the Web is never slow???, or the figures
could be out by a significant amount. I have seen over 20 minutes just to load
a page, and then some pages take quite a long time to read. One I read the 
other day took me over an hour.

Still, who wants realism, in this scenario?

By December this year (these figures were worked out in March, and 
may have changed a little) there would be a need for a minimum of 8,140 full time
terminal staff, 8,140 terminals, and the number rising continually.

Now as we all know, no-one can work that much non-stop,  and machines do 
go down, and the Net sometimes has hiccups. So the figures are grossly 
understated.

One must also factor in sick leave, tea breaks, annual leave, maternity leave, 
phone calls, etc etc etc. In fact, anything that can interrupt these dedicated 
people.

This staff will need appropriate training, of course. If it takes as little as a
week to train them, it will still put the initial part of the project back, and
therefore the numbers will need to be further increased.

There will also need to be a suitable place where such a number of 
terminals, and staff can be housed.

I really don't think they thought about the logistics, did they? This would soon 
be one of the biggest deptarments in the public service, giver the rate of growth.

And don't forget, this is just the Web. Newsgroups - over 18,000 of them. Ftp sites
are not included. (I wonder if the sunsite RTFM directory is now illegal?).

In fact, the majority of the Net is ignored in this summary. Heigh-ho, *what* a 
clever plan.

>
>This more than anything could sway people if they can be convinced that
>it is a great waste of money that could be used on better things, for
>example: hospitals, health, education, public services, etc.
>
>
>>(1) The government wants to protect children from the naughty things on the 
>>Internet.
>>(2) The government is pushing children onto the Internet through the education
>>deptartments.
>>(3) Is the government being responsible in (2)?
>>(4) Why is the government trying to get kids on-line, if the Internet is so bad?
>>(5) Why should the government actions in (2) result in the *adults* being told 
>>>what they can and cannot see, and what they can and cannot read?
>>(6) Why are parents allowing (2) to happen, if they are worried about the 
>>materials the kids will be exposed to?
>
>These are very good points which probably should be emphasized more.  If the
>internet is so bad, why are the various government educational facilities
>pushing to get school kids connected???????

So they can censor the Net? Just a thought.

TTYL,

Marjorie
Chief Noid
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/
http://www.netprophet.co.nz/
*coming soon!* http://www.netfreedom.org.au/ *at an ISP near you*