Irving Anellis asks:
Is
there a possibility of setting up a dedicated server for Arisbe at your
university, at the Peirce Edition Project offices in Indy, or some
similar venue such as the Peirce Project at U Montreal or some other
university?
If I can figure out the technicalities of how we might incorporate it into the Peirce Publishing web site at
http://www.peircepublishing.com, I'd be willing to give it free space as a public service to our community.
REPLY:
Thanks very much for your offer, Irving. I should be finding out
today whether or not the change in management at my local ISP,
The Door, to a nationally based ISP called "Windstream", will
involve a reinstatement of a hosting commitment there, and if so at
what expense. The Door was doing it pro bono, the new company
probably not. Since ARISBE is not a huge site, compared to some
-- it uses a little less than 70 megabytes of space, which is not much
anymore -- the monthly fee will probably be pretty small, small enough
at least to stay with them for a little longer even at my own expense,
if necessary. But the real need is to establish both ARISBE and
PEIRCE-L on the same server and to integrate them as effectively as
possible. Just how this is to be done is not at all clear to me,
simply as a question of efficieny of function, But on the
technical side, it will also entail
getting a first-rate listserver program, such as the one that used to
be called "listserv", for example -- I forget the current name
for it -- that has an archival system which is more usable than any
others I am acquainted with, which requires quite a bit more
money for the deluxe version. But that is what is needed as far
as
the list server goes. (Although it is questionable
whether I can actually retrieve all of the old messages -- going back
to August 1993 -- from the computing people at Texas
Tech, who have changed the server system several times over the years
and never yet lived up to their obligation to port the archives from
server to server when they did so, I have copies myself of
nearly everything from the beginning, perhaps with an occasional loss
of a few messages at certain times but with no big gaps; but the
conversion of them into a common format will be a time consuming task
since ti cannot be fully automated. But it can be done and should
be done.) The upshot of all this is that what is really wanted is
a new home, as permanent as possible, for both ARISBE and the list, a
functional integration of them, and a reconstituting of the
archives for the list from its beginnings some thirteen years ago up to
the present..
Okay, one problem this poses is that it seems clear that to do this right
is going to require making the combined server system self-sustaining
financially, and that raises the question of how, since I take it for
granted that neither the ARISBE website nor the PEIRCE-L list should
have any registration fee or any other impediment to universal access
and use. My non-expert impression is that although there is not
much problem with the maintenance of a server for a website like ARISBE
as it presently stands, the same cannot be said for a list server
owing, first, to the many technical complications which email systems
introduce under the best of conditions, and second, to the fact that
the onslaught of spammers, invasive and malicious hackers, and the like
is both constant and is constantly changing as regards the kind of
invasive and destructive strategies being used and likely to continue
at the same or even greater pace into the indefinite future as spies
and saboteurs of every type -- governmental, commercial, religious fanatics, and
miscellaneous indiividual nihilists, cranks, and adventurers --
continue to figure out new ways to eavesdrop and sometimes simply
disrupt communication of every sort.
In short, it is
my impression that it is probably unwise for well-intentioned
individuals such as yourself, with small business or non-commercial
organizations or projects, to take on the responsibility for
maintaining list servers in particular, since they are a constant
headache and are not likely to be any less so for the foreseeable
future.
This then raises the question of what
sort of institutions should be turned to for hosting these things, and
of course one immediately thinks of universities as the natural home
for such entities. However, the problem with that is that
universities are, as a general rule, no less unscrupulous in respect to
any matters that they regard as part of their proper concern than
commercial organizations or governments (and of course they sometimes
are just a part of a governmental system). There are no doubt
exceptions to this, but this has little to do with their prestige as
universities and if you do not know the inner workings of the given
university you cannot know which are and which are not scrupulous in
the way you want them to be. Far from it being the case that you
can turn to universities for protection; you must on the contrary be
especially alert to unwanted activities on their part now because of
the privatization movement, which has reduced most of them to little
more than commercial enterprises, ruled by the financial profit
motive in every aspect of their operation. Now, every form of
communication can be construed as publication, legally regarded,
including our forum discussions, and so also for every
item that goes up on an archive system, and the
universities are constantly reconsidering what they can and cannot get
away with treating as their own intellectual property to do with as they please, depending
upon whether they think any such property has any possible monetary
value. Then, too, there is the constantly growing monitoring of
all communicational activities for purposes of "natural security". so
that the distinction between what is governmental and what is not is
increasingly an illusion, in any case. In sum, on this point,
then, it is not at all clear that it is prudent to turn to a
university institution as a host since the apparent protection there is
usually quite unreal, and there is very little way of knowing which, if
any, of them actually practices what it nominally preaches about the
protecion of freedom of speech. I should add, too,
that what tends to make universities particularly
untrustworthy is that they are among the most highly protected of all
institutions from lawsuits. If you want to commit a major crime
a university campus is a good site for the purpose since judges
are loathe to try to penetrate through the thickets of
obscurantist legalisms that university lawyers have at their disposal
for eliminating unwanted probes of the way they run their business.
What this seems to me to point to is the need to establish the website
and the list at some legally independent place by establishing a
non-profit organization that contracts with some reasonably reliable
commercial IT service to provide the daily maintenance and the routine
technical upgrading that is required to keep abreast of the changes and
take advantages of the opportunities which the continuing development's
in communications technology offer.. That is something that requies a
financial solution as well as a technical and functional one. For
this reason it seems best to
buy a little time right now to prepare for making such a major move by
staying temporarily with the people who are taking over the hosting for
The Door, if they will continue to host ARISBE and maintain address
continuity so that when people go to the old address they will
automatically be redirected (by aliasing or whatever). As I said,
I should be able to find out about that today.
So thanks again, for your offer, Irving, and thanks also to another
liist member who contacted me off-list with a similar offer to host
ARISBE, as least temporarily. I am sure that there are still
others who can be counted upon to be similarly generous in helping to
sustain the basis on-line for our discussions here and for Peirce
studies generally.
Joe Ransdell manager of PEIRCE-L and the website ARISBE
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Cc: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 8:33:40 AM
Subject: [peirce-l]Re: [peirce-l] Arisbe archives availability
Jamie, Joe,
Is there a possibility of setting up a dedicated server for Arisbe
at your university, at the Peirce Edition Project offices in Indy, or
some similar venue such as the Peirce Project at U Montreal or some
other university?
If I can figure out the technicalities of how we might incorporate it into the Peirce Publishing web site at http://www.peircepublishing.com, I'd be willing to give it free space as a public service to our community.
Irving
Irving Anellis
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.peircepublishing.com
On Tue Oct 3 4:44 , Jaime Nubiola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent:
Dear colleagues,
While Arisbe is down, it is possible the get access to how
was Arisbe in March 2005 and earlier, through the Internet Archive
WayBackMachine (http://www.archive.org/index.php).
Best,
Jaime
Denis and list:
The ARISBE website is temporarily down, with a possibility that it
might be permanently down at its present location and have to be
reopened elsewhere. The Door -- the IPS that has been
hosting it gratis -- was apparently taken over by a national networking
company and it may not be possible -- or desirable if it is
possible -- to keep it going there. I am waiting to hear
back from somebody at The Door on this, and will let everybody know on
this as soon as I find out something.
Two things important to understand: first, I have several complete up-to-date copies of the website stored on several different media
and restoration is just a matter of pushing a few buttons once suitable
arrangements are made, which I will do as quickly as possible if it is
necessary to move it in order to restore it. I don't want to make
more than one such move, though, because of the complications and
possible confusions implicit in such a move.
Second, the PEIRCE-L forum is not systemically connected with the ARISBE website and whatever happens there has no effect on the workings of the listserver which provides the physical basis of this forum.
Joe Ransdell -- manager of PEIRCE-L and of the website ARISBE
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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