One of the characteristics I like about the Internet is that it acts as a
marketplace of information -- good/useful information gets promulgated,
bad/useless information dies off. Someone who persists in maintaining
caching policies on their WWW server that ensures that out-of-date
information is the only information on that server :) will be ostracized by
the Internet community, shunned by their house pets, etc.
There exists a balance between having the most up-to-date information and
spending the least amount of money for that information. The balance cannot
be tilted too far one way or the other without people reacting to it -- the
creation of caching servers in the case of spending the least money, and the
general ostracizing/ignoring/shunning etc. of Internet resources that are
woefully out of date.
<soapbox>
Markets (including markets of ideas/information) are not perfect, but
because of the sheer number of equations required to analyze a market, they
work better than any centralized scheme (Weinberg's "Law of Medium
Numbers").
</soapbox>
======================================================================
Mark Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN
"Just as you should not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
traveling 65 mph filled with 8mm tapes, you should not overestimate
the bandwidth of FTP by mail."