I would like to respond to the editorial “Conserve Your KaZaA” on Thursday, Oct. 17 (p. 5). I believe that the Hatchet’s reaction to the (limited bandwidth) situation was hasty. The article did not have a balance of research from outside the walls of GW. Instead of immediately jumping on the bandwagon, take a moment to review the bigger picture.
Bandwidth is cheap. It is getting cheaper everyday, hence one of the reasons for the enormous telecom meltdown you may have heard about. Is the University engaging in discussions with their Internet service provider and internal infrastructure organizations to increase network capacity?
How are other schools contending with the issue of KaZaA? GW is not in this alone. Every school in the nation, most ISPs and some corporations are dealing with this issue.
Universities are intended to be places where highly intelligent people gather and solve difficult problems. Has the University gone to faculty or students to help solve the problem, if the staff can’t do it?
This is a short-term problem. Hiding it behind bandwidth restrictions creates other problems and only delays the inevitable. GW needs to start looking ahead with respect to student computing requirements to stay on the cutting edge.
-Mark Witczak
graduate student