Hi Wise researchers, All mail sent to this list is now archived. The archives are open to all, both list subscribers and non-list subscribers. You will be able to search for surnames, locations, etc. You are free to go to the site & search the archives of this and other lists. The WISE list is less than 3 months old and has only a few messages so far (which I don't understand completely; we have 81 subscribers and there has been only a handful of messages). If you are only interested in the WISE archives, use this URL: <http://lists.rootsweb.com/~archiver/lists/WISE-L> You may want to scan some of the archives of the other rootsweb genealogy lists. This will give you the opportunity to view the material being discussed on a list before you subscribe. If you see topics of discussion which interest you, you may want to subscribe to that list. To check out the archives of other lists, use this URL: <http://lists.rootsweb.com/~archiver/lists> Among the many advantages to archiving are: 1. If you have to unsubscribe for a period of time, you can view messages that you missed by going to the archives. 2. A new subscriber can view messages that were posted previous to their subscribing to the list. 3. If you accidently delete a message you can go to the archives and retrieve and/or view the message. 4. You can preview a list before subscribing. VERY IMPORTANT One last message. As you all should be aware, our mailing lists are made possible by some very generous and very, very hardworking people at Rootsweb. Namely Karen Isaacson, Brian Leverich, Ben, Laurie, Marc Nozell, Tim Pierce, Barry Zurawicz, and others. Without the hard work and generosity of these people, our mailing lists, as such, would not exist. By way of comparison, Rootsweb (WITH A BUDGET OF $60,000/YEAR) ships substantially more bytes than www.familytreemaker.com and familytreemaker's budget runs over $500,000/year. What Rootsweb has managed to do reflects the efforts of all the volunteer Webmasters and listowners, and the volunteer system administrators. Looking at what we've done with $60,000, think about what we could do if most of the 300,000 online genealogists became Members or Sponsors. We could make a serious run at creating online resources to rival the Salt Lake City Family History Library. Real commercial main servers cost $10-60K or more. Surf to any VAR's Website. (A "VAR" is a value-added reseller -- that's where you go to buy off-the-shelf server boxes.) Brian hand built ours and managed to bring them in at about $6,000 a box, which is dead as cheaply as you can build these things without using schlock components. They've built four main servers in the last year (BL-12, BL-30, FP-1, FP-2), have one in reserve, and one under construction. That's $36,000 right there. Auxiliary servers run about $2-3,000 a pop, and they've built a number of those (BL-4, BL-5, BL-7, ns-245, wavegate, ... ). T1 pipes cost $2-3,000 per month in California. Surf to Pac Bell and any backbone provider's Web page to verify those costs. They have two of those, but their annual cost is less than $48-72,000 because they only buy the outbound side and ISPs use the inbounds. Routers, switches, and secure hubs run $1-3,000 a pop, and they have a number of these devices scattered over three NOCs. Uninterruptable power supplies and batteries run them $1-$2,000 each, and they have two sets of those. And a propane generator at the third NOC. Cables, backup tapes, and all the other odds and ends are also sort of frighteningly expensive when you add them all up. You shouldn't need a calculator to figure out where the $60,000 in expenses came from. With demand increasing at about 20% per month, it's sort of a no-brainer that next year will be at least as expensive as last year. And they're going to be adding a third and possibly a fourth T1 by the end of next year. Moreover, Brian would *really* like to bring at least one heavy-weight server on line for supporting search engines, and a box with a pair of big RAID-5 arrays and a gig of DRAM is going to wind up costing us at least $20,000 to build even with him handcrafting it. At least $20,000 of the money spent came out of the above people's pockets. Where does that leave us, the beneficiaries of these marvelous lists? We could help defray some of the $20,000 in out-of-pocket expenses that Brain and Karen have come up with so that Rootsweb may continue. If everyone who utilizes these list would send $5, $10 or $20 to Rootsweb, "the financial burden wouldn't be so great on so few". Another way to help is to become a Rootsweb Listowner. I know that as "Rooters", we spend this much and more on yearly postage alone. Please search your hearts & give what you can. Send contributions to: Rootsweb Genealogical Data Cooperative P.O. Box 6798 Frazier Park, CA 97333 Thanks guys and successful searching!