From: ransdell@door.net [mailto:ransdell@door.net]

The only thing that raises any questions to me in what Stevan says [about LANL] is the part about the "cowboy front end" and the need for a "face-lift". If that means nothing more than a more intuitive and attractive interface, that's fine; but since that would doubtless be occurring in due time, anyway, I wonder if there are any additional qualifications or prior agreements or conditions that might be involved in the emerging plan. The Scholar's Forum Proposal was difficult to decipher in this respect, but I could not find the LANL open access to deposit and retrieval anywhere in that plan when I looked for it in the attached operational flow-chart, nor, as I pointed out in a message to the AMSCI forum, did I find that the principle of unrestricted deposit and retrieval was mentioned when the Proposal listed out what the proposers deemed to be the important features of the xxx server system. A trivial detail like that could be devilishly important.

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Joseph Ransdell <ransdell@door.net> or <bnjmr@ttu.edu>

Dept of Philosophy Texas Tech Univ. Lubbock TX 79409

(806) 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax

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