JT> I recall some ISPs (ozemail I think) offered an el-cheapo
JT> service as long as you only used it for email, and then you
JT> couldn't attach files, were limited on total number of messages
JT> AND bandwidth AND you had to fork out five bucks a month. I
JT> don't even know if such a service is still available. (I don't
JT> think it is) It was a rip-off then, and would still be a
JT> rip-off now. When it comes to low useage, no ISP offers value
JT> for money. 

 Yair... the cheapest I've seen was $9.99 and then you had to sign up
for 12 months. I don't blame them. Everyone seems to want unlimited,
and after they download a bit of porn they only use it for e-mail.

JT> The dream to bring the internet into every home is bullshit. An
JT> american ISP did some research on tapping the market that was
JT> left over. They found that of those who HAD a computer, was not
JT> already connected to the net, AND expressed wishes to connect
JT> to the net (that is, they didn't flatly refuse it), pretty much
JT> completely described the senior citizen demographic. That's why
JT> you saw AOL (and bigpond if I recall) a while back advertising
JT> heavily to seniors.

 The reality is time. Who's got time to spare? Kids after school and
wrinklies. Wrinklies need extra time... have you ever seen them
shopping? Talk about freeze-frame!

JT> Duh. I'm not surpised that bubble burst. Look at the model they
JT> were pushing (web as entertainment) to what demographic (the
JT> oldies who's best fun can be found associating with other
JT> seniors while playing bingo).

 I visit Mum in the nursing home (no intenet, btw) and in the common
room you have one poor nurse trying to stir up interest (playing
bingo or something), a couple of younger stroke victims doing
crosswords one handed, a few stray loonies wandering, and the genuine
oldies collapsed in their chair asleep! (including Mum)

 Why don't they get real? No one wants to be old. If they want to
encourage oldies to use the Net, they ought to show them how easy it
is to get porn. That's all the net is good for anyway... porn, kids
games, e-mail, and upgrades for software that will never work right
anyway.

JT> Now that I mention it, I also recall bigpond had a model that
JT> supported 10 emails a month, with no file attachments, (and
JT> tight limits on message lengths), AND limits on incoming
JT> messages, for free. (well you had to use specific windows based
JT> software + 25c per call).

 Ten a month! That's insane. I have no problem with the Windows
(except it's probably linked into spam).

JT> Who was going to fork out for a computer, a modem, face the
JT> learning curve, to take advantage of a "free" (25c per call)
JT> mail service and then only up to ten damn messages a month,
JT> where the EXISTING alternative is 45c for a postage stamp, no
JT> computer, no modem, and no learning curve? 

 About half, is the answer. You have to understand that about half
the population will use any new technology, no matter how fucking
useless it is. Do you realise that about half the people with dogs
pick up their shit and put it in their pocket? 

 I had a confidential report from the Railways that listed problems
with employeees, and when you aded it up, 20% of the population were
either crazy or just stupid. Twenty years later, it's nearer to 50%.

JT> But no, it appears no-one has learned their lesson yet. Others
JT> (the ones who haven't learned yet) have been, and are still
JT> pushing dedicated email boxes that plug into your phone. The
JT> boxes cost about $1K (or you can pay a bit more and have a full
JT> blown PC that does more) PLUS regular charges (replace them
JT> with a standard ISP), for an email service that ONLY removes
JT> the learning curve (you don't have to learn windows to send and
JT> receive email). 

 E-mail is an ideal way to stay in touch with people asynchronously.
No need to pick a time, no need to let a conversation drag on when
neither wants to tell the other to bugger off. BBS-style e-mail is
even better, where you can talk to an entire group at your own
convenience, set up meetings, that sort of thing...

> I'm actually surprised that someone has not set up a new sort of
> BBS for "free" mail. Surely Telstra could do it, and make their
> money on the actual local calls.

JT> See above. They haven't learned that people aren't stupid
JT> enough to shell out $1000 plus monthly charges just so they can
JT> replace snail mail. 

 I don't think it's the money (see 50% above). The BBS was always
simple. The sysop told you what software to download, and all you had
to do was learn to type a bit. It started out with enthusiasts
stealing software (that never worked right), but what lasted longest
was the offline mail... because it is fun! Best of all, the only way
to get replies was to have a positive IQ. It filtered out the silly
kids and dills.

> But we're not talking about data transfer... just MAIL. As soon
> as you want a system that moves megabytes, or allows users
> "permanently" online, then a BBS is useless. But you don't need
> that for mail. Live mail (chat room) is bloody stupid.

JT> No, live chat on BBSs didn't work. IRC which does work for
JT> chat, has replaced it, and effectively at that.

 If God had meant us to have chat rooms he would not have invented
the telephone. I've never understood why people would rather type than
talk. For me, the attraction of e-mail is OFFLINE. It gives you time
to think about what you've just said and remove *some* of the offence.
The written word can never replace speech, or God would have invented
monkeys with a keyboard attached (something like a yuppie with a
notepad).

JT> There is nothing quick about it. The only available models were
JT> limited to 10 messages a month, which means you weren't going
JT> to shell out 25c every day to check your email.

 That's just silly. What on earth was Telstra's problem with a mail
packet? Telstra worries me. It's no wonder that their shares hit $4,
they are living in cloudcuckooland.

> I really don't know why Telstra (or Optus) doesn't do it.

JT> BECAUSE THEY CAN'T MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT.

 Telstra makes its money out of local calls. If they matched the BBS
with 100,000 extra local calls a day, that's $46M a year! At no extra
cost for them... all profit.

 That's why I keep saying that Telstra is stupid! They could offer a
full *LOCAL* internet service on top of the BBS. All they need is a
server to hold a gigabyte of porn, a few Microsoft "upgrades" and
that's it. Why do you need a satellite, except once a day for a few
minutes upgrading? 

JT> If you were telstra, would you spend money for the
JT> infrastructure, to suit a market that was going to pay nothing
JT> per month, when you have users that are happy to shell out $75+
JT> in the same time but to move gigs?

 For $50M a year... yes I would. But then I can do simple sums and it
seems that you and Telstra can't.

JT> Even the free Bigpond email model was flawed. It was clear to
JT> me then (I checked it at the time) that it was nothing more
JT> than a push for their "standard" internet models. They offered
JT> a free service that was limited to the point of being useless,
JT> just to push users to an existing paying model. 

 Nothing is free. I'd suspect that Telstra makes more out of its
local calls *connecting* to Bogpond, than they make out of Bogppond
subscriptions.

JT> It was in essence, an ineffective advertising technique, for a
JT> VERY small niche, advertising their MINIMUM internet service
JT> (low bandwith dialup). It was doomed from the start.

 Ten a month is just silly. In the old BBS days, we had 100,000
people dialling every day! Telstra could expect to do even better than
that.

> Yes. I accept that Fido is dying, but it's a shame. All the
> Internet offers for mail is netmail... person-to-person, but as
> you know, that was the very least of the BBS. Its strength was
> its areas, and the way we got to know *who* we were talking to,
> often personally. A newsgroup is *nothing* like an Area. It would
> be possible to set that up within the Internet, but it hasn't
> happened.

JT> They are effectively the same, how are they different? AVTech
JT> is a niche (a bunch of tech heads who mostly don't talk about
JT> tech head issues). How do you propose to duplicate that on the
JT> net? Oh look, it's already been done. I'm using it RIGHT NOW.

 No... you took AVT and *moved* it to the Net. Even then, I miss your
mail the first time through (no To: line). I admit I could fix that if
I rewrote my sofware. How does anyone on the Internet find AVT? On the
old BBS, all they had to do was mark the area (usually accidentally).
On the Net, you have to go to one of the carriers and how do you even
know they exist?

> When Fido dies, I'm outa here. The Net offers nothing to me. I
> don't trust the data flying about. If I need information I'd
> rather buy an encyclopoedia CD - at least I'd know it's mostly
> right.

JT> Except that it's so hopelessly brief and out of date that it's
JT> useless? 

 Not so. And the encyclopaedia gives references anyway.

 Really. I do not trust the Net. People seem to believe anythign they
read there... "look it up" is the catchcry, and they never know who
put the misinformation there. Gee. How easy is it for the USA to start
a war? I reckon they ought to invade Iraq...

 BTW, have you noticed how Johnny Condom and Poofter Blair fall in
behind George Dubya? He's stopped calling for Weapons of Mass
Delusion, now he's calling for "complete disarmament." Since when did
the UN call for disarmament? Where did the word "disarmament" come
from, When did it stop being weapons of mass media?

 The answer ... since George Dubya had 300,000 troops on the ground.
From day-1, I've been waiting for 300,000 as the magic number. Ypou
just can't invade a country with parity of forces... Montgomery liked
a 4:1 superiority and Stormin' Norman had 600,000 men. He didn't have
to take two major cities, either.

 If I were Saddam (being an utter bastard), I'd move all my troops
into the suburbs, billeted in private houses, and make the US kill the
entire population.

> E-mail is useful, but I'm not going to pay $40 a month on Netmail
> so I can save a fifty-cent stamp.

JT> So we agree? :-)

 No... I was talking about Internet e-mail, not BBS e-mail. At its
peak before I went to weekly rather than daily, I was spending nearly
that much on local calls anyway.

> They don;t tell *you* John, there is no "To" field, they tell the
> group and all you have to do is read everything on that subject,
> which probably runb to 5,000 messages so youy trust Gates' search
> engine and miss most of them.

JT> Yes Bob, they DO tell *you*.

 As Netmail, John. You keep explaining things to me as if I've never
used the Fucking Net. I was using it ten years ago when the Sydney
PCUG still existed... when the BBS was carrying the Net, to help it
get started! There's irony...

> What's this... the ZEN echo? OF COURSE there are right and wrong
> answers. What's two plus two? Only one answer, bubba...

JT> You're not paying your accountant enough. :-)

 I got a letter from the Tax Office telling me I'd cheated them of
$1200 dollars-odd. For one horrible moment, I thought they'd caught
me! My creative deductions still hold, apparently...

JT> If you're asking about an answer that YOU can get out of a
JT> datasheet, then why aren't you reading it yourself? The most
JT> used phrase is RTFM.

 I WROTE TFM!

JT> If you're asking what options one has on solving a generic
JT> problem, or what solutions people have used to solve any
JT> particular problem, then there is more than one answer. And I'd
JT> bloody well hope so too. 

 Then why did everyone here tell em the same thing about the flash
RAM backup? Of course, if Rod Speed still lived in the real world,
he'd have had another opinion...

> In other words, you have to know the answer before you ask the
> question? Are you into Zen now, John? What's the sound of one
> hand clapping? I've always wondered about that. And you do you
> get clap on your hand anyway?

JT> RTFM.

 I WRTM.

> UUCP is a very *cheap* transport system, very similar to Fido.

JT> It's no different from any other transport system other than
JT> the protocols are different. It's just no-one offered it as a
JT> paying model. 

 Do you know what UUCP is? It is *nothing* like HTTP or SLIP.

JT> Again, why should you offer UUCP for free to ten users, when
JT> you have a hundred users that are happy to pay for PPP?

 You've just answered your own question.,.. it's called a BBS.

> I've been using a computer since the 80's, and only once have I
> lost power. Once in twenty years. Who wants to back their battery
> against the power stations?

JT> I do. Since the first time it caused me to loose a couple of
JT> months worth of work.

 The answer is called daily differential backups. Back in the
jurassic, it took minutes to backup a megabyte; now it takes seconds.
UPS does *not* guarantee a seamless save oif the battery is half=dead
and the software misses the first part anyway.

JT> When I first lost power, we were getting power outages every
JT> six months or so (at least glitches anyway). Now it's more like
JT> one power outage ever 5+ years, and then only due to freak
JT> storms and such. 

 Twenty years ago, there was a period of unreliable mains, but as I
said, that was 20 years ago. Would you bet on a 20-year-old UPS
battery? 20 years ago, that's what I did for a living... designing a
foolproof UPS and I became convinced such a thing did not exist
unless you went to extremes and had someone test the system daily.. in
which case that person could simply so a backup anyway, and kick the
UPS out the window. It was good for lightning strikes...

> What's the worst thing that can happen if you pull the plug? You
> lose what was in the RAM at the time. Big deal. Then the power
> comes back on. What happens? It reboots.

JT> You're thinking workstations. Difficult to justify a UPS for a
JT> workstation for anything except the most mission critical
JT> applications. Servers on the other hand? Who serve hundreds of
JT> users?

 You're right... I was not talking about servers, or mainframes, or
even NSA at Fort Meade. I was not even talking about workstations...
just PCs.

Regards,
Bob









         



         

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5