[9274] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Cost vs benefit of internet services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon Dec 27 18:44:02 1993
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1993 18:43:32 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: dfazio@mr.net
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Dennis Fazio's message of Mon, 27 Dec 1993 16:18:01 -0600 (CST) <9312272218.AA26953@riverside.mr.net>
>From: dfazio@mr.net (Dennis Fazio)
>1. That the host-based provider has done a good job at providing a custom
>interface that shields subscribers from Unix (except for those either macho
>enough or masochistic enough to demand it and have the need for the power
>and flexibility it provides) and gives them a nice easy to navigate and use
>system for mail, news and file fetching.
Oh please, this is religion.
Do you base this on anything more than your own personal beliefs?
There must be, by now, well over 100,000 public access unix accounts
using primarily the unix shell out there, and that number is growing
rapidly. I suppose one can simply cite a higher number and say, oh
yeah, well there aren't 100,001 accounts, how come?! Look around at
where the market has gone and is going. This is no longer 1983 when
unix was odd man out, there are facts and figures to work with that
are becoming overwhelming, almost every major computer vendor in the
world is a Unix vendor, or trying to become one. Time to smell the
coffee.
Please explain to us how much more difficult the unix shell is to
fathom then, say, DOS. Or perhaps explain the concomitant unpopularity
and unfathomability of DOS...
Sure, people would like more GUI-ish software to help them get
started, and to help them do certain things. But GUI's aren't foreign
to Unix, so it shall come to be.
Next someone will be trying to convince us that a device which
requires you to type in 7-14 digits to contact others is far too
difficult for anyone to learn to use...
I tend to agree with your other assertions about providing SLIP
packages to customers.
-Barry Shein
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