[892] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Zen II and "exploiting the market"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Hart)
Fri Jul 31 18:30:54 1992
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:10:12 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 30 Jul 1992 11:19:57 CDT from <ALILESTE@IDBSU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The "chicken and the egg" syndrome of online Internet guides is somewhat
prevalent, and also somewhat misleading; anyone who gets an account will
be beyond a generic introduction to their specific mailer, but they will
get a local introduction to their mailer. From there it is elementary--
in the extreme, to send a message to various email servers which will do
an email of Zen or any file of that size. (Zen I is about 175K)
If the person is so much of a novice that they can't even send/receive a
single email message, then anything as general as the Internet guides is
not going get them over that threshold. Once over that threshold, all a
person needs is the simple instructions available in each of the Project
Gutenberg Newsletters and a wide variety of other sources.
Actually, the best reason I have heard for paper copies is that you will
have trouble using an etext manual at the same time you are running such
programs as you want help with. . .however, the simplest TSR (Terminate,
Stay Resident) programs such as SideKick provide easy access to the text
files, as do the more complex TSR's that come with the Norton Commander,
PCTools, etc. Even the oldest floppy only PC's can do this with ease; a
person can also write their own notes during the learning process and do
their own upgrades to the Internet guides as they go along, with the aid
of such TSR programs. In fact, we will be encouraging this for users of
"A Child's Garden of the Internet" which should be generally available a
few alpha and beta test versions from now in the middle of the Fall.
Right now the only versions are alpha versions, and not meant to be out,
but a few copies have obviously escaped. If you are not a contributor--
please don't ask for a copy yet, they will be highly publicized, and our
interactions with paper publishers have yielded permission to keep these
files on the networks where they belong, while simultaneously published,
in the normal sense.
=====================================================
Thank you for your interest,
Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532
No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC
