[908] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Zen II and "exploiting the market"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Elizabeth Lane)
Mon Aug 3 16:49:57 1992
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1992 15:07:09 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: Elizabeth Lane <ELANE3@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri,
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:10:12 CDT Michael S. Hart said:
>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)
It is only "elementary in the extreme" if we accept several premises that
I feel are flawed. The first is that anyone who has gotten an Internet
account will automatically get an introduction to their local mailer. There
are scads of people at every institution I have ever been affiliated with
who could use their accounts only for the most rudimentary of actions, and
have been given no assistance by local computing centers. The second is
that everyone with understanding of e-mail is (1) aware of and (2)
in possession of documentation for the e-mail servers. The third is that
said users will have sufficient disk space to retrieve a 175K file; often
new users are given paltry disk space allocations. The fourth is that they
will have no trouble converting the e-mail messages to a readable file that
they can consult while "surfing the net."
>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
What about the many people who are forced to use dumb terminals as their
only access to the net? *Not* everyone has a PC of their own, and those
of us who take them for granted need to remember that when designing
informaton resources for "the rest of us." No, this doesn't mean we shoudn't
take advantage of the tools we have. But it does mean we could be a bit
more tolerant of new users who do not have the resources Michael seems to
assume are available to all new Internet users.
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