From: shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 94 22:08:50 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
Message-ID: <v0151010dab16d64a9ad1@[192.0.2.1]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Tim wrote:

>It may be backward, but it is how a huge fraction of the list accesses
>the Net. Am I wrong on this? Dial-up access to local POPs is a fact of
>life for many, many people. Do a "who cypherpunks" on the list and
>look at the sites. Many will be dial-ups, others will be access to
>university machines, via dial-ups, etc. Others will be a mix of
>corporate machines, some with better connectivity than others, and
>many with proprietary e-mail systems, such as VAXMail and the like. My
>guess is that fewer than 20% of the list are directly SLIP- or
>PPP-connected, with good access to the tools praised here by Amanda,
>Perry, you, and others.

I have the same type of shell account with Netcom that you have. However,
thanks to The Internet Adapter I turned that shell account into a SLIP
connection. If you have a shell account, you can convert it into a SLIP
account. It is as simple as that. Not that it mattered much for MIME email.
Eudora can handle that via dial-up just as well. Sure helps for browsers,
though. Accessing the web through Lynx is a joke. Even if you have image
loading turned off in the browser to conserve bandwidth, _anything_ is
better than Lynx.

>It might be a good idea to get some real statistics on this. We did
>this a couple of years ago, and there was talk about doing it again.
>
>For reasons I just addressed in another post, I foresee being on a
>dial-up (not a SLIP or PPP, that is) for a while. And I have relatively
>few complaints about it. My service provider keeps the 9446 current
>newsgroups, provides ftp and suchlike tools, and I don't have to be a
>sysadmin. Frankly, if I have to choose between not being able to see
>someone's MIMEd GIF and becoming a Unix sysadmin for my own site, I'll
>skip the GIFs.

Perhaps we can find some common ground here. You don't want to have to use
UNIX. You like your Mac, don't you? So why interact with a lousy terminal
server if you can do all the things you can do there - and more - the Mac
way? Think about it. All the benefits of a Mac interface without giving up
the benefits you get from Netcom. (No, I don't work for TIA. I am just a
VERY satisfied customer.)

>Even Perry admits to using emacs, and Unix mailers like elm are not
>exactly oxen. (I have a choice of several mailers, the usual ones. Big
>deal.) I also have commercial Eudora, the PowerMac version no less, so
>my offline mailer is adequate. This still doesn't mean non-ASCII
>(graphics, fancy fonts, equations) can be plausible placed in
>messages--and communicated to the list for reading/viewing.

Any of the mailers that you can use on a shell are oxen. Anything that can
be used over a VT100 emulator is an oxen. (At least where non-ASCII display
data is concerned).


>I'd like to see some evidence that I am one of the last of my tribe.
>
>Call me Ishi.

You are fighting a lost cause and you know it. VT100 is dead. No, you are
not the last of your tribe. I should hope that you have the good sense to
come around before that happens. All your friends here sure hope for it.


-- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.