Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp From: tp@mccall.com Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: <3070.2694591f@mccall.com> Date: 6 Jul 90 09:25:50 GMT References: <1990Jun28.164938.23367@DSI.COM> <3008.268b1e9a@mccall.com> <1990Jul5.005618.17046@techbook.com> Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 51 In article <1990Jul5.005618.17046@techbook.com>, jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: > In article <3008.268b1e9a@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com writes: >>Since most internet sites that are willing to be forwarders insist on a >>direct connection, many sites are left out in the cold. There either is a >>willing internet site local to you or there isn't. If there isn't, and you >>can't spend the LD, you're stuck. > > Ah, c'mon. You call once a night long-distance to pick up your mail and drop > off anything that you want to go out. If there's nothing there, you get > nicked for a one-minute phone call. Assuming that the worst case is $.20 a > minute for that call, and there are 30 days in a month, you're looking at > $6 a month. Figure that there will be mail coming or going the other times, > and you're probably up to $10 a month. That's the worst case, assuming that > you can't find anyone else in your neck of the woods to group together in a > park and that absolutely none of your local Internet folk are friendly. First, remember we are talking about calling LD and registering, vs. a free local call and not registering (I know local call's aren't always free, but they are usually cheaper than LD). 1) If you work at a company, and want to spend money, you have to justify it. This is often a much bigger roadblock than the dollar figure itself. 2) I had a once a night LD link from Kansas to California. It was so unreliable (i.e. I could only get through sometimes, so some mail got bounced for sitting around too long) that I got thrown off of mailing lists. And it still always cost me $20-$30 per month, bare minimum (maybe higher costs for business lines? I dunno. I paid around a dollar for the first minute.) 3) I tried to call several times per night to avoid this problem. The cost of the 1 minute phone calls adds up fast if you do 3 or 4 per night. I ran into my $100 limit per month, and had to go back to the above alternative. I also started real hard looking for a local uucp link. As I said, I'm lucky, as there is a site in town that can/will MX for me. 4) Getting together a park still assumes that someone in the park can get mail forwarded via MX. You're just shifting the problem to someone else (which may or may not help at all). 5) You may not even have any local internet folk. And even if you do, it is not at all unlikely that they will be unfriendly. It happened to me. I had a modem in New York City, and had actually set up forwarding with rutgers in New Jersey before one guy in the city changed his mind (he didn't even answer my mail for 3 weeks, later said he read it but was too busy to answer, and if I hadn't found anyone else, he'd do it, but it would be a while before he could get around to it. REAL friendly). -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA