Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!mit-eddie!bbn.com!orc!decwrl!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mstar!mstar.morningstar.com!bob From: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: Date: 13 Jul 90 19:12:42 GMT References: <1990Jun28.164938.23367@DSI.COM> <3008.268b1e9a@mccall.com> <26669@ditka.UUCP> <7871@lynx.UUCP> <100@raysnec.UUCP> <269B82AE.415E@intercon.com> <104@raysnec.UUCP> Sender: usenet@MorningStar.COM (USENET Administrator) Reply-To: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Distribution: na Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 33 In-Reply-To: shwake@raysnec.UUCP's message of 12 Jul 90 22:44:19 GMT (Hasn't this topic been flogged enough yet?) In article <104@raysnec.UUCP> shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) writes: Of COURSE [site!...!user] is a route. But it's also an address. Just like the scribble on the front of the USnail envelope you received yesterday is both address and route. Thanks for providing such an excellent illustration for the point you contest! Looking at the front of that envelope, I have no way of knowing whether the postman walked down my street from the corner to the north, or whether my block started on the south end. I suspect he was wearing neither snowshoes nor a sun hat today, but he may have worn a rain poncho for part of the morning. And it really doesn't matter, because the envelope is now sitting in my hand. I don't know whether he was driving one of their old Jeeps or one of their nifty new GM lo-step aluminum vans. I don't know whether my letter sat waiting in a bag in a corner storage bin for a few hours this morning, or whether it came out from the local station in the postman's vehicle as part of the first bag of the day. I don't know whether it was hauled from the city's central station in a trailer towed by a Mack tractor or an International. I don't know whether that truck got to the local station via I-71 and Broadway, or whether it came along Fourth Street and Cleveland Avenue, with stops at a few other substations along the way. And on it goes... I don't know and don't care about the route, or how it was carried, so long as it arrives in my hand at 43224-3424. An address hides routing and transport issues. Addresses can stay stable (and therefore useful for business cards, sales literature, and articles in refereed journals) regardless of massive changes in connectivity and technology. Routing and transport technology are the postmaster's problem, and should be well-hidden from innocent users.