Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: Date: 17 Jul 90 15:30:25 GMT References: <1990Jul16.202721.271@chinet.chi.il.us> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 55 les@chinet.chi.il.us writes: >Is it really worth working so hard to give life-support to broken >configurations, when it makes things worse for up-to-date configurations? This attitude does a lot to explain the popularity of using fax machines for anything important even when revisions need to be retyped. Why is it always _presumed_ that old, out-of-date things must be perpetuated? When your car has to be replaced, do you buy the exact same model you got last time? Do you look for the same model year? Do you look for the exact same feature set? Or do you instead go looking for newer technology, better gas mileage, safer passenger restraints, more functional cockpit gadgetry, and so on? What is it about using computers makes people think this way? "If it's changed _at_all_, well, heaven defend us, it's Morally Incorrect, and how dare the programmers _change_ something! Most importantly, find me a way of making the world look like it used to. Paper, yeah! I can't possibly be expected to learn anything new!" The only reason that fax can be said to work better than email is that the underlying transport, the raw phone network, has its operation ENFORCED by people who know what they're doing, and they're damn well accountable when it doesn't work. UUCP stuff is typically managed by people who seem to be offended by the idea that they should be required to take something seriously. I've got this UUCP neighbor sysadmin who took offense when I sent him a toasty-gram to complain that he had 4 days' worth of news (~16Mb) piling up here -- "Well, I just didn't get around to telling you that our system is dead." Gee, thanx, my spool area overran twice because of you, bozo. Responsibility, people -- that's what fax has over email. People who deal with the phone network take it seriously -- they have to. People who manage email frequently don't. So of _course_ it doesn't work as well. --karl PS- Yes, I saw the CACM article on fax -vs- email. I wasn't impressed. The idea of converting all email systems to use phone-number addressing is revolting. What I want is a user interface in front of my telephone that lets me ask for a person, and it finds the phone number for me. I don't want to have to open a @#$% phone book. PPS- Observe, if you will, that phone numbers have one other redeeming value: They are semantically equivalent to domain addresses. When you dial a phone, for fax or not, you just tell the phone network where you want to go, and don't have a clue on how you get there -- no indications of, "go through the downtown central office and from there to the Hinsdale office in Chicago, where you can connect with the Orland Park local office, which will find..." No. I just tell the phone network the numeric equivalent of "Carlene Kleinpaste," using a hierarchically-defined address, and expect the network to figure out the rest on its own. !-paths suck.