Xref: utzoo comp.misc:11416 comp.org.eff.talk:1432 alt.censorship:1219 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship Subject: Re: Prodigy Special Offer hits my mailbox... Message-ID: Date: 11 Feb 91 15:53:10 GMT References: <1991Feb6.141621.9765@javelin.es.com> <1991Feb11.061828.20234@looking.on.ca> Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Organization: The World Lines: 26 In-Reply-To: jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU's message of 11 Feb 91 04:18:39 GMT From: jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) >Face it folks, 25 cents per e-mail message is less than the price of >a stamp. The chance of timely delivery is similar. And when was the last time you wrote a letter, stuffed it an envelope and put a stamp on it to convey one sentence like the above? Face it folks, there's some large differences between e-mail and postal mail. It lies somewhere between telephony and postal service, closer to telephony in its informality. And flat rates are a big feature in telephony (for non-business users.) There's a very difficult economic question buried in here that's being glossed over. For example, due to the automatic and non-physical nature of the medium (e-mail), the nominal cost of carrying one more message is almost nil (for modern networking, let's skip the historic relic of modem delivery.) Put another way, an idle line-minute can never be recovered. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD