Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sun, 28 Apr 91 00:45 PDT From: John Higdon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Online Services Reply-To: John Higdon Message-ID: Organization: Green Hills and Cows Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 314, Message 4 of 8 Lines: 56 With the recent articles detailing the various horrors of online services, one must conclude that there might be other ways of accomplishing what these services provide. It really should not be surprising that Prodigy, Genie, CompuServe, etc. have shortcomings and limitations when you consider their design purpose and why they were created. If your desire is to communicate and share information with others sharing a common, specialized interest, privately run BBSes should fill the bill nicely. Many are now quite sophisticated with networking and powerful software that serves the users quite well. And best of all, they are free. Each issue of any free computer rag contains page after page of BBS listings. And the rules of any given system are generally much less Mickey Mouse than the pay services. If you want non-interactive information, such as stock quotes, national weather, etc., you might want to check out the various cable channels. These are very convenient in that you do not have to login, or do anything other than tune your TV to the correct channel. I have just discovered The Weather Channel -- it is well done and quite informative. It is also more accurate than the Ken and Barbie weatherpeople on the local news. If you want airline info and the ability to book reservations, you might want to look at the online OAG. Actually there are online specialty services for almost any activity. These are no-nonsense services that provide a quality product. For e-mail and international BBS-style boards, nothing beats UUCP and the Internet. If you are an e-mail junkie, then get yourself a software package that will do UUCP, find a sympathetic host, and go to it. There are no online charges, no restrictions on what you can mail, no restrictions on how much you can mail, in fact, few restrictions at all. You can send and receive unlimited amounts of mail to and from virtually anyone on any system that talks to the outside world. Usenet provides discussion on every topic known to man and is read by people all over the world. Except for the moderated groups (such as this one), a person may post whatever and whenever he likes. I am sure that I have missed many other examples of substitutes for general purpose online operations, but you get the point. Years ago when I discovered Usenet, CI$ went by the wayside. And even the considerable cost of CompuServe was not the issue. The anarchistic nature of Usenet is much more suitable for its purpose (diverse discussion) than the restrictive "grade school style" rules that are part of all the commercial services. While I recognize that there are, for example, commercial interests that Prodigy must protect, that is Prodigy's problem. We, as functional adults, would prefer to be treated accordingly. I seriously doubt that the general purpose online services are incapable of that accomodation. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !