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From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp,news.admin
Subject: Re: BITFTP grief!
Summary: The simple, impossible solution
Message-ID: <1991May29.172122.8305@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 29 May 91 17:21:22 GMT
References: <1991May22.040039.21721@iguana.uucp> <1991May22.141737.26521@sceard.Sceard.COM> <1991May24.230704.19188@skypod.guild.org>
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 16

The way to make all of this academic would be for a fair geographic distribution
of internet sites to make some kind of logins publicly available (I think Peter
daSilva suggested this already).  I have no idea about workability, and 
absolutely no hope that it will happen, but I'd gladly pay $50 a year for
access to a system with a couple of lines, nothing but the ftp suite enabled
(well, enough more so I could send stuff on to my machine) and all files
deleted 10 minutes after logoff (the delay to allow for logoffs by line hits).
The advantage over uucp archives is the ability to browse.  It would probably
take at least 4 such sites to make it remotely practical.  The whole idea is
generally along the lines of uunet's 900 number, but more focussed in purpose,
and in more locations.

I'm not shy about paying my own phone bills.  But many of the packages I'd like
to check out are archived in places that don't give me that option.

                                     Steve     saj@chinet.chi.il.us