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From: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: National Amiga forums
Message-ID: <117@l5comp.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-May-87 09:07:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5comp.117
Posted: Sun May 10 09:07:21 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 13-May-87 01:30:40 EDT
References: <269@atlas.UUCP> <648@omepd>
Reply-To: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Distribution: na
Organization: L5 Computing, Edmonds, WA
Lines: 41
Summary: Yeah right $3 is a rip off...

In article <648@omepd> hah@isum.UUCP (Hans Hansen) writes:
>In article <269@atlas.UUCP> spietrow@atlas.UUCP (Steve Pietrowicz) writes:
>>Many people that are reading this probably also belong to some of the
>>subscriber networks (PeopleLink, Genie, etc) that have Amiga related
>>SIGs.  I was wondering, what do people look for when they subscribe to
>>these?  I know cost is a factor, but obviously other factors are involved.
>>(Some places charge something like $12.95/hr at 1200 baud, but people still 
>>flock to them....other services, like PeopleLink charge about $4.95/hr at 
>>1200 baud).
>>
>>S. R. Pietrowicz
>
>Any thing over $3.00/hr at any baud rate is a total ripoff!  Also some of
>these so called services try to copyright all articles posted to their
>systems.
Gee I pay nearly $10 an hour to get USENET, I guess I'm getting ripped real
bad eh? Usenet is NOT free by any stretch of the imagination. That $10 is
just for telephone charges, it doesn't include CPU usage nor disk usage both
of which are VERY high for usenet.

There's more to this subject than just $perhr. Compuserve for example charges
$12+hr for 1200 baud and delivers data at about 576 baud. GEnie charges $5hr
for 1200 baud and delivers data at about 1024 baud. USENET costs me roughly
$10 an hour and delivers data at about 840 baud.

Also a clarification, the services don't try to copyright ALL materials posted.
They do attempt to copyright material that has no legal copyright though. A
good example of a loser under this is the dork that "This program is Copywrite
1987 by"! Other losers are "CopyRight 1987" or "(C) 1987" or "Copyright 1982-
83-84-85-86". If you aren't a dork then your software is safe for the most part.
The moral of this? Don't be a dork, find out how to copyright your postings.
And foolish is the person who would rather use "(C)" than "Copyright" and risk
loosing his/her property over a cold legal decision. A "Copyright" in the hand
beats a "(C)" in the bush.

Scott Turner

-- 
L5 Computing, the home of Merlin, Arthur, Excalibur and the CRAM.
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If Motorola had wanted us to use BPTR's they'd have built in shifts on A regs
[ BCPL? Just say *NO*! ] (I don't smoke, send flames to /dev/null)