Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:14928 news.admin:2019
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,news.admin
Subject: Re: Can something be done about 770K waste of time postings...
Message-ID: <22099@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 27 Apr 88 03:44:57 GMT
References: <1574@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 34

In article <1574@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
|As some people may have noticed, a person named cgs@umd5.umd.edu
|(Chris Sylvain) recently posted an ARC file entitled "PSPICE demo"
|to comp.binaries.ibm.pc.  [...]
|
|And of course, to hit one of my pet peeves, the posting was made
|with no identification of what the program does or is for [...]

Before you all flame the hell out of him, let me identify the program.
SPICE is a program that helps analyze electronic circuits.  He should
have told you this, but for his defense:  If you need to analyze them,
you probably already know what SPICE is.  If you don't, the program
probably won't do you any good anyway.  I can see that a lot of people
(ok, engineers :-) might really want this program, even if it's a
demo.  The poster reported that it actually functions, although not
with all the bells-and-whistles of the full blown program.  Even a
small version of SPICE can be very useful, especially if you're an
engineering student and don't particularly need the $3000 version.

| [discussion of transmission costs deleted]
|
|But this idiot posted something that cost $5,800!

This is a time-old argument with pros and cons.  Why not flame at
things like talk.bizarre which generate tons of useless material every
day?  At least the program *does* something.  For those that
understand what it does, it is valuable.

Aside from that, I find that your analysis of the cost of transmission
as being somewhat flawed.  I'd suspect that many UUCP connections are
faster than 1200 baud.  But this is just nit-picking.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu