Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1366 news.misc:1539
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-sally!utastro!werner
From: werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.misc
Subject: RE: bashing on AT&T ( was Re: The rebirth of USENET)
Summary: thanks, ihnp4, cbosgd, ATT, Mark, Gary, Brian, ...
Message-ID: <2780@utastro.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 88 11:02:36 GMT
References: <585@cbnews.ATT.COM> <6000001@uiucdcsm>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 29

You do not deserve all the bad press you are getting lately, result of
having the decency of announcing the final "reduction" of services by
those 2 heroic machines.  I am glad that none of the old-timers seem to
have gotten the matter confused, as all of them should know that ihnp4
and cbosgd had been downgraded over the years slowly but consistently
in the services they provided to the general public, but in olden times,
mailing to ihnp4 and have it find the intended recipient's host was once
considered wizard's knowledge which separated the men from the boys.
(nobody knew anything about women (and their problems) on the net, then ... :-)

As far as I am concerned, all these people we've been hearing from lately,
foaming at the mouth and barfing up venom and gibberish, probably
have rabies and should be quarantined from the net for a while, so that
they have the time and reason to FIRST learn something about the facts
before they SECOND accuse, condemn, and lynch anyone or anything -
or ruin the day of one of our friends at AT&T.

AT&T and any other company which has expensive in-house long-distance networks
have every reason to protect themselves from others routing their mail through
their internal network, just to have it emerge somewhere again to be delivered
to someone outside the company.   This is true especially for a company that is
trying to make a living by selling long-distance services.

If AT&T has in the past allowed themselves to be open to having people
communicate long-distance at the cost of a local phone-call, we owe them
a "thanks" - even if it is the case that AT&T simply was "too lazy" to invest
the effort to plug the hole sooner...  (-:

as a parting thought, what has IBM, HP, DEC, MCI, .... done for you lately?
they (and many other companies) could also pay for your long-distance call ...