Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!ndcheg!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: USENET news for MS-DOS?
Summary: Give it to us.
Message-ID: <906@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 24 Apr 89 00:26:12 GMT
References: <0082@fubarsys>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 56

In article <0082@fubarsys>, chris (Christopher J. Ambler) writes:
> I have developed a uucp/mail/news package for my system, Fubar BBS. I am 
> thinking about taking all the code for it and making it available as a 
> standalone package. Would there be a demand for this?

If demand does not exist, it should. The cost of phone lines is a
dominant factor in the cost of providing USENET news service from a
UN*X-based BBS/public access node. By offloading as much of the
news-reading and mail functions as possible to the subscribers' own
PC's, the public access node can probably serve at least three times
as many people with the same number of phone lines. This savings can
go either to lower charges to the subscribers, or to improved service,
or both. One could go so far as to claim that the success of an
information service depends absolutely on how well that service can
use the computer power the subscriber already owns.

I gather that this is the difference between the Prodigy (TM)
commercial information service and CompuServe (TM).  The former is
designed from the ground up to offload maximum processing onto the
subscriber's PC, while the latter retains the historical "dumb
terminal" model. To be fair, I should note that third-party programs
can significantly automate access to CompuServe (e.g., TapCIS)., and
that CompuServe does promote these packages.

Nonetheless, a short-sighted business executive might well mistakenly
assume that these packages compete with CompuServe by cutting the
user's connect-time charges. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Henry Ford's business maxim was "maximize service to the customer, and
then profits will take care of themselves." A business serves by
offering the highest-quality products at the lowest possible cost. A
business that serves better generates more demand for its product,
more than offsetting a lower per-unit profit. Demand for information
has no effective upper bound, and the markets for information services
are light-years away from even short-term saturation. The key to
growth in the information services industry is to CUT PRICES. Few people
are willing to pay $12--$60/hr up front to learn why they need to use
information services. An enormous market is going undeveloped right now.

The cost of computer power is dropping much faster than the price of
phone service. To maximize service to the USENET community,
public-access nodes must attempt to push data through the phone lines
at the maximum possible rate. Any time someone must edit a file over a
phone line (as I am doing now) when they have perfectly good editors
right on the machine they are using, they are grossly under-utilizing
the potential bandwidth of the phone line. This wastage of a
relatively scarce resource generates a lost value, which stunts the
growth of the information services industry and all its supporting
industries (including the telephone industry--because the more utility
a phone line can yield, the more phone lines customers will purchase).
Anyone who benefits directly or indirectly from these industries
should have an interest in seeing that this waste is minimized.

Dan Mocsny				Snail:
Internet: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU		Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171
513/751-6824 (home)			University of Cincinnati
513/556-2007 (lab)			Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171