Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!rex!ames!sgi!rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com From: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com (Robert P. Warnock) Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix Subject: Re: USENIX Board Studies UUCP Message-ID: <46487@sgi.sgi.com> Date: 16 Dec 89 05:06:48 GMT References: <36700@apple.Apple.COM> <127@dumbcat.UUCP> <36766@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Nov26.001644.3176@utzoo.uucp> <93061@pyramid.pyramid.com> <46406@sgi.sgi. Sender: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com Reply-To: rpw3%rigden.wpd@sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 43 [I apologize for the null article <46406@sgi.sgi.com>; I'm still getting plugged into a new environment, and news isn't *quite* the same here as before. Let's try again...] In article , spencer@eecs.umich.edu (Spencer W. Thomas) writes: +--------------- | You should all read the Viewpoint column in this month's CACM. John | McCarthy writes "Networks considered harmful for electronic mail". He | pushes development of a standard that will compete with FAX, where you | can send mail to "any" telephone number, without pre-arrangement with | the receiving party. Otherwise, he feels, e-mail will never "make | it", since FAX is just easier. +--------------- "When it's steamboat time, steamboats get built." This may be an idea whose time has come. I recall Dave Yost proposing this exact thing a few months ago, before he left L.A. and moved to New York. We were talking about what it would take, and decided that the cost would be somewhere between a telephone answerer and a small PC. Not $200, since you really do need a hard disk (even a small one), but less than $1000. The idea is that you have this small black shoebox that sits on a phone line, and has an RS-232 line you can connect to your Mac or PC or whatever, but your Mac/PC does *not* have to be on for the box to send/receive mail, only for you to read/compose/queue it. Of course, the box has a modem and some sort of (slow, cheap) CPU, but from outside you see something like a hard-wired ATTmail session... *NOT* a "computer". Obviously, one wants such a thing to *also* be able to talk to/from Unix-based mail systems, but as usual, the gateway/conversion burden will probably be on the Unix system. Anyway, sounds like a great market opportunity for "somebody"... -Rob ----- Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@wpd.sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311