USENIX Board Studies UUCP

[Robert P. Warnock]

[I apologize for the null article <46406 at 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.89Dec13124514 at spline.eecs.umich.edu>,
spencer at 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 at wpd.sgi.com	rpw3 at pei.com
Silicon Graphics, Inc.		(415)335-1673		Protocol Engines, Inc.
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA  94039-7311