USENIX Board Studies UUCP

[Spencer W. Thomas]

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.

Quote: "E-mail could work the same way at similar costs [as FAX,
projected to be $200/machine by 2010, and present in 50% of all homes
(yes, something like 30 MILLION installations)], but because of a
mistake by DARPA about 20 years ago, i.e., making a special-purpose,
special-politics ARPANET network the main vehicle for e-mail, it was
combined with other network uses that require higher bandwidth and
packet switching.  Another mistake was UUCP.  It uses the telephone
network, but three features inherited from its use within Bell
Telephone Laboratories made its widespread adoption a blunder."

Read it yourself if you want to know why.  And factor his points into
the "future of UUCP", if you can.


--
=Spencer (spencer at eecs.umich.edu)