;login: newsletter status

[Dave Taylor]

Albert Cheng suggests:

> What about sending ;login: via Email to members?  It can be in
> postscript or troff forms.  Can we assume most, if not all, members
> have Email address and access to text processing tools?

An interesting idea until you think about the costs and complexities
involved; with the number of members involved with Usenix, the email
distribution could be quite prohibitive (e.g. thousands upon thousands
of copies emailed at one time from the ole' Usenix machine)

The alternative of having a "comp.org.usenix.login" newsgroup, moderated,
with the moderator being the 'editor' of "login" is an interesting
alternative, but 1. not everyone in Usenix gets Usenet (nor do they
all have active email addresses, I'd guess) and 2. people would want
to have followup discussion.

Which would rapidly transform into "news.announce.conferences",
"alt.books.technical", "comp.doc.techreports" and an occasional
delve into "comp.os.unix" or similar.

Which is to say...

 What *is* the purpose of "login" as it currently stands?  Is it
 worth the time/effort/expense?

Speaking for myself, it's been a long time since I've actually
*read* an issue (because it's been a long time since there's
been anything *to read* in the magazine).

I've some further thoughts on this topic, but I'd like to hear some
frank opinion from others on the net first...
		
						-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems
Mountain View, California

taylor at limbo.intuitive.com    or   {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor