joshua@erewhon.UUCP (10/18/83)
I logged on to MCI's free registration number, and registered as "myself" and as Richard Falken. Depending on their credit checks, you may soon send mail to "JOSHUA"; I couldn't remember Richard Nixon's social security number so I used 111-11-1111. Apologies to the possible owner of that number. On a more serious note, they tell you that ^H will erase mistaken characters, and they use a ^H space ^H to echo them. They also provide (undocumented) ^W for word erase, and ^X or ^U for line kill. Falken
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (10/19/83)
I thought the following excerpts from fa.telecom would be of interest to this
group:
Date: 13 Oct 1983 1731-PDT
Subject: MCI Mail
From: Ian H. Merritt <MERRITT@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
I just completed the initiation dialog to the MCI mail service. It is
an interesting dialog, in which the system asks questions such as your
social security number, and mother's maiden name, for identification,
and allows you to specify your own unique ID code if you don't like
the one the system generates from your name. After this, a series of
survey questions are asked, hoping the user will provide answers. For
each question, a simple <CR> indicates you don't wish to answer; and
one may quit the survey at any time without disturbing the service
application previously entered.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no cost to establishing yourself
as a user; only when you actually send something. I think you can set
up a recipient address on-line, also without charge.
I can't tell what kind of hardware the system was that did the
querying, but backspace is character delete, Ctrl/U works for delete
line, after logging in, and Ctrl/R works as a retype. Other control
characters are taken as a delimiter, and RUB characters are ignored.
This leads me to believe that the application is running under VMS.
If anybody is interested in playing with this thing or establishing
their own account, the number is 800-323-7751. (100-300baud/1200baud)
<>IHM<>
Date: Sat 15 Oct 83 10:16:04-PDT
From: Jim Celoni S.J. <Celoni@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: MCI Mail
When I couldn't register for MCI mail on 800-323-7751 (is there a "new
user" name and password?), I called local MCI sales; they referred me
to 800-MCI-MAIL. They didn't know anything but referred me to
800-MCI-CALL, where I found out the service offers four kinds of
messages:
Instant letter: direct from sender's terminal to another
subscriber's; $1/"ounce" (7500 chars) to send, free to read. (Like
ARPAgrams but more expensive)
Overnight letter: from you to one of their laser printing centers to
destination by noon the next day via Purolator Courier. (System will
tell you whether PC serves the area.) $6.
4-hr letter: to printer to destination within 4 hr via PC (only 15
areas now). $25.
Letter: to printer to destination via U. S. mail, usually arrives
within 24 hr. $2.
Sender (and instant mail receiver) can use any access numbers (all in
"welcome kit"). Bill comes each month with nonzero charges.
[The way to register is to use username REGISTER, password REGISTER. --JSol]mark@cbosgd.UUCP (10/31/83)
Wait a minute. Do I understand that if one person gets mail id JSMITH, there is nothing to prevent someone else from getting JSMITH? That if you send to his mail id, you have to wade through a list of Smiths and pick one? Good grief - what do you do if you routinely send mail to someone and don't want to wade through every time? What about gatewaying from the outside world - say UUCP or ARPANET mail, or a smart front end program in a PC that goes into the background? I haven't gotten my welcome packet yet - it's been almost two weeks. Maybe it will all become clear soon enough. Mark
gordon@trsvax.UUCP (11/04/83)
#R:cbosgd:-45300:trsvax:53300005:000:2307
trsvax!gordon Nov 2 12:59:00 1983
cbosgd!mark, you understand correctly that there can be more than
one user JSMITH in MCI Mail. This is shown as an example in the
"welcome" packet, although I don't think they used that particular name.
There is a "MCI Mail id" number, which seems to be of the form nnn-nnnn,
that uniquely identifies a user. That can be used if you routinely send
mail to JSMITH and there are enough JSMITH's to make it annoying. This
id number is printed along with the company, address, and full name of
the user when you are given the choices, so you can find out the id number
by wading through the choices once, then just writing down the id number.
I don't recall exactly, but there was some implication that you can
use the full name of the recipient, and it may match on that. You might
have to get the periods and spacing exact. It will take full names
on letters and not find a match when it isn't supposed to - in this case
it was being sent on paper.
You are going to have problems with gateways, unless MCI Mail does something
different on its end. Your return address is generated automatically
(in this case, one for the gateway account). A smart interface program
will have to wade through the menus and expect several different responses
and take appropriate action, as in "User not recognized" or multiple choice
for the specified user. It will have an even worse nightmare trying to
do a reasonable job of billing the sender. This problem is more one of
the nature of the uucp network than the way MCI Mail works. MCI Mail
appears to offer special breakdowns by project, etc., but you seem to have
to use a different login/password to identify which project the bill belongs
to. (I am not absolutely sure of this, but the intent was at least that
each individual have a separate login/password combination). Billing
can, of course, be done by the gateway program itself, before handing
it off, but I see lots of problems in getting people to pay up.
Anyone operating a gateway that does not charge back the users or authorize
specific users only is going to find itself, once it gets known, an
extremely cost-competitive (free) alternative to the 20 cent stamp, and
the gateway operator is going to go broke, fast.
Gordon Burditt
...!{ctvax,microsoft}!trsvax!gordonbees@drux3.UUCP (11/07/83)
> There is a "MCI Mail id" number, which seems to be of the form nnn-nnnn, > that uniquely identifies a user. That can be used if you routinely send > mail to JSMITH and there are enough JSMITH's to make it annoying. This > id number is printed along with the company, address, and full name of > the user when you are given the choices, so you can find out the id number > by wading through the choices once, then just writing down the id number. > > I don't recall exactly, but there was some implication that you can > use the full name of the recipient, and it may match on that. You might > have to get the periods and spacing exact. It will take full names > on letters and not find a match when it isn't supposed to - in this case > it was being sent on paper. Yes, the MCI Mail ID is nnn-nnnn. When you login to MCI Mail, you give your user name and a password that MCI assigns and changes upon request. By default the user name is your first initial and last name (JSMITH), but you can make it anything you want when you first sign up. I made mine 'bees'. Since there can be multiple users with the same user name, MCI Mail decides who you are by using your password. The password serves two purposes. When sending mail to another user, you can reference them either by their user name, or by their name. The software does some kind of matching, so you don't have to type the recipients name exactly. In my case, MCI Mail has me listed as 'Ray B. Davis II', yet sending to 'Ray Davis' will match me. If you don't want to send to one of the John Smiths known to MCI Mail, or want to send to a different address than the one known about John Smith, you can force it to use an address that you type in. Also, in reference to writing software to talk to MCI Mail: There is an Advanced service available (soon) that allows the user to use commands instead of menus. This service comes with more and longer disk storage, and other things. It also has a minimum monthly charge. I ask MCIHELP if it were possible to be allowed command usage (instead of menus) without the other "advanced" services. They said no. So if you want a more reasonable interface, you will have to pay extra. Also, they do not have a spelling checker, text formatter or screen editor, and did not indicate any plans in this direction. What this means is that someone should write a program for UNIX that interfaces to MCI Mail, so we can take advantage of whatever word processing software and disk storage we have. Ray Davis AT&T Information Systems Laboratories Denver {ihnp4|hogpc}!druxy!bees (303)538-3991
ark@rabbit.UUCP (11/07/83)
A friend of mine signed up for MCI mail recently. It demanded her Social Security number as part of the enrollment process. She tried not giving it, and it wouldn't let her enroll. She finally gave it a random string of ten digits and it let her continue. The program said that it wanted her SSN so it could run a credit check on her. That, of course, is exactly one of the reasons she did not want to give it. I expect that in a few days she'll receive a letter telling her that she has not been enrolled because they could not locate her in their credit files. I thought it was illegal for anyone to demand your SSN for purposes unrelated to social security.