davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) (04/02/91)
I see a lot of prodigy bashing. For a change here's a few words in defense of prodigy. In article <Mar.26.20.17.49.1991.9220@remus.rutgers.edu> rauscher@remus.rutgers.edu (Rich Rauscher) writes: >Quite simply, prodigy sucks if you've ever used the internet. Hardly a reasonable comparison. OK, Prodigy is not internet, never was never will be, but it offers a host of usefull features that aren't available here: stock quotes, headline news, gulf war updates (surprisingly well done), Dow Jones news retrieval, and of course all the infamous comercial services. >When I used it I remember: > 1) No "chat" mode to talk to other users I haven't noticed that here either, and probably wouldn't use it if it was available. > 2) One bandwidth-hogging advertisement per a screen > 3) A complete waste of ten dollars a month Well during one not entirely typical month I logged on nearly every day, checked the Gulf War update and the headline news (now I only buy the paper on Sundays and save a tree), then I checked the price of my stock (NCR of course), checked the Dow Jones news retrieval for the latest on AT&T's takover attempt, and checked "PC News". Also during the month I looked at consummer reports for info on watersaver toilets, and queried one of the BBS's for info on laser printers. That amounted to at least half an hour a day. Of course I could have done the same thing 'commercial free' on Compuserve for only about $150. For a savings of $140 a month I'll live with a few advertisements. Personally I've never run up against Prodigy's infamous censorship but I don't use Prodigy to post notices complaining about Prodigy. Most of the 'censorship' occured after Prodigy started charging for E-mail services when a few very vocal people started seriously abusing the system by flooding the BBS's and other user's personal mailboxes with "Boycott Prodigy" messages. I for one was happy to see some of those people get kicked off. I'll bet such tactics wouldn't have been dealt with kindly here either. Admittedly Prodigy did go overboard for a time in trying to squelch such practices. -- Dave.Lord@SanDiego.NCR.com
bgeer@javelin.es.com (Bob Geer) (04/03/91)
davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes: > Personally I've never run up against Prodigy's infamous censorship but > I don't use Prodigy to post notices complaining about Prodigy. >... One of my Prodigy messages bounced due to "inappropriate content". That content, as far as I could determine, was the word "sucks", It was definitely not used in any way shape or form as a sexual reference. Any human I believe would have realized that and passed the message. I tried at least 4 ways to get a query to *P* adminstration in an attempt to understand specifically why the message was bounced. I got no response at all. The $10-15 per month "high cost" of prodigy is no doubt much less than that required if you had to pay for a full-fledged Internet node. I've enjoyed Prodigy, have some nice pen-pals & derived some useful info. It does serve a different clientele than Internet, so the flavor of communication is certainly different. -- <> Bob `Bear' Geer <> bgeer%javelin@bambam.dsd.es.com <> <> Alta-holic <> speaking only for myself, one of my many tricks <> <> Salt Lake City, <> "We must strive to be more than we are, Lal." <> <> Ootah <> -- Cmdr. Data, learning schmaltz <>
anthony@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) (04/04/91)
In article <1991Apr1.181020.8836@SanDiego.NCR.COM> davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes: >In article <Mar.26.20.17.49.1991.9220@remus.rutgers.edu> rauscher@remus.rutgers.edu (Rich Rauscher) writes: >>Quite simply, prodigy sucks if you've ever used the internet. > Hardly a reasonable comparison. OK, Prodigy is not internet, never was > never will be, but it offers a host of usefull features that aren't > available here: stock quotes, headline news, gulf war updates (surprisingly > well done), Dow Jones news retrieval, and of course all the infamous > comercial services. Check out clarinet, the commercial news and information service that uses Usenet protocols. See biz.clarinet.* >>When I used it I remember: >> 1) No "chat" mode to talk to other users > I haven't noticed that here either, and probably wouldn't use it if it > was available. Internet Relay Chat, realtime communication with hundreds of users in dozens of countries (Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, France, Germany, etc) I use it nearly everyday and so do thousands of other people. See alt.irc for more information. [...] > Personally I've never run up against Prodigy's infamous censorship but > I don't use Prodigy to post notices complaining about Prodigy. Most of > the 'censorship' occured after Prodigy started charging for E-mail > services when a few very vocal people started seriously abusing the > system by flooding the BBS's and other user's personal mailboxes with > "Boycott Prodigy" messages. I for one was happy to see some of those > people get kicked off. I'll bet such tactics wouldn't have been dealt > with kindly here either. Admittedly Prodigy did go overboard for a time > in trying to squelch such practices. When they come after you aren't you going to wish there was someone left to support you? Although your own company may not like it when an employee posts negative comments about it, there isn't much that any organization can do about any postings that don't originate from within it. One thing to remember, is that there are two distinct systems here. There is the Internet (real time, high speed, global network), and Usenet (batch information distribution system). Usenet runs on top of the Internet and other networks (eg. UUCP dialup phone lines). It has no central control, you can't get kicked off, if someone is censoring your feed, you get a feed from someone else (like uunet). The Internet however is the metanetwork of regional networks around the world, each has their own operating policies. What happens to Prodigy users everyday cannot happen to Usenet users. The difference between Prodigy and the other commecial systems is that the Prodigy management wants to have total control over what their users can get out of and put into the system. There is no true freedom. -- <-:(= Anthony Stieber anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony
lev@rsdps.gsfc.nasa.gov (Brian S. Lev) (04/09/91)
In article <1991Apr1.181020.8836@SanDiego.NCR.COM>, davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes... > Personally I've never run up against Prodigy's infamous censorship but > I don't use Prodigy to post notices complaining about Prodigy. Most of > the 'censorship' occured after Prodigy started charging for E-mail > services when a few very vocal people started seriously abusing the > system by flooding the BBS's and other user's personal mailboxes with > "Boycott Prodigy" messages. I for one was happy to see some of those > people get kicked off. I'll bet such tactics wouldn't have been dealt > with kindly here either. Admittedly Prodigy did go overboard for a time > in trying to squelch such practices. I was recently reading the Letters to the Editor section of one of the main Mac magazines (-User or -World, I *always* get them confused!), and there were some comments in there from Prodigy users whose messages *did* get posted -- AFTER someone had changed to wording and/or removed some text! If I read the letters correctly, none of these messages involved "Prodigy bashing" or sexual subject matter. I'm sorry -- despite the limits (sometimes) placed on message language and content on the various nets, no one (in my knowledge) has gone so far as to limit Email to what they liked -- or changed the wording of the sender! I do not currently subscribe to Prodigy, and -- due almost completely to what I've learned about their "editing" -- have no plans to try them out again (had a test set-up for a while). -- Brian Lev +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Brian Lev/STX (301)286-9514 (FTS)888-9514 | | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center DECnet: SDCDCL::LEV (6153::LEV) | | Advanced Data Flow Technology Office TCP/IP: lev@dftnic.gsfc.nasa.gov | | Code 930.4 BITNET: LEV@DFTBIT | | Greenbelt, MD 20771 TELENET: [BLEV/GSFCMAIL] | | X.400 Address: (C:USA,ADMD:TELEMAIL,PRMD:GSFC,O:GSFCMAIL,UN:BLEV) | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | "The ability of a network to knit together the members of a sprawling | | community has proved to be the most powerful way of fostering scienti- | | fic advancement yet discovered." -- Peter Denning | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | DISCLAIMER: THESE STATEMENTS ARE MY OWN AND *NOT* NASA'S OR STX'S! | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
kmccook@wrdis01.af.mil (Ken McCook) (04/13/91)
I've seen several articles on the net and in the press on this and similar cases. The sooner email is protected to the level of Snailmail by federal law the better, IMHO! If I was a Pottygy user and my account got terminated because some jerk(s) didn't like my postings... well, I'd spend lots of time planning evil things to do to them and hope my lawsuit set a new precedent, so I'd have enough money from the award to buy a real computer to play with. Ken
kingsley@hpwrce.HP.COM (Kingsley Morse) (04/18/91)
Does anyone know how to send email to a Prodigy user? Thanks, Kingsley
dlow@pollux.svale.hp.com (Danny Low) (04/20/91)
>(Ken McCook) >I've seen several articles on the net and in the press on this and similar >cases. The sooner email is protected to the level of Snailmail by federal >law the better, IMHO! If I was a Pottygy user and my account got terminated >because some jerk(s) didn't like my postings... well, I'd spend lots of time >planning evil things to do to them and hope my lawsuit set a new precedent, so >I'd have enough money from the award to buy a real computer to play with. Email already has the same protection as US Mail. The problem is the law enforcement agencies have very few people who know the difference between a floppy and a hard drive. They would not recognize email if it was in front of their face. Also some of them seem to be trying to set legal precedence with email that will allow them to snoop more easily into email than they can with US mail. Danny Low "Question Authority and the Authorities will question You" Valley of Hearts Delight, Silicon Valley HP NPCD dlow@pollux.svale.hp.com
ralphs@seattleu.edu (Ralph Sims) (04/20/91)
kingsley@hpwrce.HP.COM (Kingsley Morse) writes: > Does anyone know how to send email to a Prodigy user? Ask them for their postal address, compose the letter, add the correct postage, and mail it. Oh, email? Become a Prodigy user and do it via Prodigy? Oh, you're not a Prodigy user? Too bad; you can't send email from outside of Prodigy to a user on Prodigy (the folks that run it won't let you, probably because they'd have to get more folks to censor the mail). -- halcyon!ralphs@seattleu.edu The 23:00 News and Mail Service - +1 206 292 9048 - Seattle, WA USA +++ A Waffle Iron, Model 1.64 +++