gregory@csri.toronto.edu (Kate Gregory) (05/10/91)
Some time ago I posted to n.n.q asking how to get mail to my
brother on Nifty-Serve, armed only with his Nifty-Serve account
number and two pieces of information from him: that the Compuserve
code for Nifty (or perhaps vice versa) is 97, and that you can "go Nifty"
while on Compuserve.
Since I have a Compuserve account, I signed on and went "go Nifty"
but it told me I didn't have a Nifty account and that was the end
of that. I tried various methods of mailing to him from within
Compuserve, thinking I could later take whatever worked and add
"@Compuserve.com" to the end from here. Well, nothing worked.
">NIFTY: ...." and ">97: ...." and a whole load of other variants
were all wrong.
I was pointed to "the file" on internetwork communications, which
is posted to comp.mail.misc regularly, and which I retrieved by ftp
from princeton.edu. It says this:
Nifty-Serve a Japanese BBS
suzuki@sai.vtt.fi (Makoto Suzuki) contacted the
system operators and confirmed that there is no gateway.
Now, on the phone my brother told me he bought this account because
they told him he could exchange mail with Internet.
In private mail which I seem to have deleted, I was told (paraphrasing
from memory) that it is illegal for Japanese networks to hook directly
to the outside world, and that all Nifty users also get Compuserve
accounts.
Since then I have got mail from my brother, and we've pieced the story
together, and it goes like this:
-----------------------------------------------------
Most Nifty users also have Compuserve accounts. You buy your
accounts from the same company, but it is possible to buy only one.
The Nifty user can either phone a Nifty phone number or a Compuserve
number. After signing on to Compuserve, go Nifty will get the user
to the same place as phoning directly would have (but presumably Nifty
doesn't have the world-wide network of local phone numbers that
Compuserve has). Before "go Nifty" the user is free to use the Compuserve
account for all the usual stuff including mail. The Compuserve mailbox
and Nifty-Serve mailbox are completely different, and only the former
is accessible to the outside world.
What this means to me is that I can safely ignore the fact that my
brother has a Nifty account, and just behave as though he had only
a Compuserve account. His name and ID appear in the international
listings on Compuserve, and like all "international" ID's, his does
not start with a 7. The format seems the same as the people with the
same last name elsewhere on the planet though, ie there's nothing
special about his Nifty connection. This has been confirmed by
postmaster@compuserve.com.
So, he writes to me as ">INTERNET:gregory@csri.toronto.edu" and I
write to him as "101075.106@CompuServe.COM". (Blatant plug: so
can anyone who wants Japanese/English translation done.)
Bottom line: anyone who tells you they have a Nifty account probably also
has a Compuserve account. You can't reach them on Nifty, but you
can reach them on Compuserve. Unless you have a Compuserve account
yourself, you will need their Compuserve ID. (If you have one, sign
on and use the free member directory to find their ID. Then sign
off quickly before the charges pile up, and mail to them from your
internet account.)
Perhaps the maintainer of the list that said nifty was unreachable
could add a short line pointing out the compuserve connection?
Kateoi@opencs.fsu.edu (Hitoshi Oi) (05/12/91)
Thank you Kate. I'll try to ask him if he has CompuServe account and if so, his account by another means. Hitoshi Oi