roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (07/12/89)
Somebody here is interested in using some research service. The
service is willing to (according to their brochure) email their results
back to us (I'm not sure exactly what they research, I gather it's some
sort of value-added bibliographic search service). So far, so good. I
called the guy who runs the service to work out with him how to send mail
to us (the person using the service doesn't really understand about network
mail, so I figured it would be easier to cut him out of the information
loop).
Much to my surprise, this guy hadn't the foggiest idea what I was
talking about when I told him to just send mail to person@phri.nyu.edu. He
had never heard of the Internet, nor of UUCP (nor, for that matter,
bitnet). It seems his idea of email is some sort of mailbox service that
GEnie (sp?) runs, or MCImail. He kept wanting to know what telephone
number he had to call to "connect to Internet", and kept going on about
mainframes. Eventually, he got the GEnie tech support people to show him
how to get connected to the Internet, but I'm not really sure what they
showed him; I suspect he could telnet to an Internet host if he had an
account on one, but I'm not really sure; what he was describing to me
didn't quite make sense.
Anyway, is there a way for people on GEnie and the Internet to
exchange mail? If so, what do I have to do so send him mail and what
should I tell him to do to send mail to us?
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu
"The connector is the network"