dick@slvblc.UUCP (Dick Flanagan) (05/13/88)
In article <111@pigs.UUCP> haugj@pigs.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) writes: > i actually have several complaints with picnix being distributed on > the net. I am responding to this because I am the poster of PICNIX V3. > first, picnix is a shareware product which the author is going to, > attempt at least, make money from. as such, this posting > belonged in biz.binaries.whatever. the source for picnix is > available, therefore if anything were to be distributed it should > be the sources, except that picnix is shareware and the author is greedy. Let's see. At $15 for 30 utilities, that works out to fifty-cents each. Yup, he's greedy, all right! > secondly, we know what picnix is and another version has already > been posted to usenet recently. The recent posting (four months ago) was of PICNIC V2 and that was already more than a year old when it was posted. PICNIX V3 has been significantly polished and improved since V2. (I am not the author, by the way.) > i in fact run it on the compaqs here > at work. I see your standards didn't prevent you from benefiting from that previous posting. Let me guess. You registered them all, didn't you? > why should my upstream feed be expected to transmit that > thing to me if they aren't using it, considering i can pick it up > from my local archive site? Just how are they supposed to know what you do and don't want? > thirdly, the cost of transmitting this product is once again being > borne by the net without their consent, per se. comp.binaries.ibm.pc > was agreed upon as a moderated group. for monies to be spent on a > whim by someone not the moderator is unfair and unjust. comp.binaries.ibm.pc was NOT moderated at the time of the posting. The moderation control messages arrive two days later. > fourthly, the cost of acquiring picnix from a public access site is > minimal. the transmission costs for this package are approximately > $4.00 at 2400bps, and right at $9.00 for 1200bps (figures based on > connection statistics at rpp386) neither of those amounts are too > much to expect an individual to pay. You appear to be arguing for the dissolution of c.b.i.p. It sounds like a more reasonable solution for all of us would be for you to simply unsubscribe. > fifth, the posters in comp.binaries.ibm.pc don't seem to have the > connectivity to be providing useful services to the net. Say what? > rahul > dhesi, the moderator of c.b.i.p, has provided useful services to the > net, in the form of zoo, and would seem to be a responsible person, > worthy of our trust. who is dick flagan[sic]? No argument regarding Rahul's contributions, but, with any due respect, what is _your_ price of admission? Is there some rite of initiation you exact from potential posters? (And if you're going to flame me, at least spell my name correctly!) > and did anyone notice > that the site which transmitted the code was a uupc site? Oh, dear me, yes. How silly of me to use a PC to com- municate with a newsgroup about PC's. Next time I'll consider using one of the Suns to keep the elitests happy (or is a mere workstation still not good enough?). > are we > really going to let pc-clone users spend all of the net's money and > provide nothing in return? Answering questions, responding to requests, contributing to discussions, posting sources and binaries of wide interest, these have been my attempts to repay the net for all I have received from it. What must I do, John, to satisfy YOU? On second thought, ask me if I care! Sheesh! -- Dick Flanagan, W6OLD GEnie: FLANAGAN UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucscc!slvblc!dick Voice: +1 408 336 3481 Internet: slvblc!dick@ucscc.UCSC.EDU LORAN: N037 04.7 W122 04.6 USPS: PO Box 155, Ben Lomond, CA 95005
wcs@skep2.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart.<ho95c>) (05/17/88)
In article <44310@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) writes: } Well, "this net" was started EXPLICITLY for Unix boxes. It remained } EXCLUSIVELY for Unix boxes for the first 5 (more or less) years } of its existance. A few years ago, the "pcs" started encroaching on it. Not really. I started using the net around 1981 or 1982, and back then Bell Labs was using IBM RJE connections to ship news around. As far as content is concerned, the ARPAnet gateways were piping in occasional EMACS code emulating EDT, people were talking about networking and super-computer architectures that certainly weren't UNIX, and for that matter the precursors to talk.politics were hardly UNIX-related. UNIX has always been a major focus, but it's never been all there was. } I believe uupc is sent around to encourage electronic mail, not to } replace existing pc bboards. It's big advantage is it lets MS-DOS users join the real world, though writing a kermit-protocol for uucp might accomplish the same thing. One problem with the PC-BBS world is that it's so fragmented, though FidoNet is better than the standalone BBSs. In <4577@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes } Binaries are very hard to maintain and very hard to port. } What good is the last 30 years of progress in software engineering if } we never get the sources? Maintenance is always the largest cost of } any piece of software. Binaries are just throwaways; change CPU or OS } and toss 'em. Don't tell me an IBM PC binary good today will be good } forever...I know better. How many binary programs from PC-DOS 1.0 I agree, source is nice, though the ideal might be source plus binary. But there are two real uses for software - doing things and understanding how they're done. I don't care much about MS-DOS innards, and when I use a PC, I'm using it as a tool - a portable place to do fast editing and lightweight calculation and graphics that I can ship to my real machine where I can do real work. I generally don't need source for desk accessories, DOS emulations of UNIX commands, etc., and to use source I'd need to get a hard disk and a compiler (compilers are cheap, but does anyone know where to find a hard disk for a Toshiba 1100+ ?). Yes, binaries are throwaways, but so is MS-DOS. -- # Thanks; # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs # skep2 is a local machine I'm trying to turn into a server. Please send # mail to ho95c or ho95e instead. Thanks.
haugj@pigs.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) (05/17/88)
when one considers the cost to transmit the 770K PSPICE and 417K PICNIX postings, plus the various other ones whose size i didn't count, every member of the net was slapped with what amounts to a big $$$ charge for what other writers, notably john gilmore and bill stewart, have refered to as throwaways. certainly in a vacuum PSPICE and PICNIX would be of such a great value that the distribution costs would be tolerable. however, such a vacuum does not exist and these goodies do in fact exist in other forms and from other sourcs. duplicating THAT effort, i.e., the distribution itself, is wasted energy. while the content may indeed be very useful, which for PICNIX i will conceed quite readily, broadcasting megabytes of data is an inefficient distribution method, cost wise. providing pointers to the binaries would seem far more productive and far less expensive to the USENET community. since middle february i have been providing some collection of the more popular source postings for anonymous uucp. while the initial costs were high to me, the monthly expense of maintaining an ever increasing collection of connections, anonymous and otherwise, is very small. furthermore, all of the users accessing the system are required to pay their own way. there are no ``hidden'' costs being exploited or overlooked. what i see on my phone bill, and what they see on theirs is the sum total of the expense. more sites of this nature are needed, along with a means of coordinating this new network. USENET may well be the most effective tool at hand for distributing information pertaining to non-Unix software. already a newsgroup heirarchy exists for this purpose. the pubnet distribution is extremely underutilized but would seem to be The Place for such information to collect. before more posters claim USENET as their local BBS, how about seeing some interest in pubnet? persons interested in pubnet feeds should contact myself or someone else in their area who is receiving pubnet. - john. -- The Beach Bum Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers UUCP: ...!killer!rpp386!jfh jfh@rpp386.uucp :DOMAIN "You are in a twisty little maze of UUCP connections, all alike" -- fortune