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| Author |
Message |
chelsea
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Prodigy on the Internet
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Dec 28 00:43 UTC 1994 |
I've used Prodigy since just shortly after it went online, maybe 6 or 7
years ago. Over that period I've used it anywhere from very little (just
banking and stock quotes) to quite a lot (conferencing, reference
materials, news, weather, etc.). And over the years I've watched Prodigy
change in response to market pressure by offering new and expanded
services. But today I tried, for the first time, their Usenet News reader
and I was blown away.
It's fast, easy to use, and does not in any appear to restrict
available groups to suit a "family-style" agenda. The binaries
are there. Alt.sex.bestiality.hamsters.duct-tape is there as well as
rec.music.classical and rec.food.cooking.low-fat.
Soon they'll be adding a World Wide Web browser. Internet mail has been
onboard for a while now. Anyhow, for those who haven't taken a look in a
good long while you might want to take another peek. I'm finding that
even though I could do most of this through my MTS account or on Grex
that it's still worth the few extra dollars a month for a Prodigy
subscription just for the reliability and convenience.
How is AOL doing in regards to Internet services?
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| 64 responses total. |
steve
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response 1 of 64:
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Dec 28 01:27 UTC 1994 |
Interesting. What Grex and all the other systems like us need, is
some sort of a front end program for the PC/Mac platforms that make for
a reasonable display system.
If Prodigy really does keep things open, then they'll do pretty well.
Mary, do me a favor, would you? Sometime, send me mail here with a
sample of Carlin's "Dirty Words"? I'd like to see if they still filter
outgoing mail.
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denise
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response 2 of 64:
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Dec 28 01:49 UTC 1994 |
AOL has had the 'net mail for ages; also has the net groups, too. I'm
not at all familiar with the Web, so I haven't looked for it, because,
since I don't know what it is, I don't know what it can do for
me. And thus, I haven't explored any other options! Though I do know AOL's
been working hard in expanding alot of their services...
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danr
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response 3 of 64:
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Dec 28 04:22 UTC 1994 |
re #1: I've been saying that we need an easier to use interface
ever since Grex got started!!!
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steve
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response 4 of 64:
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Dec 28 05:12 UTC 1994 |
Well, you're right of course. All we need now is for someone to
put some time into this.
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raven
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response 5 of 64:
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Dec 28 05:31 UTC 1994 |
A gui front end would be wonderful, esp. for us Mac users!
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steve
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response 6 of 64:
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Dec 28 06:19 UTC 1994 |
Espically for Mac folks? You're being platformchauvinistic. ;-)
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peacefrg
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response 7 of 64:
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Dec 28 07:38 UTC 1994 |
AOL has exploded onto the market recently. I have like 3,000,000 of their
promo 10 hours free diskettes. Their new interface is beautiful. I haven't
worked with it at all since I am not a member but I've seen it.
As far as the Grex interface goes I have a few questions (Don't I always)...
How much would a graphic interface cost Grex? Would the membership fees
skyrocket? Is there a way the members could get together and get a graphic
interface for Grex? If it came to the point where the validations
skyrocketted then I would think it should be an option. I like Grex
because it's the one place on the net where us poor people can get full
net access. I couldn't afford much more than 6.00$/mth. And what's
the deal with Mac users? How differant is the Mac interface for Grex?
I used a friends Mac on Grex and noticed nothing differant.
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roz
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response 8 of 64:
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Dec 28 12:26 UTC 1994 |
Oh, swell. After years, we're finally getting ready to cancel our Prodigy
account since it gives us at a cost what I can get for free at the
University. And most of my good friends there have drifted off it for
various reasons. I _always_ seem to leave a party just as it's getting
good. :-)
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chelsea
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response 9 of 64:
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Dec 28 13:38 UTC 1994 |
Well, roz, before you leave for good just take a look at their Usenet
reader and let me know what you think. I've only used RN and TIN and
both were cumbersome and far more difficult to configure.
Grex is not in competition with Prodigy.
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remmers
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response 10 of 64:
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Dec 28 14:56 UTC 1994 |
I think that the cumbersomeness of tin on Grex was due mainly to the
slowness of grex and its internet link rather than tin itself. I use
tin on a reasonably fast system (emunix) and find it preferable to the
Prodigy news interface, although that opinion is based on only one
quick look at news on Prodigy. Tin appears to do a better job of
threading articles, for one thing.
Considering Prodigy's past history of screening bulletin board entries
and mail, it's astonishing to me that Prodigy is carrying all the
newsgroups (including the 'alt' ones) without restriction. This in-
cludes some of the 'binaries' groups that are used to distribute
graphic images, something Grex decided a while ago to stop doing
because of possible copyright violations.
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kt8k
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response 11 of 64:
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Dec 28 15:44 UTC 1994 |
I thought that usenet was the "news" that hasn't been working on grex fo
r so many months, according to the MOTD (OK, well maybe it hasn't been
months, I don't remember). I tried using trn once, and it took forever at
2400 baud to read just a list of newsgroups, but that's probably where I
would want to start. I finally gave up. Does such a list exist where I
can download it? I am very interested in usenet, but have never been able
to get into it due to time and grex restraints. Now that I am hunting for
work I have more time .;..
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peacefrg
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response 12 of 64:
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Dec 28 16:21 UTC 1994 |
Me too. I've always wanted to join usenet.
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peacefrg
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response 13 of 64:
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Dec 28 21:28 UTC 1994 |
What is MOTD? And I think it has been down for months, because I've been on
for three months and I don't remember it ever working.
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davel
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response 14 of 64:
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Dec 29 00:32 UTC 1994 |
motd is "*m*essage *o*f *t*he *d*ay", and is a file that gets displayed
automatically when you log in. It's what's been announcing that news is
down for all this time.
News had been somewhat flaky for a while, but has been totally down since
soon after the new disk began its erratic behaviors.
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srw
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response 15 of 64:
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Dec 29 03:31 UTC 1994 |
Usenet News used to work great on Grex. Then we opened up the internet link,
and once the traffic became heavy, we were never able to keep the link up
to the newfeed with any consistency. It kept timing out because of the
lag introduced by the excessive traffic on the link, and our router's inability
to deal with that traffic reliably enough. At that point we
had news working, but the feed was spotty and lots of article were being
lost.
More recently, the news disk was taken over by staff, shutting news off
altogether. This disk was being used to help deal with the ongoing disk crisis.
The plan is to return it to news service.
There is a plan to get a better router. It is possible that news can be
restored based on that (and getting the news disk back), but it is likely
to make the netlag far worse than it is now.
There is another plan (better, I think, but it will cost more money) to set
up a separate line to provide a uucp connection to a newsfeed, and possibly
to have news maintained on a separate cpu from Grex. The result of this
plan coming to fruition should be an exceptionally good restoration of
Usenet news service. I hate to predict how long this'll take. A qualified
volunteer to work on this would probably make a big diffference.
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other
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response 16 of 64:
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Dec 29 05:02 UTC 1994 |
re #13: rotfl!
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peacefrg
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response 17 of 64:
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Dec 29 09:26 UTC 1994 |
What's the differance between trn and rn? And how can you post to newsgroups
using e-mail?
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kt8k
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response 18 of 64:
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Dec 29 18:15 UTC 1994 |
I just got my Compuserve magazine (I joined a month or two ago to help with
my job search) and it says all I have to do there is type "Go Usenet" to get
full access to -- get this -- all *8,500* news groups! I had heard numbers
like 4,000, and lately 6,000, but 8,500 is incredible. This is going to be
daunting but fun!
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mju
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response 19 of 64:
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Dec 29 18:30 UTC 1994 |
trn presents articles in terms of discussion threads, whereas rn just
presents them in chronological order. With trn you can select which
threads you do and don't want to read, and then only read those articles,
regardless of their chronological ordering in the newsgroup.
As for your second question, there are mail-to-news gateways where you
send mail to post-<newsgroup> or a similar address. I'm not sure how to
use any of them, or any more specifics.
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tsty
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response 20 of 64:
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Dec 31 02:29 UTC 1994 |
In theory (practice is unsubstantiated as yet), email postings
to: exact.name.of.newsgroup.usenet@decwrl.dec.com will get
the posting made.
Guess I cold have said, <news.group.name>.usenet@decwrl.dec.com which
might have been clearer - anyway, there are both descriptions.
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steve
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response 21 of 64:
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Dec 31 03:02 UTC 1994 |
Ugh. Just what we need. I hear the link modei squealing.
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kentn
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response 22 of 64:
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Dec 31 04:10 UTC 1994 |
Bandwidth control by obscurity, STeve? Hmmm...
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steve
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response 23 of 64:
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Dec 31 05:50 UTC 1994 |
No, just that people now have another way of overloading
Grex. As this is only one of 16,777,532,413 ways to do this,
there is lots of room for improving the overload factor here. ;-)
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kentn
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response 24 of 64:
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Dec 31 06:50 UTC 1994 |
Damn...we'd better turn off e-mail...
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