From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!cbosgd!mark
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: "Network without news"
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.3095
Posted: Tue Feb  8 16:45:39 1983
Received: Fri Feb 11 05:45:32 1983
References: <5722@wivax.UUCP>

You are both wrong!  The ARPANET has news, in fact several ARPANET sites
are on USENET, and some news is transferred over ARPANET links.  (However,
a lot of the ARPANET sites seem to think that mailing lists are somehow
better than the concept of news, and I have given up on trying to convince
them otherwise.)

Anyone who has been on the ARPANET in the last month knows that ARPANET mail
is often anything but reliable.  Not that UUCP mail is any better, but mail
in general likes to fall on the floor, even on the ARPANET.  File transfer
on the ARPANET is not exactly what I'd call convenient either - you have to
sit there and watch the files get transferred (yawn); and you have to have
a valid remote login and password on many sites, even to send your friend a
file!  (Make that ESPECIALLY to send your friend a file - the anonymous login
hack only works for retrieving public files.)

What the ARPANET does give you is high bandwidth connections, reasonable
software (most of the time), and reasonable remote login at high baud rates.
Also, somebody else is paying the phone bills.  But it's a very expensive
network to join, and you have to get the Dept of Defense to approve you,
so we average joes (even at Bell Labs) can't get on.

This is not to defend UUCP, of course.