[Ccil-user] Preserving CCIL services (fwd)

[Miles Nordin]

On Fri, May 10, 2002 at 04:03:54PM -0400, Emil J. Volcheck wrote:
> Pine, in text access, is so much faster than doing anything with webmail,

I'm glad you've found a MUA you like.  I've used 'pine' before and agree that 
your MUA of choice does not suck.

I wasn't discussing webmail at all, but rather POP mail.

My point about 100s of messages wasn't about how fast I can delete them all 
without reading them, but rather about how fast I can read and respond to 
them.  POP mail uses less modem time than 'pine' since you can batch your 
mail transfers, and also qualifies as ``text access'' since one can use POP 
mail without also using an image-capable web browser.

If one wanted to, one could offer PPP access but restrict IP traffic to a local 
POP3 server, thus prohibiting ``graphical'' access (along with lots of other 
things) if you decide that non-paying members don't deserve it for some reason.  
However I'm not sure what advantage prejudging types of traffic has over other 
modem schemes, like various kinds of time limits or kicking off the heaviest 
user whenever all modems become full.

Also, you've brought up viruses again as a reason that everyone should use 
'pine'.  email viruses are Outlook viruses.  It's not necessary to use 'pine' 
if you want to avoid email viruses.  You just have to stop using Outlook.

Finally, if you are a real 'pine' fan, it is possible to read POP mail with 
'pine' if you have 'pine' on the near end of your modem link.  The issues of 
personal MUA choice and CCIL login style are truly orthogonal.

Although lack of PPP was once an obstacle to ``graphical'' access for CCIL 
users, there is nothing inherently graphical about PPP access.

HTH.