On Wed, 10 Feb 1993 11:49:33 EST Matthew Simpson <054340@UOTTAWA> said: >I have recently been notified that this topic is a very sensitive one. >It was not my intention to start a flame war. Honestly, I, and my lists, >are engaged in the BITNET/INTERNET shuffle. So, I wanted to solicit a >discussion from others who find themselves in similar positions. No >offense intended. My appologies. That is not why I reacted the way I did. One of the main purposes of this list is the exchange of technical information. Many list owners are not computer professionals and this list allows them to solicit advice from more technically knowledgeable people so that everyone can benefit. There is nothing shameful in not being a computer expert if your job is to teach philosophy. However it is an entirely different thing to walk in with strong, black and white statements presented as factual evidence but which are in fact at best debatable, and sometimes plain wrong, and then make predictions based on these "facts" and ask around if people agree with you and what they plan to do about it. This is what I called the lemming effect: people without much technical computer knowledge read something alarming on some forum their attribute some credibility to, think "oh my god in 2 years at most LISTSERV will be gone, I better move my lists to something else before I get stuck", and create a self-fulfilling prophecy due to the unavoidable "that many people can't POSSIBLY be all wrong". The reality is that I don't see any convincing signs of BITNET's imminent demise. Even if this were to happen, I don't see how this would suddenly prevent LISTSERV from exchanging mail with Internet users, a capability it has had for many years. This is just like saying you should scrap your CD player after copying all your CD's to regular audio tapes because there is a rumour Sony will come up with a minidisc that will make the CD obsolete in a year. This is just speculation, and even if it were to happen your CD player would still work and so would the hundreds of CD's you've already got. There would be plenty of time to decide what to do about your CD's, and they can always be dumped to tape later. In other words, much ado about nothing. Eric