> Would *you* give a network address to anyone who wandered in off the street ?
> And an account on your system ? Only accredited scholars ? Hm, I'm a scholar,
 
I've given references every time I've asked for access on a system at another
university -- before being asked for them.  That makes sense to me.  It would
take seconds for a system administrator at another university to check up on
me with the system administrators here if he/she wanted to.  So far, the
only system that has not granted me access immediately is one that has an
odd situation involving lack of resources and piggy-backing off of a private
super-computer.  I'm confident that the problem there had nothing at all to do
with their being worried about the dangers of granting access to a stranger.
 
> I think it's their responsibility to provide the terminal and modem if they
> care about it. I have a 1200-baud laptop, it sux but it works. Dialups are
 
Although I now have my own laptop and modem, I relied on campus labs when
traveling before that.  If the lab has idle stations, nobody seems to care.
I would consider it tacky to grab the last computer in a crowded lab, of
course.
 
> all over the place, and Unix boxes also. Membership is cheap, you can get a
> lot for $20.00 a month, and an increasing number *do* have 800 numbers. It's
> sort of like renting a postbox ...
 
I rely on CompuServe to send e-mail when I'm somewhere without telnet access,
but that doesn't help me take care of the lists I run.  I once considered
listing my CIS address as one of the listowners to use in case of emergency,
keeping 'nomail' set, of course, but it dawned on me that that would be
insane, given the message-per-day limit on CIS e-mail.  Sometimes I'm
away from my computer for two hours and return to find several hundred
delivery-error notices.  If they were going to a CIS address, the overflow
would have been bouncing wildly back to the listserv manager -- not my idea
of good manners, especially when you're running lists on a system in another
state at a university with which you have no official ties.
   --Natalie ([log in to unmask])