On Mon, 14 Sep 1992 09:50:03 EDT Stan Horwitz <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Your statements regarding FTP are wrong and I must take issue with them.
 
Try FTP-ing  something from anywhere  in Europe  to Germany and  you will
understand immediately.  We're talking about  a dozen retries to  get the
package you wanted, and each time over a hundred keystrokes. Of course if
you only FTP locally, or from  dedicated machines on the T3 backbone, you
may never have noticed  how convenient FTP is if the line  is just a tiny
bit unstable or overloaded.
 
>Ftp can transfer huge files, binary  and text, very rapidly between many
>types of systems.
 
FTP can't even  transfer a VMS saveset unless both  systems run Multinet.
SEND/FILE/VMSDUMP works.
 
>SENDFILE's RSCS heritage sometimes limits  (...) the number of columns a
>file can contain. (...)  For those who need to chat  with lots of people
>at once, there's  the IRC package which  is to Internet what  Chat is to
>Bitnet.
 
When I don't know what I'm talking about, I either check my facts or keep
quiet, to avoid embarassing myself in public with erroneous statements.
 
SENDFILE is  limited to 4G  columns, or maybe 2G,  I'd have to  check the
code carefully, who  cares anyway. There is no equivalent  to Chat in the
Internet. IRC is very nice if you  are interested in talking to 800 horny
students from  all over the world.  Installing an IRC client  on a public
disk is a good way to get so much trouble that you will wish for the rest
of your life that you hadn't done that.
 
>While  we are  on  the subject,  a  key disadvantage  to  Bitnet is  its
>inability to permit remote login sessions.
 
I am on BITNET and I can TELNET around. I must have missed something.
 
>Bitnet just doesn't  follow the client server model  of computing that's
>become so popular lately.
 
And it's not even written in C or OOPS/CASE. I'm sure your users are very
concerned about  the model  followed by  BITNET and  its popularity  in a
certain category of "executive-oriented" magazines.
 
  Eric