"My sense is that this is an area currently full of potholes and badly in need of some general understandings." I think most administrators are more concerned with liability than anything else. Systems aren't public utilities. Until communication - and in partic- -ular, telecommunication - becomes a public utility, a recognized right and responsibility we all share ... much as carrying a letter, in the days of the Old West, before the Pony Express, was regarded as a sacred responsibility. No one knew when they might not be needing to send a letter, and few could afford to pay someone exclusively to do such a thing, so all were equal ... 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, but I'm self-educated. Dropped out of high school, passed lightly through the regional junior colleges, studied assembler and electronics and programming on my own, became an administrator to have better access to netnews ( as well as control over it, since, clearly, network administration is better in the hands of responsible people than machiavellian people ) and here I am helping run a world empire, of sorts. How about students ? Students of other colleges ? It gets fuzzy ... 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 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 ... Or maybe they should consider setting up their own node, which they could take with them, and make *that* their mailbox, a sort of sophisticated answering machine, with a whole lot more ... -- richard ===== -- richard childers [log in to unmask] 1 415 506 2411 oracle data center -- unix systems & network administration Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.