In-Reply-To: <199504271516.LAA25553@nic.iii.net>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: O
X-Status: 



On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Donovan White wrote:

> 
> >The problem with e-mail, especially mailing lists, is that they have to 
> >be stored Somewhere.  I have had to deal with more than one admin who had 
> >to deal with 25 users who were reading the same 200 posting/day mailing 
> >list.
> 
> This isn't really a problem as much as it's the cost of doing business.
> Storage space for email is something that has to be provided along with the
> rest of email functionality. The next time your sys admin comes around
> whining about mail taking up space, slap him. This is exactly the same as
> outfitting the company with high-end applications and then complaining about
> having to buy new desktop systems to run the software.

What you saying is reasonable when we are only talking 25,000 1 kbyte text
messages/week.  If we start slapping MIME messages full of HTML containing
4 250 kb "context sensitive maps", I now have to plan for about 25 
Gigabytes/week.  That's almost as much as the entire Dow-Jones NRS 
database (which is all text).

I have received several MIME HTTP attachments with links to graphics.  If 
the description looks good, I can view it.  With Andrew, I can view it 
from the mail handler.

> >When Prodigy, Spry, Chameleon, or Mosaic users (about 2 million) hit
> >your "cute" posting, they will give up and browse your competition.
> >When a Netscape user (another 2 million?) hasn't registered his software 
> >and doesn't have exchange, he will also hit your PDF and "shop elsewhere".
> 
> I'm pretty sure all he has to do is set the .PDF helper application to the
> Acrobat reader and he'll be fine.

I have Ultrix 4.2, it runs Mosaic (I compiled the source in 10 minutes),
and a GIF/JPEG viewer, but I didn't see any DEC, HP, or IBM platforms, I 
only saw SunOS 4.1.3 and Solaris 2.3.  Considering that much of the 
financial industry in on Sun/Unix, and much of the publishing industry is 
on VMS, and much of the Banking Industry is on HP, and most Manufacturing
is under RS-6000, that it might be limiting the market.

> I'd suggest that future Net growth is going to come from Windows, so the
> end-user market share of such things is going to drop even lower.
The Linux market is approaching 2 million and doubles in size every 4-6 
months, the same way that the TCP/IP market (and the internet) quietly 
grew at about the same rate as Novell bragged about a carefully worded
statement (Leader in PC-Network Operating Systems), it was only when the
internet jumped from 6 to 12 million users that Novell tried to react.
Too Little, Too Late.

MicroSoft MUST deliver a high-quality server-capable operating system that
can run on a machine costing under $1500, or it will lose the market to 
Linux, Solaris, or Univel.  In fact, it's a natural progression to switch 
from Linux to Solaris, since they are derived from the same baselines.
(Xview is part of Linux too).

>         Donovan White

	Rex Ballard


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri May  5 00:50:59 1995