[plug] Re: mail-list vs news

[Cameron Patrick]

Alex Nordstrom wrote:

> Being from Sweden, I'm used to dialup being charged by the minute. While 
> I certainly never liked that, this "quota" thing you have here seems 
> even more evil.

Most dial-up accounts these days don't have quotas, and 

> > The bandwidth I do have (dialup; 250 megabyte/month quota) has
> 
> As I am relatively addicted to the Interweb, and preferring to keep the 
> variable costs in my cash budget to a minimum, I have never looked at 
> anything but unlimited options. Unlimited dialup with a 4-hour hard 
> disconnect cycle is less than $17/month if you live in Perth, Broome, 
> Bunbury, or Rockingham.

(Heh, Rockingham as separate from Perth?)

> Even on a limited student budget, I don't consider that a lot.

Yup.  But I suspect that what Bernd is paying for is a static IP and
permanent connection, and that he where he lives, he can't ADSL --
otherwise why stick with dialup?  Dial-up + line rental costs
/substantially/ more than an ADSL connection.  e.g. Looking at
WestNet's web site, permanent dialup is $66/mth (with unlimited
traffic), plus $27/mth line rental from Telstra -- it ends up costing
more than 1500/256 ADSL with a 14GB cap.

> Bottom line: just about all, if not precisely all, of the perceived 
> differences between mailing lists and newsgroups are attributable to 
> user agents and are independent of transport protocol.

Not so in practice... IMAP access to mailing lists is equivalent to
NNTP access to newsgroups, but most mailing lists only deliver via
SMTP.  If you want IMAP access to your mailing lists, you need to run
your own mail server and split messages into separate folders.

Cameron.