🚀 go-pugleaf

> >Uucp is, after all, used for a lot more than email.  Even with
> >intelligent mail routers installed everywhere (which is still
> >not too close to realization), people would still be making
> >little, temporary links and running uucp across it for purposes
> >like downloading binaries and uuxing them.  Requiring that users
> >first spend several orders of magnitude more time consulting a
> >name authority is not realistic.
> 
> Of course it is used for more than email.  You are making a useless point
> since the issue of the actual workings of UUCP is not germane to this dis-
> cussion.  UUCP knows nothing about domains and addresses and probably never
> will.  All it knows about is paths.  As far as mail is concerned, UUCP is just
> a transport protocol, ignorant of the application layer's needs and intentions.
>
Well, yes and no.  Note, first, that I didn't say anything about
the actual workings of UUCP.  I was talking about people using
it to do a job.  And when they set up little local uucp clusters,
they very often run mail across it.  Why?  Well, mail is often
more convenient than running uucp directly.  Many users know how
to use mail better than uucp, and they use what they know.  This
may not be the "best" from a guru's point of view, but they're not
gurus.  And as long as they're only passing source files across
the links, mail works just fine.  Granted, uuto would be better,
but people tend to use the tools they know.

Every Unix system I've ever seen has a library program called 
'mail', and they all work the same.  It's a nice little program, 
for what little it does.  I can teach a novice user all about
it in 5 minutes, and they can use it without surprises on a local
uucp cluster (which regrettably requires a guru to hook up). 
It's still going to be a while before domainized mailers are
so easy for a non-guru to use.

The point I've been trying to make is that there are many good
uses for temporary clusters of machines.  Those who are developing 
new mailers can rail all they want against such uses of machines,
but users aren't likely to listen.  Currently, hooking up a cluster 
via uucp can be done in time measured in fractions of an hour per
node.  Consulting a name authority is several orders of magnitude
slower, and in many cases would take longer than the lifetime of
the cluster.  This is quite prohibitive.

> Mail is the entity that needs to know about domains and addresses (if you are
> a domainist and if you aren't then this entire discussion is of no interest).

Actually, even if I weren't, I'd still find it interesting.  But
I can assure you that most of the other users around here find it
supremely boring; they leave newsgroups like comp.mail.headers to
weirdos like me. 

-- 
	John M Chambers			Phone: 617/364-2000x7304
Email: ...{adelie,bu-cs,harvax,inmet,mcsbos,mit-eddie,mot[bos]}!cdx39!{jc,news,root,usenet,uucp}
Smail: Codex Corporation; Mailstop C1-30; 20 Cabot Blvd; Mansfield MA 02048-1193
Clever-Saying: Uucp me out of here, Scotty; there's no AI on this node!