🚀 go-pugleaf

This article is from "Kenneth Ng" 
 <hplabs!@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA:1480@NJIT-EIES.MAILNET>
 and was received on Sun Oct 19 01:30:06 1986
 
I've read the talk about EIES in mod.comp-soc and would like to make a few
corrections. First, EIES DOES talk to the outside world.  For that matter, 
this mail is definite proof that it does.  At the moment the only publically 
available transfer mechanisms are through MAILNET, which is to be discontinued 
in December. But there are efforts to get EIES to talk to Usenet and BITNET, 
possibly to be available next year.

It is true that EIES has not kept up with other conferencing systems.  EIES 
was designed in the 1970's before there was such as thing as computer 
conferencing.  But there are a few features of EIES that other systems STILL 
don't have (to the best of my knowledge). An example is active text.  Active 
text is the ability to modify the text at display time with commands buried 
in the text. With active text I can write a message that will display 
different messages to different people, or display different messages 
depending on whether or not I am currently on line.

Lastly, sometime late in 1987 start looking for 2 new systems: EIES 2 and 
TEIES.  These are both efforts to bring EIES technology more up to date with 
other systems.

[this is the last message on EIES itself - I'd like to steer the discussion
 more towards the IMPACT of conferencing systems and public bulletin boards
 on society, and vice versa.  -- Dave]