[This isn't quite on topic, though you could stretch it to deal with remailers. Can the winsock remailer do this?] At 10:50 PM 9/18/95 GMT, Rick.Sciorra@hudson.lm.com wrote:

Does anyone know of an E-Mail package that will automatically connect to the Internet and retreive mail at specific intervals?

Sigh. Folks have gotten too used to PC-market email systems, which are generally braindamaged by having been around operating systems where you can't just run a listner program that waits for somebody to call you when they want to send you mail, which of course fits in very well with letting ISPs avoid having to make outgoing phone calls instead of just receiving, plus the market reluctance of many of them to forward mail for you to competing mail services and the client/server-orientation that makes peer-to-peer services harder to implement. Unix systems did this job just fine on PDP11/70s, which could support a dozen or two users on a machine with about the horsepower of a PC/AT. And Henry Spencer could do that on a /44 :-) Just about anything that does UUCP can be set to do that, if you've got an ISP who doesn't charge you lots extra for using UUCP. Most high-end terminal emulation packages have scripting languages that let you call up and do stuff, which you should be able to call from timer programs; you can probably even find a free Kermit version that will do it. I use Eudora Light with Trumpet to call Netcom's newbie-friendly Netcruiser service; when I hit the menu item for send or retrieve mail, it pops through all the layers and dials, and hangs up when it's done. If Commercial Eudora can't already do that automagically, it should - ask Qualcomm to add it to the next version... Alternatively, Winsock programming isn't really all that hard, and POP3 is a pretty simple protocol, so you could roll your own. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---