Netcom is not a good example (Was: Re: Files and mail)

[Michael Handler]

On Fri, 6 Jan 1995, Mike Duvos wrote:

[ big monolithic service providers like Nyetcom are the best and will 
crush all you piddly little upstart ISPs ]

> Big service providers like Netcom don't interfere with customer
> use of the resources they sell, except when network functionality
> is impacted.  Even in such cases, they try to reach an
> understanding with the user, and terminate accounts only as a
> last resort.  Accounts don't vanish when "the guy who owns the
> machine" decides to throw a tantrum.

	Yeah. They only kill accounts when people criticize NetCruiser. :-P

	Nyetcom is hardly an example of a quality service provider. They
suffer periodic long term news and email delays; their service personnel
are rude, slow, and unprofessional (read: Bruce Woodcock & the above
incident); their security has been compromised countless times; their FTP
server is constantly overloaded; their toy software NetCruiser generates
nonconformant Usenet articles; their 18 (!) machines are constantly
overloaded that it takes a good five minutes to respond to a finger
request; they have no http:// support. They are home to some of the most
infamous net.kooks and net.cretins (like Tom Servo, currently), and their
net.reputation sucks.  Frankly, I'd rather have a Winternet account than a
Netcom account. 

ObCypherpunks: sameer's system, the Community Connexion, suffers *none* 
of these problems. http://www.c2.org or <info at c2.org> for more 
information. sameer supports PGP and the running of anonymous remailers 
on his system. Check it out, send him money.