[Info-vax] Rethinking DECNET ?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <540b8261$0$27604$c3e8da3$dbd57e7 at news.astraweb.com>,
	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> On 14-09-06 16:32, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
>> Functionality wise, DECnet do have some things in there which is way 
>> better (in my opinion) to what exists in the IP world, but also some 
>> things that are horribly worse. (CTERM anyone...?)
> 
> No computer vendor wanted to abandon features in their existing stack by
> adopting a lower common denominator. So they got together and devised
> OSI which included all the features they currently supported.
> 
>> Read receipts... I've never understood the point of them. It puts the 
>> world in a very syncronous mode, which sucks. MAIL-11 is still no fun,
> 
> Sorry, but read receipts were very useful.

Useful in what way?  Since when can the computer tell the difference
between "reading" and opening and deleting"?  There are systems that
even tell you this in the return receipt they send back.

>                                            Knowing when the recipient
> READ the message. 

You can barely tell when they opened it.  The computer can not tell if
anyone actually read it or if they read it and actually understood what
it said.  I get stuff in languages I don't know.  What value is a return
receipt from one of those?

>                   (not when it was delivered). And was very commonly
> used with ALL-IN-1.

If ALL-IN-1 assumed it could tell when someone "read" a message, it was
more of a joke than even I thought it was.

> 
> And remember that dec's X.400 product replaced Message Router (an MTA)
> not the user agents (ALL-IN-1 and the VMS MAIL low end basic product)
> 
> While read receipts were somewhat added with SMTP, it was never
> "officialy" supported by all agents and not a function you can rely on.

Read receipts could not be added to SMTP as they are a UI response and
not an MTA response.

> 
> 
>> And I don't really care if 
>> the mail was opened or not. 
> 
> You've obviously never worked in an organisation with a working mail
> system that supported read receipts.

I have worked with many of them.  The truly useful ones tell you that
the recieipt merely tells you the message was opened, not that it was
read or understood.

> 
>> Agreed that it wasn't until 1992 that internet became "commercial". 
>> However, at that point, there was really no alternative around anymore. 
> 
> Had the government push for standard protocols to connect machines from
> different vendors happened a couple years later, IP would likely have
> become the standard, but there are likely have been many official
> extensions to stuff like SMTP, FTP etc to support each vendor's
> proprietary extensions. (for instance, VMS RMS or MVS dataset attributes
> supported by any unix system, not just text line end conversions)
 
bill
 

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>