Not quite accurate...Compu$erv IS part of the Internet...additionally,
for those fortunate ones who have both an account on there and another
*full-blown* institutional service provider can actually access their
Compu$serv account via telnet. I realize that this may verge upon being
overly technical, but there continues to be a wrong-headed concept about
the Internet being some kind of single entity that exists beyond our
keyboard and is only accessible via some service.
 
STILL (and I hope the potential flamers get this far!) Bayla Singer is
100% right in saying that it gets expensive in a hurry because the
commercial suppliers have made their individual features exclusive and
one must pay to play. It is analogous to all the local phone service
providers offering radically different features, but only to their local
markets...and you cannot connect across the boundaries.
 
So for any organization to choose one of these commercial servers
actually can wind up cutting off a sizeable portion of potential users. I
no longer use AOL, Compu$erve, or Delphi and MUST use the services of
both the institutions with which I am affiliated. While I am fortunate
thatt one of the institutions allows me *full access* (ie, I can take
advantage of using various WWW viewing software applications, telnet
connections, ftp, etc) I cannot, as I said earlier, use any of the
exclusive features of the commercial service providers...
 
It's time for coffee...
 
 
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Dennis Moser                           (313)271-1620 x 657
Project Photo Archivist         Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village
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"Yes, please...another cup. I haven't hit my target heart rate yet..."
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On Fri, 16 Sep 1994, Bayla Singer wrote:
 
> And one more thing -- Compu$erv is not accessible from the Internet: one
> must already be a paying member/subscriber in order to pay the additional
> $15/mo for the ASTC forum... other desireable services are the exclusive
> property of AOL, etc -- so now we are really getting expensive, as one
> will have to pay for membership in several commercial services in order
> to monitor activity in interesting fields.