Re: The FAQ system approaches obsolescence. What do we do now?

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Joe Sewell (jsewell@iu.net)
Sat, 10 Dec 1994 21:43:21 +0000

At 10:54 AM 12/9/94 -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>People have been predicting charge-for-bytes for ten years,
>without noticing that it has never actually happens --- the commercial ISPs
>all charge either monthly flat rate or by connect time. Reason? The
>accounting overhead for charge-by-byte is so high that the game is not worth
>the candle.
>
>Go on, prove me wrong. Name *one* ISP that charges by the byte.

I believe someone in another country already has, Eric. It's not popular
in the USA, but it apparently has been implemented elsewhere in the world.

>Again, I urge you to think of httpd as a replacement ftpd with a massively
>better interface. From an economic-utility point of view, the graphics are
>just a distraction.

That works as long as folks are ftp'ing their FAQ's. The point you miss,
though, is that FAQ's are still useful when sent along USENET channels,
sans ftp, sans http. (So far, no Web browser I've seen does news as well
as dedicated news readers, and we've talked about the "one size fits all"
vs. the "specialist program" debate already.)

Joe

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