Mail, Domain Names, NSLUG, and 7.2 and 8.0, and the coming ice age in Hell.

[Barry Margolin <barmar@think.com>]

    Date: Wed, 16 Dec 87 18:58 PST
    From: Jerry Bakin <Jerry@marlowe.inference.dialnet.symbolics.com>

	Date: Wed, 16 Dec 87 10:53:20 CST
	From: forbus@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Forbus)

	They could make the
	best mailer in the world and it wouldn't make much of a difference if they
	don't stay head of SUN and others in the raw performance of their lisp on
	large problems.

    I dunno about this, in the past Symbolics has sold their machines as
    productivity platforms and stressed software engineering on them.  I am
    working on a large system created by about seven people and we also have
    to deal with three different external groups (the customer, a third
    contractor, and internal product development).  Much of my work is
    communications.  And no, I do not want to log onto our overloaded VAX
    with its "ultrasophisticated mailer" when I can use all of those lisp
    cycles that would be going to waste and ZMACs and filters and all of the
    rest to handle mail the way it should be handled.  Hey Zmail works
    pretty damn well, I think you should reconsider your image of it.

It is possible to use the sophisticated Unix mailer and the winning
Lispm mail reader.  Zmail allows you to read Unix mail files, so you
don't have to login to the Vax to read the Vax mail.  It is the
Symbolics store-and-forward-mailer that has trouble.  Basically, the
only thing we use it for is delivering mail to users who wish to keep
their inboxes on the LMFS.  If it receives any mail for users who don't,
it just forwards it to Unix.

                                                barmar