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On Tue, 17 Aug 1993, miekael wrote: > David, you seem to belive that most of my dislike for the Minitel > system is that it uses a terminal. This is not true. What I disliked > the most is the actual terminal, the Vidoetex terminal with it's > terrible block graphics and letters. I myself hate the terrible, childish letters on the Prodigy service. Of course I'd want TeleReader users to choose the sizes and styles of the characters. > > The Swedish telephone company has had a Videotex system running a long > time now, and the latest investment, TeleGuide, has just turned off > the last terminal. *evil grin* I think the single reason this system > broke down was that people interested in computer technology simply > puked on the system. I mean, if they had uses *ordinary* character > based terminal when they started the Videotex experiment back in the > early eighties I think they would have gotten a lot more users. > Same point I made re Minitel toys vs. PCs. You're absolutely right. > Of course, their terrible page based software was a part of the > failure as well. I guess a lot more people would have used the system > if it had been menu based or had simply provided a command line with a > straigthforward help system. Agreed! (David reads ahead and keeps nodding his head.) > > Things like e-mail was missing as well. Sure, there was some way of > sending messages to each other within the system, but you had to > remember something like 11147111, 187827878293 to be able to send a > single message. The number above is supposed to be a user ID. Arrgh... > > Miekael <[log in to unmask]> > > void *mind; /* We're all void pointers... */ (Reminder to innocent onlookers: It's no big deal for me to e-mail copies of the latest version of teleread.txt.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David H. Rothman "So we beat on, boats against [log in to unmask] the current...." 805 N. Howard St., #240 Alexandria, Va. 22304 703-370-6540(o)(h) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------