6/10/95                        CompuNotes                        Issue #12
                  Patrick Grote, Publisher and Editor
     CompuNotes is a weekly publication available through an email
           distribution list and many fine on-line networks!
We feature reviews, interviews and commentary concerning the PC industry.


     +-----------------------------------------------------------+
     |Hello! I am back from vacation! Very enjoyable! A couple   |
     |of folks wrote to me needing some files. To them I say     |
     |A) SAFPAK21.ZIP is now up on the FTP site and B) PKUNZIP   |
     |and PKUNZIP.EXE are now up ont the FTP site.               |
     |                                                           |
     |I am in desperate need of a LISTSERV or MAJORDOMO facility |
     |for the list! Can anyone help? Please let me know . . .    |
     +-----------------------------------------------------------+

                         This Week's Contents:
                         =====================
                                  NEWS
                                  ====
*************************-=> IBM BUYS LOTUS <=-*************************
                        -=> Web Crawler Sold <=-
                                REVIEWS
                                =======
               -=> American Yellow Pages by Judy Litt <=-
                     -=> On File! by Judy Litt <=-
                          WEB SITE OF THE WEEK
                          ====================
                  -=> You Can Author the US Budget <=-
                          FTP FILE OF THE WEEK
                          ====================
                         -=> Dragon's Bane <=-
                               INTERVIEW
                               =========
                  -=> Robert Vostreys, RNET Author <=-

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------------------------------------------------------------------------
   NEWS OF THE WEEK| This section is dedicated to verified news . . .
       All News (C)opyright  Respective Owner - Will Only Reprint
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                         -=> IBM BUYS LOTUS <=-
    ARMONK, N.Y. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 11,
1995--IBM and Lotus Development Corp. today announced a definitive
merger agreement under which IBM will pay $64 per Lotus share in cash
for all of Lotus' outstanding shares and preferred share purchase
rights.  The transaction has a total equity value of approximately $3.5
billion.
    "We're delighted that Lotus and IBM have been able to reach an
agreement so quickly," said IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.  "This means we can begin moving ahead  rapidly
to bring our shared vision of team computing -- and its many  powerful
benefits -- to reality for our customers.  I know I speak  on behalf of
all IBM employees when I say that we eagerly look  forward to working
with our future colleagues at Lotus and its  industry partners.  We have
much to do, and we are anxious to get  started."
    "We are excited about this opportunity to partner with IBM,"  said
Jim Manzi, who will continue in his role as chairman and CEO of  Lotus,
reporting to Mr. Gerstner.  "We intend to utilize our  combined
resources to expand our leadership position in  communications software
and advance our desktop software business.   After careful
consideration, Lotus' Board of Directors believes it  has acted in the
best interests of the company's employees,  shareholders and customers.
We now look forward to working with IBM  to grow our customer base and
set our collective sights on the  market opportunities before us."
    Mr. Manzi will be named a senior vice president of IBM and will
work hand in hand with John M. Thompson, senior vice president, IBM
Software Group, to manage the transition and day-to-day interface
between Lotus and IBM.
    Completion of the tender offer is conditioned on the tender of a
majority of the outstanding Lotus shares and expiration of the
Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting periods.
    Additional details on today's announcement will be available on  the
IBM and Lotus Internet home pages (IBM: http://www.ibm.com.   Lotus:
http://www.lotus.com).


                        -=> Web Crawler Sold <=-
    (Reuters) -- Envy isn't always a bad thing. It's making Brian
Pinkerton rich.
    Two years ago, Pinkerton was a busy grad student who couldn't goof
around on the World Wide Web like his friends.
    Pinkerton didn't have the time, but as a University of Washington
computer sciences PhD. candidate he had the smarts and access to the
department's Internet server. So he wrote a little program that probed
the Web for new stuff and filed it away in a database that he could
quickly search using simple keywords.
    Now it was his friends' turn to be envious. They pushed Pinkerton to
put the program on the Web for everyone to use. He did, and Web Crawler
was born.
    Last week Pinkerton gave his old buddies an even bigger reason to
see green: he sold Web Crawler (http://webcrawler.com/) to America
Online for more than $1 million.
    The deal is the latest match between creators of Web search tools
and large, established online companies. On the same day America Online
announced the Web Crawler deal, the company bought Global Network
Navigator (http://gnn.com/gnn/gnn.html), a major Web information site,
from O'Reilly & Associates for $11 million in cash and stock.
    Earlier this year, the creators of Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) --
themselves graduate students at Stanford -- hooked up with Netscape
Communications, then raised $3 million in venture funding to turn the
popular Web searching service into a company.
    Microsoft Corp., which is expected to launch its online network Aug.
24, has negotiated the rights to use the Lycos
(http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/) search engine created at Carnegie Mellon
University.
    What's going on here?
    Commercial online networks such as America Online and Microsoft are
hot for services that will help customers make sense of the maelstrom of
information on the Web, said Michael Rinzel, with Jupiter Communication,
the New York interactive services market research firm. With the number
of Web sites increasing daily, it's no small task.
    ``Their experience with the medium has given them a unique
perspective of what's important to customers,'' Rinzel said, ''and
what's important is providing an organized idea of where to go, a menu
of things to choose from so users aren't lost in the wilderness.''
    With the kind of money America Online and Microsoft have stuffed in
the bank, it makes sense to buy something that's already out there and
perfect it, rather than develop something from the group up, Rinzel
said.
    For Pinkerton, 31, Web Crawler had gotten too big to handle alone.
In November 1994, seven months after Pinkerton loaded Web Crawler onto
the Internet, the service had received a total of a million queries.
These days, Web Crawler answers two million queries a week.
    ``The whole thing has been amazing,'' Pinkerton said.
    Web Crawler was consuming about 75 percent of the University of
Wisconsin's computer science network before Dealernet, an Internet-based
car dealer, bailed Pinkerton out by buying him a 486 computer. Starwave,
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's interactive services company, became
Pinkerton's second underwriter, allowing him to work on Web Crawler
virtually full time.
    But it wasn't enough. Pinkerton still couldn't update Web Crawler's
index of 200,000 Web sites as often as he liked, and he wanted to make
it even easier for people to perform searches. So he shopped around and
soon was talking to a handful of companies about funding or buying his
baby.
    He teamed up with America Online -- even though Internet hardliners
accused him of selling out -- because the company earmarked money to
improve Web Crawler, offered him the job of running the operation and
paid $1 million-plus up front, Pinkerton said.
    ``I did what was best for me,'' he said.
    Pinkerton recently moved Web Crawler to a bank of file servers at
America Online's WAIS Inc. division in San Francisco. Searches are
already faster, he said.
    Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo have temporarily given up
their studies, but Pinkerton claims he'll finish his PhD. sometime next
year, even though he's now living in San Francisco.
    Meanwhile he's thinking of buying a house in the Bay Area. Call it
his Web Crawler dividend.
    (Michelle V. Rafter writes about cyberspace and technology from Los
Angeles. Reach her at mvrafter(at)deltanet.com or mvrafter(at)aol.com.
Opinions expressed in this column are those of Ms. Rafter)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     -=> American Yellow Pages <=-
                          Review by Judy Litt

    The American Yellow Pages cd-rom 1995 is compiled from more than
5000 Yellow Pages Directories. To ensure the information you receive is
accurate, American Business Information makes more than fourteen million
phone calls. Within a twelve month period, you can download 5000 company
profiles. If you need more, there is an option to pay for more.

Installation
    The installation went smoothly, even though I did get what is termed
a "severe error". I use Dashboard as my shell. When the installation
procedure complained it didn't recognize my shell program I ignored the
warning. I've installed a great deal of software with Dashboard running,
and never had a problem. The next thing I saw was the message "severe
error - could not open progman.exe." However, the installation finished
and everything worked.
    I also normally ignore any installation instructions. I usually go
into file manager, open up the floppy (or cd-rom in this case) drive,
and doubleclick on setup.exe or install.exe.
    American Yellow Pages comes with a demo version of Sharkware
(contact management software). When you open up American Yellow Pages in
file manager, there are two setup.exes - one under the root directory,
and one under a subdirectory called SW. Which one do you use? It turns
out you use the one under the root directory; the other is the Sharkware
demo program.
    My only problem with the installation was the amount of space
occupied on my hard drive: almost 10 MB! I've never liked cd-roms that
don't allow you to run the program off the cd-rom. I realize that this
slows down performance, but for little used programs the space freed is
more important to me than how long it takes to retrieve information.

Video
    American Yellow Pages does not come with a manual. There is a short
video included. You can be up and running without viewing the video. I'd
only open the video if you're confused; the majority of the video is a
sales pitch.
    ABI sells several other products, and they're not shy about letting
you know about them. Much of the video is actually a sales pitch for
ABI's products. The video also claims that American Yellow Pages is "the
single source of information on many businesses." I don't totally agree
with that statement, as you'll see in the following.

The Program
    American Yellow Pages has a very simple interface. There's a toolbar
at the top of the screen that allows you to search, clear, change
options, get industry counts, access American Business Lists Online,
access Data Times Online, find out about other ABI products, exit or get
help.
    The setup options show you how many inquiries you have left, and
give you the option to add more inquiries. This is where you can turn
hints and tool tips on or off.
    The Industry Counts is a very interesting feature. You can find out
how many, say, graphic designers are in every state in the nation.
    You can begin searching either by choosing a yellow page heading or
a company name. You can also narrow down the search by limiting it to a
certain state, city, county, or zip code. It's really very simple.
    The program will then show you all the companies that match your
criteria. With the matches, you have several options: you can view the
records, check to print or download, print, download, or cancel.
    You get more than just an address and phone number with each match:
SIC code, brand carried/specialty, size of ad in Yellow Pages, years
listed, telephone number, and address.

Let Your Fingers?
    I had several problems with the information on the disk. I did a
search for my own business, which had its first yellow pages ad in this
year's directory. Not only did it fail to find my business, but it
didn't even have one of the yellow pages headings that my listing is
under: desktop publishing.
    I was also hoping this cd would solve a problem I've had. I've been
trying to return something to a company. I've e-mailed and written to
them, but so far they've ignored all my efforts. I didn't have their
phone number, and I was hoping I could get it from this cd. No such luck
- it did not recognize this company.

Conclusion
    It seems to me that the uses of this cd-rom are limited. When I do
direct mail, I like to have a contact name, not just a company name.
Also, the fact that I couldn't find a company or listing on the cd-rom
that I know are listed in the Yellow Pages makes me wonder about its
accuracy.
    The cd is easy to use, and has a simple interface. It also lets you
try out contact management software that can be used in conjunction with
the listings. I'm sure I'll find some uses for it.

                            SRP:    $149.00
                          Street Price: $49.00
                 System Requirements: DOS 5.0 or higher
                          Widows 3.1 or higher
                                4 MB RAM
                       4 MB available disk space
                              CD-ROM Drive
                          MSCDEX 2.1 or higher
                     American Business Information
                          5711 S. 86th Circle
                             P.O. Box 27347
                             (402) 593-4595
                           FAX (402) 331-6681
                            CompuServe: None
                               URL: None

                            -=>  Onfile <=-
                          Review by Judy Litt
    It's everyone's recurring nightmare _ a client/boss/spouse wants the
file you worked on a year ago revised. You know you dutifully backed it
up - but where? And what did you name it? You've run into the PC 8.3
wall.

How It Works
    OnFile uses a book metaphor. Files are arranged into books; the
books are separated into chapters and topics. A book might represent a
directory, while the chapters might be subdirectories. Topics are always
files.
    You can choose to set up books manually, or let OnFile do it
automatically with autobook. I tried the autobook feature, since I have
all of my client files set up as subdirectories under one client
directory. 137 MB of files took approximately ten minutes to catalog.
    After using autobook you can go in and change all of the chapters
and topics. You can have each topic accompanied by a thumbnail of the
file or the icon of the program it is associated with. There is even an
option to include the beginning text from the file in the description
automatically.
    OnFile did a good job with my files, with one exception: it didn't
recognize either one of my page layout programs - PageMaker and Quark
XPress. Both of these programs got classified as database programs.
However, when I dragged and dropped a file from Quark, everything worked
as it should.
    Which brings me to another point: OnFile supports OLE 2. You can
drag individual files from file manager and drop them onto a chapter.
You can even drag programs' executable files from file manager, and drop
them into a new book. Then you can launch the program from within
OnFile.

Viewing
    OnFile allows you to view files, even when you no longer have that
particular application loaded. The viewer program supports fifty
different file formats, including the most popular word processing,
spreadsheet, and graphic formats. This also allows you to print out
files when you don't have the application the file was created in
loaded!

Updates
    OnFile will automatically update your books for you. Every time you
open your book, it will ask if you want to update it (you can turn this
feature off if you'd like).

Conclusion
    OnFile is easy to learn and use. My only real complaint is that
there is no way to create a new file with a long file name; you can only
rename already existing files.
    OnFile could even work as a program manager replacement, although I
find the interface a little awkward in that respect. I use Dashboard as
my shell, and I will probably keep on using it.
    Windows 95 (affectionately known as Winever) may make OnFile
obsolete, since it will support long file names. On the other hand, the
ability to see and print your file without opening the corresponding
application is truly unique.

                             SRP:    $49.95
                     System Requirements: 4 MB RAM
                       5 MB available disk space
                          Widows 3.1 or higher
                         VGA or higher display

                    Software Publishing Corporation
                            3165 Kifer Road
                             P.O. Box 54983
                       Santa Clara, CA 95056-0983
                         (408) 986--8600 Voice
                         CompuServe: GO SPCFOR
                               URL: None

------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK! | This section is devoted to a cool WebSite . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                For Release: May 30th, 1995
                                For more info, call:
                                        Nathan Newman (510) 452-1820
                                        Anders Schneiderman (510) 643-8293
                                        ccer@violet.berkeley.ed
                                        Center for Community Economic Research


                         The Federal Budget Gets Wired:
             Citizens on the Internet Can Now Play Senator
                    On Interactive Budget Simulation

    Berkeley, CA:  Taking interactive civic education to a new level,
UC-Berkeley's Center for Community Economic Research (CCER) today
demonstrated a new on-line National Federal Budget Simulator that lets
anyone on the World Wide Web try their hand at bala ncing the budget.
The simulation is located at:

           http://garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/budget/budget.html

    Going beyond the rhetoric and headlines of budget choices, this
simulation allows Internet users to control a whole range of budget
choices, submit a budget, and interactively see the changes in the
federal deficit.  Internet "Senators" can get into the nitty-gritty of
controlling mass transit spending, weapons procurement, national parks
allocations, and social welfare spending and see results of cuts in all
areas of the $1.5 trillion budget.
    Additionally, Internet "Senators" are given interactive control of
the $455 billion in "tax expenditures" in the federal budget.  Some have
called these tax deductions the largest hidden entitlements of the
federal budget and this simulation demonstrates how adding them into the
budget debate opens up far wider possibilities for balancing the federal
budget.

               Other features of the simulation include:

 Generating automatic bar charts that lets you see the results of your
                             budget choices
 Line-by-line printouts of the results of specific categorical cuts or
                               increases
     Links to analyses of the federal budget on the Internet from a
                        variety of perspectives
      The ability to view an "Internet Budget"--the tabulation and
   averaging of all successfully balanced budgets on the simulation.

    The National Budget Simulator is part of the ongoing work of the
Center for Community Economic Research to promote economic and civic
literacy through interactive Internet tools.  "The Internet has a lot of
flash and glitz, but most of what is on the Wo rld Wide Web are cute
toys," notes Dr. Anders Schneiderman, CCER's co-director.  "This
National Budget Simulator is one of the first tools on the Internet that
really takes advantage of the interactive nature of the technology to
enhance civic education."
    The Center's Economic Democracy Information Network (EDIN) project
has supported and trained a whole range of community organizations in
getting on-line and helped bring their voices to the Information
Superhighway. The EDIN project has been cited in sou rces ranging from
USA Today to The Nation.  PC Computing declared the EDIN server (located
at http://garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/) one of the 29 "Highlights of the
Internet" in their September 1994 issue.  The Center is also an ongoing
consultant to the Association of Bay Area Governments in getting cities
and government agencies in Northern California on-line
    "The next challenge for those dedicated to information access and
democracy," said CCER co-director Nathan Newman, "is to create tools
that make economic policy choices clear to the public. Numbers gets
thrown around by politicians and we are working to create the tools and
the links to background information that will allow citizens to 'get
under the hood' of those numbers."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
COOL FTP FILE OF THE WEEK | You may need this file . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       Dragons Bane: Mah Jongg II
                             Solitaire Game

    Addictive tile solitaire! Dragons Bane: Mah Jongg II is a second
generation version of the popular tile solitaire game. It supports both
SVGA and VGA graphics and SoundBlaster sound effects. A wide variety of
tiles are available and an editor is included to make your own. The
original "dragon" layout is just one of many arrangements possible and
with the built-in layout editor there is no limit to the possibilities.
Extensive record keeping is possible for those who like statistics.
Requires VGA or SuperVGA (VESA 1.2 and others supported) and 1 meg
expanded/extended memory. Mouse and SoundBlaster supported but optional.

    You can find this as DRGNBN10.ZIP on the following FTP site:

        WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU:/pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/misc/drgndn10.zip

------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK | Interesting people you should know about . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This week we talk with Robert Vostreys. Never heard of him? That's
ok. He is the reason that QWK based networks exist in the PCBoard world.
With his program RNET, more than a thousand PCBoard sysops can share
messages among themselves without worry of bugs, dupes or crashes.
    Robert also runs a very successful BBS, Father Than Light, and has
brought some neat ideas on sysoping to the tables!

PG:  No one can just "do computers" all the time. Do you hit the golf
course? Play a little ping pong? What?
 
RV: Actually, I do "do computers" all the time.  Ok, I do go out to the
movies occasionally, I read science fiction when I make the time, and
about once a month I drive a long haul truck route.  I have a nice
telescope, but haven't used it in years (sigh).  I'm kinda like Scotty
from Star Trek -- for a vacation I read technical manuals.

 
PG: What other shareware products do you offer? Commercial programs?
 
RV: While 90% of what I've put out for Sysops is in the public domain,
there are two shareware programs (two that I ask for registrations for):
RNET and TXT2MSG.
    As for commercial software, I have a number of serious utilities for
PCBoard/Sysops including: UUFTL File Decoder, Email MX processor,
Ping/Finger/Telnet/etc (TCP/IP service doors), NNTP Poller, WWW/FTP
Server, AutoFTP, and SLIP/PPP doors.  As you can see, the direction
lately has been toward Internet TCP/IP and Usenet based packages.
    In the non-BBSing realm, I write commercial database applications
(usually for mailorder and inventory systems) and finance company
accounting/database software.  Accounting software was the primary focus
for several years but has given way to running the BBS full time for the
past two years.


PG: Do the words Pearl Jam mean anything to you? What type of music are
you in to?
 
RV: Er, is that anything like Grape Jam?  I don't think grinding up
pearls would be very tasty.  Based on your second question, I'll assume
it's a music group of some type.
    I like Classic Rock and usually loud when driving.  Cream, Floyd,
Zepplin, etc. I also like classical and folk music.  I don't like
anything with a 3/4 beat.
 

PG: How is RNET selling? Well enough to live off of? If not, what do you
do for a living?
 
RV: It has been dropping off (as expected).  It is a VERY limited market
product -- only used by PCBoard/Prodoor Sysops who want to be part of a
QWK based echo network.  While it has many useful features beyond its
echo abilities, nobody but that small market has any excuse to look at
it.
    It was originally written to get around the problems with the only
other existing tosser at the time.  The author was very unresponsive to
getting things fixed so I had to write something.  Roger Sligar also had
the same problems with his board so I gave it to him.  He convinced me
to put it out as shareware to provide Sysops with a solution to the
problems they were facing.  I expected to get maybe a dozen or so
registrations in a year.  However, it had a dozen registrations in the
first week and went from there.
    All the registrations have gone directly into the board and its
expansion.  It was due mostly to RNET that the board remained a free
access system for seven years.
    What do I do for a living?  I "do computers" <heh>.  I do contract
programming / consulting, sell hardware, and drive the occasional long
haul truck route to get away from it all.
    However, things are changing.  I and several others are in the
middle of putting together a corporation to act as an Internet Service
Provider and software development company.  And you can be assured that
it'll be very "Sysop Friendly" since I, being a Sysop, have a good idea
what pains Sysops have to go through.
 

PG: Ok. Just like everyone asks a car reviewer or mechanic what kind of
car they drive, what is the configuration and type of your primary PC?

RV: My personal machine is a 386/40, 8mb RAM, 260mb HD, SVGA.
    If you are asking what the BBS runs on, it varies from a 286/12 that
just won't die up to a pair of 486/100's running OS2 Warp.  It drives
some folks crasy that I have mostly 486's here and yet still use a
386/40 that doesn't even have a power switch (it has never been turned
off since being put together).
 

PG: Are you afraid that Clark Development will incorporate the
functionality of RNET into PCB at any time? They have done that with
Fido technology.
 
RV: Nope, not at all.  If PCBoard (or another product) did what RNET
does, then RNET wouldn't be needed anymore.  I didn't write it to sell,
and I don't keep writing it to make anything.  It continues to exist and
expand soley for the benefit of the Sysops who need it.  If it wasn't
for habit and my liking to know folks are still getting use of it, it
would be freeware.
    Clark Development has implemented many of RNET's features
specifically because of RNET Sysops asking for them.  A perfect example
is the PCBPACK /THreashold command.
 

PG: Your also a pretty insightful sysop, define the Information
Superhighway in your own words.

RV: It's a toll road that leads into a hay stack looking for a needle.
RV: The problem is that there is no intelligent filtering of the vast
amounts of information available.  Information overload.  The next big
step in software technology will be the software ability to search,
analyze, and filter information of any and all types to find what
someone is looking for without swamping them.
    As binary indexed databases made a difference, followed by GUI
interfaces and applications generators, the next leap will be filter
technology.  All this information is just great -- but it takes forever
on to impossible to find the best answers to your questions.  You may
find an answer somewhere (manually searching), but is that the best
answer?  Is there a better, more complete, more up to date answer
somewhere else you haven't looked?  Software search and filtering
technology will be required before the true value of the "Information
Superhighway" is seen.
    I believe that with the development of the software technology to
search and filter the information available, the "Information
Superhighway" will change definition to mean those tools themselves.
 

PG: The QWK format has undergone very little changes over the years. Do
you think it is ready for an overhaul? If so, in what areas? If not, why
not?
 
RV: QWK not changing isn't for the lack of need.  The only real reason
QWK hasn't changed is due to the originator of the QWK format (which is
simply the PCBoard 12 message base format with a few extra fields)
dragging his heels and being unresponsive to suggested changes.
    QWK needs to die.  It no longer suit the needs of Sysops nor of
Users. However, it has mass and momentum.  Various other formats and
systems have come out, but none have taken hold as well as QWK.  It's
advantage was it's timing on the market.  The BBS community (that which
was not on Fido technology already) was ready for echonetworks.  It
provided the means of accomplishing that.  That's where it stopped.
While better mouse traps (including RNET) have come along, they're still
mouse traps.
    As for reader technology, QWK is in even worse shape than network
wise.


PG: I'm a sysop of a BBS. What are the top five things I can do to
attract paying callers?

RV: I've run a free (donation) system for the last 8 years so I don't
really know the answer to that one.  I'll make some common sense
guesses:
 
1. Support your customers (users).  Use voice support lines, be
   professional, answer all questions in a timely manner.  Listen very
   carefully to what your customers tell you.
 
2. Know your market.  You need to know what the users in your area are
   in need/want of and try to provide it.  If your users are mostly
   into games, provide games.  If your users are mostly into files,
   get lots of files.
 
3. Advertize.  Doesn't matter if you have the best system in the world
   if nobody knows about it.
 
4. Have a style or a primary purpose.  A "general, do everything" system
   is undefined and just like any other.  Have a unique system style or
   focus without losing compatibility with the general marketplace.
 
5. Price your services well.  Pricing too low or too high will
   discourage users.  If your system was $1/year, folks will not feel
   there is anything worthwhile or you are not serious.  If you price at
   $500/year, you'll have very little in the way of customers and/or
   have a very limited nitch market.
 
END OF INTERVIEW
----------------
                    This issue was brought to you by
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|                                                  /               \    |
|Even if all you want is for your BBS to break    |    .o~o~o~o.    |   |
|even, the author shows you how! Did you know:    |     \     /     |   |
|   *   The easiest ways to hook customers costs   \     \   /     /    |
|       less than your average store soda.          `.    | |    .'     |
|   *   You can have all the new files you want without~. | | .~        |
|       paying a dime of long distance or a service fee!| | | |         |
|                                                      }~_~_~_~{        |
|To order THE BBS CASH MACHINE, send $13.95 to         }~_~_~_~{        |
|Readables, POB 31351, St. Louis, MO 63131. Check/MO.  }~_~_~_~{        |
|Satisfaction is guaranteed!                             |___|          |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

