Re: News Reader...
From: Don Caton (support_at_shorelinesoftware.com)
Date: 01/13/05
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Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:36:12 +0000
"Vanguard" <see_signature> wrote in message news:see_signature:
> "Don Caton" <support@shorelinesoftware.com> wrote in message
> And what is their operating costs? Quoting revenue is the ploy of the
> foolish. Yeah, they make a lot of money. They also spend a lot of
My point is simply that the product generates revenue, a lot of it, and
they obviously can afford to invest some of that income back in it.
Whether adding NNTP support makes sense for MS or not, I don't know, but
cost isn't a factor. It took me all of 6 months to do it, and that's
with outdated and inaccurate docs on MAPI. MS could do it themselves a
lot quicker. We're talking about thousands of dollars, not millions.
They probably spend more money watering the plants each month.
> through a wishlist>. You don't think all that added codebase is going
> to drive up the cost of the product?
Clearly it hasn't. Look at today's software and the number of features
they contain, vs. older software. We're generally paying the same or
less for a lot more. Some, maybe even a lot of the new "features" are
of questionable value and serve no other purpose than to generate
upgrade revenue. Nevertless, version 2.0 of product x with 100 features
doesn't cost 10 times more than version 1.0 with 10 features.
> business. The point was that e-mail was and is seen as a business
> communication channel. NNTP is not. NNTP is seen as play time by
> employees and thus a waste of company resources but companies realize
> that a certain amount on non-productive time is needed for their
> See, you're off talking about a very small segment of the user community
> for newsgroups and a very small portion of the corporate community.
My disagreement is simply with sweeping generalizations like that. No
question, some companies see NNTP as unnecessary and certainly they can
(and probably do) block NNTP at their firewalls. I was involved with
Computer Associates for a while a number of years ago, and they thought
email was an unnecessary distraction, to the point of disabling it
during certain working hours. And that is a technology company! It's
amazing that they're still in business.
In any case, NNTP, like email or anything else is a potential tool. For
some it is useful, perhaps even essential, for others it is not. Just
because some companies don't find it useful doesn't make it undesirable
for the world as a whole.
> And unless the company uses content filtering or operates their own
> newsgroups server that is managed by them to eliminate the binary groups
> (or has their ISP provide an NNTP for them with the restrictions) then
> how does the company prevent their employees who have NNTP access from
> visiting particular newsgroups? Once in, all in, everywhere in.
Doubtful. It is a simple matter to examine an NNTP conversation and
filter out unwanted newsgroups. HTTP proxies do it all the time, and I
would be surprised if the same thing isn't available for NNTP. Any
company large enough to worry about these things almost certainly has
firewalls and proxies and various policies in place to address these
issues.
> Obviously we all speak from our own experiences. I have not yet found
> good evidence or studies made of all computer-using companies regarding
> their attitude and leniency towards NNTP.
Sure. But unless you've undertaken a survey of all corporations, your
evidence and experience, as well as mine, is anecdotal. I don't doubt
that many corporations have no use for NNTP, but that doesn't invalidate
the needs of others who do.
> What, you think new variations or mutations don't get by anti-virus
> scanners? Or past IPS'es (intrusion protection systems)? Why do you
Of course, but the same applies to email or in some cases, just visiting
a malicious web page. This has nothing to do with NNTP.
> We've already heard the past rumors that Microsoft was going to dump
> Outlook Express. There was a huge wailing by users that wanted to
> continue using OE. If Microsoft rolls NNTP into Outlook then they
> probably will do that by rolling in the code from OE, if possible, into
> Outlook. Then perhaps there would be no cost increment for adding the
> new protocol to Outlook.
I think that's unlikely. If they dump OE and roll everything into
Outlook, then they would have to bundle Outlook with the OS. If MS
removes the email and NNTP client from Windows, that would drive people
to some other free product like Netscape, and I'm quite sure that would
make every blood vessel in Gates' head explode.
> get it. Sounds very much like something Microsoft might attempt by
> pulling over a portion of the userbase of their free product for which
> they generate no revenue, as would any corporate entity. Why would
> Microsoft continue to lose on OE when they can make revenue on Outlook
> after adding NNTP?
Why does Microsoft do anything? Why do they spend millions on IE and
Media Player? You'd still have to buy Windows anyhow. Aside from the
fact that they don't like to compete on merit, why not make IE and Media
Player a revenue generator by selling them as products?
> their shareholders to somehow offset that expense. They don't buy a
> company so they can go out of business. So why pay Microsoft later when
> and if they ever add NNTP functionality to Outlook when you can pay for
> that now?
In a general sense yes, but you're talking about pennies. Microsoft
doesn't report to their shareholders every time they spend a few
thousand bucks. NNTP is trivial to implement. They already have code
to do it in both OE and Exchange. We're not talking about an investment
of million of dollars and man-years.
-- Don Caton Shoreline Software, Inc.
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