Re: [Asrg] Re: Answering a lot of questions about e-postage in afew sentences

[der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>]

> Electricity too cheap to meter!

> GE used to use that slogan, in the 1960's, to sell the idea of
> nuclear power plants.

> It's always suspect, tho not a priori false, and certainly suspect
> here, for the very reason we're here; it becomes abused.

I know someone who has phone service with, effectively, a
continent-wide local calling area.  (That is, one flat fee per month
(USD 40.00 is what I recall) covers all calls within North America.)

I gather it's new and thus relatively experimental, but people don't do
such things unless they have reason to think they will succeed
commercially.

>> It's not a fiction.  It's a fundamental difference between e-mail
>> and all those analogies people seem to like so much, a difference
>> that is in large part why the analogies are flawed.
> It's not "fundamentally different", it's mostly different as a matter
> of a degree, different costs, which would seem to argue
> "fundamentally the same".

It is a fundamental difference in that it is a difference at the
foundation (the "fundament").  It is a quantitative, rather than
qualitative, difference, yes, but it is still fundamental.  (Actually,
given how much of the reason it matters is social, I think a good case
could be made that it is a quantitative difference large enough to have
become qualitative.  I'm not going to more than mention it, though,
bceause I don't think it really matters whether it's thought of as
qualitative or quantitative: it's drastic enough either way.)

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