[ih] GOSIP & compliance

[christian de larrinaga]

This made me laugh. Reminds me of a meeting with a senior IBM exec in UK early
1982. I'd been called in by a third party to advise on as I had a systems business
specialising in 16 bit microcomputer solutions, for all of 18 months by
then. The exec sat on the phone behind his desk with his
crystal water jug status on display, talking to whoever about me .. and laughing
dismissively .. "Nah he's not "big iron".  

That's been a badge of honour ever since 

C

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> writes:

> I remember reading this historical perspective and it was pretty accurate.
>
> I could add a couple of first hand experiences with France Telecom,
> Minitel, Transpac and VTCOM.
>
> In 1997 I had a meeting with top level executives of France Telecom,
> Transpac and VTCOM, discussing an Internet project. All the way then,
> the suited people I had in front of me, then a young postgraduate,
> were obviously very proud of the Minitel's success. I would say, too
> proud, to the extent that they were completely blinded by it - and as
> a Frenchman, I can say that it's sometimes a trait that we have in
> France - national pride, for better or for worse.
>
> In this case, it was for worse. I told them the Minitel was on life
> support, based on a technology that was developed in the 70s. I knew
> everything about its limitations, including its intended evolution
> through Broadband ISDN - B-ISDN, which was also going to be a non
> starter due to its lack of flexibility and top down control. But that
> fell on deaf ears: Transpac was France's National Pride, a stable
> network running on X.25. VTCOM was the main supplier/controller of
> content - serving millions of paying customers. Why would they need to
> look at anything else than their pride and joy? I told them Transpac
> was on its last legs due to its inability to support faster transfer
> speeds. And top down control of all content was not scalable. The
> Internet was the future. A decentralised network where everyone could
> produce content. The laughter around the room was not hidden. "With
> the Minitel we make a lot of money because people pay for their
> services. How is your... Internet ever going to make money, when its
> services are free? Nobody has ever made any money giving things away
> for free. You are living in a dream world. An anglo saxon dream
> world. Not everyone speaks English, you know?"
> After an hour and fifteen minutes, I was promptly kicked out of their
> office. They weren't disrespectful, but didn't hide the fact that they
> had a strategy and it definitely wasn't mine.
> I won't share the names, but these were added to a long long list of
> people suffering the Peter principle that I have met in my life.
>
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
> (with apologies for answering an old thread - I have been very busy am
> just catching up)
>
> On 20/03/2022 19:53, Ole Jacobsen via Internet-history wrote:
>> For some historical perspective: In 1994 we published an article about Minitel
>> in ConneXions--The Interoperability Report. It's the first article in the April
>> issue. The entire archive of ConneXions is available from the Charles Babbage
>> Institute, but for easy access to this particular issue I've uploaded a copy
>> to my directory on Yikes.
>>
>> See:
>>
>> https://www.yikes.com/~ole/store/ConneXions8-04_Apr1994.pdf  <https://www.yikes.com/~ole/store/ConneXions8-04_Apr1994.pdf>
>>
>> Ole
>>
>>> On Mar 20, 2022, at 09:45, Bob Purvy via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, don't people in France ever want to look up numbers in Germany,
>>> England, and Italy?
>>>
>>> Also, there were lots of other apps on top of Minitel, including a dating
>>> service! It did replace calls for directory assistance, but then people
>>> discovered it could do a lot of other things, too.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 9:41 AM John Levine<johnl at iecc.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> It appears that Bob Purvy via Internet-history<bpurvy at gmail.com>  said:
>>>>> One still wonders why the other European PTTs didn't do their own and
>>>>> interoperate with Minitel. Too much NIH?
>>>> Remember that the business case for Minitel was that it would replace
>>>> paper phone books and directory assistance operators.  Everything else
>>>> was an add-on.  You didn't need to interoperate to do that.
>>>>
>>>> R's,
>>>> John
>>>>
>> Ole J. Jacobsen
>> Editor and Publisher
>> The Internet Protocol Journal
>> Office: +1 415-550-9433
>> Cell:   +1 415-370-4628
>> Web: protocoljournal.org
>> E-mail:olejacobsen at me.com
>> E-mail:ole at protocoljournal.org
>> Skype: organdemo
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
> http://www.gih.com/ocl.html


-- 
christian de larrinaga 
https://firsthand.net