[Mailman-Users] Mailman and phone bills

[Phil Stracchino]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 08:20:58AM -0500, Ed Wilts wrote:
> On Saturday 23 June 2001 05:27 pm, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 11:10:29PM +0100, Karl Carlile wrote:
> > > If you put mailman on a machine such as pentium three to use it as a
> > > mailing server with a moderate amount of mail how to phone call costs
> > > work. If mail are sent to your server while the server is in sleep mode
> > > do you pay for such incoming calls. On the other hand that posting that
> > > comes in must go out to in my case up to a hundred subscribers. Does that
> > > form part of the phone cost bill. And if it is does it amount to just one
> > > phone call since all the one hundred are sent out together.
> 
> > This is a troll, right?
> 
> Not necessarily.  There are places in the world where local phone calls are 
> billable.  Karl posted from an Irish ISP, and it wouldn't surprise me if 
> local calls there aren't free.  He needs to clarify how his ISP and phone 
> calls are billed and then determine if he's got a specific Mailman issue (in 
> which case this list might be appropriate) or a general Internet connectivity 
> issue (frequency of PPP calls, etc) that might be better answered in other 
> lists.


If his server is already online, then he should know already that personal
email he receives doesn't show up as a per-message charge on his phone
bill, and if he can receive mail without a per-message phone charge, then
MailMan can receive mail without it showing up as a per-message phone
charge.  Incoming mail's not going to cost him any money.  If his machine
is offline, whether he has it set up to wake up and auto-answer or not,
it's not going to cost him any money.  The UK has no free *outgoing* local
calling, but you still don't get billed for incoming calls (the cellular
companies are the only ones who've managed to get away with that racket)
or calls that you miss and don't answer at all.  Anyone should know that.

*8-year-old kids* fer crissake know that it doesn't cost any money to
answer a call when the phone rings.  This isn't rocket science.

As for the outgoing replies, if he's gotten connected at least once and
sent at least one mail message then he should know that it's only one call
*at most* (assuming he isn't already connected when the reply goes out,
which seems unlikely since if he wasn't connected, it couldn't come in),
unless he's gone to the trouble to make his machine dial out, send one
message, disconnect, dial out, send the next message, disconnect, dial
out, send the next message, disconnect ....

(And if he has, not only does he not need to be asking the question, his
setup needs to be written up in a paper to the Journal of Irreproducible
Results [for research that cannot or *should* not be repeated].)


This is why I wondered if it was a troll.  I find it implausible that
anyone could be competent to get an Internet access account set up,
develop a need to host a mailing list, find and choose Mailman, get
subscribed to the list, figure out that he wants to run Linux, and still
be unaware that it doesn't cost him any money to pick up the receiver when
the phone rings.


-- 
 Linux Now!   ..........Because friends don't let friends use Microsoft.
 phil stracchino   --   the renaissance man   --   mystic zen biker geek
        alaric at babcom.com                halmayne at sourceforge.net
   2000 CBR929RR, 1991 VFR750F3 (foully murdered), 1986 VF500F (sold)