mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (02/28/84)
Just thought I'd mention that I've seen lots of free copies of the new magazine UNIX/WORLD floating around. In fact, my office mate has received 4 free copies in his Bell Labs mailbox, and two have appeared in mine. However, long ago I paid $12 using my home address for a charter subscription. It seems that copy has never appeared. Has anyone else out there who paid for a subscription received their paid copy? Mark
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (03/03/84)
I never fail to be amazed at the results one can get by posting something to Usenet. A few days ago I mentioned that I had received 4 complimentary copies of UNIX/world but had not received the copy I paid for. I asked the net if anyone else was having this problem. I got 6 or 7 responses (I did not keep count, sorry), about half of whom haven't gotten theirs either, the other half said they had gotten them OK. (One person claimed to have received two issues, but apparently the second issue won't be out until late March.) Today I received a phone call from Cheryl Hogan, the Circulation Director of Tech. Valley Publishing, the people who put out UNIX/world. She had heard about the network posting and wanted to make sure it got straightened out. She was incredibly courteous and very helpful. She explained that there had been an error and that a large batch of paid copies had been sent out with the yellow "complimentary copy" wrappers. We tried to figure out why I hadn't gotten a copy at home, and she guessed that their duplicate elimination algorithm (they had pieced together a large number of mailing lists and essentially ran uniq on the names) may have culled the paid one in favor of a complementary copy. She made a note of my home address and promised to check it out carefully. She also gave her phone number - 415-949-3737, and said if anyone is having subscription problems, to give her a call. I talked this over with my wife tonight, and she said that I listed my office address on the paid subscription form. She's pretty sure and I'm not at all sure I listed my home address, so I'll assume that one of the complimentary copies I got at the office was really my paid copy, in other words, I blew it. In any case, their subscription service seems to be pretty good, although they are working some bugs out of the system. I did receive several comments that were unimpressed with the quality of the magazine (one person said he resented paying for what was essentially a collection of press releases). I will admit that I found the first issue of UNIX Review much more useful than the first issue of UNIX/world. However, there's a pretty big difference in subscription price, too. Mark Horton