dtynan@zorba.Tynan.COM (Dermot Tynan) (03/21/89)
i work for a company that develops 'expert' systems that they develop on micro-vax and on Suns however they are not USENET!!!!! i need some 'good' reasons as to : 'why we should be on the USENET ?' could the software developers out there tell 'me' their reasons for being on the USENET and what benefits they as a software developers gain from being on the net!!!!! aali
jgrace@BBN.COM (03/23/89)
Here are some reasons I can think of right off the top:
Keep abreast of current trends, in CPUs, peripherals,
systems, software, workstation bugs AND TIMELY FIXES,
methods for getting vendor support, and product announcements.
Free Publicity (as long as your 'netters are polite,
well respected and discreet).
Track the competition.
Avoid misinformation spread about the company's
products by the ignorant or dishonest.
Employee education (just about everything I know about
hardware, CPU design and features to look for,
support chips, memory support, cacheing --- comes
from USENet).
Employee satisfaction.
Get informed (and uninformed) responses to arbitrarily technical
questions for *free*.
Help others and let them know about your products in passing.
Lots of free, public domain or copylefted, software.
Status reports of free software projects --- see all
the gnu.* groups.
All of the ideas can be concretized just by considering things your
company has/is/will be doing, e.g., buying workstations (buy now? or
wait for the new Sun workstations which have been described on the net
several times in the last few months?), move to a new platform because
it'll be cheaper or more popular (How is IBM micro-channel looking on
USENet? What about the new TI AI LISP chips? How does the Amiga
look compared to the Mac II as a turn-key system? etc..)
Hope this helps.
= Joe =
--
Joe Grace
ARPA: jgrace@bbn.com
UUCP: {harvard,husc6,decvax,etc.}!bbn!jgracepaul@olivetti.com (03/23/89)
I often get useful little programs and scripts from the net. For
example there was a VERY useful little program to disable the annoying
"Caps" key. (Almost everyone here uses that, now.)
I can get information and programs from friends and associates over
the net. ("Hey, Tony, you had a program which prints the
last-accessed date of a file. Could you send it to me?")
I get useful information about bugs and bug fixes from the net. For
example, the Internet worm was covered in great detail. In January
1988 the Sun's leapyear/time problem was discussed (I thought our
system management had goofed up again), and a solution posted.
I use the net as a method of professional developement. I am
interested in error-free programming and C++, so I read net.risks and
comp.lang.c++. It is like being able to go to a conference or seminar
every day on your lunch hour.
We communicate with our suppliers (Sun, among others) and clients via
email. Email avoids telephone tag. Besides, have you ever tried to
give someone a program verbally? ("No, line three should be open
curly, a, equals, star, bee, paren, paren, semicolon, close curly.")
Clearly you are on some network. I am not that familiar with Usenet
compared with other networks to say which of the above (if any!) you
do not have and would gain with Usenet.
Paul E. Black | UUCP: ...{pyramid,amdahl,ames}!oliveb!cirrusl!paul
CIRRUS LOGIC, Inc. | Internet: cirrusl!paul@olivetti.com
1463 Centre Pointe Dr. | Voice: 408-945-8305 extension 210
Milpitas, CA 95035 USAkunkee@ficc.UUCP (03/23/89)
Perhaps the newsgroups comp.ai, comp.ai.neural-nets, and comp.ai.nlang-know-rep would be interesting resouces for your company. They seem to get a lot of postings. USENET has been a pretty valuable resource for us just for getting public domain programs as well. --- Randy Kunkee Ferranti International Controls Corporation 12808 W. Airport Blvd. Sugar Land, TX 77478 UUCP: uunet!ficc!kunkee ph: (713) 274-5132