bill@alembic.UUCP (Bill Hatch) (08/29/88)
Can anyone provide some answers or possibly informed opinions on the following two questions: 1. When will Microport ship the next 386 Unix release to their update service subscribers ? 2. How do I, as a current hotline subscriber, download the 386-fix/format file from the Microport BBS ? I e-mailed these information requests to Microport (unet!uport!techs) about a week ago - either they have not answered yet or I messed up the mailing. Any information will be greatly appreciated. My firm is considering the use of Microport/386 Unix and DOS Merge on some software projects. We like what we have seen so far but we need to get answers to the above. Bill Hatch uunet!bts!bill Computational Engineering 14504 Greenview Drive, Suite 500 Laurel MD 20708 301-470-3839 FAX 301-776-5461
hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) (08/29/88)
In article <2569@alembic.UUCP> bill@alembic.UUCP (Bill Hatch) writes: > I e-mailed these information requests to Microport (unet!uport!techs) > about a week ago - either they have not answered yet or I messed up > the mailing. A week is short, otherwise I would assume: 1. You messed up the mailing. --or-- 2. They are not answering you. I have seen a lot of flames about uport not answering email. I have seen a lot of uport replys saying they never got it. At any rate, don't feel alone. My email 6 weeks ago WAS addressed correctly and not answered. No doubt went to a sucking black hole, be it human or computer. If nothing else, I would suggest to uport that they hire a clerk to reply, "We acknowledge receipt of your mail. Will get back to you in another phase of the moon.". -- Greg
plocher@uport.UUCP (John Plocher) (08/30/88)
In article <1172@bellboy.UUCP> hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) writes: >In article <2569@alembic.UUCP> bill@alembic.UUCP (Bill Hatch) writes: >> I e-mailed these information requests to Microport (unet!uport!techs) >I have seen a lot of flames about uport not answering email. I have seen I'm the one who gets to answer this mail - about 200K per week. :-) Many of these people: 1) get phone calls if a phone # was included 2) get replies by email (I try 3 times, if the reply still bounces I usually /dev/null it) 3) get general replies thru the net (ie a posting about mice & merge) if they are responses to a news article. 4) get forwarded to engineering (bugs/features), or sales (requests for info/prices) 5) get archived for in depth replies (anything taking more than about 10 minutes) I was planning on installing filter to automagically generate ACK blurbs, better get moving on that one... -John (not ignoring you) Plocher
plocher@uport.UUCP (John Plocher) (08/30/88)
In article <2569@alembic.UUCP> bill@alembic.UUCP (Bill Hatch) writes: >Can anyone provide some answers or possibly informed opinions on the >following two questions: > > 1. When will Microport ship the next 386 Unix release to > their update service subscribers ? I will be able to post an answer to this on Sept 8th. 'till then marketing says I have to keep my mouth shut. :-( > 2. How do I, as a current hotline subscriber, download the > 386-fix/format file from the Microport BBS ? With the bbs software, using kermit or xmodem. Anonymous uucp is only allowed for PD stuff - we *can not* allow non licensees access to AT&T derived anything. Sorry. >I e-mailed these information requests to Microport (unet!uport!techs) >about a week ago - either they have not answered yet or I messed up I got your msg about 2-3 days ago, about the time I found that a mail file > 300K makes elm 1.7 get *very* confused. :-( -John Plocher
dts@cloud9.UUCP (Daniel Senie) (08/31/88)
{Discussion about mail to uport deleted}
I sent a piece of mail to uport!plochner over the weekend, and got the
response from the uport machine today. It claims that the mailer could
not find someone named plochner on its machine. This seems rather curious.
An additional piece of mail came through to say that /bin/lmail failed. I
don't know if this means that the mailer on their end died or whether it
really couldn't find John.
John: If you read this, could you give me a call?
Dan
--
Daniel Senie UUCP: ihnp4!cloud9!dts
Stratus Computer, Inc. ARPA: anvil!cloud9!dts@harvard.harvard.edu
55 Fairbanks Blvd. CSRV: 74176,1347
Marlboro, MA 01752 TEL.: 617 - 460 - 2686david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) (09/03/88)
In article <1172@bellboy.UUCP> hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) writes: >If nothing else, I would suggest to uport that they hire a clerk to >reply, "We acknowledge receipt of your mail. Will get back to you >in another phase of the moon.". >-- >Greg I've received these "automated" replies from other companies (no names) and while they are't much help, it's still a little better than nothing. I doesn't even require person, a program could generate the replies. Much better would be an automated "bug reporting" system that could parse subject lines of incoming E-mail to a specific user, perhaps uport!bugs. The subject line could contain the product (286/386) and version number (or whatever else is necessary for uport), then te messages could be added to a data-base with a confirmation mailed back to the sender. I know I'll get flames about how this would bring usenet to its knees, but realistically I think this would work better than the completely free-form method we're all using now to try report problems and get them solved. There could be a separate data-base for "suggestions" (flames) and another for actual bugs. This would also mean that uport could publish the reported bugs, and their fixes or work-arounds for everybody. As it is now, many of the problems I report to uport never appear on a bug-list anywhere. I think if uport doesn't implement something like the above, we are going to have to start posting bugs so we can all find our own solutions and work-arounds which would be a lot worse on the net. -- David Beckemeyer | Beckemeyer Development Tools | "Reckon the Ball's plumb open now, 478 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland, CA 94610 | and it's `swing partner'!" UUCP: ...!ihnp4!hoptoad!bdt!david |
brian@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Brian Cuthie) (09/06/88)
In article <376@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes: ... >Much better would be an automated "bug reporting" system that could >parse subject lines of incoming E-mail to a specific user, perhaps >uport!bugs. ... >This would >also mean that uport could publish the reported bugs, and their fixes >or work-arounds for everybody. As it is now, many of the problems >I report to uport never appear on a bug-list anywhere. > I think the biggest problem with microport is not actually with engineering or tech support. I believe their problems are more marketing related. That's why it's extremely unlikely that they will *ever* publish true bug reports (that means ones with *all* the bugs listed). Publishing a report like that is often seen by the marketing department as "giving away our position" or "giving the enemy amunition." >I think if uport doesn't implement something like the above, we are >going to have to start posting bugs so we can all find our own >solutions and work-arounds which would be a lot worse on the net. This is the best sollution I've heard yet. I would even volunteer to hold the data base. As hard as John Plocher tries, I believe his hands are always going to be tied, to some extent. If we want to know which things are bugs and which problems are isolated events (or pilot error) it is necessary to communicate problems with other users. This communication must be free from flames, however, or it will be no better than this news group. -brian