#INTERNET vs C-Serve
23 messages in this thread
This very aspect of CIS — namely, that messages "scroll off" after a set
amount of time and/or sufficient subsequent message traffic — that IMO makes
CIS not as suitable for a technical support forum such as this one as it would
otherwise be.
GEnie demonstrates a viable alternative: messages there do NOT scroll off
automatically, by time or by message count. (A Topic will _close_
automatically if the message count therein reaches 999, but that only prevents
new messages from being posted until the Topic is cleaned so that the total
message count is less than 999.) Sysops have to manually delete the older
messages and clean the Topic. Usually, they archive messages that are of
moderate or greater interest level first, placing the archive in the Library.
This method has many advantages and few disadvantages. The primary
disadvantage is that it's more work for the Sysops — but then, that's why they
get paid and we pay. <grin> Seriously, any business would benefit from the
policy of "if it's a choice between easier for us vs. easier for our customers,
then we choose easier for our customers even if it means more work for us."
(That's why GUIs are so popular — they're much harder to program, but easier
for the end-users to use.)
The advantages are numerous: because the Sysops can pick and choose which
messages to delete in order to make more room, really important messages that
provide long-term help for frequently-asked questions can be left in even after
a cleaning. Eventually, the "meat" to "gristle" ratio of the Topics increase
to near-100%. Likewise, they can choose what does or does not get archived.
Messages like "Thanks for the answer! Did I ever tell you about the time I met
President Bush? It was on a hot and humid summer day . . ." would just not get
archived.
Because important messages remain, the actual space used by the message
board is less, because the same long answers to the same questions don't have
to be answered over and over and OVER and over again and again and AGAIN and
again every time someone new finds this place, or someone who's not so new
happens to ask a question which he or she hasn't had to ask before, but which
has been answered before. So, for instance, if someone asks, "I just got OS/2
2.1 and can't get 3DSr3 to network render under it using LANtastic 5!" (our own
actual question a few weeks ago!), rather than post the same answer repeatedly
(taking up lots of space and wasting online time for people who use CIM etc.),
one could simply reply something like this: "That has already been answered in
Category 12, Topic 31, Message 193. To read it, `SETcat 12' and then `REAd 31
193'." Much easier and much more efficient.
The scrolling off of messages is an annoyance for something like, say, a
comic book fandom forum, where business do not succeed or fail based on the
timely availability of the information. For something like this, the only
on-line technical support for a $3,000 program that businesses depend on for
their continued existence, "annoyance" is a vast understatement. In our own
case, we posted an important question a couple of months back, and then an
ice-storm ravaged our area, knocking out both electrical and phone lines to our
offices for a total of six days. By the time we were able to access Compuserve
again, both our question and any answers to it had long since met the Saint
Peter of the ASCII Afterlife, much to our chagrin. Had this forum been on
GEnie, the messages would have still been there.
I recommend that CompuServe either change the way it handles message
overflow, or AutoDesk consider opening a branch of this forum on GEnie. We've
invested way too much in 3DS and other Autodesk products to have to deal with
evaporating messages in the sole technical support facility available to us
(short of paying the price of the program again for the honored privilege of
calling Autodesk on the phone).
Jonas is keeping a running archive of each months message base, and it is
posted in Library 9 as soon as he gets it there.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
John,
>> Internet <<
I just called a local provider. Sounds like a good deal, but says I need
something called SLIP so that I can run some free graphical interface that make
everything easy. I never learned the commands for CIS .. and I don't want to
learn them for Internet. Anyone out there accessing Internet on POTS lines
using SLIP and a GUI?
Ang
"Internet World" magazine had a recent interview with Microsoft's networking
chief. It sounds like they're going to put TCP/IP in Windows in the future.
It's already in WinNT. SLIP is TCP/IP over serial lines. Several companies
sell it.
John,
>> SLIP is TCP/IP over serial lines. Several companies sell it.<<
Do you personally know of anyone hooking with this system? I understand that
these is a new Windows based access program .. that using SLIP .. will make
Internet access alot less painless … can't remember the name though.
>> It sounds like they're going to put TCP/IP in Windows in the future.<<
Does OS/2 have it? I was thinking about trying OS/2 for Windows on my station.
Ang
I don't think OS/2 for Windows would include any networking abilities normally
present in straight OS/2. (Whadya want for $50? 🙂
I think I saw something about Beame & Whiteside (or maybe it was another PC
network software company) that just released a package that claimed to make
Internet access simple and painless. Maybe that includes SLIP. Just check out
any issue of a networking or programmer magazine, there's plenty of ads hawking
network products.
Ang,
I got this info off my Internet Provider yesterday.
tbone.biol.scarolina.edu is the FTP site, you want to get to the /pub/kit
directory and the files you need are:
00README.DOC
DISK1.EXE
DISK2.EXE
From what I understand these three files give you the Windows SLIP interface as
well as the apps that you need like mail and FTP.
I have not gotten them yet but will probably go for it tomorrow.
Fred
P.S. Tell Charles I'll get back to him soon. Still no $.
Fred,
>> I have not gotten them yet but will probably go for it tomorrow. <<
Do me a favor and keep me informed on your progress.
>> P.S. Tell Charles I'll get back to him soon.<<
You got it.
Ang
Ang,
I got the files and unpacked them and started to read the docs, and then got
sidetracked by Gus's reminder that TCP/IP is included with Windows NT. So I
have been following up on that end of things.
I have gone over to the Internet forum and looked at their files and there are
lots of programs over there including the ones I got. I have not read any
messages over there but they seem to be very busy.
PC Magazine has a blurb about two products for the internet called Cello and
Mosaic but more important there is a executive discussion on CServe this week
the 11 to the 15. As they say, just GO EXEC.
I think I'll check it out.
Fred
Yep — I run a SLIP line (actually, I have two SLIP accounts and two shell
accounts for mail. I'm transitioning from a long distance provider to a local
provider.)
I use Trumpet Winsock (shareware) to get TCP/IP under Windows, and use NSCA
Mosaic (freeware) to access the WorldWide Web, among other things.
I use Spry's Air Navigator (commercial software) for newsgroups, mail, telnet,
ftp, and Gopher. There are shareware programs which would probably work as
well. Spry also includes a UUCODE program — just the thing for decoding the
JPG files in alt.binary.pictures.tasteless. <G> (The Internet is a strange
place.)
If you want, I can answer questions about how to get on the Internet here, or
you can come to my tutorial session at A/E/C Systems this summer.
Evan
Evan,
>> Yep — I run a SLIP line <<
Great! That's exactly the same setup I'm going for. How was it to setup? …
a real pain or pretty straight forward?
Ang
Evan
What is the minimum one needs to get a gopher to this number i have for net
access through UCI here. Do you use a number through U of A?
Rachel:
If you can telnet through your UCI access number, you can find
gophers all over the place. Here are some good ones:
gopher.micro.umn.edu
veronica.scs.unr.edu
gopher.ncsa.uiuc.edu
gopher.tc.cornell.edu
gopher.psc.edu
gopher.sdsc.edu
gopher.micro.umn.edu
gopher.uiuc.edu
wx.atmos.uiuc.edu
bigcheese.math.scarolina.edu
athena.sdsu.edu
You don't need a client Gopher program (such as NSCA Mosaic) unless you
have a direct IP connection.
Evan
jeez ev…i just got off the uci connection after about 2 hours and my head is
dizzy and then, here you are way up ahead!
i just sat and read on line info about veronica and gophering so from what you
and they say…i got the concept and am ready for veronica and the University
of Pisa's data base right? unix(?!)
i will be in your lecture at AEC. Want to visit Lincoln Memorial one morning
before the events? Bring GYM SHOES! I'll protect.u.g.@.
West has some current irresistable bargain going and i am awaiting the info. I
ordered a bunch of those new books and am reading BIGDUMMY et.al from that
forum. Did you ever read "He,She, and It"?
thanks for the anonymous gophrs.hope all's well. i am going to Tucson soon. i
still miss the creosote smell.bye.frm.rach.@.beach.smile.
I don't know about the Lincoln Memorial. I'm planning on spending a
bunch of very late nights out.
Evan
have fun,
i miss the classicism, the East Wing galleries, the smithsonian…
i haven't ever been to the vietnam memorial ever so this is an important trip
for me. but you're to young to remeber that era i just realized.
The family Kinkos at UCI is going to have Internet access thru their future
BBS; its where i modem my color proofs and short run to. They just got about
six power macs set up for self serve…the machines read out loud(g).
>i haven't ever been to the vietnam memorial ever so this is an
>important trip for me. but you're to young to remeber that era i just
>realized.
I was too young to go, but not too young to watch it on TV, and know
people who were going.
The Vietnam War Memorial is amazingly powerful. I've been there a few
times, and I still have a hard time with it.
Evan
Marion,
One of the differences between GEnie and CIS is the underlying philosophy to
the system. This is reflected in how they each handle the message base and is
not a reflection in the amount of work that a sysop expends on his/her forum.
If you really look, your proposal would at least double the number of machines
that CIS needs to manage the service and probably triple the number of drives
required to maintain these messages adinfinitum. To give you an example. We
recently had a small problem with library 9 in this forum. It's now fixed and
the main cause of the problem was discovered. Library 9 used over 270,000 file
blocks to hold it's contents and it simply was too big. To give you some
indication as to the size of library 9 at that time, each file block is
approximately 512 bytes, which means that Library 9 was 135,000k or 135
megabytes at the time of the failure. (CIS now recommends that we keep the
libraries from exceeding 200,000 blocks or 100 megs.)
To put this into a total perspective, we have a possibility of having 100 megs
of files in each of the forum's 18 libraries or close to 2 gigabytes of files
for each forum. And there are over 400 active forums on CIS presently. That
adds up to a lot of potential storage just for the libraries.
Now when you add a non-deleting message base to that (specially at the scroll
rate that this forum runs), you can really get into some BIG numbers for the
storage that would be necessary. And the really amazing thing is that the ACAD
and ASOFT forums (though they are in the top 100) are no where near the scroll
rate of the most active forums on CIS.
We have some section leaders on these forums who we call TM's or Thread
Masters. One of the jobs of a TM is to gather the interesting threads in his
speciality and archive them in the forum libraries. I will admit that this
hasn't been done as well as it should or could have been. And maybe we need a
coupla interested people from this forum to help out with this. But all is not
lost. When you had your comm problem during the ice storm, you may not have
been able to read the replies to your request, but they weren't dropped into
the bit bucket.
ALL UNREAD MESSAGES posted to a specific UID are scrolled to the mail box
assigned to that UID rather than being lost. So the replies you didn't get a
chance to read would be in your CIS mail box. Did you check there ??? Did you
get an announcement when loging into CIS that you have waiting MAIL ??? Did you
switch CIS accounts ????
Incidentally, the sysops of this forum aren't paid (unless you wish to consider
the Autodesk employees weekly paychecks, or the fact that while they are
working on this forum, the TM's don't have to pay connect charges while
managing the message base or working in the libraries as payment). I personally
have been working and sysoping in the Autodesk forums since 1989 or before the
original ADESK forum split into ACAD, ASOFT and ARETAIL. In all that time I
have never received a penny from either Autodesk or Compuserve (though I did
get a coupla Autodesk shirts for the booth work at AEC in Dallas…<g>). I have
been given the use of the particular UID that I now access the service with, so
I guess you can say that in a sense I am being paid, as it is a system wide
free flag. The only problem is that I don't have the time to troll the system,
cause I gotta be here typing these stupid messages…….<grin>.
Are we having fun yet ????
BTW. If you really need the answers (replies) to your original request, I got
about 100 megs of compressed messages from ACAD and ASOFT that I could
search………just call me packrat…..I save everything from the forums.
Thanks for the explanation, Joe. I know about the auto-scroll to Mail for
messages posted to a specific ID. Problem is, a good many of us use CIM, and
CIM doesn't make it easy enough to reply to a specific user after one has read
a complete thread, so replies are often labeled with the wrong person's UID. I
myself have gotten better about not doing that (you'll notice this is addressed
specifically to you), but it's still not anywhere near as easy to do as it
should be.
We finally did get the answer we needed, after asking the question again.
Our client understood about the weather problems and gave us more time, but it
was almost not enough.
Glad you did get the answers you needed Marion. Sometimes CIS (and CIM) makes
it very hard to do what you want or need. Guess that's why most of us "old
timers" are still using the ASCII (command line) interface rather than the
newer HIM (graphics) interface. Could also be that we don't wanna' change.
On the other hand, the forlorn newbie that wanders into a GEnie roundtable
often spends three hours reading three-year-old messages before they know how
to get around.
I've got a basement full of old computer magazines. I know I should throw them
out. Do you see the analogy?
I, too, think it's a shame that CIS throws away messages so quickly. I'd be
happy with three months' worth in archives, but keep the same weeks' worth in
active circulation.
The fault there is that GEnie's "REAd" command defaults to "ALL" instead of
"NEW", and changing it now would break some front-ends and scripts that expect
"REAd ##" with no parameters to mean "REAd ## ALL". I personally think they
should make that change, and have the people who wrote scripts which don't tack
on "ALL" have to do so.
The "BROwse" and "RAM" shortcut commands both imply "NEW" so that isn't a
problem for most users.
As for computer magazines, I do keep certain ones that have articles of
truly timeless value (such as a Computer Shopper with an Ask the Guru that has
a table of PostScript screens that give good results on a 300dpi laser printer,
published way back in 1989, I think). Some messages posted here are like that
(such as, say, a tip on using the Keyframer and a Background to convert
sequences of numbered still image files to FLiCS or vice-versa — that trick
works on any version of 3DS, and so is of truly timeless value).
The point is that much of the message traffic Joe was talking about is
simply the same answers given to the same questions over and over again, so
going the GEnie-like route would mitigate the scroll rate by eliminating the
need to repeatedly answer the same question.
Jonas is keeping a running archive of each month's forum traffic, and posting
it in the What's New Library.
John Tissavary
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