Conference 7.286::digital

    Some idiot in one of the trade rags suggested that Digital "needed to
    do away with conferences and internal e-mail", as they were a
    time-waster.  As far as I'm concerned, all non work-related conferences
    could disappear tomorrow and my life would continue, but I *totally*
    rely on the work-related ones to do my job.
    
    My experience is the same as the basenoters.  These conferences are
    completely invaluable.
    
    								Tex

No, I think we shouldn't communicate with one another. It really gets in the way
of individual productivity. We should also stop communicating with those outside
the company, they are a constant nuisance.

Surely you know that competition improves the quality of service, so obviously
it would be a good thing if employees didn't communicate lest they steal each
others' ideas.  (Smiley omitted intentionally, I think there's more truth to
this than face value may suggest...)

Chris.

>    Some idiot in one of the trade rags suggested that Digital "needed to
>    do away with conferences and internal e-mail", as they were a
>    time-waster.  As far as I'm concerned, all non work-related conferences
    
    May be the guy is not an idiot. 
    May be he is right. 
    Maybe he just wanted to do away with non-work related conferences.
    
    Since salaries constitute the single largest cost to DEC, it would be
    interesting to find out how much of that cost goes to support non work
    related noting and internet browsing. What percentages are we talking
    about here? 5% ?? 2% ? 1% ? Whatever. They all represent BIG BUCKS. 
                                                             
    Maybe the guy is not such an idiot after all. BTW, which trade rag is
    that ??

	A quicker way than using DIR/TITLE= in a notefile is to go to
	the following home page on the (internal to DEC) web:

	http://www-comet.alf.dec.com:8032/

	This brings you to the Comet Search Engine, maintained by the
	CSC, specifically Chris Hill. (Chris, *you* deserve a bonus!)

	This has saved TONS of time in searching. And I *mean* TONS!

	For example, I just connected and searched for "alphastation vrt16" 
	and within 40 seconds I got a pointer to the AlphaStation notesfile 
	and topic #41 mentioned in .0. Normally the search time is under
	20 seconds. 

	Thank God for Search Engines on the Web and the people that design and
	maintain them.

							mike

    I'll ask to up the ante.  How about making this available to the
    Business Partner's so that they're technical people can do the search
    themselves and NOT call the CSC or me (unless it ABSOLUTELY necessary).
    
    Let's have conference open to the world and restricted ones for
    ourselves.  They, Business Partner's, know about the Conferences and
    call us because they know we are the only ones that have access.
    Especially the ex-DEC people.  That's the single most important thing
    missed for technical support.
    
    The Business Partner's that now maintain accounts on our System, I
    never get calls from them and I see their postings periodically.
    
    Just tried that and worked great.  Is there a URL into TIMA?
    
    	Regards,
     
    

    Good ideas in .6 and I believe there is an effort to get additional
    technical information out over the Internet.
    
    There could be some legal issue though with the content of
    'speculative' information in technical conferences that Digital should
    look out for.  On the fringes there are software HACKs, hardware
    implementation which are outside of the supported realm that could
    if taken out of context and misused - really hurt the credibility
    of Digital.   
    
    Digital needs to look out for itself in this realm or we could really
    open ourselves up for some trouble.

    1) Yeah, no company wants groupware for employees to communicate.
    Hence the fact that nobody buys Lotus Notes.   :-)
    
    2) As for search engines, when my wife was the Notes Project Leader,
    they had a prototype of Notes integrated with CBR (Context Based
    Retrieval, or something like that).  It was an amazingingly powerful
    search engine.  She showed me a query of the DECWINDOWS conference for
    all notes containing the words "bug" and "widget" (not just the titles,
    but the bodies as well!).  It came back with the directory listing in
    about 5 seconds.  It never saw the light of day due to political
    bickering and infighting...
    
    				-John

RE: .6

You can access the STARS V2.6 web page via:

http://aztech.cxo.dec.com:1999/stars

-Patrick

I wrote the STARS http server in January 1994 and have had it available
from aztech, which is our development machine, ever since.  It accesses
all of the tima-stars databases that are used by the CSCs.  I have been
continually frustrated in efforts to move it outside of the firewall
to allow external customers use it.  The politics are unbelievable...to
the point that I have given up trying.

It has a "higher security" mode than what I have it set up for internal
that was intended to be used external customer access.  It also has the
capability to allow non-contract customers in, if you wish, and to keep track
of billing information.  In fact, I have an external customer that has
purchased the server itself (it is sold through Target Systems under the
name Target Smart Search) and has it on the WWW to allow their external
customers to access their data.

- Bryan

>    May be the guy is not an idiot. 
>    May be he is right. 
    
    I called him an idiot because he wanted to throw the baby out with the
    bath water, as seen below:
    
>    Maybe he just wanted to do away with non-work related conferences.
    
    Nope.  *ALL* conferences.  And as this notes string shows, we rely
    heavily on 'em.  Can't remember the rag, right off though.
    
    Also, I couldn't live without my InterNet access.  Rather, more aptly,
    I couldn't work without it.  I send all my project plans, small
    patches, some software, more by I-Net, so I don't want to lose that.
    
    Sounds like you have the same opine on non-work conferences that I do. 
    I personally like the damn few I have (as Ainsley will testify) but can
    live without 'em.  They're a luxury that I don't think we can still
    afford, in terms of resources and employee time.
    
    Next, were I BP, I'd mandate that *no* games were allowed on any
    Digital machine.  Zippo, including solitaire.  I see more people
    playing solitaire during the day than I do working at times.
    
    What's your take on this, Saxena?  Anyone else?  I would prefer to keep
    my non-work conferences, but if it means higher profitability and
    freeing up resources, then smoke 'em, Bob!
    
    								Tex

Re: COMET - this is too cool! I just did a little searching through NOTES (for
grins, enter your username as the keyword and find out where you've been the
last few years :). This is an excellent tool. It really is nice to be able to
correlate a topic over multiple conferences and databases, since information can
get scattered around.

A definite link on my home page.

> Re: COMET - this is too cool! I just did a little searching through NOTES (for
> grins, enter your username as the keyword and find out where you've been the
> last few years :). 

Whooo.  Scary stuff.  How about having it compute 'amount of your 
working life wasted writing notes?' score when you search for a given 
username?

  .13    How about having it compute 'amount of your
  .13    working life wasted writing notes?'
    
    or even have it compute how helpful you've been to
    internal or external customers?   or even have it compute
    how many technical problems have been reported / resolved.
    
    These computers sure are helpful...

re: .6
    
 >  Is there a URL into TIMA?
 
Not just yet...but stay tuned.

mark

�re: .6
�
� >  Is there a URL into TIMA?
�
�Not just yet...but stay tuned.
�
�mark

TIMA V2 is a product that jackets STARS V2.  All of TIMA's data searching and
retrieval is STARS.

STARS does have a URL.  It is at http://aztech.cxo.dec.com:1999/stars
That url accesses all of the databases used by the CSCs and by TIMA.  Included
in those databases are all the customer readable articles made available
through DSNlink (which also uses STARS), all articles not marked for customer
reading, and a ton of notes files.

- Bryan
  STARS V2 Engineering &
  Tima-Stars V3 Engineering

    Re: .11
>    What's your take on this, Saxena?  Anyone else?  I would prefer to keep
>    my non-work conferences, but if it means higher profitability and
>    freeing up resources, then smoke 'em, Bob!
    
    Not meaning to rathole here. I think perhaps this topic deserves to be
    by itself. Let me start another note on this.

    This is COOL!  Thanks for the pointer!

re: .16


>STARS does have a URL.  It is at http://aztech.cxo.dec.com:1999/stars
>That url accesses all of the databases used by the CSCs and by TIMA.  Included
>in those databases are all the customer readable articles made available
>through DSNlink (which also uses STARS), all articles not marked for customer
>reading, and a ton of notes files.

True.
But what the STARS server doesn't have today is the ability to get at
TIMA TOOLS databases (patches, CBI's, SDK's, service manuals, etc) and
to do article and tool maintenenace. This is what is currently being
developed.

Use STARS, use COMET, use TIMA the more the merrier!

mark

�But what the STARS server doesn't have today is the ability to get at
�TIMA TOOLS databases (patches, CBI's, SDK's, service manuals, etc) 

The STARS server can access these because they are just STARS databases.

�to do article and tool maintenenace

It does have the ability to do article maintenance, but I have it turned
off at the moment.

But you are right, "Use STARS, use COMET, use TIMA the more the merrier!"
especially if it helps someone solve a problem.

- Bryan