QUESTION: I wrote asking about the OSF/1 v3.0B install software sending mail
back to DEC informing them I had installed DECladebug. I was wondering if
this was on purpose, and if it was common policy.
ANSWER: This "mail-back" is sometimes used in product development to keep
track of who and where pre-release versions of software have been installed.
The fact that this slipped through onto the distribution CDROMs was an error.
It has been changed (I got a response from the person who corrected it!) but
I don't know when this correction will make its way into distribution.
My concern was not due to any paranoid fear that "they're out to get me".
I just found this a terribly impolite way to monitor software (i.e. mailing
to the author without informing the user of this).
Thanks to the following for answers:
Charlie <jui_at_greisen.physics.utah.edu>
Dan Riley <dsr_at_lns598.lns.cornell.edu>
urban_at_mfr.dec.com (Robert L. Urban)
kobig_at_neora.iso.dec.com
berc_at_pa.dec.com
Gerhard Kircher <gk_at_gkws.edvz.tuwien.ac.at>
John Corne - 833 3305 06-Feb-1995 0906 <cornej_at_kernel.enet.dec.com>
Windows NT: What? New Technology! <kenoyer_at_pmesd.enet.dec.com>
Christopher Allen <allen_at_ilovit.zko.dec.com>
And a closing anecdote sent to me...
> Here is a related story that should amuse you. I used to run a group of
> about 30 workstations (HP) for the OPAL experiment at CERN (OPAL is one
> of 4 collider expeiments at the LEP electron-positron collider).
> In high-energy physics w routinely use a program called PAW to display
> histograms. ONe day in March of 1993, This program, which is used by just
> about everybody, stopped working on the OPAL HP's. It turns out that
> the cause of the problem was that the person workstation of the author
> of PAW, R.B., wa down. THe version of PAW we were running would
> inform R.B.'s workstation each time a PAW session is started. The program
> would then keep statistics on the different commands used, and report
> again to "Big Brother" at the end of the session. Welll...that particular day
> they couldn't contact "Big Brother" so the program dumped core each time
> somebody started it it up. Took us a couple of days to track that one down
> and in the mean time, R.B.'s support people kept telling us that it must
> be our segment of the network that was acting up...
>
> so you see DEC isn't so bad...
Jim Wright Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience
jwright_at_keck.ucsf.edu Department of Physiology, Box 0444
voice 415-502-4874 513 Parnassus Ave, Room HSE-811
fax 415-502-4848 UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143-0444
Received on Mon Feb 06 1995 - 14:36:26 NZDT