Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihu1e.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!ihu1e!nowlin From: nowlin@ihu1e.UUCP (Jerry Nowlin) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Purdue Message-ID: <291@ihu1e.UUCP> Date: Mon, 6-Aug-84 14:16:54 EDT Article-I.D.: ihu1e.291 Posted: Mon Aug 6 14:16:54 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Aug-84 08:07:25 EDT Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 32 . I went to school at Purdue for 4 years and then worked there for almost 7. I wouldn't trade those years for anything. There are lots of good things about Purdue. From the perspective of the computer systems on campus there could be some improvements though. Take the Engineering Computer Network (ECN). (I'm glad I don't have to anymore) It's dominated by a bunch of ivory tower, holier than thou, self proclaimed gurus who consider the users a nuisance to be tolerated so they can continue to obtain the funding to monkey around with their own pet projects. Not all the ECN system administrators are that way. Some try very hard to help users with their problems. Others might as well have an answering machine hooked to their phone that plays "read the documentation" and then hangs up. When they upgraded from 4.1 to 4.2bsd they assured everyone they wouldn't even notice the change except for the improvement in disk transfer speed. The first day most people couldn't log in all the way without a flurry of error messages, "nroff" didn't work, and to top it off disk transfers were actually slower at first. This was because of the little "improvements" that ECN made to the standard Berkeley distribution. These little enhancements also made ECN's version incompatible with the other two entities on campus that operate UNIX systems, the Purdue University Computer Center (PUCC) and the Computer Science department. I've been gone about 6 months now and while I miss Purdue I don't miss ECN at all. I'm curious though. Anybody know whether or not ECN got 4.2 to go faster than 4.1 or did they settle for an improvement in name only? Jerry Nowlin ihnp4!ihu1e!nowlin