Re: E-mail notification from AS400 -- RPG400-L

Just some observations - not taking sides :)

This sounds like www.tnt400.com.

Which is now a (free) part of www.as400network.com

(which I find more than a little ironic!)

And many of the topics discussed on this list make
their way to the (free) ClubTechTips newsletters which
is put out by the same guy that did www.tnt400.com
(yea Chuck!)


Phil


--- boldt@ca.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> Gary wrote:
> >Hi Hans,
> >
> >I think I might be slightly surprised by your
> comments.
> >
> >The magazines are a business. They won't be for
> long if they don't do
> >anything to recover costs. I wonder if the
> obliteration of the trade
> >magazines would be more helpful for the AS/400
> community.
> 
> Hi Gary!  I'm surprised over your surprise.  The
> first thing I
> wrote in my note was that I have no problem
> whatsoever in anyones
> desire to be fairly compensated for their work. 
> That's a given
> in a capitalist economy.  (Another given in a
> capitalist economy
> is that no one owes you anything either.  Forgive me
> for being
> blunt, but if your son doesn't go to MIT, well
> that's not my
> fault, is it?)
> 
> What I was pointing out was that in other areas of
> the computer
> field, there are working business models in which
> information is
> offered with no strings attached.  I brought up
> Linux as a
> general area where this seems to work quite well.  I
> also
> pointed out the fact that the process of
> registration keeps the
> search bots out of the AS400Network and
> MidrangeComputing web
> sites, which makes the information in them more
> difficult to
> find (even though much of that information IS
> available for
> free).
> 
> Both you and Brad mentioned that you both answer
> upwards of 50
> questions a day from people.  Doesn't that strike
> you as somewhat
> excessive?  How many of these questions are the
> same?  In other
> domains, there are excellent FAQ files listing
> answers to
> commonly asked questions, and people are very often
> referred
> to these FAQs.  If you and other experts would spend
> just ten
> minutes a day contributing to an RPG FAQ (placed in
> a prominent
> publically accessible place), perhaps you'd have
> more time for
> other more important matters, like your regular
> consulting jobs.
> (Or other even more important matters like spending
> time with
> your family, or even your model trains.)
> 
> (If someone else would get the ball rolling on a
> FAQ, I would be
> quite happy to contribute a couple of thousand words
> gratis!
> One person has already offered to start that ball
> rolling in a
> private e-mail.)
> 
> To summarize:  There is certainly quite a bit of
> information
> already out there (available for free), but it's
> scattered over
> multiple web sites, and is poorly indexed by the
> search sites. A
> FAQ, with definitive answers contributed by the
> experts and
> easily located, would go a long way to help AS/400
> programmers.
> And ease the burden on the overworked experts.
> 
> Sorry, I don't mean to sound critical of the good
> things you and
> Brad and others do.  But I DO see how things are
> done elsewhere
> and the contrasts are striking.  There are, in my
> opinion,
> things to be learned from the experience of others.
> 
> Cheers!  Hans
> 
> Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab,
> boldt@ca.ibm.com
> 
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