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Subject: Spin Doctors
From: [e-mail]
Message-ID: <uX6h4.9163$[e-mail]>
Organization: bCandid - Powering the world's discussions - http://bCandid.com
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 23:46:34 GMT
To: [e-mail]


On 2000-01-18 [e-mail](JeffreyAltman) said:

JA> Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kermit.misc
JA> In article <OoOg4.6711$[e-mail]>,
JA> <[e-mail]> wrote:

JA>FD> If  you  want  Zmodem  software with Kermit scripting for
JA>FD> DOS,   you're in the unenviable position of having to put
JA>FD> it    together  yourself. It's not Omen's job to give you
JA>FD> Kermit    scripting,  and  it's  not  our job to give you
JA>FD> Zmodem protocol.

    This time it's a JOB. Next time it will be volunteer work.

    This  reminds  me of those presidential debates. On the one hand
    you  and  the  other  `team' members will refer to this as a JOB
    and  that time and money are the determining factors. When I try
    to  discuss  the  responsibilities  of a JOB you refer to unpaid
    volunteers.

    When  you say Kermit does not _need_ zmodem and I point out that
    the  `latest and greatest' version has zmodem you tell me it was
    contributed  which  is  to  say  "I  didn't  do  it" like a Bart
    Simpson episode.

    NOW  I'm  being  told  "We are very well aware that Zmodem is in
    Kermit  95.  I  put  it  there.". Playing both sides of your own
    argument.

    Your  Internet  `handle' should be `Shadow Dancer'. You'll never
    have  to  be  responsible  for  anything  because  you are never
    actually  _there_  but  when  you  need  to  run off people with
    questions you can stetch to enormous heights in the sunset.

JA> You  keep saying this and yet zmodem found it's way into the
JA> WIN95  Kermit. Are you not aware that zmodem is in the WIN95
JA> Kermit?  If it doesn't belong in there someone should remove
JA> it.

JA> As  I  have  stated  repeatedly  in  this thread, the Zmodem
JA> support  in  K95  is  there because somebody donated it with
JA> the condition that it only be used in Kermit 95.

    At  the  same  time you have said that only what MANY users want
    is  put  into kermit, now it turns out what is actually required
    is  that  some  poor  boob  write  it  for  you and you guys can
    copyright  his  /  her  work  and  then  take credit for another
    decade? Good scam.

JA> : --8<--cut

JA>FD> There  are  real  people at work here. For some of us, it
JA>FD> is  our  job. For others, all participation is voluntary,
JA>FD> outside  of  their real jobs. The demands on our time are
JA>FD> greater  than the time available. We do our best to serve
JA>FD> the largest number of people in the time we have.

CA> Not  quite  sure  what  "real people" is supposed to mean in
CA> this  context.  It  reads  as  though  you left out the word
CA> "important".

CA> To  say "We're really busy right now and are not able to get
CA> to  anything  new at this time." would be a nicer way to say
CA> the same thing IMO.

JA> Frank  has tried to be extremely polite and careful with his
JA> words.

    That's not really whats been happening at all.

    Frank  alternates  between  condescending and somewhat polite. I
    have    postulated  that  this  is  a  hazard  of  the  teaching
    profession  because you are surround by trainees (students) on a
    daily  basis  whereas  in  the  REAL world you are surrounded by
    equals  and  some who are even better (smarter) than you are and
    you  are forced to compete (and many times this means you lose).
    Who do you and Frank compete with when I'm not around?

JA> Please  do  not add words to something Frank says because by
JA> doing  so you are reading what you want to hear and not what
JA> Frank is saying.

    I don't `hear' anything, this is text.

    This  probably  works  well  with  the  kids  who  come  to  the
    University  to  learn  a  few things - doesn't work on old guys.
    I'm  confident that I can read and understand English and if the
    meaning  of  what  Frank  is  writing  is  vague it's because he
    intended  it to be vague. If it seems arrogant it is intended to
    be  arrogant. I suspect Frank can turn a phrase in any direction
    he wants it to go.

JA>FD> If  you  have  bug  reports, we welcome them. If you have
JA>FD> questions of reasonable scope, we try to answer them.

    Yes,  I  _did_  notice  the qualifier "of reasonable scope". You
    should  consider  going  into politics but then those committees
    you  mention  are  more political than just a social club aren't
    they?  I must guess that you took "Intro Logic" and "Philosophy"
    in your youth eh?

JA>FD> If  you have suggestions, we'll listen to them, but we're
JA>FD> not obligated to act on them.

    Same  statement as before, different qualifier. This is a give /
    take which equals a non-statement.

JA>FD> If  we  have  a  hundred thousand users anxiously waiting
JA>FD> for  some  particular new feature in one of our programs,
JA>FD> and  one  person looking for some other feature, all else
JA>FD> being equal, I think the course is clear.

    Yes,  the  course  _is_  clear.  You  wait until some frustrated
    `user'  writes  it  for  you  and  donates  the  code  then  you
    copyright it.

JA>CA> Could  you  give  an  example of this new feature you are
JA>CA> all  working  on that 100,000 users are anxiously waiting
JA>CA> for?

JA> For  a  small  idea  of  the work we have doing for the last
JA> three years you may read

    Short answer is no you can't.

    What  if  I  want a LARGE idea of the work you do? How about the
    name  and  email address of the head of your department? The guy
    you  ALL  answer  to including Frank. Maybe he knows what all of
    you  do, or maybe not.  This thread and the elusive URL might be
    of more than passing interest to him / her?

JA> for  a  description  of C-Kermit 7.0 and the Internet Kermit
JA> Service.  This  latest  implementation  of  Kermit for Unix,
JA> VMS,  VOS,  ...  and the Kermit 95 for Windows 95/98/NT/2000
JA> and  OS/2  that  will  shortly  follow  is what we have been
JA> working on.

JA> This  does  not  include  the  work  we  do  as  part of our
JA> involvement  with International Standards organizations, the
JA> Unicode Consortium, and the Internet Engineering Task Force.

JA> Nor  does it include the help desk support we provide to end
JA> users  via e-mail (9000 messages in the last 12 months) plus
JA> telephone support. I think we have been rather busy.

    That's  25 email msgs per day (30 day month). 8 msgs for each of
    you.  You're  busy  but  no  ones  on  overload from what you're
    telling me here.

JA>FD> Nobody  is  going  to  wade through a long script hunting
JA>FD> for  where the problem might be.

JA> "Nobody"  is  a  bit general. I intend to try the script (it
JA> takes only 10 or 15 minutes) and see what happens.

JA> A  newsgroup  is  meant for user to user support in addition
JA> to  developer  to  user  support.  I  look  forward  to your
JA> analysis of the problem and hopefully a solution.

    The  majority of user `support' here is to insist that no answer
    is a good answer. That's not support.

    If  Mr.Dold  hadn't  posted the REAL URL for the MSKermit source
    code  I  would probably still be looking for it. Not one of `the
    team'  every  posted  the  REAL  URL  for the source code - that
    doesn't even wrinkle an eyebrow for you does it?

JA>FD> Nevertheless, we have been doing our best ...

    --8<--cut

JA>FD> Read, for example, ...

    --8<--cut

    No,  actually  there  are  times  when  you  must  actually _do_
    something  to  get their attention. Posting text on a website is
    `passive'.  The  information  isn't  able  to seek out those who
    need  it.  With  a  human  brain and imagination we can seek out
    those who need the information and _give_ it to them.

    Let's  see  ...  here's  a  thought.  Write  up a short two page
    `flyer'  introducing  `the  team' and explaining that kermit can
    actually  match  other  protocols  for  speed  etc.  Go  to  the
    FIDONEWS  site,  download  a  list of BBS and email using `cc' a
    copy to these sysops. It's called being pro-active.

    If  it  bothers  you that they do not come to you as supplicants
    you  could  include  a  short  questionnaire asking them if they
    have   tried  to  install  the  kermit  protocol  and  run  into
    difficulties and what those were.

    Have  your  students  cut-n-paste the email addresses of telecom
    authors  as  they find them on the Internet and give them to you
    once  a  month.  Have  a  robomailer `cc' these authors the same
    flyer.

    And so on and so on ...

CA> To  be honest you are the people that caused the problem but
CA> won't admit it.

JA> In  what  way  are  we  responsible. The Kermit protocol has
JA> evolved  from  1980  until  the  present.  The first version
JA> supporting  packets longer than 94 bytes was released in May
JA> 1985.  The  reason  that  we  have  not used greater than 94
JA> bytes  as  the  default  packet  length  until Kermit 95 and
JA> C-Kermit 7.0

    This  K95  was  a  real wake up call - your `epoch event' eh? It
    altered  the  default packet size AND includes zmodem. A turning
    point in the continuing saga.

JA> is  that  up  until  the  present  time  we  have  been more
JA> concerned  with making sure that the transfer would work the
JA> first time the user tried to transfer a file.

    Anyone  that  has been using modern protocols these past decades
    knows  that  this  argument  is  absurd.  Shortly  after dumping
    Motorola-S  code  and  Intel-Hex  the  XMODEM  and  soon  ZMODEM
    protocols  were zooming right along. You're going to tell me you
    crippled  kermit  for the sake of those HP-48s aren't you? (Yes,
    I  read  all  that painfully droll information re:HP-48s at your
    website).

JA> Otherwise,  users  that  need  to perform a transfer one and
JA> only  one  time  would  very  frequently try to transfer the
JA> file and have the transfer completely fail.

    User  that  need  one single transfer are not really `users' are
    they?  Those of us who use kermit on a daily basis had to suffer
    for the "one-shots"? Poor logic that.

JA> They  would  then be forced to learn a great deal more about
JA> Kermit than they would want to.

    You're talking about corporate managers here aren't you?

JA> The  fact that Kermit always worked when Zmodem often failed
JA> is the primary reason that Kermit is often sought out.

    That  has  not  been my experience. Success or failure of zmodem
    or  any  other  protocol  never entered the picture. I would say
    that  when  I  accessed  mainframes I anticipated finding kermit
    and  never  zmodem.  Had I been accessing more UNIX systems this
    might have been a bit different at some point.

    Early  implementations  of kermit were locked at 94 byte packets
    and  ASCII  only  transfers  (or  I  was unable to interpret the
    docs?).

JA> We  have  made  the  change  in  C-Kermit  7.0 and Kermit 95
JA> because  the most common use of Kermit for file transfers is
JA> now  over  TCP/IP  connections which are reliable. It is for
JA> this   same  reason  that  Kermit  has  evolved  to  support
JA> streaming  transfers.  As long as TCP is ensuring error free
JA> delivery  of data there is no reason for Kermit to duplicate
JA> the effort.

    The  majority  of what I found in C-Kermit looked to be freebies
    for  corporate  `clients' and not all that useful to a hobbyist.
    Non profit status can be `for the people' or just a tax dodge.

    I've  not  `diff'd the last year or so of C-Kermit but I'd wager
    it  would  be  interesting to see just how many lines of code we
    are discussing here.

JA>CA> There  are  many  people  who  restore  old  automobiles,
JA>CA> others  restore  old  furniture. Do you think they should
JA>CA> buy only `new'?

JA>CA> For  some  this is a hobby and doing it with the original
JA>CA> equipment  or  close to the original is a challenge. It's
JA>CA> not always about money.

JA>CA> Any fool can buy his way onto the Internet.

JA> It may not be about money, but it is about time.

    Again  the  petense. Time IS money and the money that is paid to
    a  worker  is an IOU for `x' amount of the hours of his life. We
    then  trade  our  `lives' for the things we either cannot do for
    ourselves or chose not to do.

JA> What you are requesting is that either Professor Doupnik

    This  was  `Joe'  until  recently.  Did he only now complete his
    doctoral thesis?

JA> or  one  of  the paid members of the Kermit Project take our
JA> time  to  develop  and implement a Zmodem implementation for
JA> MS-DOS Kermit.

    Well ... yes that's what someone there is paid to do.

    I  also  ammended  my  request  when I realized that you are not
    able  to  do  the zmodem transfer. I asked for a `hook' into the
    TCP/IP stack for external software.

JA> This is not a trivial one hour job.

    For  a  person  familiar  with  the various functions of MSK the
    `int  14h'  hook  is not enough to occupy an entire day (I never
    said  one  hour). If you wanted to make a group effort of it and
    have  coffee and doughnuts, swap a few stories, and gossip about
    your co-workers maybe an entire day.

JA> If it were it might have been done years ago.

    That    attitude  leads  to  nowhere.  You  haven't  thought  of
    everything  just  yet.  It's entirely possible no one thought of
    it and now no one wants to admit it.

JA> It is also a memory trade off.

    Many,  if  not  all,  modern telecom apps allow for `plugins' as
    they call them now. External hooks for additional function.

JA> As  you  have seen from threads this week there are concerns
JA> about memory space and scripts.

    A valid concern, yes.

JA> Adding  45K  of code to MS-DOS Kermit it would significantly
JA> reduce the size of the scripts that might be implemented.

    Depends.  Both kermit and zmodem use similar functions. It would
    depend    on  how  flexible  these  are.  Many  existing  kermit
    functions  lend  themselves  to  zmodem (such as calculating the
    CRC, use of packets, sliding window size, etc.).

    I  already  abandoned  any  hope that zmodem would reside within
    MSK  and ammened my request to only a `hook'. Probably less than
    2k of additional code - maybe only 1k if in ASM.

    --8<--cut

JA> I've  used  the TRANSMIT a few times. The entire screen goes
JA> haywire  and  looks  like a runaway ASM program (core dump?)
JA> but  when  it finally stops the data has been transmitted. A
JA> bit  unnevering  to  watch if you've had : many ASM programs
JA> try trashing your hard drive on you.

JA> It  appears  to be functional but could use a better display
JA> format  that   doesn't scare the heck out of you when you do
JA> use it IMO.

JA> Turn off echoing if you do not desire it.

    "If you don't like it don't watch"?

    Wow! Why didn't I think of that?

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>     <|        @AngelFire.com        |>  __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__