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181 responses total.

Why was I put directly from item 1 to item 14, then when I typed r n there
were no new items, when I typed browse new likewise?  r 3 n got me here.

r n worked after I got to item 3.

  Because whenever you join a new conference you onlyget to read the first
and the last items. You should do a r all, to properly catch up. (I do this
and it only takes a few more minutes)

  It's a conscious decision meant to keep first-time conference users
  from being overwhelmed when they join a conference with hundreds of
  items.  Personally, I disagree with it -- my thinking is that many
  readers will drop in, see only two items (one of which is almost
  always fluff), and decide "Hmmm..  not much going on here, guess I
  won't bother to come back."  But it's not a system problem, per se,
  it's the way Grex has behaved for time immemorial..

I vaguely recall asking about this last agora.  Hope it is helpful to new
users, except they would not have been able to find this item.  Does someone
want to put the info in item number 1?

  Between Valerie's "about conferences" response (item 1, resp 2)
  and the introductory info that shows up the first time you read
  the new conference it's probably covered already.  In any case
  it's doubtful that many readers who really need the info would
  find it 30-40 responses deep in item #1.

We have been calling grex at 761-3000, 9600 bps, with a 25 sec wait before
giving up, and could not get through on 4 tries.  This has happened often,
sometimes we get through the second or third try.  We also tried 14.4 bps at
the other number, same problem.  As an experiment I called 761-3000 at 2400
bps and got through right away?  Why?  This has been going on for a few days
at least.  We dial and get the usual static sound, but no connect.

Line noise would be my guess.  are you on a phone line or modem setup that
has changed recently?

I suggest that new users be put into agora with all items read but 
'new' from (say) the previous day. Then they immediately see a little
of quite a few, rather than too much of two.

When I try to telnet in during my lunch 35 minutes, I usually end up 
somewhere around 45 in the telnet queue.  (usually around 11:30 am)Is 
this just a busy time to telnet in, or is there something I'm doing 
wrong?

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Re 7, we have not changed anything in our setup and are still unable to dial
in sometimes except at 2400.  It worked at 9600 an hour ago but not now.

Ah yes...I make the mistake of thinking one can do *anything* with
computers....except change the source code.   :)  [Say....how about getting
the source code?]

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That's OK with me. He probably has some ideas too on how it could be upgraded.

The mail limiter is still not working properly. Since it is sending the
extra-large messages anyway, and bouncing back a copy as well, how about
turning it off until it can be fixed?

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It's funny.  Today when I telnetted in over lunch (11:15) there was 
nobody in the queue.  I connected immediately.

I can't telnet from 5-11pm because my home telnet software is messed up.

Re 11 re 9: Valerie, it would *not* require changing Picospan to do what Rane
suggested.  Picospan could be spoofed, instead.  newuser could initialize a
participation file, with items shown as read up to some particular time. 
(IMNAAHO that should be done *right*, not the way fixseen does it, so that
as responses are added the user doesn't suddenly see all resps back to the
beginning.)

I'm not sure I think this would be a good thing; I'm just pointing out that
it could be done, and fairly easily, with a separate piece of programming,
not touching Picospan at all.

(And doing that wouldn't unconfuse users like Sindi (and like me, a couple
of times years back) who join a new conference.  Only new users.  But it might
avoid the problem of making new users think nothing ever happens here -
possibly at the price of scaring them away with too much activity.)

This past week, I've been able to telenet onto Grex just about anytime of
day without waiting in line. This is unusual, especially in the morning.
If somebody did something, thank you.

Those joining new conferences could be a bit unconfused by having an
into message saying what is going on (only first and last items shown
immediately - and how to see the others).

We will try the other phone lines.  5041 worked today after 3000 did not. 
But nothing changed at our end, we had no problems last week.

This time 5041 did not work in 25 sec, nor did 3000 or 3411.  I got 
through twice today on 761-5159 after 20 seconds.

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I think the first step you should take, Sindi, is to increase the 25
second timeout.  That isn't long enough to negotiate a high speed
connection.  I keep mine at 60 seconds.  45 should be good.

Wow!  The load average is over 13 and the system is s-l-o-w.  Anything
unusual going on?

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Why is mnet down?

When I first logged into grex, I chose dumb, not knowing a darn thing about
it.  Now, whenever I try to use dumb, I cannot access pine, and I keep getting
these warning messages...like for or five lines of them EVERY TIME I hit the
ENTER key....which means All the Time.  Very annoying. So I now type in vt100,
which means that when I read mail or a conf, it all comes up on the the screen
and the it compresses it self by deleting a line somewhere on the screen.
I also was not able to do a darn thing with editing in pine...the cursor 
would sometimes move were I wanted it to./...or it would just stay in one
place,
or it would skip several lines at once, etc.  Also very annoying.  I also
cannot edit in conf. any more....How can I get this fixed???  (Iknew about
some of this before, but since I was telnetting in, it wasn't a problem...now
it's a problem...majorly)

Edit the file, in your home directory, called  .profile  (that leading dot
is part of the filename).  There's a line in it that says:
        eval `/usr/ucb/tset -s -m 'dialup:?dumb' -m 'su:?dumb' "${TERM-dumb}"`
Change all 3 occurrences of "dumb" to "vt100".

What do I edit it to?

It's not necessarily .profile that needs to be editted.  It is in Megan's
case, but other people have .login instead.

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Just now when I tried to connect to cyberspace.org as I always do, it looks
like "the DNS" complained that it didn't know that host.  grex.cyberspace.org
worked...

Re: 25

My telnet software won't work over my family's proxy server.  I have no 
modem in my computer because it uses an IRQ which I can't afford to 
spare if I want the sound card and the Ethernet card to work.

Maybe I'll just give in to my PC-ness and buy an IMAC

WHen isn't M-nut down?

I use LotusWorks, but I don't think that my windows terminal program is any
better, and neither is my alphaworks program.  (I gotta check that one...I
haven't used it in forever)

A lot.  Take now, for instance.  And their period of inactivity I was
referring to was the conclusion of a new record of up time for them, over 56
days if I recall the statistics correctly.  That's a long time.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss