Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!rbthomas From: rbthomas@athos.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Suggestion regarding Minix distribution Message-ID:Date: 29 Sep 89 04:02:53 GMT References: <24806@louie.udel.EDU> <3376@ast.cs.vu.nl> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 34 > From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) > An advantage of having P-H doing it is that despite the numerous > complaints about them, by-and-large they get it right, and they are set up > to distributed packages. The 20 times they screwed up, we have heard about > it at great length on the net, but the thousand times they didn't, of > course nobody said anything. My experience has been that P-H gets it right if you give them the right ISBN number and they get it wrong if you give them the wrong ISBN number (arguably they got it right -- you got it wrong -- but in either case, you didn't get what you wanted) and they get it right/wrong (depending on your persuasion -- optimist/pessimist) about 1/2 the time if you give them no ISBN number at all. This seems to be because their order-taking people are trained to look at ISBN numbers and not trained to look at (to them) insignificant things like "version numbers". Frankly, I wouldn't expect anything different, if I were in the publishing biz... Moral, Andy Please! -- the next time there is a release from P-H -- please post the correct *new* ISBN number to the net and encourage people to order by that number and accept no substitutes. That way we can avoid a lot of grief and flamage. Rick -- Rick Thomas uucp: {ames, att, harvard}!rutgers!jove.rutgers.edu!rbthomas internet: rbthomas@JOVE.RUTGERS.EDU bitnet: rbthomas@zodiac.bitnet Phone: (201) 932-4301