Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Using UNIX to control experiments with a 386 box
Keywords: VENIX,LynxOS,drivers,IEEE488,video capture cards
Message-ID: <764@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 3 Oct 89 16:37:11 GMT
References: <33152@beta.lanl.gov>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 28

In article <33152@beta.lanl.gov>, tss@beta.lanl.gov (Timothy S Sullivan) writes:
|  card. That they coudn't guarentee it would work is not surprising
|  considering the large number of boards out there. But they also
|  wouldn't let me have a no-risk trial. I can't afford anything like
|  $1600 without assurances that it will even run. Can anyone explain why
|  this is a sensible policy?  Seems to me that they would want to know
|  of additional systems that the software would work with?  (ISC said no
|  problem for 386/ix, but I didn't get the impression that the person I
|  talked to thought about it very much and the hardware is not on their
|  386/ix compatible devices list I got from VenturCom. Has anyone used
|  either of these boards with 386/ix?)

  Consider it from their point of view. Once you get the software they
have no way of knowing if you will keep a copy of the disks or not. You
could make the copies and return the product, buy a cheap set of SysV
manuals to go with photocopies of the changes in their manual...

  In general companies will do something like that for a large company
byt not an individual. There is less chance of theft and more chance of
a big order with the big company.

  I'm not defending it, you wanted to know why it was a sensible policy,
and I gave you my opinion.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon