[854] in IS Home Pages
Re: Concerns about MIT Software Distribution page
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marshall Vale)
Mon Nov 29 16:36:24 1999
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Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 16:35:08 -0500
To: Robyn Fizz <fizz@mit.edu>
From: Marshall Vale <mjv@MIT.EDU>
Cc: sw-release-team@mit.edu, is-home@mit.edu, goguen@mit.edu
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At 11:51 AM -0500 11/18/99, Robyn Fizz wrote:
>Just to round out the picture, within a short time frame, the Mac and PC
>links will be replaced by the ones found on
>http://training.mit.edu/products/test.html.
So I've looked over the Mac section of the pages. This is purely
commentary on the information contained in the database.
- The section on Kerberos for the Macintosh and KClient isn't
correct. KClient should not be a separate item from Kerberos for
Macintosh. They certainly shouldn't have different categories.
There is no such version as 1.0.1 for Kerberos for Macintosh. The
system requirements for 2.0.2 are actually for KClient itself, not
the general package. You want to use the requirements listed for
1.0.1 for 2.0.2. The description for KfM only refers to the Kerberos
v5 pieces; it should refer to both v4(KClient) and v5 components.
- Disinfectant should be removed.
- The only 2.x version of Eudora released officially at MIT was 2.1.4.
- Macintosh System 7.5.3 should be removed from the list. 7.6.1 is
the last we officially support. The entries for 8 should be
consolidated into 8.x or explicitly list each version to be
consistent.
- The NCSA Telnet entry should be removed since BetterTelnet is
there. At the very least, it's description should be pared down to
something similar to the others.
- At the least, Netscape Navigator 2.0.2 should be removed. Probably
3.0 and 4.05 too.
- Norton Utilities should be removed, Disk First Aid is good enough
these days. Users not keeping up with upgrades of NU causes them more
problems than any help it could possibly give and worse, gives them a
false sense of security.
- MacDiscuss should only list 1.2a2
- Open Transport should be removed as it really is not a separate
product anymore.
- PageMaker should be removed.
- Photoshop should be removed.
- TechMail should be removed.
- TechNotify should be removed.
- White Knight should be removed.
- Word Perfect should be removed.
- ZTerm should be removed.
This last bunch of products should be removed because no training
goes on at the helpdesk for these products. We are doing a great
disservice improperly advertising a knowledge base that doesn't truly
exist in that channel. The goal should not be to recommend a product
for every category under the sun but rather limit our selections to
services that are critical for getting MIT work done for which we can
commit the resources needed to support said services. I hardly think
things like PageMaker, Photoshop and Word Perfect qualify these days.
Marshall
