Hi all,

Okay, I have a bit of a dilemma here.

I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of the subscribers to
3000-L, and many or most of the newsgroup readers, are advocates for the
HP 3000 platform. Nontechnical posts include excited notices about
mentions of the HP 3000 in the press, pleas for ways to enlighten
management that's mandating a switch to another platform, dispairing
stories about the HP sales force pushing Unix, and so on.

Some of us need to support multiple platforms and as a result are on
other lists -- Unix, AS/400, whatever. And, I suspect, most of us keep
postings to those groups clear of HP 3000 advocacy. This is the way it
should be; advocacy postings are just noise to the majority of readers.

The question is this: if in one of those other forums, you read "The HP
3000 does not support Internet access" -- surely a common misconception
-- what do you do? If you let it go by, it may well come back to haunt
you in some platform selection meeting in the future, when the
decision-maker or the advocate for the non-3000 platform says "I've read
in a number of places that we can't connect the 3000 to the Internet."
But if you post a note to correct the information, you're essentially
engaging in advocacy.

I will admit that my last two postings crossed the line -- though in the
second, I was hoping to start a discussion on reversing the trend toward
throwaway hardware; I'm afraid that by including some Mac-vs-PC issues, I
obscured the main purpose of the post. However, I think that responses to
correct factual errors about other platforms should be encouraged.

-- Bruce





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