Conference 7.286::digital

I agree - and there's also a lot more possibility of confusion with all 
usernames being in one address space, without the location in between.

I've been victim of several misdirected mails since I acquired the
[email protected] address, there being a watsonr, watsonro already and at 
least another two Rob Watson's to come on line yet...

It also used to be easy when telling customers to get in contact with 
someone to say mail [email protected] - as long as you knew their 
name and location you had a 99% chance of getting it right. Now it's a 
lottery - fine if you're logged in, but no chance of guessing it.

-- Rob (who used to be one of two Rob Watson@BBP's many years back)

An extra step (or two :-): highlight the name in Exchange and right click, under 
properties you can see what the person's location is.

Flat name spaces don't scale well from:
	an administrative perspective: require centralized name space
		admininstrator to manage
	an end-user perspective: naming restrictions placed on end-users
		often make their lives difficult

The DIGITAL1 domain is such a flat name space.  It would make better
sense to have it hierarichial by location (as the MTS name space), or
by organizational unit (may not work in Digital, where these change
frequently).  There may good technical limitations which prevent this
approach, since I am unfamiliar with Microsoft's Domain architecture.

I am reminded of the time I worked on a non-Digital time-sharing
system back in 1975.  The (5 MB?) disk had a partition carved out
for user data.  All users created files within this partition,
with no directories or subdirectories possible.  By convention each
user prefixed all his file names with a 3 character uniquely assigned
prefix. Since filenames I believe were limited to 8 characters, that
only left 5 characters to come up with a descriptive name!

> Does anyone else see it this way ? 

  Yes. Several times a week I get VMS email messages in which there is
no clue what location they came from, except for the node name, which I can
track down. Without a node name, we will be dependent on:

1. Personal-name fields, which indicate a location less than half the time in
VMS mail and, I assume, in Exchange mail too. (If any Exchange instructors are
reading this, PLEASE ask your trainees to set a personal-name (or whatever they
call it in Exchange) that includes a location code).

2. ELF, which, as we all know, is useless for 10% or so of the people here
because they are contractors. And if there are several people in the company
who have the same name (such as the "Rob Watson" example), ELF can only narrow
the search.

  So we are going to get lots of email messages that we don't know whether
they came from 100 feet or 10,000 miles away. 

    Had an interesting experience yesterday sending from Exchange to a
    customer, who wasn't exactly sure of his user name, but gave me a
    couple of options.  I sent the message using the first option and got
    the message back that my note could not be delivered as there was no
    such user (this sounded familiar!)  What was very different though is
    the message from his end provided me with some options based on the
    user name I'd used.... sort of a "here's who we think you might have
    been trying to reach, and here's how to get to each of them.  Pick the
    appropriate one".  It was very nice to see something like this because
    it immediately allowed me to get my message to him rather than having
    to call him and/or try the other options he gave me (which by the way
    weren't right!)
    
    Pat

    Re: .5 What was very different though is the message from his end
    provided me with some options based on the user name I'd used....
    sort of a "here's who we think you might have been trying to reach, and
    here's how to get to each of them.
    
    I got a response like that from a Sun mailer some years ago.  Very
    nice indeed.
    

Re: .5

I got the same thing sending to an MTS receipient in REO earlier this week...

				Steve

    
    	RE: .4
    
    	Actually, I didn't even notice a "personal name" field in Exchange.
    	If it's there, it wasn't obvious to me.
    
    	But the employee directory, presumably set up by the administrator,
    	has all sorts of fields that could be populated, from location to
    	position to phone numbers [work/home/portable] ... but I don't even
    	think my listing includes my site code.
    

    I love the, "well my friend has [email protected], wouldnt it be nice if
    I had that?". Their friend works for a 1000 person company and the
    Digital employee's surname is something like Smith. 
    
    The previous naming scheme scaled, proven,  to a 120K person organisation,
    the current one doesnt even scale to what Bob Palmer is aiming to shrink us
    to. 
    
    - John

    Actually, I've found a plus with Exchange and the ELF MAPI interface.
    I've set my address search up to be Personal Address Book, then
    Exchange then Elf. If I spell the name properly, the person is found
    and I don't even know where it was found. If there's duplicates, I get
    a choice.

    But is there any reason I can't be [email protected]?  You'd be
    hard pressed to find another August Reinig in this company (or any
    other for that matter).
    
                                            August G. Reinig  

    Well, it would work for August, but not for Bob Smith (there are 6
    in ELF).  Perhaps we should only hire people with unique names? :-)
    
    				-John

    You can create a signature file in Exchange, in which you can put
    anything you want, including your phone number, and internet address. 
    Beware that this is stored on your PC, so if you use someone else's,
    you will get their signature.  And if you have more than one PC, you
    have to create it on all of them.  But it really helps people on the
    other end.
    
    The Global Address List in Exchange doesn't have everybody, but I think
    it is better than the way ALL-IN-1 does it internally.  Digital never
    chose to implement DDS from ALL-IN-1, which would have provided a
    complete list.  It was very slow for some reason.  So I find it pretty
    easy to find people.  
    
    However, I do get a lot of misaddressed mail now, and before I just
    about never did. I've been invited to a hockey tournament in Canada,
    and something in Australia, as well as being asked some odd questions. 
    The Internet address is totally non-intuitive.  Some would say the old
    one was too, but at least you *could* work it out.
    
    

    
    Fyi - this topic appears to be discussing an industry issue ie. what to
    do with the lack of standard directory services? 
    
    The industry response is LDAP (lightweight X.500) and is currently
    being defined by IETF. It will allow inter company addressing
    capabilities (company can allow only name/address type info), ability
    to right click highlighted name and see picture/location and any other
    properties defined and setup for public access, and being able to drag
    and drop a username in "From:" field directly into your local PIM.
    
    For additional info on this, reference:
    http://altavista.reo.dec.com/avd/avdx500.htm
    
    Regards,
    
    / Kerry

    
    LDAP, or DAP for that matter is not the answer. They will help uniform
    accessibility from applications and will allow for rationalisation of
    multiple directory services, but they wont fix this naming mess.
    
    Sensible design of the directory tree is the answer. You can
    make a hash of an X.500 directory information tree (DIT) just as easily as
    the mess we have made of this flatter one. And the DIT can be designed
    to be quite flat and unscalable as well. 
    
    Its like relational database design. The success is not just predicated
    on having SQL. Very careful attention to the modelling of the entities
    and relationships is just as important.
    
    
    - John

    re .2
    
    Doesn't work too well when you are working at home and don't have 
    the requisite PC. Or you are using VMSmail anywhere. Or you are using
    an Internet mail service like (Netscape|Eudora) apps utilize. 
    
       erik

    Is there a way to have the global address put last name first. Right
    now I have to put in the person's first name and then last. I want to
    be able to find Soderstrom, Dean instead of Dean Soderstrom.
    

    
    	Type
    
    	d soderstrom
    
    	into the "To:" field and then hit <ctrl>k and you will be given a
    	choice [if a choice exists] as to which recipient to specify.
    

    go into the address book, select tools then select find, from there a
    menu comes up where you can enter someone's last name

    
    	That doesn't do much for me, especially if you're looking for
    	someone named Ulysses [sp?] Smith and it stops on Aaron Smith.
    
    	However, you can also enter a first initial into the "first
    	name" block and that does help.
    

>    Is there a way to have the global address put last name first. Right
>    now I have to put in the person's first name and then last. I want to
>    be able to find Soderstrom, Dean instead of Dean Soderstrom.

Gee, when I was in kindergarten in the fifties that's the way the teachers 
used to refer to the class.  Billy S, Tommy G, Mary L, etc.

When we grew up into big boys and girls people started using W Sommers, 
Thomas Gershwin, Mary Lamb, etc.

Now we're at a big computer company being treated like kindergarteners 
again.

I can't even find half of the people here because they're listed by their 
first names, some of which nobody's ever even heard of.  Quite a few of my 
associates have been addressed by nicknames or they use their middle names. 

Exchange doesn't follow any common practice.  I'm in there as skip, (my 
given name is Allen)  Peter Teague was in there as William Teague (W Peter 
Teague)

There's no system and rummaging through to get to a last name sort routine 
is sheer stupidity.    

    Just about every time you see a list of names, it is ordered on
    Surname, rather than "given name".  Just think how much fun it would be
    if the phone book was listed by given name...
    
    Even ELF has the ability for me to add nicknames and common typos fr my
    name (people forget my trailing "e" or think I start with a "k").
    
    Jc  (Sorry - John Corne :-)
    

In some Scandanavian countries, the phone book IS ordered by given name.

				Steve

    �In some Scandanavian countries, the phone book IS ordered by given name.
    
    Not in Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark. Don't know about Iceland
    though.
    

I had read that Sweden did this - but it was a long time ago - and it's of
course possible that my source was mistaken.  My apologize for the
spelling error.

				Steve

    It might be the case for Iceland as they tend to name everyone "Bill
    Steve's-son" or "Mary Steve's-daughter" etc. (you get the idea).
    
    Then again, Iceland isn't really Scandinavian either...
    

<<< Note 5224.26 by bhajee.rto.dec.com::JAERVINEN "Ora, the Old Rural Amateur" >>>
>    Then again, Iceland isn't really Scandinavian either...
 
Eh?  
The Icelandic phone book *is* organized that way.  And on the web, even.

"Jeg err Islenskur."

Eirikur Hallgrimsson   (Hallgrim's son, but Hallgrimur was my grandad,
actually)

   

It was probably Iceland I was thinking of, but it had been a long time since
I read it and got a bit confused.

				Steve

    >Iceland isn't really Scandinavian either...
    
    Without context, this is ambiguous at best.  Iceland was settled by
    norsemen early in the viking era. The language remains close to old
    norse.
    
    But perhaps the context meant was geographic rather than cultural... 

Of course, Ora, being Finnish, should know better than anyone that Finland
is a Nordic, not a Scandinavian country.

/john

What is the difference between a 'Nordic' and a 'Scandinavian'
country?

Re .26,.27,.29,.30,.31:

See http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/scn/faq21.html
				/AHM

    re .32: The FAQ should probably answer most questions. As one can see,
    the terms are somewhat loosely defined and slightly dependent on
    whether the context is political, goegraphica, linguistic, historical,
    ...

    My understanding was that there were four Scandinavian countries:
    
    Norway
    Denmark
    Sweden
    
    and Minnesota.
    
    

    ...and where is MINNESOTA???  ;*)

RE: .34

	Ya, sure, youbetcha!

							mike

    re .34:
    
    I've only visited Minnesota once, but as a born Scandinavian (or at
    least Finn :-) I cann asure the statement is not very far from truth.
    

I, too, am a Finn. Or is it Swede? I don't know, but they're both the
same, aren't they anyway?

    ..."our Scandinavian countries:"
    
    bunch of folks I've known well in Delaware (formerly known as New
    Sweden, first settled by the Swedes (and Finns) before being taken
    over by Dutch and then English interlopers) might be inclined to
    want to be included...
    

    Well, I'm only half Scandinavian by heritage (my paternal grandparents
    having come from Norway and changed from Stukkibeck to Beck at Ellis
    Island).

I'm almost sure that we (in Australia) have more American (Northern variety) shows on 
our TV than they do in America, but when I saw FARGO (the movie) I couldn't believe that
 the quirks of Minnesota have kept away from me for so long...  I think I missed out  on
some of the plot just trying to get over the accent...

Stuart "with a Zed" Zorbas

Isn't a swede a root vegetable, like a turnip?

PJDM

    �Isn't a swede a root vegetable, like a turnip?
    
    One of my favorite dishes is (found in an American vegetarian cookbook)
    
    Finnish Swede Pudding
    

    >> Swede Pudding
    
    What happens if you don't finnish eating your swedes, are you allowed
    to have your pudding?
    
    ..Kevin..
    

    Yes, if you have a swede tooth.

re: .42

>Isn't a swede a root vegetable, like a turnip?

Yes, also known as "rutabaga" and "yellow turnip".

-Hal