Re: Is ANYBODY there? (was: i/o error)

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:54:01 -0500 (EST), James B. Hiller
<[email protected]> wrote:
> If you know when you sent the email, take a look for it in the list
> archives.  I'm pretty sure it never actually made it to the list.  

It made it to the gmane group.  (It was probably from another email
account not mine, possibly via gmane's NNTP/NNRP, and went through the
confirmation process successfully, then through hpoj-devel's moderator
approval apparently successfully.)  I took that as confirmation that
it was sent to the list also.  I couldn't find it in the archives in a
brief search, but then I don't understand Yahoo's searching semantics.

(More recently I joined the list directly from this account, and I
sent or confirmed messages from this account.  I have grown attached
to the [email protected] feature, which your list software
does not seem to support.  Any mail sent to me with anything after the
+ will work.  See below for more on this.)

> lead HP person doing maintenance coordination; and yes, there is a future
> for your HP AIO and linux.  It's just got a different face than what
> you might have expected if you'd dropped off the list.

I have been monitoring the gmane group for a long time and did read
some of those posts, and I am glad that HP at least expresses intent
to continue to support Linux.  That is probably more than most
companies.

Overall, however (and this is of course not an indictment of
volunteers at all) the impression that I get from more recent activity
is that my AIO is probably going to be useless to me now that I can no
longer return it to the store -- unless somebody can look at the
debugging output.  To be honest, I don't know whether it's hardware or
software or both, although several people said that it must be the
hpoj backend.

(OT: trying to reach HP has been a nightmare; their web site seems to
have been designed to create a maximum of frustration.  For example,
there are no email addresses, so you spend way too long filling out an
email form, and it asks you to confirm, and there is no send button. 
Or you try the web chat, and half of the characters you type are
dropped, then the chat person (who might be an Eliza-like bot
pretending to be a human) tells you that they only support English and
drops the connection -- I have the transcript.  Then Firefox bogs down
with Javascript.  Or you try to find your problem, figuring you would
read between the lines of Windows errors because they have no Linux
error pages, and they got the link wrong.  And they don't make it
clear whether their "drivers" and other downloadable software are or
affect firmware in any way, so you can't tell whether you could fix a
problem in the device itself by using them.  Do they really want
repeat customers?  Why don't they just have a simple HTML page that
says "Thanks for buying our product.  We don't want you to ever have a
real conversation with any of us who is capable of fixing any
problems."  I would like them *more* if they did that. :-()

> Might I recommend that you verify your subscription - something may well
> have happened to it, which would also have held your message in queue and
> also explain why you perceive no activity.  I get several emails 

More recently I subscribed directly using this address.

I get hpoj-devel email here.  But my post was held as a supposed
nonsubscriber.  I assume that there is an administrator who will post
the post or bounce it within a few days at most.

(I suspect that's because I am subscribed as gambarimasu+something and
gmail only lets me send mail as gambarimasu without the +something.  I
would prefer to avoid spam and filter my email by keeping the
subscription as +something if possible, and other than the fact that
my messages have to await moderator approval, this should not affect
anything else AFAIK.)

> name, and you'll likely also find more direct and precise answers
> to your question.  If I recall right, would be mid-spring 04 and late
> summer 04.

I probably read that.  I have no problem at all with infrequent status
or software updates *if* there are no serious bugs.  A latest update
of half a year ago would be splendid if I didn't have a huge
paperweight on my desk :-).  That colors my perception of the
project's future viability.  Perhaps it is incorrect to let my
perception be colored like that, but it does not comfort me to know
that I am one of only a few people who have the problem.

Of course volunteers are volunteers and they don't have to do anything
at all, but I am so desperate in this matter that if I could I would
buy another scanner (any recommendations for very cheap, reliable,
non-HP, ADF, Linux scanners?  ARE there any such scanners?  Of course,
it would be ideal if the 6110 were fixed instead.).

> I'd give you more data here, but as you asked for it from an HP person
> (and that's the proper pedigree to be asking for), and as it's 

I'll accept help and comments from anybody, and your data are likely
to be useful, so please feel free to fire away.  I'm skeptical of HP
now, but it would be great if some technical people there would
comment.

Thanks for your reply.  It makes me feel listened-to.  :-)

P.S.  It looks like I violated email convention by paraphrasing the
old Subject: line in the (was: ...) instead of putting it there
verbatim.  Didn't mean to.


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