Interex Closes Its Doors 15
matt.cheek writes "I was just informed that Interex, the HP User's Group, has shutdown. Here's the notice on the organization's web site: 'Dear members: It is with great sadness, that after 31 years, we have found it financially necessary to close the doors at Interex. Unfortunately our publications, newsletters, services and conference (HPWorld 2005) will be terminated immediately. We are grateful to the 100,000 members and volunteers of Interex for their contributions, advocacy and support. We dearly wish that we could have continued supporting your needs but it was unavoidable.'"
So... with the I'net, is it really needed...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of us rely on Open Source and/or
Amateur Radio communities for hints,
tips & useful workarounds, at least
sometimes over the life of our many
high-tech system projects.
This might be like the phasing out of
the horse & bugy (except for Amish &
others in developing worlds), ie, now
that we have cars (at least while our
fossil fuels last...).
Of course, there are some folks who -
quite rightly - relish some elements of
the past (eg, Clydesdale horses here)
enough to keep representative alive,
either by restoring older machine or
breeding, riding & showing a few horses.
Just as worthy as enjoying a sail on
tall ships.
But business has to consider costs &
RoI... not the warm glow that might
come from doing a job well for clients
or members.
With a bit of luck, slices of Interex's
support libraries or whatever they have
will fall into the hand of respective
communities of folks who care about the
systems needing support.
Maybe any users group meeting will take
place at greener, potentially lower cost
venues out, a bit away from cities.
It might do some good...
Backstory? (Score:1)
Re:Backstory? (Score:5, Informative)
In short it looks like HP is holding a competing conference. Other user groups, like Encompass [encompassus.org], are working w/ HP on this new conference.
Get rid of Hpux (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't do high end nearly as well as Aix, it doesn't do low end as well as Linux. And most would agree Solaris is better in the middle.
Re:Get rid of Hpux (Score:4, Informative)
HP-UX started to fall behind Solaris in the mid to late 90's, HP was starting to waffle about the future of HP-UX, while Sun was firmly committed to Solaris. In the early 90's, HP-UX seemed to be a bit more solid than Solaris.
HP also did a good job of pissing off their customers by dumping MPE.
Seriously Dead! (Score:1)
Seriouslym, anyone using HP operating systems out there?
Nandz.
Re:Seriously Dead! (Score:1)
IMO HP-UX Just isn't all that exciting or robust, even to those that get excited in general about Unix and Unix-Like operating systems.
It is similar to AIX in that it has a nice console-gui, SAM, that you can use to do almost every, and perhaps every system admin task through it. This for me is a definite plus.
I am sad for those that may have used it extensively, and enjo
What is Interex? (Score:2)
Re:What is Interex? (Score:2)
There are other strong Unix communities about (Score:2)
While HPUX gets a bit "long-in-the-tooth", there are still quite a few other Unix communities that have user-centric forums and websites dedicated to their support.
One of my favorites is UserBlue [userblue.org], focused on IBM and AIX solutions. They're hosting mailing lists, webcasts, conferences (with speakers needed in some cases), and lots of other resources where you can tie into other developers, users and solutions involving AIX.
UserBlue is run BY USERS, not by IBM, and that tends to help its buoyency quite
HP even has one (Score:2)
Prepaid admission? (Score:2)
The posted notice suggests that Interex is financially unable to continue. (ironically, I just received a bill from them yesterday) While that might be true for the organization as a whole, why cancel the conference? I know my company has already paid for it, and I'm sure 1000's others have as well. So unless they only got a few registrants (I wondered why a lot of the courses were still