CRICINFO_NEWS_24AUG93

Tues Aug 24th - CricInfo News & some Q and A's

The pledges are coming in quite nicely. We have now been pledged over US$800 and so are not quite half-way. Keep them coming please.

A common question that we are asked is "where do I send the money?" The answer to this is that we don't know at the moment. When we have been pledged sufficient funds to cover the purchase, and one of us has found the unit we would like to buy, in all likelihood we shall ask you to send your cheques directly to that individual, who will then actually make the purchase ($2000 is a lot to ask us to go out-of-pocket for :) - so speed will be important then. We will email each of you individually (probably a standard letter) when we are at that stage. It may still be 2-4 weeks yet. Please also keep an eye on your local noticeboards/adverts for used Suns (we are tending towards buying a Sun) and let us know of anything interesting.

A question we have been asked more than once is : is there a mail-server interface to CI?

A: no

Q: do we have plans to do this ?

A: yes, but we need the new computer first. Poor old tulip just cant handle more processes (I have spent the last 3-4 days removing various maintenance routines to lighten the load on tulip - hence the machine has actually been *up* for the last few days :). The down-side of this is, of course, that the files are not always correctly indexed: Updating has gone from several times a day (typically it was 5-10 times daily) to just once a day. This severely limits irc access to the database at times, since the bot will only find files it has been told exist. Apparently there are some of us who do not have Internet access (are there any ppl left w/o InterNet access ? :-). An investment in the new computer for CI would be well worth your while ! :)

Other stuff:

We really now need information on becoming a charity in both the USA and the UK (and possibly also Aus). Please take a few minutes to help us with the research on this and email any information you have to help@tulip.ee.ndsu.nodak.edu. Who knows; if we can achieve this, some kind company may even *give* us a new computer as a tax write-off, so that we wouldn't need any money :). There's only so much that the CI managers can do here, since we are still few in number, and we all have jobs to do as well ! :( - so please help with this matter.

Bread-and-butter stuff : Keeping CI fed...

The RSA_SL-BOARD-XI card (in SCORECARDS/) is incomplete. Articles on the SL grounds would be appreciated please.

Mundane stuff, I know, but this is the sort of thing that CI is all about, and which occupies much of our time! We need volunteers who can keep CI fed on a regular basis, please. The more there are, the less work needs to be done by each (wow.. what logic! :) so please email us if you can help here. Also, as the Eng season comes to a close, we would like stats for this season, as well as volunteers from the southern hemisphere who will keep CI updated with international and domestic scorecards during your seasons. We're in our first year, so no mechanism yet exists for getting this information.

Thanks,

CP/The Management.