HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kab@s1.gov (Keith Benton)
Subject: Re: Silence on the Windoz Front...
Reply-To: kab@s1.gov
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 19:17:01 GMT

In article 4oB@acsu.buffalo.edu, v053qpgh@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Eric W Sarjeant) writes:
>Has anyone been keeping up with the OS/2 and the MS Windows newsgroup
>fronts? As of late, I have noticed a considerable decline in the comp.
>windows.ms group. Typically only around 10-15 messages appear daily,
>whereas the os2 forums are constantly bustling with nearly 100 messages
>each per day.
>
>Has Windows gotten so stable that no one has any problems with it anymore?
>I think not; this is probably an indication of how people are spending
>their time. Let's hope IBM can fix the few little bugs as quickly as
>they say they can... 
>==============================================================================
> Eric W. Sarjeant                    | "I am only too conscious that I have no
> sUnyaB                              |  claim to wisdom, great or small..."
> v053qpgh@ubvms.bitnet               |
> sarjeant@aol.com                    |

I think it's because comp.windows.ms has been replaced by:

		comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
		comp.os.ms-windows.announce
		comp.os.ms-windows.apps
		comp.os.ms-windows.misc
		comp.os.ms-windows.setup

and some others I don't see right now. Currently I see

		56 messages in .apps
		53 messages in .misc
		24 messages in .setup

so I'd say the Windows newsgroups are doing fine.

---
	---------------------------------------------------------
	|             Keith Benton: kab@s1.gov                  |
	| ME!?!? Speak for anyone here!?!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA |
	|             Standard Disclaimers apply                |
	---------------------------------------------------------

Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:7030 comp.os.os2.misc:32242
From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Shutdown failure (?)
Date: 6 Oct 1992 23:48:53 GMT
Followup-To: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Oct6.222645.4695@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de> ch@sg1502.chemie.uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter) writes:
[about PM programs hanging while owning the message queue]
>The only workaround is hitting Ctrl-ESC like an Arcade-Professional
>then you will see some "ENTER" or "CANCEL" dialog. If you choose
>CANCEL, nothing happens. If you choose ENTER, the system crashes
>or other nice things. In case of PMTERM, you cannot use the COM-Port
>until you reboot.

Which operating system are you using?
OS/2 2.0 GA will handle this just fine; _one_ press of Ctl-Esc will get the
dialog box, and choosing Enter will stop the application just fine. It's
happened to me recently, while trying to use what turns out to be a version of
Irwin's EZTape/PM designed for 1.2, and I had no trouble at all. No crash, no
repeated hammerring of the key needed, nothing. One press, and it recovered.
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
    Vote for a REAL change on 3 November: Throw out the check-bouncing,
  tax-and-spend Democrat Congress! (obviously, not an opinion of UTHSCH)
From: thg@cam-orl.co.uk (Tim Glauert)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Interesting tidbit from September 7, 1992 PC Week
Date: 6 Oct 92 09:56:59 GMT
Organization: Olivetti Research Ltd, Cambridge, England.

In article <7482@lib.tmc.edu>, jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
|> Bwahahahahaha!!!! If it's marketed towards developers, why can any Tom, Dick,
|> and Harriet call up and order one?

You mean like the current OS/2 2.0 "Beta"?  As everyone is keen on pointing
out, a "Beta" should go to a restricted number of developers who will provide
detailed reports on bugs and features. A "Beta" is not generally available to
the whole world.

Let's face it, both IBM and MS have given a wide exposure to "unfinished"
versions of their code in an attempt, in part, to forestall criticisms about
dealys in producing the real thing.
From: ameline@vnet.ibm.com (Ian Ameline)
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 13:22:21 EDT
Subject: Re: Tidbits about NT and OS/2 from the trade rags.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Organization: C-Set/2 Development, IBM Canada Lab.
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM

In article <7494@lib.tmc.edu>,
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>
>In article <1992Oct5.002541.6252@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>And yes I do have all that in writing from MS.
>>Though I only find it necessary to get things in writing, when it comes
>>from  IBM... I just installed CSD0014 of Workset/2... the bloody
>>optimizer STILL has too man bugs to be used.  You can take your anti-MS
>>attitude and stick it if the best you have to offer as an alternate is
>>IBM!  They may give you your bug fixes free, but you sure as hell need
>>them!
>>(Sorry... it's just that C Set/2 has just wasted yet another 12 hour's work.)
>
>I'd be willing to bet a steak dinner that Ian Ameline, or someone from his
>shop, has _already_ emailed or spoken to Brian about this statement. Could the
>same be said about Microsoft? How many bugs are there in MSC 6? How much did
>you spend on bug fixes for that several-hundred-dollar package?...not to
>mention the fact that you can't get a functioning upgrade to the latest
>version if you're an OS/2 user...
>

   Ooops -- Sorry to let you down -- Didn't see this until now. I'll send
Brian a note, reminding him that our support group is waiting for any
failing programs at CSET2@vnet.ibm.com. We'll be happy to give him a call
and do our best to fix any problems that are reported to us.

CSD 14 fixed several bugs, including the one bug reported by Brian. If he
has found more, we're interested in fixing them too.

Ian Ameline
C-Set/2 Development.

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara)
Subject: Re: Multitasking (was Re: MS's misconduct!)next reply
Date: 01 Oct 92 00:52:36 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Sep30.185808.3691@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> u1665462@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au writes:
>
>I cannot agree with peteski@microsoft.com.

     Actually, you are agreeing with him nearly 100%.  Check back
towards the beginning of this thread.


>We are a small department, and the secretary only uses WP 5.1 and Dbase IV.
>Yet *WE NEED MULTITASKING*. Why? Becouse that is the way people work: all the
>time somebody asks the secretary for something different: an old file, Dbase
>figures, etc. All the time we have to jostle to use her machine to get
>something we thought we would not need... Being able to switch between apps. is 
>an efficiency improvement one can not underestimate!

     This is not multitasking - this is task switching.  Totally
different animals.

					-Phil
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Lafornara         				1 Microsoft Way         
philipla@microsoft.com				Redmond, WA 98052-6399 
Note:  Microsoft doesn't even _know_ that these are my opinions. So there.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: discar@nosc.mil (Joe Discar)
Subject: Re: Why OS/2 **WILL** fail
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 22:17:47 GMT

In article <BvAvrB.52L@acsu.buffalo.edu> v053qpgh@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Eric W Sarjeant) writes:
>
>I know we have had this debate before, and I don't want to start a war, but
>I have never had MS DOS crash on me. DOS is a nearly foolproof os compared
>with the other offerings that are out there. When it comes to DOS extenders,
>Windows 3.x has to be the most dangerous. Not only does it have a
>tendancy to crash frequently (ie a couple of times a week) but only DOS
>programs can really get multitasked. Windows programs have to compete for
>CPU time -- that's no way to share a single processor.

This is very true.  It is RARE that DOS ever crashes.  In fact, I remember
watching a Mac user crash his mac with an ID=41, nonchalantly reached to the
side of his computer and push the reset button--he commented all that it
happened all the time, but not consistently.  I remember thinking that on a
PC, if DOS inconsistently locked up, I would take it to the shop to figure
out what was wrong--Mac users (and now Windows users) seem to take it in
stride.

But perhaps DOS doesn't crash as much simply because we don't expect too
much from it?  Most of the time, it's doing only one thing at a time...
or something really trivial in the background as a TSR (such as e-mail
watching, or appointment book watching)... and these new generation
OS's (such as Windows 3.1, OS/2 and NT) try to do much, much more.  Think
about it, scrolling a maximized Word for Win 2.0 window is moving (basically)
a megabyte of data--in the video RAM--alone...

> sarjeant@aol.com                    |

-> Joe <-
From: grjost@uts.amdahl.com (Garrett Jost)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Pre-emptive multitasking
Date: 30 Sep 92 02:09:56 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


     Why is there all this discussion about pre-emptive multitasking and its
necessity?  Some people here are so against it and it makes me wonder why.
If you don't want it, then don't use it!  But why should the rest of us suffer
because of something you don't want?

     Although the discussion has not been directly about Windows 3.1, it
seems like some people are becoming defensive of it.  Just because Windows
3.1 does not have pre-emptive multitasking, doesn't mean it is not necessary.

     Maybe people think it would be too much work to add pre-emptive 
multitasking...  It shouldn't.  The basis of pre-emptive multitasking is
a timer interrupt that the operating system would catch telling it to
reschedule processes.  That is pretty trivial code to add, especially
figuring that an operating system must also take care of other interrupts.

     In the case of Windows 3.1, it already somewhat pre-empts.  Why did
Microsoft stop there.  Every DOS process in Windows MUST be pre-empted or
else it would take over the system.  But this does not happen with Windows
processes.  Why?  It wouldn't be that much more work to add it into the
scheduler.  It already has some of the pre-emptive routines.

     With pre-emptive multitasking, the system runs much more smoothly, 
assuming you wish to run more than one program at once.  With task switching,
every other process hangs.  And if the running process has a bug (oh, I
forgot ALL COMMERCIAL software for the PC has NO BUGS!) that does not
allow the process to exit, then the system must be re-booted.  With non
pre-emptive,  processes switch, but a process can take over the system.
This is really bad for I/O, especially when the buffers fill and the
devices don't know (it happens all the time when I download, even when
playing solitare!).  It also puts an extra burden on the programmer: he
must worry about the process using too much CPU time at once.  Something
like that should be handled by OS.  And if the process hangs infinitely,
then its reboot time!

     Pre-emptive multitasking makes sure no process hogs the CPU.  And
in a multiuser environment, it is essential!  I can just see some university
running a multiuser machine on a network and some student runs a program
he just made and it non-intentionally goes into an infinite loop.  There
will be a lot of angry people there (not to mention all the wasted man-hours
in rebooting a large system).

     Why are people so against pre-emptive multitasking?  It is not the
new OS fad (its been around at least as long as I have) and it does not
that hard to implement?  Are people just so used to DOS and Windows that
they do not want change???


Garrett

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc
From: eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (Tan Jin Meng)
Subject: Re: Shutdown failure (?)
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 02:28:50 GMT

unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:
: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
: 
: >Some (poorly written) apps don't recognize the shutdown message.  They
: >don't pass it to the default handler, and they don't respond properly.
: >This effectively places the entire shutdown process on hold.  Try
: >killing various apps and seeing which one has to go before shutdown
: >proceeds. 
: 
: Surely OS2 should not allow itself to be hijacked . If a program does not
: respond, OS2 should kill that app itself ( or give you the option), not
: sit there waiting on rude behaviour.
: Actually, OS2 allows itself to be hijacked a bit too easily. Another
: case is running the PMterm, when you shut down the PMterm, you get the
: wait icon and the system gets hijacked until the PMterm has finished its
: business. Surely OS2 should not allow that- you should be able to change
: focus while one program continues its shenanigans. Is this a symptom of
: the single message que?
: 
I'd think its a good thing. If there is something that does not
recognise the shutdown signal, I'd rather kill it manually then have
OS/2 do it for me - who knows what I'd loose if OS/2 accidently killed a
program that did not save state/data properly.

jin meng
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Interesting tidbit from September 7, 1992 PC Week
Date: 27 Sep 92 02:57:39 GMT
	<1992Sep15.174241.2427@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
	<1992Sep21.165505.21510@hemlock.cray.com>
	<1992Sep23.184315.229@microsoft.com>
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <1992Sep23.184315.229@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:

 >      What word did he break here?  I could say, at this moment, that
 > the Buffalo Bills will win this year's Super Bowl.  If, come
 > January, they don't, then I was incorrect.  But have I not "kept
 > my word"?

Unless you have connections we don't know about, Philip, you cannot
influence the chances that the Buffalo Bills will win this year's Super
Bowl. However, Bill Gates, as head of Microsoft (and one who according
to many articles, industry insiders, etc., has always had a strong
influence on company strategy), can and does strongly influence the
chances that OS/2 will actually fulfill its destiny of being "the most
important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

But, you are right. Strictly speaking, Bill Gates did not say any words
in that quote that he could be legally shown to have "broken". Nope.

--
Ping Huang (INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu), probably speaking for himself
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: ch@sg1502.chemie.uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter)
Subject: Re: NT? WHY?
Organization: Philipps-University Marburg
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:51:53 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.154600.21867@hellgate.utah.edu>,
brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

|> >     Hi Brian, just a few questions about NT that I thought other
|> >people might be interested in...
|> >     Do you *personally* have NT set up for a network?  Does this
|> >include peer-to-peer and TCP/IP?  I'm just wondering.  Ok, I'm
|> 
|> Yes, I have it configured with all the networking turned on.
|> As I only have one machine running NT, I've not tested the peer-to-peer,
|> but I do use the TCP/IP.  (The machine is at home, thus only my machine
|> and my wife's machine are on the network.)
|> 

I have an /NT machine with TCP/IP turned on and using 4 LANMAN 2.1 servers
simultanously, while 5 DOS-Machines use disk-resources from the /NT
machine and I am compiling the sample apps. This runs smoothly on
a 16 MB 486/33. If I am doing the same thing on the same machine with
OS/2 2.0 swapping is incredible.

Christoph
-- 
Internet: ch@sg1502.chemie.uni-marburg.de
BITNET: HAMPE2@DMRHRZ11
Fido: 2:243/660
From: MXD118@psuvm.psu.edu (Spiro the Spiny Goldfish)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM, Microsoft, and OS/2 -- a history.
Date: 6 Oct 92 13:34:58 GMT
Organization: Penn State University

Your sources are incorrect. For example, Cringely refers to the Austin
Texas lab "whipping up" OS/2 1.3.

Baloney. I *worked* on OS/2 1.3 in Boca Raton three years ago. Austin did
work on Extended Edition (Comm. Manager and Database Manager), but all of
the Standard Edition work was done in Boca Raton and Hursley, England.

Cringley's other information is misleading at best.
----
Mike Dahmus       MXD118@PSUVM  or  dahmus@cs.psu.edu
TEAM OS/2
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:6937 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:2339
From: mhuth@byron.u.washington.edu (Mark Huth)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Tidbits about NT and OS/2 from the trade rags.
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:38:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Oct5.233820.21503
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <921005081617@128.247.81.82> 4389750@mcimail.com  (Robert Gammon) writes:
>Please remember that MOST of the world, MOST of the users or DOS, Windows, and
>OS/2 do NOT have ANY reason to talk to a UNIX host.  We do NOT want to pay for
>feature.  IBM recognizes our desire, and packages the TCP/IP product separately.
>With enough of you asking for this, perhaps IBM may choose to offer a bundled
>product to satisfy your desires, without making all of us buy the bundled
>product.  Remember that there is a whole world out there beyond the confines
>of your university campus.
>
>--
>Regards,
>Robert Gammon
>(713)-274-3299       (voice)
>(713)-274-2324       (fax)
>(713)-274-2323       (BBS 300-9600,8,N,1)

Robert, since you asked....networking using tcp/ip doesn't have to be to a Unix
host.  Many (most???) businesses do use some kind of networking and many (most?
of them use either a tcp/ip or a novell based protocol.  Home users seldom 
need networking.  Look at the users on the internet, lots of them have 
commercial addresses.  I'd caution you that just because you see .edu in an
address, doen't mean that we're unaware of "the world beyond....".  
>


-- 
Mark Huth                         * Is it too wild to want to get into 
Mhuth@u.washington.edu            * Space someday?
Compuserve 70346,563              *
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: yiupun@leland.Stanford.EDU (Yiupun Michael Kwong)
Subject: Re: NT? WHY?
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 92 11:29:55 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.004820.15289@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>	Logons.
>		Anyone that shares a system will appreciate the value
>		of this feature.  Larger sites will appreciate the
>		C2-level security.

Just a question:
Is NT going to be a multi-user OS?  If not, how does logons differ from
multi-user system stuff?

>
>Finally...
>OS/2 2.0 is a kludge of 16-bit and 32-bit calls.  It will be
>quite some time before IBM can get it to a portable state.  It is
>missing a fair number of major features.  Unless a complete rewrite is
>undertaken it will always be a hack...  and hacks are hard to
>maintain.  It's API is already cluttered with historical problems
>from failed 1.X ill-thought out features.
>

I don't have an experience at all in programming in Windows or OS/2.
However I've read somewhere that the API of PM is actually much more
logical than that of Windows.  To maintain compatability with Windows 3.x
NT's API can't be too different from it.  Then why can NT's API be
better thought out than OS/2?

>NT has one of the most clean modern designs of any
>commercial OS available or announced.  It has a feature set that
>is ready to take full advantage of modern systems.
>It is inherently portable and extensible.
>
>Wouldn't you prefer that the better OS win?
>Five years from now would you prefer to be fighting the uglies of
>a hack (i.e. the future equivalents of the 640K barrier), or using
>an OS that was designed to be extended?

Yes.  I definitely want the better OS to win.  Therefore I hope that
people have the sense to switch to OS/2 now, and if NT is better, to
switch to NT later.

>
>Brian
>-- 
>C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
>University of Utah                             United We Stand
>Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
>brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara)
Subject: Re: MS ready to release 32-bit Word & Excel?!?! Read on...
Date: 29 Sep 92 17:57:07 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

     I've removed comp.os.os2.apps from the newsgroups line - this
isn't appropriate for that group.

In article <1992Sep28.175412.9513@cu23.crl.aecl.ca> gutz@cc49.crl.aecl.ca writes:
>
>With all due respect to whatever position you have at MS (and I don't
>care what it is), you are a total idiot!

     That's respect?  Interesting definition.


>  If you think 2-3 million people
>constitutes a few special intrest groups, then you have to be brain-dead.

     Even the most hardened OS/2 zealots aren't claiming 3 million
users - most aren't even claiming 2 million.  Can you provide a 
source for these statistics.


>[I run OS/2 without the Windows support stuff deleted]

     This is certainly your option.


>If you, and/or MS think I'm going to use a Windows app under OS/2 when
>there is a native OS/2 app, you will surely miss the boat.

     There isn't a native OS/2 app.  That's the point.


>  So drop your
>"NT is going to take the World" attitude and admit that MS is working on
>OS/2 apps.

     I can't make any kind of official statement here, but no one that
I know within Microsoft is working on OS/2 apps, with the possible
exception of Lan Manager.


>  One would have to be pretty naive to believe that MS hasn't
>noticed the potential of OS/2 and has not started to build apps.

     The potential is not clear yet.  If and when it becomes apparent
that OS/2 2.0 will be around for a while, with substantial user base,
I would expect some management person to make a decision on whether
or not to produce apps for it.  At present, though, OS/2's future is
far from clear.

					-Phil
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Lafornara         				1 Microsoft Way         
philipla@microsoft.com				Redmond, WA 98052-6399 
Note:  Microsoft doesn't even _know_ that these are my opinions. So there.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy