HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rwb00@loon.as (Robert W Beveridge)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: What I *LIKE* (and didn't) about MS-DOS & Windows
Date: 15 Oct 92 15:27:03 GMT
Reply-To: rwb00@loon.as
Organization: Sun Microsystems


In article 19645@gn.ecn.purdue.edu, jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle) writes:
>In article <16WZ02D.261m01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> rwb00@loon.as writes:
>>So its a FEATURE of the mac that no useful software is bundled with it ? 
>
>As if Windows comes with any useful software!  The average free/shareware
>programs for the Mac are much more useful.
>
>MS Write does not have a parallel in Mac freeware.  It, however, is 
>something that VERY few people can consider useful.  Almost everybody 
>needs something more/different.  It makes MUCH more sense for the user 
>to purchase a word processor that suits their likes and needs.  If I
>HAD Windows, one of the first things that I would do would be to remove
>MS Write from my hard drive.
>
>Jess Holle

Of course, there is lots of Windows freeware/shareware, too. And most people
will need something more sophisticated then Write. Would you also immediatly throw
away the Paint program ? The Clock ? The Calculator ? 

To have some programs to play around with the moment you get your machine
up and running seems to make a lot of sense - to argue that its best not to
include some small applications and games seems pretty short sighted.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl)
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:30:18 GMT

In <6196.2ad9c574@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:

>In article <1992Oct11.010129.12913@cgrg.ohio-state.edu>, derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Dariusz Bolski) writes:
>> In article <Bvx5Lr.3rI@rice.edu> jimwong@owlnet.rice.edu (Jim Wong) writes:
>>>In article <1992Oct10.075603.11316@cgrg.ohio-state.edu> derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Dariusz Bolski) writes:
>>>>In article <6169.2ad59050@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
>>>>>HAD to use the mouse. Now, I would never go back.
>> 
>> I didn't argue for a vi. I did argue against the editor where I am
>> forced to use mouse from time to time. It is taking my hands off
>> the keyboard.

>You completely missed my point then. I had the same reaction initially. When
>I finally acheived proficiency with the mouse, I changed my mind completely.

>If you never take the first step, you'll never find out what you are missing
>out on.

You take for granted that whoever insists on having the choice between
keyboard and mouse instead of being forced to use the latter never 
has taken the first step, even if that is obviously not true.

>> I always work with any editor I have available. Some (on a Mac) force
>> me to use a mouse. Actually how do you know that I locked myself out
>> of the alternatives? 

>From your attitude. Your mind is clearly closed on the subject.

From reading your above comment, I get the impression that *your* mind 
is more closed about the subject than his (or mine).

I can understand your reasoning and don't want to argue with it -
a user should have the freedom to operate his computer and his 
software using the mouse only. I even understand *why* you prefer
a mouse-only interface, I just don't share your preferences,
and don't want to use an environment which enforces them upon me,
without need.

Wolfgang Strobl
#include <std.disclaimer.hpp>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT
Date: 12 Oct 92 14:23:55 EDT
Followup-To: onvex.com> <references:  <1992oct10.003537.18144@javelin.sim.es.com>

Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <1992Oct10.003537.18144@javelin.sim.es.com>, mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson) writes:
>> In article <1992Oct8.225238.4448@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz>, (Stuart Woolford) writes: 
>> > I have sound players, which use the internal speaker, which sound MUCH 
>> > better than any old (6bit) MAC I have heard, and as good as the newer
>> > 8bit, using PCM. I find the 6bit mac's unbearable in comparison.
> 
>> When you say PCM, what do you mean? Sound is analog, is it not? How can it
>> be PCM?
> 
>> Or are you saying the 8-bit samples are COMPANDERED, using mu-law or A-law
>> compandering, as used in PCM?
> 
> I think the technique that generic PC use for playing these type of sound
> is to create a carrier signal of a given frequency, and use 1 bit 'clicks'
> to modulate the speaker.  

Except he said 8 bit samples, using PCM, not 1 bit.

I agree that this 1 bit sound stuff is technically intriging, but it sounds
awful. Even a PC user is better off buying a sound board.

-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
Principal Software Engineer        ! Packet Radio: AA4LR @ W4QO
Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. ! UUCP: uunet!hayes!bcoleman
POB 105203 Atlanta, GA 30348 USA   ! Internet: bcoleman%hayes@uunet.uu.net
Disclaimer: "My employer doesn't pay me to have opinions."
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -Steve Hackett.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl)
Subject: Re: Sorry (was Re: System 7.0 vs OS/2 and Windows NT)
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 22:25:50 GMT

In <ewright.718661949@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:

>In <MepPG_a00WB2Bdemcs@andrew.cmu.edu> Carl B Jabido <cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:

>>they were only in response to Edward V Wright who based some of his
>>arguments on incorrect assumptions and "facts" such as the "fact" that
>>there is no standard sound form (while .wav files are exactly what he
>>was talking about).  

>Like, .wav don't play on *every* PC, you dig?  Only PCs with hardware
>and software to play .wav files.  I said, show me a sound format that
>you can play back on *any* PC.  Not "any PC that has some somewhere 
>or hardware that fewer than 10% of all PCs have."

THats a straw-man type of argument. Your are playing with different
interpretations of the word "standard". Give the interpretation
you like to use here, there is nearly nothing "standard" on PCs,
besides the Intel et al. processor, perhaps. This is one of the biggest
advantages of PCs, imho - if you don't want a feature on a PC, just built
one without that feature. Of course, there are PCs without sound hareware,
like there are those without keyboard, without monitor, without
mouse or without any storage device.

All this doesn't have anything to do with the question whether there
is such thing as as a standard sound format, on PCs. Of course
there is, there are many of them. :-) 

.wav seems to be quite standard; even my Silicon Graphics
Indigo can play it. The various .wav files I have (some came
with Windows) sound much better on the INdigo than through
the internal speaker on my PC (without sound hardware).

Wolfgang Strobl
#include <std.disclaimer.hpp>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: mike_steiner@qm.claris.com (Mike Steiner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: PowerPC (was Re: IBM SUCKS!)
Date: 13 Oct 92 23:25:06 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy

In article <1992Oct13.091209.3637@tamsun.tamu.edu>, sfuller@tamsun.tamu.edu
(Steve Fuller) wrote:
> 
> In article <6197.2ad9c684@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
> >
> >This is not what I heard from Apple at the developers conference. Apple isn't
> >using the IBM R6000 chips. They are using the Motorola chips recently
> >developed by the Apple/IBM/Motorola consortium. THe 601 isn't compatable
> >with the R6000. It has a similar architecture, but completely different
> >instructions. 
> [....]
> >True, but the PowerPC 601 isn't an RS 6000. It is a completely new chip.
> 
> Some of your facts are wrong.
> 1. They (PPC601) are not really Moto. chips. They are mostly IBM designed.
> 2. The PowerPC line (601,603,604,620...) *are* binary compatable with R/S 6000.
> 3. PPC is sortof a low-cost, second-generation R/S 6000.
> 
> Here are some facts gleaned from the newspaper:
> 
> 2.8 million transistors.
> A Motorola 88110 bus. 
> Symmetric multiprocessing.
> 32K byte cache.
> 50 and 66-megahertz versions.
> 
> The 601 is being manufactured at IBM's Burlington, Vermont, plant using IBM's
> .6-micron complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. 
> IBM and Motorola are working on the 603, 604, and 620 at Somerset, a new
> facility in Austin, Texas. 

From what I had read, the 601 was also designed, and the first silicon
produced, at Somerset.

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Now that I have a reader that can do .sigs, I can't think of a witty |
|one to put here, so I won't.  All normal disclaimers apply.          |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: trepidations of a longtime Mac user
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 21:29:46 GMT

Douglas> == Douglas Floyd <ifbb657@cc.utexas.edu> 

 ckd> This is why some people (like Douglas Floyd) have crashes every 5
 ckd> minutes and others (like me) go for weeks or months without 'em.

 Douglas> Ahem.  My Macintosh at home has not crashed w/ a system bomb
 Douglas> in the last 6 months.

That was my point; public machines crash a lot, home machines don't.
People who compare their home PCs to public Macs (not you) then distort
the relative crash frequencies.

I didn't realize you had a (non-crashing :-) home machine; you were too
busy complaining about the crashing lab machines.

 Douglas> The //si's I were using went down so often in the computer lab
 Douglas> that you always kept hearing a bing when the machine
 Douglas> restarted.  Why do most home machines, LOADED with extensions,
 Douglas> control panels, etc. crash much less often than plain
 Douglas> University machines?  This puzzles me.  I never had a
 Douglas> directory get trashed until this, and I have been with the Mac
 Douglas> for a while.

The reasons I listed before (wear & tear, viruses, stupid people who
don't use Shutdown).  Usually on a home machine you will be aware of
what extensions are running, and if you discover a conflict, you'll just
toss the offender(s) if need be; you *certainly* take better care of it
than Joe Random who just wants to get his paper done and doesn't know or
care what's going on.

On a school machine, someone will install something and leave.  Too bad
that conflicts with Word, they were using some other program (which they
probably left lying around on the hard drive anyway), they'd never
notice...
--
Christopher K. Davis      |       NET.INSIGHTS INTO ARTISTIC CRITICISM:
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   | ``[Y]ou don't cure bad art by locking it all up
System Administrator, EFF | in one museum, you cure it by throwing tomatoes
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   | at bad artists.'' --Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: cshort@nmsu.edu (MetaPope, Internet in a Day Tour.)
Subject: Re: More Defense of CLI (there, I changed the subject ... )
Organization: Computing Research Lab
	<9aqzm-g@rpi.edu> <1992Oct05.031819.26841@NeoSoft.com>
	<ewright.718387191@convex.convex.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 22:05:37 GMT

>>>>> On Tue, 6 Oct 1992 15:59:51 GMT, ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) said:


>> I have an idea.  Why doesn't your side just get together and paint
>> a really big, really colorful billboard sign saying, "We haven't the
>> slightest idea what we're talking about."  It would save you so much
>> time. :-)

 I have an idea.  Why doesn't your side just get together and paint
 a really big, really colorful billboard sign saying, "We haven't
 mastered the learning curve to use a CLI." It would be so much more
 accurate than your CLI attacks. :-)

c.
--
                                                                    |V
                                                                    |A
  |------------------------|                                        |T
  |agent orange health club|-------------------------------         |I
  |    lifetime member     |   cshort@nmsu.edu is The MetaPope(tm)  |C
  |------P|-----                                                    |A
         O|      Silica Gell. Do Not Eat. Stays Crispy In Milk.   --|N ------|
         P|                               ----------------|vietnam theme park|
	 E|				                  |------------------|
From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:42:03 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Oct5.140712.997@yvax.byu.edu> feijai@endor.byu.edu (Sean Luke) writes:

>At the risk of furthering this thread, I must disagree, if we're just  
>talking about things like mouse tracking.  In this case (for example), the  
>system could manage the mouse with a custom program with high priority,  
>which checks to see if the mouse has changed, and if it hasn't,  
>immediately traps and goes to sleep.  As a result, very little power  
>wasted.

I was not talking about low-level mouse tracking.  My example was a
paint program that needs to track the mouse (i.e., call the mouse
tracking routines), modify a bitmap, and update the screen continuously
in real time.  The details of the actual mouse-tracking routine are
unimportant.  

>At any rate, I don't think that an effective argument can be made for  
>*prefering* cooperative multitasking over preemptive multitasking for  
>everything but very unusual tasks, simply because cooperative multitasking  
>has a BIG BAD side-effect:  because it allows programs to grab 100% of the  
>time-slices, programs can grab 100%.  

Exactly.  Because there are times when a program will *need* 100%
of the CPU cycles.  When it's doing realtime graphics, for example.
With preemptive multitasking, there's no way to guarantee this. Not
unless you set the priority so high that you effectively block the
other programs out.  But the priority remains fixed during the entire
time the program is running, so the program with high priority will
continue to hog CPU cycles even when it's doing something that isn't
time critical.

>The other nasty is that programs  
>have to be written to multitask efficiently, yet another problem a  
>programmer has to face in addition to the multitude of stuff the Mac GUI  
>already imposes in terms of program-making-toughness.

Rubbish.  Learning how to make a Macintosh program multitask properly
is about as hard as learning to do a directory listing using "ls" on
the NeXT.  Or type the command line to start the Interface Builder.

Sure, there are some programs that don't multitask well, but there's
a simple solution to that problem: don't buy them.  Most software
packages sell for one hundred to several hundred dollars.  For that
price, software companies should be able to get their programmers
to use a simple system call.


Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson)
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't) (long)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 04:15:16 GMT

bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:

>In article <1992Oct3.164204.28284@leland.Stanford.EDU>, spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola) writes:
>> Bill Coleman writes
>> The old cube was slow.  Period.  

>Really? I remember reading all about all the cool hardware technology that
>was built into the cube to make it fast. And it had more processing power
>than the Mac II I had. Perhaps it was just to much to expect decent 
>performance.

Well, the fact is that the old cube was running (is running! I have
an 030 cube!) an OS that is reallly taxing on a CPU.  Try to run
A/UX 3.0 on a Mac II.  Yes, the 030 /25 MHz cube had more power than
a Mac II, but it was running something that (IMHO, and in the
opinion of many) is more powerful/flexible than System 7.
The NeXTStation Turbos have significantly more CPU horsepower, and
are able to run NeXTSTEP at a good speed.
-- 
David Lemson                                                (217) 244-1205
University of Illinois NeXT Campus Consultant / CCSO NeXT Lab System Admin
Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu                UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson 
NeXTMail accepted                                  BITNET : LEMSON@UIUCVMD
From: ifbb657@cc.utexas.edu (Douglas Floyd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: trepidations of a longtime Mac user
Date: 16 Oct 92 14:37:47 GMT

In article <CKD.92Oct9124255@loiosh.eff.org> ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)  
writes:
> One reason, probably the main reason, people have problems with Macs is
> because they are using "public" Macs.  The Mac was never designed to be
> a "public" machine.  (This is one big advantage the NeXT has, IMHO.)
> 
> Problems that develop include:
>  - hardware wear (people do the damndest things to the floppy drive)
>  - software "wear" (often caused by people just turning the machine off
>                     instead of using Shut Down; if the System gets
>                     corrupted, it's Crash-o-Rama time)
>  - INITs (people bring them in)
>  - viruses (same here, especially nVir and WDEF)
> 
> This is a shortcoming of the Mac.  At Ease will help with this somewhat
> (yeah, it's lame security, but it's something).
> 
> This is why some people (like Douglas Floyd) have crashes every 5
> minutes and others (like me) go for weeks or months without 'em.

Ahem.  My Macintosh at home has not crashed w/ a system bomb in the
last 6 months.  The //si's I were using went down so often in the
computer lab that you always kept hearing a bing when the machine
restarted.  Why do most home machines, LOADED with extensions,
control panels, etc. crash much less often than plain University
machines?  This puzzles me.  I never had a directory get trashed
until this, and I have been with the Mac for a while.

PS:  This December, when the sales are on, I am going to purchase
either a //ci or what replaces it, and stick A/UX 3.2 on the machine.
I already know how to program in machine language, and do not care to
learn anew all of the graphics and OS calls in another OS.

PS #2: I apologize for the ranting in the post that started this
thread.  The day I posted this, I lost a major project due for a class to that
offending computer, and was VERRRRY pissed.  I later ran Norton
Disk thingie, and recovered the data by searching and manually
putting the file back together.


--
******* ifbb657@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Douglas R. Floyd) ******
             (Insert standard disclaimer here)

   Ross Perot:  Politician "for the rest of us" or Ferengi?  The
ears know...
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: yjc@po.cwru.edu (Jerome Chan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: More Defense of CLI (there, I changed the subject ... )
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Date: 9 Oct 1992 11:13:03 GMT
Organization: The Tofu Society of Singapore
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: b61539.student.cwru.edu

In article <CSHORT.92Oct8150537@ogygia.nmsu.edu>, cshort@nmsu.edu
(MetaPope, Internet in a Day Tour.) wrote:

>  I have an idea.  Why doesn't your side just get together and paint
>  a really big, really colorful billboard sign saying, "We haven't
>  mastered the learning curve to use a CLI." It would be so much more
>  accurate than your CLI attacks. :-)

  I think we've got a big billboard painted that says "We'd rather spend
our time learning something else." :)

---
 The Evil Tofu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: "Marc VanHeyningen" <mvanheyn@nectarine.ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: More Defense of CLI
X-Quoted: 46%
Reply-To: mvanheyn@whale.cs.indiana.edu
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Indiana University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 00:20:25 -0500

Thus said mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson):
>A more practical example would be to copy 3 unrelated files into a folder:
>
>CLI - 
>      type "ls <CR>"       (locate file names to copy)
>      type "cp -n user.list group1/.  <CR>"
>      type "cp -n rtest.in.a group1/. <CR>"
>      type "cp -n test.out group1/. <CR>"
>      type "cd group1"     (change to group1 subdirectory to check operation)
>      type "ls"            (locate files and insure they were copied)

Don't be silly.  You do:

       cp usr.list rtest.in.a test.out group1

not three separate cp commands.  And you would probably use a wildcard,
depending what else was in there.  And you probably would use filename
completion.  Oh, and what does the -n option do?  I've never seen it before.

>On a command line interface, you can get the benefit of a wild card operator to
>work on several files at once.  An example would be:  cp test*.* group1 
>However, you would have to be carefull that thier isn't a file that starts with
>'test' that your really don't want to copy.  Prompting before each file name would
>work, but it would be cumbersome.

It's a bit cumbersome, depending.  It's easy to do with cp -i; you can
make an alias if you don't want to remember the -i option.

Oh, if you insist on using lines longer than 80 characters, please use
richtext.
-- 
Marc VanHeyningen    mvanheyn@whale.cs.indiana.edu    MIME & RIPEM accepted
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that calls itself
`science' probably isn't.
	- John "I don't know about minds, but I know what I like" Searle
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: trepidations of a longtime Mac user
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:42:57 GMT

One reason, probably the main reason, people have problems with Macs is
because they are using "public" Macs.  The Mac was never designed to be
a "public" machine.  (This is one big advantage the NeXT has, IMHO.)

Problems that develop include:
 - hardware wear (people do the damndest things to the floppy drive)
 - software "wear" (often caused by people just turning the machine off
                    instead of using Shut Down; if the System gets
                    corrupted, it's Crash-o-Rama time)
 - INITs (people bring them in)
 - viruses (same here, especially nVir and WDEF)

This is a shortcoming of the Mac.  At Ease will help with this somewhat
(yeah, it's lame security, but it's something).

This is why some people (like Douglas Floyd) have crashes every 5
minutes and others (like me) go for weeks or months without 'em.
--
Christopher K. Davis      |       NET.INSIGHTS INTO ARTISTIC CRITICISM:
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   | ``[Y]ou don't cure bad art by locking it all up
System Administrator, EFF | in one museum, you cure it by throwing tomatoes
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   | at bad artists.'' --Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Xref: sparky comp.sys.mac.advocacy:1673 comp.sys.amiga.programmer:14546