HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 23:31:35 GMT

In article <C0nIsp.H9K@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>In article <1993Jan10.112010.11073@athena.mit.edu> fihsu@athena.mit.edu (Hsu I-wei) writes:
>>
>I say that ADPro is garbage because it is
>a totally hands-off image processing program.  Almost everything is done 
>completely blind, so that you cannot see what you are doing.  And it has no
>image editing and painting features.  This is more escusable for a program
>running on an older Amiga, but for a program for an AGA Amiga it is garbage)

You really don't understand the Amiga philosophy, do you?  Anyone into image
processing already owns a paint program, so why pay for that in a post-
processing program?  It would just make it bigger, more overblown.  If you're
using an Amiga, you just run your paint program alongside your image processor.
In fact, with decent ARexx support in both, you could easily command the IP
software to transfer the current image version across to the paint program
for immediate editing, as if it were integrated.  Except, the difference is
that the user should be able to decide which 24-bit paint package they prefer
to use.

Modularity in a multitasking environment is the way of the future.  We can't
continue with mega packages which allow for every conceivable feature just
in case the user wants to something different while using that package.  Even
people like Bill Gates have spoken about in the future users being able to
put together their own applications, except that for an interapplication macro
language, he wanted to use BASIC!  :-)


-- 
David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...
Currently residing in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: POWER-PC  Info wanted !!!
From: wiesmann@uni2a.unige.ch
Date: 8 Jan 93 15:17:43 +0200
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland

In article <1993Jan6.222619.25830@tdb.uu.se>, m92mmy@tdb.uu.se (Mattias Myrberg) writes:
> 
> Can anyone tell me something about the Power PC-project ?
> 
> I hardly know anything about it, is there any truth to the following:
> 
> Power-PC will have fast RISC-processors, actually they'll be
> so blazingly fast that they'll be used to emulate other processors.
> (running no specific operating system...of course ?)
> 
From what I heard on the Mac front, Power Pc will be able to emulate
68000 code, but not a serious speed, the trick that Apple will use is
that the Power PC will soft-emulate the 68000 code but the Toolbox code
will be rewritten in Power PC code, as statisticaly, something like 70% of the
CPU time is used in the ToolBox, the speed gain will counteract the 4 time
slowdown on the 68000 code. They say that such an emulation should
go to a similar speed thant a 68040. 
I don't know if such a thing can be done on the same scale on a Amiga, perhaps
on the library level...
Power PC is a cooperation between Apple,IBM and Motorola, so Apple made sure it
will be compatible with its product, same on the IBM side...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Millions of lemmings cannot be wrong...
				throw yourself off a cliff...
Matthias Wiesmann
Wiesmann@uni2a.unige.ch
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: alan@xserver.uts.amdahl.com (Alan Bomberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Mac is not ideal (was Re: Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths)
Date: 4 Jan 93 20:38:35 GMT
Organization: Amdahl

I resisted a followup for a while....

There is a preference setting on the Print Monitor
to keep its window open all the time it is actively
printing.

The latestet (7) Version of the MacOs has made it 
possible for Applications to cooperatively multitask
so that you can indeed calculate spread sheets and
edit words "simultaneously", Older applications do
not do this as it is part of the application not
the OS (the OS provides a tool).  This muddies the
difference between an App and a DA and gets some people
to spend money upgrading applications to get what the
Amiga gives for free.

It isn't the GUI that makes the Mac look better to 
me as a developer for both Mac and Amiga.  The Mac
is infinetly better at producing paper as one need
only open a printer port that acts just like  a 
window port.  One uses the same drawing instructions
and the result goes correctly to your printer.  The
application does not have to have its own printer
driver!!

Other features are better integrated as well.

Like most systems, it is often  the "common"
knowledge that comes from active use that makes
the Mac system appear good to the Mac biggots and
the X system look good to the X biggots.

Personally, I like both the Mac and Amiga and
restrict my dislike for the "U" system which seems
to offer non of the niceties of either.  (Since I
probably started rage based on my Mac comments I
thought I would finish the job).

Peace

- 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: roelle@uars_mag.jhuapl.edu (Curtis Roelle)
Subject: Re: The Truth about Iowa.....
Organization: Johns Hopkins University
Date:  8 Jan 93 16:01:48 GMT

Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman) writes:

>Iowa is a basket case in the United States -- it's full of cornfields, and
>looked down on as a place full of yokel farmers and -cornfields- without
>much culture, interesting things to see, or intelligence..... [Iowa's part
>of the "bread basket"] There are lots of jokes about there being nothing of
>interest between the east and west coast of the US -- it's a 6 hour
>airplane flight, over a lot of -boring-, flat, -cornfield- landscape.  It's
>less tedious than -driving across- the midwest (I've never drived across
>Iowa.  I;ve driven for 9 hours across Kansas, I've driven across Texas..
>Iowa's merely further north.  It's -boring-... the same landscape without
>change for hours....

The drooling above betrays a [not too] underlying neurosis w.r.t.
cornfields.  It appears that the author must have been "rubbed the
wrong way" by an ear of corn in the past.  Have you ever stopped to
consider how many of our food products are based on corn -- not to
mention wheat, rice, oats, or barley?  Think about that next time you
snarf a bag of Doritos.  Unless your diet excludes corn, you would be
better off not displaying your hypocrisy in public.

As far as culture, it is in the eye of the beholder.  The agri-culture
may just be too suble to be observed by insensitive people.  As far as
jokes go, great.  Why don't you tell us some so we can all enjoy a
chuckle or two.

You make broad sweeping statements about how boring the place is, and
then admit you've never been there -- except for perhaps brief visits
via airplane, restricted to a small geographical area of the state.  I
find such admitted ignorance to be quite amazing.  While you find the
"same landscape without change for hours" to be boring, I expect that
people from the world's maga-cities, say Tokyo or Bombay, wouldn't share 
your impression.

Of course, how one interprets their surroundings is in large part determined
by their experiences.  So to someone from a wooded state, the midwest would
appear like an alien wasteland.  But how would someone from a desert 
region view a region rich with vegetation?  How would someone from Iowa
view a large metropolitan area?  World class culture -- itty bitty living
space.  Enough said.

Curt roelle@sigi.jhuapl.edu



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst)
Subject: Re: CBM mention on 12/11/92 Computer Chronicles
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:13:32 GMT

In <1993Jan6.142748.19712@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Bullshit.  Take a look at UNIX.  VM was added to BSD because it is useful,
>not because they wanted to sell more copies.

Personal computer do not run UNIX nor was VM added to BSD. VM is an intrinsic
feature of any UNIX. The only UNIXish OS I know that avoids VM is the Cray
operating system (UNICOS), guess why.

Regards,
-- 
Michael van Elst
UUCP:     universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
Internet: p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: jerry@cs.mcgill.ca (Gerald (Jerry) KUCH)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: SOCS - McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:45:52 GMT

In article <C0Co8r.F53@news.udel.edu> don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes:
> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) babbles:
>
>     You said it was _totally_ _broken_.  That implies to me that it
>does not, under any circumstances, function at all.  "CDTV is dead" 
>implies to me that Commodore has stopped selling CDTVs and has activated
>a remote self-destruct mechanism to obliterate all the existing units.

Actually, if you were around last summer you would have seen Marc's great
post where he announced "CDTV is DEAD," gave a date, said that the whole
CDTV development staff had been laid off, and that all development had been
halted.  It took about a day or two before someone from Commodore posted to
the net explaining that it hadn't happened.  I found it especially interesting
since I was working on the Tandy VIS at the time the possible demise of
a similar product was inherently worth noting...  it's good that the
information was laced with MB's usual razor sharp accuracy.

>Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
>don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
>GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
>BIX: DRL  


-- 
 Jerry Kuch (jerry@cs.mcgill.ca) | Wishing I were an emaciated chihuahua. 
 "I was wrong to play God.  Life is precious, not a thing to be toyed with.
  Now take out that brain and flush it down the toilet."
                  --- M. Burns  "Treehouse of Horror II"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: jerry@cs.mcgill.ca (Gerald (Jerry) KUCH)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: SOCS - McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 15:36:09 GMT

In article <C0H2uH.Bs1@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>In article <C0Go2H.KKo@starnine.com> mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) writes:
>>>In article <C0CJnH.4DL@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>>>
>>>Besides, Apple manages
>>>to sell three times as many Macintoshes as Commodore sells Amigas, every
>>>year 
>>
>>Is THAT all?  Only 3 times more?  That's pretty good...
>>
>>Used to more than that... they're losing ground!  :-)
>>
>>Way to go, C=!   Thanks for pointing that out, Mark!
>
>   Commodore is the one that's losing ground.  The Amiga used to outsell the
>Mac a few years ago.  Only about three years ago, the Amiga and Mac were just 
>about even in unit sales.  Now the Mac outsells the Amiga by three-to-one.
>I don't know why you're so happy about that.

This sounds mildly doubtful.  On top of that... if it had been true, wouldn't
you personally have been on this group frothing at the mouth like a rabid 
walrus about how the Macintosh had matched the Amiga's sales despite a slow
first year?

>| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>"No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
>is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me

Quoting yourself?  Wow... that really gives you a definite air of authority.


-- 
 Jerry Kuch (jerry@cs.mcgill.ca)   |  NEED A NEW QUOTE
 "I was wrong to play God.  Life is precious, not a thing to be toyed with.
  Now take out that brain and flush it down the toilet."
                  --- M. Burns  "Treehouse of Horror II"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: zarthac@bradley.edu (Matthew Simmons)
Subject: Re: Byte's Amiga 4000 review...
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:01:01 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
X-Posted-From: cs1.bradley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

Jerry Shekhel (jerry@msi.com) wrote:
: Donald R Lloyd (don@chopin.udel.edu) wrote:
: :
: : Every once in a while around here someone
: : brings up the posting on an internal bulletin board at IBM in the early days
: : of OS/2 development in which one of the programmers said something like,
: : "Why don't we just buy AmigaOS from Commodore and save ourselves four years?".
: :

: Yes, Amiga fanatics have been there from the beginning.

: :
: :      MicroSoft wanted to use a version of BASIC as the integrating language
: : ofr OS/2.  Someone brought in some Amigas to show what could be done with
: : AREXX, and MS conceded; REXX became part of OS/2.
: :

: That's hilarious.  IBM invented REXX, but they had to bring in an Amiga
: to show it off.  What a joke.

: :
: :      The Amiga OS can be run from floppy, as can most applications.  Try
: : doing a full-blown OS/2 install to a 1.44 meg disk.
: :

: What for?  You may enjoy installing operating systems on floppy diskettes.
: I don't.

Well, first of all, its not diskettes, it diskette.  Second, doesn't it
kinda say something for the OS if its better than windows or os/2 and
fits on a single floppy?

: --
: +-------------------+----------------------------+---------------------------+
: | JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | Molecular Simulations Inc. | Time just fades the pages |
: | Drummers do it... |     Burlington, MA USA     | in my book of memories.   |
: |    ... In rhythm! |        jerry@msi.com       |         -- Guns N' Roses  |
: +-------------------+----------------------------+---------------------------+

--
---------------------------------------------------------
My newsreader is screwed up... Therefore, it doesn't print the machine
name for email... Please send all email to zarthac@cs1.bradley.edu or
zarthac@camelot.bradley.edu
---

Millions of lemmings can't be wrong -- throw yourself off a cliff
Remember to always be a visionary, or someone will do it for you and beat you.

The best Disney girl?  Definitely Belle (BatB)

I hate hicks and farmer boys. I hate everything they stand for, especially the
part about putting food on my table. I can do without the food. I wish all
farmers would just die. I can live off of lawn clippings.  -- Dave Tiberio

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu (Aaron M. Buhr)
Subject: Re: Byte's Amiga 4000 review...
Organization: Rice University
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 23:36:53 GMT

In article <C0o6Ku.K6I@news.udel.edu> don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes:
>>As to REXX...It's not a very nice language anyways.  The only reason
>>IBM includes it is because ALL of their operating systems do.  I would
>>prefer if they would replace it with Perl or something.  It was by no
>>means "borrowed" from the Amiga.
>
>     MicroSoft wanted to use a version of BASIC as the integrating language
>ofr OS/2.  Someone brought in some Amigas to show what could be done with
>AREXX, and MS conceded; REXX became part of OS/2.

    FWIW, what I heard was that the REXX<->BASIC issue was one of the 
sore points that ended up in Microsoft abandoning OS/2.  IBM most likely
insisted in cross-platform compatibility (i.e. REXX), while B.G.'s ego
wouldn't permit his brainchild to not be included in the "o.s. of the 
future" (paraphrase of B.G.)


Aaron Buhr
abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas)
Subject: Re: CBM mention on 12/11/92 Computer Chronicles
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 05:26:16 GMT
Organization: StarNine Technologies, Inc.

In article <1993Jan6.145700.20413@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Mike Haas (mikeh@starnine.com) wrote:
>: >
>: >Hardly.  Do you have any idea how VM works, or what it does?  If you're
>: >talking about multitasking several CPU-intensive apps, a decent VM system
>: >can only help.  Yes, that's right.  The application's working set always
>: >remains in RAM, while the dormant part is swapped out, resulting in more free
>: >RAM for applications, WITHOUT any significant performance degradation.  This
>:                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^
>: Oh, so VM only introduces INsignificant performance degredation, eh?
>:
>
>VM introduces the penalty associated with passing all addresses references
>through the MMU, which is insignificant on a decent system.

...not to mention the computer eons of time wasted when data and/or code
is in the process of being swapped...

>
>:
>: The benefit of VM is allowing more apps to run.  Period.  It can only
>: have a negative effect on performance, the effect may be large or
>: not-so-large, but it is inescapble.
>:
>
>Untrue.  Let's look at two systems.  System A has 8MB RAM.  System B has
>8MB RAM + VM.  You need to run two CPU-intensive applications.  Each
>application's image size is 5MB.  Each application's CPU-intensive working
>set size is 2MB.  System A *cannot* multitask the two applications -- you
>must run them sequentially.  System B *may* swap a bit initially, but it
>will eventually reach a state where both applications are running smoothly,
>*without* swapping.  This is an example of VM increasing performance and
>productivity.
>
>:
>: What you just said is pure rubbish, Jerry.  Ever run Unix in 4 Meg?
>: You'll get bored waiting for 'ls'.
>:
>
>There it is again.  Both you and Greg keep whining about minimum
>RAM configurations.  What does this have to do with whether or not VM
>is useful?  I never said that VM is better than RAM; I said that VM is
>better than no VM.  Get the difference?

Not if the goal is real-time performance, rather than what you're
used to with WIndoze & O/S2... Get the difference?

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu (Aaron M. Buhr)
Subject: Intel vs. Motorola performance
Organization: Rice University
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:17:59 GMT

      Please, if you're going to say ANYTHING about Intel CPU vs. Motorola
CPU performance, back up your claims with third-party benchmarks available
(same source) for both systems, ideally the SpecInt92 and SpecFP92 figures.
This subject has been flamed back and forth over and over and over, ad
nauseum...   Not that you can't say that about quite a few other arguments
here on c.s.a.a, but it seems that in this case there's a fairly simple,
equitable solution, namely the Spec figures.


Aaron Buhr
abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu
From: dmkasten@redorc.chi.il.us (Bowie Poag)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Marc-meister!
Date: 12 Jan 93 11:28:14 CST
Organization: Red Oracle Bbs/Network

In article <Steve_Halliburton.030c@naraltd.raider.net>,
Steve_Halliburton@naraltd.raider.net (Steve Halliburton) writes:
>OK, granted that Mr. Barrett shoots his mouth off sometimes without
>thinking first. I've done that a couple of times myself.
>
>But we should try to separate the wheat from the chaff, and mobilize in
>action on some of his more valid points.
>
>-- Via DLG Pro v0.995
>
>Only  /\ |\/| | (i /\  makes it possible.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
>Steve_Halliburton@naraltd.raidernet.com


Valid points? ...well, I suppose that his proving time and time again that he
is a complete fool, certainly is a valid point.



        +-----------------------------------------------------------+
        |o|              I think, therefore I Amiga.              |=|
        +-----------------------------------------------------------+
        | Douglas Michael Kasten (DMK) | Amiga 2000HD/5 with a tiny |
        |  dmkasten@redorc.chi.il.us   | little 21" Toshiba monitor.|
        +------------------------------+----------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 04:21:27 GMT

In article <C0CyxF.2FM@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>
>  If having two disk icons for every disk was a "feature" 
>Commodore would have left the FastFileSystem that way, since the FFS did 
>exactly the same thing under 1.3.  Yet Commodore rewrote the FFS to remove 
>this "feature", but has never bothered to do so for CrossDOS in 2.1 or 3.0.

There's a huge difference here.  FFS is compatible with OFS as far as the user
is concerned.  Specifically, they both allow for 31-character filenames with
case preservation and few limitations.  The user doesn't need to know which
filesystem he's writing to.  But, if the disk in DF0: could potentially be
using an MSDOS filesystem, how is the poor user going to know that their
filenames will be reduced to 8+3 uppercase chars?  There's nothing unusual in
having different names for different filesystems, anyway.  If I want to read
a PC disk on a SPARCstation, I have to mount it as /pcfs first.  Makes sense,
and avoids confusion.

But, I do agree that having two icons showing, with only one usable, is ugly.
Perhaps the "inappropriate" one should go away, rather than show as "bad".
File requestors should also only list drives with readable disks in them.
That way, the user would be presented with either DF0: or PC0:, but never
both.  But, they still get to know what type of filesystem is being used.


>| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>"No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
>is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me

Nice to know you agree that all those PCs out there are kludges...  :-)


-- 
David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...
Currently residing in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia