HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: yiupun@leland.Stanford.EDU (Yiupun Michael Kwong)
Subject: Re: Multitasking (was MS's misconduct!)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 92 10:59:09 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.212741.10306@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.210112.15594@ans.net> db3l@ans.net wrote:
>> In article <1992Sep28.025600.17618@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:
>> 
>
>The main point that I was trying, appearently unclearly, to get across is
>that preemptive multitasking is not the savior of the world, as both sides
>of the OS/2 and NT group tend to say.  (and UNIX guys too).  It is just
>another tool, nothing more.  It is useful, but so are other things.  It is
>not the only tool around to do things either.  It has its benefits
>(parallel programming paradigm, etc), and its drawbacks (trying to avoid
>deadlocks, critical sections, etc).
>
>> 
>> Doesn't this imply that multitasking (whether preemptive or non-preemptive)
>> is a useful thing?  Isn't that somewhat opposite to what you've been saying
>> in your posts recently?
>
>BTW: I was arguing mostly from the point of view that preemptive multitasking
>was not as necessary as people were pointing out.
>

Maybe we don't need Windows NT as much as someone has been pointing out.

>
>petesk@microsoft.com
>My Opinions...


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: 880506s@dragon.acadiau.ca (James R. Skinner)
Subject: Re: Is WPS really better??
Organization: Acadia University
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 16:40:05 GMT

pvonk@scott.skidmore.edu (Pierre VonKaenel) writes:

>>>my file manager is configured to open two windows.  For one, I click
>>>on A: and the other on C: (it's C by default, so I don't have to do
>>>anything.)  I point to the desired file on A and drag it to C.

>Yes, it's the Windows 3.1 file manager.  When I click on its icon, two
>windows open up.  Each has two subwindows - a directory tree and the

This is very easy to do in the WPS also.  Simply create a folder that
is a workspace and contains shadows of two drives you would like it to open.
When you open the folder the two drive windows will be opened if you
left them in that state when closing the folder...  What could be easier?


-- 

-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
        James Robie Skinner        |     Jodrey School of Computer Science        James.Skinner@dragon.acadiau.ca  |  Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada
-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: os2 attitudes
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 19:49:19 GMT

In <7444@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:

>In article <1992Sep27.031415.20002@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> rda758g@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (A.J. Kleinert) writes:
>>  If a team of programmers would produce NT in 3 years (pulling a number
>>  out of the air) and the marketing guys say "No, it has to go to 
>>  market in 2 years" (pulling another number out of the air) what is  
>>  the case of not just doubling the number of programmers and adding 
>>  a few extra for unexpected delays?  Is it an economic thing?  (ie:
>>  the cost of writing the software would not make it economically viable)
>>  Is it that there isn't the management/programming/productivity tools
>>  around for co-ordinating such a large collection of programmers
>>  efficiently?  Where is the bottleneck?

>Read _The Mythical Man-Month_, by Fred Brooks. He discusses this question very
>thoroughly, using his experience managing the initial implementation of OS/360
>for source material. In it, he sets forth, and then proves, Brooks's Law:
>"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." The problem is
>that the problems of coordinating the work of, and providing communications
>between, programmers increases exponentially with the number of programmers,
>while the total programmer output goes up linearly at best.

Or, as I tend to keep muttering about some managers who apparently have
never read _The Mythical Man-Month_, "Yes, and if one woman can
produce a baby in nine months, all you need to do is get nine women to
produce a baby in one month."  The point being that there are large
parts of software development that have to take place SEQUENTIALLY.
Just throwing more people at them doesn't help.


-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: FAGER@gribb.hsr.no (Fagerland, Svein      94/96)
Subject: Installation problems with OS/2 2.01 beta
Organization: Rogaland University Centre
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 16:31:25 GMT


It is my opinion that you get problems when installing the beta, whn you 
have two IDE harddisks.

I removed one, and the problems were gone.

But I am 50 meg short, and that cant go for a longer period of time...
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim)
Subject: Re: I hate to tell you this, but...
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 03:17:10 GMT

mikegal@microsoft.com (Michael Galos) writes:
>Here, Pete, let me help. Since C.O.O.A. seems to have quite a few members
>who's PC industry history is weak enough to think that Apple invented the
>GUI and there were no computers before Un*x :-)
>Once upon a time there was a popular comm package called Crosstalk. A 
>company called SoftKlone decided to copy Crosstalk. Crosstalk's creators
>sued SoftKlone to prevent it. Thus began the practice of suing people to
>prevent cloning.
>Since then we've had quite a few of these lawsuits.
>Lotus sued just about everyone to protect their interface.
>Apple sued Digital Research because they thought GEM looked to much lik
>  a Mac.
>Ashton-Tate sued (or threatened) just about every xBase vendor to protect
>  the dBase language.
>IBM sued Eagle for cloning the PC BIOS.
>IBM implied that anyone who wanted to license microchannel would have to
>  pay back royalties on every PC or AT clone they had made.
>Apple blocked almost everyone who made an Apple ][ clone or a Mac clone.
>When Digital Research cloned MS-DOS, Microsoft didn't try to sue them
>  out of business. On the other hand, it hardly seems (in light of
>  industry history) an example of the "Dark Side" when we don't help
>  them debug their code when they have problems doing a good job in
>  cloning. After all, Windows 3.1 works fine with MS-DOS 3 which has
>  only given them about seven years to study it.

Either you're right and Microsoft is the nicest company out of this lot,
or Microsoft enjoys so close to a near-monopoly when it comes to PC OSes
that it didn't feel the need to sue.  Historically, monopolies have relied
on direct market manipulation more than lawsuits (the latter can take a
few years before you get any results, the former has nearly instantaneous
results).  I'll leave it up to the readers to decide if Microsoft is engaging
in market manipulation (Win3.1 incompatible with DR-DOS - DR had to update
DR-DOS, OS/2 support dropped from MSC compiler, OS/2 versions of popular
MS apps dropped, $2600 OS/2 SDK support dropped - switch to the NT SDK or
get only $400 refunded).

Don't get me wrong.  I think all the legal wrangling you've listed stinks,
but just because you don't sue doesn't mean you're doing nothing else
that stinks.
-- 
John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)
From: Bertram.Moshier@f115.n282.z1.tdkt.kksys.com (Bertram Moshier)
Sender: FredGate@tdkt.kksys.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Wondering why no discussi
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:46:13 -0600

Everyone / Anyone:

I have been reading c.o.o.a and wondering why none of the interesting
OS/2 Monthly Magazine articles get discussed.  An example is the "OS/2
2.0 Through Microsoft Eyes" article in issue five.

I am guessing but there are two reasons for the lack of discussion:

    - Not very many people get who write c.o.o.a messages
    - The subscribers are OS/2 advocates and don't see the magazine
      as having controversial articles.

Maybe I answered my own question.  Maybe not.

Bert.


 * Origin: (1:282/115)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: jja@wsl.ie (John J. Allen)
Subject: Re: NT Graphics
Organization: Project Papyrus, AIRAID, Dublin, Ireland
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 12:24:44 GMT

philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
: 
: WARNING:  This post has no OS/2 content.
: 
: In article <1992Sep22.112100.9071@wsl.ie> jja@wsl.ie (John J. Allen) writes:
: >
: >In a future release this will be possible just like all the features that
: >NT will have when it is released but does not have now that you say it does
: >have because it will have when that feature is put in in some future
: >non beta/pre-beta that we may be able to buy as a final release sometime
: >before 1994.
: >
: 
:      I'm amazed by the fact that the above paragraph is all one
: sentence.  It reads like the ravings of a madman.  Way to go!
: 
: 					-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.

Congratulations Phil, you noticed that the paragraph is all one sentence. This
means you not half the idiot I took you for and probably are not from the 
marketing department.

As the originator of that post which was in reply to the ravings of the
BRIAN it was intended to sound like a rave to complement the raves from
BRIAN about NT. 

An just to keep you happy I'll make all my paragraphs as long as
possible in future.
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:6401 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:2229 comp.os.os2.misc:31494
From: moore@iastate.edu (Brian J Moore)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: So much for Msoft's bluster <grin>
Date: 28 Sep 92 22:00:58 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA

In <1992Sep28.160233.3985@spcvxb.spc.edu> mauritz_c@spcvxb.spc.edu writes:

>09/25 (DW) Microsoft Delays Shipments of Windows NT Operating System
>    By Ken Yamada
>    Dow Jones Staff Reporter
>	
>    REDMOND, Wash. -DJ- Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said the first shipments
>of its Windows NT operating system software are expected to be delayed
>until early 1993.


Good idea... not only does that give developers more time, but IBM won't
have the rights to any code released after 1992...  not suprising.

-- 
   ________________________________________________________________________
  /                                  /                                    /
 /  Brian J. Moore                  /                  moore@iastate.edu /
/__________________________________/____________________________________/
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: msmith@netcom.com (Martin P. Smith)
Subject: Re: Installation problems with OS/2 2.01 beta
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 21:14:04 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <FAGER.26.717525085@gribb.hsr.no> FAGER@gribb.hsr.no (Fagerland, Svein      94/96) writes:
>
>It is my opinion that you get problems when installing the beta, whn you 
>have two IDE harddisks.
>
>I removed one, and the problems were gone.
>
>But I am 50 meg short, and that cant go for a longer period of time...

Try replacing the file IBM1s506.add in the OS2 directory with the version 
on the GA release ( its on a boot floppy if you have one. ) There have been 
people reporting problems with this and it is being investigated by the
IBM development team. 

Hope this helps
MArtin Smith 
msmith@netcom.com
 
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: westes@sti.com (Will Estes)
Subject: Re: PowerPC or (P5 & P6)?
Organization: Mail Group
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 03:27:16 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.163556.13131@tandon.com> tdbear@tandon.com (Tom Barrett) writes:
>Actually, it is totally a waste to spend money on EISA for
>personal computing... servers and multiuser (not
>multiprocessing) machines excepted.

True maybe *unless* you happen to be using an EISA controller for which
the manufacturer has written a 32-bit virtual device driver that works
under Windows with the Windows 3.1 virtual memory 32-bit access.  

When you switch on 32-bit access in Windows, the 32-bit virtual device
driver is used in all paging operations by Windows (enabling paging of
MS-DOS applications as well), as well as being used as a complete
replacement for BIOS disk access routines in int 13.  The Microsoft
White Papers on 32-bit access state that overall performance of Windows 
using an EISA controller that specifically supports 32-bit disk access
will be noticeably enhanced.

The problem is that most of the EISA peripherals do not (yet) have
32-bit virtual device drivers for Windows.  But if we get on the
manufacturers' backs about this and start calling in with requests, I
predict that EISA systems will come into their own as standout
performers on single-user Windows systems within one year.  

Anyone who knows of an EISA SCSI that has a 32-bit virtual device
driver under Windows, please let us know about it.  PLEASE NOTE: the
device must support 32-bit access using the 32-bit virtual device
driver.  It will not have significantly better performance if it just
emulates the Western Digital standard and uses 16-bit disk access on the
32-bit bus (I'm guessing that there are already a few cards that support
the latter sort of compatibility with the Microsoft 32-bit standard, and
omit mentioning that such cards won't perform any better than a 16-bit
card that also supports the 32-bit standard).  Someone please clarify
the above if I am wrong in any of the details.

-- 
Will Estes		Internet: westes@netcom.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: jja@wsl.ie (John J. Allen)
Subject: Re: What IBM has said about OS/2 2.0
Organization: Project Papyrus, AIRAID, Dublin, Ireland
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 12:17:49 GMT

petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:
: In article <1992Sep22.111233.8995@wsl.ie> jja@wsl.ie wrote:
: > brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
: > :.......
: > 
: > A load of shit that I'm not interested in hearing. Please give up
: > all this constant IBM can't make it stuff. IBM will make it, maybe not
:                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^pro IBM
: > on your schedule, but then I don't give a damn about your schedule.
: > 
: > I'm prepared to wait for something better than WindowsNT.
:  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ANTI-MS
: > 
: > Also when it comes to missing ship dates Microsoft are better than most,
:   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ANTI MS
: > where is the NT that was supposed to ship 1Q92. 
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ANTI MS
: Well I can tell you
: > where it is, it's NotThere that's where it is.
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ANTI MS
: > 
: > Also this an and OS/2 advocacy group not an ANTI-OS/2 group.
: 
: Yeah, Brian, This is OS/2 advocacy, thich means, in laymans terms, 
: ANTI-MS.  Brian, notice how jja made at least four attempts to flame
: MS in this post.  Notice how jja also only supports IBM once, and
: supports the OS/2 product zero times.
: 
: Brian, maybe you should follow suit with these OS/2 guys and stop
: putting real information in your posts.  And stop posting about
: products and start flaming the companies instead.
: 
: ;)
: petesk@microsoft.com
: My Opinions...

Sorry to repost all of this but it is necessary.

That post was not an ANTI-MS post but an ANTI-BRIAN post. Brian is
fundamentally a PRO-MS person and I was just trying to balance things
out by being a PRO-IBM person.

Please note that in my applcation development I support DOS,Windows and
OS/2 so I don't have a solid BIAS towards anybody.

From a programming standpoint my OS/2 preferences are the PM API and
with Version 2.0 the new WPS which has no equivalent in MS-Windows.

I have no doubt the MS will come up with the goods on Windows NT,
including an object oriented shell etc. but that does not directly
imply that IBM are doomed, that OS/2 is dead or that I'm a gobshite
for not going down the one TRUE path that NT is. 

In fact BRIAN sounds like a UNIX pusher and we've plenty of those around 
here with an unjustified hate of Windows, OS/2 and for that matter anything
that is not UNIX.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: OS/2, my final analysis.
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:59:09 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Sep30.175139.22736@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de> ch@sg1502.chemie.uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter) writes:
...
>We have several machines (IBM PS/2 90, 16Meg) and installed OS/2,
>LAN-Server, TCP/IP, Database Manager, IBM C Set/2 and the PDK
>(all original IBM Products)

I have a similar setup but don't have LAN-Server or the Database Manager.

>
>I have almost no time for my development work, because I am busy to
>install all those bugfixes and CSDs, e.g. for the C-Compiler there
>is already CSD Level 14 for a 6 month old product and it still does
>not work reliable.
>
>This of course is not a bug, but a feature, because you don't have
>to take care so much, what you are coding, since the behavior of
>compilant is unpredictable anyway.
>
>Although I have installed those bugfixes, the system is still
>unstable, when you do real work on it. It usually crashes once or
>twice a day and I had reformat the partition twice, since I am
>using OS/2 2.0

I've been lucky... it hasn't hosed my disk, but crashes plague me too.
More annoying is that TCP/IP seems to work slower the longer the
system has been up... in the end I just reboot every day or two.
It cuts down on crashes and it makes the TCP/IP transfers go at reasonable
rates.

...
>The screen I see most is "The system has stopped + register contents +
>Contact your service representative". That's fun. I have phoned to
>so many SEs at IBM, but none of them even knows, what a machine register
>is or the difference between segments and selectors.

You're lucky.. you _have_ an SE...  try reporting a problem without an SE!

>I am an experienced software developer and system maintainer for more
>than 10 years now. I have been working on mainframes, worstations and
>PCs, but I never had to work in such an unstable and buggy environment.

I have about 10 years experience as a Unix systems administrator and
about 2-3 years experience with PCs and Macs.
Only in the last couple of years have I started doing commercial app
development, but have always done at least in-house development.
I agree... even early free versions of Unix were more stable developement
platforms than OS/2 with CSet/2.

>And to compare OS/2 2.0 with /NT. /NT is not even in beta now, but if
>you don't use the WIN16 or DOS Subsystem, it does what you expect. It
>never crashed and never garbled all data on my HPFS partition. And
>last but not least, the C++ Compiler produces output, that really does,
>what you coded in the source.

I can second the vote of confidence for NT here too.
I have not had NT crash except when I play with 16-bit Windows or DOS
apps.  An amazing record for a system at the phase of development that
NT is in.

>Christoph

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! :-))
From: dab6@po.CWRU.Edu (Douglas A. Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM, Microsoft, and OS/2 -- a history.
Date: 6 Oct 92 13:25:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.1as44iINN6r7
Reply-To: dab6@po.CWRU.Edu (Douglas A. Bell)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thor.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) says:

>I don't see how people can view this as Microsoft "abandoning" OS/2.
>In truth they were simply reverting to the path they had wanted all
>along.  They tried to bring IBM along, but Big Blue Bureaucracy was
>always in the way.  In the end it was switch or die.



Brian,

Don't be an idiot.  Just because you think that microsoft was justified
in what they did does not change the fact that they abandonded OS/2.
Justification is one thing, it is very subjective.  But objectively,
it is impossible to argue that microsoft has stopped developing PM apps
and makes windows apps, when they had said that they were going to do
the exact opposite.  You can't argue with those to facts.  Whether it
made good buisness sense or not does not change the fact that MS 
abandoned OS/2!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: johnnyl@microsoft.com (Johnny Lee)
Subject: Re: OS/2 Future Trends and Directions
Date: 28 Sep 92 08:43:14 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <Bv9Bz0.6Kn@acsu.buffalo.edu> v053qpgh@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Eric W Sarjeant) writes:
>In article <1992Sep26.131512.23689@news.columbia.edu>, hpw@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Harry P Warren) writes...
>>Two brief comments on Timothy F. Sipples' informative summary of the
>>Chicago monthly OS/2 User's Group meeting.
>> 
>>| Since IBM and Apple together control over 50% of the market in
>>| personal computers, they hope to promulgate standards more effectively
>>| in tandem.
>> 
>>I find it hard to believe that IBM and Apple together control over 50%
>>of the personal computer market. Perhaps 50% of the computers that
>>have been manufactured sport the IBM or Apple name but they certainly
>>don't control 50% of the market today. In fact, I imagine that Apple
>>and IBM's combined sales of 68040 and 486 based machines effectively
>>sums to zero when compared with the number of 486 systems sold by the
>>likes of Dell and Gateway. I don't see how companies that sell
>>yesterday's hardware are going to set tomorrow's standards.
>> 
>You might want to check your figures on this one. In the PC world, only
>1 company (COMPAQ) even comes close to the size of IBM. In fact, COMPAQ
>is almost half the size of IBM, other clone manufacturers are many times
>smaller than COMPAQ, and unless your chart is detailed enough IBM can
>loom happily over all of these...
>


It depends on what sources you use to back up your facts.
In a recent issue of Fortune magazine (the one that has an article
about "Care and Feeding of Engineers"), the mag had an article
about the PC arena and the recent cutthroat pricing.
They show a pie graph with market share for the personal computer
market for 1991. IBM was at ~18%, Apple at ~14%, and the category Other,
which didn't include any big names like Packard Bell, Compaq, NEC,
etc. weighed in at a whopping 36%.

In Computer Reseller News, they have a chart for "PC Market shares
Among the Big Three" based on U.S. Unit Sales through dealers.
IBM comes in at 28%, Apple 28% and Compaq up to 23%.

So selling through dealers, yes, IBM and Apple have 50% market
share, but the other distribution channels, who knows.

J
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy