HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: C558172@mizzou1.missouri.edu
Subject: Re: 24 hours of advocacy...
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 92 17:13:55 CDT

In article <1992Oct2.161009.10358@crc.ac.uk>
ifenton@crc.ac.uk (I. Fenton) writes:
 
>
>dear net,
>
>looking at teh various advocacy groups here, i notice what 24 hours worth
>of advocacy leads to :-
>
>  comp.os.os2         103 postings (mostly os/2 vs. windows-nt)
>  comp.sys.amiga       89 postings (mostly amiga vs. atari falcon)
>  comp.sys.mac         62 postings (mostly mac vs. pc's)
>  comp.os.mw-windows   24 postings (mostly is windows an os ?)
>  comp.sys.next        15 postings (mostly should nextstep be cheaper)
>  comp.sys.acorn        5 postings (mostly about acorn's share price)
>
>as can be seen most of the discussion is about one system vs. another, rather
>than discussion about that particular os/system.  this is interesting as most
>groups have their zealots saying that other people should leave their group
>alone.  does the net have any comment on these figures ?!
>
What has interested me in my reading of .advocacy groups is who considers
whom to be enemies. Based on my reading of the groups...
group      hated enemy     lesser enemies    beneath notice?
amiga      Macs            PC, Atari Falcon  NeXT, Atari ST
Mac        PC (esp. Windows) DOS             Amiga, Atari
PC DOS     Mac             Windows, OS/2     everybody else
PC Windows OS/2                              Mac, Amiga, etc.
PC OS/2    Windows                           Mac, Amiga, etc.
>
>=============================================================================
>IAIN FENTON                             | All errors of spelling, grammar &
rest of sig deleted B-(
--Shannon
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: IBM Funny
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1992 11:50:48 GMT

In article <terjer-300992093707@majestix.ifi.unit.no> terjer@ifi.unit.no (Terje Rydland) writes:
> In article <1992Sep30.011703.4998@NeoSoft.com>, peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da
> Silva) wrote:
> > 
> > In article <6057.2ac6dd05@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
> > > In article <1992Sep27.122135.22721@NeoSoft.com>, peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> > > > The Windows GUI is significantly better designed than Apple's, 

> > > <GACK!>

> > > You must be using some unusual, non-standard definition of the word "better".

> > Um, easier to learn and use. More powerful. More convenient. Less surprising.
> > More easily generalizable. Better feedback.

> Lets say that you are an "ordinary" user. You are in the program manager
> and you insert a diskette with a program and some data on it. The datafile
> is on the root level, but the application is three layers down in the
> filetree.

That's an implementation problem. I already *said* the implementation sucked
dead gerbils. I'd certainly rather use a Mac than a Windows box for real
work (and I recommend so). I'm talking about the GUI. You know... it's possible
to consider individual components of a system and discuss their merits
separately without getting emotional. At least I hope it is.

> > > QUICK! What's the keyboard shortcut for copy and past?

> > I don't have it in front of me (haven't used it in years), but that's in the
> > Edit menu. Paste will be ALT<EP>, and either cut or copy will be ALT<EC>. The
> > other will be ALT<EU> or ALT<EO> respectively. The keyboard shortcuts are
> > uniformally mnemonic for the menu selections. *and* they're displayed on the
> > screen.

> > Quick, on the Mac, what's the keyboard shortcut for "Print Draft"?

> That is not a standard choice, so it has no standard shortcut.

Who cares if it's standard or not, if you're using the program in Windows the
shortcut is presented to you every time you pull down the menu. And it's a
simple mnemonic. (probably ALT<FP>)

> > On the Mac, how do you tell just looking at the screen what programs you have
> > running?

> I use Applicon!

And this is a standard part of the system?

> > On the Mac, how do you get proportional scrollbars?

> I'm not sure what the extension is called.

Never mind. You don't. There's a hack that lets you get them on some
programs, but it depends on the programs using scroll bars in a particular
way.

> > On the Mac, can you move the menu bar down to where you're working on a large
> > screen?

> I use PopIT!

Another hack.

It's not part of Apple's GUI, and so it's not something the naive user you
were talking about earlier will come up with. This basically proves my
point: if the Mac GUI was so well designed, these hacks wouldn't be needed.
Other parts of the Mac system software are clearly superior to the way
Windows works, but the GUI is not one of them.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Heeft u vandaag al uw wolf geknuffeld?"
  'U`  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: rtaylor@cie.uoregon.edu (Russ Taylor)
Subject: Re: Why the fuss???
Organization: University of Oregon Campus Information Exchange
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 05:26:52 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.145933.3643@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> u2005681@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au writes:
>Hmmm....
>Having just read this news-group for the first time I have come to the
>conclusion that it should be called loony.advocacy.comp.sys.
>Why do you people get SO excited about a computer? All computers are
>pieces of plastic and metal (with a few semi-conductors thrown in) that
>are going to be out-of-date in the next few years anyway. Why bother
>foaming at the mouth about any particular brand?

And a car is just a lump of fast-moving metal that explodes upon hitting a
tree. That doesn't mean I'll run out and buy a Yugo instead of a Ford, does
it?

>Do you also feel this passionately about the brand of toilet paper you use?
>

To extend the analogy, an IBM PC is a piece of starched sandpaper, while a
Macintosh is nice, fluffy, double-ply ultra-deluxe TP :)

Sure, the IBM can get the job done, but talk about pain!  Given a choice, 
I'll stick with my Mac, and be quite passionate about it, thank you very much.
>I can think of mach better things in life to get emotional about (and if
>you can't then its time to switch off your Mac and try a brand new game:
>its called going out meeting people and GETTING A LIFE)
>
The only thing sadder than a rnhead with no life is the pathetic slob that
wastes his valuable time reading a newsgroup he doesn't even like, for the
sole purpose of telling the people who ENJOY it that they have no life.

Are you mother and father blood relatives, by any chance?
Go back to the clinic and get them to finish your lobotomy, pinhead.

>Happy Macintoshing
Indeed.

>C.Hofflin


-- 
*********************************************************
*From the files of Russ Taylor (rtaylor@cie.uoregon.edu)*
* This .sig protected by Siguard 9.2 and VirusKill 2.5  *
*********************************************************
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: Simon Palmer <simon.palmer@anu.edu.au>
Subject: Apple IIg  & PageMaker (4.2) Grey scale problem
X-Xxdate: Mon, 28 Sep 92 22:58:10 GMT
Organization: The Australian National University
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d9
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 12:58:19 GMT

I have been having a problem with Apple's new laserwriter IIg printer. 
When printing from PageMaker 4.2 it does not print grey scales properly
... I printed out a grey scale chart from PageMaker and found that it
printed:

10% Grey as 0%
20% Grey as 10%
30% Grey as 20%
etc

Can anyone help me????

Ta    Simon


-----------------------------------------------------
Simon Palmer
ANU Graphics
The Australian National University
Email: simon.palmer@anu.edu.au
Address: GPO Box 4, Canberra City 2601, Australia
Phone: + (06) 249 2108
Fax: + (06) 249 0736

     o o
     \_/
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: gapdrr@gsusgi2.gsu.edu (Daniel R T Rothman)
Subject: Re: More info on system 7.1 and $$$
Organization: Georgia State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 03:48:04 GMT

jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle) writes:

>In article <30983@goofy.Apple.COM> greg@applelink.apple.com (Greg Marriott) writes:
>>The argument about users suffering because developers will be slow to
>>adopt 7.1 features is silly.  From (99% of) U.S. developers' point of view, 7.1
>>is not different from 7.0.  From an international developer's point of view,
>>7.1 is just what they're looking for, allowing them to offer functionality
>>in markets previously closed to them.

>It is not really just 7.1 that I worry about, but rather that further system
>releases will also not be free if 7.1 isn't.  This means that ALL additional
>features from hereon out will be slow to gain developer support.  This
>also includes any 7.1 add-ons, since they will likely require 7.1, which
>only a small share of the market will have.  It will do the developers no
>good to include the add-ons in their releases if 7.1 itself is not free.
>Overall, there is a very dangerous potential for this move (charging for
>7.1, etc) to stunt the "real" growth of overall system functionality (by
>real, I mean as the average user sees it, not the programmer).  Developers
>will stick to the "usually available features", which WILL be held at a
>lower level by this move.

>Jess Holle

Jess - 
  Licensing, my dear boy, licensing. Apple is going to make a bundle off of
system extensions because they're going to sell standard plug-ins to 
developers to bundle with the DEVELOPER's product. That way you only buy
what you need, and you get what you need when you get the thing you need it
for. 

and apple makes a bundle.

i don't object to apple making a bundle. they deserve it, and they need it
to keep the good stuff coming.

daniel
From: ASI509@DJUKFA11.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Sys 6.0.7 vs. 7.*
Date: 29 Sep 92 11:30:16 GMT
 <kc-180992003759@chang.slip.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Forschungszentrum Juelich

In article <kc-180992003759@chang.slip.uiuc.edu>, kc@complex.ccsr.uiuc.edu
(Kenneth Chang) says:
>
>In article <1992Sep17.180232.18692@newshost.unh.edu>, K_LEPA@unhh.unh.edu
>(Kristen   Lepa) wrote:
>> Also, a lot of my software won't work in sys 7.
>
>A number of Sys 7 skeptics mention this & I've always wondered which
>applications *didn't* work under 7. When I upgraded (& that was a month
>or so after 7 came out), exactly one application crashed and burned
>(SimCity).
>A few others had compatibility problems (such as Freehand 2.0 which
>the Font menu dimmed out. Could still change font through the dialog box,
>so it wasn't a fatal error). Most programs ran without problems.
>
Labview 2 doesn`t work with Sys 7.0. And I bought it together with a IIsi with
 Sys 7 preinstalled. So the first thing I had to do with my Mac was to get some
 Sys 6.07 disks and reinstall the OS on it. Oh boy was that user friendly.

Michael Bode.
From: yjc@po.cwru.edu (Jerome Chan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Date: 3 Oct 1992 06:44:48 GMT
Organization: The Tofu Society of Singapore
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: b61539.student.cwru.edu

In article <1992Oct3.042710.11799@cgrg.ohio-state.edu>,
derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Dariusz Bolski) wrote:
> I have something more than 700 commands in my PATH (programs, utilities, scripts). 
> How many commands can you add to a menu?
> 
> And yes, I added a few of them to the menu. But there is not enough many spots for
> them all.
> 
> >Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
> 
> Dariusz Bolski

  How many can you remember? Do you have to look up certain commands to
find out what they do? I can't remember more than a handful of commonly
used Unix commands AND their parameters. You can remember 700 of them?

---
 The Evil Tofu
From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: Is Apple a hardware company?
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:29:51 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 <92276.134050DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu> <DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

>I'm curious what people think: Do you consider Apple to be primarily a
>hardware vendor or software vendor? Sure, Apple sells hardware, but why do
>people buy it?  Probably because the hardware comes with a set of MacOS ROMs.
>(Feel free to disagree with this assessment :-)).

Since my first "Macintosh" was an Atari ST, I have to agree.

>Do you think Apple would be a more profitable company if they had given up
>hardware a few years ago and just concentrated on the MacOS? My guess is no,
>because the selling of hardware makes Apple a more visible company and
>tends to generate strong loyalty in customers.

I'd say "no," but not for that reason.  Most hardware companies are
not good at figuring out how to make money off software (hell, Apple
has enough trouble figuring out how to make money selling hardware)
and I doubt that Apple could have made the changeover successfully.
From: fj05+@andrew.cmu.edu (Faisal Nameer Jawdat)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs Mac
Date: 27 Sep 92 19:35:15 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.celbpni00VRBI=YNh_
	<Bv9MGC.As@rice.edu>
Organization: Sophomore, Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

jimwong@owlnet.rice.edu (Jim Wong) writes:
> "likely"? I don't think so.  About 90% of the time an application dies on
> my Mac, I get an "The application "blah" has unexpectedly quit" dialog
> and  end up in the Finder.  Are your assertions base on anthing resembling
> actual experience or merely hearsay?

my experience with mac se's, si's, cx's, ci's, quadra 700's, 900's and
950's with every system from 4.0 to 7.01 (pleeze don't charge for 7.1
- my personal system is a ci, and I need worldscript ready system)
i get to play with a lot of nice toys
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu (Dariusz Bolski)
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't) (long)
Organization: OSU Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 04:51:13 GMT

In article <1a8i5gINNfvm@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> cd248@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Richard Sherman) writes:
>Will your IBM type drives read or write to disks from any other computer?

Neither can any other machine I think. There is always some limitation.

>  No they won't.  As a matter of fact (someone correct me if I'm wrong), I
>think the hardware is incapable of doing this.

>A Macintosh can tell what kind of disk you have in it, and what file system
>it's from. You don't have to tell it anything.

It would not read NeXT 2.88 MB disks nor any Amiga disks.

NeXT has too high capacity and Amiga uses track continuously (that is why
nothing can read Amiga disks, I think).

In that case Amiga is the most versatile as it can read correctly any
format which does not exceed it's capacity. For that reason NeXTs' 2.88 MB
disk is out of reach for Amiga drive. I don't know about the formats
between 1MB to 2 MB of PC or Mac.

Regards,

Dariusz Bolski
-- 
Dariusz Bolski     Ohio Supercomputer Center, IBM POWER Visualization System
Systems Programmer Ohio State University , Columbus U.S.
                   The Advanced Computing Center For The Arts And Design
e-mail: derek@cgrg.ohio-state.edu  derek@osc.edu
From: tlt38517@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Terry Thiel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: How many "Macs" do you see doing important work?
Date: 29 Sep 92 00:14:33 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

charestm@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Martin Charest) writes:
>> Even putting all else to the side, one has to admit the IBM are the INDUSTRY
>> standard control device.  How many major factories, power plants and process
>> control systems do you see macintoshes tied to ..
>> ALMOST NONE.
>Hey, Buddy! what do you think about that;
>the big particles accelerator at Fermi Lab is entirely controled by a couple of
>Mac II !...
So are the Cray Supercomputers at NCSA.  In fact the Crays were designed on
Macs.  You don't see many researchers using IBM's, most I've seen in Computer
Science and Engineering use Sun workstations although a number of them also
have Macs. Like most blanket statements this on is completely wrong.
-Terry
From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why Macs are better (and the others aren't)
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:48:59 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <strobl.717624432@gmd.de>, strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) writes:
> Probably nothing, because the Mac is a closed system.

FOUL!

15 yard penalty! First down!

--

This statement has been made repeatedly by non-Macintosh types. It is false.
Please don't repeat it. The Mac has been open in every respect from the
hardware to the software since 1987. 

In the MS OS world, however, things aren't so rosey. Indeed, wasn't there
some scuttlebutt about MS using undocumented calls in their Windows 
applications that weren't available to other developers?

Talk about a closed system....

-- 
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: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1992 11:41:58 GMT

In article <ewright.717800868@convex.convex.com> ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:
> People make mistakes.  CLIs make it easy to make mistakes.

If you make it hard to do stupid things, you make it hard to do clever things.

I *like* dragging and dropping files when I'm just noodling, but I hate not
having 'find / -name core -print | xargs rm -f'. Gimme both, and make them
snappy.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Heeft u vandaag al uw wolf geknuffeld?"
  'U`  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola)
Subject: Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)
Reply-To: spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 20:35:20 GMT

Edward V. Wright writes (inter alia)
> >Yes, if you absolutely need color, then the NeXT is expensive.
> >Its good color, but its not cheap. ...
> >But look carefully at how you work: how much do you really
> >use color?   ...
> >I suspect that grayscale would more than fill most people's needs  
> >most of the time.  Is having color worth having a less powerful  
> >machine that doesn't multi-task?  
> 
> I suspect that most people who suspect not are people who have
> never had color systems, and therefore have not discovered the
> uses they can make of them and integrated them into their
> lifestyle/workstyle. 

Well, in my specific case, you suspect wrong.  Practically all the  
systems I worked on before getting a mono NeXT were color.  And it  
was precisely that experience that convinced me that color added  
little or nothing to my productivity.

In other comments, you mention the performance penalty that NeXT has  
to bear for having display postcript.  Color likewise imposes a  
performance penalty.  The difference is that while display postscript  
is genuinely useful to me, because of the equivalence between screen  
and printed results, color adds little beyond aesthetic value.  So I  
take my performance penalties where they do me most good.

But there's no point in starting a religious war on this issue.  If  
your work or workstyle requires color, then you should pay what it  
takes and get color.  But I think many people have this notion that  
color is automatically better in all cases; perhaps it is, all other  
things equal, but all other things are not equal.  A mono system will  
always be cheaper than a color system with otherwise equivalent  
specs; it will always be faster, and make do with less memory.   
Clever coding and better hardware is reducing and will continue to  
reduce this gap, but will never eliminate it.  So, as in all things,  
there are tradeoffs to be made.  Everybody will make their own  
decisions as to what tradeoffs they wish to make.

> >For barely over the $3000 you say  
> >you're about to spend on a mac you would have a much more powerful  
> >system in every way except for the lack of color.  
> 
> Barely over $3000?  Only if you can get an academic discount.

I believe the poster I was responding to was an edu student, and that  
the $3000 mac price he's quoting is likewise an edu price.  Yes,  
street prices are higher, but that's true of both NeXT and mac.
--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Interesting Performa specs
From: bob@nutmeg.ntu.edu.au (Robert Watkins)
Date: 4 Oct 92 00:19:08 +0900
Distribution: world
Organization: Information Technology, Northern Territory University

In article <ewright.718055434@convex.convex.com>, ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright) writes:
> In <1992Oct2.162118.507@leland.Stanford.EDU> spagiola@frinext.stanford.edu (Stefano Pagiola) writes:
> 
> >Just saw an Office Depot ad featuring the Performa 200 in the SF  
> >Chronicle.  $1199 for a 4/80 system; not bad.
> 
> >The interesting part was in the list of specs, right among '80MB hard  
> >disk' and the like was the entry 'MS-DOS compatible.'
> 
> Might even be true if they're bundling SoftPC with it.

Might even be true if it comes with Apple File Exchange. This will allow the
Perfoma to read and understand DOS disks, but won't allow it run DOS
applications. Depends entirely on the fine print in the ad.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
From: mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson)
Subject: Re: More Defense of CLI
Reply-To: mmunson@animal.es.com (Mark Munson)
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, UT
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 00:10:54 GMT

In article <6031.2ac1d1f3@hayes.com> tomster@banzai.WPI.EDU (Thomas Richard Dibble)
writes: 

>  > Well, the word "syntaxt" isn't in my dictionary.  Presumeably you
>  > mean syntax.  Yet another CLI user who believes that typing errors
>  > are not a problem but can't spell.  

>First, that was not a typo.  That was a spelling error.  It says nothing about
>the difficulty of typing in a word just as I think it is spelled.


What a classic response; "It wasn't a typo, I'm just uneducated."

[Ed. note:  I needed a good laugh today, and this one was it.]


> Notice that, as far as I've seen, I have'nt made *one* error in a word
                                      ^^^^^^^
>of three letters or less.  Most CLI commands are between three and five letters
>long.  Longer commands, when misspelled, have less of a chance of causing
>destruction because the computer will not interpret it as anything.


I hope your understanding of DOS is better than that of the English language.
The real intersting part here is that in the same sentance that you tell us
how infrequently you misspell short commands, you make mistakes with words
of lengths between three and four letters in length.

Or did you really mean say "have-Unt."

[MGM]


P.S.  Tomster, try using a color Mac for a few days.  Use both like we've all
had to do.  Then maybe you won't be so polarized against the Mac interface and
enamored with MSDOS.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy