HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bdubbs@cs.tamu.edu (Bruce Dubbs)
Subject: Re: Os/2ers whine again
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Distribution: world,local
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:07:32 GMT

In article <1992Aug26.091123.1@violet.ccit.arizona.edu> f67700241@violet.ccit.arizona.edu (Greg Franklin) writes:
>In article <92239.084655TURGUT@FRMOP11.BITNET>, Turgut Kalfaoglu <TURGUT@FRMOP11.BITNET> writes:
>> Phil: If Microsoft is not responsible for dropping OS/2, and is
>> not responsible for my personal loss of $1000 for purchasing two
>> of their dud compilers (I thought they would continue supporting
>> OS/2 when I bought them), who is?
>
>Well, you are.  You gambled $1000 on the (remote) possibility of a 
>successful OS/2 1.x.  The rest of us hoarded it until MS Windows came 
>along.  Don't blame MS for the choices of a free market.
>
You're kidding right?  In 1987-1988 MS was hyping OS/2 almost as hard
as they're pushing NT now.  They said (correctly) that the
capabilities of OS/2 would far exceed MS-DOS.  20/20 hindsight says
that OS/2 1.x was not successful.  When people listened to MS then,
they were encourged to buy $3000 SDKs for OS/2 and windows was some
secondary project.  Don't blame MS for someone believing what they
actually said?  Why do you think so many experienced people wnat to
get away from MS dominated systems?

    -- Bruce



--
Bruce Dubbs                   |  Oxymorons of note:
bdubbs@neuron.tamu.edu        |  Honest Politician, Political Science,
bdubbs@sadis01.sa.aflc.af.mil |  Scrupulous Lawyer
From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.3
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:50:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: hellgate.1992Sep2.095057.15396
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Sep2.114943.7556@eng.cam.ac.uk> aci10@eng.cam.ac.uk (A.C. Innes) writes:
>In article <1992Sep1.222800.17703@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>
>>OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.3
>[ A feature of NT that is lacking in OS/2 ]
>>#	Asynchronous I/O
>>		OS/2 1.X had this feature but for unexplained
>>		reasons dropped it in 2.0.  While you can do it
>>		with threads, you can also multi-task in DOS...
>>		all you have to do is write the code that intercepts
>>		the timer interrupt and swaps the processes.
>>		Apparently the 16-bit API DosReadAsynch, DosWriteAsynch
>>		still exist in thunked form.
>>		Deitel and Kogan don't mention them... anybody
>>		know why they're being phased out?
>
>This is neither a flame nor a correction, but rather a simple request
>for information.  Could you (anyone) please give an example or
>explanation as to why asynchronous I/O is "better" (easier to use,
>more efficient, whatever) than using synchronous I/O in a separate
>thread?  Perhaps I simply misunderstand the reasons for wanting to do
>async i/o, but why would it not be just as easy (or easier) to spawn a
>separate thread to handle "background" writes or reads as to set up
>signal handlers to respond to read/write completion events (presumably
>by initiating more async read/writes)?  In other words, isn't async
>i/o something that was provided to make up for the lack of
>multi-threading, at least for one particularly useful application of
>threads?

You are right in that in many cases they are equivalent.  However sometimes
this can be quite inefficient.

Let's assume one has a server that reads 1K of data, quickly analyses it
and stores some value.  Let's suppose it's not unreasonable that the server
might have to service 100 clients at a time and that the data comes in
via file handles.

Threaded approach... fork 100 threads, each has it's own 1K buffer.
Here you have the overhead of 100 threads and 100 1K buffers.

Async I/O approach... issue 100 async reads each calling the same routine
for I/O completion.  Here you need the overhead of recording the 100 async
reads (8 bytes per?), one thread, and only the number of reads actually
being done at that instant's worth of 1K buffers (assuming the
read_is_ready routine allocates the buffer on the stack).

>
>Any insight would be appreciated.
>
>--
>Andrew Innes (aci10@eng.cam.ac.uk)
>Engineering Dept.
>Cambridge University
>Cambridge, England.

Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                       *** OS/2 2.0 is for YOU! ***
University of Utah                  Microsoft needs some competition, but
Center for Software Science        -I- want to be one of the many using NT.
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373           :-) :-) :-)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG)
Subject: Re: X is a hack? (was Re: NT goes "late Beta" in 8 weeks!)
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 05:41:01 GMT

bill@snoopy (Bill Poitras) writes:
: Brian Sturgill (brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu) wrote:
: : In article <47470005@hpfcmgw.FC.HP.COM> glen@hpfcmgw.FC.HP.COM (Glen Robinson) writes:
: : From a personal standpoint, NT is closer to what I want, as the features I
: : have always wanted was a combination of Unix and Macintosh/Windows
: : 3.0.  NT fits this bill very well. I.E. tons of neat, cheap GUI apps on
: : a "real" system.  X is a hack, so no Unix ever really fit the bill.
: : OS/2 2.0 came close, but it is not multi-user enough, and I'm not about
: : to buy into a multimedia API that no one will develop for.  It is also
: : not clear that it will have a good app base.
: : 	     	      Oops insert ^ native :-)
: 
: 1) Why is X a hack?
: 2) At what level do you need multi-user?
: 3) What native apps would you like?
: 

X **IS** a hack - but it's an excellent one ;-).

I think we need multiuser - even if its to prevent my kid sister from
crashing the system ;-).

jin meng
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
From: xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: POSIX
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 92 06:10:59 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In <67420@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0059e@prism.gatech.EDU (Garrett Drysdale) writes:

>Questions:
>1)  What exactly is POSIX anyway?

An attempt by DEC to get their VMS operating system labelled as a more
standard UNIX than any UNIX systems.  :-)

>2)  What are the *real* benefits as opposed to the *ideal* benefits?

Any vendor who is willing to ship source code to customers can expect
that the customers will be able to compile that code.  :-)

Note smileys...  :-) :-) :-)
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't | NOBODY for President!
xtifr@netcom.COM| need disclaimers | Because Nobody's perfect!!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc
From: bgm@cray.com (Bert Moshier)
Subject: Just Wondering II
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 25 Aug 92 11:06:11 CDT

Everyone / Anyone:

I have yet to see issue five of OS/2 Monthly Magazine.  The lead article is
OS/2 Through the Eyes of Microsoft (I understand - this is not the original
title).

I am wondering what it and the issue (including my column with George Bush
saying - "Ask not what IBM can do for OS/2; Ask what WE can do for OS/2!") look
like.  Thanks in advance.

Bert.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: X is a hack?
Date: 27 Aug 92 09:57:53 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Aug27.100913.9227@cam-orl.co.uk> thg@cam-orl.co.uk (Tim Glauert) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.195452.941@hellgate.utah.edu>, brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>|> In article <1992Aug26.171756.17033@msi.com> bill@msi.com writes:
>|> >1) Why is X a hack?
>|> It's a glue-on on top of Unix (i.e. it's not well integrated).  I purports
>|> to be a GUI, but has a fair number of standard features missing.
>
>Let's get this straight, shall we? X is a "Window System", not a GUI, and it
>provides all the standard features of a window system. A key design feature of
>X was "Mechanism, not policy" whereas the key feature of a GUI is that it
>provides consitency by enforcing a given user-interface policy.
>
>If you want to talk about GUIs, discuss Motif or OpenLook or Andrew or
>something else. But don't accuse X of not having features it was never
>intended to have.

If you hadn't cut the next line, I believe I was talking Motif and OpenLook.

You're right in the sense that X was intended not as a GUI, but a base
for a GUI.  It falls short here too.  Why can't I get a list of fonts,
why is there no printer support?  I'm guilty of sloppy terminology, but
the point remains that X+anybody's toolkit still falls short of 512K Macs,
let alone more modern GUI's like that in System 7, Windows 3.X, NextStep,
etc.  Oops for Presentation Manager... don't want any flames! :-)

Brian
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:4754 comp.os.os2.misc:28660
From: xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: NT goes "late Beta" in 8 weeks! (was Re: Windows NT 'Alpha')
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 06:32:42 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In <1992Aug26.170708.29552@cgrg.ohio-state.edu> bpowell@osc.edu (Brian Powell) writes:

>Brian Sturgill (brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu) wrote:
>: ...
>: a "real" system.  X is a hack, so no Unix ever really fit the bill.
>: OS/2 2.0 came close, but it is not multi-user enough, and I'm not about
>: ...

>X is a hack?  If X11R5 is a hack, it is by far the best, most stable
>and robust hack I've ever seen.  I've NEVER crashed an X11 session on
>my Sun SPARCstation, and I sometimes do some pretty strange things on
>it.  Compared to Windoze, X11 is stability incarnate :-) Even OS/2
>(a very stable PC system, IMHO) can't match the stability of X11.

Yeah, X is a hack, so is Windoze and OS/2.  :-)  None of them seem to be
the OS of my dreams (and I'm certain that NT won't be either).  X is a
lot more stable, because it runs on a real OS.  OS/2 is only half an OS,
but it only costs 1/10th of what a real OS costs.  Not a half bad deal.  :-)

Oh yeah, and SYSV is crippled kludge, and BSD is a bloated whore.  And X
is a maximally bloated kludge you can load on top of 'em.  I may not
have much good to say about OS/2, but it has plenty of company in
badness country.  :-)  :-)  :-)
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't | NOBODY for President!
xtifr@netcom.COM| need disclaimers | Because Nobody's perfect!!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2, DOS, NT (Speculative) -- My Opinions
From: orville%weyrich@tnet.com (Orville R. Weyrich)
Date: 23 Aug 92 02:24:31 GMT
Reply-To: tnet.com!weyrich!orville
Organization: Weyrich Computer Consulting

In article <SXMRP.24.0@orca.alaska.edu> SXMRP@orca.alaska.edu (Michael R. Platzke) writes:
>In article <19920820.064647.623@almaden.ibm.com> AV@vnet.ibm.com (Anton Versteeg) writes:
>>From: AV@vnet.ibm.com (Anton Versteeg)
>>Subject: Re: OS/2, DOS, NT (Speculative) -- My Opinions
>>Date: 20 Aug 92 13:46:44 GMT
>
>
>>It makes you wonder though why this SDK is so much cheaper than
>>the OS/2 SDK's MS used to sell for over $1000.
>
>Probably for the same reason that IBM used to sell its hardware for twice
>as much as a decent clone - because people were willing to pay for it.
>(for the humor impaired, please ignore the blantant jab at IBM)
>

I thought  that it was  a jab at  MS -- implying that  people would not
be  willing  to try NT if they really had to pay for it (compared  to  
$1000, $69 is essentially free).

:-) :-)  

orville

--------------------------------------       **********************************
Orville R. Weyrich, Jr.                          Weyrich Computer Consulting
Certified Data Processor                       POB 5782, Scottsdale, AZ 85261
Certified Systems Professional                      Voice: (602) 391-0821
Certified Computer Programmer                Internet: orville%weyrich@tnet.com
--------------------------------------       **********************************
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: gthiruva@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (George Thiruvathukal)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: OS/2 2.01:  Is it here yet?
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:25:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.BtyoEJ.93C
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

Excuse my ignorance.  I recently left for my freshman year at college and have  missed the last few issues of PC Week and other mags.
I've also missed this newsgroup as well.

Anyway, I'm a loyal user of OS/2 2.0, and was wondering if the update, 2.01 I   suppose, has shipped yet or if it is going to ship soon.

If it's no trouble, I would appreciate it if someone can send me a one-line     e-mail response to this.  I would look for a posting, but I'm still tryiing to  understand the inner workings of the UNIX system which I use to get news.  I    used to use an easy to use environment, call LUSH, which was tacked on to UNIX.

Thanks!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: msmith@netcom.com (Martin P. Smith)
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.2
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 92 03:56:28 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <1992Aug31.164630.13859@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>	
>	Automatic stack expansion.
>		I am certain that OS/2 does not do this.
>		OS/2 has you specify a limit on the stack size, but allocates
>		only one page of the stack at a time, using a guard page
>		technique to expand the stack.  When you hit the
>		stack size limit your process dies.  Why they went most
>		of the way, instead of all the way, I really cannot say.
 
Sorry but you are WRONG.

Please check the OS/2 technical library Programming Guide volume 2 Page 6-7
text below Table 6-1. ( The Programming guide volumes in the library 
are worth buying in my opinion ) 


"The guard page attribute is intended to provide automatic stack growth
and stack limit checking. An application can also use it in other data
structures such as arrays. For example if an application is using an 
array of 4096 bytes (one page) the application can allocate and commit
two pages, one with read and write access and one designated as a gaurd
page. If the application tries to write past the end of the array a
page guard exception will be generated.

Any reference-read,write or execute- to a guard page causes an access violation
page fault to be generated. This fault causes a Guard Page Entered exception  
to occur for the thread that referred to the guard  page. The exception can 
be handled by the exception handler for the process, if one is registered.
If the process does not have an exception handler registered, the systems i
default exception handler will handle the exception. The default action by 
the system exception handler is to convert the gaurd page to a commited
page, then try mark the next page in memory as a gaurd page. If the systemi
is not successful in marking the next page as aguard page, an
Unable-TO-Grow-Stack exception occurs. The thread is allowed to continue 
execution, but must be aware that it has at most 4KB of stack remaining."


The paragraphs above CLEARLY show that OS/2 CAN dynamically grow the stack.

All typos in the above (and lack of punctuation) are my fault. The above is 
reproduced without permission. I felt it was important that we show the truth.


Martin P. Smith
msmith@netcom.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The republican party election platform == Religous FASCISM            

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ameline@vnet.ibm.com (Ian Ameline)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 13:34:04 EDT
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.2
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Organization: C-Set/2 Development, IBM Canada Lab.
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM

In article <1992Sep02.155848.24011@ans.net>,
db3l@ans.net (David Bolen) writes:
>Actually - it seems quite an impressive optimization to me

   I'm glad you like it. It actually wasn't that hard to do.. It
just took me about a weekend to write it. In addition to turning
recursive calls before the return into jumps, it will turn calls to
to other fcns immediately before the return into jumps to that function,
providing that the parameter list is smaller than the one in the current
function. We call this optimization tail call elimination. I believe that
C-Set/2 is the only 386 compiler that does this.

Regards,
Ian Ameline.
From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 Advocacy
Date: 31 Aug 92 05:27:04 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <t7fn3_+.xtifr@netcom.com> xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters) writes:
>>   Proposal:  Multimedia as a part of the base OS/2 package.
>
>I shan't comment, except to state that I hope it's an optional feature. 
>I have no interest in wasting disk space on this crap.  :-)

I don't think that'll be a concern.  Do you remember the selection
screen during the installation of OS/2 2.0?  You could pick and choose
from anything - you could even choose to include/exclude specific
applets from among the set of them.

I suspect that MM would be yet another selectively-installable
feature. 

My own opinion is that the MM system should be included.  Let the $150
price tag to the a MultiMedia toolkit (for the developers) if IBM
wants to ship it separately.  A developer can write it off as a
business expense, and will make money from it anyway.  A user
shouldn't have to spend money for an OS extension to use someone
else's application, IMO.  (excepting, of course, very large
extensions, like database servers...)
-- 
   |)  David Charlap           "I don't even represent myself
  /|_  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu   sometimes so NJIT is right out!.
 ((|,)
  ~|~  Hi! I am a .signature virus, copy me into your .signature file.
From: ps@tangtown.UUCP (Peter Schwarz)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: How can i re-enable the spooler permanently ?
Date: 22 Aug 92 16:34:03 GMT
Organization: CeCa

Hello you all,
I have a small but interresting problem.
About 2 months ago i switched off the printer spooler via the WPS.
Now i want to switch it on again. This works fine, but only
until i reboot. After rebooting the system the printer spooler of
OS/2 2.0 is disabled again.

Who can help me ?

Thank you
           Peter

+-------------------------------------------------------+
|   Peter Schwarz        | Tel.: 49-4109-6420           |
|   ps@tangtown.hanse.de | Adr.: Claudiusstr. 22        |
|                        |       D-2000 Tangstedt       |
+------------------------+------------------------------+
|   I am still looking for a HP-DJ driver for OS/2 2.0  |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
From: pd2n+@andrew.cmu.edu (Peter W. De Bonte)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows NT Shareware Contest for COMDEX 92
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:58:27 GMT
	<47470007@hpfcmgw.FC.HP.COM>
Organization: Freshman, CIT general, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Why not create comp.nt.advocacy?

Pete W. De Bonte (x4173)                    pwd+@cmu.edu 
"Knolege is powef, Speling is unimportnt"   (but pd2n is unaceptable)
From: pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Brian, your bias is showing ( was Re: OS/2 vs NT features
Date: 4 Sep 92 02:45:59 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <1992Sep3.164040.11566@nuscc.nus.sg> eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG) writes:

 > Come to think of it - how can the file system code be pageable? I need
 > the file system to page in needed blocks! For that matter - is the cache
 > pageable - makes no sense if I allow this (though unlike the previous
 > case is not impossible just wierd!).

If the paging file is kept on a FAT partition, it is theoretically
possible to page code for other installable file systems (HPFS, CD-ROM)
to disk. Caching pages, and paging caches, tend to be counter-productive.

--
Ping Huang (INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu), probably speaking for himself
From: "stephen dawson" <stephen.dawson@canrem.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: nt goes "late beta" i
Date: 23 Aug 92 13:14:18 EST
Reply-To: "stephen dawson" <stephen.dawson@canrem.com>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Canada Remote Systems

(Continued from the previous message)

expertise!

    STEPHEN         Look through the Windows and you will see OS/2!
    ^^^^^^^    :-)  Walking and chewing gum at the same time.

 stephen.dawson@canrem.com
 Entered 08-23-92 at 10:52am in Downsview, Ontario

 * DeLuxe2/386 1.25 #3969 * Conformity obstructs progress.
--
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario/Detroit, MI
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: superVGA  (and misc top-blowing)
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:34:21 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Aug26.164303.42582@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> thompson@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.140404.14501@hellgate.utah.edu>, brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>> In article <1992Aug26.194222.549@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> smsmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Smith) writes:
>>>brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>>
>>>>Look at how snappy
>>>>the 32-bit stuff is... it's already faster than OS/2.
>>>
>>>Could you clarify this?  What 32-bit stuff are you running that is
>>>faster than the equivalent 32-bit programs under OS/2?  Surely you
>>>aren't comparing 32-bit NT stuff to 16-bit OS/2 stuff, are you?
>> I'm comparing running a native NT 32-bit API program with a native
>> OS/2 2.0 32-bit API -- which is implemented in a 16-bit/32-bit "hybrid".
>> That's unfortunately the best OS/2 can do.  This is fair as IBM claims
>> OS/2 is released.... surely they wouldn't be afraid of a comparison
>> with someone else's pre-beta?
>
>You haven't answered the question.  What 32-bt NT app(s)?  Are these
>subjective measurements (I would say so from your use of the word 
>'snappy') or objective?  Did you tweak OS/2 2.0 at all?  Are the NT
>pre-release and OS/2 2.0 running on comparable systems?

These are subjective measurements on identically configured (w.r.t. to
memory, manufacturer and disk) machines.  The point I was trying to
make was that NT is already snappier about things like bringing up
apps, opening folders/program groups, etc.  I am not and was not
claiming to have run benchmarks, mainly because neither platform has
any native-GUI apps in common.  I'm not sure what could be benchmarked.
If you have suggestions, I have two 33Mhz 386's with 20 Megs memory
and segate hard drives, but would you trust me to run them.
As to have I tweaked OS/2?  No... but then neither have I tweaked NT.
What is there to tweak?  Why is the tweaking not listed in the installation
manual?

>
>We should probably wait till NT is released before running benchmarks,
>though. 
Well we could run them, but if NT loses, it clearly should get a break.
On the other hand if OS/2 loses....
I'll let someone else publish the results... nobody'll believe me. :-)


Brian
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy