From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett)
Subject: Re: Marc Barrett: an Amiga pioneer (was Re: More AmigaWorld Lies)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 11:06:55 GMT

In article <53062@dime.cs.umass.edu> barrett@gleep.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett) writes:
>In article <1992Sep8.003808.6875@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>[posted in c.s.a.misc]
>> What I want is a better Amiga.  I can more honestly call myself an Amiga
>>pioneer than 90% of the people who flame me for my messages.  I got my first
>>Amiga in March of 1986, only a few months after it started hitting the
>>streets.  There are probably plenty of people at Commodore who ahve not been
>>using Amigas as long as I have.
>
>	Marc, if you are an "Amiga pioneer", then it is only for being the
>first person to flame Commodore nonstop for four years.
>
>	I remember the first time Marc arrived in the comp.sys.amiga
>groups.  He was but a mere whiner back then.  In the space of a week, he
>posted about a dozen articles flaming the Amiga's graphics capabilities.  At
>least 3-4 of them appeared in rapid succession all on the same day.  They
>all said essentially the same thing, but with the words rearranged.
>
>	This had an immediate effect on USENET:  half of comp.sys.amiga put
>"barrett@iastate" in their kill files.  Some people responded to Marc's
>allegations, but... he simply didn't answer them!  I guess their opinions
>weren't important.  Instead, he posted more articles.

   I would like to explain a few things about what was going on back then.
When I started posting to Usenet, it was so now to ISU that I did not even
have access to a newsreader of any kind.  The only way I could read news 
back then was to receive comp.sys.amiga through the mail, from
amiga-relay@udel.edu (which is now defunct).  This, in conjunction with the
fact that all of the Amiga messages were junked into one main newsgroup back
then, meant that I was absolutely FLOODED with mail/messages.  Also due to
the fact that I did not have access to a newsreader, I could not post 
followups very easily.  These also had to be sent through the Udel relay,
and I had to put the quoted lines from the original message in by hand -- a
real pain.

   What happened when I posted all of those messages in rapid succession 
(which, on hindsight, was not a good idea, I admit), was that the Udel relay
then chose to go down, for almost a full week.  Without access to the 
followups to my messages, I obviously could not follow-up to the follow-ups.
I replied to allof the messages that I recieved through mail, even the
nasty ones.  But I was then totally blind to the public followups to my 
messages.  

>	This was just the beginning of Marc's reign of misinformation.
>I have lost count of how many times Marc has posted false information
>and never "backed down" from it.  Here are a few I remember:
>
>	o	"The Atari Lynx was based on the Amiga chipset."
>		(Totally false.)

   The Atari Lynx was loosely based on the Amiga chipset, in the same way
that the Amiga chipset is loosely based on the old Atari 400/800 chipset.  
All of these were designed by several of the same people, and to say that
the Amiga chipset and Lynx chip(s) are in no way related is preposterous.

>	o	Flames against the AmigaOS 2.0 NotePad.  (There is
>		no such program.)

   What happened is that, after installing 2.0, I opened Notepad, noticed that
it looked different (the screen colors were reversed), and had a version 
number of 2.something.  I stupidly assumed that it was a new version included
with AmigaOS 2.0.

>	o	Statements in one particular fiscal quarter that CBM's R&D
>		had dropped when considered "as a percentage of sales."
>		(Mr. Statistics neglected to realize that sales had RISEN.)

   True, but critical corporate investments should always keep up with
sales increases.  Otherwise growth in new products and customer services 
will become out-of-sync with corporate growth.

>	o	Several dozen "Commodore is/isn't doing XXX" when in fact
>		Marc has no special information.

   All the information I need is in the R&D investment statistics.  With 
a low R&D budget, there are obvious limits to what Commodore engineers could
be doing right now.  For instance, with a $30 million/year overall R&D budget,
it is totally reasonable for me to conclude that Commodore is not developing
any supercomputers.  Other conclusions are only slightly less reasonable.

   BTW, I have been generally correct in most assumptions about Commodore
product development.  Over two years ago, when I first brought up Commodore's
sorry track record with respect to their R&D investments, I predicted that
the "32-bit chipset" probably would not see the market before 1993.  Well, I
was wrong, but I was not off by much.  If it does see the market before 1993,
it will probably be only one or two months before the end of the year.  I also
predicted that the project to give AmigaOS device-independent video would take
an even longer time to develop.  I was correct here too.  All of this was
based on the fact that Commodore's R&D budget was too low to get such projects
done in a reasonable time frame.


>	o	The solution for Commodore's CDROM problems is to pirate
>		the CBM's software and give it to "cracker" groups.
>		(Marc outdid himself on this one!)

   I've also received more private agreements than disagreements on this one,
which is unusual.  People don't want to say so publicly for fear of being
labeled a pirate with me, but many people agree that Commodore is a liability
for the Amiga, and that freeing the Amiga of dependency on Commodore through
means such as this would be a good thing.

>	o	The statement that "I am not flaming the engineers -- I want
>		to pressure Commodore management" when asked why he posts
>		his flames.  (In fact, CBM management doesn't read USENET!)

   You got me on this one.  For a long time I did not know what my aim was 
with my messages.  I now have been attempting to point out to the Commodore
product development people areas where Amiga development is needed.  For 
instance, by talking about possibly yanking Amiga CD-ROM development from 
Commodore's hands, I am trying to let the Commodore people know just how badly
Amiga CD-ROM development support is needed.  With the possibility that they
may lose control of a key Amiga market, this may spurr them to make needed
modifications to the CDTV OS to allow it to run on an A3000 with a third-party
CD-ROM drive, and market the product themselves before the same product was
created and distributed by Amiga cracking groups.
 
>	o	Despite the fact that Marc has never designed a graphics
>		chipset, he was quite sure that there was "no reason"
>		one could not be designed by a particular date.

   Consider this: the Commodore engineers have been working with tights budgets
ever since the Amiga was created.  With budgets so tight, I do not think it is
altogether unreasonable to conclude that the Commodore engineers probably do
not have access to the best hardware and software development tools available
in the computer industry.  I do not think it is unreasonable to conclude that
the Commodore engineering department is overstaffed, either.  All that I am
saying is that, had Commodore engineering been given somewhat higher budgets
and better development direction since 1985, two or three years might have
been saved in the development of the AA chipset, and other Amiga hardware
and software projects.  

   If you think these conclusions are not reasonable, just tell me why.  
With access to much better tools and with a bigger staff, I don't understand
why it is unreasonable to say that a significant amount of time could have
been saved on my projects, especially on longer-term projects like the AA
chipset.


>	o	Despite the fact that Marc claimed to be a registered
>		developer, nobody has reported even a single product Marc has
>		created.  Hell, he's not even on the Fish Disks.  So much
>		for credibility.

   So what?  I was not even able to afford a C compiler until last year.  I
come from a lower-middle-class family, so it has been a bit of a struggle for
me to be able to afford the programming manuals that other Amiga programmers
take for granted.  The few books I have on Amiga programming were purchased
used and are very outdated.  As well, I had to sell my 2.0 RKM manuals not
long after purchasing them to help pay for tuition.  

   BTW, I have a reasonable amount of expertise on programming on other
systems, where I can get programming manuals free from the computation
center library.  Not long ago, I wrote a Motif shell for a file transfer
script, to allow users of some NMRi systems to copy some bizarre files from
Sun systems to DECstations, with automatic translation.  


>	o	Saying "Commodore is doomed" in 1988.  Gee... they're
>		still around.
>
>	o	Saying "Commodore is doomed" in 1989.  Gee... they're
>		still around.
>
>	o	Saying "Commodore is doomed" in 1990.  And so on.

   Commodore is not growing, that's for sure.  In fact, if you take global
inflation into account, Commodore's sales have been steadily decreasing since
1987.

>	o	The general belief that what happens in Iowa mirrors
>		the rest of the world.  "Well, I haven't seen any ads
>		at Iowa State, so Commodore isn't blah blah blah...."

   The midwest does not exist in a vacuum, either.  And I do get enough of
an indication from messages from people at other universities that the
situation for the Amiga at ISU is the rule rather than the exception for
other universities across the nation.
   
>And of course, let's not forget Marc's famous "I wish Irving Gould were
>dead" post.

   I did not say that.  I only said that I would not cry if he died.  And I
was not the only person to say this -- I was merely the first.  Lots of other
people have made similar comments in the past few years.

>	Also, when asked about his reasons for posting all this stuff,
>Marc responded in c.s.a.advocacy:
>
>[me]
>>>...you continue to post
>>>the same negative opinions time and time again.  So I ask:  why?  We've all
>>>heard it by now.  Are you doing this for anybody else's benefit?  Are you
>>>trying to turn off future Amiga buyers, or just letting off steam?
>[marc]
>>Mostly just letting off steam.
>> I guess, in a nutshell, my messages are an attempt to induce realism on
>>the discussions here, but I often go too far and post messages that are
>>overwhlemingly negative and caustic.
>
>There is more, if anyone's interested.  But the message is this:  Marc is
>not posting this stuff for anybody else's benefit.
>
>	At this point, we should all realize that Marc isn't going away.
>Even if he sold his Amiga and Commodore went out of business, or if
>Commodore suddenly improved 1000% and gave Marc a free 48-bit high-speed
>graphics board, Marc will still complain.  He *lives* to complain.
>And he doesn't see anything wrong with constant complaining.

   If Commodore improved 1000%, I would not complain, period.  The only reason
I continue to post complaints is that I continue to see very little progress
from Commodore.  In many respects -- especially marketing -- all I see is
constant deterioration of their efforts.  For instance, only two years ago
Commodore was making some reasonable efforts to get Amigas into universities,
by advertizing in university newspapers, instituting the Amiga On-Campus
Consultants program, and pushing Amiga UNIX systems into the research market.
In the past year, *ALL* of these efforts have been complete curtailed.

>	Occasionally, Marc makes a good point.  Even though there are
>sometimes real issues addressed in his postings, he constantly exaggerates,
>spreads falsehoods, and misunderstands things he has no background in.
>
>	Oh wait... NOW I understand why Marc is an Amiga pioneer!
>If it weren't for him, nobody would have proposed the creation of
>comp.sys.amiga.advocacy.

   Yes, I can take personal credit for that! :-)

>
>                                                        Dan
>							(no relation)
>
> //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>| Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center |
>| University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA  01003  --  barrett@cs.umass.edu |
> \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////

---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy