HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:21:46 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.195712.3358@netcom.com> damiel@netcom.com (Paul Theodoropoulos) writes:
>In <C0H2nt.BoE@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>
>>   The Amiga is a little younger than the Mac, but not much younger.  The
>>Amiga is seven years old, the Mac is nine years old.  Seven years should be
>>more than enough time for a system to have a highly polished GUI.  Especially
>>when the Mac GUI was very highly polished by time it was two years old or
>>so.  
>
>seven years should be more than enough time for a system to have a highly 
>polished multitasking OS. Especially when the Amiga multitasking  was very 
>highly polished by the time it was two years old or so. if we're going to 
>talk about the shortcomings of a platform, let's deal with all aspects of it.
>
>i fail to understand why the mac has gone so long without proper multitasking.
>i guess the engineers at apple are just dumb, or they spend too much time 
>playing with the surface details of an OS that's broken, rather than dealing 
>with the most significant shortcoming of the underlying system.

   Does Apple really have to do anything to the internals of the machine?  
Apple sold 2 million Macintoshes last year -- and three Macintoshes for every
Amiga that Commodore sold -- despite the lack of a real multitasking OS.  
Perhaps if Commodore took the old cliche "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"
and made the Amiga a little more Mac-like by giving the Amiga more surface
polish and friendliness, Commodore would sell more Amigas.  They would also
need to push some major software developers to devleop Amiga software.

---
| 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
From: fheitkamp@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: VistaPro & clones
Date: 4 Jan 93 06:46:20 EST
Organization:  Wright State University 

In article <72822@cup.portal.com>, Harv@cup.portal.com (Harv R Laser) writes:
> 
> Semi-related to this, I was reading ClariNet Newsbytes yesterday (I can't
> repost the article here due to copyright restrictions) but a new product
> press release for a Windows product had been posted. The sole purpose of
> this new $99 product is to let Windows users delete disk directories. 
> ::rubbing eyes:: yeah you read it right. It deletes disk directories
> and their subdirs and their contents if any.  Now I don't pretend to
> be intimate with Windows, in fact we haven't even slept together, but
> apparently there are some horrible genuflections one has to go thru
> to delete a Windows dir and its contents, without having to resort to
> going down to DOS to do it. So this $99 product lets a Windows user
> delete dirs and subdirs and contents without having to drop down to DOS.
> Imagine that. For a mere hundred bucks. 

	I have been tring to keep a more open mind about Windows lately
	( We're stuck with it right? ) and to that end, I've been trying
	stuff I take for granted on the Amiga.  For instance:  I tryed
	windowing directories with the mouse to delete them;  didn't
	work on Windows.  It seems you have to hit the delete key and the
	FS automatically chooses the icon in the upper left as the one you
	want to delete.  So, to delete many programs you need to hit the
	delete key , <confirm> delete... etc.

	This leads me to believe Windows is using DOS as the file system,
	since this is very DOS like.

	I have noticed that Windows has some features that I like more
	than those lacking or similar features in AmigaDOS.  Having
	multiple printers configured, for one.  This is only an advantage
	if you have more than one LPTx port or are on a network.  The 
	ability to resize windows from any side, and drag a window partialy
	off screen, without resizing is also convienient.

	I have also noticed what you mention about "utility" Windows 
	programs.  Many are adding a rather lame functionality to 
	Windows that an un-lame version already exits on the Amiga;  right
	out of the box.
> 
> And here all this time I thought the Pet Rock was the biggest quick
> money scam of all time... silly me.

	Yes ignorance is bliss, as they say.
> 
> Harv
> 
>>
>>> 
>>> --
>>>    The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
>>>      North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
>>>         Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
>>>            internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
>>- Fred
- Fred

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: vailm00@DMI.USherb.CA (MARC VAILLANCOURT)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: Universite de Sherbrooke -- Dept. d'Informatique
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 18:55:55 GMT

Marc Barrett wrote:

-> I've used Adobe PhotoShop on the Mac II systems at school, and it 
-> is FANTASTIC.  In order to approximate Photo Shop on the Amiga, 
-> you have to combine ADPro with a paint program such as DPaint IV.  
-> And even then Photo Shop blows the ADPro/DPaint combination away.
-> 
->    BTW, would the ADPro/DPaint combination include any support for 
-> EPSF images?  Adobe PhotoShop includes a limited PostScript 
-> interpreter for visualizing EPSF files.
 
   Last time I looked, Adobe PhotoShop was around 700-800 bucks... much
more expensive than AdPro and ImageMaster and ImageFX combined.

	Marc
From: dmkasten@redorc.chi.il.us (Bowie Poag)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: CBM makes dealers look like liers
Date: 11 Jan 93 10:42:00 CST
Organization: Red Oracle Bbs/Network

In article <93005.012733CTLCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>, <CTLCC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
>CBM has again made it's dealers look bad. Besides the fact that they never
>inform dealers on upcoming products and the dealers are the last to know
>anything that CBM does, they also give us shipping dates that they never stick
>too. CBM promiced us that we would have A1200s on Dec 28 1992. We were to
>recieve 24 machines. We never got them. We did get a shipment the next day of
>A2000s and 600s, but we only recieved 2 a1200s. Customers who we told about
the
> shippment were extremely angry and hostile. We called our CBM rep and they
tol
>d us that they would send 10 of the UPS red label. It never arrived. We
finally
>recieved 18 today. Not UPS red like they said they would do.
>
>This and other things CBM do are the reasons why a majority of dealers don't
>carry Amiga machines. If CBM keeps up then eventually you will only be able to
>get them mail-order.


"Hostile"? ....what, were you getting firebombed or something? Hell, were Amiga
users, behavior like that is to be expected.. I remember back in July when that
Knight-Ridder columnist wrote an article on the "death" (giggle) of the
Amiga... People were senting the guy death threats!

So much for THAT moron, by the way... He declares the death of the Amiga,
meanwhile Commodore releases 3 new machines in the past 4 months.. :)



        +-----------------------------------------------------------+
        |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.|
        +------------------------------+----------------------------+
From: dtiberio@xamiga.linet.org (David Tiberio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: test
Date: 4 Jan 93 07:29:44 GMT
Organization: Amiga Graphics Association BBS
X-BBS-Software: EXCELSIOR! V0.975

test




      IT IS IN MY OPINION THAT SUPRA 14.4 v.32bis MODEMS ARE NOT RELIABLE

-------------------- Via Amiga Graphics BBS (516) 473-6351 --------------------

                NO LONGER RUNNING ON A SUPRA 14.4 v.32bis MODEM
                            FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE

     PLEASE SEND COMMENTS REGARDING SUPRA MODEMS TO supra@xamiga.linet.org
                    JOIN OUR NEW SUPRA MODEM MAILING LIST

 David Tiberio                //       Amiga Graphics BBS  (516) 473-6351
 dtiberio@xamiga.linet.org   //      NO SUPRA MODEMS --- BY POPULAR REQUEST
 Long Island, New York     \X/     USENET - 3D - Music - Fonts - Pics - Utils

    MAILING LISTS:

    NEW Aladdin 4D          - post to aladdin@xamiga.linet.org
        America             - post to america@xamiga.linet.org
        AMOS                - post to AMOS@xamiga.linet.org
        Commodore-Amiga     - post to Commodore@xamiga.linet.org
        Emplant             - post to Emplant@xamiga.linet.org
        Excelsior! BBS      - post to Excelsior@xamiga.linet.org
        Imagine 3D          - post to imagine@sp.paramax.com
        Lightwave 3D        - post to lightwave@bobsbox.rent.com
    NEW SUNY Press          - post to SUNY_Press@xamiga.linet.org
    NEW Supra               - post to supra@xamiga.linet.org
        United We Stand     - post to United@xamiga.linet.org


    For help, send the following line in the body of your text, and replace
    username with your account name, and domain with your computer address,
    and send this to subscribe@xamiga.linet.org.

#subscribe.help username@domain;

          IT IS IN MY OPINION THAT SUPRA PRODUCTS ARE OF POOR QUALITY
--
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Byte's Amiga 4000 review...
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 21:01:31 GMT

>	THEY also invented IBM PC. THEY were singletasking before Amiga
>	was born, and most of THEM still are :)
>	BTW, REXX is from mainframe world, right? Its pretty far from
>	microcomputers, which are the subject here.
>

Read my lips:  All IBM operating systems (or at least new ones) have
REXX.  It is part of their SAA/CUA standards.  It is the equivalent of
a "law" in a country...it has absolutely nothing to do with the Amiga.

IBM was singletasking in 1981, when Apple was single tasking, before
Commodore was single tasking etc.  The reason they didn't start out
with a multitasking operating system is because with 64k of ram, you
can't load two useful programs, plus a multitasking operating system.

As soon as multitasking was feasible (with the advent of the 286) IBM
started work on OS/2, the multitasking OS for it.  The amiga was not an
influence.
From: cs_e445@ceres (Vlod Kalicun)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Byte A4000/A3000T-040 Review
Date: 5 Jan 1993 15:02:34 GMT
Organization: Kingston University
NNTP-Posting-Host: ceres.kingston.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

tfoley@camaro.uucp (Tim Foley) writes:
: change the Amiga's name to something else, and put it in a METAL case (or at 
: least a more ugly, business like case), and it would sell to business's like 
: hot cakes.

Hmmm.. are you sure you don't work for C= Marketing??
I could swear that the 4000 is in a big ugly Tandy (business ??) case! ;-)
Regards..

Vlod
-Amiga Advocate.
----------------------------------------------
Amiga - Anything else isn't worth considering
----------------------------------------------
From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Comdex/Quicktime released for the PC
Date: 9 Jan 1993 07:36:58 GMT
Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33

In article <38403@cbmvax.commodore.com> chrisg@cbmvax.commodore.com (Chris Green) writes:
>	You're basically correct in your explanation.

Hurrah!!!

>	These are on a dealer demo that is suppose to be circulating soon.
>All they do is CopyMemQuick from data which is stored in memory to
>a 320x200xham8 screen.

Yay!!!

>	Good point. Spenceer Shanson and I have written a few AGA demos lately,
>so maybe something will come of them.-- 

Even just for fun, you guys should release some of the little demos
you put out.  Source-releasing them could even be beneficial--as well
as spurring on development of others who wish to come out with demos
that would handle AGA properly, it would give an example of just what
the AGA systems are capable of.

You might want to look into the Gnu Public License, GPL.  CopyLefting
code could be a real boost to the Amiga community in general, and
those demo coders who have realized they've either got to deal with it
or be forever trapped in ECS modes.

Greg


--
(: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today?  Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :)
(: "Our father, who art in Iowa, Hollow be thy head, Thy ideas run    :)
(:  Thy will be done, At Commodore as it is at Apple"  -Dan Barrett   :)
(: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: () :) :) :) Wubba, the Dark Angel :)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: courtn@hercules.cs.uregina.ca (todd courtnage)
Subject: Re:  Amiga OS weaknesses
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:17:54 GMT
Organization: University of Regina, SK, Canada

In article <61110b9c@ofa123.fidonet.org> Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
>> Organization: The Portal System (TM)
>> From: TomK@cup.portal.com (Tom R Krotchko)
>> Message-ID: <73215@cup.portal.com>
>> Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
>>
>> >Yes, I'd much rather have the system interface pop up a window saying "the
>> >disk is unreadable, do I want to format it?" every time I pop in an IBM
>> disk,
>>
>> Augggh! Where's the smiley? That's the single biggest thing I dislike
>> about the Mac, forcing me to make a decision about the disk as soon as I
>> pop it in.
>>
>> It would even be acceptable if one of the button choices was "hey, stupid
>> computer, I KNOW its unreadable. Just wait until I tell you to do something
>> with it".
>
>The Mac is anoying in the same way that a salesman is - set one foot inside
>some  stores and *PING* a sales(wo)man materializes out of nowhere and asks
>"Can I help you with anything?"...  "No.  Just browseing.  Go away" ..  "We
>have  some  wonderfull  stuff  on sale over here -" ..  "GO AWAY!  Leave me
>alone!".

Heh!  :-)

I'm in the process of writing a small utility for the Amiga that does exactly
what a Mac does when you stick a "non-formatted" disk in.  Just waiting for
my registered version of DICE and my replacement hard drive.

>> TomK@cup.portal.com
>> Tom Krotchko
>
> -Dances With Coyotes-EMAIL: dances@qed.cts.com-At the begining of the movie-
> --AKA Dances V2.0/Coyote/Critter/Magnet/Major--they know they  have to find-
> -Former Net-Lurker - A-M-I-G-A! NOT AMEOBA%#$!-each other.... but they ride-
> -World's slower programer and cursed with 1.3!-off in  opposite  directions-

Don't have a sig yet. :-)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie)
Subject: Re: Advocacy? What do you want for the Amiga?
Originator: torrie@Xenon.Stanford.EDU
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: 13 Jan 93 05:37:08 GMT

mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes:

>Tell me any program on the Mac that actually _supports_ a multiheaded
>display and then you can see the percentage of applications that would
>need extra _support_ of RTG.

  Actually, Mac programs do need to be slightly aware of multimonitor
displays to conform to user interface guidelines.  For example, when
clicking on the zoom box, the window should zoom to its zoomed-out state
on the monitor which most of the window lies on.  This means the program
needs to know what its intersection is with each of the displays.
  This is sort of an artifact of window zooming being introduced before
multimonitor displays - one can envision an API where the program would 
ask the OS for the bounds of the display which it should zoom to.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu 
Embrace rationalism, reject superstition.           Break away from the past.
"...there is only one thing worse than having marketing people on a project,
 and that is having no marketing people on a project."  - Larry Tesler.
From: jprad@faatcrl.faa.gov (Jack Radigan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: CBM mention on 12/11/92 Computer Chronicles
Date: 8 Jan 93 00:56:18 GMT
Organization: FAA Technical Center, Pomona, NJ
NNTP-Posting-Host: faatcrl.faa.gov

pss1@kepler.unh.edu (Paul S Secinaro) writes:

>>  Anyone who's had the pleasure of using OS/2 on a machine with 4Meg of
>>ram (and again with 8Meg or more) knows full well how much of a performance
>>penalty VM is.

>*Sigh* I get the impression that everyone here thinks that VM is
>supposed to be used as a *replacement* for real RAM.  It isn't.  If
>you have an application that absolutely needs 8MB of real RAM, and you
>only have 4MB, then VM isn't going to save you.  I hope everyone
>understands this.

  That's not the impression I was trying to give.  I find the base value of
VM in a single user system with today's cheap ram and decently powerful cpus
to be essentially worthless.

  I don't think I'm that much different from anyone else here, when I first
started using OS/2 I had 4Meg of memory.  A few days later I had 8, and wish
I went for 12 instead.

  I know VM is there, I know what it can do.  What I'm pointing out is that
anyone with some common sense in them will do whatever is necessary to keep
any memory swapping to a bare minimum.

  If most people respond in the same manner, what does that say for AmigaDOS
lacking VM and OS/2 having it?  Is it that important a feature to have it
around if the natural response is to minimize the amount of memory swapping
going on?

>One nice thing about VM is that it takes away some of the workload
>from the programmer, at the expense of some performance.  No need to
>worry about overlays and such, for example - it's all managed by the
>OS.

  If the programmer is bad to average, probably.  But, just like hand-coded
assembly versus compiled code, in the hands of an expert, never...  ;-)

>Going with this analogy, overlays would fall in the same category as
>cooperative multitasking.  Each program can manage its own memory
>resource usage for optimum performance.  But some programs will do it
>well and others badly.  If you leave it up to the OS programmers, then
>someone just has to write the demand paging code once (and do a good
>job of it), and all programs will benefit, at the expense of some
>performance.

  I'm not so sure I'd agree with that.  The domain of an overlayed program
is much better defined than a cooperatively designed multitasker.  But, the
only facts I can give on this is personal experience, most overlayed programs
seem to behave rather well that I've come in contact with, certainly all of the
major MS-DOS applications qualify here.

  Can't say the same for CMT's though, like the Mac and pre-Windows 3.x...

  -jack-
From: dac@prolix.apana.org.au (Andrew Clayton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Arexx not useful? Was: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 13:59:06 GMT
 <C0GBL5.Gor@news.iastate.edu> <Ace.04fh@auilcs0.UUCP>
Organization: More like Dis~, really.
X-Newsreader: Arn V1.00

In article <Ace.04fh@auilcs0.UUCP>, James Knowlton writes:

> In article <C0GBL5.Gor@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
> 
> ->    ARexx is no micacle scripting language.  It only allows you to slightly

Marc "Putdown" Barrett does it again.

Arexx is cool.

Rexx is cool.

Hey, even IBM PeeCees have access to REXX so it MUST be good, by
your retarded definition of the term 'good'.

Why don't you go hassle Macheads about their platform's collected
difficulties. Or become a road statistic.

Whatever your choice, please leave comp.sys.amiga.*

Thanks in advance.

Dac
--
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Originator: torrie@Xenon.Stanford.EDU
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: 12 Jan 93 08:55:38 GMT

peterk@cbmger.de.so.commodore.com (Dr Peter Kittel Germany) writes:

>But when I compare the Basic interpreters of the Old Days by Bill & Co
>against the compiler competitors from then (can you say UCSD Pascal?), 
>it won and wins hands down.

  Obviously you aren't a fan of structured programming.  UCSD Pascal
(at least on the Apple II) was far, far superior to the Microsoft-derived
Applesoft Basic.  You could create libraries, write and link in assembly
language routines, it had modules for multiple source files, not to 
mention the integrated full screen editor and filer.  But the most important
thing was that UCSD Pascal was the best way to teach structured design
principles on microcomputers until at least 1984/85 when True Basic
emerged.
  The high school I was at used UCSD Pascal from its release of 1980
on the Apple II until well into 1986.  I'd shudder to think what most
of the students would have turned out like if they'd been taught the
Basics of the same era.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu 
Embrace rationalism, reject superstition.           Break away from the past.
"...there is only one thing worse than having marketing people on a project,
 and that is having no marketing people on a project."  - Larry Tesler.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: c92andst@odalix.ida.liu.se (Andreas Stenmark)
Subject: Re: Advocacy? What do you want for the Amiga?
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 11:52:28 GMT

lindblad@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Jarkko Lindblad) writes:

>Marc N. Barrett (barrett@iastate.edu) wrote:

>>    That's a very good idea.  I don't really care who Commodore has develop the
>> package, as long as the package is done well.  And you are right that it is
>> better for Commodore to subcontract the writing of the software to a third-
>> party than to do it themselves.  I think it can be argued that one of the 
>> reasons why the first incarnation of AmigaVision was halfway good was because
>> it was done by a third-party and not by Commodore.

>Yes. It does not matter what Commodore does, it sucks anyways.
>Commodore can't do anything right, their programmers suck suck suck. I
>just wish Commodore would had let thrid party to develope Amiga 3000
>and 4000 for them.

That's probably more a marketing question. The tech guys at C= are
probably not worse than the ones at Apple or IBM.

>Also the operating system should have done by some
>third party - the best choise would have been Apple, heck they should
>have bought the right to use Mac's OS in Amiga's! And Microsoft Basic
>should be put back in all Amiga packages.

Microsoft Basic for the Amiga is not very good. Despite the fact that
it doesn't follow the simple rules of programming under AmigaDOS, it's
very slow. It's probably easy to write a faster Basic interpreter in
Lisp. MS claims that the AmigaBasic is written in 68k asm.

(The fact that they (MS) embarassed themselves so much with AmigaBasic
is probably one reason that they won't develop programs for AmigaDOS
today. They simply can't.)

And - using Mac OS in Amiga would not be an improvement.
--

------///-------------------------------------------------------------------
     /// Andreas Stenmark - Computer Science at LiTH, Sweden
    ///  Internet: c92andst@und.ida.liu.se or stenmark@lysator.liu.se
\\ ///   - Don't bother - I'm already dead...
 \X//
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy