From: rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard M. Warner)
Subject: Re: Byte should dump Pournelle (was Re: Windows 3.1 virus attacks OS/2 2.0!)
Organization: San Jose State University, Math & CS
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 16:28:03 GMT

In article <weinkam.713648226@sfu.ca> weinkam@fraser.sfu.ca (James Lawrence Weinkam) writes:
>From: weinkam@fraser.sfu.ca (James Lawrence Weinkam)
>Subject: Re: Byte should dump Pournelle (was Re: Windows 3.1 virus attacks OS/2 2.0!)
>Date: 12 Aug 92 19:37:06 GMT
>rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard M. Warner) writes:
>
>Joe User, when installing windows 3.1 will use the default settings.
>From what has been said, the default settings will screw up previous
>installations of windows even if the user does not want these to be
>changed.  Thus by Pournelle doing exactly what Joe User would do, he
>has brought fourth the knowledge that windows 3.1 install will mess up
>previous windows setups when using the default installation. 
>
>Why complain about one of his good Joe User columns?
>
>James

I am not complaining about the good in his columns - I am complaining about 
how bad, overall, his column is.  Take a look at the most recent issue.
First off, he has discovered that fonts look better at higher resolutions!
This is a guy who has state of the art video cards and 17" and 21"
screens and he confesses that he has been running Windows at 640x480 on
these things!  Inexcusable that he should learn this so late in the 
process of adopting Windows.

Then there are at least two instance in the column where he talks about
hitting a roadblock, ripping off a fax to the company concerned, and then
finding the answer in the manuals!  RTFM should be posted in 3' letters
on every wall in Chaos Manor.  This is an unnecessary burden on the
tech support staff and teaches everyone that you fax first and read later.
Inexcusable.

The first part of the column is a rag about installation of ISA boards.
Then he confesses that his tower was upright as he tried to force it in
and that it went much better when he turned the tower on its side.  This
from a man who extolled the virtues of S100 bus systems when he first 
started his Chaos Manor column.  He should know how to install a board - the 
problems he had are indicative of how isolated he has become from the world
of the common user by having tech support folks from every company at his
beck and call.  

A major part of every column is blatant advertising for his books (I think
every column in the past 3 years has mentioned the sequel to his so-so
'Mote' book), his wife's (Roberta) consulting business, and occasional
plugs for whatever company his son (Alex) is working for now.  And then
there is a copious amount of mis-information thrown in for good measure.
The best example I can think of from the last issue had to do with the
formatting information in Word for Windows.  He claimed (erroneously) that
the way W4W stored paragraph level information was a result of its
object-oriented development.  W4W has little OOPs in it, and the technique
for storing formatting information by paragraph goes back at least to
DOS version 3, long before MS ever heard of OOP programming (for the
uninitiated, Word and W4W have a marker at the end of the paragraph; this
marker stores a pointer to the paragraph level formatting information,
which is stored, along with other formatting info, at the end of the file).

His columns have little connection to the real Joe User - they are mostly
tirades that expose his isolation from the real world.  To get back to
your original point, Joe User is not going to give a flying flip if
the Windows 3.1 install overwrites previous versions of Windows, because
that is precisely what Joe A.(verage) User wants - 1 version of
Windows on his hard disk.