gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/30/85)
Please take this article in the spirit in which it's offerred. I'm not trying to flame Amiga or amiga-lovers, just trying to inject some reality into Mike Schwartz's critique of a "detrimental" Amiga review in InfoWorld... In article <309@3comvax.UUCP>, mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) writes: > The latest issue of InforWorld reviews the Amiga, and is a real detriment > to the Amiga. Not only did the article contain several > mistakes, but they reviewed version 1.0 of the workbench and kickstart, > which we knew had bugs. Now, 1.1 has been out for a few weeks, Maybe infoworld was one of the sites that got 1.0 after waiting for 1.1. Or maybe they wrote the review a few weeks ago. Lord knows even the Usenet sometimes takes a few weeks to get an article to me. > My Amiga crashes all the time when I pass extra parameters to function > calls, etc., but during normal use, system crashes are rare. This is a recommendation of the machine? Traditional 68000 Unix C compilers don't coredump your C programs when you pass extra parameters, they just ignore the extras. Let alone crashing the whole system. Sounds like they botched the function call convention. > InfoWorld also talked mostly about the 256K machine, which is like > reviewing a 64K IBM PC. The Amiga is an 8+Megabyte of RAM machine, > and those of us who own Amigas are just licking our chops waiting for > the equivalent of an AST card. The Amiga with 8+ megabytes and the > 68020 should be compared with the IBM AT and MicroVax. A vaporware comparison if I ever heard one. Keep licking. > "As an aside, we forsee a flood > of bad software written for the Amiga by programmers unaccustomed to > multi-tasking programs..." is pretty stupid, if you ask me. I've seen too many programs written for SunWindows that sit there burning 100% of the CPU polling when they should be select()ing. I suspect that people who buy Suns are more experienced than those who buy Amigas (on the average, no flames please). So I expect that many Amiga developers will make the same kinds of mistakes and worse. (Hmm, I recall that VM/370 had a test for polling loops in its supervisor instruction emulation code, which would just sleep the virtual machine until something interesting happened. Commodore, are you listening?) > InfoWorld > did not even mention a single piece of software that we have all been > seeing and hearing about since they were anounced and demonstrated at > the June launch. > Another quote: "Judging from the number of beta-test programs floating > around, we can expect to get a chance to judge the software side of the > Amiga system a lot sooner than we could when the Macintosh was first > introduced." Well, in June, the Amiga had more software packages announced > ... You are just confirming what they said. "There's lots of software being announced and demoed and beta-tested and very little being shipped yet." I'm glad InfoWorld hasn't fallen to the level of Byte in reviewing random alpha test stuff to beat their ridiculous lead times for articles. I want a review that tells me what I get if I walk in and buy one.
mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) (12/31/85)
In article <365@l5.uucp> gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >Please take this article in the spirit in which it's offerred. >I'm not trying to flame Amiga or amiga-lovers, just trying to inject >some reality into Mike Schwartz's critique of a "detrimental" Amiga >review in InfoWorld... > Is this a personal attack? > >Maybe infoworld was one of the sites that got 1.0 after waiting for >1.1. Or maybe they wrote the review a few weeks ago. Lord knows even >the Usenet sometimes takes a few weeks to get an article to me. > They got their Amiga at the same place I got mine. Computer Attic called me on the phone to tell me that they had just gotten in their 1.1 software and that they would make a copy for me. I assume they did this for all of their customers. >> My Amiga crashes all the time when I pass extra parameters to function >> calls, etc., but during normal use, system crashes are rare. > >This is a recommendation of the machine? Traditional 68000 Unix C >compilers don't coredump your C programs when you pass extra >parameters, they just ignore the extras. Let alone crashing the whole >system. Sounds like they botched the function call convention. > You missed the point, it was my bugs that crash the Amiga, not the Amiga's bugs (it does still have a few, but they are RARE). >> "As an aside, we forsee a flood >> of bad software written for the Amiga by programmers unaccustomed to >> multi-tasking programs..." is pretty stupid, if you ask me. > >I've seen too many programs written for SunWindows that sit there >burning 100% of the CPU polling when they should be select()ing. I >suspect that people who buy Suns are more experienced than those >who buy Amigas (on the average, no flames please). So I expect that >many Amiga developers will make the same kinds of mistakes and worse. > Who are these developers that write these SunWindows programs that are worth all the money that SOME people pay for? I doubt these people would survive very long in the Amiga marketplace. After all, they are only competing against guys like Microsoft, Lattice, Electronic Arts, Mindscape, Broderbund, Strategic Simulations, and Aztec. Other companies you can expect to see software from in the future are Lotus, MicroPro, Borland, and other such companies (when the market is right). These must be the inexperienced guys that InfoWorld was talking about (sarcasm intended here folks). > >> InfoWorld >> did not even mention a single piece of software that we have all been >> seeing and hearing about since they were anounced and demonstrated at >> the June launch. >> Another quote: "Judging from the number of beta-test programs floating >> around, we can expect to get a chance to judge the software side of the >> Amiga system a lot sooner than we could when the Macintosh was first >> introduced." Well, in June, the Amiga had more software packages announced >> ... > >You are just confirming what they said. "There's lots of software being >announced and demoed and beta-tested and very little being shipped yet." > >I'm glad InfoWorld hasn't fallen to the level of Byte in reviewing random >alpha test stuff to beat their ridiculous lead times for articles. >I want a review that tells me what I get if I walk in and buy one. They DIDN'T tell you what you'd get if you walked in and bought one. OR The DIDN'T tell you what you'd get if you walked in and bought one (and just in time for the Christmas buying season, too), did they. They told you what you could have bought a while ago. That is what I wrote my original article about. They also didn't tell you what you could expect to buy down the road, just that the road was a lot closer than for any machine. Seems like this fact would be a great reason to buy a new machine with potentially no software. I admit that potentially, there is no software for the Amiga, but the sun might not rise tomorrow either (no pun intended). -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= OK, why do I have to defend myself? I stated my opinions, and I hope you liked reading them. I like the fact that I got a response, too. I think that it is a bad habit to confuse a rebuttal with personal remarks. I see it all over the place in this newsgroup and between this newsgroup and the Atari one. Let's try to start a rebuttal by saying something like I have a different opinion, or this is how I see things... It sure would be a lot nicer. I appologize for using this paragraph as a soapbox, but I couldn't help myself. I think John Gilmore meant what he said at the beginning of his response "Please take this article in the spirit in which it's offered" to mean that what I originally wrote did not offend him or get him angry (or whatever), just that he had a different view. Then he fell into the typical flame the last guy who wrote anything mode that we all seem to go into.
mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) (01/03/86)
This is a public apology from myself to John Gilmore. I did not at all intend my response to your response as a "flame" about you, but about many of the newsgroup articles in general. I did not feel that your response was a flame on me or my article at all, and I tried to make it clear in my response (to your response). An example of the type of article that got me upset about flaming was (I will not mention names) one in which some guy responded to another guy's article and said things like > I think..... >>There you go thinking again... etc., etc. I realize that I should have probably used a different article than your response to make my feelings about some of the horrible (my opinion) flaming that does go on. I wanted everyone interested in this newsgroup to see this apology and to know that I sent you mail about your response as well as responding in my (to some, I hope not to you) offensive way. I respect everyone's opinions in the newsgroup, but I imagine someone new (like I was a couple of weeks ago) reading through the Amiga articles, seeing all this public flaming of individuals and their statements, and getting turned off or just being too afraid to participate. This was my only concern when I wrote my statements, not really anything in particular about your response. Like I said, I am glad that my article got a response, and I encourage anyone who cares to respond also (but please state your opinion, and keep the flames off of individuals). By the way, I want to correct one of my statements in my original article: >> My amiga crashes when I pass too many arguments to a function... should be >> My amiga crashes when I pass the WRONG ARGUMENTS to certain functions, not because of any particular bugs in the OS... I will try to be more explicit in the future (for those of you who seem to require it of me) about such things. I think we have a real good thing here - an excellent way to share ideas, code, strategies, etc. However, it can also be a bummer sorting the good stuff out of the ashes. So John, please accept my apology - I meant no offense to you (and tried to make that clear). mike schwartz "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires." --- Smokey the Bear ---
gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) (01/05/86)
In article <323@3comvax.UUCP>, mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) writes: > So John, please accept my apology - I meant > no offense to you (and tried to make that clear). Thanks. We all get carried away and we all get misinterpreted when someone a few thousand miles away can't say "now what did you really mean by that?" and fix the misunderstanding immediately. I've done more than my share of flaming (sorry folks) and Mike's apology humbles me. > "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires." > --- Smokey the Bear --- "forest fires prevent bears" -- and readable newsgroups