wilson@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Paul Wilson) (01/10/90)
In article <3111@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> halam@umnd-cpe-cola.UUCP (Haseen Alam) writes: >In article <774@gandalf.littlei.UUCP> davidl@leonardo.intel.com (David D. Levine) writes: >>I just read an article entitled "Newest Macintosh Deserves Honors as First PC >>of the 1990s," which was forwarded to me from Compu$erve. It was bylined "By >>T.R. Reid, Washington Post Staff Writer," so I assume it first appeared in >>the Washington Post. >> > [ negative comments about Reid's review deleted ] I saw this review, too, in some major newspaper or other, and BRIT HUME, the network newshead, had his name on it, too. (First, I believe.) What bugged me about it was that it said that the IIci was abaout a gazillion times faster than a 25MHz 80386 machine, for some program they ran. Clearly, they screwed up bigtime. Maybe the 80386 had no 80387 and was doing some trap handling every few instructions, or maybe they just measured wrong. Nobody with a whit of sense and knowledge could actually say that the IIci is that much faster than a fast 80386. (They said it computed more values for some function in 15 seconds than the MS-DOS machine computed in several HOURS.) I'm not saying the IIci isn't faster, but not by orders of magnitude, for sure. And these bozos were too stupid to realize their comparison had to be way, way off. They not only didn't realize they'd screwed up, but they trumpeted the IIci as a breathtaking leap forward, leaving the MS-DOS machines in the dust. That seemed to be the point of the review. It's pretty annoying for Apple to be painted as making huge leaps, in the national media, when in fact they're very conservatively taking baby steps and charging premium prices. (Don't get me wrong -- I like the Mac a lot. But Apple could advance quicker, especially in terms of hardware.) So anyway, I took the time to listen to some of Brit Hume's TV reporting about Panama. You know what? He is a moron. Yikes. (Whenever I read/watch news stories about things I know well, I realize reporters usually don't know much about what they're writing/talking about. Makes me wonder what the hell really is going on out there...) Paul R. Wilson Software Systems Laboratory lab ph.: (312) 996-9216 U. of Illin. at C. EECS Dept. (M/C 154) wilson@carcoar.stanford.edu Box 4348 Chicago,IL 60680