eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene Miya N.) (05/21/87)
While I think the suggestion is a little premature, I think this is the
best community to discuss this topic (even with all the flames).
Let me tell you why. Before I went on vacation, I went to the so-called
Supercomputer conference in Santa Clara (also noted in Time a week ago.
[I had friends at three sites specifically directed not to attend this thing.]
I guess I have really gotten use to Usenix meetings, it felt really
antiquated. Here is what I suggest you have your various Unix marketing
departments do:
1) the Usenix policy of having a common Ethernet is an excellent one.
Connectivity between manufacturer is important. Anytime a vendor show
is given, the market department should ask, "Fine, now what's
the LAN situation?" "What?" "You will have a LAN for the vendors?" . . .
This is a great Usenix idea. Really leading edge. Show you Unix
networking savey by asking all your conferences to get out of the dark
ages. There should be a net at SIGGRAPH for instance.
2) A vendor has to be able to open their doors for their competitors to
run programs. No propritrary benchmarks. Make the machine open.
3) Let the users do hand on's. There were three Connection Machines
at the last conference and friends in exhibit. They were really
paranoid about me typing on the LISP machine keyboard when all I wanted
to do was learn about the environment.
4) Output run information in the form of native language comment.
Stick output into source of program like a chain letter. This suggest
was first proposed by Frank McMahon, the developer of the LLNL Loops,
aka the MFLOPS, or Livermore Kernels, etc.
This means a C in column 1 for FORTRAN, /* */ in C or PL/1, and so forth
{I suggest (* *) for Pascal since {} are surprising infrequent }, -- for Ada.
5) There is NO RULE nunber 5.
More later.
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
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