oz@utcsstat.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) (06/14/84)
>>This is NOT VAXnet. This is NOT BSDnet. This is USENET. The software that >>we publish needs to be portable so that it can reach the widest possible >>audience. If it doesn't we are artificially crippling the network. > >So you will have us cripple our software instead? Chuq simply acknowledges the importance of portability. How is it that the effort that goes into producing a portable program is crippling ?? Are you sure you are using "C" ?? > >>What you >>are telling us to do is basically the same as suggesting that a person >>write a program for the IBM PC but require that the PC have 512K instead of >>128K so that you can do everything. > >I have bad news, Chuqui - most IBM PC software needs more than 128K to >run in. Most of it will run in 256K, but I suspect that the 8086's crippled >addressing modes have more to do with that than anything else. > So what ? Given any amount of memory, there will always be a programmer out there to fill it up with an application that used to run on half as much memory before, without any significant improvements over anything. (Oh sure ! space vs. speed trade-off - only if you knew what needs to run faster !!!) >>Anyone who honestly things they can ignored PDP's has no idea how many of >>them are still out there. They also seem to ignore the trend to >>workstations and smaller personal machines, not every one of which is going >>to try to simulate vaxes. Massive addressing spaces is for the lazy >>programmers who don't want to have to think about things like structure and >>efficiency (both of which are sometimes amazingly lacking in usenet >>software at times). >> >>Chuq > >I think you have that backwards. Those who insist that everything should >run on 1970'ish hardware are ignoring the trend to personal workstations, >most of which are based on the 68000. I don't know of *any* personal >workstations based on machines with small address spaces; could you >name some for me? > GOD ! nobody says EVERYTHING should run on small-address-space computers. Do you think all the existing hardware will magically dissapear from the surface of this earth ?? How about MICRO PDP-11's and PRO-350's with System V or VENIX on them ?? Surely, you are ready to tell us all about this NS<whatever> or MC<whatever> based micro with 5-meg memory that the next-door neighbor cabbie got !! >As for structure and efficiency, some things just flat *will not* fit on >a PDP-11. Examples upon request. > > > <mike > > Some things will need to be re-written, not to fit them into PDP-11's but to get rid of hideous hacks, unelegant design principles (or lack thereof!) and silly "featurisms" that cost more than they are worth.. Magically, those things may end up 40kb smaller !! cheers for sensible software development !! OZ (the wizard of something or another..) Real-life: Ozan S. Yigit Dept. of Computer Science York University Electric: decvax!utzoo!yetti!oz ............!utcsstat!oz Ps: We do run well equipped VAXEN, but we are sensible about it !!
north@down (/*NOTREACHED*/) (06/15/84)
USENET is not software. USENET is a set of protocols for both machines and humans. if these protocols were well-defined then we might eventually have programs that implement them correctly. trying to limit the number of newsgroups or amount of traffic on the net just to appease certain braindamaged programs for which bug fixes are posted daily and to make life easier for trs-80s is not only silly, but impossible. stephen c north
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (06/19/84)
USENET is not software. USENET is a set of protocols for both machines and humans. Actually, Usenet is the set of machines that get net.announce. if these protocols were well-defined then we might eventually have programs that implement them correctly. The protocols ARE documented, have you read your doc/standard that comes with 2.10? It's also available on the ARPANET as RFC850. The whole point of documenting the standards is that hopefully someone else will write a wonderful implementation that takes 2K of memory and does everything better.
honey@down.FUN (code 101) (06/20/84)
where in rfc850 does it say that there can be no more than 511 newsgroups? peter honeyman