byard@dca-ems (04/28/83)
From: Larry Byard (WSE-EUR) <byard at dca-ems>
Number: 3 Length: 483 bytes
Date: 27 Apr 83 12:23:27 PDT (Wednesday)
From: Newman.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: Lisa in the Sky with Diamond
To: Larry Byard (WSE-EUR) <byard@dca-ems.ARPA>
cc: Newman.es@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
What is Diamond? What is Telematics? What is the AMH ROC? What is
WWMCCS software? What are A/O functions?
I found your message very interesting, but I am baffled by the
abbreviations and project(?) names. Please spell out what you are
saying next time!
Thanks, Ron
<*>
Number: 4 Length: 302 bytes
Date: 27 Apr 83 12:50:14 PDT (Wednesday)
From: Newman.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: Lisa in the Sky with Diamond
To: Larry Byard (WSE-EUR) <byard@dca-ems.ARPA>
cc: Newman.es@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Also, what is HQ USEUCOM? Is it a European trade show for American companies?
Thanks, Ron
<*>
==============================================================================
Ron,
I did not intend for those messages to be placed in the WorkS.
Due to an oversight (I assume full responsibility) they were. No
"great harm" was done. Except, those messages are out of context
with my overall thinking about Lisa. They express my INITIAL
enthusiasum (which I still have) for the apparent potential of
the machine; but they do not express my concerns about respon-
siveness. The following message, which appeared earlier in the
WorkS, tends to balance the scale on this somewhat. I intended,
and still do, to write something for the WorkS after I have more
hands-on experience. When I do, as I always try to do, I will
tailor the message to the expected audience. To answer your
questions, briefly...
Diamond is an R&D project being done by Bolt Beranek and Newman
Inc. (BBN) under contract with the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA). It is a multi-media (text, graphics,
and voice) document system. It includes the ARPANET protocols.
It is being written in Pascal, is presently being hosted on the
BBN Jericho personal computer, and, as part of the contract
requirements, will be rehosted on commercially available hard-
ware. There is now an operational prototype and I(!) think it is
impressive. The following are some words I wrote about Diamond
last January...
"As a matter of interest, I spent two days at BBN towards the end
of Nov. investigating the Jericho. ... I'm not too impressed
with the hardware (although it has "everything": lots of bit-
slice power, "inexhaustable" hard disk capacity, half MByte of
RAM, multi-frame, bit-mapped display (color or full-page B&W take
your pick, or take both--they had two machines set-up), and a
swiss mouse) because it has a much bigger "footprint" than most
personal computers/intelligent work stations. But what did
impress me was the software (code-named Diamond). Sliding/
shrinking/scrolling/over-lapping widows, popup menus, very clean
conceptual design, nice database structure (looks like a superset
of InfoMail), a full IP/TCP/telnet/ftp host protocol capability
(it's operational on the ARPANET now; I sent a message from it),
EMACS made friendly(!), and multimedia documents (graphics, text,
and voice(!)). And it makes the Star (which I played with for a
couple of days last June) look like an 8080 compared to a 68000
as far as speed is concerned. The software is written in a BBN
version of Pascal (multi-tasking, etc.) and may be converted to
Ada. The contract (DARPA) requires that they rehost the software
to a more widely available hardware system."
Any problem with those acronyms?
Telematics is term coined by James Martin in his book, "The
Telematic Society," Prentice-Hall, 1981. The book was previously
published under the title, "The Wired Society," which tells you
something about the meaning of the word, "Telematic."
AMH ROC is an acronym for Automated Message Handling, Required
Operational Capability. It is an extensive set of user require-
ments for automating the paper-based, military message system.
Essentially, it can be thought of as a description, from the
user's viewpoint, of what we think we need in the way of
integrated office automation (oa)--oa with a military "flavor."
WWMCCS is an acronym for the World-Wide Military Command and
Control System, a big big system. Plans are to modernize it in
the next few years. Implementing the AMH ROC is part of that
modernization.
A/O is a military acronym for action officer. Action officers
are junior to medium level executives or "staffers." As envi-
sioned, they, their superiors, and supporting personal will be
the users of the system implemented to meet the AMH ROC require-
ments.
HQ USEUCOM is an acronym for Head Quarters, U. S. European
Command. It is the top echelon Headquarters of the U.S. mili-
tary forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) in Europe.
The HQ has approximately 700 A/O's.
Hope this answers your questions.
Mel, this one IS for publication.
Larry
==============================================================================
Number: 49 Length: 3825 bytes
Date: 11 Feb 1983 16:59:35 EST (Friday)
From: Larry Byard (WSE-EUR) <byard at dca-ems>
Subject: Responsiveness of the Lisa
To: works at rutgers
Cc: byard at dca-ems
We have read with interest about Lisa in the WorkS (thank you),
and in articles in Time, Newsweek, BYTE, InfoWorld, Businessweek,
etc. At first glance, the machine looks(!) very impressive for
the money. But then one sees hints here and there that all is
not well. I refer to comments on the machine's responsiveness.
Digressing a bit... Last summer we investigated XEROX's Star.
I first saw the Star at the Hannover Fair and was very favorably
impressed by a DEMONSTRATION of the machine. I managed to sit at
the keyboard/mouse for awhile and was able to learn the basics of
the machine in about 30 minutes. Soon thereafter, I started to
really notice how very slow the system was. Nevertheless, at
that point, I was enthusiastic about its potential for meeting
our requirements.
Arrangements were made to demonstrate the Star system to our
staff. XEROX said they would set-up a faster Star, one with a
later version of the software and more memory. They brought the
Ethernet, two Stars, a small laser printer, etc. They did an
absolutely superb job of showing their products. I must say that
most of the staff officers were INITIALLY, very favorably
impressed with the system. We had to "drag" some people away
from the workstations--they were having that much fun!
Although faster than the version I saw in Hannover, the Star
system was still very slow. As one became more familiar with the
machine (and some of the razzle-dazzle began to wear off)--that
is, as the man part of the man/machine interface became more pro-
ficient and able to operate the various tools faster--the inada-
quate responsiveness of the system became more and more
untolerable. To make things worse, the system didn't print or
send messages in background. One had to literally sit there for
minutes(!) while documents were printed or transmitted.
The XEROX reps responded to our comments about Star's speed
with promises that the system would be 'speeded-up.' Mainly,
because it was so sluggish, we concluded that Star was not a
suitable solution to our needs. In my opinion, XEROX put the
system on the market before it was ready.
Do I see a repeat of the same sort of thing with the Lisa?
How many of those glowing reports are based on hands-on
experience? How many were overly influenced by the geee whiz
factor, or by demonstrations which did not make the briefly men-
tioned responsiveness problems as apparent as they would be after
several days of actual use? Will the user be very happy during
the first 30 minutes of exposure to the machine, while learning
its basics, and then, after using it for two or three days,
become completely disgruntled because the machine can't keep up
with him? Is the Lisa ready for market?
Regardless of the Smalltalk philosophy of designing it in
after the fact, responsiveness is a vital part of the ergonomic
equation. In my opinion, an "ergonomic engine" (if I may coin a
term) presents a new problem, a "two-edged sword": the bit-mapped
display, conceptual hierarchy, modeless operation, and mouse make
tasks seem easier yet take more hardware and software overhead,
and time or speed to accomplish. A tool for the mind, operating
at levels of abstraction more easily assimilated by the mind,
will doubtlessly have to respond in terms of real-time thinking
or it will soon bore and alienate the user (particularly, the
computer-naive user), no matter how "nice" it is and how easy it
is to learn. That is, if it appears simple, it must be fast,
very fast. Any comments?
Larry Byard
byard@dca-ems
WWMCCS System Engineering - U.S. European Command
Stuttgart, Germany
<*>
P.S. I briefly looked again at Star while in Hannover this year
and didn't notice anything new, except that the machines were not
THE focal-point of XEROX's exhibit as they were last year. At
this point I would say, subjectively, that Lisa appears to be
faster than Star once an applications program is loaded. From my
limited exposure (please note the intentional caveats throughout
this message and my other messages) Lisa appears to take, concep-
tually, too long to switch between applications programs, unless
one thinks in terms of applications being loaded from floppies;
and who wants to do that... wait that long... wait at all? The
hard disc seems to be consistently busy all of that time; maybe a
bottleneck somewhere. The 35 seconds previously reported in the
WorkS and in the Feb. issue of Byte (as I recall) seems about
right. I might add that the Apple people appeared nervous every-
time I looked at my watch. Also, I would say that the Feb. issue
of Byte, the article starting on page 33, fairly well expresses
my present, overall reaction to the machine. One of my primary
concerns is how long it takes to move stuff from the word pro-
cessing application to Lisa Terminal (communications interface)
and visa versa. I'll know about that next week when Lisa will, I
hope, temporarily replace my CPT 8525, which I am using now
(that's how I did those "tricks" with the messages in this
message... and one of the reasons I am heavily contributing to
the deforestation of this planet).
LFB