bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) (11/02/88)
From: conrad@wucs1.wustl.edu (H. Conrad Cunningham) >In article <4391@ubc-cs.UUCP> manis@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: >> ...Basically, the >>issue for `revolutionariness' is not the operating system, but the under- >>lying physical architecture. ... >>... >>It's clear that the leverage we need for truly revolutionary applications >>comes from massively parallel systems, either loosely coupled (in a network) >>or tightly coupled (e.g., Transputers or the Connection Machine). ... > > I have no disagreement that wide-scale availability and usage of >massive parallelism is one of the potential revolutions somewhere over >the horizon. Innovative computer and communications architectures and >designs must play a big part in that revolution. However, without >devising new ways to exploit the parallelism on a wide-range of >problems, all the fancy parallel hardware won't be so revolutionary. >The revolution will be as much--maybe moreso--a "software" revolution >than a "hardware" revolution. New languages, operating systems, >tools, theories, methodologies, algorithms, and/or techniques are >needed. First off, consider the company I work for (and also note I was saying the same as I am about to say before I came here a few months ago, don't confuse cause and effect.) The problem with both of the above comments is that they are making the "best" the enemy of the "good". I have no doubt that all of the above coming true will make massive parallelism more useful, but to some extent this whole line of reasoning is a thought virus, something which infects your thinking about a new idea and renders your thoughts nearly useless. Non-massive parallelism is here *today* in completely useful packaging. Why does something as simple as knowing that while your compile is running in the background your foreground is running on a different CPU so response remains flat. Also, with several CPUs, things like compiles of lots of files can speed up at least linearly (at least seems odd until you realize how efficiently the buffer caches and shared text segments can get used during parallel compiles, they're not only cpu bound but use a lot of disk resources as well.) Also, traditional unix pipes like: lastcomm | sed mumble | sort -u | wc -l will run in parallel on 4 (in this case) CPUs. There are a lot of other examples, like I said, don't make the best the enemy of the good and say "Ah, computers are useless, no one has even solved the halting problem yet!" which is what a lot of this moaning and groaning sounds like. -Barry Shein, ||Encore||
manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) (11/03/88)
In article <4069@encore.UUCP> bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) writes: >There are a lot of other examples, like I said, don't make the best >the enemy of the good and say "Ah, computers are useless, no one has >even solved the halting problem yet!" which is what a lot of this >moaning and groaning sounds like. I have a great deal of respect for Barry, but I think he's under a misapprehension about my original remarks. Basically, what I intended to say is that the NeXT machine doesn't seem tremendously technologically revolutionary (though definitely nice). It will, however, reach an audience which has never had access to this sort of heavy-duty computing capability before. What they'll do with it I don't know, but it will certainly bear watching. The PC is an excellent example of this sort of thing. When the PC was released in 1981, the dominant machine was the Apple ][. This machine, however, had the cachet of being a toy (you could play games on it). The PC was marketed as a serious business computer, though it was in fact a glorified Apple ][ (it even had a cassette port). Suddenly, a lot of people had PC's on their desks, and they started using them for all kinds of applications. Technologically, the PC is boring. However, its wide availability led to all kinds of applications being developed, and to a tremendous lowering of prices. The PC led to increased credibility of microcomputers, and therefore set the stage for the Mac (itself a revolutionary machine). I don't know whether the NeXT machine will be revolutionary in this sense. A lot will depend upon the fortunes of the company, and how their customers use the machine. I do however wish them well. ____________ Vincent Manis | manis@cs.ubc.ca ___ \ _____ The Invisible City of Kitezh | manis@cs.ubc.cdn ____ \ ____ Department of Computer Science | manis%cs.ubc@relay.cs.net ___ /\ ___ University of British Columbia | uunet!ubc-cs!manis __ / \ __ Vancouver, BC, Canada | (604) 228-2394 _ / __ \ _ "In the U.S.S.R., newspapers all print the same thing because ____________ the government tells them to. American newspapers all print the same thing even though the government doesn't tell them to."
bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) (11/04/88)
I agree with Vincent's apprehensions. What would probably be revolutionary would be an inexpensive home computer who's forte is setting up home-brew usenet/e-mail links between households. Something like an Atari/ST or PC/Klone with a 2400b modem and a 100MB disk with a "just pick a site name and a neighbor" software set-up. It doesn't have to be fast. It could probably be done for around $2000 list or less. Centralized service machines could then be built around this. I suppose FIDOnet was an attempt at that, perhaps someone from that culture could comment on its current status? The important distinction from services like CompuServe is that a significant amount of the computing would go on in the households. What do other people think would be revolutionary in a personal computer? -Barry Shein, ||Encore||
dave@micropen (David F. Carlson) (11/09/88)
In article <4429@ubc-cs.UUCP>, manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: > In article <4069@encore.UUCP> bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) writes: > >There are a lot of other examples, like I said, don't make the best > >the enemy of the good and say "Ah, computers are useless, no one has > >even solved the halting problem yet!" which is what a lot of this > >moaning and groaning sounds like. > > I don't know whether the NeXT machine will be revolutionary in this sense. > A lot will depend upon the fortunes of the company, and how their customers > use the machine. I do however wish them well. > > ____________ Vincent Manis | manis@cs.ubc.ca Something on NeXT that I have seen so I'll say it: Note that Apple's successes (and therefore arguably Job's) have not been from the rev I machines. Every see an Apple I or even an Apple II? No, the real success was the Apple II+ (which is still being sold in a slightly different form today.) Similarly the Mac was an anemic toy when first released: tiny little B&W screen with 128K memory with no possibility of expansion. I was really the MAC II that made the Mac viable for anyone who needs a real machine. I have no reason to doubt that this machine for "academia" is just the Apple I for NeXT. Its the NeXT II+ that I'm waiting for: the machine for the rest of us. -- David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc. micropen!dave@ee.rochester.edu "The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll
gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells) (11/09/88)
In article <4090@encore.UUCP> bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) writes: > >What do other people think would be revolutionary in a personal >computer? I feel particularly qualified to answer this, since I live with 2 techno-klutzes. I can make wonderful things happen with the machines in our house, they have trouble making anything work right. The comments that follow apply equally to computers, television sets, VCR's and micro-wave ovens. 1) They must become simplier to use. _MUCH_ simpler. My wife cannot reliably record a TV program of her choice because she can't remember to set all the appropreate options (start time, end time, channel, antenna/cable, etc). She also can't reliably run the word processor, for the same reasons, even though I have relabeled the function keys as "store", "retrieve", etc. 2) Endless options, nice for the truely interested, should somehow be reserved for the expert. The general person wants to write a letter, and send 6 copies of it to friends. Footnotes, reference list, widows, orphans, binder, etc, options are just confusing. 3) The general population wants to _see_ it on the screen the way it will look on paper. They want color and the ablity to draw pictures. They want color printers. 4) They want "point and shoot", literally. Ask a person who is struglling with any program what they want to do. They will point at a word (for instance) thatthey want moved, point at where they want it, then point at the printer. Their hand never touches the keyboard. We will have a revelution when fingers are the primary pointing device, WYSIWYG test editors are the rule, the program can configure itself (the last WP packageI ionstalled had 5 floppies full of printer config files. _I_ know they were mostly duplicates with different names on them, but the average person doesn't),color and graphics are simple to use and include in all operations, what appearson the screen appears on the paper and, most important, the documents don't out on the first page with jargon (open any doc's you have. read the "getting started" section. It says "Before you use this package*, make a backup* copy ofthe disks* and store them in a safe palce", or words to that effect. * indicatejargon. My wife doesn't know what to do at this point, so does nothing. In thefirst sentance, we have already intimidated our user, which is the same as saying alienated our customer. Not a good idea! -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Still working on _natural_ intelligence. gary@percival (...!tektronix!percival!gary)
mfi@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Mark Interrante) (11/09/88)
>In article <4429@ubc-cs.UUCP>, manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) writes: >Note that Apple's successes (and therefore arguably Job's) have not been >from the rev I machines. Every see an Apple I or even an Apple II? No, >the real success was the Apple II+ (which is still being sold in a slightly >different form today.) Similarly the Mac was an anemic toy when first >released: tiny little B&W screen with 128K memory with no possibility of >expansion. I was really the MAC II that made the Mac viable for anyone who ^^^^^^ >needs a real machine. >I have no reason to doubt that this machine for "academia" is just the >Apple I for NeXT. Its the NeXT II+ that I'm waiting for: the machine ^^^^^^^^ >for the rest of us. Just for historical accuracy, it was the mac+ with 1mb, hardisk port, and updated ROMS, that push the MAC into the "real"machine catagory. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Interrante Software Engineering Research Center mfi@beach.cis.ufl.edu CIS Department, University of Florida 32611 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "X is just raster-op on wheels" - Bill Joy, January 1987
snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy T. Beagle) (11/10/88)
In article <4069@encore.UUCP> bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) writes: |The problem with both of the above comments is that they are making |the "best" the enemy of the "good". On the other hand, one needs to be careful and not mistake some handy piece of garbage for "good" and make it the enemy of the truely good. There is altogether too much of that happening. The trick is to determine what one can accomplish, avoiding both the over-optimistic blue-sky ideas and the under-optimistic stuck-in-the-mud ones. I suspect that there are a lot of Jobs worshippers out there, who were expecting something more than what he is delivering. NeXT *is* a nice step forwards. It is not perfect. There are things I would have done differently. If nothing else, "NeXT" is painful to type, and is ugly to boot. :-) _____ /_____\ sn00py /_______\ |___| tektronix!tekecs!sopwith!snoopy |___| sun!nosun!illian!sopwith!snoopy
bowles@millar.UUCP (11/12/88)
> David Carlson writes: > > I have no reason to doubt that this machine for "academia" is just the > Apple I for NeXT. Its the NeXT II+ that I'm waiting for: the machine > for the rest of us. I have problems with the idea that a $7K machine a good student machine. Sure, if you are spending $10K a year in tuition alone, perhaps your parents can see footing the bill for a $7K computer; if you're going to some public school in the not-northeast, this is more money that you might expect to spend for all expenses for a year or two. The success of the Mac, initially, was that it was [more or less] self-contained, it was intuitive, and although we all bitch about the Apple pricing scheme, it was marginally affordable for interested students. I can't see that NeXT does this, yet. There's no question that the machine is pretty nice, but at the current price, it's more reasonable to hope for schools to buy LOTS of them and make them available --- not that "students" will buy them. Perhaps that NeXT II+ might change this, but I have yet to see the second edition of any machine that didn't raise the price. Jeff Bowles
kent@WSL.DEC.COM (11/12/88)
Nothing that I've seen written about the NeXT machine has said that it's a "student" machine. It's always been called a "scholar's workstation". Freshmen in college, anywhere, are not "scholars". If I have any gripes with the machine, they would be around the fact that it's too self-contained. Yah, it's got lots of whizzy stuff and I'd love to play with one, but I don't want a self-sufficient box any more. I want a user interface engine that knows how to deal with a lot of very powerful back ends. I don't want the collected works of Shakespeare in my office -- I want them down on the literature server, along with a full concordance, index, and commentaries. I say a scholar's workstation should give you the power of a library at your desk. That's what most scholars I know need. chris
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (11/20/88)
>> I have no reason to doubt that this machine for "academia" is just the >> Apple I for NeXT. Its the NeXT II+ that I'm waiting for: the machine >> for the rest of us. Can anyone at NeXT comment on their plans for future machines if any? -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 Shar and Enjoy!