In the April issue of Byte, on page 140, is an ad for the xeroX 6085
"Professional Computer System".  It's full of slime.  Here's a sample,
the first two paragraphs:

       "  It's the first professional workstation and personal computer
        and communications terminal -- in one.

       "  It's the first workstation ever with an enormous 19 inch bit
        map screen.  With multiple windows that let you neatly display
        and process what used to clutter up your desk.  Windows that can
        be stretched the entire width of the screen so you can see your
        work.  And let you conduct numerous operations at the same time.
        Like running PC programs, running mainframe progreams or
        downloading selected data from host computers.  And, integrating
        the results.  Even copying or moving host data into PC
        spreadsheets, or PC spreadsheets into xeroX' special ViewPoint
        Document Editor.  True integration!  Any window to and from any
        window!"

I'll leave it to the lawyers to figure out whether they can be sued for
lying, or whether lying is covered under the leeway for "puff"
advertising, but the ad is clearly full of lies.

The Sun-2 and Sun-3 have had an "enormous" 19-inch bitmapped screen for
several years, so xeroX is not "the first".  With multiple windows, etc
etc etc.  With the right software and hardware, you can run PC
programs, talk to mainframes, etc.  You can copy things from any window
to any other.

Other vendors (eg HP, AT&T) certainly have a better claim to "the first
professional workstation, personal computer, and communications terminal
in one".  In fact, the IBM PC/AT, Atari, and Amiga would be less wrong
than xeroX in making this claim.

It's sad to see that since xeroX can't make it because of inability to
get its shit together, they are trying to do it by lying.
--
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilm...@lll-crg.arpa
                             Post no bills.

While I agree with John that this ad (I haven't seen it, but I'll take his
word for it) is pretty hyped, it can't be denied that the Xerox Star software
on which this machine is based is light-years beyond Suns for copying data
between windows.  What it does it pass structure around, real manipulable
objects with operations -- not just cutting and pasting ASCII text.

Sure, the Star was a commercial flop, but it wasn't for reasons of lack
of prettiness in the software model.  Maybe this new machine will make up
for the Star's lacks.

Xerox, after all, is probably hurting now that most of its Star/Mesa/XDE/
Cedar people work at Sun :-).

        - Mike

Ad copy written in sentence fragments annoys the reader. And shows the ad
agency's lack of class. And reflects badly on the company buying the ad.
Like in the example above. Which is slimy to the extreme. As John Gilmore
pointed out.

Are we braindamaged yet?

-Neal
--
"And that is one of the beautiful things about rock-and-roll,
that I can retire, hopefully, at a very early age."
                        - Dee Snider, to the Senate Commerce Committee

[UUCP: {turtlevax, resonex, cae780}!weitek!neal]

John Gilmore of Nebula Consultants in San Francisco writes:
______
In the April issue of Byte, on page 140, is an ad for the xeroX 6085
"Professional Computer System".  It's full of slime.  Here's a sample,
the first two paragraphs:

      "  It's the first professional workstation and personal computer
         and communications terminal -- in one.

       "  It's the first workstation ever with an enormous 19 inch bit
        map screen.  With multiple windows that let you neatly display
        and process what used to clutter up your desk.  Windows that can
        be stretched the entire width of the screen so you can see your
        work.  And let you conduct numerous operations at the same time.
        Like running PC programs, running mainframe progreams or
        downloading selected data from host computers.  And, integrating
        the results.  Even copying or moving host data into PC
        spreadsheets, or PC spreadsheets into xeroX' special ViewPoint
        Document Editor.  True integration!  Any window to and from any
        window!"

...

The Sun-2 and Sun-3 have had an "enormous" 19-inch bitmapped screen for
several years, so xeroX is not "the first".  With multiple windows, etc
etc etc.  With the right software and hardware, you can run PC
programs, talk to mainframes, etc.  You can copy things from any window
to any other.

...

It's sad to see that since xeroX can't make it because of inability to
get its shit together, they are trying to do it by lying.
________

I could be very wrong on this, but it isn't the Xerox 6085 an
economical version of the Xerox STAR?  The Xerox STAR, as readers
will probably recall, WAS the first computer system to accomplish
all these great claims.  People spun-off from Xerox PARC after
the STAR was completed went to places like SUN microsystems and
Apple (where they developed the LISA and the followup, the MAC).
So, it seems that Xerox is not lying in their claims (although
they are not exactly straightforward either!).  I also agree with
you that Xerox really blew a chance to make big bucks with the
STAR, but then Xerox also built the SIGMA-7 computer - the first
good time-sharing machine - way ahead of its time, it even
pre-dated the IBM 360 (TSO - yyuk!).  How many people have ever
heard of the SIGMA series of multi-user computers?

--
John McNally  GE/Calma  9805 Scranton Rd. San Diego CA 92121
...{ucbvax | decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jpm      (619)-587-3211

The other side of this is that Unix would not have one-tenth as many useful
utilities if everything had to understand complex structured objects on the
input.  Don't be so quick to assume that ASCII-text-based interchange is
grossly inferior.  One can always encode structured objects in ASCII, with
some penalty in speed and complexity over passing them directly... and then
a lot of other programs can manipulate them too.

There is a lot to be said for structured objects, mind you, but it's not
as one-sided as you suggest.
--
Support the International
League For The Derision         Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
Of User-Friendliness!           {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry

Did Xerox really BUILD the Sigma-7, or did they BUY it?  The Sigma-7 was
produced by Scientific Data Systems as a successor to their earlier 940
(which some considered a fairly good, though kludgy, time-sharing machine).
Xerox liked SDS so well they bought the company (like the guy with the
electric razors), thereby making Max Palevsky their largest single
stockholder and a very wealthy man.

I'll confess some fuzziness on chronology.  I worked for SDS in the summer
of 1966 and again in 1967 (my intro to programming!) and followed things
with interest thereafter, but can't remember whether the Sigma-7 came out
before or after the Xerox purchase.  Certainly Xerox was one of the early
examples of a large corporate entity buying an aggressive small company and
running it into the ground.  (Though, to be fair, much of this happened
with Mad Max at the helm of Xerox.)
--
Wendy Thrash   {allegra,cmcl2,decwrl,hplabs,topaz,ut-sally}!pyramid!wendyt
Pyramid Technology Corp, Mountain View, CA  +1 415 965 7200 ext. 3001

What Wendy says is correct.  The Sigma-7 preceded the creation of Xerox
Data Systems (formerly SDS).  Rumors that the name change occurred as a
result of the Students for a Democratic Society are entirely in my own
imagination.

Just to put things in perspective, one of the big plusses of the Sigma-7
was its programmable microcode, and the gang at UCSD was really looking
forward to getting a machine which could emulate an IBM 1130!  The name of
the emulating OS was "Meta-4", one of the best examples of pre-UNIX puns in
the computing industry.

        - Bob Lewis
          ...!tektronix!tekecs!bobl

---------
I'm afraid Bob Lewis is "mixing his metaphors":

     Just to put things in perspective, one of the big plusses of
     the Sigma-7 was its programmable microcode, and the gang at
     UCSD was really looking forward to getting a machine which
     could emulate an IBM 1130!  The name of the emulating OS was
     "Meta-4", one of the best examples of pre-UNIX puns in the
     computing industry.

The Meta 4 was a microprogrammable machine built by Digital
Scientific Corp. around 1970.  Its main purpose was indeed to
emulate the IBM 1130, although it could be reprogrammed for other
purposes.  (In 1972 I microprogrammed a Meta 4 to execute a "P-code"
for a subset of APL at the Center for Research in Management Science
at the University of California at Berkeley.)

Paul McJones  decwrl!mcjones  mcjo...@src.dec.com