four more reasons to hate Jerry Pournelle
Mark Smith
He gives his computers astoundingly stupid names like Fat Panther
and Mud Puppy. Presumably, he does the same thing with all his
appliances, from Timmy the toaster to Big Bun the oven, and phones
his local garage asking if they've finished servicing Scud Bunny.
2. Jerry's Problems
He drones on endlessly about the ridiculous amount of work he had
to do just to accomplish the simplest tasks: "I installed the new
XJ12-17Q MondoBananaGraphics board into Wet Nurse but she wouldn't
boot after that so I uninstalled all the TSRs even the incredibly
useful ScreenFlipLockJaw Hot Key that I mentioned in last month's
column but that didn't seem to help so I replaced the power supply
and moved all the other cards over one slot to the left but then
WordStar 37 came up in purple on green so finally I swapped the
disk controller with the one in Hot Llama erased all the files
beginning with 'i' to 'n' from the D drive and jumpered the XJ12
for semi-compatible-non-interlaced-386-with-a-twist-full-moon mode
using a couple of Mrs Pournelle's hairpins and hey presto 16 colour
graphics in 320-by-200 ultra-high-res mode!"
3. Jerry's Wife
Speaking of the wife, he always seems to be flogging some half-baked
program she apparently whipped up while waiting for Kenny the Kettle
to boil: "And if you're in the market for some handy little utilities,
Mrs Pournelle's High memory Macrame Stitch Popup Chart should be in
the stores any day now. Mrs Pournelle learned Bubblehead Basic in
only nine months, which certainly puts to rest the idea that you need
to write real applications in dangerously unstable languages".
4. Jerry's Books
His utterly irrelevant book recommendations usually fall into one
of two groups: incredibly tedious and juvenile space epics in the
Ranger Rick On Space Station Zebra vein, which invariably feature
heroic individuals triumphing over the evil forces of pan-galactic
collectivism, or slightly-to-the-right-of-Lyndon-Larouche political
treatises in the "we nuked 'em once and we can do it again" vein,
which invariably feature heroic individuals triumphing over the
evil forces of pan-global collectivism.
---- Mark Smith ---- Canon Research Europe ---- sm...@canon.co.uk ----
5. Jerry's Salary unlike me, he gets paid to write this drivel
Geoff Miller
In article <1992Jan22.1...@canon.co.uk> sm...@canon.co.uk (Mark Smith)
writes:
>1. Jerry's Computers
>
>He gives his computers astoundingly stupid names like Fat Panther
>and Mud Puppy. Presumably, he does the same thing with all his
>appliances, from Timmy the toaster to Big Bun the oven, and phones
>his local garage asking if they've finished servicing Scud Bunny.
What is this dude, some kind of PeeWee Herman for the taped glasses and
pocket-protector set?
[...]
>4. Jerry's Books
>His utterly irrelevant book recommendations usually fall into one
>of two groups: [...]
I first heard of this guy when I read a book he co-wrote with Larry Niven
called _Lucifer's Hammer_. Not a bad read, as disaster novels go (it's
about the Earth being struck by a comet), and I forgot about Pournelle
until I heard his name several years later in connection with computers.
(I'm not really a true compu-nerd -- my home system is an original 1984
Apple //c -- so I can be forgiven for not being up on Pournelleism.)
Geoff
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Geoff Miller + + + + + + + + Sun Microsystems
geo...@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM + + + + + + + + Menlo Park, California
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Rick Gordon
>I first heard of this guy when I read a book he co-wrote with Larry Niven
>called _Lucifer's Hammer_. Not a bad read, as disaster novels go (it's
>about the Earth being struck by a comet) ...
I remember the book, but without the generous nostalgia of He Who Dates
Himself. Most of the plot in the first part uncoils in and around JPL,
where I worked at the time. I read it to see how well the authors
handled the details and was disappointed at every turn. I've forgotten
most of that (very) long tome, but one special effect sticks in the
mind. A fragment of the comet strikes the ocean off Santa Monica,
causing a huge wave (like, *huge*) to rush toward LA at high speed.
Alert Surfer Dude sees the wave coming, paddles furiously and *rides*
it shoreward and thence through Los Angeles. I think he came to grief
near the Hollywood Freeway, splattering against the Capitol Records
tower like a bug on a windshield. Cowabunga.
ObPeeve: Things have been quiet in Peevetown. Too quiet.
>Geoff
--
Rick Gordon | "Often in error, never in doubt."
ri...@netcom.com | --- Universal Marketing Department motto
David Munroe
[ an accurate description of Pournelle and why to hate him ]
Pournelle is one of the reasons I stopped subscribing to Byte. When Jerry
first started writing for them, he was pathetically unqualified. His
perspective -- and this is probably why Byte hired him -- was that of a
neophyte who knows just enough to turn the computer on and bring up the
editor. I remember him making such a big deal about modifying a startup
file on a damn IBM PC.
I got sick of his whining about the only good editor being some customized
thing that a friend wrote for him. I got sick of him whining about all the
mail and products he was getting: face it, his column was nothing more than
free advertising for anyone who sent him their software in the hopes he
would try it and mention it.
And I got really pissed the way he hawked his lousy books. I lost count of
how many times he began his column saying something like "I just finished
chapter X of Footfall, my next science fiction book, blah, blah, blah".
Jerry Pournelle and Byte.we.love.intel.ibm.and.microsoft can go suck a big
dog dick as far as I'm concerned.
-Dave "attitude? what attitude?" Munroe
Graham Jenkins +61 6 276 6812
>
>And I got really pissed the way he hawked his lousy books. I lost count of
>how many times he began his column saying something like "I just finished
>chapter X of Footfall, my next science fiction book, blah, blah, blah".
>
>Jerry Pournelle and Byte.we.love.intel.ibm.and.microsoft can go suck a big
>dog dick as far as I'm concerned.
>
Can I take it from this that you're not terribly keen on the guy?