Pournelle again

[Oleg Kiselev x268]

About time someone said a word about Jerry... Pournelle's reviews are, at best,
incompetent babblings of an over-blown egotist.

I was not too bothered by his mis-representation of CP/M and Macintosh
capabilities, but what really upset me was Pornelle's praise of AT&T 7300.
Maybe because I had a chance to play with it for a few days and as many of my
friends who had used 7300 found it an even worse product than 3b2.

This machine sports the slowest windowing system, the noisiest hard-disk,
and the slowest process/page swap of ANY UNIX micro I've seen. It does not
come with C compiler as a standard utility. Manuals are terrible. Screen layout
is unpleasant. A 1/2 inch corroded attemt at an pointing arrow can not even
move to all points on the screen! Just try moving a window. The mouse can roll
all the way to the edge of the screen, and window'll be in the middle of it!
All in all, AT&T 7300 makes Mac look like a real computer.

To treat 7300 as the best thing that happened to programmers since transistors
and full-screen editors is simply STUPID! I wonder if Jerry tried to
run Multiplan on it, or whatever word processor came with his machine.
The speed of responce I got on 7300 was TERRIBLE! There is something VERY
SICK about the machine and it got a GREAT REVIEW in Jerry's column.

If I had *ANY* respect for J. Pournelle, it's gone now!
--
Disclamer: My employers go to church every Sunday, listen to Country music,
and donate money to GOP. I am just a deviant.
----------------------------------+ Don't bother, I'll find the door,
"Only through a violent revolution| Oleg Kiselev.
can the existing order be pre- |...!{trwrb|scgvaxd}!felix!birtch!oleg
served..."-Perfect Student Union |...!{ihnp4|randvax}!ucla-cs!uclapic!oac6!oleg

[ron vaughn]

In article <8...@birtch.UUCP> ol...@birtch.UUCP (Oleg Kiselev x268) writes:
>About time someone said a word about Jerry... Pournelle's reviews are, at best,
>incompetent babblings of an over-blown egotist.

[and more about how pournelle *loved* the at&T 7300]

i couldn't agree more. pournelle's reviews are so..... unprofessional it
makes me doubt anything he says. he acts like he knows everything in
the world about micro's, when most the time a manufacturer hands him
a product, he uses it for 37 minutes, and then has his son alex tell us
that it is ok. then he talks about some 4-bit micro he bought in 1973
that is still the best. "isn't that right, alex?", and alex says it is ok.

his tales from "chaos manner" don't reflect on how "fast paced/up to date/
in the news/with it/on the fly" he is as much it shows he is unorganized,
unprofessional, and biting off more than he can chew. he should take
*time* to do reviews ("but we just don't have time, right alex?", and alex
says we had time when we only had the 4-bit micro, our best machine)

whatever his reviews are like, DOUBLE agreement on his ego. only a
person sitting at home with his vic-20 could take his reviews
seriously. he acts like everyone who makes a machine is holding their
breath for the official pournelle OK. ("jim, i just got the word -- jerry
checked out the new modem over coffee, and alex agreed to say it's ok.
we're IN!!")

oh well, maybe he'll read this. i know alex will. alex is the local
unix expert. jer consults him all the time.

right, alex?

ron vaughn ...!ihnp4!ihdev!rjv

quote from the 7300 article, "the lord of the manor moves upstairs". (jesus,
what an ego):

"my son alex is a UNIX hacker (see, i told you! -rjv); he very much likes the
machine. he glues himself to it every opportunity. although i suspect it's
largely to play rogue, a game of unimaginable fascination."

thank *G*O*D we got the official alex ok. the machine is guaranteed
market success now :-) pournelle then goes on to admit he doesn't play
rogue. no wonder he can't imagine the fascination.

[Matt Crawford]

I cancelled my BYTE subscription because the rest of the
contents were not sufficient compensation for the risk that the
magazine might accidentally fall open to Pournelle's column.
His writing is useless self-praise and often displays proud
ignorance.
Matt

[Ron Natalie <ron>]

Jerry Pournelle is to the computers, what Dr. Shockley is
to genetics.

[Ron Natalie <ron>]

> Then he tells how ARPANET started a decline that was complete
> when HIS account got removed (and some more whining about how it was an
> unfair removal).

Actually, it started to decline when he got his account at MC.

-Ron

And to think it is because of this jerk, that I almost didn't read
Larry Niven (guilt by association).