Two fingers to I.T.
Kyzer
I must be getting grumpy in my old age.
I curse and spit whenever I hear the bastardized name of Computing Science
for the '90s... the dreaded 'I.T.'.
The cameras are rolling, the I.T. spindoctor masquerading as an education
spokesperson approaches an impudent 14 year old. The I.T. bloke thinks to
himself 'this had better be good'. He's had to travel from the comfort of
his Central London office to some crummy county whose council has just
ploughed a great stack of cash into 'joining the I.T. revolution', and
wants to make sure it gets a bit of recognition on national TV for its
money. It's going on the 6 o'clock news in a couple of hours.
"So Johnny, what are you doing this year?"
"I'm doing Maths, English, Modern Studies and ... I.T."
"Great! Do you feel I.T. will help your studies in other areas?"
"Probably not, but it's just pissing about with computers for easy marks,
and my dad's got a PPro200/MMX with 32Mb and Windows 95 at home, so I get
an excuse to play Quake on it."
"Err... that's very good, Johnny."
"Yeah. The best bit is the teachers don't know nothing about how the
computers work, so we can twat them all up and they have to call in the
I.T. technician, who always has great fun undoing it. He'll be a complete
BOFH in a year or two."
"BOFH?"
"An I.T. technician with experience."
"Ah, yes, thanks for that, Johnny. It just goes to show, our children
already have a headstart in the ongoing information revolution."
What a great idea, huh? Mix in the 'computers for dipshits' course and the
office-studies course. Revitalise your jaded and cynical pupils by
labelling them 'students' already, and explaining that the adults of the
world are all currently involved in 'I.T.' 'training'. Cheers them up
immensely, you would presume. All that computer equipment RM and Acorn sold
you won't end up monopolised by silly people who know how to use it, and
you can fully maximise the educational potential of your expensive
equipment by teaching kids how to read the manual and understand all the
most cumbersome and unintuitive interfaces imaginable. And, you can get the
modern languages department to run courses in understanding inane
marketroid jargon, 'GPF #0669881A:B8ED This Product has committed an Error.
If this persists, contact the Vendor.' being a case in point.
Big lie number one must be 'I.T. training makes computers more friendly.'
Bzzt. It makes a person more of a slave to the computer. Computers still
act in the most inconvenient ways, they still come up with the most stupid
messages, only this time you are initiated to the evil cult. You now
believe it is a good idea that products on CD should have to be installed
on your hard drive prior to usage. After all, it just doesn't make sense
that a program with all its code and data on the CD should also be capable
of being run from the CD, no no no.
Don't forget to buy in educational CD-ROMs from companies that go bust in
their first year of trading, and hideously cumbersome 'multimedia' packages
that happily allow you to indulge your hidden talent of cardboard cutout
2-frame animation... sigh... what happened to DPaint? Electronic Arts too
busy making edutainment gnuk and interactive movies? But why did Paintbox
migrate off to the decent computers? You know, the ones that schools don't
buy because RM don't sell them...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of I.T. But it's meant to be
the means, not the end. I mean, why does anyone dare use Encarta when
there's a _real_ encyclopaedia available? I can answer that. With a real,
weighty book in your hand, and plenty more on the shelf, you are actively
involved in searching for your goal. In fact, you might even explore
another avenue on the way there. You may even think for yourself, God help
you. Encarta; load it (and sit there waiting, with your gob open and your
mind closed), start a search and enter your 'key' 'words'. Leave the hard
work to the machine, see if it comes up with a screen or two of information
about the subject. Maybe a cross-reference if you're lucky. But at least
you didn't have to think terribly hard to get it.
Mind you, them thar electrical engineers are making computers faster and
bigger nowadays, so noone really needs to think too hard anymore.
Programmers need not think at all, they need only implement the new ideas
from management and marketing. It's such a good idea to add useless new
features that noone will really need, but will make the product look so
much better in corporate demonstrations. And little animated icons! "Yes,
no matter what you're writing, add lots of little animated icons somewhere,
makes the product so much better and only adds another 400k. After all, we
have virtual memory and there'll only be minor performance loss, besides
the users should really have 40Mb instead of 32Mb RAM, it's their fault if
their computer is up to spec. Hang on, I've just been faxed from M$ HQ -
their latest upgrade to the OS needs another 8Mb to get up in the morning,
so make that 48Mb RAM minimum. Have to keep with the times, dear."
So why do we now need so much memory and storage space, in general? Well, I
propose "the USA phenomenon". The strange observeration that everything is
"bigger" in America, possibly because them merkins just don't have any
concept of "small is beautiful". Wing Commander, Monkey Island, Word 7,
Windows 95, all of them straining at the bounds of available resources,
none of them straining at the bounds of enjoyment or power. They add as
much pretty bits as possible to avoid the embarrassing fact that their
less-pretty European equivalents fit in much less space. No doubt it was
America who invented the interactive movie.
I.T. spindoctors, in general, like to use big numbers to make computers
sound better than they actually are in practice. The old 'you can get 7000
pages of text on a disk' has been replaced with 'you can get an entire
library on some CDs and a big hard drive'. True, but pointless. The problem
is, very few people have really put that much space to good use. It's so
much easier to fill up space with semi-useless and completely useless junk.
Actually, do we have a chart? I think we do:
THE TOP FIVE BIGGEST SPACE-FILLERS
1. Movie files of extremely bad quality, and aren't even slightly near the
quality of their sources, but they occupy hundreds of megabytes for an hour
of so of footage. Especially loved by games producers in an effort to
disguise extremely shoddy games, quite often employing people whose acting
quality is lower than viewed in those terrible soap operas on Channel 5 in
the afternoon.
2. Rendered animation. It only took _you_ a few minutes of designing with
your mouse, but several hours later your computer has generated an
bsolutely huge animation file of a few hundred megabytes. Well done, how
wonderful of you. And look, it uses all those textures everyone else has.
3. Music 'mod' files. Of course, since it became popular on the PC, it's
generated lots of differing formats, each with their own acroynmized names.
God knows why there are so many mods produced, but there are. And so many
of the new ones are in the now very diverse techno genre. Using everyone
else's drum patterns and samples, natch.
4. Shareware! Yes, after all, owning a PC means that you _want_ to pay for
ugly, overinflated and badly written programs, unlike your UNIX cousins who
get the best for free, and the worst is just laughed away. Did you know
that in the USA, if you learn how to program a language like Visual Basic
or Delphi, you can instantly earn $$$$ by writing useless programs that
have a nice-looking, but inflexible, user interface.
5. Digitised porn. Plenty of it about, especially on the internet where
extremely stupid people seem to equate it directly with personal freedom.
Extremely stupid and anonymous, of course, and somehow they assume the fact
you post articles to Usenet means you want information about getting free
phone calls in the USA and passwords to XXX hot sites. No, thankyou.
I've spent the last year of my life totally immersed in an electronic
existance, to my detriment. But at least I now respect the real world
properly. I feel constrained by online documentation, for even though I can
search through it at blinding speed, and have topics hyper-linked, I feel
bound by the size of the window, compared to the size of a page. And even
if I could afford one, I wouldn't be able to fit a 20 by 50 inch monitor on
my desk. I want to feel a wad of paper in my hand, the keyboard just
doesn't cut it.
Electronic mail, yes, a superb idea, write to someone when they're not
there, and you get to prepare your message before you send it, unlike
answer phones which catch you unaware, as you were expecting said person to
answer, not a machine. However, emails manage to entirely lose a person's
personality somewhere. Not a problem for John Major, but a problem for most
people. And emails immediately become completely frivolous if you try and
stage a real conversation with them:
> > > hi
> > yeah, hi there.
> thanks
you're welcome
> > > want to go out tonight?
> > yeah, why not
> ok where to then?
how about the pictures?
However, there is IRC, which is always entirely frivolous. And often full
of extremely annoying and silly people. Please God, show me the world is
not full of people with chat-room mentalities, and people who wish to
exercise silly power games over one another.
Usenet. No comment.
I think I'll stop there before I get cross.
--
Stuart 'Kyzer' Caie, Aberdeen University, Scotland. Email to: ky...@4u.net
My opinions are not those of Aberdeen University, and I do not speak for or
on behalf of AUCC.
..100% Amiga, forever!.. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u13sac/
--
Random sig of the day:
Warning: .sig copier in use - will your sig be next?!
Steve Brewster
Kyzer (junk...@sysa.abdn.ac.uk) wrote:
:
: "I'm doing Maths, English, Modern Studies and ... I.T."
:
: "Great! Do you feel I.T. will help your studies in other areas?"
:
: "Probably not, but it's just pissing about with computers for easy marks,
: and my dad's got a PPro200/MMX with 32Mb and Windows 95 at home, so I get
: an excuse to play Quake on it."
I sat GCSE Computer Studies in '88 (the first year of GCSEs).
I learned all about the relative advantages of punched cards
and magnetic tape as input devices.
And what all the flowchart symbols mean.
And how to write a program in BASIC that adds two numbers together.
--
http://zeus.bris.ac.uk/~masjb 641 divides 2^2^5 + 1.
Bec4eva
i kinda agree, but why write "Computer studies" (or whatever) when we can
get away with simply putting "IT"? Also, Encarta is soooo much easier - I
can get it from 200 different places (we have 200 computers in our school),
but there's only a handful of "proper" encyclopaedias (sp.?) which usually
have either pages missing, or are already in use.
I do, however, agree with the bit about pupils trashing the computers 'cos
the teachers dont know how to stop us.. :)
BEC
Ian Lynch
Kyzer wrote:
>> "I'm doing Maths, English, Modern Studies and ... I.T."
Its ICT now you know :-)
--
Ian
Jonathan Williamson
Kyzer <junk...@sysa.abdn.ac.uk> wrote:
>Mind you, them thar electrical engineers are making computers faster and
>bigger nowadays, so noone really needs to think too hard anymore.
>Programmers need not think at all, they need only implement the new ideas
>from management and marketing.
the marketing people come up with ides which are probably very un
feasable on the available hardware. the programmers/designers have to
recreate that idea as accuratley as possible still bearing in mind what
resources they realistically have avaiable.
as for management. well they sign the cheques.
> It's such a good idea to add useless new
>features that noone will really need, but will make the product look so
>much better in corporate demonstrations. And little animated icons! "Yes,
>no matter what you're writing, add lots of little animated icons somewhere,
>makes the product so much better and only adds another 400k.
well 400k is a tiny price to pay on todays hardware. and animated icons
can actually give an unexperienced user a feel of 'feed back' from the
program.
> After all, we
>have virtual memory and there'll only be minor performance loss, besides
>the users should really have 40Mb instead of 32Mb RAM, it's their fault if
>their computer is up to spec. Hang on, I've just been faxed from M$ HQ -
>their latest upgrade to the OS needs another 8Mb to get up in the morning,
>so make that 48Mb RAM minimum. Have to keep with the times, dear."
well win '95 will run realistically in 24 megs. nothing wrong with that.
win 3.1 was a pile of shit. win '95 is an amazing leap forward. windows
'95 is a great achievement, and while it does have its faults/bugs what
2 million lines of code doesnt? it is said there is going to be on
average a bug in every thousand lines of codes produced by any
programmer. and naturally not all of these will be found instantly. they
could have held back the release for another three months and maybe
pulled out a few more bugs but why wait?
>So why do we now need so much memory and storage space, in general? Well, I
>propose "the USA phenomenon". The strange observeration that everything is
>"bigger" in America, possibly because them merkins just don't have any
>concept of "small is beautiful". Wing Commander
never played it.
>, Monkey Island,
was a joy to play. and a pretty amazing game. i think many people would
agreee with me. it by *NO* means stretched the ability of the available
pcs though. at the time it was realeased a slow 486 was standard and
monkey island runs fine on a fast 386 (i know i had one 386 dx 20mhz).
> Word 7,
actually office '97 is a hell of a lot better than the one before. it
has a lot of features i wouldnt use but the actual 'normal' parts are
faster than in office '95. the different office apps share a lot more of
the same common code, which while requiring the code to be longer and
possibly slightly slower, does allow total integration and speeds up the
loading of a different office app when one is already open.
>Windows 95,
like i said before. an amzing feat of software engineering. they kept
full compatibility with previous software which is one of the main
reasons that performance is lost.
> all of them straining at the bounds of available resources,
no point in have resourses if you arent going to utilize them.
>none of them straining at the bounds of enjoyment or power.
directx and direct3d/opengl will revolutionise the games industry (and
already are).
> They add as
>much pretty bits as possible to avoid the embarrassing fact that their
>less-pretty European equivalents fit in much less space.
such as? name european equivalents for win '95, office '97,
opengl/direct3d, directx, monkey island.
oh i forgot monkey island uses the scumm interface developed by lucas
arts and *american* company. oh and windows95/directx/direct3d/monkey
island run on *intel*/*intel* clones, intel also being american. but
wait the origional pc operating system CPM, silly me also written by
bill gates. sigh i guess americans are just fucking useless.
oh i am english through and through btw.
> No doubt it was
>America who invented the interactive movie.
no doubt they did. doesnt make it a bad thing. (in theory)
>I.T. spindoctors, in general, like to use big numbers to make computers
>sound better than they actually are in practice. The old 'you can get 7000
>pages of text on a disk'
assuming a page is 80x50 characters (a very conservative estimate) 7000
pages would be roughly 28 megabytes. or ~20 1.44MB disks.
>THE TOP FIVE BIGGEST SPACE-FILLERS
>
>1. Movie files of extremely bad quality, and aren't even slightly near the
>quality of their sources, but they occupy hundreds of megabytes for an hour
>of so of footage. Especially loved by games producers in an effort to
>disguise extremely shoddy games, quite often employing people whose acting
>quality is lower than viewed in those terrible soap operas on Channel 5 in
>the afternoon.
this is due to CD technology being pretty crude. the new DVD will be
able to read/write to ~17GB disks. capable of holding 2 full length
films at above tv resolution with CD quality sound (in full dolby
surround).
>2. Rendered animation. It only took _you_ a few minutes of designing with
>your mouse, but several hours later your computer has generated an
>bsolutely huge animation file of a few hundred megabytes. Well done, how
>wonderful of you. And look, it uses all those textures everyone else has.
actually rendered animation is a very complex form of design. a
*proffesional* is capable of creating simply amazing animations and they
do *NOT* take minutes. they take days/weeks/months of hard work.
>3. Music 'mod' files. Of course, since it became popular on the PC, it's
>generated lots of differing formats, each with their own acroynmized names.
>God knows why there are so many mods produced, but there are. And so many
>of the new ones are in the now very diverse techno genre. Using everyone
>else's drum patterns and samples, natch.
.mod is a file format. and there are many others like you say. but why
is writing a .mod any different to recording onto a tape from a
keyboard? it is a form of artistic expression and as in any artform some
people are better than others. besides the .mod format is relatively
small since in the basic definition you can only have 4 channels.
things like .it (impulse tracker) with 64 channels (in stereo) and many
effects and samples up to 44khz can get very large.
>4. Shareware! Yes, after all, owning a PC means that you _want_ to pay for
>ugly, overinflated and badly written programs, unlike your UNIX cousins who
>get the best for free, and the worst is just laughed away. Did you know
>that in the USA, if you learn how to program a language like Visual Basic
>or Delphi, you can instantly earn $$$$ by writing useless programs that
>have a nice-looking, but inflexible, user interface.
but unix takes a hell of a long time to boot on a *standard* pc. i know
i have it running on a computer which is sat about 2 metres from me. i
am running SCO OpenServer 5.0.2 Development System it is admitadly on a
486 DX4 100 but it does have 28 megs of ram and even then it takes an
eternity to boot.
>5. Digitised porn. Plenty of it about, especially on the internet where
>extremely stupid people seem to equate it directly with personal freedom.
>Extremely stupid and anonymous, of course, and somehow they assume the fact
>you post articles to Usenet means you want information about getting free
>phone calls in the USA and passwords to XXX hot sites. No, thankyou.
you are talking about spam in your last line. spam is not at all related
to the memory/hdd space available it is a form of cheap advertising.
>I've spent the last year of my life totally immersed in an electronic
>existance, to my detriment. But at least I now respect the real world
>properly. I feel constrained by online documentation, for even though I can
>search through it at blinding speed, and have topics hyper-linked, I feel
>bound by the size of the window, compared to the size of a page. And even
>if I could afford one, I wouldn't be able to fit a 20 by 50 inch monitor on
>my desk. I want to feel a wad of paper in my hand, the keyboard just
>doesn't cut it.
i love to have a book to read technical information from. i agree it is
a hell of a lot more comfortable. but the ability to download a 10kb
file about something and print it is wonderful. i dont want to have to
buy a whole book (in the computer book world that is equivalent to about
£40-£60) just for one topic of information. plus online information
(from the right sources) is more likely to be up to date.
>Electronic mail, yes, a superb idea, write to someone when they're not
>there, and you get to prepare your message before you send it, unlike
>answer phones which catch you unaware, as you were expecting said person to
>answer, not a machine. However, emails manage to entirely lose a person's
>personality somewhere. Not a problem for John Major, but a problem for most
>people. And emails immediately become completely frivolous if you try and
>stage a real conversation with them:
>
>> > > hi
>> > yeah, hi there.
>> thanks
>you're welcome
>
>> > > want to go out tonight?
>> > yeah, why not
>> ok where to then?
>how about the pictures?
actually my email conversations with various people tend to be very open
and interesting.
>I think I'll stop there before I get cross.
i am cross
:)
i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
head told me that Bec4eva had written :
~ Also, Encarta is soooo much easier - I
~ can get it from 200 different places (we have 200 computers in our school),
~ but there's only a handful of "proper" encyclopaedias (sp.?) which usually
~ have either pages missing, or are already in use.
Thus writes somebody who singularly failed to grasp the point of what
was being written...
--
Support the Campaign for the Respectablisation of Farting !
http://www.mahayana.demon.co.uk/ <--- now with Sights & Sounds !
Alasdair S. Allan
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<5kYtxRAI...@chipping.demon.co.uk>...
> oh i forgot monkey island uses the scumm interface developed by lucas
> arts and *american* company. oh and windows95/directx/direct3d/monkey
> island run on *intel*/*intel* clones, intel also being american. but
> wait the origional pc operating system CPM, silly me also written by
> bill gates. sigh i guess americans are just fucking useless.
Bill Gates didn't write CPM, it was written by some bloke (forget the name)
at PARC and Gates licensed it from him, then re-licensed it (sub-licensed
?) to IBM.
The other myth is that Gates wrote Basic, again he only licensed the
product.
I'm not sure why such expception is being taken to a simple argument,
increases in hardware are easing pressure on efficient code. This
conjecture holds true with a number of notable software packages doing no
more than were done on similar packages a few years earlier yet having far
greater system requirements, just it seems for the animated paper-clip to
annoy you at start up !
I should add that I'm a real fan of Win95 and Office95, however, my opinion
is that the level of software development as far as package use and
features goes is plateau-ed and the existing hardare meets my requirements,
I'd be much happier with more efficient code of Win95 and Office95 than I
would be with Win98 and Explorer taking up 38Mb (according to NT systray)
and office97 with the extra features but not being fast enough.
--
Cheers,
Alasdair Allan
Rangers Webzine - http ://www.x-static.demon.co.uk/rangers
Ian Lynch
"Alasdair S. Allan" <mark...@ics-uk.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I should add that I'm a real fan of Win95 and Office95
Some people are easily pleased :-)
> I'd be much happier with more efficient code of Win95 and Office95 than
> I would be with Win98 and Explorer taking up 38Mb (according to NT
> systray) and office97 with the extra features but not being fast enough.
Funny how I can install Techwriter Pro off a single floppy (under
700K for the whole lot) and do all the document processing
including automatic table generation, graphics and formula
editing I and most others would ever need including import and export
of Word files. Makes you wonder why with all their resources Microsoft
couldn't write an efficient word processor in the first place.
Probably because lots of people think they are tied into their
products and they don't need to bother doing anything other than what
is in their own intersts. Either that or most people have never
seriously triedanything else so don't know what they are missing.
--
Ian
Jonathan Williamson
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
>
>You mean a rip off of other people's ideas wrapped up in bloated code
>with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
no, a backwardly compatible operating system. with an amazingly powerful
set of interface programming functions/tools. running some of the most
up to date software for the internet/desktop publishing/3d modeling/prog
ramming/everything.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Alan Brown
>no, a backwardly compatible operating system. with an amazingly powerful
>set of interface programming functions/tools. running some of the most
>up to date software for the internet/desktop publishing/3d modeling/prog
>ramming/everything.
>
>--
>thankyou.for.listening
>jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
>www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
No, thirty two bit extensions to a sixteen bit GUI designed to run on
top of an eight bit OS originally written for a four bit chip :-)
Cheers
Simon Wheeldon
In message <5vjupd$1ms$1...@info.abdn.ac.uk>
junk...@sysa.abdn.ac.uk (Kyzer) writes:
> Stuart 'Kyzer' Caie, Aberdeen University, Scotland. Email to: ky...@4u.net
> My opinions are not those of Aberdeen University, and I do not speak for or
> on behalf of AUCC.
> ..100% Amiga, forever!.. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u13sac/
There's quite a delicious irony involved in you dissing not just IT
but many aspects of computing (including Usenet) and having to use a
keyboard (and Usenet) to provide a voice for your argument.
Mark Carroll
[ praise for Win95 and how it leads the field in many respects ]
I can only suggest you post that to comp.os.linux.misc or
comp.sys.amiga.misc or something! It's clear you've been leading a sheltered
life. Admittedly, Linux's DTP isn't great, but the Mac's has been awesome
for quite some time. Win95 does have its good points, but it's hardly the
wonderful thing you describe.
I've changed the followups line to include only relevant groups.
-- Mark
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com
In article <nCA8...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Funny how I can install Techwriter Pro off a single floppy (under
>700K for the whole lot) and do all the document processing
>including automatic table generation, graphics and formula
>editing I and most others would ever need including import and export
>of Word files. Makes you wonder why with all their resources Microsoft
>couldn't write an efficient word processor in the first place.
>Probably because lots of people think they are tied into their
>products and they don't need to bother doing anything other than what
>is in their own intersts. Either that or most people have never
>seriously triedanything else so don't know what they are missing.
Either that or they don't care.
The simple fact of the matter is that nobody cares if, e.g. a word
processor fits on a single floppy anymore because floppies are dead as
a means of software distribution. Nobody cares if you need 16 megs to
have a reasonably fluid system, because memory is cheap. No-one cares
if the code is sluggish on a 386 because high speed Pentiums are the
norm now.
I'm not saying that I think code bloat and inefficient software is
good engineering practice, far from it. However, efficiency in terms
of speed and size is simply not important in the market that Microsoft
plays in (within reason). Mid range desktop PCs are comming with 3 gig
harddisks, 32 megs of RAM and 200MHz processors these days. Bearing
that in mind, who is going to care less about a megabyte or ten here
and there?
Small may be beautiful, but beauty, in the market in question, is
irrelevant.
--
/* _ */main(int k,char**n){char*i=k&1?"+L*;99,RU[,RUo+BeKAA+BECACJ+CAACA"
/* / ` */"CD+LBCACJ*":1[n],j,l=!k,m;do for(m=*i-48,j=l?m/k:m%k;m>>7?k=1<<m+
/* | */8,!l&&puts(&l)**&l:j--;printf(" \0_/"+l));while((l^=3)||l[++i]);}
/* \_,hris Brown -- All opinions expressed are probably wrong. */
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com
In article <01bcc293$4a952280$b07a...@ics-uk.demon.co.uk>,
Alasdair S. Allan <mark...@ics-uk.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Bill Gates didn't write CPM, it was written by some bloke (forget the name)
>at PARC and Gates licensed it from him, then re-licensed it (sub-licensed
>?) to IBM.
MS-DOS is not CP/M, although it is based on it (loosely).
>The other myth is that Gates wrote Basic, again he only licensed the
>product.
If BASIC wasn't invented before the illustrious Mr. Gates was even
born, I think it probably wasn't far off. He did, AFAIK, write a BASIC
interpreter for a very early personal computer however.
>I'm not sure why such expception is being taken to a simple argument,
>increases in hardware are easing pressure on efficient code. This
>conjecture holds true with a number of notable software packages doing no
>more than were done on similar packages a few years earlier yet having far
>greater system requirements, just it seems for the animated paper-clip to
>annoy you at start up !
This is probably a fair point.
>I should add that I'm a real fan of Win95 and Office95,
I find Windows95 perfectly usable. There are a lot of areas in which
the user interface could be improved, including some that are, I
think, broken by design (why can't I move a window when the program
controlling it is busy? I understand this is probably a legacy they've
inherited, but it is not the right way to implement a GUI).
From an OS point of view, of course, I'd prefer NT4, but I think
hysterical rantings against W95 that certain groups tend to be prone
to are based more on emotion than reason. I came to W95 from the Amiga
camp, use UNIX at work, and so have fairly high expectations. That I
can use Windows95 without wanting to hurl a brick through the screen
after 5 minutes (which is certainly not the case with any Windows3.x
or Macintosh system I've ever used) is probably saying something. I
wouldn't want to write code on such a system though - give me Emacs
and bash any day.
(inappropriate newsgroups snipped)
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> no, a backwardly compatible operating system.
Most modern OS's are backwardly compatible. Nothing remarkable about
that. Pretty easy to implement too if you just write additional code.
> with an amazingly powerful set of interface programming functions/tools.
Depends what it takes to amaze you. Can't say they are particularly
more amazing than the tools on virtually every other current computer
platform. Amazingly complex for some simple tasks perhaps. I don't
know many people who have managed to configure Win 95 internet
extensions to work with an independent ISP such as demon without a lot
of hassle.
> running some of the most up to date software for the internet/desktop
> publishing/3d modeling/prog ramming/everything.
There are equally up to date and in many ways more advanced tools for
all these things on other platforms, some pre-dating Windows 95 by a
long way. Sounds like someone is easily taken in by all the marketing
hype. Glad to see M$ aren't wasting their money on all that
advertising.
I am realistic enough to realise that using Win 95 and Office is
inevitable from time to time and that a lot of people believe they are
better than sliced bread. Believing the hype is another matter. Using
adjectives like amazingly for something which is pretty ordinary is
typical of the IT industry which more than any other has the upper
hand over the customers because it is complex and technical and
determined to stay like this.
--
Ian
Mike Slocombe
In article <nCA7...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>, Ian Lynch
<i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> writes
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
>
>with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
>
It looks like there's a nasty "Pc'S/MaCsz SuKz/RooLLz" thread on the
horizon...
Mike
--
http://www.urban75.com/ UK underground eco-rave-protest-drugs-e-zine
"the finest and best designed independent site in Britain" Dly Telegraph
"the most relevent, innovative site of the nineties" Internet Magazine
Remove 'NOSPAM' in header to reply
Illtud Daniel
William Oakey <b...@orla.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:28:55 GMT, al...@ablink.demon.co.uk (Alan
>Brown) wrote:
>
>>No, thirty two bit extensions to a sixteen bit GUI designed to run on
>>top of an eight bit OS originally written for a four bit chip :-)
>
But you had to nibble.
--
Illtud Daniel ida...@jesus.ox.ac.uk
-Read Mr Nice (now available in paperback!)- -Buy Radiator-
"What I don't understand is how Pavarotti got on a motorbike in
the first place." - friend's gran on the Diana affair.
Alan Brown
On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:33:47 GMT, b...@orla.demon.co.uk (William Oakey)
wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:28:55 GMT, al...@ablink.demon.co.uk (Alan
>Brown) wrote:
>
>
>>
>>No, thirty two bit extensions to a sixteen bit GUI designed to run on
>>top of an eight bit OS originally written for a four bit chip :-)
>>
>
>That wasn't worth two bits.
Ye gods, it wasn't that good. DOS, Dirty Operating System, and to
think that there are some weirdos around who actually hanker after the
dark days of DOS.
Ian Lynch
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com wrote:
> No-one cares if the code is sluggish on a 386 because high speed
> Pentiums are the norm now.
Perhaps they should care when I can buy a complete and functioning 386
system with 4Mb RAM for 100 ukp.
What I am interested in here is the *reason* no-one cares. This seems
to me to be largely due to an attitude reinforced by marketing that
there really isn't an alternative and that you really must have the
latest fastest whatever. The reality is that most people simply don't
use most of the features - or even know they exist. Those with a
genuine need for ultra high performance quite often don't use PCs
anyway. I should think there are far more 386 and 486 machines out
there than Pentiums. Most of the Pentiums I see do very little that
couldn't be achieved on a very much less powerful machine,
irrespective of whether the code was more efficient. If the OS and
code were more carefully produced older machines would last longer
saving in resources, the environment and everything else. The only
loser would be IT manufacturers. The IT industry is different because
Microsoft in particular has such a stranglehold on software
development and huge advertising capacity. I'm not saying there is an
alternative now or that Microsoft are some devil reincarnated but
neither do I have to praise them for products which are pretty
mediocre by most objective measures.
> Mid range desktop PCs are comming with 3 gig harddisks, 32 megs of RAM
> and 200MHz processors these days.
So all schools should immediately junk their A3000s, 386s, 486s and
Mac classics to buy these wonderous machines at only 1500 quid each
including software and peripherals. That's probably 500 million pounds
in the secondary sector alone.
> Small may be beautiful, but beauty, in the market in question, is
> irrelevant.
Perhaps so in practice but as a tax payer I'm not too impressed with
this as an argument when next year you will be saying the entry level
is 300 MHz with a new mother board bus architecture needed to run
Windows blah blah blah when all little johnny wans to do is write a
single page letter to Santa and add up his pocket money in a
spreadsheet.
PS shouldn't you be working for Intel ;-)
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Mike Slocombe <mi...@NOSPAMurban75.NOSPAMdemon.co.uk> wrote:
> It looks like there's a nasty "Pc'S/MaCsz SuKz/RooLLz" thread on the
> horizon...
Nah, all computer platforms have their limitations this is simply a
"don't get caught up by the advertising and hype thread" :-)
Well my contribution is anyway. Its relevant to education in so far as
good education should be informing people not to take advertising at
face value when the adverts are clearly designed to exaggerate the
benefits for the gain of the advertiser. A little more healthy
scepticism in the IT world would not go amiss, particulary with the
players with the biggest advertising budgets.
--
Ian
Where do you want to go tomorrow? - Anywhere so long as I don't have
to take commercial vested interests with me.
Ian Wallace
>with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
God, Windows 95 is an awful OS, I hate it.
But I have to use it because there is nothing else.....
--
Ian Wallace
Dom
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes:
>i definatley agree that there is very little that needs to be done with
>office anymore. it does everything it has to. newer versions are simply
>adding wieght to the package. the main features that should be added is
>support for newer hardware such as 3d accn/mmx/agp or whatever. though
>most of this is handled through the os or libraries such as directx.
Unfortunately the spell checker is still a bit buggy.
--
Dom +++ Fabulous Kitchenware: http://www.fabkitch.ms +++
Eirwen Williams
In article <5vjupd$1ms$1...@info.abdn.ac.uk>, Kyzer
<junk...@sysa.abdn.ac.uk> writes
<snip>
Fine rant.
--
Adrian
Mark Carroll
Hmmm... I get the impression that Chris Brown wasn't saying that it's a
good thing that no-one cares how their software runs on older systems,
just that the market MS and suchlike is one where they don't care. You're
probably more in agreement with each other than you think. (-:
-- Mark
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCA8...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Funny how I can install Techwriter Pro off a single floppy
> 700K for the whole lot) and do all the document processing
700K would be about nine floppies circa 1983, representing about twelve
times the RAM memory of a well-configured CP/M machine, and 10% or so of
the biggest disk you could afford. Similar logic applies for, oh, say a
PDP11/34. You could run sensible Sixth Edition Unix systems with 64K
limits on processes, even without split I and D, and Seventh edition
only needed Split I and D.
However, today, a 600M CD costs less than a floppy to make, you can
hardly buy a hard disk smaller than a gigabyte for ready money, and
standard memory in a PC is 16MBytes. Hell, the X terminal I'm typing
this on has 32M of memory and a 66Mhz Intel i960 and retails for about a
grand, and I'm logged onto a machine with a gigabyte of RAM and a couple
of fast processors which cost about 25 grand, which wouldn't have bought
you a VAX 11/730 in the eighties.
Space efficiency is pointless when resources are so cheap.
ian
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Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
You mean a rip off of other people's ideas wrapped up in bloated code
with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
--
Ian
Jonathan Williamson
"Alasdair S. Allan" <mark...@ics-uk.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I should add that I'm a real fan of Win95 and Office95, however, my opinion
>is that the level of software development as far as package use and
>features goes is plateau-ed and the existing hardare meets my requirements,
>I'd be much happier with more efficient code of Win95 and Office95 than I
>would be with Win98 and Explorer taking up 38Mb (according to NT systray)
>and office97 with the extra features but not being fast enough.
i definatley agree that there is very little that needs to be done with
office anymore. it does everything it has to. newer versions are simply
adding wieght to the package. the main features that should be added is
support for newer hardware such as 3d accn/mmx/agp or whatever. though
most of this is handled through the os or libraries such as directx.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCA9...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> anyway. I should think there are far more 386 and 486 machines out
> there than Pentiums.
I'd be stunned if that were the case. PC purchases have rocketed in the
past couple of years, and the number being sold each year is close to
the combined total of several previous years. I've got a 486, because
I'm mean, but I don't know many people with computers but without a
Pentium or equivalent.
> Most of the Pentiums I see do very little that
> couldn't be achieved on a very much less powerful machine,
> irrespective of whether the code was more efficient. If the OS and
Yes, yes, yes, but so what? Most of it could be done on a pdp11/70, but
why bother keeping old iron going when the new stuff is so cheap? I use
a whole pile of old Suns for internal DNS and mail relaying and so on,
but I could in fact buy the same bang as the whole bunch of them for
peanuts. Progress, and all that.
> code were more carefully produced older machines would last longer
> saving in resources, the environment and everything else. The only
Yes, but Microsoft want to sell software, and they also want to sell
operating systems. Since most buyers won't pay for software support ---
schools included --- how else can they make money?
> So all schools should immediately junk their A3000s, 386s, 486s and
> Mac classics to buy these wonderous machines at only 1500 quid each
> including software and peripherals. That's probably 500 million pounds
> in the secondary sector alone.
Sorry, but that's the way the world is. I don't like it any more than
you do, but that's the way the world is. Why aren't you condemning
Acorn for superceding the BBC Model B?
> Perhaps so in practice but as a tax payer I'm not too impressed with
> this as an argument
Tough. Tax payers don't set the agenda of business. If people were
prepared to pay for software support, companies could stay in business
selling long-lived software. If they'll only buy it once, they won't.
In you model, Ian, suppose 90% of schools bought machines that could be
kept going indefinitely. Who would make machines for the last 10%?
ian
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Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
[...]
An interesting analysis !
Just one thing to add: 'voicemail' - whyohwhyohwhyohwhyohwhy are
answering machines called 'voicemail' services ?!
Ian Wallace
In article <5kYtxRAI...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
<Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>well 400k is a tiny price to pay on todays hardware. and animated icons
>can actually give an unexperienced user a feel of 'feed back' from the
>program.
Which is why Impression Style on my Acorn takes up about 600k in memory,
the OS takes up about 400k, and my internet suite (mail, news, web,
telnet, ftp, etc.) takes up 3 meg on my HD. Not 10meg+ for web and mail.
The upsurgance of system resources only comes from demands from
programmes. What ever happened to programming in machine code? Visual
BASIC is one of the most sloppy ways of programming I have every seen.
And the Acorn BASIC compiler is about 32k.....
--
Ian Wallace
Mark Carroll
In article <5vmcdn$48h$1...@ftel.ftel.co.uk>,
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
(snip)
>700K would be about nine floppies circa 1983, representing about twelve
What? The Commodore PET's various drives would store that on around two
floppies! The PET came out in the late 70's, but drives better than the
4040 maybe have been a bit later (I'm thinking of the double-sided one,
forget the higher density ones!)? Certainly they were out by 1983, though
- wasn't even the Commodore 64 out by then?
(snip)
>Space efficiency is pointless when resources are so cheap.
<sigh> Tell that to Netscape 3.x when I try to run it on this 16Mb Pentium
Win95 system here. We wouldn't have to keep buying new PCs every two or
three years if people still cared much about software bloat. ): (At least
in the Microsoft world.)
-- Mark
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com
In article <nCA9...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com wrote:
>
>> No-one cares if the code is sluggish on a 386 because high speed
>> Pentiums are the norm now.
>
>Perhaps they should care when I can buy a complete and functioning 386
>system with 4Mb RAM for 100 ukp.
I picked myself up a 32K PET with an 80 column screen and a twin 5.25
inch disk drive for a tenner a few years ago. I also got a ZX81 and an
Acorn electon for free. At least two of those machines could be used
for your basic bashing out a letter to the bank manager type word
processing. Collecting antuqie computers is all well and good as a
hobby, but you seem to be suggesting that software publishers should
bear such machines in mind when writing code for the general PC
market? Why?
>What I am interested in here is the *reason* no-one cares. This seems
>to me to be largely due to an attitude reinforced by marketing that
>there really isn't an alternative and that you really must have the
>latest fastest whatever.
No, that's not the reason. The reason no-one cares is because they
don't have to. Your average small business or home user just wants
something that does the job. If the3 price is right, they couldn't
care less about the technical specs, and how neat the source code for
the word processor is. Why should they?
One of the keys to being sucessful in business is to understand your
customers needs, and concentrate on addressing those, not to spend
your time doing something whih you, as a manufacturer find aestheticly
appealing, but which the customer is uninterested in. A business that
ignores this is almost inviting its competitor to come in and shut
it down.
>The reality is that most people simply don't
>use most of the features - or even know they exist. Those with a
>genuine need for ultra high performance quite often don't use PCs
>anyway. I should think there are far more 386 and 486 machines out
>there than Pentiums. Most of the Pentiums I see do very little that
>couldn't be achieved on a very much less powerful machine,
>irrespective of whether the code was more efficient. If the OS and
>code were more carefully produced older machines would last longer
>saving in resources, the environment and everything else.
If the OS and code were more carefully produced, their time to market
would be longer and their development costs higher. People often cite
the VHS versus Betamax/Video2000 battle in the early '80's when
talking about the computer industry. VHS triumphed despite being an
inferior product in most respects. We can argue all day over the
reasons why this happened, but the fact that VHS made it to the mass
markey first with a product that was *good enough* probably has a very
large bearing.
Now consider Microsoft. They provided the operating system for the IBM
PC. The first personal computer to make much of an impact in
business. As the PC became the established standard, it became very
difficult for anyone, even with technically superior products, to
displace it. You can accuse Microsoft of lots of things, but being
lousy buisnessmen is not one of them. Their product was the
established standard. It was good enough. What people were doing with
their Apples, and their Amigas, and their whatever-elses was all very
interesting, but it never appealed outside the niche market of
enthusiasts, because it was seen as untried technology and the
workforce wasn't comfortable using it.
Taking the lead and pioneering something is all well and good, but
if the mainstream market is a conservative one, which the personal
computer market tends to be, an innovator is going to have trouble
breaking into the mainstream, because people aren't willing to bet
their jobs on what they see as untried equipment with only a small
market following. As they used to say, "No one ever got fired for
buying IBM".
So, comming back to why people don't care about software
efficiency. They don't care because it's not a priority. If you're
buying a car, do you go for the wonderfully fuel efficient one that
runs on liquid hydrogen and is environmentally friendly (note,
hydrogen powered cars may or may not be more efficient than the
traditional type - I really don't know), or do you buy the more
polluting, less efficient petrol driven car? A few enthusiasts might
go with the new fangled hydrogen cars, but they're not going to be a
general success until you can get hydrogen fuel as easilly as you can
get petrol. The bulk of the personal computer market does not base its
buying decisions on technical innovation. If it is a concern, it's a
minor one.
>The only
>loser would be IT manufacturers. The IT industry is different because
>Microsoft in particular has such a stranglehold on software
>development and huge advertising capacity. I'm not saying there is an
>alternative now or that Microsoft are some devil reincarnated but
>neither do I have to praise them for products which are pretty
>mediocre by most objective measures.
This argument is raised again and again, and I must say, with no
disrespect intended, that I think it's rubbish. People on
comp.sys.*.advocacy can sit and talk for ages about technical
superiority, and efficiency, and how their software fits on fewer
floppies, but from the point of view of the buyers in the markets
concerned, these measures are about as objective as the measure of the
number of hedgehogs you can fit on the monitor stand. You can go up to
the PC buyer in the street and ask, "Don't you care that the software
you are buying is less efficient and uses slightly more harddisk space
than this other, non-standard product?", and their answer is, 90% of
the time, going to be, "No, why should I? I just want something that
works".
>> Mid range desktop PCs are comming with 3 gig harddisks, 32 megs of RAM
>> and 200MHz processors these days.
>
>So all schools should immediately junk their A3000s, 386s, 486s and
>Mac classics to buy these wonderous machines at only 1500 quid each
>including software and peripherals. That's probably 500 million pounds
>in the secondary sector alone.
Of course they shouldn't, just as they shouldn't junk their 3 pronged
forks in the dining room, because a new government study shows that 4
pronged forks are better for the general well being. There are
companies that, at some time in their lives, have concentrated on the
shcools market as a niche market in which they specialise. Apple and
Acorn are two such companies. As long as they could make a living out
of that market, and as long as their products were better suited than
mainstream products to the needs of that market then everyone is
happy.
However, consider your man in the street, who wants to buy a computer,
What are his needs?
- Probably wants to bash out the occasional letter to the bank, or
council, or whatever.
- Something that the kids can play games on.
- Might want to connect to this Internet thing that everyone keeps
going on about.
- It shouldn't be too expensive.
I assert that these needs are 'mainstream', and so a product that is
aimed at meeting those needs is the one to buy. Does the machine I
described above (200MHz MMX, 3 gig harddisk, 32 megs of RAM, Windows
95, CD-ROM, 3D graphics card, 16 bit sound card, 1500 quid, very
similar to the one I bought a few months ago, primarilly to play games
on in fact) address these needs? Let's see:
- Comes with Microsoft office 97. That will suit his word processing
needs. Lives on a single CD-ROM, and it's like the stuff they use at
work, so that's looking good.
- The MMX processor, 3D graphics card and sound card mean that the
kids should be entertained for hours. Add to that the fact that
nearly all of the games in your local Virgin Megastore only run on
PC's, and it's the obvious choice.
- Plug in an off the shelf modem, it comes with a selection of ISP's
CD-ROMS. Switch it on and plug it in to your phone line. Enter your
credit card number when asked and you're on line.
- The price is right.
Does the schools A3000 address these needs? Let's see.
- The wordprocessor, if bundled, is completely alien. The printer
needs lots of messing about with before it will work because it
only comes with Windows drivers.
- Checkout assistant down at Virgin, "A3000? Is that one of those AMD
thingies?"
- Internet software is hard to find, as is an ISP that specifically
supports your machine. Once you've found it, it seems like you need
a degree in computer science to set it up. No thanks.
- No economy of scale, so it's expensive for what you get.
I'm not belittling the Acorn machine here. The wordprocessors might be
excellent, the printer drivers second to none, shareware games
excellent and Freds bedroom Ltd. TCP/IP stack might be a superb piece
of software. ALl of it might be of a higher quality than the PC stuff,
but the Internet software came with the modem for the PC. The printer
driver came with the printer. The wordprocessor is the same one they
use at work and the games are available down any high street.
Where does an extra 100 megabytes of harddisk space come into this?
>> Small may be beautiful, but beauty, in the market in question, is
>> irrelevant.
>
>Perhaps so in practice but as a tax payer I'm not too impressed with
>this as an argument when next year you will be saying the entry level
>is 300 MHz with a new mother board bus architecture needed to run
>Windows blah blah blah when all little johnny wans to do is write a
>single page letter to Santa and add up his pocket money in a
>spreadsheet.
Why should anyone reccomend such a system to a school? If there is a
company specialising in that market that is well established and
respected in that market, and provides good service and value for
money, then surely it's in the tax payers interest to stick with that
technology? I think we probably agree on this point. If you're in a
niche market, and someone specialises in catering for that niche,
that's who you want to go to.
My point is that in the general personal computer market is not
concerned with issues such as code size and efficiency, or the power
consumption of their processors, to pick a topic closer to my heart
;-). Their target market doesn't count these as important when
deciding where to spend its money.
>PS shouldn't you be working for Intel ;-)
Not according to my contract. :-)
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com
Jonathan Williamson
Dom <d...@i-cubed.co.uk.REMOVE> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>>i definatley agree that there is very little that needs to be done with
>>office anymore. it does everything it has to. newer versions are simply
>>adding wieght to the package. the main features that should be added is
>>support for newer hardware such as 3d accn/mmx/agp or whatever. though
>>most of this is handled through the os or libraries such as directx.
>
i hate the friggin spell checker/grammar checker. but the point is you
can switch them off so who cares?
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> i definatley agree that there is very little that needs to be done with
> office anymore.
Since this is being cross posted to uk.education, a new spellchecker
might not go amiss and better integration with news editing ;-)
Alternatively, how about junking it and starting again? All they need
do is keep the same file format. They could do a version which runs
sensibly on any 486 with 8 Mb RAM. Think of the benefit to the
environment and all our hard up schools of prolonging the life of all
those 5 year old machines. Down-sizing - now there's a marketing idea.
Come on Bill you can do it :-)
--
Ian
Jonathan Williamson
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> no, a backwardly compatible operating system.
>Most modern OS's are backwardly compatible. Nothing remarkable about
>that. Pretty easy to implement too if you just write additional code.
backwardly compatible to the level of msdos? backwardly compatible to
about 10 years previous technology? (and i dont mean the amiga because
that *IS* ten year old technology).
>> with an amazingly powerful set of interface programming functions/tools.
>Depends what it takes to amaze you. Can't say they are particularly
>more amazing than the tools on virtually every other current computer
>platform.
in that case name an equivalent to microsoft visual c++ 5 using the
microsoft foundation classes for programming on the
amiga/macintosh/archimedes. and i mean one which is up to date and
supports new hardware/os features.
> Amazingly complex for some simple tasks perhaps. I don't
>know many people who have managed to configure Win 95 internet
>extensions to work with an independent ISP such as demon without a lot
>of hassle.
i didnt have any hastle. i installed dial up networking. pointed it at
my mail/name servers and connected. (of course my external modem was
automatically detected and configured for me by windows...)
>> running some of the most up to date software for the internet/desktop
>> publishing/3d modeling/prog ramming/everything.
>There are equally up to date and in many ways more advanced tools for
>all these things on other platforms, some pre-dating Windows 95 by a
>long way. Sounds like someone is easily taken in by all the marketing
>hype. Glad to see M$ aren't wasting their money on all that
>advertising.
hokay the mac is great for dtp/3d. unix is wonderful to run your
web/dns/ftp server from. amiga workbench is just plain old. and the
archimedes as far as i am concered is just plain laughable. whereas the
windows does all of these things and many more.
as for programming in a gui environment, there is nothing to compare
with borland/microsoft compilers and integrated development
environments.
>I am realistic enough to realise that using Win 95 and Office is
>inevitable from time to time and that a lot of people believe they are
>better than sliced bread.
no, sliced bread is great. and a hell of a lot more nutritious.
> Believing the hype is another matter.
i never believe hype. i have used windows, unix, work bench, system 7.5
and risc os. i have programmed in windows, unix and risc os. i go on
what i have seen from these operating systems.
> Using
>adjectives like amazingly for something which is pretty ordinary is
>typical of the IT industry which more than any other has the upper
>hand over the customers because it is complex and technical and
>determined to stay like this.
i dont find it very complex. but windows is very good. i would prefer to
run NT4 but unfortunatley i dont have a copy of it so i stick with
windows 95 which serves me fine. i use dos a hell of a lot, and i have
sco unix open server 5.0.2 development system running on my second pc
but to use the internet or write documents i always come back to
windows.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Jonathan Williamson
Ian Wallace <i...@cloudnine.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <nCA7...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>, Ian Lynch
><i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> writes
>>> i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
>>You mean a rip off of other people's ideas wrapped up in bloated code
>>with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
>
>God, Windows 95 is an awful OS, I hate it.
>But I have to use it because there is nothing else.....
wrong
there is nothing else good enough.
you could use xwindows for unix, or one of the many spawns. i believe
some people still use gem. besides i thought you were an archimedes
user?
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Ian Wallace
In article <sTEY8GA4...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
<Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>hokay the mac is great for dtp/3d. unix is wonderful to run your
>web/dns/ftp server from. amiga workbench is just plain old. and the
>archimedes as far as i am concered is just plain laughable. whereas the
>windows does all of these things and many more.
The archimedes is one of many machines who's original ideas were copied
by M$. Acorn was the first mass produced machine to use a RISC
processor, whilst intel are still pushing CISC shite. Did you know that
the Strong ARM runs at 200MHz *without* a fan? And RISC OS is a dream to
use compared with Win95. Drivers for graphics cards? What are they? :)
--
Ian Wallace
Ian Lynch
Chris...@arm.remove_this_part_when_replying.com wrote:
> No, that's not the reason. The reason no-one cares is because they don't
> have to. Your average small business or home user just wants something
> that does the job. If the3 price is right, they couldn't care less about
> the technical specs, and how neat the source code for the word processor
> is. Why should they?
Perhaps I would believe this if I didn't constantly come across people
in these small businesses and at home with computer problems. They
care but they believe there are no alternatives. "Its just the way
computers are". Perhaps there aren't given the current situation.
Let's just go back a couple of steps. I never said there should be a
revolution to install another manufacturer in M$'s place or that in a
sense people don't get what they deserve. Its like the tabloid press -
lots of people buy these papers. It doesn't mean I have to say the Sun
is a work of literary genius. I said nothing about M$'s business
accumen, although given the advantage they got on a plate from IBM its
a bit difficult to see how they could lose. I criticised the claims
that Win 95 was a wonderful product then got dragged into a lot of
irrelevant argument about marketing and business which really has
nothing to do with the original comment.
Anyway things do have a habit of changing so who knows. All I am
saying is that people should be a little less accepting of the
problems they have. There is a trade off between standardisation and
competition which is pretty unique to the computer industry. There
might not be anything anyone can do about it but let's not pretend its
an ideal situation for the customer with wonderfully innovative easy
to use products. That's just complacency and low expectations. The
equivalent of saying schools are the way they are so we can't improve
them so why bother trying.
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> In you model, Ian, suppose 90% of schools bought machines that could be
> kept going indefinitely. Who would make machines for the last 10%?
I didn't suggest an alternative model. If 90% of schools bought
machines which could be used indefinitely and the other 10% bought
something which didn't I should think the 10% would look a little
silly 5 or 10 years down the track. I'll just remind you of my
original criticism which was of an acceptance that Windows 95 was a
product worthy of respect. My point is OK, we might be stuck with it
but it doesn't mean we all have to pretend its something better than
it is.
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> 700K would be about nine floppies circa 1983, representing about twelve
> times the RAM memory of a well-configured CP/M machine, and 10% or so of
> the biggest disk you could afford.
Which all might just miss the point that 700K of code actually does
just as good a job as umpteen megabytes - better in many respects. The
CP/M machine would be functionally not in the same league. I only
really mentioned the disc because of the size of the file which means
it takes a lot less machine resources overall. It was simply an
illustrstion of why Windows and Word are not that especially good
products, nothing more nothing less. That was the original comment.
All this stuff about PDP11s and the marketing prowess of Bill Gates is
irrelevant. Apologies for getting drawn into a side-track which really
goes nowhere.
--
Ian
Matt B
onathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> with an amazingly powerful set of interface
> >> programming functions/tools. e> >Depends what it takes to amaze you.
> >> Can't say they are particularly
> >more amazing than the tools on virtually every other current computer
> >platform.
> in that case name an equivalent to microsoft visual c++ 5 using the
> microsoft foundation classes for programming on the
> amiga/macintosh/archimedes. and i mean one which is up to date and
> supports new hardware/os features.
Who'd want one? With Acorn architecture, you can impliment anything you
want simply with a few built-in os routines which have been around since
mid 80's...
If you want to, you can build custom libraries, but you really don't need
to! Also why 'visual c++' when Acorn c++ will do an equivalent job
producing EFFICIENT code 1/10th the size
> > Amazingly complex for some simple tasks perhaps. I don't
> >know many people who have managed to configure Win 95 internet
> >extensions to work with an independent ISP such as demon without a lot
> >of hassle.
> i didnt have any hastle. i installed dial up networking. pointed it at
> my mail/name servers and connected. (of course my external modem was
> automatically detected and configured for me by windows...)
I pulled up a box, chose my modem type and provider then clicked
'configure'...
> >> running some of the most up to date software for the internet/desktop
> >> publishing/3d modeling/prog ramming/everything.
> >There are equally up to date and in many ways more advanced tools for
> >all these things on other platforms, some pre-dating Windows 95 by a
> >long way. Sounds like someone is easily taken in by all the marketing
> >hype. Glad to see M$ aren't wasting their money on all that
> >advertising.
> hokay the mac is great for dtp/3d. unix is wonderful to run your
> web/dns/ftp server from. amiga workbench is just plain old. and the
> archimedes as far as i am concered is just plain laughable. whereas the
> windows does all of these things and many more.
Fair enough, mac=graphix, unix=servers, workbench starts games, but arc
laughable? I think not! Just look at Acprn's window system. It's just
like Windoze95 with the following differences:
1. It hardly ever crashes.
2. It comes built-in and takes up only 3-400k of memory - that includes all
the operating system bits such as file handling, device support and the GUI
3. It doesn't have the milenium bug as seen in Win3.1, 95, 98...
4. It was released in 1987
5. You can run quite happily on less than 2meg RAM
I feel I must admit though, I like Win95 Netscape Navigator. It is IMO the
best browser around and I applaude Netscape for thir development on the
HTML language.
> as for programming in a gui environment, there is nothing to compare
> with borland/microsoft compilers and integrated development
> environments.
Oh great, yet another fancy (non-standard) front-end...
Just a quick comparison - BCC= 200Mb approx. DJGPP= 6Meg Approx.
Both do the same job and DJGPP executables are of equivalent speed yet
smaller. Hmmm
> > Believing the hype is another matter.
> i never believe hype. i have used windows, unix, work bench, system 7.5
> and risc os. i have programmed in windows, unix and risc os. i go on
> what i have seen from these operating systems.
I don't need hype - I need results. That's why I hate Windoze and love
Risc Os...
--
________________________________________________________________________
/ ___ | \
| |\ /| |__> | m.b...@argonet.co.uk Woody on IRC |
| | \ / | | \ | http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/m.burke/ |
| | \/ |ATTHEW |__/URKE | On an Acorn A3010 in Wolverhampton, England |
\________________________|_______________________________________________/
... I am Jordan of Borg. Gravity is irrelevant.
Matt B
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Ian Wallace <i...@cloudnine.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In article <nCA7...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>, Ian Lynch
> ><i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> writes
> >>> i dont like micro$oft but i still respect win95 for what it is.
> >>You mean a rip off of other people's ideas wrapped up in bloated code
> >>with a few flashy gimmicks? :-)
> >
> >God, Windows 95 is an awful OS, I hate it.
> >But I have to use it because there is nothing else.....
> wrong
> there is nothing else good enough.
<COUGH> Windoze 95 does NOT fit any idea i've ever had of 'good'.
> you could use xwindows for unix, or one of the many spawns. i believe
> some people still use gem. besides i thought you were an archimedes
> user?
Doesn't stop me from being force-fed PCs at school...
--
________________________________________________________________________
/ ___ | \
| |\ /| |__> | m.b...@argonet.co.uk Woody on IRC |
| | \ / | | \ | http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/m.burke/ |
| | \/ |ATTHEW |__/URKE | On an Acorn A3010 in Wolverhampton, England |
\________________________|_______________________________________________/
... I am Porky, of Borg. You will be as-s-sim, as-s-sim, oh forget it.
jtu...@wcc.net
On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 11:27:19 GMT, "Alasdair S. Allan"
<mark...@ics-uk.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
><5kYtxRAI...@chipping.demon.co.uk>...
>> oh i forgot monkey island uses the scumm interface developed by lucas
>> arts and *american* company. oh and windows95/directx/direct3d/monkey
>> island run on *intel*/*intel* clones, intel also being american. but
>> wait the origional pc operating system CPM, silly me also written by
>> bill gates. sigh i guess americans are just fucking useless.
>
>Bill Gates didn't write CPM, it was written by some bloke (forget the name)
>at PARC and Gates licensed it from him, then re-licensed it (sub-licensed
>?) to IBM.
>
CP/M was written by Gary Kildall when he worked at the Naval
Postgraduate School. He went on to found the company Digital Research.
He missed his chance to license CP/M as the prime operating system on
the early IBM PC. When that happened, Bill Gate licensed a "Clone" of
CP/M called 86dos from Seattle Computing, and licensed that to IBM,
and sold it as MSDOS to everyone else. Xerox Parc was not involved.
>The other myth is that Gates wrote Basic, again he only licensed the
>product.
>
Bill Gates did indeed write one of the early personal computer basics.
It was called Altair basic at its begining. Details of this can be
found in any early computer magazine. Bill Gates didn't invent basic,
as that had been developed at Dartmouth University as a teaching
language in the 1960s. Worked on one of the early implementations of
it. The language specification was in the public domain, so Bill Gates
did what a lot of other people were doing at the time. He wrote a
version of Basic. He was smart and lucky. First he managed to License
it to Altair, the first successful pc company, and second, because he
Licensed it, he could resell it as often as he liked, even when Altair
went broke.
>I'm not sure why such expception is being taken to a simple argument,
>increases in hardware are easing pressure on efficient code. This
>conjecture holds true with a number of notable software packages doing no
>more than were done on similar packages a few years earlier yet having far
>greater system requirements, just it seems for the animated paper-clip to
>annoy you at start up !
>
>I should add that I'm a real fan of Win95 and Office95, however, my opinion
>is that the level of software development as far as package use and
>features goes is plateau-ed and the existing hardare meets my requirements,
>I'd be much happier with more efficient code of Win95 and Office95 than I
>would be with Win98 and Explorer taking up 38Mb (according to NT systray)
>and office97 with the extra features but not being fast enough.
>
>--
>Cheers,
>
> Alasdair Allan
> Rangers Webzine - http ://www.x-static.demon.co.uk/rangers
Just Clarifying a few points.
Might also want to check out
http://www.ddj.com/ddj/1997/1997.05/eric.htm
on Gary Kildall
For general history try
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comp1971.htm
Jim Turner
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Pretty easy to implement too if you just write additional code.
> backwardly compatible to the level of msdos? backwardly compatible to
> about 10 years previous technology? (and i dont mean the amiga because
> that *IS* ten year old technology).
Come on it gets easier to go back further. You can even emulate the
whole OS and machine in software if necessary. Acorn and Apple both
managed it so why is it such a revelation that Windows can run old
DOS programs? Acorn just ran a pretty complete software simulation of
the BBC B and for the IBM PC which was admittedly rather slow but
adequate for things like Wordperfect.
> in that case name an equivalent to microsoft visual c++ 5 using the
> microsoft foundation classes for programming on the
> amiga/macintosh/archimedes. and i mean one which is up to date and
> supports new hardware/os features.
Ah, I thought you meant tools which help the ordinary users not tools
for programmers. Why should the end user be bothered about c++ blah
blah unless it results in less expensive and easier to use products?
Since less expensive and easier to use products exist on minority
platforms with a lot smaller investment I don't see this matters to
the end user particularly. Again it seems rather better for IT
professionals rather than the typical customer.
> i didnt have any hastle. i installed dial up networking. pointed it at
> my mail/name servers and connected. (of course my external modem was
> automatically detected and configured for me by windows...)
But you are obviously an enthusiast. This is the whole problem. The
industry is designed by enthusiasts and IT professionals for the
benefit of enthusiasts and IT professionals. I have yet to find a
novice who has not had problems. Its the outcome for these people that
matters.
> as for programming in a gui environment, there is nothing to compare
> with borland/microsoft compilers and integrated development environments.
Here we go again. More IT gobbledegook. Sounds like you swallowed the
techie handbook. You obviously love all this techie stuff - most
people don't.
> i dont find it very complex.
Most of the evidence suggests you are the exception. Most people find
computers complex and difficult if they do not have support from IT
departments etc. You are the exception not the norm.
> i would prefer to run NT4 but unfortunatley i dont have a copy of it so
> i stick with windows 95 which serves me fine. i use dos a hell of a lot,
> and i have sco unix open server 5.0.2 development system running on my
> second pc but to use the internet or write documents i always come back
> to windows.
I rest my case :-)
--
Ian
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCAF...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> But you are obviously an enthusiast. This is the whole problem. The
> industry is designed by enthusiasts and IT professionals for the
> benefit of enthusiasts and IT professionals. I have yet to find a
> novice who has not had problems. Its the outcome for these people that
> matters.
Financially, it isn't. Companies with IT departments buy lots of
computers, usually in bulk, and (since the threat of Anton Pillar orders
from FAST) by and large license their software. Certainly we would take
severe action against our employees were they to be using pirate
software. The hardware and software we buy is usually on service
contracts, but we do our own first and second line support.
The individual and educational market, however, buys PCs in units of one
or a few at a time, keeps them for a long time, doesn't have software
service, has been known to pirate the odd item once in a while and
requires first-line hand-holding.
If you were a _business_, which market would you support? The one with
serious money to spend that doesn't give you too much daily hassle, or
the one with less money to spend that will give you hassle?
Computers are like fax machines, mobile phones and a few other
technologies: if the man in the street can use commerce's by-products,
good luck to him. But there's not enough revenue to make it worth
while producing specific products.
ian
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Jonathan Williamson
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> wrong there is nothing else good enough.
>
>Office on occasions but I actually run my business using a couple of
>Archimedes networked together one of which is 7 years old. For the
>applications I use this is at least as good as Office and 95 because
>it does everything I need it to quickly and efficiently and has done
>for the last 7 years. The nothing else good enough is subjective
>advocacy. There are quite a few alternatives but most people don't
>know enough about them. Its knowledge and skills of the user which
>usually dictate the functionality of things not the technical spec.
okay, obviously whether a system is 'good enough' is totally reliant on
what it is being used for. it was a stupid statement. but there is
nothing better for everyday use (including dtp,word processing,programmi
ng,internet) than windows 95 (atm, except perhaps windows NT but its
still windows isnt it.).
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCAB...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> silly 5 or 10 years down the track. I'll just remind you of my
> original criticism which was of an acceptance that Windows 95 was a
> product worthy of respect.
Er, yes. I spend my working life keeping Win 95 at bay, and if you care
to travel to London in November you can hear how hard it is at a
conference I'm speaking at.
Hint: users want applications. Windows has applications. They're
cheap. They work. They inter-work. OLE may be hideous, but it works
quite tolerably. Even if you don't like it, Word Six has become a
standard interchange format for business. I can rail against it all I
like, but if our customer ships a tender in Word 6 and demands the
response in Word 6, what can I do?
> My point is OK, we might be stuck with it
> but it doesn't mean we all have to pretend its something better than
> it is.
Who is this ``all'', kemo sabe? I don't touch the stuff. However, just
because I've been known to produce documents by writing raw postscript
(which is how I did my wedding invitations, for example, and I've done
the odd diagram that way) doesn't mean that Word doesn't do the right
thing for most people. If Acorn are so good, how come their products
aren't in the shops? Another classic example of the British disease of
believing that if you build an (allegedly) better mousetrap, people will
beat a path to your door.
ian
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Ian Wallace
In article <rX2ZdKAw...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
<Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>>God, Windows 95 is an awful OS, I hate it.
>>But I have to use it because there is nothing else.....
>there is nothing else good enough.
I use it because I can get it for free, and anything else would be
incompatable on a PC.....
M$ Office for OS2 anyone?
>you could use xwindows for unix, or one of the many spawns. i believe
>some people still use gem. besides i thought you were an archimedes
>user?
And I find it heaven when I go back to my arc.....
I would *gladly* use my arc, if only it was a little faster, the serial
port ran my modem at full speed, and my net software was better....
--
Ian Wallace
Jonathan Williamson
Ian Wallace <i...@cloudnine.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <rX2ZdKAw...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
><Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>>>God, Windows 95 is an awful OS, I hate it.
>>>But I have to use it because there is nothing else.....
>>wrong
>>there is nothing else good enough.
>Wrong.
>I use it because I can get it for free, and anything else would be
>incompatable on a PC.....
>M$ Office for OS2 anyone?
office. you could use whatever suite is popular for os/2 (presumably
there is one).
as for unix, well there is always vi or emacs. ;)
>>you could use xwindows for unix, or one of the many spawns. i believe
>>some people still use gem. besides i thought you were an archimedes
>>user?
>And I find it heaven when I go back to my arc.....
>I would *gladly* use my arc, if only it was a little faster, the serial
>port ran my modem at full speed, and my net software was better....
if only blah..blah..blah..it was a *real* computer. capable of handling
todays requirements. you have summed my point up beautifully.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <bb933cb47%st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk>,
Steve Turnbull <st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk> wrote:
> Absolutely untrue. Sorry but as I work for a company that produces PC
> and Acorn magazines I can assure you, from measurable raw facts rather
> than expert opinion, that the amount of trouble people have with PCs far
> exceeds that for the Acorn platform (and that's calculated relative
> to magazine circulation).
And of course, you can demonstrate that the demographic that owns PCs is
equivalent to the demographic that owns other platforms. I've only
placed about three non-bug-report support calls on our Auspex in five
years: do we deduce from this that Auspexes are the last word in user
friendliness. I think not (sorry, Mike). More likely is that you don't
buy an Auspex unless you know what you're doing.
> risen to three out of three. No one we know who's bought Acorn [at
> least five instances] has ever had this difficulty. Of the two that
And now many naive users buy Acorns? Hell, they're not exactly
available over the counter, are they?
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Steve Turnbull
In message <KxjxEHAn$5H0...@chipping.demon.co.uk>
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> i dont find it very complex.
> >Most of the evidence suggests you are the exception. Most people find
> >computers complex and difficult if they do not have support from IT
> >departments etc. You are the exception not the norm.
> thousands of people have computers in their homes, i would suspect the
> majority of these people are perfectly capable of using them. maybe a
> call or two to a technical support line from some of the people but that
> is true of any platform/os.
Absolutely untrue. Sorry but as I work for a company that produces PC
and Acorn magazines I can assure you, from measurable raw facts rather
than expert opinion, that the amount of trouble people have with PCs far
exceeds that for the Acorn platform (and that's calculated relative
to magazine circulation).
In fact the number of queries to the PC mags is so high the staff
refuse to take technical calls -- and despite that they still get more
than the Acorn mags, relatively, from the people who don't know
they won't get an answer.
Your judgement on this matter is biased by your expertise, you
don't have trouble because you know what you're doing. Don't assume
this is the case for the average person.
(Addendum: I have previously stated that two out of two personal
friends who bought PCs had sufficient difficulty that they couldn't
get the machines working at all -- PCs bought new. This has now
risen to three out of three. No one we know who's bought Acorn [at
least five instances] has ever had this difficulty. Of the two that
have bought Macs, one had trouble [though nowhere near as bad as
that for PCs], the other was fine.)
--
Steve Turnbull
You are not a Human Being having a spiritual experience
You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience
-- Brian Herosian
... Flash Gordon exposed himself to all sorts of danger.
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> Who is this ``all'', kemo sabe?
The guy who is saying how wonderful the technology is. I'm begging to
differ on behalf of that section of the population who don't believe
it :-)
> If Acorn are so good, how come their products aren't in the shops?
Where did I say Acorn were so good? I simply used an example of a
particular application which demonstrates that Word is not
particularly good. That is a long way from saying anything about
advocacy for a particular platform. I am simply saying M$ products are
technically not that good. The reasons we are stuck with them are
complex and peculiar to the IT industry.
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> If you were a _business_, which market would you support?
I am a business and I hope I provide better support to my customers at
better prices than the IT industry does. In fact if I didn't I would
be out of business because my customers aren't tied to me as a sole
supplier in the same way as they are to the IT industry.
> Computers are like fax machines, mobile phones and a few other
> technologies:
Except that one company does not control the entire development of the
technology associated with these devices.
> But there's not enough revenue to make it worth while producing
> specific products.
I think this is where things are changing. Technological diversity is
actually spreading with processor technologies built into many
dedicated products. Mobile phones, TVs, in car intelligence, palmtop
computers to name but a few. It wouldn't surprise me if the general
purpose desktop computer is at the height of its importance in ICT
terms. There are plenty of communications applications springing up
which can be done without a 3 box Wintel machine because running
windows isn't an issue. In comparison with TVs, video recorders and
other consumer goods PCs are relatively low volume and the need to
upgrade is getting less and less urgent. The IT industry would like to
make us think differently but that's hardly surprising is it?
BTW, hows your little 'un doing :-)
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson wrote
> well i have used the pc emulator (software and hardware) in a risc
> pc and even the hardware one was slow, i mean it was meant to be a
> 486 dx something and it was awful.
I am not being drawn into an advocacy argument which will never be
resolved. You have already shown you don't know anything about the
RiscPC so it isn't worth the effort one way or another. The argument
is not about whether Acorn or Apple are faster or slower than Pentiums
but whether WIn 95 is as good as it should be given the resources
available for its development. You seem to think its the best thing
since sliced bread, I think its pretty poor.
> demon/turnpike do a very good job of providing that information.
I wasn't referring to turnpike but to Windows 95 and configuring it to
communicate with Demon who then tell the poor old customer - we only
support turnpike. So why have I got all this internet code which I
can't use sitting on my machine says the customer?
> thousands of people have computers in their homes, i would suspect the
> majority of these people are perfectly capable of using them. maybe a
> call or two to a technical support line from some of the people but that
> is true of any platform/os.
You don't seem to have cottoned on to the fact that I am not
advocating any platform. I'm complaining about the fact that people in
the IT industry don't seem to understand that a *lot* of people find
computers a lot more frustrating than they do.
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> And now many naive users buy Acorns? Hell, they're not exactly
> available over the counter, are they?
Perhaps the argument should be why computers can't be designed better
for ordinary people rather than PCs are fine because all other
machines are arguably as bad.
PS. If all Acorn users are that knowledgeable why do they opt for a
minority platform which is more expensive and inferior to everything
else?
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> Oh really? Technical inferiority being balanced by marketing muscle is
> unique to computing?
Perhaps not unique but much more so than in any other industry and
much more critically. Someone designs a car that is significantly more
economic and reliable and it will get to market even if only because a
large manufacturer buys up a smaller one. Which manufacturer has the
patent for petrol or 4 cylinder in line engines or road surface?
Which Hifi manufacturer owns the patent on tuner circuits?
TV technology is stuck in a rut not because one manufacturer has the
monopoly on TV tube design but because of the installed base of sets.
The installed base is in common to both situations. One manufacturer
determining the standard isn't.
Note I am not proposing a solution to this but it is pretty easy to
see that the PC industry is not like most others when it comes to open
competition. All I am saying is that customers should start being a
bit more willing to complain and should not be taken in by all the
"amazings" and "innovations" perpetrated by a company which has very
limited competition. PC hardware might be an open standard but the
operating system certainly isn't.
--
Ian
Mark Carroll
For the record, I actually much prefer Linux for everyday use - it can
actually multitask properly, has programs crash much less often, and
generally zips along rather nicely and lets you configure whatever you
want. Mind you, I don't do much DTP, but for normal word-processing tasks
it's not hard to get WYSIWYG front-ends to TeX and the like, and best of
all it's all free! And you usually get source code so you can fix bugs
yourself if you like.
I'm not saying that Linux is a better solution than Win95 for everybody -
far from it - I just thought it was worth noting that there are many
people out there who are familiar with Win95 and Linux and are using the
latter. They tend not to be novice users, of course. (-: However, a glance
at the Win95 groups shows that even intermediate users still run into
awful problems with Win95 sometimes.
-- Mark
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> wrong there is nothing else good enough.
Actually I have a PC laptop, with Windows 3.1 and use Windows 95 and
Office on occasions but I actually run my business using a couple of
Archimedes networked together one of which is 7 years old. For the
applications I use this is at least as good as Office and 95 because
it does everything I need it to quickly and efficiently and has done
for the last 7 years. The nothing else good enough is subjective
advocacy. There are quite a few alternatives but most people don't
know enough about them. Its knowledge and skills of the user which
usually dictate the functionality of things not the technical spec.
--
Ian
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCB1...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I am a business and I hope I provide better support to my customers at
> better prices than the IT industry does.
Ah, so you'll be as rich as Billy Boy :-)
> In fact if I didn't I would
> be out of business because my customers aren't tied to me as a sole
> supplier in the same way as they are to the IT industry.
You seem to assume that the IT industry _is_ Microsoft. It isn't.
They're a very big desktop player, sure, but larger systems aren't their
territory. If you read the glossies you'll believe that people will be
doing OLTP for banks, airline booking systems and so on with NT real
soon now. But in the real world, they won't. I can assure you there's
not a scrap of Microsoft code between my keyboard and our exterior
router, and I doubt we're alone in that. My keyboard is a Microsoft
one, mind you...
> Except that one company does not control the entire development of the
> technology associated with these devices.
Which company would that be? Intel and Microsoft may be symbiotic, but
they're not the same company. Above the commodity desktop, IBM, Sun,
Apple and Oracle are all multi-billion dollar companies.
> terms. There are plenty of communications applications springing up
> which can be done without a 3 box Wintel machine because running
> windows isn't an issue.
Yes, indeed, and obviously this company is concerned about such products
(and makes a few, as well). However, it's often cheaper to add feature
X to a pre-existing Wintel box than provide a new box, and it's a
reasonable bet that affluent technophile who is the market for product X
has a pre-existing Wintel box.
Moreover, the problem with STB technology is that for anything
non-trivial you need a keyboard. Which needs a desk. Which needs a
monitor on the desk. Many people don't have room for two or more
computers, so it's easier for them to do it through their existing one.
So it's cheaper _and_ easier to use a PC add-on that a new box. QED.
Want it portable? Stick it on a laptop.
> BTW, hows your little 'un doing :-)
Growing. Learning to cross herself around Microsoft software :-)
ian
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Mike Slocombe
In article <47cac20c...@argonet.co.uk>, Matt B
<m.b...@argonet.co.uk> writes
>I don't need hype - I need results. That's why I hate Windoze and love
>Risc Os...
Ah. So what you're saying is:
MacZ SuX, PeCeeS Sux, but AcorNZ R000llZZ!
That's a new twist on an age-old argument...
Mike
--
http://www.urban75.com/ UK underground eco-rave-protest-drugs-e-zine
"the finest and best designed independent site in Britain" Dly Telegraph
"the most relevent, innovative site of the nineties" Internet Magazine
Remove 'NOSPAM' in header to reply
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
>> I am a business and I hope I provide better support to my customers at
>> better prices than the IT industry does.
> Ah, so you'll be as rich as Billy Boy :-)
No because as I said I have never had the opportunity to establish a
near monopoly handed to me on a plate.
> You seem to assume that the IT industry _is_ Microsoft.
Not really, I rarely use their products myself.
> So it's cheaper _and_ easier to use a PC add-on that a new box. QED.
> Want it portable? Stick it on a laptop.
ROFL - laptop? I hardly use mine. Too heavy and cumbersome and the
battery always goes flat just when its most inconvenient. Palmtops
much better for me far less expensive too. When my phone has speech
recognition so I can dictate this message and E-mail it I don't think
I'll bother with either a laptop or a palmtop. My son has a GR1 guitar
synth. not much point is there when he could plug the thing into a
desktop computer - not. Look at all the games consoles - no keyboards
on these and not running windows. Interactive TV and digital video
recorders through a PC? As consumer goods I think not. In car
navigation systems running Windows? No, I don't think so.
I agree M$ are not the whole industry but some people seem to think
they are. That's what started all this!
--
Ian
Ian Wallace
In article <5vol2j$qjp$1...@ftel.ftel.co.uk>, Ian G Batten
<I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> writes
>> risen to three out of three. No one we know who's bought Acorn [at
>> least five instances] has ever had this difficulty. Of the two that
>
>available over the counter, are they?
Does it actually matter if they are naive or not?
I thought the point was whether the machines worked or not.....
--
Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace
In article <KvC*dP...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, Mark Carroll
<ma...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes
I think the point with this whole argument is what you want from an OS.
Linux I'm not quite sure of (a flavour of UNIX I do believe), but Win 95
seems to be the OS for Mr and Mrs Smith who want to buy a PC for their
little Johnny for school (Encarta anyone?). UNIX and RISC OS are quite
stable, as is MAC OS (AFAIK). To me Win95 is bulky, patronising,
unstable, and a waste of system resources.
I would not really call WIN95 an OS, it is more a front end/GUI.
--
Ian Wallace
Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
head told me that Ian Lynch had written :
~ Note I am not proposing a solution to this but it is pretty easy to
~ see that the PC industry is not like most others when it comes to open
~ competition. All I am saying is that customers should start being a
~ bit more willing to complain and should not be taken in by all the
~ "amazings" and "innovations" perpetrated by a company which has very
~ limited competition.
So how do you propose to re-educate the majority of the computer buying
public for whom it is a major achievement to stop the video permanently
flashing 12:00 ?
--
Support the Campaign for the Respectablisation of Farting !
http://www.mahayana.demon.co.uk/ <--- now with Sights & Sounds !
Steve Turnbull
In message <5vol2j$qjp$1...@ftel.ftel.co.uk>
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> And now many naive users buy Acorns?
More than you'd think (makes my job harder) ... but by asking that
question you have simply confirmed the point that naive users
have trouble with PCs.
But let's not get into platform wars. Been there, done that, eaten
the biscuit.
> Hell, they're not exactly available over the counter, are they?
Irrelevant since I was comparing on a proportional basis.
Anyway why are you being so defensive? Could it be that news of
Acorn's expansion and re-birth are beginning to filter into the
outside world?
;)
--
Steve Turnbull
You are not a Human Being having a spiritual experience
You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience
-- Brian Herosian
... "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
Keith Burnett
In article <nCA9...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>, Ian Lynch
<i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> writes
[snip]
>Alternatively, how about junking it and starting again? All they need
>do is keep the same file format. They could do a version which runs
>sensibly on any 486 with 8 Mb RAM. Think of the benefit to the
>environment and all our hard up schools of prolonging the life of all
>those 5 year old machines. Down-sizing - now there's a marketing idea.
>Come on Bill you can do it :-)
How about flogging a slimmer Excel in bits? The nerds can
have visual basic and pivot tables and the database plumbing
and schools can buy the basic pie charts and sums bit which
would run on the 486.
Cheers;
--
Keith Burnett
ke...@xylem.demon.co.uk
http://www.xylem.demon.co.uk/
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <nCB0...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk>,
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> advocacy for a particular platform. I am simply saying M$ products are
> technically not that good. The reasons we are stuck with them are
> complex and peculiar to the IT industry.
Oh really? Technical inferiority being balanced by marketing muscle is
unique to computing?
ian
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Ian Lynch
nob...@star-one.org.uk (Simon Gray) wrote:
> So how do you propose to re-educate the majority of the computer buying
> public for whom it is a major achievement to stop the video permanently
> flashing 12:00 ?
As a start I would challenge those who hype things like Win
95, repeating all the marketing propaganda as if this meant that they
were experts in IT. I would get kids at school to discuss the motives
of commercial companies and encourage them to be sceptical of
advertising. I would also educate them about a variety of
technological possibilities including objective comparisons between
systems and applications preparing them for inevitable change rather
than worrying about whether or not the WP in the IT department is the
same as the one in the Chairman of Governors' office. Let's consider
what IT might be like in 5 or 10 years time using a bit of imagination
rather than assuming it'll be just like we use now.
Of course we can all roll over and die instead, accepting that dollars
and the marketing boys will always prevail. :-) Seriously, I think my
children deserve better.
--
Ian
No User
In article <341f4bc...@news.wcc.net>, jturner//@wcc.net wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 11:27:19 GMT, "Alasdair S. Allan"
<huge snippage of the World According to Gates, CPM, BASIC...>
Excellent series on Channel 4 about the PC revolution (Revenge of the Nerds,
by Robert Crinchley (sp?) based on his book of the same name).
Funny[1] thing is that the BASIC interpreter Bill coded (did he do it alone or
was it a team effort? anyone, anyone, ferris) was apparently[2] an excellent
piece of coding, very fast, optimized and really small. Contrast with current
Microsoft output - 13MB for an Excel app install, so that's 7million
instructions maximum (ish) and it runs slower in real terms than version 2 on
a M68000, which has all the features that _I_ need. MS isn't exempt though -
Freehand, Pagemaker, MacOS[3] (which I use most of the time), spring to mind
just by looking round the office.
Also, WTF has alt.haggis got to do with this thread?
P p dot kent at ucl dot ac dot uk
[1] though probably not ironic
[2] I haven't actually disassembled the binary to find out.
[3] I remember when the Mac OS was 79,000 bytes. I think you can get linux to
run in 64K, though I somehow doubt that's a full build of the kernel.
Jonathan Williamson
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> backwardly compatible to the level of msdos? backwardly compatible to
>> about 10 years previous technology? (and i dont mean the amiga because
>> that *IS* ten year old technology).
>Come on it gets easier to go back further. You can even emulate the
>whole OS and machine in software if necessary. Acorn and Apple both
>managed it so why is it such a revelation that Windows can run old
>DOS programs? Acorn just ran a pretty complete software simulation of
>the BBC B and for the IBM PC which was admittedly rather slow but
>adequate for things like Wordperfect.
well i have used the pc emulator (software and hardware) in a risc pc
and even the hardware one was slow, i mean it was meant to be a 486 dx
something and it was awful.
>> in that case name an equivalent to microsoft visual c++ 5 using the
>> microsoft foundation classes for programming on the
>> amiga/macintosh/archimedes. and i mean one which is up to date and
>> supports new hardware/os features.
>Ah, I thought you meant tools which help the ordinary users not tools
>for programmers. Why should the end user be bothered about c++ blah
>blah unless it results in less expensive and easier to use products?
>Since less expensive and easier to use products exist on minority
>platforms with a lot smaller investment I don't see this matters to
>the end user particularly. Again it seems rather better for IT
>professionals rather than the typical customer.
but then again it is the IT professionals who write the software for the
typical customer. this is the point i am trying to make. if you dont
have programmers working on a platform then it is no use to anyone, so
by providing the best tool for use with windows, microsoft has secured
its future...
>> i didnt have any hastle. i installed dial up networking. pointed it at
>> my mail/name servers and connected. (of course my external modem was
>> automatically detected and configured for me by windows...)
>But you are obviously an enthusiast. This is the whole problem. The
>industry is designed by enthusiasts and IT professionals for the
>benefit of enthusiasts and IT professionals.
and consumer (see above).
>I have yet to find a
>novice who has not had problems. Its the outcome for these people that
>matters.
dial up networking is very simple if you have the right instructions,
and it is up to the service provider to provide that information.
demon/turnpike do a very good job of providing that information.
>> as for programming in a gui environment, there is nothing to compare
>> with borland/microsoft compilers and integrated development environments.
>Here we go again. More IT gobbledegook. Sounds like you swallowed the
>techie handbook. You obviously love all this techie stuff - most
>people don't.
i didnt swallow any 'techie' handbook, i read a lot of technical
documents/specifications because i am a programmer, i need to know about
these things.
>> i dont find it very complex.
>Most of the evidence suggests you are the exception. Most people find
>computers complex and difficult if they do not have support from IT
>departments etc. You are the exception not the norm.
thousands of people have computers in their homes, i would suspect the
majority of these people are perfectly capable of using them. maybe a
call or two to a technical support line from some of the people but that
is true of any platform/os.
>> i would prefer to run NT4 but unfortunatley i dont have a copy of it so
>> i stick with windows 95 which serves me fine. i use dos a hell of a lot,
>> and i have sco unix open server 5.0.2 development system running on my
>> second pc but to use the internet or write documents i always come back
>> to windows.
>I rest my case :-)
on what?
that i always comes back to windows to do what windows is designed for?
to provide the features/software required for everyday computer use? i
only program in dos when i am writing hardware/graphics programs. i
program in windows (visual c++) to write applications.
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
~ Excellent series on Channel 4 about the PC revolution (Revenge of the Nerds,
~ by Robert Crinchley (sp?) based on his book of the same name).
Excellent, apart from the main problem that it totally overlooked the
contribution to personal computing made by anybody other than apple or
microsoft. Which was quite a lot, actually.
Matt B
Ian Wallace <i...@cloudnine.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <sTEY8GA4...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
> <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
> >hokay the mac is great for dtp/3d. unix is wonderful to run your
> >web/dns/ftp server from. amiga workbench is just plain old. and the
> >archimedes as far as i am concered is just plain laughable. whereas the
> >windows does all of these things and many more.
> The archimedes is one of many machines who's original ideas were copied
> by M$. Acorn was the first mass produced machine to use a RISC
> processor, whilst intel are still pushing CISC shite. Did you know that
> the Strong ARM runs at 200MHz *without* a fan? And RISC OS is a dream to
> use compared with Win95. Drivers for graphics cards? What are they? :)
Risc OS can be looked at as Win95 'done properly' - I use a 12mhz computer
with 4mb RAM and a 100mb hard drive (well, actually it's a parallel Zip
drive!!!). The performance I get is superior to P133s with Win95 (except
stuff like JPEG decoding etc...)
The StrongARM processor runs quite happily "without a fan" when you change
a link on the pcb and knock it upto an unofficial 287MHz!
--
________________________________________________________________________
/ ___ | \
| |\ /| |__> | m.b...@argonet.co.uk Woody on IRC |
| | \ / | | \ | http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/m.burke/ |
| | \/ |ATTHEW |__/URKE | On an Acorn A3010 in Wolverhampton, England |
\________________________|_______________________________________________/
... How much sin can I get away with and still go to heaven?
Matt B
Mike Slocombe <mi...@NOSPAMurban75.NOSPAMdemon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <47cac20c...@argonet.co.uk>, Matt B
> <m.b...@argonet.co.uk> writes
> >I don't need hype - I need results. That's why I hate Windoze and love
> >Risc Os...
> Ah. So what you're saying is:
> MacZ SuX, PeCeeS Sux, but AcorNZ R000llZZ!
No: PeeCees really suck, Max are almost livable(?) and Acornz RULE!
> That's a new twist on an age-old argument...
:-)
--
________________________________________________________________________
/ ___ | \
| |\ /| |__> | m.b...@argonet.co.uk Woody on IRC |
| | \ / | | \ | http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/m.burke/ |
| | \/ |ATTHEW |__/URKE | On an Acorn A3010 in Wolverhampton, England |
\________________________|_______________________________________________/
... He's dead Jim. You get his tricorder, I'll get his wallet
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <a21522cb47%st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk>,
Steve Turnbull <st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk> wrote:
> Anyway why are you being so defensive? Could it be that news of
> Acorn's expansion and re-birth are beginning to filter into the
> outside world?
Er, you _do_ know what I do for a living, don't you? Just in case my
regular sounding off has missed you, I run a 160GByte Auspex Fileserver
and an ATM-based network of Suns, a typical configuration having a
gigabyte of memory, a quarter of a gigabit per second of networking and
a couple of UltraSparc processors. I'd be very glad to see Acorn do
wonderfully: I think Microsoft's products are unmitigated shite and I
don't use a byte of their code in my working life.
You should file your paranoia somewhere else.
ian
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No User
In article <34211cc8...@news.demon.co.uk>, nob...@star-one.org.uk wrote:
>~ Excellent series on Channel 4 about the PC revolution (Revenge of the Nerds,
>~ by Robert Crinchley (sp?) based on his book of the same name).
>>Excellent, apart from the main problem that it totally overlooked the
>contribution to personal computing made by anybody other than apple or
>microsoft. Which was quite a lot, actually.
Agreed, but I think the programme set out to concentrate on Apple and
Microsoft, and only mentioned XPARC, Altair etc. Why? Well Bob wants to sell
lots of books, right, and he wants to make a series that will go out in a peak
viewing time so he can sell it for more money, so it has to have mass market
appeal. Most people[1] know of Apple and MS, but not that many of the smaller
players. If he spent too much time on the 'others' the series wouldn't have
such wide appeal, etc. You get the general idea.
P.
[1] in the western world anyway, of employable age, who don't live in a cave
Martin Harvey
>Of course, on an ancient Mac I used to the ironing while it compiled,
>on a Performa I didn't have time to stand up. However while more power
>helps the difference is less important, disc access times are far more
>relevant.
Disc access times are only important if your program has poor data
locality.
MH.
***********************************************
Martin Harvey
Pembroke College, Cambridge University.
Uni email: mc...@hermes.cam.ac.uk
Home email: mc...@harvey27.demon.co.uk
Uni web pages: http://www-stu.pem.cam.ac.uk/~mch24/
***********************************************
Jonathan Williamson
Acorn User Editorial <aued...@post.idg.co.uk> wrote:
>Oh good grief, I can't help it sorry...
>
>In message <knBahHAR...@chipping.demon.co.uk>
> Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> (in criticising Acorn machines)
>>
>> basically anything which requires a fast processor you can't really do
>> at a comfortable speed...
>>
>> - raytracing
>True, no floating point hardware.
ok we agree on this...
>> - fast 3d games
>Debatable, we have some very nice fast 3D games.
no i don't mean flat shaded polygons or doom clones (doom aint real 3d
anyway), i mean at least texture mapped with light sourcing in 16 bit
colour (transparency too)...
>> - image manipulation (the application of filters/effects)
>False. (Professional DTP artists here consider PhotoDesk to be at least
>as good as PhotoShop, and often faster.)
well, i have never used photodesk so i cannot comment but i do really
respect Adobe Photoshop so if it is anything like it it cant be all
bad...
>> - compilers/linkers
>??? eh? False. (What a strange thing to include)
compilation/linking takes a lot of processing power. i can compile my
new 3d engine (~55Kb of code, not nearly finished yet) in around 5
seconds, on my old 486 it takes around half a minute so dont tell me
processing power isnt important...
>> - web browsing (with images/tables/frames in 16bit colour takes a hell
>> of a lot of processing power)
>Rubbish. 16bit, 32bit, 8bit, 4bit, 2bit whichever mode I choose (changing
>halfway through if I want to), no problem (and that's using an ARM610
>which is a twelfth the speed of a StrongARM).
ahh well must be the computers at my school are plain shite then,
because they are slow as hell. mainly A7000's and a RISC PC with access
to the internet
>> >The StrongARM processor runs quite happily "without a fan" when you change
>> >a link on the pcb and knock it upto an unofficial 287MHz!
>> and like you can't over clock intel/cyrix/amd processors you simply
>> increase the speed of the clock multiplier or the entire bus or both.
>> its not hard.
>But with RISC OS you don't *need* to. And "it isn't hard" for who?
you dont need to with windows (i don't), he bought it up. it isnt any
harder than what he described, you simply move a jumper on the mother
board...
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Acorn User Editorial
In message <GLrSKFA6...@chipping.demon.co.uk>
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Acorn User Editorial <aued...@post.idg.co.uk> wrote:
> >> - fast 3d games
> >Debatable, we have some very nice fast 3D games.
> no i don't mean flat shaded polygons or doom clones
Neither did I.
> (doom ain't real 3d anyway)
Hm ... depends whether you're referring to the view space or
the object space. And I'd say it's the user's perception that
really counts ... but that's another subject.
> well, i have never used photodesk so i cannot comment but i do really
> respect Adobe Photoshop so if it is anything like it it cant be all
> bad...
No indeed, it is not bad at all.
> >> - compilers/linkers
> >??? eh? False. (What a strange thing to include)
> compilation/linking takes a lot of processing power. i can compile my
> new 3d engine (~55Kb of code, not nearly finished yet) in around 5
> seconds, on my old 486 it takes around half a minute so dont tell me
> processing power isnt important...
Of course, on an ancient Mac I used to the ironing while it compiled,
on a Performa I didn't have time to stand up. However while more power
helps the difference is less important, disc access times are far more
relevant.
--
Steve Turnbull (Editor, Acorn User, aued...@idg.co.uk)
http://www.idg.co.uk/acornuser/
Ian Wallace
In article <knBahHAR...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
<Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>> The performance I get is superior to P133s with Win95 (except
>>stuff like JPEG decoding etc...)
>at a comfortable speed...
Get a Strong ARM and you may compare speeds, etc.,
I remember somone writing a JPEG decoder for the Acorn which could
decode a JPEG in the same time a P133 could do. And that is on an ARM2.
10 year old processor technology.
--
Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace
In article <JicBwAAa...@chipping.demon.co.uk>, Jonathan Williamson
<Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> writes
>>And I find it heaven when I go back to my arc.....
>>I would *gladly* use my arc, if only it was a little faster, the serial
>>port ran my modem at full speed, and my net software was better....
>if only blah..blah..blah..it was a *real* computer. capable of handling
>todays requirements. you have summed my point up beautifully.
No. What I wanted can be solved by buying a RISC PC and the ANT suite.
Costing about 600 quid. Unfortunately I don't have 600 quid atm.
--
Ian Wallace
Ian Lynch
Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> ahh well must be the computers at my school are plain shite then,
> because they are slow as hell. mainly A7000's and a RISC PC with access
> to the internet
These machines are more than 3 years old. Compare them with 3 year old
PCs. P75 perhaps DX4/100 or something running Win 3.11. Also depends
on what modems and software you are using. Perhaps you should also
make sure that both the Acorns and PCs have the same amount of RAM ;-)
Has your RPC got video RAM installed? This will make a significant
difference too. Also try extending the font cache by dragging the
little bar out in the task manager. A badly configured cache can slow
the machine down a lot.
--
Ian
Ian Lynch
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> But since a lot of schools seem besotted by products which are neither
> mainstream nor cutting edge (to judge from my periodic reading of the
> TES), how do you intend to achieve that culture shift? You should
> come to the conference in November and hear me talk about > the
> cultural issues of NC...
You should read my publication "Managing IT at KS3" published by the
Technology Colleges Trust 1997 ISBN 1 873882 33 5
:-)
> Acorn and RM have encouraged a ``not invented here'' attitude in UK
> education, which is pernicious and wrong.
Depends on your view. A strange thing to say given what you said about
M$'s business motivation. Acorn and RM are just as likely to protect
their markets as M$ even if on a smaller scale. The thing about Acorn
is that they produced machines very early on which moved educational
IT light years ahead of most other countries in the world. Colour and
sound and software screen modes on 8 bit machines in 1980. Believe it
or not we are still more advanced than most in many respects. Some of
the pedagogy coming from the States was done here 10 years ago.
Prettier buttons perhaps. RM have concentrated on education and stuck
with it when other PC manufactueres have been in and out depending on
the climate. Despite all this many schools buy PC clones - I have been
involved in tenders for millions of pounds worth of PCs recently but
the fact is RM are very competitive on price when pushed and offer
some value added facilites and services when compared to the "quality
manufacturers such as IBM, Compaq or Apricot and their machines run
all the M$ software. If you have built up a relationship over 15 years
and trust a manufacturer who sells you machines cheaper than the
opposition why change?
Ok I know schools who buy Acorn or RM because they just hate everyone
else but they are pretty few in practice. Those who stick with Acorn
do so because they believe on balance that it does the job better or
they are scared of change - no different from those in industry on
PCs in fact. The difference between these people and those in industry
is that to them in their industry Acorn is the industry standard and
they know the machines well. From my observations any platform can be
used well or badly in education the determining factor is probably the
users' skills not the machine and in my view PCs are more complicated
if only because the software applications are much bigger. You tend to
see more multimedia authoring, graphics origination etc on Macs and
Acorns and more wordprocessing and spreadsheets on PCs - not because
each platform can't do the other things but because of tradition and
association.
I wouldn't dream of telling you how to manage your Suns in your
industry but I do know a lot about how IT is used in schools.
Mainstream and cutting edge are not the issue. Preparing children for
change by giving them experience of a wide range of applications to
under-pin this is.
--
Ian
Steve Turnbull
In message <5vqjhm$hp6$1...@ftel.ftel.co.uk>
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
> In article <a21522cb47%st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk>,
> Steve Turnbull <st...@turnbull.cix.co.uk> wrote:
> > Anyway why are you being so defensive? Could it be that news of
> > Acorn's expansion and re-birth are beginning to filter into the
> > outside world?
>
> Er, you _do_ know what I do for a living, don't you? Just in case my
> regular sounding off has missed you, I run a 160GByte Auspex Fileserver
> and an ATM-based network of Suns, a typical configuration having a
> gigabyte of memory, a quarter of a gigabit per second of networking and
> a couple of UltraSparc processors. I'd be very glad to see Acorn do
> wonderfully: I think Microsoft's products are unmitigated shite and I
> don't use a byte of their code in my working life.
>
> You should file your paranoia somewhere else.
I think you should spot the smiley that you cut from the quote above.
--
Steve Turnbull
You are not a Human Being having a spiritual experience
You are a Spiritual Being having a human experience
-- Brian Herosian
... Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
Matt B
Ian Wallace <i...@cloudnine.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> The performance I get is superior to P133s with Win95 (except
> >>stuff like JPEG decoding etc...)
> >basically anything which requires a fast processor you can't really do
> >at a comfortable speed...
> Like comparing a 133MHz machine to a 12MHz machine is fair.
Just remember how much mine costs (£45 s/h and ~£120 new [discontinued])
and how much the PC cost 8-12 months ago (£1K ish?)
--
________________________________________________________________________
/ ___ | \
| |\ /| |__> | m.b...@argonet.co.uk Woody on IRC |
| | \ / | | \ | http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/m.burke/ |
| | \/ |ATTHEW |__/URKE | On an Acorn A3010 in Wolverhampton, England |
\________________________|_______________________________________________/
... I am Tweety of Borg. I did! I did attimuwate a Puddy Tat!
.adrienne.
lost in the wilderness, i ran to Steve Brewster
<ma...@zeus.bris.ac.uk> for help - but was instead given this
coded message..
>I sat GCSE Computer Studies in '88 (the first year of GCSEs).
>I learned all about the relative advantages of punched cards
>and magnetic tape as input devices.
>And what all the flowchart symbols mean.
>And how to write a program in BASIC that adds two numbers together.
i did gcse i.t. last year and learnt how to make little lights switch on
and off in sequence.
i feel so enlightened now.
no place like home.. http..www.slim.demon.co.uk..moon
Liam Collins
...so there! Hands off the cattle or next time it's The Finger!
Tim Jackson
Not so long ago, Matt B wrote:
> I applaude Netscape for thir development on the HTML language.
Ha! What, you mean like the <BLINK> and <MARQUEE> tags? Oh yeah they
deserve a massive round of applause for that!! :>
And for introducing a new tag <CENTER> just because they couldn't be
bothered to support the HTML ->2<- tag <DIV>?!! Stunning!
--
___ __ ____________________________________________________________
/.__ / / Theatre technician, musician, programmer - Arcline on IRC /
///// _/. / http://www.nucleusd.demon.co.uk - Sheffield, England /
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
~ The thing about Acorn
~ is that they produced machines very early on which moved educational
~ IT light years ahead of most other countries in the world. Colour and
~ sound and software screen modes on 8 bit machines in 1980.
Ho ho ho.
Some of us were actually around during the consumer electronics boom of
the early 80s, & remember the bbc micro/acorn proton debacle as clearly
as we remember who is the team manager of the british entry to the
current world's fastest car competition.
Now, about those 18 month delivery delays...
Stephen Walker
Ian G Batten <I.G.B...@batten.eu.org> wrote:
>(*) My school made a huge thing out of General Studies, which they
>pointed out that my decision to do my A Levels at a tech would rule
>out.
It was pointed out to me that if I did four A-levels, I wouldn't have
time to attend the additional lectures for the General Studies. Which
pleased me no end.
> I decided to take it anyway, for fun
M3 T00
> (and I can't recall if I did
>it with my other A Levels in 1983 or a year early in 1982) and got an
>A.
M3 T00
> Hardly surprising: I'm white, and my parents are middle class. No
>need to go any further, really.
Doesn't even require that; it was a piece of piss. Write a couple of
easy essays, answer a few multiple guess questions, demonstrate some
basic ability to imagine a 2-d image in 3-d. All you had to do to
answer the current events type questions was not to have been raised
by polar bears.
Steve
--
Steve Walker (email; swalker at nerc dot ac dot uk)
Email address spelt out and return field sabotaged
to deter spam.
Ian G Batten
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <EGKEn...@fsa.bris.ac.uk>,
Steve Brewster <Steve.B...@Bristol.ac.uk> wrote:
> I sat GCSE Computer Studies in '88 (the first year of GCSEs).
I did it for O-Level in 1980, ``for fun'' (ie I didn't bother doing it
at school, I just got myself entered). With hindsight, I should have
taken the same attitude to A-Level Computer Studies, and done Chemistry
as well as Maths and Physics (*). For the O-Level, you had to write
seven absolutely trivial programs for course work, which as a cocky
bastard I did in seven different languages (including PLAN, as I
recall).
Even then, the syllabus was outdated. I did most of the work on a Prime
550 under PrimeOS --- my eternal, and public, thanks as ever go to Clive
Lucas and Peter Ingham of Birmingham Poly, who let an obnoxious child
play with their computers for years on end --- with a small amount done
on their time-expired ICL 1902 under MaxiMOP, and the syllabus was
really pointed at batch processing with cards and tapes.
(*) My school made a huge thing out of General Studies, which they
pointed out that my decision to do my A Levels at a tech would rule
out. I decided to take it anyway, for fun (and I can't recall if I did
it with my other A Levels in 1983 or a year early in 1982) and got an
A. Hardly surprising: I'm white, and my parents are middle class. No
need to go any further, really.
ian
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Ian G Batten
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In article <5vs4lb$6...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>,
Hugh Davies <huge@axalotl_nospam.demon_nospam.co.uk> wrote:
> I disagree. 90% of the resources on most people's desks, in the
> form of 100MHz Pentiums, 64Mb memories and 2Gb disks are completely
> wasted. 90% of the computing use at my employers could be met with
> Wordstar running on an AT. And those resources aren't that cheap,
I have a problem, Hugh. In my head, in the car, I can make speeches
that would have me fronting a political rally and winning, and I could
produce a ``back to basics'' computing manifesto that should get me a
few million on VC just on my charisma alone. It's just that
I just can't get them down on the page. But I'll try...
It makes me weep to see the _time_ --- not the resources, not the
capital, the time --- spent dinking with documents to align the margins,
dinking with spreadsheets to categorise three quids' worth of stationary
and writing immense Access databases to collect addresses. It's all an
alternative to doing real work. Why do we employ (presumably) talented
marketing people, and then allow them spend days playing with the PC to
produce shoddy documents, that a proper designer could have done ten
times better, in half the time, at a lower hourly rate? And why then do
we allow the same production values, the chart-junk, the clip-art, to
get into even our internal communication?
Spreadsheets and databases are, in many cases, a total con. They
provide no diagnostic power and no predictive power: they merely collect
information for its own sake. Was it Rutherford who said that Physics
is Science, and everything else is just stamp collecting? Most business
computing is stamp collecting. But no-one dares question it.
Look at a purchase meeting these days. Everyone turns up with lap tops
when an A5 exercise book would do the same job. Power-Point
presentation of zero value are given. And finally the decision is made
on the basis of the credibility of the salesman, just as it always was.
A total waste of time.
> when you have to buy hundreds of the damn things and upgrade them
> every 12 months to support the latest and "greatest" from Redmond.
I suppose you're right. We don't do that --- hey, I'm still getting
excellent computing value from some s/h Sun IPCs we bought five years
ago --- but I guess you're right.
ian
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Jonathan Williamson
Ian Lynch <i...@ianlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> ahh well must be the computers at my school are plain shite then,
>> because they are slow as hell. mainly A7000's and a RISC PC with access
>> to the internet
>These machines are more than 3 years old. Compare them with 3 year old
>PCs. P75 perhaps DX4/100 or something running Win 3.11.
> Also depends
>on what modems and software you are using.
an isdn line.
> Perhaps you should also
>make sure that both the Acorns and PCs have the same amount of RAM ;-)
well this risc has 13 megs, and the a7000's have 8 i think.
>Has your RPC got video RAM installed?
no idea.
> This will make a significant
>difference too. Also try extending the font cache by dragging the
>little bar out in the task manager. A badly configured cache can slow
>the machine down a lot.
yes i know how to change the font cache ;P
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Simon Gray
I was reading uk.misc, when all of a sudden the voices in my paranoid
~ > I sat GCSE Computer Studies in '88 (the first year of GCSEs).
~
~ I did it for O-Level in 1980, ``for fun'' (ie I didn't bother doing it
~ at school, I just got myself entered). With hindsight, I should have
~ taken the same attitude to A-Level Computer Studies, and done Chemistry
~ as well as Maths and Physics (*). For the O-Level, you had to write
~ seven absolutely trivial programs for course work, which as a cocky
~ bastard I did in seven different languages (including PLAN, as I
~ recall).
Did you write the flow chart after finishing the program, in time
honoured style ?
For my O level in 1986 I wanted to do one of the programs in forth &
another in z80 assembly, but was told by the teacher that I couldn't
because she wouldn't have been able to mark them :(
So they all ended up being in YS MegaBasic.
Dom
Ben Werdmuller <b...@werd.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Tim Jackson wrote
>>And for introducing a new tag <CENTER> just because they couldn't be
>>bothered to support the HTML ->2<- tag <DIV>?!! Stunning!
<snip>
>that were originally introduced with Netscape Navigator. The colour
>tags, background graphics, support for .wav and .mid files playing in
>the background, animated GIFs, etc., etc. are just some of these, and
>they have made a very large impact on what the Web is like today.
Which is exactly what Tim is saying, I believe.
--
Dom +++ Fabulous Kitchenware: http://www.fabkitch.ms +++
Ben Werdmuller
Tim Jackson wrote
>> I applaude Netscape for thir development on the HTML language.
>
>Ha! What, you mean like the <BLINK> and <MARQUEE> tags? Oh yeah they
>deserve a massive round of applause for that!! :>
<MARQUEE> is Microsoft Internet Explorer, and is unsupported by Netscape
Navigator.
</pedantic>
>And for introducing a new tag <CENTER> just because they couldn't be
>bothered to support the HTML ->2<- tag <DIV>?!! Stunning!
They should have supported it; at the same time, imo, the multimedia
enhancements that Netscape introduced into HTML are largely responsible
for the surging popularity of the Web, and thus the Internet (most
people join the 'Net to browse, which is incredibly sad, but that's
neither here nor there). HTML is updated and maintained by committee,
which if you ask me would have come up with none of the enhancements
that were originally introduced with Netscape Navigator. The colour
tags, background graphics, support for .wav and .mid files playing in
the background, animated GIFs, etc., etc. are just some of these, and
they have made a very large impact on what the Web is like today.
--
Ben Werdmuller < Seems you're the only one who knows
http://www.werd.demon.co.uk/ben/ > What it's like to be me
Mike Slocombe
In article <osxXJLAZ...@werd.demon.co.uk>, Ben Werdmuller
<b...@werd.demon.co.uk> writes
>
><MARQUEE> is Microsoft Internet Explorer, and is unsupported by Netscape
>Navigator.
>
></pedantic>
Surely you should have opened that tag first?
Mike
--
http://www.urban75.com/ UK underground eco-rave-protest-drugs-e-zine
"the finest and best designed independent site in Britain" Dly Telegraph
"the most relevent, innovative site of the nineties" Internet Magazine
Remove 'NOSPAM' in header to reply
Stephen Walker
nob...@star-one.org.uk (Simon Gray) wrote:
>For my O level in 1986 I wanted to do one of the programs in forth &
>another in z80 assembly, but was told by the teacher that I couldn't
>because she wouldn't have been able to mark them :(
>So they all ended up being in YS MegaBasic.
As a result of a recent thread on uk.misc, last time I visited my
parents, I had a root about and dug out my old C64.
I thought I'd dig out my old assembler, rewrite it to make it a bit
more efficient, and generally mess about. I was also thinking of
writing a machine code routine to plot points in high-res bit map
mode, because calculating the bit and byte to manipulate in order to
plot x,y is very slow in Basic.
Things haven't quite gone to plan.
I've rediscovered all my old games.
I've realised that my assembler wasn't all that badly written, and
that it actually does a number of things I'd forgotten all about.
I've also realised that I should have written some sort of a manual to
go with it: for example, I'd used certain characters to specify
addressing modes, and hadn't written them down. It has a routine to
calculate offsets for conditional branches; I couldn't remember how to
make it do that. I ended up having to scroll through the program
trying to work out what did what.
My attempt to mess about with the high res graphics was stalled when I
found that the page in the programming guide giving the memory
location for setting the position of the bit map was missing, along
with any guidance about where to put it. So I hunted down an old
program I'd written to allow drawing on the screen with a joystick.
And found that large chunks of it were being performed by calls to m/c
routines. Eventually got the info I wanted though.
Might even get round to doing something with it, eventually. That's if
I can ignore the games...
Jonathan Williamson
Acorn User Editorial <aued...@post.idg.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <GLrSKFA6...@chipping.demon.co.uk>
> Jonathan Williamson <Jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Acorn User Editorial <aued...@post.idg.co.uk> wrote:
>> (doom ain't real 3d anyway)
>
>Hm ... depends whether you're referring to the view space or
>the object space. And I'd say it's the user's perception that
>really counts ... but that's another subject.
well judging by your response you are aware of the techniques used in
doom and are therefore aware of the vast superiority of the quake engine
(which does use proper 3d) so doom clonbes simply dont make the grade
anymore...
>> well, i have never used photodesk so i cannot comment but i do really
>> respect Adobe Photoshop so if it is anything like it it cant be all
>> bad...
>No indeed, it is not bad at all.
but i would still use adobe photoshop/corel xara studio had i the
choice...
>> >> - compilers/linkers
>> >??? eh? False. (What a strange thing to include)
>> compilation/linking takes a lot of processing power. i can compile my
>> new 3d engine (~55Kb of code, not nearly finished yet) in around 5
>> seconds, on my old 486 it takes around half a minute so dont tell me
>> processing power isnt important...
>Of course, on an ancient Mac I used to the ironing while it compiled,
>on a Performa I didn't have time to stand up. However while more power
>helps the difference is less important, disc access times are far more
>relevant.
well since i run my compilers under windows 95 the disk caching means
that after the first compile my hard drive hardly ets accessed. and the
amount of power you need really depends on the size/complexity of
project...
--
thankyou.for.listening
jona...@chipping.demon.co.uk
www.users.areti.co.uk/jonathan
Kyzer
[education newsgroup removed]
From the lips of Jonathan Williamson sprang:
: >> (doom ain't real 3d anyway)
[snip]
: well judging by your response you are aware of the techniques used in
: doom and are therefore aware of the vast superiority of the quake engine
: (which does use proper 3d) so doom clonbes simply dont make the grade
: anymore...
I hate to butt in to this flame war I appear to have started, but perhaps
if I had longer reaching arms I could properly knock some heads together.
Perhaps if game producers spent more time on developing effective graphics
and interesting gameplay, they would be able to get away with 'only' doom
quality graphics, preferably shaded a little nicer. Quake is a bit silly,
on all but the very fastest of machines it is completely unplayable at
maximum quality and screen size, and even then it can be very slow. I
would much prefer to see games that held a full 50/60/72Hz framerate
rather than try and emulate a raycasting engine. Just look at the N64.
Of the few games available, most are extremely high quality, very playable,
and despite being vast _and_ graphically splendid, they mostly fit in about
20Mb of space.
'3d' games are still the sloths of the games-world. No matter how fast
processors get, how many MIPS and MFLOPS they can muster, some 'bright
spark' will doubtless come up with adding another load of features that
add nothing more than graphical gloss to a 3d game, and bring the
framerate down to the speed it was 6 months ago. Idiots.
: but i would still use adobe photoshop/corel xara studio had i the
: choice...
...because you've already learnt how to use it, and plenty of advertising
has made it a name that is known by all, even computer idiots. You would
be employable on the basis that you 'knew photoshop', rather than any
technical or artistic ability. Bless Photoshop, image processor of
Champions. If only we could get 5 year olds to use it, then we wouldn't
have such embarrassing artwork on our fridge doors.
: well since i run my compilers under windows 95 the disk caching means
Windows 95. Once again, the world must BOW to LORD WILLIAM GATES THE THIRD ON
HIGH and OBEY HIS EVERY SUGGESTION.
*sigh*
I believe that I can safely say that the majority of computers in use
today support disk-caching. If users want to use it, that's their choice.
Rather ironically, W95 has an option to make an upper limit on how much
physical RAM should be made available for disk-caching purposes, so if
you neglect to set this properly, you may find all your available RAM
consumed for the terribly important task of holding data that is already
held on the hard disk, and is only a few microseconds away.
Mind you, far be it from me to say that if Wintel software wasn't so
bloated these days, HD's would be fast enough without much caching.
: amount of power you need really depends on the size/complexity of
: project...
I can quite happily compile huge projects on a stock 68020 (15 years old,
if memory serves me correctly), with about 1Mb or less of RAM. Are you
sure you have an efficient linker and compiler set if a Pentium only gives you
a 5-fold increase in speed over a 486? Or perhaps you're not writing modular
enough code.
--
Stuart 'Kyzer' Caie, Aberdeen University, Scotland. Email to: ky...@4u.net
My opinions are not those of Aberdeen University, and I do not speak for or
on behalf of AUCC.
..100% Amiga, forever!.. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~u13sac/
--
Random sig of the day:
Packing class and eating pies!