Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!dayton!joe
From: joe@dayton.UUCP (Joseph P. Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Mr. Pournelle is brain-dead.  News at 11:00.
Message-ID: <6206@dayton.UUCP>
Date: 28 Sep 88 14:34:59 GMT
References: <3060@hubcap.UUCP> <70319@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: joe@dayton.UUCP (Joseph P. Larson)
Distribution: na
Organization: Dayton-Hudson Dept. Store Co.
Lines: 44


Personally, I suspect Dr. Pournelle is a little brighter than he lets on
in his articles.  I suspect he's quite capable of handling the code-a-wheel.
However, he also knows just how to say things to achieve some effect.  One
would be a little naive to believe he actually had a problem using it.  But
he was annoyed enough that he wrote what he wrote.

I mean, come on!  Anyone who can co-author brainstorms such as "Oath of
Fealty" can handle a little computer technology.  But his article probably
DOES reflect what the average Joe out there is going to think.  Those stupid
code-a-wheels are a pain in the butt.  And when he complains that the Amiga
crashes from time-to-time, he's exactly right.  It *does* crash every now
and then.  Manx "z" (at least version 3.4A) has bugs in its garbage collection,
for instance, that gives you reproducable crashes.  The average guy out there
isn't going to be real understanding when his 1-hour edit session was just
wasted 'cause the computer crashed.  And users are dum.  Dum dum dum.  I
had to walk a woman through a reboot over the phone yesterday.  I told her
to type "2 space".  She does this then says "Should I use the numbers
over the letters?" (Rather than the keypad numbers).  Notice she didn't
say that she had already typed anything nor that the screen had changed
because of it.  So I say "That's always better".  (Some system software
doesn't handle keypad in keypad mode on our machine.)  Well, option 2.2
in the menu she was running is "Enter Multi-User mode".  Dum.  Dum.  Dum.
When dealing with users, one needs to speak very slowly, using tiny little
words, and it has to work EXACTLY (to the keystroke) the way you tell them.

So people can take offense at what Dr. Pournelle writes, but when it comes
right down to it, I haven't heard anyone quote anything from his article that
was that far off the wall with what the users are going to feel.  Don't bitch
about how dum he is but maybe think "Gee, maybe he's right.  Maybe it SHOULD
be a little easier to install such-and-such."  If you want the average Joe out
there to want an Amiga, it can't crash.  It has to be easy to install and
should work right the first time.  My Amiga crashes.  My Amiga has a cronic
hardware problem in the video cable (I have to bend the pins a little bit
every few weeks so they make good contact into the back of the Amiga).  How
many messages have come across the net in the past few weeks where people
are having weird resets, disk problems, memory problems, Fat Agnus chips not
seated correctly, etc etc?

Don't bitch about what he says.  Fix it. -Joe
-- 
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