Very Computer

I know it is an exercise in futility to debate this sig, but I will never
understand its underlying attitude:  that intelligent people prefer to
work with poorly designed and/or difficult to operate machinery.  Although
the price of progress does seem to be a world of technological marvels
that never seem to work right, I still hold out hope for something
better.  I certainly do not look to the tools I use as an intelligence
test for the *user*.  I no more want my computer to "challenge" me than I
do my car when I have someplace to go or my CD player when I want to hear
music.  The more it does so, the more it interferes with my reasons for
using it in the first place.

Win95 pre-emptively multi tasks. mac cooperatively multi tasks. Sure,
you can run several programs at once on a Mac (granted you can't
minimize them) but if on crashed (highly likely) there goes your whole
system...

But Win95 is still unstable, even w/ the kernel update. Linux rules,
bar none.

------------------------------------------------------------
* Matthew Borowski, http://mkb.home.ml.org/                *
------------------------------------------------------------
* "Macintoshes have to be smart computers --               *
* they must make up for their users' lack of intelligence."*
------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:>          I certainly do not look to the tools I use as an intelligence
> test for the *user*.

Agreed. Learning the basics of those tools takes no more intelligence
than learning how to drive and obey the rules of the road. People just
refuse to learn those basics, because they've been told that the tools
are "intuitive."

They then try to do, say, desktop publishing, without acquiring a smidgen
of the knowledge that graphic designers and compositors take years to
acquire....

Quote:>                       I no more want my computer to "challenge" me than I
> do my car when I have someplace to go or my CD player when I want to hear
> music.  The more it does so, the more it interferes with my reasons for
> using it in the first place.

Are you still using it only for the purpose for which you started using
it? It is telephone, typewriter, TV, radio, stereo, VCR, sketch pad,
canvas, calculator, card catalogue, filing cabinet, newspaper, and more,
all rolled into one -- but most important of all, it gives other people
power over how you work and play and what you see and hear. It *must* be
viewed as a challenge, and we *must* rise to it.

As computers gain in importance, we, the ordinary end users, must become
the masters of our machines, or we will not be the masters of our own
lives.

Dan Strychalski

Quote:>Win95 pre-emptively multi tasks. mac cooperatively multi tasks. Sure,
>you can run several programs at once on a Mac (granted you can't
>minimize them) but if on crashed (highly likely) there goes your whole
>system...

Pre-emptive multi-tasking involves central allocation of processor
time, if a task crashes the central control of simply passes control
on to the next task.  On Mac (and Windows 3.1) Multi-tasking is
co-opertive, each task holds on to the processor till it has finished
with it, then passes it on the the next task.  Under co-operative
multi-tasking a crashed task will never pass on control of the
processor.

People who have used Mac's for a while then use Win95 certainly notice
the difference (try starting a long copy process on a Mac, then open
your word-processor) and as a Win'95 user who uses Macs I find the
lack of pre-emptive multi-tasking irritating.

Hopefully the Mac will get this sorted out soon, but until then (much
as I hate to say it) Win '95 will be my prefered platform...

Quote:>But Win95 is still unstable, even w/ the kernel update. Linux rules,
>bar none.

...but only if MS and Apple are the only ones in the running.  Linux
is the place to be, though it's worth noting that the Psion hand-held
(and lop-top) has had pre-emptive multi-tasking for around 10 years!

Lots Of Love

Bill Ray

Well, someone obviously needs to clarify here.

Win95 and Mac multitask equally well, Unix does it better than both, the
difference between the three methods has almost become a matter of
symantics.  

The Mac:
The Mac uses Cooperative Multitasking. In this method, the program in the
forground has control over CPU cycles. It uses the cycles it needs and
then doles out the remaining cycles to applications in the background.
(BTW, you can "minimize" a program on the Mac, just use the "Hide"
feature.) This method works pretty well, and it lets you decide which
program whould get the largest slice of pie by putting it in the
foreground.

A side note on the crash problem, I am running a beta of Tempo, and
crashes are completely isolated to the offending program now, just like
NT. So if a program crashes, it just shuts down and the other programs
keep chugging along.

Win95:
Win95 uses pre-emptive multitasking. In this method, a portion of the OS
intercedes and devides up the CPU cycles between applications using
criteria of its own. This method works fine and can in some cases show
speed improvements over cooperative multitasking. It does however, cause
slowdowns in other situations by using too many of the CPU cycles to make
up it's mind as to which program should run next. If I recall correctly,
mathmatically intense computations trigger this (don't hold me to that, I
have a recollection of reading it though).

A side note on crash problems with Win95.  I work in a large shop that is
pretty evenly divided UNIX/Win95/Mac/NT. I see just as many crashes on
Win95 and NT that take the entire system down as I do on Macs. NT seems to
be a bit better about avaoiding total system hangs, but it still does it.

UNIX:
Unix uses TRUE multitasking, in which CPU cycles are divided evenly at the
OS level between programs. You can also set priorities to operations
defining their importance and how many cycles they should get. This method
works best, and since Unix is totally multithreaded and has totally
protected memory, total system locks are rare. It is unfortunate that Unix
is so behind the times on things like intelligent resource sensing and
GUI.

All told, all three methods work, but only UNIX is REALLY multitasking. I
don't think any argument can be forwarded that proves either cooperative
or pre-emptive are inherently superior.  

When the NEXT/Mac OS is released, it will be the first time in history
that a system as sophisticated as UNIX will be offered to the desktop with
an excellent GUI and a decent Price/Performance scale. I think when
Rhapsody hits the streets, it wont take long before most experts agree it
is the best OS in these catagories. Whether or not it developes a
significant marketshare is irrelavent if all we are concerned with is "Who
has the best multitasking/protected memory" argument.

--
?1996 JLB. Non-exclusive, royalty free license to distribute is granted to any person, entity or business worldwide except Microsoft. By distributing this, Microsoft agrees to pay $1,000 per posting, printing or copy in any form whatsoever.

   Nah. 90% of the time if an app crashes on me, it just vanishes and
everything else is still up and running. I've recently had annoyances with
the newest versions of Eudora Lite (not to mention Netscape 2.02). In
every case, the stupid thing would crash. If it was in the background at
the time, I'd get an alert when I switched to the Finder, generally saying
application 'unknown' quit for no explicable reason.
   As for minimizing? I'd consider option-clicking on the desktop or
another app's window to qualify, as the previous foreground app fooshes
away to hide in the upper-right apps menu and work unobtrusively in the
background until called out again. That would seem pretty minimal ;)
   'Fraid you don't know much about what you're talking about :)

Quote:> But Win95 is still unstable, even w/ the kernel update. Linux rules,
> bar none.

   *nod* I have no gripe with Linux- hope you get more people into it, it
sounds kinda cool :)

   Jinx_tigr
   (aka Chris Johnson)

Quote:>I no more want my computer to "challenge" me than I
>do my car when I have someplace to go or my CD player when I want to hear
>music.  The more it does so, the more it interferes with my reasons for
>using it in the first place.

        Imagine that your car could not have its hood oppened.  The only
way you could attempt to fix the car yourself would be to point and klick
on ikons.  Wouldn't that be enturbulating!  The DoS (Device of Satan)
prompt allows a skilled user to fix problems by actually going into the
programs themselves and mucking around.
        As far as I know, Makintosh doen't have a DoS prompt.  Could be
wrong.  
        It's the difference between automatic and stick.  Automatic is
easier for learning and offers instant expertise.  Stick lets the skilled
user have more control at the cost of greater difficulty, but for the
skilled user, the difficulty in automatic is actually greater at times
because of the enturbulation of the lack of control.

-----
The Ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted
a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestial hell.
                                                        ---Russel Kirk

This thread is clearly off-topic for alt.religion.scientology. Please
be kind enough to remove alt.religion.scientology from your followups
to posts in this thread, and keep our little corner of Usenet that bit
less cluttered.

Thanks!

[a.r.s. snipped from followups]

--
Steve A, SP4, GGBC, KBM, Unsalvageable PTS/SP #12
So long, Arthur...
ObURLS: Beginners: http://www.veryComputer.com/
         In-depth: http://www.*com.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html
 Suspicious Death: http://www.veryComputer.com/~cultxpt/lisa.htm
   The Other Side: http://www.veryComputer.com/

"...Your suppositions include an unwarranted accusation which
I do not consider myself called upon to address..."
- a nice line in diplomatic put-down from Swedish
  A/G in response to letter of Warren McShane

you want multiprocesing check out the beos. you can play numerus videos,
download stuff, surf the web, anything, at the same time. it has true
multiprocesing! also the box has 2 ppc procesors so it makes it even
truer (not to mention better) multiprocesing. you can also run this on
the mac (power computing systems come with it). when you boot your
system it will automaticaly ask which one you want to run. imagine this
on a Daystar Genesis MP 720+ with about 256 megs of ram! and you can get
this now! but don't have an *- the system i mentioned costs about
15K. i guess you should try the mail sceme mentioned.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((josmo((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

Quote:> an excellent GUI and a decent Price/Performance scale. I think when
> Rhapsody hits the streets, it wont take long before most experts agree it
> is the best OS in these catagories. Whether or not it developes a
> significant marketshare is irrelavent if all we are concerned with is "Who
> has the best multitasking/protected memory" argument.

> --
> ?1996 JLB. Non-exclusive, royalty free license to distribute is granted to any person, entity or business worldwide except Microsoft. By distributing this, Microsoft agrees to pay $1,000 per posting, printing or copy in any form whatsoever.

...

Quote:>>                       I no more want my computer to "challenge" me than I
>> do my car when I have someplace to go or my CD player when I want to hear
>> music.  The more it does so, the more it interferes with my reasons for
>> using it in the first place.

>Are you still using it only for the purpose for which you started using
>it? It is telephone, typewriter, TV, radio, stereo, VCR, sketch pad,
>canvas, calculator, card catalogue, filing cabinet, newspaper, and more,
>all rolled into one -- but most important of all, it gives other people
>power over how you work and play and what you see and hear. It *must* be
>viewed as a challenge, and we *must* rise to it.

>As computers gain in importance, we, the ordinary end users, must become
>the masters of our machines, or we will not be the masters of our own
>lives.

agreed--people should know how their computers work.  but while some people
spend their time mastering his/her os, others are actually DOING WORK AND
GETTING PAID.  of course, in this case, the first and most important
catalyst of productivity is ease of use.  micro$hit surely does not provide
this.

micro$hit operating systems are for *ic nerds:  the kind of people
who go through the trouble of doing things the hard way just so they can
feel as if they've accomplished something special by overcoming the inherent
flaws of their operating system.

meanwhile, mac users are turning their computers on and doing work without
thinking about their os.  period.  gil amelio is right when he says that
productivity is the only benchmark.  you can have a pentium running at
200mhz, but if you get caught up in a crappy, unintuitive interface, a lot
of good that zippy processor will do for you when your work deadline is
coming up.

anyways, what is the "challenge," of which you write, to which we must arise?
overcoming the clumsiness of a command-line interface?  an inferior gui?
yeah, dude, whatever.  work smarter, not harder.  why try figuring out how to
get a dos-box to do what a mac can do out of the box?  playing a simple
*ing movie, for example...

Roman Larski

Quote:> > When the NEXT/Mac OS is released, it will be the first time in history
> > that a system as sophisticated as UNIX will be offered to the desktop with
> you want multiprocesing check out the beos. you can play numerus videos,
> download stuff, surf the web, anything, at the same time. it has true
> multiprocesing! also the box has 2 ppc procesors so it makes it even
> truer (not to mention better) multiprocesing. you can also run this on
> the mac (power computing systems come with it). when you boot your
> system it will automaticaly ask which one you want to run. imagine this
> on a Daystar Genesis MP 720+ with about 256 megs of ram! and you can get
> this now! but don't have an *- the system i mentioned costs about
> 15K. i guess you should try the mail sceme mentioned.

> (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((josmo((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

> > an excellent GUI and a decent Price/Performance scale. I think when
> > Rhapsody hits the streets, it wont take long before most experts agree it
> > is the best OS in these catagories. Whether or not it developes a
> > significant marketshare is irrelavent if all we are concerned with is "Who
> > has the best multitasking/protected memory" argument.

I agree that the BeOS does have excellent multitasking. However, I really
don't believe that is will survive in it's current form. The GUI is
pathetic and there are absolutely zero applications for it, unless you
want to run old 68k mac apps in emulation, but then you dont get the
multitasking.

I believe that BeOS will be absorbed by a larger company and dissected
into its componants for use in other OS's. To be honest, Gaussee really
shot himself in the foot when he blew the deal with Apple. NEXT is a
better OS, but Be had the inside track and could have come out on top if
Gaussee hadn't blown it.

--
?1996 JLB. Non-exclusive, royalty free license to distribute is granted to any person, entity or business worldwide except Microsoft. By distributing this, Microsoft agrees to pay $1,000 per posting, printing or copy in any form whatsoever.

Yes, but I *know* you then go ahead and reboot because (as any good
macintosh user knows) your system is not exactly stable when an app
quits unexpectedly - or *especially* when you *force-quit* an app.

Quote:>> you want multiprocesing check out the beos. you can play numerus videos,
>> download stuff, surf the web, anything, at the same time. it has true
>> multiprocesing! also the box has 2 ppc procesors so it makes it even
>> truer (not to mention better) multiprocesing.

        I should point out that "true multiprocessing" means you physically
have more than one processor running at once.  Anything else is multi-tasking,
multi-threading, or multi-programming, depending on a few fine points.

        Also, you can get a multiprocessor PowerMac clone with pretty much
everything you'd ever need for BeOS fer about $5K give-or-take, so it's not
*THAT* far out of one's price range.  $15K would get you a top-top-TOP of the
line DayStar machine with all the goodies.

        Okay, whoa.  What about the GUI is pathetic?  I personally think
it's clean and slick.  Are you perhaps complaining about the fact that
it's not like a Mac?  A single tear rolls down my cheek.

        Also, EVERY OPERATING SYSTEM had zero applications when it first
came out.  Has it really been *that* long since the first appearance of DOS,
Windows and MacOS that their users cannot comprehend this simple fact?  

Quote:>I believe that BeOS will be absorbed by a larger company and dissected
>into its componants for use in other OS's. To be honest, Gaussee really
>shot himself in the foot when he blew the deal with Apple. NEXT is a
>better OS, but Be had the inside track and could have come out on top if
>Gaussee hadn't blown it.

        First, there's no 'u' in "Gassee."  Second, BeOS is its own OS,
and was always intended to be so.  When those rumors about a deal with
Apple (yes, _rumors_) started floating around, comp.sys.be and such
were suddenly packed with Mac advocates, bragging to their Wintel
enemies that "Apple just bought Be," not comprehending that maybe we
don't *want* our nice, modern OS ground into tiny bits to shore
up MacOS, or any other dilapidated monstrosity.  The problem is that many
OS religious fanatics use their favorite OS as the very _definition_ of
all that's good in the world, and so dismantling a really cool new OS
to make their own old OS crash a little faster is perceived as "GOOOD."
When Be didn't sell out, it was perceived as "BAAAD."  Whatever.

        BeOS has so far defied all the elitist snorting in the *.advocacy
groups:  it still exists, it hasn't been bought and disassembled to
keep some other piece-of-shit OS going for a few more years, and it works
well.  Further, it will run on multiprocessing PowerMac clones long before
MacOS itself will be an SMP OS.  That's hardly "blowing it."

o888'   `88   ,888.    888                                                
888          ,8'`88.   888     "If I am more nearsighted than others,
888o.   ,oo ,8oooo88.  888       it is because I have stood on the
`888oooo88 o88o  o888o 888             shoulders of midgets."
____________________8o888'____ (Issac Newton's evil twin brother Spike) ___

I agree completely. He got greedy and lost. Now, he's putting all his
energy into sabotaging Apple.

--
Regards,

Joe Ragosta

See the Complete Macintosh Advocacy Site
http://www.dol.net/~Ragosta/complmac.htm

<Dribble SNIP>

Quote:>anyways, what is the "challenge," of which you write, to which we must arise?
>overcoming the clumsiness of a command-line interface?  an inferior gui?
>yeah, dude, whatever.  work smarter, not harder.  why try figuring out how to
>get a dos-box to do what a mac can do out of the box?  playing a simple
>*ing movie, for example...

The last time I played a movie on my '95 box, I double clicked it's
icon... movie played. Worked the same on WIN 3.1 and WIN3.11. So....
let me guess, the Mac's got it down to a single click. It's insanely
great advancements like that that have made the Mac the market leader
it is. Time for a *real* computer yet?