Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Comic
Message-ID: <7117@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 14 Jul 90 14:50:55 GMT
References: <228@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Lines: 43

In article <228@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) writes:
>Comic is attractive, so I played with it some on our Cray Y-MP
>to see how it does there.  It is horrible!  (In terms of speed.
>Worked OK, though, with no changes, under Unicos).
>
>The compression is good enough, however, so that it would bear
>some further investigation.  

I just got back from the UK UNIX Users' Group meeting in London where
I was a speaker, along with Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan,
Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Stu Feldman, and quite a few other stellar
personalities.  All of those guys are great speakers, so if you ever
get the chance to hear them at conferences, don't miss it. I definitely
feel hono(u)red to be invited to join in with those folks.

The conference gave a nice example of man being humbled by nature.  The
conference organi{z/s}ers thought it would be nice to have terminals
available with internet access, so attendees could telnet to their home
machines to read mail.  They rented about 20 X-terminals and set them up
in the conference hotel.  British Telecom renegd on its promise to provide
a leased line to Imperial College nearby, so the conference people
got an infrared link and installed it on the roof of the hotel, along
with another one at Imperial College 1 km away.  They tested it the night
before, and it worked perfectly.

However it refused to work in the day time.  Only at night.  It seems that
the heat from the sun striking the hotel's roof causes the air to shimmer,
distorting the infrared signal so badly that transmission is impossible.
The best laid plans of mice and joysticks ...

Anyway, if anyone has good ideas about how to fix comic to make it faster
without hurting the compression too much, I'm all for it.  The net postings
could be considerably reduced if comic were used instead of compress.
Furthermore, the number of disks in the distribution from P-H could also
be sharply reduced, which would greatly reduce the price.  I think 1.5
will cost $169.  A substantial reason for the increase from $116 (1.3
in slipcase form, with manual), is the jump from 10 disks to 17. (As I
mentioned before, there will be a discount for people who send in a P-H
boot disk from 1.1 - 1.3; more about that later when I find out).

I'm going away again tomorrow.  I'll be back July 31.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)