Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!exodus!limes From: limes@sun.com (Greg Limes) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Required MIPS (was Sun's Competitive Strategy) Message-ID: Date: 10 Dec 90 21:29:11 GMT References: <1635@unix386.Convergent.COM> <1990Dec2.014554.3491@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1758@unix386.Convergent.COM> Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM Lines: 31 In-reply-to: dtynan@unix386.Convergent.COM's message of 10 Dec 90 03:47:07 GMT In article <1758@unix386.Convergent.COM> dtynan@unix386.Convergent.COM (Dermot Tynan) writes: > In article , khb@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman fpgroup) writes: > > > > 28mips is several hundreds > > of orders of magnitude too small for a really user friendly system. > > > > A friend of mine has a good example. He goes to his favorite pub (duke > > of endinburgh) and waves > > to his favorite server. She looks him over, and picks out what he > > wants to drink ... based on his mood. > Great example! I sometimes go into "The Duke" myself, and almost every time, > I have to wait *ages* just to order a pint of Bass. The service there is > *terrible*. Even with 280 GIPS, I can't see this kind of thing changing. > For some people, you just can't beat a command prompt (ie, take a glass > down from the shelf, put it under the tap and pour :). The learning curve > may be brutal, but once learnt, the interface is optimal. As the friend in question ... I might share a quick comment. Sometimes you may find yourself using a fancier GUI instead of a CLI, even though it may be slower or introduce more overhead, simply because it is easier or more estheticly pleasing, and the extra slowness is not enough to bother you. Given this attitude, people will always be figuring out ways to chew up more processing power to get fancier interfaces, so there will always be a market for machines that are just a bit faster. -- Greg Limes limes@eng.sun.com "Just One More Bug Fix ..."