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From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
Newsgroups: comp.archives
Subject: [ibm-pc-binaries] A look back at 1990 from uwasa.fi
Message-ID: <1991Jan2.030951.13808@ox.com>
Date: 2 Jan 91 03:09:51 GMT
References: <1990Dec31.180130.26665@uwasa.fi>
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
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Archive-name: msdos/uwasa/year-in-review/1990-12-31
Archive: chyde.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/0news90.ts [128.214.12.3]
Original-posting-by: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
Original-subject: A look back at 1990 from uwasa.fi
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

Mon 31-Dec-90: Now that the year 1990 has gone by it is interesting
to take brief a subjective look back at some features from a
moderator's vantage point.
   The number one product of the year on the net seems to have been
McAfee's virus scanner which was updated at very frequent intervals
throughout the year. (Currently /pc/pd2/scanv72.zip.)
   Another product that captivated the scene at the beginning half
of 1990 was LZEXE from France by Fabrice Bellard. (Currently
/pc/pd2/lzexe91.zip). The idea is brilliant in its simplicity.
Compress any executable program, and place the code to decompress it
at run time into the program. Later PKWare followed suit with its
pklite, and will probably dominate in the future because of its
well-known brandname and US background. (Not perhaps fair in a
sense, but that's the way "the market" stands.)
   I was pleased to see one of my own packages (currently
/pc/ts/tsfaq15.arc) to do particularly well. When I started
collecting frequently asked questions from the news, and find
answers to them, I didn't quite foresee that it would so quickly
become this popular.
   One of the depressing features I saw repeated many times over in
program packages in 1990 was poor testing before releasing. There
were several programs which were either very difficult to implement,
had poor user interfaces, or simply did not work at all. More than
ever before I saw what I call my "ten minute rule" broken. (The
rule: If an experienced user is still completely stuck after the
first ten minutes, a shareware product is badly done.)
   The turbulent PC file compression scene earlier dominated by the
.arc packing method saw .zip emerge the dominant archiver in 1990.
What lies ahead is difficult to say, since this is a volatile and
competition prone area. We had repeated gossip of much enhanced
versions of .lzh and .zoo archivers throughout the year, but nothing
happened.
   Net connections improved in general during the year, but there
were occasional breaks in the overseas link in particular. Another
sad feature was that so many parts of comp.binaries.ibm.pc had
techincal difficulties in reaching the destinations. This is
probably due to the lenght of these packages. Also our site
experienced repeated problems in this respect.
   One of the nice features (and perhaps a sign of maturity) is that
no really serious flame wars had to be endured in c.b.i.p.d this
year.
   A Happy New Year from uwasa.fi archives.
   All the best, Timo

...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi        (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun