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From: chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What's in the '586?
Message-ID: <14251@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 30 May 91 22:50:18 GMT
References: <1991May14.002130.4740@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> <42390@cup.portal.com> <4731.284500fb@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
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Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:
>mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>> Gee, didn't you notice the smiley at the end?  
>Another facet of this that no-one commented on - it came right at the
>end of a heavy flame war on news.admin because Ed Vielmetti posted
>a similar joke with no smiley.

I was quite surprised that so many people failed to spot the posting
as a well-written joke, smiley or not.  I'm not sure, but I'd swear
that people have been writing parody, satire, and sarcasm since before
there were smiley faces, and somehow they got the message across.  Not
everyone on the net is Swift or Voltaire, but an intended joke is
almost always immediately obvious, even if it isn't funny.

Generally, I think smileys are vile -- sort of like visual canned
laughter.  Do we really need them?

So, here's an obligatory architectural musing: How about those sound
chips?  Howcome I have to call a library routine to get at them?  I
want direct access to the sound chip from the language that I program
in, so that the programs that I write can give users audio feedback,
but I want portability, too, so I'll get a similar effect on a Sun,
Macintosh, or NeXT.  For instance, we can introduce a new escaped
character in C strings "\h", for "Humor" (similar to "\a" for "Audible
Alert"), which will cause the sound chip to emit a chuckle.  "\H"
emits a belly-laugh.  I leave it to the standards committees to decide
on the full mapping of noises to escape sequences.

Compiler writers and language designers need to provide access to
these valuable architectural features so that we can get on with the
task of enhancing our mailers and news readers; after all, a great
deal of user time, CPU time and disk space is spent in the use of
these valuable applications, so we should ensure that they are of the
highest possible quality.

David Chase
Sun