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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!floyd!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!mhuxm!pyuxi!pyuxa!weamc
From: weamc@pyuxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: long names and hardware...
Message-ID: <424@pyuxa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Dec-83 09:33:43 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxa.424
Posted: Thu Dec  8 09:33:43 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Dec-83 01:28:58 EST
References: <6196@watmath.UUCP>, <507@dciem.UUCP>, <1490@utcsstat.UUCP> <410@pyuxa.UUCP>, <1107@rocksvax.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Piscataway
Lines: 28

My terminal is still  smoking from the flames that Bell Labs people
sent me about my remarks about the BLIT, so I am posting a general
reply.
     My information about loading the system came from the UNIX person
at PY responsible for installing the software for the BLITs. *He* told
me it dragged the system down. I used the word *reportedly* because I have
not worked on a system with a significant number of BLITs installed.
     For those of you that sent me notes about BLIT not being being an
acronym--do you think that I made that up??? I have heard several
people refer to it as the "Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal." There is more
than one person here with that idea. Given the propensity of people
at the Labs to make acronyms, it seems more likely that it is an acronym
than not.
    For those of you that lambasted me with stories of how wonderful
your BLITs are, I am reasonably sure that you are right. What I said,
if you read it closely, was that I don't think the ASCII technology is
dead yet. for one thing, I can hook an ASCII terminal up to virtually
any computer in the country and do useful work. You *cannot* hook up
a bit-mapped terminal that way. (Before I get anymore flames, I know that
the BLIT can function as a dumb terminal--that's not the point.) I think
the ASCII technology can be extended to provide many of the features
of bit-mapped terminals and still retain the universality of ASCII.
   What distresses me is the headlong rush to make everything have 
windows, just as last year it was to make everything user-friendly,
and the year before that it was something else. The computer community
is a little too much in love with technology and buzz-words. 
            
                           Andy Cohill