Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!internet!William Chops Westfield From: William Chops Westfield Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Jerry Pournelle Message-ID: <5860@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Sat, 17-Nov-84 03:05:13 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.5860 Posted: Sat Nov 17 03:05:13 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 19-Nov-84 02:49:50 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 44 Well, if no one else will defend JEP, I will. he logs into ARPANet on MIT-MC. MIT-MC is a DEC PDP10 running ITS (Incompatable Timesharing System (I kid you not)). If you think unix is less user friendly than it should be, youd hate ITS - to get a directory you type ^F, for example, and you can kill a fork with "$^X." Log out with $$U and so on. Its lots of fun. As far as I know, he follows several special-interest mailing lists, but last I heard he was dialing up at 300 baud. Lets see - he last logged in on 9-NOV, and currently has 55 blocks (I forget how big an ITS block is though (1K 36 bit words, I think)) of mail that looks like it hasn't been read. JEP listens a lot, but doesn't talk much. Why? There seems to be something about public figures that makes everbody think that they are entitled to crucify them in public. I don't think Ive ever seen him post a message that hasn't resulted in the net being clogged with rebutles, flames, comments that he doesn't know what he is talking about, and so on. Far more than any normal net user would encounter. So he stopped sending messages. His time is better spent writing for users who know very little about computers, who appreciate his advise, and for which he gets paid (presumably large) sums of money. Why should should he try to talk to people who seem sure that they already have the answers? (I am guilty of this myself, I recall. Seems JEP doesn't like EMACS, which I think is wonderful, and at one point I tried to convince him that I was right. I changed my mind - EMACS is wonderful for me, but that doesn't mean that everybody has to like it.) JEP's Byte column is an extremely valuable service. Not so much to us, since we are frequently able to make our own intelligent decisions about equipment and software, but to truly naive users. Too many other reveiws are always coated with honey - no one wants to say anything bad about a new product. JEP is well off enough to say what he thinks. We may frequently disagree, and ocasionally he may be wrong, but frequently another persons opinion is all a beginning computer user will have to base an expensive decision on. In such a case, that person is probably much better off following Jerry's advise than most others. I present Westfield's Law: "Strongly opinionated people are much more fun to talk or listen to. Especially if you dont disagree with them." BillW