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From: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Further file format problems
Message-ID: <162@l5comp.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-May-87 11:54:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5comp.162
Posted: Sat May 30 11:54:29 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Jun-87 01:44:09 EDT
References: <8705280817.AA02563@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Organization: L5 Computing, Edmonds, WA
Lines: 224
Summary: Gee what did I do to YOU? Don't miss this one folks. :)

In article <8705280817.AA02563@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes:
>Thanks, I'll check it out. And thanks for your other purely informative
>comments.
You are quite welcome. I enjoy helping others.

>>>	Finally, I can't find any method for distinguishing handlers from
>>>	regular executables at all. Anyone know how?
>>And finally we get down to the $64,000 answer. You RTFM that came with the
>>product. Which is why it's handy to get a FM in the first place.
>
>On the one hand I appreciate technical assistence, and answers to my questions.
>On the other hand, this seems like a pretty rude comment to me. And it
[ flames ]
>Manual...somehow I missed this one buried in the back of my Bantam book.
>FYI it did *not* come with the product.
Yep, you're right, the Bantam book doesn't come with any product I can think
of. What product were YOU thinking of? For that matter what brought the
Bantam manual into this? When I had refered to the Bantam manual previously
I did it BY NAME. Well I'll buy that you could get confused and think I meant
the Bantam book. But I won't buy your other leap, whatever it was, about the
'product'. I mentioned no products in my posting. You were meant to link
'product' with handlers and device drivers. Which ARE products. And then
there's my comment about getting a manual in the first place. This I think
would have created even more confusion about what I was saying. But instead
of asking me to clarify what I was saying you decided to make the leap that I
was attacking YOU personally and decided to attack back. Sure, my message may
have had a few items aimed at C-A, as you point out later on, but none CLEARLY
directed against you.

I think your WHOLE posting serves as a great example of how NOT to use the
net.

1. Without the personal attacks upon me it would have amounted to "Thanks
for the help". Messages of this sort should be made via E-Mail not public
postings.

2. PERSONAL attacks should be made via E-Mail. I'm a big boy, I read my mail
and I DO reply to it. By making this attack public you force me to make another
bandwidth wasting public posting since silence must be interpreted as agreement
not disagreement. Because if I didn't agree I'd do what I'm doing now.

3. Before making personal attacks you should READ and UNDERSTAND what the
poster was saying. If you don't understand what he/she was saying then why
risk attacking the person if he/she didn't intend an attack upon you? You
should get it clarified THEN attack if needed.

4. When I posted the message that sparked the flames I should probably have not
posted my message to the net. I should have sent the info via E-Mail. However
I felt that the info I had might be of use to others and the person might not
understand about summarizing and posting to the net. After reading this reply
I feel even more sure I did the right thing. Of course if I had E-Mailed the
person he might have replied via E-Mail thus sparing others his mis-directed
attack upon me.

>Perhaps I'm out of line here; maybe I shouldn't ask any questions until
>I'm already an expert on AmigaDos. I didn't realize that was the policy here
>(at least since Scotty joined us).
Yet another comment from hyper-space. You can search my message high and
low and you will find no suggestion on my part that you should not have posted
your original message.

>I for one wish that people would be a little less smug about allowing gurus
>to happen. I suppose it really makes *your* day every time a guru shows up?
>And you're really unhappy with programs that refuse to guru no matter what?
>And ashamed if you write a program that is robust?
More and more personal attacks based on reading who knows WHAT into what I had
to say.

First, let me take time out from this rebuttal and make an Amiga comment. The
intent of this code is to keep a user who decides to charge ahead without
reading the manual from meeting Mr. Guru. However, this code will simply
cause the program to return to the user. No error message or anything. Wouldn't
it be better for this code to return a result code OTHER than 0 so that the
user would get an error? ie:
		moveq	#99,d0
		rts

Back to the rebuttal in progress...

My comments above aside. Handlers and device drivers load into ram and stay
there. Thus they eat ram on an on going basis. As such it's nice if they use
as little ram as possible. I'll summarize the rest of my position by saying
that I don't normally do something that has a negative effect on everyone
just to keep those reckless enough to use my code, in a manner it was not
intended to be used, out of trouble. I do however put in internal checks to
keep away Mr. Guru for when my code is used in it's intended fashion.

>And before I go, I'd like to ask you to aim your flames more carefully
>when you're complaining about AmigaDo*...some of them are hitting CATS
>people like Andy Finkel, and it is hardly his fault that the system is
>the way it is. The problems exist for historical reasons that you are probably
>very familiar with, and now we all get to live with them. The CATS people
>probably hate the problems worse than we do, since it is their job to
>help people understand and work around them. Give them all a break...
>let them know you appreciate them being here on the net answering questions.
>People who flame CATS tend to be unpopular with a large audience. And
>I think Andy deserves a medal for such remarkably calm, informative responses
>to Scotty's flames.
Now I think we finally get to the heart of all these flames aimed at me. And
not just by the author of this posting.

So I'll take this chance to respond to EVERYONE who is taking the time to
send me such lovely E-Mails and usenet postings.

It seems that the CATS crowd has a few vocal supporters out there in netland.
These people do not stand for ANY negative comments about CATS it seems. It's
fine to say what you will about management at C-A or C-A but not about CATS.
ie CATS are the 'untouchables' of the Amiga.

Andy makes the comment about having killed my 'Gold fish'. Gee Andy I wish you
people had only done that to me. CATS has cost me time, money, and mental
stress. The time is the part I miss the most since it is such a scarce item.

The author wishes to pile praise upon CATS in general and a medal on Andy in
particular.

1. CATS has done alot in the past to make me want to not heap praise on them.
I see SOME promising signs from grr, carolyn, and eric though of maybe making
me feel differently. (Note andy IS missing from that list currently)

2. The medal for Andy was to be for his 'informative replys' to my 'flames'.
I would direct attention to these replys and Andy's postings in general. His
postings have a high content of the following:
	A. Ducking the subject. For example, his comments on my comments about
usage of addbuffers buffers. He comments that my suggested usage of these
buffers is not the original intended usage for them. Heck I already had my
suspicions about what was wrong. But my comments stand still with no response
as to why what I suggest can't be done or shouldn't be done or won't be done.
	B. Replies that cause confusion. For example, he states that the
buffers were not intended to be used with tracked storage devices. First this
just begs the followup question "What kind of storage devices are supposed to
be used?" Second, every major storage medium in popular usage that I can think
of is tracked. My other favorite was his "You can use install on PD bootdisks
...so enough of the PD installs...un-offically Andy Finkel"

I've been jumped by more than one person for making item B type replies. Yet
no one jumps Andy about it when HE does it. And I'm not the only person to
notice what I'm talking about here:

>From: richard@pnet02.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton)
>Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
>Subject: Re: BCPL/AmigaDOS
>Message-ID: <559@gryphon.CTS.COM>
>Date: 28 May 87 17:55:15 GMT
>"Stuff we are doing with hard disks" ?? Care to elaborate Andy?

Richard was "smart" he didn't employ the same tactics against Andy that others
on the net have used against me when I did something like what Andy did.

Also, the last Amiga mail carries a plea that can be summarized as:

Many of the tech support people can be found on electronic networks. They are
doing this on their own time and out of the goodness of their hearts. Thus
the plea continues, we should keep this in mind and be nice to them.

I can already hear the pro-CATS anti-Scotty crowd reaching for the R or F
key to send me a reply along the lines of "If you've read that how can you
treat them like you have?!?" (With additional flames added on I'm sure :)

Again I invite those of you in netland to inspect the postings of the CATS
people. 'cbmvax' is located 5 hours west from GMT. Thus you take GMT time
and subtract 05:00:00 from it to get local 'cbmvax' time. For example:

From: andy@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Andy Finkel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: BCPL/AmigaDOS
Message-ID: <1938@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: 27 May 87 15:19:07 GMT

The above message was posted at 10:19:07 local time. EXCEPT that this message
was posted with local daylight savings time in effect, thus we add one more
hour to get 11:19:07 corrected local time.

If you examine several more postings a 'curious' pattern emerges. The CATS
people TEND to post their messages during the 09:00 to 17:00 local time
period...

'l5comp' is 8 hours west of GMT. I invite examination of the posting times
for my messages.

I don't know about the CATS people, but I pay $10 an hour so 'l5comp' can reach
out an touch its newsfeed. I also pay $10 an hour to read all flames directed
my way via E-Mail. And $10 an hour to respond via E-Mail.

I don't get paid by anyone (not even GEnie) to answer Amiga questions no matter
the time of day. Thus answering Amiga questions via this forum doesn't make my
'job' any easier.

Actions speak louder than words. Thus I let my 'actions' speak for me rather
than any plea in Amiga Mail. These postings truely come from the goodness of
MY heart.

Maybe the CATS postings come from the goodness of their hearts, or maybe it's
just another side of their jobs. I'll let them explain if they wish to. This
isn't an attack on the CATS people, I'm just curious.

Now for some quick public replies to some of the E-Mail I have received...

No I'm not a closet (check one):
	A. ST lover (I enjoy rm /usr/spool/news/comp/sys/atari/st/* too much :)
	B. Mac lover.
	C. Amiga hater.

My parents were also married through all phases of my conception/birth. And I've
had no carnal knowledge of my mother or any other mothers for that matter. :)

As for the comment about the current OS not being Andy's fault... There comes a
time when the people who step in to clean up/maintain an OS can no longer hide
behind 'The Sins Of The Creators'. When does Andy get to start taking the fall?
Version 1.3? Version 2.x???

Anyway, I grow weary of responding to flames on what I think of CATS and C-A.
So here's what I'll do, no more editorial in nature comments about C-A and CATS.
Just the facts, be they pretty or ugly.

Anymore publicly posted flames against me will go un-replied to in public. I'll
use the R key instead. So please don't assume I'm agreeing with what people had
to say about me just because you don't see a response from me.

Scott Turner
-- 
L5 Computing, the home of Merlin, Arthur, Excalibur and the CRAM.
GEnie: JST | UUCP: stride!l5comp!scotty | 12311 Maplewood Ave; Edmonds WA 98020
If Motorola had wanted us to use BPTR's they'd have built in shifts on A regs
[ BCPL? Just say *NO*! ] (I don't smoke, send flames to /dev/null)