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From: bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Multitasking as the rest of the world see it
Message-ID: <8708111704.AA12623@cogsci.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 11-Aug-87 13:04:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: cogsci.8708111704.AA12623
Posted: Tue Aug 11 13:04:49 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Aug-87 03:40:54 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Institute of Cognitive Studies, UC Berkeley
Lines: 28
Summary: we're living in a box, folks


Last night I had a telephone conversation from a intelligent person, a
programmer no less.  A person with commercial products for the Commodore-64
and IBM clown markets.	Here's an excerpt:

[Random chit-chat about life, the universe, and computers.  He discovers
I'm busy in a Desk Top publishing program on the Amiga at the moment.]

ME>> "Sure, I'll send you that file.  Just a sec while I click into my
     [already loadd] terminal window"
HIM> "Yeah, multitasking is kina neat.  But it gets so slow."
ME>> "Huh?"
HIM> "You know, when you have more than one thing loaded."
ME>> "What do you mean?  What two things are you thinking of?"
HIM> "Any two things.  Two things, twice as slow, three things, three times
     as slow.  The old 'no free lunch'."
ME>> "Arghghg!  No!  Programs that have nothing to do take no processor
     time."
HIM> "What?  How did they do that..."

No, he was not "yanking my cord".  Yes, he understood my explanation of
how real multitasking works.  One down, how many billions to go?

-----
|\ /|  . Ack! (NAK, EOT, SOH)
{O o} . 
( " )	bryce@cogsci.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!cogsci!bryce
  U	"Success leads to stagnation; stagnation leads to failure."