Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!fmsrl7!teemc!wayne From: wayne@teemc.UUCP (//ichael R. //ayne) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor Message-ID: <4060@teemc.UUCP> Date: 30 Aug 88 06:04:35 GMT References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <717@mcrware.UUCP> <606@unh.UUCP> <6756@well.UUCP> <1909@looking.UUCP> <513@afit-ab.arpa> <479@Aragorn.dde.uucp> <3047@teemc.UUCP> <661@proxftl.UUCP> Reply-To: wayne@teemc.UUCP (/\/\ichael R. \/\/ayne) Organization: TMC & Associates, Troy, MI Lines: 106 >>>>> The very last paragraph is the most important! <<<<<< In article <661@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: >In article <3047@teemc.UUCP> wayne@teemc.UUCP (I) write: >: [A lot of BYTE trashing] But nowhere NEAR enough! Nothing I could say would be enough derision for what they have done to us. But on to other things! >My first comment is that a lot of what he says is just plain >noise: it isn't true of BYTE. Please, guys, if we are going to >bash at someone, lets do it for the right reasons! Many other people sent private mail that felt otherwise. I did and still do. Byte has abandoned it's readers. I stand by my comments. >: USENET? What's that? Must be some newfangled thing that some new >: company dreamed up. > >They're not that stupid. The article was obvious satire to make a point. Sure I slightly overstated my point but, reading the magazine, this is the impression I get. I truly believe that most "serious" computer users have to have a Usenet account. It just is not possible to keep current in our industry without one. There are so many free systems available that there is not a good excuse to not do so (Unless, of course, you work at Byte where you might damage the Bix revenues if any of your subscribers found out that there was anything else out there). >: The editors at BYTE can not be expected to keep up >: with every new product that comes along, you know. It takes a lot of >: time to chase down all those C compilers for MS-DOS and write those >: clone articles. > >Bull. As you ought to know, they *do* make quite an effort to >keep up with the industry. What good does it do if they don't TELL THEIR READERS? I don't care what they KNOW, I care what they PUBLISH! They make quite an effort to keep up with the MS-DOS industry, I'll grant you that. > As for why Usenet isn't mentioned: ask yourself >what percentage of the personal computer *hackers* are on >Usenet. (My guess is less than a percent.) Never mind the >computer *users*. Most of the real *hackers* I know have AT LEAST one account on a Usenet machine. Many have 4-5 in case some "go away". Many purchase hardware to make REAL sure that their access doesn't "go away". Of course most of them don't touch PCs. They use PC-Pursuit to call around the country at night to explore Unix machines. Some start private access machines. (Some spend hours trying to break into my machine :-) >: Oh, it's a network you say? Well, they never got the >: free AT-compatible card, software, manual and cables to hook it up on the >: 47 PCs in the office (or maybe it got lost in the mail?). Oh, a conferencing >: type network. Well, they know all about that. After all BYTE was responsible >: for the finest, best, most user-driven, most revenue-generating (oops, strike >: that) conferencing network around: BIX! EVERYone knows that there is >: nothing better than Bix! Why USENET probably doesn't even RUN on a PC/AT. >: Who could possibly be interested in it? After all, if Jerry didn't write >: about it in his column, it can't be worth much. 1/2 :-) > >You can't be serious. Obviously you aren't. You know and I know >that they aren't that dumb, or that ignorant. So why do you >expect us to take this criticism seriously? This is the impression I get of the magazine. As I said earlier, my article was satire, with a point. BiX gets space EVERY issue, how often do other networks get mentioned? Commodore has sold 700,000 Amigas, how much space do they get? What about FSF, the single most revolutionary thing going on in the software industry? Nah, let's write about something REALLY important, a Tandy clone, yeah, that's it. Now THERE's a thought! Let's see if we can get JP replaced with Richard Stallman! I'd buy (and ignore) the rest of the magazine just for that. >: After all, they already got OUR money, they need to pump more hype to get >: the new suckers, er, subscribers to pay them. Gotta be careful, don't >: want to scare off those new users with any big words. Gotta run another >: clone article this month, that'll sell more on the newsstands. > >Oh, don't be silly. If they weren't serving their existing >readers, they'd be getting so many cancellations that their >parent company would tell them to change. This is an interesting point. I've been doing a bit of research on this. It appears that the McGraw-Hill people are getting a LOT of people who ARE cancelling the magazine because of the tact it has taken. The Byte staff wants to go even FURTHER into a PC magazine. There is a war going on. SEND THOSE LETTERS!! Call them on the phone. Make noise! McGraw-Hill is on OUR side! Let's get Byte back into a useful magazine Let's make them put "The Small Systems Journal" back on the cover and then live up to it! /\/\ \/\/ Permission granted to upload this article to any computer network or conferencing system. Oh, sorry, and to BiX. -- Michael R. Wayne --- TMC & Associates --- wayne@teemc.uucp INTERNET: wayne%teemc.uucp@umix.cc.umich.edu uunet!umix!teemc!wayne