Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!udel!rochester!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: piracy, multi-tasking, nice programs, e.t.c
Message-ID: <3107@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 16 Dec 88 14:03:09 GMT
References: <3632@crash.cts.com>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 43

In article <3632@crash.cts.com>, steelie@pro-charlotte.cts.com (Jim Howard) writes:
> People want everything to multitask so they can re-dial BBS's 

Or *run* bbses, or do other long-term stuff that basically ties up their
computer... or would if they had a "PC". But, they don't.... they have an
Amiga. That means they don't have to wait for that ray-trace or that bozo
to hang up off their BBS or that file to print or whatever.

> The only thing that I can figure is that the majority of people who use
> the net are *POWER* users, and therefore have system
> environments, with shells, compilers, and various other utilities,
> and they usually have a hard disk and gobs of ram.. I can see
> why they would be annoyed at a program that takes over the machine.

Back when Karl and I were doing Tracers, he had 4 Meg and 2 floppies. I had
512K and 2 floppies. I could still usefully multitask while compiling.

> But the fact is the majority of Amiga users do not have 8 megs of
> ram and a 100 meg hard disk, and most of them don't mind losing
> the ability to use a text editor or re-dial a BBS in the background,
> as long as the game is great.. 

No, they have 1 Meg of RAM and nearly 2 Meg of floppies. I'd like you to cast
you mind back a few years. Imagine someone with his 48K Apple-II with a couple
of big third-party floppies... say a few hundred K apiece... and proud of it.
These were power users.

It's not how much you have, it's what you do with it.

[ Tracers ]
> I cant see anything so great about it, other than the fact that it
> uses so little CPU time that it multi-tasks nicely and exits cleanly.

And it's mindlessly addictive, like peanuts. And that's what you pay for,
isn't it? To have a good time.

If you just want to be blown away by hot graphics, there's always the Newtek
Demo. I run it more often than all my games except Marketroids :->.
-- 
		    Peter da Silva  `-_-'  peter@sugar.uu.net
		     Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?

	          Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn busines#!rne