🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <18154@cup.portal.com> bcase@cup.portal.com (Brian bcase Case) writes:
>If John Mashey can post 300+ lines of marketing counter-measures, then I can
>post a few lines about my OPINIONS too.

>I think these discussions are very interesting, after all, I did read all
>of John's posting, but they are nearly completely inappropriate for comp.arch,
>IN MY OPINION.  Even the note that precipitated John's note was dicey.

Well Brian is probably right on this [and I wouldn't have been as long,
except I'd just been reading a Cypress brochure that claimed SPARC
had "thousands of times more lines of code than all other RISCs put
together." among other things that stirred me up.]

Maybe it's time for another newsgroup.  On looking back on the last few
years, I observe that there are at least 3 distinct kinds of discussion:
	a) Pure architectural questions, opinions, information
	b) Performance analyses
	c) Economic and/or industry-structure discussions; competitive
	arguments over non-architecture issues.
What happens is that a discussion starts under a), and then sometimes
spins off onto b) or c).  Sometimes it starts under c) ["whose computer
or way of doing things is better, and why?"]  and then either degenerates
into name-calling or else somebody throws a lot of DATA at it and that's
the end.  [Of course, I realize that much of the net awaits such discussions
with glee, since light is occasionally generated along with the heat,
and since, as far as I can tell, there's no other architecture-newsgroup that
has a readership that isn't skewed towards some particular architecture.]
For example, this whole sequence started with somebody asking for
some objective criteria, a few of us responding with some, and then
(over the last week) going MARKETING-OPINION-crazy.

Either of the following could be OK:
	a) Split most of c) off to another newsgroup, allowing an interesting
	discussion that's getty away from architecture to have a place to go.

	b) Keep it as is, but urge everybody to avoid repeating
	OPINIONS that came straight from market-hype literature unless
	they can supply FACTs to support them.  [because, of course,
	those of us who feel compelled to shoot missiles at such things
	will still do it, even if we try to keep them shorter.  Personally,
	I have a lot of other things to do, so I'd be happy not to feel
	compelled to challenge as many such things.  non-discussions like:
		OPINION, OPINION 
			How about some data?
		OPINION, OPINION, AGAIN
			Really, how about some real data?
		OPINION, OPINION, DATA IS ELSEWHERE
			Please, how about some real data?
	really get wearisome.]

Comments?
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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