🚀 go-pugleaf

It seems that my posting about peer-to-peer AppleShare has caused a
minor flame war. The particularly weird thing about it is that I have
not seen *ANY* of the followup articles! (No, it didn't mysteriously
wind up in my kill file.)  I wouldn't know about it at all if my friend
David hadn't mentioned it in passing, and mailed me a copy of one
article. Since I only have this one article (by Tim Maroney) from this
message thread (though it quotes two others), I don't have the complete
picture, but I'll try to clear up a few things.

First of all, Tim was quite pissed off when I said that TOPS had no
byte-range locking at all. Well, that was in a different article that was
not directly related to this one. But, he was right, and what's worse is
that I knew this- I just forgot it at the time I was writing. That's why
I kept quiet when he posted a correction to that other article- he was
right, and I had nothing to add. I also can understand that he still
feels angry that Apple changed the rules of the game, but that's hardly
my fault. The statement that TOPS is incompatible with AFP, _as it now
stands_, is correct. In addition, it has other problems (which are
getting lots of press right now) that have nothing to do with this-
they're just bugs.

These bugs do in fact make TOPS useless for major database work, since
my goal when maintaining 60 MB databases is NOT to have to repair
corrupted files every week or two. I am NOT going to go into this- if you
want to know more, check in last week's PC Week, or MacWeek from a few
weeks ago, or talk to TOPS tech support. Anyway, I said that using TOPS
with databases was "difficult to impossible." This is absolutely true-
it can't be done with FoxBase, and using design mode in 4D is likely to
corrupt your database. (It also had major problems with OMNIS for a long
time, but that was a bug in OMNIS that was since fixed, after months of
complaints, by a fellow who used to work for TOPS [Tracy Lakin].)

This comes from Tim's note:
>Again, no correction or retraction from Alexis, and this rudeness was
>compounded by a statement of intent to violate journalistic ethics by
>publishing this false information in MacWeek.

This is rather heavy-handed, I think. In regard to databases, my original
posting was correct. In any event, why would I want to publish false
information???

Tim also warns about negative messages bringing down the wrath of some
companies on the net (and the posters). If anyone is likely to be the
subject of a lawsuit, it's them! They made fairly specific claims that
version 2.0 would be compatible with AppleShare, which as we all know
(and regardless of IM-IV) it's not.

I can only suggest that in the event of such nasty tactics by vendors,
we net.folk return the favor by boycotts, negative word-of-mouth, letters
to magazines, and whatever other typical grass-roots activist tactics
seem necessary (how about a sit-it at corporate headadquarters :-) :-) ).


To get back to my original posting: It was not meant as just another
potshot at TOPS (they're too easy a target). They simply got mentioned
extensively in the historical information because they make up a large
part of macintosh networking history. The message was primarily about
the IPT product, and my comment that more exposure for the net was good
was in reference (obviously, if you read it again) to my favorable
mention of IPT, not my jabs at TOPS (they already know what I think of
them).


If there were other points made (or other shots taken), please let me
know and I'll try to respond to them. I still wish I knew why I haven't
seen any of these articles in news.


---
Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}
alexis@rascal.ics.utexas.edu  (last resort)