Pournelle (The decline and fall of Byte) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 May 1997

About 9 years ago when I was in our end user support organization, I had
occasion to speak to Jerry.  He was threatening to give QuickBasic a
scathing review because he couldn't get it to compile Mrs. Pournelle's
Reading Program (what else?) under Windows 386.  He called up our
QuickBasic group manager and just about carved him a new orifice.  I, as
the Windows support lead, was asked to call him on this very urgent,
sky-is-falling problem and help him out, since as you may have noticed
...
 from years of columns, he never, ever calls support
himself.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi Mr. Pournelle, this is Kai with Microsoft Product Support..."
Jerry: "What the HELL are you DOING calling during my DINNER TIME?!?"
Me: "I'm sorry sir, I understood you had a very urgent issue, and I had
no way of knowing..."
Jerry: "YOU PEOPLE are MORONS!  <blah blah blah blah>"

And things went downhill from there.  Later on we finally got to the
problem, which as I recall was related to a bizarre SCSI adapter in that
silly Cheetah 386 he had, the one into which he would put any piece of
hardware any manufacturer ever sent to him for free.

Not a great experience.  I spoke to him again a few months later on a
different issue, and he was no more lucid or logical on that occasion.

Kai

...
  ----------
 From: 	Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers[SMTP:gram@cnct.com]
 Reply To: 	classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
 Sent: 	Tuesday, May 06, 1997 2:01 PM
 To: 	Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
 Subject: 	The decline and fall of Byte

 On Tue, 6 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:

    My own collection of Byte starts with August of
85 (Amiga 1000 is  the
  cover story) and ends somewhere in late 89 or
early 90.  The library  at the
  university I attended had issues starting from
Jan '77 (which I read  8-). 
  The dates given here are approximate, looking at
a Byte from 1980,  then 1985
  then 1990 will show almost three different
magazines.

   -spc (It started sliding when Robert Tinney stopped doing magazine  covers,
          (~87) then it nose dived once Steve
Ciarcia stopped writing  hardware
          articles, (~88 or 89) although there are
some that think it  started
          way back in '77 when Pournelle
started his column)  
 Well, most of my older Byte magazines were destroyed by water several
 moves ago, and I wouldn't mind acquiring most of them again.  I had
 mostly
 given up on Byte in the mid-eighties, but in recent years I've wound
 up
 with a subscription (recently finally expired) due to McGraw-Hill
 ceasing
 publication of more useful magazines.  Ciarcia's articles were always
 excellent (and I know that most of them were released in book form
 awhile
 back), and his current magazine, "Circuit Cellar Ink" is pretty good,
 especially if you're a serious hardware hacker as I no longer am. 
 Actually, nowadays, Pournelle's column is about the only thing I read
 in
 the magazine, and now that it's available on the web (with extra
 text), I
 really don't care to subscribe. Opinions vary concerning Jerry
 Pournelle. 
 I've known him for over twenty years due to our mutual interest in
 science
 fiction and membership in the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (I'm
 still a member despite living in New Jersey -- Death Shall Not Release
 You!).  Over the years we've had a lot of conversations and arguments,
 about politics (he's in favor of having a government, I'm opposed),
 about
 space development (we're both in favor) and computers (I was a
 Shacker,
 and while I was living elsewhere on the continent he had bad
 experiences
 with a very early TRS-80 and the company rather hurt themselves by
 being
 uncooperative and ignorant of the power of the press -- which is why
 after
 I showed him one of the first Model 100s, he went out and got a NEC
 equivalent).  He's a man of strong opinions who's always trying to
 learn
 something new and so am I.  Really, he should be a member of this
 mailing
 list -- he's experienced directly more of the history of computers
 than
 most of us who've worked and played with them.  That plus having the
 clout
 to get information from the movers and shakers. 
 --
 Ward Griffiths
 "America is at that awkward stage.  It's too late to work within 
 the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe