Mac Expert 1995 Winter/Mac Expert - Winter 95.iso/Les fichiers/Tidbits/Tidbits 01 à 100/TidBITS#054_TidBITS_Survey.txt

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TidBITS#54/TidBITS_Survey
=========================

 Copyright 1990-1992 Adam & Tonya Engst. Non-profit, non-commercial
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Topics:
    TidBITS Survey Introduction
    TidBITS Numbers
    TidBITS Authors
    Survey Statistics
    Like Best?
    Like Least?
    New Articles?
    Make TidBITS Easier?
    Favorite color
    Miscellaneous comments
    The End


TidBITS Survey Introduction
---------------------------
  Happy Birthday to us. TidBITS is officially one year old and what
  better way to celebrate (OK, so we can think of a few) than by
  reporting the results of our TidBITS Survey. We ran the survey in
  December and still receive occasional responses, although the
  majority arrived in the first month or two. What took us so long?
  Data entry. It's time consuming, a lot of work, and boring beyond
  belief, even though we could just copy from QuickMail and paste
  into Double Helix. If we had figured out some method of getting
  everyone to return answers in exactly the same format, we could
  have had Nisus clean it all up. Maybe for next year's TidBITS
  Anniversary.

  As far as the organization of this issue goes, we'll talk a bit
  about year-end numbers, the statistics we gathered from the survey
  (and do remember Mark Twain's dictum "There are three sorts of
  lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics."), and then we'll list a
  bunch of the responses we got to different categories and our
  comments on those responses.

  This issue is a lot to read at once, being over 60K of text, and
  since it's not like the timely news we normally report on, feel
  free to read at your leisure. If you think 50K is a lot, though,
  we got well over 700K of email responses and 20 snail mail
  responses that we typed into Double Helix manually.


TidBITS Numbers
---------------
  This issue is a special issue released in honor of TidBITS' First
  Anniversary and/or Birthday. Because of this I became curious
  about what we've really done, so here's some numbers. This issue
  is not included in the totals, simply because it's still in
  progress. To find the numbers relating to the amounts of text, we
  opened all 53 text files simultaneously in Nisus (under Finder, so
  it had plenty of memory to work with) and used the Get Info...
  command. We also used Nisus to find and copy the articles written
  by other people, something it did quite well, searching all 53
  open files much faster than HyperCard. The main thing that hits
  me, looking at these numbers, is the incredulous thought, "I wrote
  350-some pages last year?!?" Oof, and you all read them. :-)

    Total number of issues = 53 (more than one per week!)
    Number of articles = 349
    Total characters = 903,424
    Total words = 147,983
    Total sentences = 7,210
    Avg words/sentence = 18
    Max words/sentence = 118 (I tend towards long sentences :-))
    Total paragraphs = 5,806
    Total pages = 391 (using single spaced New York 12 and normal
      margins)
    Flesch Reading Ease = 56
    Reading Grade Level = 13
    Total K of text files = 1,053K
    Total K of text files after DiskDoubler compression = 471K
      (you think I can manage without compression?)
    TidBITS Archive size = 3,441K
    Number of cards in TidBITS Archive = 350
    Avg time per issue = 7 hours (includes research & reading
      time)


TidBITS Authors
---------------
  I've written the majority of the articles that appear in TidBITS
  with Tonya's help, but six other people have written articles for
  us as well (if we've missed anyone, please accept our heartfelt
  apologies). We'd like to thank them for helping out with excellent
  reviews and articles. We've listed them in order of the number of
  characters they wrote. Of course, that isn't a terribly accurate
  number because we always change the original size in the editing
  process. Detail details.

* Ian Feldman = 36,980 (two articles and the Xanadu special issue)

* Ken Hancock = 18,786 (the compression program comparison)

* Mark H. Anbinder = 14,277 (articles on Macworld Expo in San
    Francisco)

* Len Schwer = 10,909 (the FlexiTrace review)

* Andrew Lewis = 6,400 (an article on DeskWriter problems)

* Harry Skelton = 3,290 (an article on the Sony NeWS server and
    uShare)

  Thank you all for the total 90,642 characters you've contributed
  over the last year, a little under 10% of all the writing we've
  published.


Survey Statistics
-----------------
  We consulted with a friend who actually knows some statistics to
  arrive at some of these values, and while they aren't necessarily
  as large as we'd like, our friend is now thinking of getting a
  Masters degree in Applied Statistics at Cornell. Maybe he'll be
  able to lie better then.

  The primary number that we hoped to discover from the survey was
  total readership. We know the number of copies of each issue
  downloaded from three main sites, America Online, sumex-aim, and
  GEnie. Three issues carried the survey form, so all of our
  percentages had to be divided by three to get an accurate number
  (or so our friend said, maybe he wasn't lying hard enough).
  Responses from America Online and sumex-aim accounted for
  approximately 5% of the number of issues downloaded from those
  sites, whereas GEnie had a lower percentage response of about 2%.
  Since it's impossible to send us email from GEnie directly, a 2%
  response rate is excellent. A friend at American Demographics
  Magazine said that a 4% return rate on those little white cards in
  magazines that are pre-paid and easy to fill out is good, so our
  5% is even better, considering that our survey was longer than a
  little card. Applying that 5% to the 127 people who responded from
  Usenet, it seems that 2,540 people get TidBITS from
  comp.sys.mac.digest. Next applying the 5% to the total 229
  respondents, we come up with 4,580 readers overall. That's
  forgetting the number of people who get TidBITS from someone else,
  and to judge from the surveys, few of those people responded. Of
  the 229 people, 34% said they redistributed TidBITS and the
  numbers of additional readers they gave add up to 911. So now
  we're up to 5,491, which is pretty good, considering all the
  defunking that you have to do to read TidBITS these days. The
  final possible addition is that if 34% of respondents (or 76
  people) distributed 911 copies (about 11 copies per person), then
  if the 34% of 4,580 people (assuming that people who receive
  TidBITS from someone else don't redistribute again) or 1,557
  people each distribute about 11 copies as well, that will be a
  whopping 17,129 copies to add to our previous subtotal of 5,491,
  to give a grand total of 22,620. Still with me?

  Even if our method of calculating redistribution is wrong (which
  it probably is, since the people who responded to the survey are
  the most likely to be the people who redistribute, thus
  artificially inflating the redistribution percentage), we're still
  happy with between 5,500 and 20,000 readers as of January, 1991.
  That number rises constantly, to judge from the amount of email we
  get asking for information about TidBITS. The real trick is going
  to be switching to an implicitly-tagged text format, because then
  we'll legitimately be able to count the entire readership of
  comp.sys.mac.digest as TidBITS readers, and it will be fun to add
  37,000 more readers just like that. We also hope to set up a
  LISTSERV when we move to text-only, which will increase the number
  of readers who were otherwise unable to download TidBITS.

  Of those 229 respondents, we received email from 209 and snail
  mail from 20. Interestingly enough, almost half of the snail mail
  we got was from countries other than the US. TidBITS is read in 18
  countries, including:
  Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany,
  Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal,
  Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, and Wales. If you want to
  be picky, Scotland and Wales are part of Britain, which would
  lower the number to 16. In theory we could figure out the number
  of states in the US that have TidBITS readers, but that would be a
  bit more difficult and fairly meaningless anyway.

  Most people got TidBITS from Usenet, sumex-aim, America Online,
  and GEnie, in that order, but a number of BBS's had multiple
  respondents, including the Memory Alpha BBS in Ithaca, Tom's BBS
  in Boston, the AMUG BBS in Atlanta, and the Twilite Clone BBS,
  whose location I don't know. A number of other BBS's had a single
  respondent. A few respondents get TidBITS from some of our less
  popular redistribution sites, like [e-mail] and
  [e-mail] and the British National Public Domain
  Software Archive. Still fewer respondents report that they get it
  from a friend or on a local network, which seems to imply that
  people who read TidBITS twice removed from the nets tend not to
  deal with the nets at all. Even though CompuServe can send mail to
  the Internet, we only received one response from CompuServe.
  What's with those people?

  Where do TidBITS readers come from, other than the woodwork? We
  didn't ask this question, but it was often obvious from the email
  address or a signature. TidBITS readers come primarily from higher
  education and big business, not surprisingly, since those two
  sectors are best connected. A lot of people find TidBITS on small
  local bulletin boards as well, which means that areas like K-12
  (not usually known as lower education, for some reason :-))
  schools, dealers, and small businesses read TidBITS. Most of the
  major universities showed up, as did large companies like Apple,
  Claris, IBM (yep, even IBM), Toshiba, Sony, Motorola, and
  government bodies like NASA and various branches of the military.

  What are TidBITS readers like? They are knowledgable (heck, to
  figure out the nets you've got to be bright) and interested. A
  good percentage of them are also packrats, since 61% of
  respondents use the TidBITS Archive. I'll bet that number would be
  higher if the archive were faster and smaller, but it still holds
  a lot of information and is bound to be large and slow to a
  certain extent no matter what. On average, people said that they
  rated 8 points out of 10 with regard to their knowledge of the
  Macintosh, but only 5 points out of 10 with regard to HyperCard.
  As of the time of the survey, only about 66% of respondents had
  HyperCard 2.0 - that number is surely higher by now, although we
  found a decent bit of HyperCard animosity reflected in other
  survey answers.

  On the normal 1 to 10 scale, people only rated themselves 2 in
  terms of how often they used the contact information and 2 in
  terms of how often they looked up the references in other
  magazines. However, many people said something to the effect of,
  "I don't use it much, but it's very handy when I do need it. Don't
  discontinue contact information or references!" OK, we won't.
  Approximately half of the respondents indicated that they might be
  interested in writing articles at some point, but that conflicts a
  bit with the number of articles we've received from people.

  And what of everyone's favorite question, "What is your favorite
  color?" It provoked many strange and uncountable answers, so we
  wimped out and asked Double Helix to count each entry in which a
  color name appeared. So if the answer was "Blue, no, red, auuugh!"
  (a common answer), both blue and red would be counted. If someone
  said "Not blue!" I munged the word so that it wouldn't count. See
  below for the results.


Like Best?
----------
  We try to avoid this sort of self-congratulation most of the time
  since it doesn't do much for readers (you know for yourself
  whether or not you like TidBITS - you don't need to hear us
  patting ourselves on the back all the time, like other
  publications are wont to do on occasion. However, there is a time
  and place for everything, so here's what people like the most
  about TidBITS.


  A lot of people like our writing style, and let us know with
  adjectives like "breezy and informal," "opinionated and
  insightful," etc. It reminds me a bit of a line I like to use when
  pretending to be pretentious about wine. First you roll the wine
  around in the glass, sniff it, and take a tiny little sip. Then
  pronounce seriously, "Obsequious, yet servile." Here's a couple of
  the comments on our style.

  "Succinct, but rich in its description"

  "It is gossipy and written with a breezy, informal style."

  "The writing style. Your articles are informative without being
  stuffy."

  "Well written; informative; witty; I've learned a lot from
  TidBITS."

  "I am always impressed at finding knowledgeable computer mavens
  who can handle English gracefully; the two are often mutually
  exclusive."

  "I like the short concise articles (when presenting information
  from other publications). Of course, you have articles which don't
  appear elsewhere and your opinions and wry sense of humor seem to
  match mine as well (which never hurts to endear one's self to
  one's readers)."

  "The personal, informal, yet informative writing style"

  "Timely, independent, humorous."

  "The lighthearted editorial style"

  "Wide breadth of info, ease of use, breezy and informal writing
  style - a very valuable source of info for me, a novice user,
  since I rarely have time to read magazines and other info
  sources."

  "The regularity, informativeness and the general all-round good
  quality of the writing."

  "Articles are interesting, humorous, well written technically."


  Another feature which people singled out as being important was
  our opinions. We certainly don't ask that anyone agree with us
  (though many apparently do), but we try to bring together
  information from a variety of sources and make sense of it as a
  whole. We do believe it's important to have and express opinions
  whenever possible because that's what makes reading a publication
  interesting. We also believe that telling the truth, cutting
  through the propaganda, and keeping it humorous are essential
  parts of good subjective (but fair) reporting.

  "Either I admire your objectivity, or I usually agree with your
  opinions."

  "I like the timely information, the HyperCard access to the
  articles and the attitude of the editors." [gee, and in high
  school I was mostly told that I had a bad attitude :-)]

  "I like that it's an opinionated and insightful digest. I read
  most of the articles mentioned or discussed, but you consistently
  make connections which make better sense of what's going on in the
  industry for me."

  "The news I usually already have, except from the unusual sources
  such as Internet which I can't keep up with. What I prefer is your
  unique analysis, viewpoints, and opinions on the news items I've
  already read."

  "I like the fact that TidBITS is willing to express opinions not
  found in the standard journals. Actually, I don't get MacWEEK or
  InfoWorld, and I very much like the fact that TidBITS keeps me
  informed of things going on in the micro-computer world. I also
  like the fact that it is not as myopic as MacUser (in particular)
  and the others: I think it is important for Mac users to know what
  is going on in the rest of micro-land: NeXTs, PCs, Unix, the lot;
  at least, the important events." [Yup, no reason to be
  chauvinistic about the Mac. We love it, but other machines
  certainly have their merits as well.]

  "Frankly, I like the candor and dry humor the best. I also like
  questionnaires that start with a 'zero' item."

  "Rather irreverent, Mac-based but ecumenical, techno-junkie
  compatibility "

  "The fact that you are enthusiastic Mac users, as opposed to the
  dry "press release regurgitation" of the mainstream press."

  "It's concise, and it has some interesting editorial viewpoints."

  "It brings together various sources and makes something out of the
  whole mess that is interesting. Often, there are very insightful
  sources in the stories that do not seem to write in the trade
  journals." [They are hard to find, but well worth it when we do.]

  "I personally like the commentary (editorializing) on the
  news/rumor items."

  "News that I haven't found elsewhere. Intelligent opinions and
  conclusions. i.e. stuff that isn't generally obvious or
  immediately apparent."

  "The collection of news and rumors. The analysis of multiple
  rumors is logical and insightful."

  "Good articles. Not those of a "canned" blurb from a vendor but
  actually those expressing the overall view of the "viewers"."
  [Precisely! After all, you "viewers" are the people who count in
  this game.]

  "I like the idea of a coupla people publishing their skewed view
  of the world (and computers, the Macintosh). I'm not into
  formality, I think it is possibly one of the main problems with
  Humanity. Many things, I think, are offshoots of formality.
  Another perk is that the two major Mac magazines, Macworld and
  MacUser, are centered around two major Mac user-groupings: stupid
  people and stupid people with money. I prefer to hear about what
  people (er, non-stupid ones) are doing with computers (or
  whatever) or new technologies, et cetera. Ya know?" [Yeah, I do
  know. Well-thought out comment, especially considering the writer
  is 14 years old.]


  And then of course, is the mission of TidBITS - to provide
  succinct, timely coverage of interesting events in the computer
  industry, commercial and non-commercial. We're glad that we've
  succeeded in this, helping busy people to stay informed without
  drowning in the sea of information (in which the computer industry
  provides a strong undertow).

  "Its very existence. I don't read any user magazines for the Mac
  (they are not interesting enough for what I usually do). TidBITS
  is the sole source of information concerning the Mac, besides the
  one presented in comp.sys.mac.digest."

  "It stays crunchy in milk. That, and it lets me keep up on some of
  the more interesting Mac news without falling behind when I don't
  have time to read comp.sys.mac.vomit and MacPlanetPerson all the
  time. " [and we don't even add BHT for preservative :-)]

  "I am most interested in news of products, especially non-
  commercial which usually don't appear in MacWEEK et al."

  "The way it summarizes interesting Net News, so I don't have to
  put up with Net Nerds."

  "Technical information (i.e., not beginner information I've read
  50 times already). Information that I usually don't see elsewhere
  (MacOberon, Xanadu, etc...). Product information. Your use of good
  reference people (such as Kevin Calhoun for HyperCard)" [Since we
  are experienced Mac users, it's gotten difficult to write so that
  a complete novice would understand everything. Partly because of
  that, we don't try. Yet, we've gotten a number of comments that
  indicate that TidBITS is still an excellent resource for novices,
  perhaps in part because it doesn't talk down to them. It may take
  a little longer to figure everything out, but once you do, you
  know it well.]

  "TidBITS supplements info for my Mac newsletter. It has summarized
  some message traffic in comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups. Good insight
  most of the time."

  "The marble-looking background. The compact summary of key topics.
  The non-tree eating format. The sticktuidness of your on-going
  dedication. Heck, I almost want to offer my paid subscription."
  [Not necessary, but the thought is extremely appreciated.]

  "Concise useful information. A lot less sensationalist than trade
  press, actually gives me the information I need and want, rather
  than a load of bumpf. Much more timely as well, which helps.
  Summarises discussions from the net, which I would like to follow
  but miss parts of because our news is so flaky. ("A low priority
  item")." [Sorry to hear about your news feed - we feel that news
  should almost always be a high priority item.]

  "I think it gives a good overview of current concerns and items of
  interest. I don't have the time to wade through all the
  information that is available to me. "

  "Concise and fairly quick reporting. Keep the new product reviews
  coming!"

  "Rumor-style news (i.e. unreleased products). Candid, succinct
  product comparisons."


  And let's not forget the review listings. This part of TidBITS is
  the least fun to do for us but is one of the most useful for many
  people. A friend who works at an Apple dealer in technical support
  says he refers to his TidBITS Archive several times a day, often
  for review listings. So while some people use TidBITS for all
  their Macintosh information, others use it as an essential adjunct
  to their magazines.

  "The index to reviews is the most indispensable feature. You do a
  great job. For me, the combination of comp.sys.mac.* and TidBITS
  eliminates any need to subscribe to Mac[WEEK,World,User]. "

  "The fact that it is a cumulative stack and the ability to search
  for a review location without going through the pile of magazines
  for one, the other thing would be to get the news electronically
  therefore fast and frequently since it is a weekly."

  "I like the list of reviews, however it would be useful to know a
  little more, such as the length of the article."


  One thing that many people in the US forget is that TidBITS is an
  international publication. It is hard for us to say much about
  what's happening in other countries, living in the US as we do,
  but we do what we can. From what we've heard, much of the rest of
  the world is unfortunately a bit behind the US in the latest and
  greatest, but TidBITS is helping to even things out. If anyone in
  another country knows something which you wouldn't have heard of
  living anywhere else (like a local developer doing some
  interesting work), please let us know and we'll do an article on
  it.

  "To get an overview about articles in US magazines without going
  to library "

  "Short list of products reviewed in Mac magazines. In Europe we
  get the new magazines about 1 month after they appear in the US.
  Info is always up to date."


Like Least?
-----------
  Of course, if we're going to print all those nice things people
  said about us, we have to print the negative comments as well. The
  majority of the complaints had to do with HyperCard itself and our
  HyperCard-based reader, which by our own admission is simple at
  best, if you're being kind. The descriptions we use currently are
  more in the range of "god-awful slow" and "brain-damaged." Of
  course some people do like the reader quite a bit, although we
  suspect that they mainly like the idea of it and are willing to
  overlook our implementation problems. In the reader's favor, all
  we can say is that if you have enough disk space free (more than
  the size of the TidBITS Archive stack), it's stable and it does
  work.


  HyperCard garnered a lot of animosity, some of which is completely
  deserved (I like the program, but I'll admit that it has some
  major problems), and some of which is our fault for not scripting
  around HyperCard's limitations.

  "My only complaint about TidBITS is that it uses HyperCard, which
  I think sucks the proverbial pickle. It treats me like an idiot,
  is slow, and most importantly, the stacks waste enormous amounts
  of disk space."

  "Archiving takes much time and leads to large files. Selective
  archiving should be supported." [Excellent point. We'll keep it in
  mind.]

  "The weird way HyperCard makes the scroll bars grey even when
  there is nothing to scroll." [Luckily, HyperCard 2.0 fixes this.]

  "I wouldn't otherwise keep HyperCard on my hard disk." [Ouch, but
  I understand. Wait for the tagged text format.]

  " Let's face it, HyperCard is a slow, belabored pig. Why is it
  that 7 weeks of TidBITS takes up gobs (211K) of my _precious_
  (read "damn near full") disk space? Keep It Simple, Stupid has
  been applied to the implementor, but HC is not the best tool for
  the end user. I'd much prefer a small application and then you
  could include the application with each issue in about the same
  space. Also, I'm sure it would be handy to keep the text of the
  TidBITS on a UNIX box so I can use tools like grep to find
  things." [This comment points to the main reasons we're moving to
  an implicitly tagged text format, though we wouldn't include an
  application with each issue - it would waste too much net
  bandwidth.]

  "Leetle slow " [Lottle slow :-)]

  "Various HC weaknesses: too slow (on my lowly Plus); odd textwrap,
  especially with hyphenation." [Yeah, I edit everything in
  HyperCard to avoid the worst of it, such as broken curly quotes
  and parentheses, but it's still a pain.]

  "That my TidBITS Archive gets compacted every time I merge a new
  issue, which takes about close to one minute on my SE. (What
  computers do you have?)" [It all takes a while on our SE/30, but I
  just leave the room for a while.]

  "It takes forever to update the *%&(*^ index in the archive stack.
  (Yes, I realize there probably isn't much of anything you can do
  about this.)" [There is, but it requires a complete revamping of
  the Archive and the distribution stacks, which would cause so much
  confusion that we've avoided doing it. I just leave the room when
  I'm doing it.]

  "It's slow to move from one end of the archive to the other, and
  there's no REALLY easy way to print out an article to share it
  with people paper-wise." [Agreed. The speed problems will be
  fixed, and printing support will be added (which is much easier in
  HyperCard 2.0), much as I want TidBITS to stay as electronic as
  possible.]

  "The text window is too small and is unstyled." [The window in the
  HyperCard 2.0 version will be resizable, at least between two
  common (9" and 13") sizes. Nothing we could do about the styles
  originally, since HyperCard 1.x didn't support different styles,
  but that will be fixed too.]


  And then there are the specific complaints about our interface.
  The next version of the interface will be very different, but
  should address the problems mentioned here.

  "That it uses a different background on each issue when archive
  stack is made." [We fixed the background problem with TidBITS#25,
  I think. A major culprit was the quotes.]

  "I'm not sure that I like the new font. It is a little small for
  me." [The font will be user-specified. We were just trying to put
  more text on the screen at once.]

  "The magic menubar (just show it, will you?)." [Sorry, it won't be
  in the next version.]

  "I don't like the fact that the index field on the left of the
  screen does a "find" to locate a card after you've clicked on the
  topic. In the archive stack, this becomes a very lengthy task
  (even on an IIfx). It would be better if the index stored the card
  id number and you could just go to that automatically." [You're
  right, it's dumb, but it's also easy and a short, efficient
  script.]

  "The opening screen of disclaimers." [Agreed. The disclaimers will
  eventually move to the end and shorten significantly.]


  And then there were the people who have been reading our minds all
  along.

  "The HyperCard format is unnecessary. Straight text would be
  better. (Remember that I don't use the archive feature.)" [Yup,
  we're working on an implicitly tagged text format that will take
  over as the primary distribution format eventually.]

  "Non text form distribution, making it practically impossible to
  read it without first transferring to Mac." [That's another reason
  for the implicitly tagged text file format - TidBITS will be
  readable on any platform.]

  "HyperCard format has to be downloaded to read." [Yup, that's the
  main advantage of the text format - you can read it online and
  download if you want to archive it.]

  At first, we didn't think about how much time would be spent
  reading the articles and did not allot enough space to the main
  text field. Heck, we were surprised that TidBITS became as popular
  as it did as quickly as it did, which accounts for many of the
  interface problems.

  "The interface, which spends a lot of screen real estate that
  probably could be better used. The field in which the article is
  in doesn't take up more that 1/4 of the screen, and that should be
  increased. For starters, I think the sources should be mentioned
  at the end of the article instead of in their own field to save
  some space."

  "Rather small main text window, because too much of the standard
  HyperCard is taken up by gizmos (such as an overly-prominent cite
  window). I'm not used to reading out of a 5" window, which is
  small even in a 9" screen, much less my 13" screen."

  "I think there's too much precious turf devoted to static
  advertisement (of the source) in the reader."


  This is the part that hurts to read and isn't pleasant to print,
  but hey, fair is fair.

  "Lengthy and arcane philosophical rambling about hypertext." [Ah,
  sorry about that. We like the idea of hypertext and electronic
  text too much and do tend to go off on it a bit on occasion.]

  "Sometimes too much rehashing of things I'd already read in the
  Mac groups." [That's part of the point, but we always try to add
  information to the news we get from sources you may have access to
  already.]

  "Long articles about nothing interesting; difficult to read for
  strangers." [As much as we try, we can't please everyone. However,
  we're delighted to print articles or reviews submitted by readers,
  so if you want to see or spread information about a topic we're
  ignoring, send us information or an article. We also try to avoid
  writing about topics about which we know nothing, which
  contributes to missing certain topics. Help us fill in the gaps!]

  "I'd prefer more fact and less rumor." [Whenever possible, we try
  to stick to fact, but sometimes it can't be helped. I think we do
  passably well on rumors that come true. It's only false rumors
  that are a pain.]

  "I am not interested in reading opinions about the "future of
  ..."" [Sorry. With the speed at which the computer industry moves,
  "the future of..." very well may be next week, which is why we
  often think that information is valuable.]

  "Cute comments." [I highly recommend reading press releases then,
  they never have any cute comments.]

  "No complaints. Though not every installment has exactly what I'm
  interested in (neither does MacUser) it's pretty good for what you
  offer." [That's what we aim for, thanks.]

  "Too much concentration on "Well known" programs like Illustrator
  and PageMaker that poor people like me have never even seen." [I
  understand your complaint, but since I write over 90% of the
  articles, it's hard for me to write much about programs that
  aren't well enough known for me to have seen. Again, if you or
  anyone else wants to let the world know about a great unknown
  product, tell me or write an article or review about it.]

  "Occasionally there's not very much interesting news in an issue."
  [Occasionally there's not very much interesting news in a week
  :-)]

  "The political editorializing." [Sorry if that has offended you.
  We try to avoid political news except when it intersects with the
  computer industry, at which point the views offered are based on
  our opinions of the industry, not on our opinions of the political
  environment. We do take a few potshots at the political system on
  occasion since it's such an easy target - we'll try to watch that.
  I hope at least someone noticed that we never even mentioned the
  Middle East - it wasn't relevant.]

  "Economy - all those market things... but sometimes they're
  necessary." [Yes, they are. As much as I dislike it, I'm beginning
  to believe my own jesting motto "All the world's a marketing
  scheme." To understand and predict the industry accurately, we
  have to pay attention to the wheeling and dealing. We do try to
  make it interesting, since there's little that more boring than
  financial news to many people.]

  "US bias" [Absolutely nothing we can do about this complaint
  without help from you, our international readers. Tell you what.
  If enough people from enough other countries send us information
  about the state of the Macintosh in their country, we'll edit it
  all together and release a special issue on the International
  State of the Mac. So if you don't live in the US, send us your
  views on the Mac in your country. Operators are standing by.]


  Here we thought that everyone would want a short, succinct summary
  of the week's interesting events. But no, it turns out that lots
  of people want more and more from TidBITS. We just can't spare the
  time, though if a company wanted to give us lots of money to
  produce TidBITS, we might be able to find more time.

  "Amount of info in each issue, could be bigger."

  "I would like more gossip and news, but that's a small beef. You
  guys do a real nice job."

  "Limited information, I know there are only a couple of you
  working on producing TidBITS."

  "It could have more news ,the size is irrelevant at least for me
  as long as it has valuable news"

  "The few instances where information is vague or missing, such as
  "it may or may not be v.everything." You probably could have found
  the answer to the question that this phrase implies by giving your
  source another phone call. I am not blaming you. I know you can't
  spend as much time as someone who is paid for such work. I am
  simply fishing for the thing I like the least and there isn't
  really anything that truly annoys me." [Yup, we just can't be as
  thorough as would be ideal, but at least we admit it when we don't
  know and seldom make completely inaccurate statements.]

  "Information I can get easily elsewhere." [We can't be completely
  different from other publications each week in terms of subject
  matter, but I hope that our format, article selection, and
  opinions set us apart enough to make reading TidBITS worthwhile.
  And try finding something in MacWEEK a few months after the fact.]

  "I have already read most of the articles from the mainstream
  press which you re-review for your readers. Go for some new
  underground news!" [We'd love to, but we're limited by our
  sources, many of whom are not in the mainstream press. If you or
  anyone else know of underground news, please tell us!]

  "The fact that it's getting smaller as it goes on. It's too useful
  to disappear entirely." [I think that was a temporary trend before
  the first of the year when everything slowed down for a while and
  there simply wasn't much interesting news.]


  A few more miscellaneous complaints.

  "The reviews. (I don't think I get any of the magazines) (Oh, and
  the names, sounds very downmarket - tabloid newspaper type -
  sounds like your articles are on the same level as the Sunday
  Sport -'Space Alien ate my hamster')" [The reviews are mostly
  useless if you don't get the magazines, but a lot of people do
  find them very useful. As far as the titles go, we're trying to
  keep them short and light - short because the index field isn't
  that wide, and light because otherwise they're just plain boring.
  And please accept my condolences on your hamster :-)]

  "Written in English :-)" [Very little we can do about that, but if
  you want to translate each issue into your native tongue, please
  feel free.]

  "Not having a quote of the week anymore. I can see where they
  would be hard to find, but they were interesting." [They were a
  lot of work, a big pain to find, and were the primary reason a new
  background was created every week before TidBITS#25.]

  "Timeliness of information" [We try our hardest, but sometimes we
  have to wait a week or two to gather more information on a subject
  and figure out what we're going to write about it. If you know
  about something interesting and we haven't written about it yet,
  please tell us.]


  Finally, a few miscellaneous suggestions about features that are
  lacking.

  "No binary file attachments. You say things about various public
  domain packages and yet, for those of us without FTP abilities, we
  see no such programs. It would be FANTASTIC if you added a button
  (where the quote was) to "extract" the attachments. They could be
  anything from programs to actual images of various things. Even
  sound! I think this would be great. Again for those of us with
  limited resources to snarf the programs anyway. If no
  "attachments" were available, you could have it dump the text file
  of information along with the references." [This is a good idea,
  but given the size of many freely distributable programs and
  utilities, it wouldn't be efficient. After all, you'd hate me if I
  attached a 200K file that you already had or weren't interested in
  and you still had to download it all.]

  "You ought to incorporate a little hypertext of your own, cross-
  referencing, if you intend it to be reference." [We've been
  thinking about this, but it's unreasonable to impress our ideas on
  what should be linked on others. More reasonable would be a
  general purpose linking tool, but that involves a lot of work on
  your part. Suggestions are welcome, especially since we haven't
  thought of anything ideal.]


New Articles?
-------------
  When we ran the survey in December we were curious about area we
  might be completely missing, partly because the news had dried up
  a bit at that time. With the new year and Macworld Expo in San
  Francisco, though, the news picked up and we had no trouble
  thinking of things to write about. The common theme is that we
  don't know everything, and we don't write much about things we
  don't know. The remedy for this situation, other than us becoming
  omniscient? Write an article and send it to us! In any event, here
  are some suggestions of new types of articles from the survey and
  our comments on them.

  "Possibly one-line summaries in the reviews section. However, I
  fear that this might be hopelessly difficult and/or biased."
  [Summaries would be nice, it's true, but very difficult and
  treading on the copyright line.]

  "More about MIDI vs Mac" [Love to, want to write me an article? I
  know _nothing_ about MIDI.]

  "Complete reviews of products (NISUS 3.0 !!!)" [Well, we've done a
  couple now, and I hope they've been useful. Nisus isn't on the
  list for upcoming ones right now, if only because it's so powerful
  that it would take a long time for a review to do it justice. I
  can't recommend Nisus highly enough.]

  "I miss the home gardening features you used to have. No, wait...
  that wasn't you. Well... how about info on product UPGRADES and
  how to get them?" [We're anxiously waiting to see how the irises
  we transplanted last fall come up, and our patch of garlic and
  chives is doing well. Upgrades? When they're interesting enough,
  they merit an article, such as the Double Helix upgrade we wrote
  about recently.]

  "Other sources of information i.e.. real people and an description
  of what they are doing, more articles from your user base." [We
  take what we can get in terms of articles from our readers.]

  "Perhaps a series of short articles on how to get information
  about the Mac (such as stuff from Info-Mac or Apple that you can
  get by FTP)." [Good idea, we'll keep it in mind.]

  "Survey result of users of various commercial/non-commercial
  products, gathered from on-line users; by reading Usenet Mac
  newsgroups, especially comp.mac.apps, I think many many people
  would willingly participate surveys conducted by you expecting
  their information would help a lot of TidBITS readers."
  [Unfortunately, although this is a good idea, surveys are just way
  too much work. Look how long it took us to finish this one. :-) It
  is a good way to gather information if someone else wants to write
  an article for us, though.]

  "Perhaps a frequently updated column of the "N most asked
  questions (with frequently updated answers)" could be handled well
  with HyperCard. Readers could continually add refinements which
  would be edited into comprehensive answers." [A good idea, but not
  really in our scope, since a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file
  (a) isn't really news, and (b) is already being done in
  comp.sys.mac.announce on Usenet. If asked, we might publish that
  file once, since it does carry a great deal of useful
  information.]

  "How to articles for beginners & experts, or summaries of where
  these can be obtained." [Again, not quite in our scope, because
  such articles have a relatively small appeal (since few people are
  both interested in and ignorant of the same subject. Also, the
  main magazines do a bunch of these sort of articles.]

  "Trends in consumer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. For example,
  many people who were burned by Jasmine could have avoided it if
  they had access to honest information rather than the fluff that
  was being published by all of the Mac magazines six months after
  it became apparent on the networks that Jasmine was in deep
  trouble. Alternately, there could be more user promotion of
  underdog products like Nisus whose treatment in the popular press
  seems directly related to the amount they spend on advertising."
  [Good points, and we do try to reflect the tenor of the net
  conversations. Sometimes we hit the trends, other times we miss
  them. Our Usenet access is a pain right now (VMSNEWS via 2400
  baud, ech!), so we aren't as up on the nets as we should be. If
  someone sees a trend on the nets, please tell us about it!]

  "I'd like to see a regular letters to the editor card. I think
  it's a little intimidating to have to write a whole story in
  response to a minor point. I would like to see articles on cutting
  edge uses of technology and future trends." [Excellent idea, which
  we've recently implemented as MailBITS.]

  "Interviews with Mac Weenies." [Difficult to carry on via email,
  which is the only way we wish to afford to communicate. Long
  distance calls add up fast when you're interviewing people.]

  "I like the content of TidBITS pretty much as it is, but if
  pushed, I would like to see comparative articles. E.g., which is
  better (and why): StuffIt, Compactor, DiskDoubler, MacCompress,
  Diamond etc.; or Maple vs. Mathematica vs. Theorist vs. etc."
  [These are certainly in demand, but are often beyond our
  resources. Ken Hancock did an excellent compression comparison,
  and the other subjects are wide open for the rest of you.]

  "Reports on interesting things at the big computer shows, MLA, and
  other events I don't get to." [If you don't get to them, we
  probably don't either. Our standard offers still applies. If you
  want to cover a trade show for TidBITS and write articles on what
  happened, we'll write you a nice letter to the management saying
  that you are a member of the press and should get a press pass. If
  you fail to deliver on the articles, though, you won't get a
  second chance and we'll be irritated at you.]

  "Vertical-market specific articles. How are people employing
  existing technology to produce results." [Interesting stuff, I'm
  sure, but we don't generally come across it. Let us know if you
  see something interesting and want to write about it]

  "Announcements of new university-level educational Mac software"
  [Since we're not heavy-duty educators, this is hard for us to
  cover. I realize I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but
  if it interests you and will interest others, write about it for
  us, whatever it is.]

  "I hate to say it, but more coverage of the DOS side would be
  useful." [We cover DOS stuff when it's interesting, which isn't
  all that often, unfortunately."]

  "How about an electronic version of MacUser's MiniFinders?"
  [MacUser already has a HyperCard stack with their MiniFinders in
  it, and they promised to send it to me when I renewed my
  subscription. I haven't received it yet and am getting a little
  irritated.]

  "A section with technical TidBITS-type tips on HC 2.0?" [We try to
  avoid concentrating on a single program like HyperCard because
  many people are likely to be uninterested.]

  "No suggestions, just a request to keep "how to" articles out of
  TidBITS." [Within limits, I agree, since they generally target too
  small of an audience.]

  "I like to see more MacNews, because it takes 2 months for a piece
  of information to get from US to the Nordic MacPress." [We try our
  best, but we also want to keep each issue small so it doesn't
  become a major time drain to read.]

  "How about keeping track of software versions - this could be a
  real task in itself, but it would be nice to have a stack that was
  updated monthly that contained this info." [A good idea, but not
  really suited to TidBITS.]

  "Well, since you asked, how about digitized computer cartoons"
  [Augh, and we wanted to move to a text-only format! Well, there's
  a possibility of binhexed pictures in the text, but it starts
  getting really messy then.]

  "Why not include a few IIgs TidBITS - it has hypermedia too" [We'd
  love to, but we don't have a IIgs and don't hear any information
  about it normally. It was nice to hear that someone on GEnie
  converted the Xanadu special issue into IIgs HyperCard format.]

  "I'd like to see more cutting edge stuff (i.e. Xanadu, AI, Neural
  nets 3D displays, etc.)" [We try, but sometimes it's hard to find
  that sort of information.]

  "More info on great shareware utilities." [Agreed. We'll work on
  this.]

  "Is there any chance you could include Murph's monthly Vaporware
  column in TidBITS?" [We'd have to ask Murph, but my impression is
  that much of what appears in his column is either covered in
  TidBITS or judged by us to be not worth an article. Also, his
  column is closer to misappropriation since he's not adding much to
  the news from the magazines.]


Make TidBITS Easier?
--------------------
  As much as we like to pretend that everything in the electronic
  world is easy, there are a number of things we could do to make
  TidBITS easier to get each week. Here are the best of the
  suggestions.

  "A plain text version, as in comp.sys.tidbits (moderated), with
  articles distributed in batches (as now) and separately." [A
  Usenet group is a good idea, though comp.sys.mac.digest is
  appropriate currently. If we ever start doing versions
  specifically for other platforms as well, it wouldn't be
  appropriate to use the Mac groups to distribute them. We'll keep
  it in mind.]

  "Well, I suppose if you delivered it to my door...FTP is about as
  easy as you can get...I don't even have to leave my room." [Ah, if
  we delivered it to your door you'd have to get up and answer the
  door and make small talk for a while. FTP is better. :-)]

  "A dedicated T1 link between Penguin Things and BAKA." [Sorry,
  we're waiting for ISDN instead.]

  "I am happy with the current configuration and distribution
  methods. KISS" [Thanks, we're trying to Keep It Simple, Stupid
  (for those of you who haven't heard the acronym before.]

  "I like your method of electronic distribution. The part I dislike
  is having to unBinHex and unStuff the file to read it." [Yeah, the
  defunking is a pain.]

  "Distribute it by mailing list on the Internet." [We tried that
  initially and crashed a few mainframes running old versions of BSD
  mailers that couldn't handle over 200 people on a mailing list.
  Now everything goes out from our Mac via QuickMail, which isn't
  smart enough to send a single copy up to the Unix host and
  distribute from there, so there's no way we could run a mailing
  list from here. Usenet, local mailing lists (like one at the
  University of Michigan), and eventually a LISTSERV are better
  methods of distribution.]

  "A fax mailing list. Do you have a fax? Send the paper around.
  Charge a nominal fee for distribution to cover the cost of the fax
  and extra phone lines. This came up as a group of us sat around
  discussing how to distribute electronic newsletters, or
  Hypermags." [Fax machines are ubiquitous, but ecologically
  disastrous. For every document, two pieces of paper must be used
  (one on the sending end, unless you have a fax modem, and one on
  the receiving end), and most fax paper is not even recyclable. So
  as much as it would probably be a worthwhile service, we prefer to
  keep TidBITS off paper as much as possible.]

  "Hand delivered by messenger on a Double Density floppy
  immediately upon release. Silver platter optional." [Is that a
  single or double density silver platter that you were wanting?]

  "I cannot think of anything which would make TidBITS easier to
  acquire and/or read. Perish the thought that it should be anything
  other than electronic." [Hear hear!]

  "Why not make your text-version of TidBITS easy to manipulate
  within GNU Emacs? Using Rmail-like features, one could read,
  search, and ARCHIVE TidBITS on any system with GNU Emacs. Future
  versions of GNU Emacs are said to have Hypertext features, too.
  There are probably enough Emacs experts out there willing to help.
  Also, you could develop a small program of your own (say, written
  in portable C) to read, search, and archive TidBITS on CRT-based
  Unix systems. If you carefully and thoughtfully build some "hooks"
  into your TidBITS text format, maybe some talented TidBITS
  enthusiasts will do the Emacs/Unix programming for you...(I wish I
  had the time/talent for this sort of thing...)" [The implicit tags
  in the text format should be perfect for this sort of thing,
  though we don't have the time or talent for that type of thing
  either. Someone will though, and then the Unix world will have an
  excellent TidBITS reader.]

  "A global wireless communication network with 10E12 baud
  bandwidth, speaking with a pocket-size pocket-weight computer with
  a 2000 pixels/inch, 48-bit colour screen, gigabytes of non-
  volatile memory, available to all at no monetary cost. (NB. This
  is not a joke.)" [No, it's not a joke, and although we agree with
  you, there's not too much we can do to help make this a reality
  sooner.]

  "FTP source" [Check out sumex-aim.stanford.edu and
  rascal.ics.utexas.edu.]

  "Where is it on CompuServe and how can I set up the Navigator 3.0
  to find it, and download it." [I believe it's in the HyperCard
  section, but I don't know for sure since I don't upload there. For
  some reason, TidBITS is not very popular on CompuServe. Does
  anyone know why? Is it merely because no one has particularly
  noticed it? It seems strange that smaller services like America
  Online and GEnie should have much larger download counts than
  CompuServe.

  "Availability via a Bitnet LISTSERVer, in plain text if possible,
  NOT .hqx (ideally a LISTSERV for each format, readers could
  subscribe to whichever they prefer)" [We hope to set up a LISTSERV
  once we move to the text format. I doubt we'd be able to get
  another one for the .hqx format.]

  "FTPable up to date archive, with incrementals at the issue,
  quarter, and annual levels." [The only problem is the file sizes.
  The TidBITS Archive with all the issues in it will be about 3.5 MB
  in size, which is a bit much for most people to FTP. We tried
  monthly archives for a while, but didn't get much positive
  feedback (actually we didn't get any feedback, positive or
  negative), so we gave up on the extra work.]

  "Text-based distribution, provided that the "import" function is
  BULLET-PROOF. The novelty is in using the stack as a reader. I
  don't even like the idea of reading the weekly stack. I'd rather
  start up the Archive stack, have it ask me if there is anything
  new to import, and then magically scroll down to the new stuff.
  Maybe with a "New Stuff" button that gets you there quick."
  [Definitely a good idea, and one which will be possible with the
  text distribution files.]

  "Upload to GEnie as well. Other than the $5 monthly charge, there
  is no fee for uploading software (or using mail and certain other
  services too)." [TidBITS is on GEnie, although since I don't do
  the uploading, I don't know where offhand. I'm sure it's not all
  that hard to find.]

  "Again, since you asked. If you would fly weekly to Austin, take a
  cab to my apartment, and read TidBITS to me while I shower in the
  morning, other than that, it's fine." [Would you like your towel
  warmed too?]

  "Write them in Finnish." and "Write in French!" [Neither French
  nor Finnish are within our linguistic abilities. Ancient Greek is,
  but it's awfully hard to write about computers in Ancient Greek,
  and at the speed I write Ancient Greek, the issues would only be
  about twenty sentences long each week.]

  "Some press releases on networks about it. (It took me some time
  to find out that it was worth downloading) Perhaps the ECHOMAC
  moderator would permit a small plug for it. Also, the dating
  system - using the week starting... format gives the impression
  that it's a week out of date. Reading something dated 03-Dec-90 on
  12-Dec-90 gives a feeling of lateness. Changing to day of
  publication would help." [If you know of a network that doesn't
  know about TidBITS feel free to post some informational messages
  there for us. Alternately, let us know and we'll send you some of
  the blurbs we've used on occasion. And thanks for the comment on
  the dates - we changed that for 1991.]

  "It would be more timely if it were uploaded directly to the
  Twilite Clone or passed through Fidonet. At this point I believe
  that it is passed along by another subscriber." [We were sending a
  few issues to a Will McLean for distribution on Fidonet, but then
  a mainframe that delivered the mail to him claimed that nothing
  was getting through for several weeks. If someone who is well
  connected would post to Fidonet for us, we'd be grateful.]

  "A secretary to download it for me." [Sure you don't want a
  secretary to download it and defunk it and read it to you when
  you're in the shower like the other guy?]

  "If AOL fixed the damn 2400 line I use to access." [I gather that
  most of the AOL lines are actually owned and operated by Tymnet
  and Telenet, so complain to them as well as the AOL folks.]

  "An archive server from which I can request back-issues via mail
  (ain't got no FTP)." [Ah, the "Ain't Got No FTP Blues." Try
  sending mail with the only line being HELP to
  [e-mail] or [e-mail]. They run a
  mail server that shadows sumex-aim.]

  "A TidBITS 1-800 number BBS with a complete library" [We've
  thought about it, but it's too expensive unless a company sponsors
  it, and it's not really what we do best. We prefer to encourage
  wide distribution so everyone can get TidBITS easily locally.]

  "You might consider creating a LISTSERV list that automatically
  mailed out new volumes across the Internet, something like the way
  Info-Mac is distributed. And you could get a better idea of your
  audience that way by seeing who subscribes." [Precisely! We hope
  to do just this when we move to text format.]

  "I could move to Ithaca." [True, but I have a feeling that
  physical location doesn't make too much difference with TidBITS,
  whereas it does with other things in life. Besides, Cornell is
  constantly under construction, which messes up the place a bit.
  Nice gorges though.]


Favorite color
--------------
  I should have known. The most common answer was blue. My pseudo-
  statistics claim that it comprised about 41% of the total,
  followed distantly by red (13%), green (9%), and black (8%),
  yellow (7%), grey (6%), and purple (5%). Other colors showed up as
  well in lesser numbers: white (3%), orange (2%), taupe (1%), mauve
  (1%), and puce (1%).


  The most common non-answer was the famous line from Monty Python's
  Holy Grail movie. The only problem is that the 13 people couldn't
  agree on what the colors really were, though it looks like blue is
  probably the first of the two colors. As for the second color,
  it's either red or yellow or maybe the character didn't get to
  saying what it was. Interesting how everyone tried to render the
  scream into ASCII. I wonder if Unicode will be able to do that
  better. :-)

    Blue... No, Yellow. Ahhhhhhhh!!!
    Red, no blue...Aaaaagggghhhhhh.
    Blue...No, RED!!! (Copyright Monty Python)
    Blue. No, yellow. AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
    Blue...no red! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    Yellow...no, blue!
    Blue!...No, yellow! AAAAAAArrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!
    Blue! No... Aaarrrggghh!
    blue... no... AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........
    blue...no...yellow aaaaaiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhhhhhhh
    Red... no green AAAAAAaaaaaugghh...
    Blue, no Red AAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!
    Blue, no yellow... Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!


  A number of people were philosophically bothered by the question,
  as evidenced by these selections. Some answered anyway, others
  didn't.

  "Blue. But the usefulness of this one question to TidBITS beets
  me." [and I thought beets were red :-)]

  "Sorry, that information requires a security clearance."

  "Red. (Will this be used to weight my answer?)"

  "Gray (is this a Monty Python question?)"

  "I can't imagine how you can correlate color to the rest... " [me
  either :-)]

  "Skyblue (What is this for???)"

  "For what fast food or fast cars?"

  "What a silly question. Let's upset the stats. I don't have one."
  [oh no! the stats are invalid now! :-)]

  "In the abstract, blue - depends on what it's used for."

  "This is obviously a trick question. Black & white, of course."

  "More information is required here. Color in what context? Cars?
  -Ans: Red. Sky? -Ans: Blue. Screen background? -Ans: Tan (easy on
  the eyes)."


  A number of people were also worried that the question had
  something to do with what sort of Mac they used.

  "Blue... (but I've got a b&w monitor if that's what you're
  interested in...)"

  "Red; but I don't have a color Mac, if that's what you're
  after..."

  "I have a lowly SE at work, a 1984 128K->1M at home."

  "I don't think this question is essential to me since everything
  on my Mac always appears black and white."

  "Grey. Really. OK, maybe not really. Maybe only because I have a
  monochrome screen. OK, midnight blue."


  As with any extremely personal question, when put on the spot,
  many people were indecisive.

  "Today, black for gadgets, green for most other things - but I
  draw the line at green skin (except for insects & reptiles)"

  "Don't really know, if pushed maybe yellows & browns."

  "Not a single one. I like good associations of two or more
  colors."

  "It has changed many times over the years (from purple to green to
  black to blue) I think it's probably blue now, although a
  sentimental spot is still held for purple."

  "Light blue. Although, any sort of blue is really okay."

  "Can I have two? Great. Green and orange. If I can only have one,
  then it's green."

  "This question always interests me, and I'm glad you asked. I
  don't think I really have a favorite color, I think I can only
  like colors in some sort of context, for example "Does this tie go
  with these cufflinks?" and such. The condensed answer is Green."

  "I never could decide."


  And then there were the answers that made me really wonder...

  "I don't have one; I have a favorite number, 5."

  "The Blues, up & down."

  "I don't have a favorite color. I am, however, very fond of the
  smell of violets."

  "Plaid"

  "Nope, it ain't taupe. How about cobalt blue?"

  "Total black (I'm still waiting for a car in this color. The Dodge
  Stealth is not it. The NeXT may be. :-)" [When Steve Jobs came to
  Cornell, there was a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Cornell NeXT
  lab. During the question and answer session, someone asked him
  about the black color of the NeXTs. He  said that they were
  actually a dark grey. Sorry.]

  "greeple"

  "Judging by my closet, grey. (What do you expect, I'm an
  accountant.)"


  A number of people obviously remember their Crayola crayon boxes
  from childhood, to judge from some of these answers.

    "Wine-red"
    "taupe"
    "puce"
    "Jet black"
    "Bruin Blue"
    "iridium"
    "tundra blue"
    "Eleanor Blue"
    "ocean"
    "Mustard"
    "Xmas red"
    "Fuchsia"
    "Spontaneous Vermillion"
    "Dodger Blue"
    "mauve turquoise"


Miscellaneous comments
----------------------
  We thought we had made the survey easy to answer, but some people
  still had trouble, such as this response to "What is your name?"
  "Sam Potts...um, no! it's Wayne Pollock (Damn these are tough
  questions :-)"


  A few people have really caught on to the idea of electronic
  communication replacing paper communication, such as the people
  who made these concise comments.

  "Responding electronically-want to save trees"

  "Timeliness and electronic format. No messy paper to deal with!"


  And of course there were the comments about surveys, such as this
  one. "A colleague recently did a small survey, asking "Pick a
  number between 1 and 4." He'd heard that well over half the time
  respondents would pick 3. It turned out to be correct..."


  If you give people a chance to score themselves, there's always a
  couple who will go whole hog and give answers for nonexistent
  questions.

  "Extra answers for bonus points: 1 7 3 5 8 9 3 "

  "18-Blue...No, RED!!! (Copyright Monty Python) 19-No thanks, and
  you? 20-Dire Straits are not so bad, but why RUSH never comes in
  France?"


  Interestingly enough, even though the average score for how
  knowledgeable you were as a Mac user was 8 of 10, engineers who've
  been working on the Mac for years tended to rate themselves
  relatively modestly, such as this person. "Knowledgeable Mac user
  (if a DOS user who has never seen a Mac is 0 on the scale): I'd
  argue that a DOS user would be several points BELOW zero. Many,
  many points. Legions and legions of numbers, obediently lined in
  rows and columns towering over the <ahem> I digress. I'd say I'm a
  nine. I've had a Mac since the Fat Mac days. I write code. If I
  wrote _great_ code, I'd be a ten."


The End
-------
  When it comes right down to it, the world is weird, and I hope
  we're all having a good time. Thanks for your support.

  Adam C. Engst & Tonya Byard, TidBITS Editors

..

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