BBS in a Box 2/BBS in a box - Trilogy II.iso/Files/MUG News/TidBITS/126-150/TidBITS#136⁄03-Aug-92.etx

Text File | 1992-08-02 | 27.1 KB | 553 lines | [TEXT/EDIT]

TidBITS#136/03-Aug-92
=====================

 For TidBITS readers, the hottest program of the week is Akif
   Eyler's Easy View 2.1, a snazzy viewer for TidBITS. Other news
   this week includes an analysis of the recent Apple/Microsoft
   love-fest, an anti-virus author for hire, an explanation of what
   happened to the well-regarded mail order firm Maya, and for some
   relaxing reading, a review of Robert X. Cringely's "Accidental
   Empires," a thoroughly enjoyable book about the computer
   industry.


This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:

* Salient Software -- 415/321-5375 -- [e-mail]
    Makers of AutoDoubler and DiskDoubler
* Infogrip, Inc. -- 800/397-0921 -- BAT chord keyboards
    One hand on the BAT, one hand on the mouse, eyes on the screen.

 For detailed information on these companies and their products,
   please send email to <[e-mail]>.

 Copyright 1990-1992 Adam & Tonya Engst. Non-profit, non-commercial
   publications may reprint articles if full credit is given. Other
   publications please contact us. We do not guarantee the accuracy
   of articles. Publication, product, and company names may be
   registered trademarks of their companies. Disk subscriptions and
   back issues are available.

 For information send email to [e-mail] or [e-mail]
 CIS: 72511,306 -- AppleLink: [e-mail]@internet#
 AOL: Adam Engst -- Delphi: Adam_Engst -- BIX: TidBITS
 TidBITS -- 9301 Avondale Rd. NE Q1096 -- Redmond, WA 98052 USA
 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Topics:
    MailBITS/03-Aug-92
    Easy View 2.1
    Anti-Virus Help
    Apple/Microsoft Love-In
    Whither Maya?
    Accidental Empires
    Reviews/03-Aug-92

[Archived as /info-mac/digest/tb/tidbits-136.etx; 28K]


MailBITS/03-Aug-92
------------------
  Well, it's that time again - Macworld Boston. I won't see any
  Internet mail all week, although Tonya will check periodically for
  important notes. If you need to get in touch with me, send me mail
  on CompuServe since the Seattle Downtown Business Users' Group
  (dBUG) kindly lent me their PowerBook 140 so I can stay in touch
  electronically. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll trade in the 140 at
  Apple's booth for a new 145 and test out that new 25 MHz 68030
  processor. :-)


ON's Engineers
  Benn Kobb answers our rhetorical question from last week about the
  whereabouts of the engineers who produced the innovative ON
  machine: "Where are ON's engineers today? They are at ONEAC Corp.,
  one of the major makers of uninterruptible power supplies for
  computers and stuff. They advertise occasionally in PC trade
  publications."

  Information from:
    Benn Kobb -- [e-mail]


Easy View 2.1
-------------
  Forget all the product introductions at Macworld Expo. Akif Eyler
  of Turkey has made my summer. Akif recently put the finishing
  touches on a program called Easy View 2.1 that can, among other
  things, facilitate the reading of setext files. So yes Virginia,
  there is a Santa Claus, and he has just brought a viewer for
  TidBITS! I uploaded Easy View to America Online (Hardware and
  Utilities libraries), ZiffNet/Mac (ZMC:DOWNTECH #0), CompuServe
  (MACSYS #6), and the Internet at sumex-aim.stanford.edu and its
  numerous mirror sites.

  Easy View operates on a slightly different principle than you
  might expect from a text viewer. It cannot modify the original
  files, and it doesn't import text into its own files. Instead it
  builds an index to the contents of files in a specific folder,
  allowing you to read them and search for text within them without
  ever opening those files manually. I find this particularly useful
  because I keep all the TidBITS text files in their original states
  since I occasionally need them that way. In addition, the index
  file is tiny - the index for 35 issues since the start of the year
  is 14K. If you wonder how this method works with compression
  software, Easy View is compatible with Salient's AutoDoubler, and
  probably with Alysis's More Disk Space and Aladdin's forthcoming
  SpaceSaver, although I haven't tested with the latter two.

  To start using Easy View, you'll need some issues of TidBITS to
  index. If you don't have as many of the back issues as you would
  like, you can download them from your favorite site, either now or
  very soon. I've uploaded to CompuServe (MACCLUB #8), ZiffNet/Mac
  (ZMC:DOWNTECH #7), America Online (look for a new TidBITS library
  in the Hardware forum coming soon!), and the Internet (sumex-
  aim.stanford.edu in the /info-mac/digest/tb directory). As usual,
  we encourage you to redistribute these back issues to friends,
  relatives, and BBSs.

  In any event, once you have all the back issues defunked, put them
  in the TidBITS folder that comes with Easy View. The folder can
  live anywhere, but the index file to those issues must be in that
  same folder with the original files. Easy View includes an empty
  index file in the TidBITS folder, so go ahead and double-click on
  that to start up Easy View. (Of course, as always, I recommend
  that you first double-click on the "Easy View - Read Me" file for
  more information on Easy View.) Once you have that TidBITS index
  file open, select Modify... from the File menu. The Modify...
  dialog is a bit like the Font/DA Mover, and you can move files
  from the left hand list to be indexed into the right hand list. If
  you want to remove a file from the index, select it in the right
  hand list and move it back to the left side, where it will become
  available for indexing again.

  That's about it for getting started with Easy View, but Akif has
  built in numerous neat features that will make reading TidBITS
  easier. The generic Easy View screen shows four panes, three small
  list panes above and one large text pane below. The left list pane
  lists the issues in the index, the middle list pane shows the
  articles in the current issue, and the right pane shows the file's
  name, size, and modification date. You can modify the size and
  appearance of the panes and their contents with the Preferences...
  option under the File menu (that's why the included TidBITS index
  file may not match what I'm saying here exactly), and of course
  you can size the window as you wish. Easy View knows about
  multiple monitors, so zooming to a small second screen works fine.
  I wish more programs were so considerate of us double-monitor
  freaks.

  You can use the mouse to move around in Easy View, and for those
  of you who prefer the keyboard, you never have to take your hands
  off of it. I'll let you find the keyboard equivalents for
  navigating in the documentation, but suffice it to say that I
  think everyone should be pleased.

  Other than reading TidBITS I suspect that you will want to search
  for terms or phrases on occasion. Easy View will not let you down.
  You can search forward only, but you can have Easy View find the
  current selection or add it to the Find dialog box, and once it's
  there you can do a simple Find (or Find Next) or extract the found
  items (either as a line of context or as entire articles) to a
  text file (which can then be indexed as well, if you wish). Aside
  from the search direction limitation and the fact that Easy View's
  Find is case sensitive, my main request for some future version
  would be the addition of an easy-to-use grep feature. But that's
  unnecessary at this point.

  Preferences abound. You can optionally have Easy View remember
  window positions, remember index positions (where you were last
  time you opened the index), show file information, keep a private
  search string for each file, automatically save the file when
  modified, and automatically modify the index whenever files are
  added or removed from the index's folder. I suspect you will find
  this last feature rather handy because you can just drop a TidBITS
  issue in the right folder, and next time you start up Easy View,
  it will add that issue to the index without any intervention on
  your part.

  One important note: Easy View knows about more than just TidBITS.
  It can index files in six different formats: plain, simple,
  setext, digest, dictionary, and starred. Make sure that your
  preferences are set for setext if you plan on indexing TidBITS
  files, but if you anticipate indexing Info-Mac digests, for
  instance, you would have to change the format pop-up to Digest. If
  your format is set incorrectly, the file will not look right in
  the index, but it's easy to remove, and add again. You have this
  choice in the Modify... dialog as well, so you shouldn't have
  trouble remembering.

  Akif has made it clear that Easy View is a work in progress, and
  like all programs it has room for improvement. Nonetheless, I
  think Akif has done an incredible job and deserves accolades for
  his past and future efforts. Easy View is free, so all I can
  suggest is that you send Akif email telling him what you think
  about Easy View. He appreciates constructive criticism, and I'm
  sure he doesn't mind hearing how much you like the program either.
  Thanks, Akif, for a job amazingly well-done!

  Information from:
    Akif Eyler -- [e-mail]


Anti-Virus Help
---------------
  An alert reader suggested this article, and I think it's an
  excellent way for the Macintosh community to pay back someone who
  has devoted much time and effort to it. Here's the situation. Jeff
  Shulman of Shulman Software and author of the popular shareware
  Virus Detective recently found himself without gainful employment
  in West Virginia. Although I'm sure West Virginia is a nice place,
  it's not exactly a hotbed of high tech, and Jeff has relocated to
  California, a hotbed of many things high and low tech.

  We see two ways in which you can help pay Jeff back for all the
  work he has put in creating Virus Detective and Virus Blockade II,
  the combination of which is one of the most sophisticated means of
  protection available. First, and this is the easiest, if you use
  these programs but have not paid your shareware fee, we encourage
  you to do so now. Second, if you know of any regular or contract
  employment for a skilled veteran Macintosh programmer in the South
  Bay area, it would be nice to drop Jeff a line about it. Shareware
  fees and other correspondence should go to:

    Jeffrey S. Shulman
    Shulman Software Co.
    1111 W. El Camino Real, Suite 109MAC
    Sunnyvale, CA 94087-1057

    Voice: 408/245-1890
    FAX:   [phone]
    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]


Apple/Microsoft Love-In
-----------------------
  Two weeks ago Apple and Microsoft made a joint announcement
  outlining plans for future joint technologies. The plans call for
  Apple to support a Microsoft database standard called Open
  Database Connectivity (ODBC) API (Application Programming
  Interface) as a standard in the Data Access Manager (DAM). In
  addition, "Microsoft and Apple have endorsed the combination of
  ODBC and Apple Data Access Language (DAL), via Apple's DAM, a
  cross-platform solution." This also has to with SQL (Structured
  Query Language, pronounced "sequel").

  I'm sure I'll offend some serious database people, but frankly,
  what a load of crock. Any agreement with so many abbreviations
  won't ever come to much, and for the vast majority of normal
  Macintosh users, it's completely meaningless. (Hint. Most people
  can throw out the DAL extension that System 7 installs for you. If
  you don't know what it is, you almost certainly don't need it.)

  Microsoft promised two main areas of support for Apple - support
  for forthcoming System 7.1 features and support for the PowerPC.
  Mr. Bill will have his programmers supporting Apple's Open
  Collaboration Environment (OCE) along with the new QuickDraw GX,
  as well as increased support for Apple events and AppleScript. Big
  deal. This is good stuff, but not exactly surprising. You think
  the largest developer of Macintosh programs would actually ignore
  the major new features of Apple's latest system software? Of
  course not.

  What about supporting the PowerPC? Microsoft claimed that it will
  develop native mode versions of its main applications (probably
  just Word and Excel) for the PowerPC chip. I find this slightly
  more interesting because Steve Jobs and NeXT have needed such
  support for some time. As sick as this may be, the PowerPC stands
  a better chance of survival with native mode versions of Word and
  Excel. Do take that "native mode" with a grain of salt though -
  Microsoft develops everything in its internal p-code in order to
  enhance transportability between platforms. Transportability is in
  itself good, but the p-code tends to make Microsoft's programs
  behave strangely at times when faced with new system software or
  hardware.

  So why the love-fest? The Apple-centric view of the world says
  that Apple's new anti-Windows ads worry Microsoft so Mr. Bill
  pressured Apple into cooperating in the press exercise. I suppose
  Apple might have wanted to reaffirm the link to ease the minds of
  large corporate accounts that exist solely on Microsoft products,
  fearing that these accounts would move to Windows to stick with
  Microsoft in the event the Mac versions of Word and Excel went
  away. Alternatively, Microsoft wished to counteract recent
  accusations that its interest in Windows has completely
  overshadowed its Macintosh development efforts. We'll probably
  never know the truth, but my money says it was politicking.

  Information from:
    Apple propaganda


Whither Maya?
-------------
  by Don Mayer, Maya Computer -- [e-mail]

  [Don recently posted this explanation of the demise of Maya
  Computer on CompuServe, and others immediately flooded the message
  thread with condolences and regrets. I was sorry to hear of Maya's
  demise as well, and thought that Don's perspective on the
  experience might prove educational for those of us who deal with
  mail order firms on a regular basis. -Adam]


What Happened to Maya Computer?
  Maya Computer closed its doors on Thursday July 8, 1992. I want to
  thank all of the customers and vendors that have called and
  expressed their support for Maya's open and honest style of doing
  business. I think that for those that I have not been able to talk
  to personally a bit of explanation is in order for the untimely
  demise of Maya Computer.

  Maya Computer's growth was spectacular during the first three
  years of operation. We grew from $750,000 to $3,000,000 to
  $10,000,000 in sales by 1991. We failed, however, to track and
  manage that growth properly and by the fourth year we began to
  experience significant losses due to out-of-control overhead and
  overstaffing. It was a natural reaction to increase our staff to
  meet the incredible volume of phone calls and orders that we were
  receiving. Our phone system was lit up like a Christmas tree and
  the phone company told us we were missing 10,000 calls a month. So
  we staffed up without the careful planning that such an expansion
  requires and without the operating capital to support the
  inventory required to meet the increased number of orders.

  For the most part our employees and the owners of Maya reacted
  maturely and energetically to the problems created by the growth
  and losses. We cut everyone's pay, reduced overhead and laid-off
  almost 1/2 of our staff in an attempt to stabilize operations.

  We were fortunate in July of 1991 to have received $1,000,000 of
  capital on what we believed were favorable terms. This capital
  came at a critical juncture in the company's development. The loan
  was to be a four year interest-only loan with conversion to equity
  at the option of the company. As a convenience to the lender we
  signed a demand note for the money with the clear notion that a
  comprehensive document would be signed 30 to 60 days later.

  In late 1991 several disagreements developed with the lender
  relating to personnel and management of the company. Maya
  Computer's Board of Directors met to address these issues in
  February of 1992 and passed resolutions clarifying the management
  of the company.

  Shortly thereafter, despite our understanding of the terms of the
  loan, we received a certified letter from an entity in New York by
  the name of Roper Enterprises claiming that they had been assigned
  our $1,000,000 note and that immediate payment was demanded. Upon
  investigation, it was later determined that the loan had not been
  assigned. Nevertheless, the demand changed our approach to the
  business. We began to search for replacement investors and in
  every case once we disclosed the called $1,000,000 note the banker
  or investor would race for the door. We were unable to extend our
  credit lines or make long term plans with this sword of Damocles
  hanging over our heads.

  We were contacted by the lawyer for the lender and asked to
  prepare a "work-out" plan for the million dollar note. In late
  May, that plan was rejected and we received a second demand to pay
  the note, this time with the proper assignment of the loan.
  Several days later we were contacted by the lender and were told
  that he wanted to negotiate a settlement of the situation. We
  responded positively to that notion but were served 24 hours later
  with a lawsuit demanding possession of all of our assets.

  We notified our bank, the Franklin Lamoille, of the lawsuit and
  prepared to go to court to defend ourselves. On the day of the
  scheduled court hearing the bank seized our bank account and
  demanded payment on their loans and offset our bank balances as
  partial payment of those loans. This effectively put us out of
  business. The bank was significantly over-collateralized and their
  action made little sense, especially since we had kept them
  informed of our financial condition on a frequent basis.

  We never got to tell our story to the court but rather were
  pressured into signing an agreement to turn over our assets to
  Roper Enterprises. In July, 1992 we held a liquidation sale for
  one week, raising enough capital to pay the bank and later turned
  over the remaining inventory and assets to Roper Enterprises. Maya
  Computer is now a company with no assets and all liabilities and
  is out of business.

  While this adversity brought out the worst in some people it also
  brought out the best in our team. Employees worked long hours for
  little pay to try to breathe life into Maya. We worked long and
  hard to ensure that no customers got caught in our problems, even
  though the lender refused to allow us to pay customers for
  equipment sent to us, make refunds or to honor checks that had
  been bounced by the bank's action.

  Who are the winners and losers and where does Maya go from here?
  There are not many winners in this situation. All of the owners
  lost their investment in the company, which for most of us is all
  the money we had or could borrow. The lender may lose a
  considerable portion of his investment. Many of Maya's vendors
  lost money and a few customers got caught in this unfortunate
  situation. The lender got some stuff (inventory and desks) but the
  people at Maya have their integrity, friendship and pride intact.
  We have been encouraged by the large number of customers and
  vendors who have been so supportive during our troubles, many of
  whom have gone out of their way to thank us for the job we did.

  We are discussing forming a new company with a number of potential
  investors. We have a dedicated, highly trained professional staff
  that works exceptionally well as a team. We have a group of very
  loyal customers and a business concept that prides itself on
  honesty and customer service. As I sat with our employees and it
  was clear that we would be closing our doors, we cried together
  and vowed that the lesson to be learned from this experience would
  NOT be to distrust everyone and act ruthlessly but rather that
  trust, honesty, friendship and hard work are too important to
  sacrifice for money. Whether we are back together in a new company
  or separately in other organizations, you will always be able to
  identify a Mayan by their enthusiasm for their work and that smile
  that comes from having done the right thing.

    Don Mayer
    President
    Maya Computer Company


Accidental Empires
------------------
  It's summer again, and all respectable publications have reviews
  of books that would be appropriate for summer reading, whatever
  that is. I've never found that one season was necessarily any
  better than another for reading, but I've found a book that reads
  well any time of the year.

  Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld's pseudonymous rumor columnist, has
  dipped into his vast store of industry knowledge and anecdotes to
  produce "Accidental Empires: How the boys of Silicon Valley make
  their millions, battle foreign competition, and still can't get a
  date." You may not always be able to judge a book by its cover,
  but Cringely's flip subtitle gives a pretty good introduction to
  what is in many ways an insightfully flip book.

  Like several other books, most notably Steven Levy's "Hackers,"
  which covers a period of time somewhat prior to where Cringely
  picks up, "Accidental Empires" presents a history of the computer
  industry. I specifically say "a" history, since I suspect that
  some people disagree with Cringely's version of various events. No
  trouble there - eminent historians seldom agree completely on the
  specifics either. "Accidental Empires" has a more narrow focus
  than Levy's "Hackers" in that it aims more directly at the
  business end of the industry, rather than looking at the machines
  or the people. Cringely does zero in on a number of people, but
  primarily the larger-than-life figures in the industry like Steve
  Jobs and Bill Gates.

  In the end, though, three things set "Accidental Empires" apart
  from the rest of the industry corpus. First, Cringely may be flip,
  but I found his writing a joy to read, an uncommon occurrence in
  industry works. His style includes an engaging level of self-
  deprecation that tempers many of his harsh comments about various
  industry figures. This is evident from the start, when he notes
  the three groups that will hate this book, the people mentioned in
  it, the people not mentioned but would like to be in the first
  group, and the people who don't "give a damn about the other two
  hate groups and will just hate the book because somewhere I write
  that object-oriented programming was invented in Norway in 1967,
  when they know it was invented in Bergen, Norway, on a rainy
  afternoon in late 1966." So if you fall into one of these groups,
  Cringely is ready for you.

  Second, I think Cringely sees the industry as driven more by
  personality and ego than anything else, and as such he spends a
  fair amount of time analyzing the major figures, presenting his
  usually justified opinions of what makes them tick and why. For
  instance, about Gates, Cringely says:

    Young Bill Gates is incredibly competitive because he has a
    terrific need to win. Give him an advantage, and he'll take
    it. Allow him an advantage, and he'll still take it. ...
    Those who think he cheats to win are generally wrong. What's
    right is that Gates doesn't mind winning ungracefully. A win
    is still a win. It's clear that if Bill Gates thinks he can't
    win, he won't play.

  Cringely's view of Steve Jobs carries an equal amount of
  insight:

    The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley sits alone on many
    weekday mornings, drinking coffee at Il Fornaio, an Italian
    restaurant on Cowper Street in Palo Alto. He's not the
    richest guy around or the smartest, but under a haircut that
    looks as if someone put a bowl on his head and trimmed around
    the edges, Steve Jobs holds an idea that keeps some grown men
    and women of the Valley awake at night. Unlike these
    insomniacs, Jobs isn't in this business for the money, and
    that's what makes him dangerous.

  Third and finally, Cringely does what few other chroniclers
  attempt and makes suggestions about how things might be done
  better. I find this delightful, especially in this day and age of
  dour economic and competitive predictions. Cringely claims,
  perhaps correctly, that mainframes will die on January 1st, 2000.
  That's because all those mainframe programs that cut paychecks and
  pay taxes and track inventory were programmed years ago when no
  one thought that the same program would do its duty without
  modification in the year 2000. Cringely maintains, and I suspect
  he's right, that much source code was lost or destroyed long ago.
  If that's true, many of these programs will cease to work, and the
  age of the microcomputer will truly begin. At that paradigm shift,
  he suggests, software will truly become all-important and we will
  need a new model for publishing it. Companies cannot afford to
  build the infrastructure each time, so Cringely offers the idea of
  the software studio, based on the movie and TV industry in which
  the studios create the infrastructure, and the players -
  programmers in this case - all work on contract and are free to
  move on afterwards. It's an intriguing idea, and only putting it
  into practice would prove its efficacy one way or the other.

  Whether or not you agree with Cringely's assessment of the
  industry and suggestions for its future, I recommend that you find
  "Accidental Empires" at a bookstore or library soon. Among the
  numerous books in my computer book collection, I think "Accidental
  Empires" is one of the more enjoyable and more elucidating. It's
  hard to beat that combination, whether the weather is sultry or
  frigid.

  As an aside, "Robert X. Cringely" is a pseudonym, and one that a
  recent BYTE review of the book theoretically revealed. I don't
  necessarily place much faith in that report, and frankly, I don't
  give a damn. I think there's too little mystery in this world as
  it stands, and not knowing who writes those columns is a
  thoroughly trivial and pleasant mystery. Also, I hear from
  reliable sources that the same person has written the column for
  quite a few years so Bob Cringely is not some collective alien
  being. You can even send him mail on the Internet at
  <[e-mail]>. Anyone who reads email can't be all bad.

  Oh, and if you consider yourself a rabid Macintosh user who cares
  little for the rest of the industry, don't worry. Despite the
  broad-based view of the industry, including notes about IBM,
  Microsoft, and Sun, followers of Apple will find plenty of juicy
  reading, and besides, it's good to get out and look at the rest of
  the world. Finally, don't feel left out, I have it on good
  authority that Cringely himself uses a IIcx and Word.


Reviews/03-Aug-92
-----------------

* MacWEEK -- 27-Jul-92, Vol. 6, #27
    Generic CADD 2.0 -- pg. 68
    LanRover/L -- pg. 68
    Infogrip's BAT chord keyboard -- pg. 71
    GraceLAN Asset Manager -- pg. 72
    DateBook -- pg. 73


..

 This text is wrapped as a setext. For more information send email
 with the single word "setext" (no quotes) in the Subject: line to
 <[e-mail]>. A file will be returned promptly.

 For an index of information on our sponsors' products, send
 email to <[e-mail]>.