Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!srvr1!math.lsa.umich.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!hyc
From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Subject: Re: What of ATW? (was Re: Atari TT 030 Launched!)
Message-ID: <1990Jun17.030119.16661@math.lsa.umich.edu>
Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
References: <15520005@acf5.NYU.EDU> <12459@shlump.nac.dec.com> <30833@cup.portal.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 90 03:01:19 GMT
Lines: 72

In article <30833@cup.portal.com> Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes:
>Chad Leigh writes:
>>For the record I read in a high end graphics oriented
>>magazine *last* year that Atari had already installed
>>more than 400 of the machines.  With a specialty machine
>>like the ATW that is a significant number.
>
>Well, for the record, I don't believe *ANY* of the numbers I see "published".

Fair 'nuff...
> 
>Atari Corp told us all that they had 70,000 Lynxes to sell over the last
>Christmas season... that turned out to be a bald-faced, outright lie...
>at their stockholders' meeting, the true figure of 30,000 was revealed.

So send in a question about ATWs for the next stockholders' meeting. What's
nagging about it on usenet gonna prove?
> 
>I tend to believe reports from "real people" who actually have machines
>like the ATW in their hands.  They have a lot less to gain by lying about
>things like "installed numbers"...

Y'know, I don't see 30,000 posts in rec.games.video from people who own
Lynxes, either. I guess that must mean that they haven't sold that many, eh?
>
>...and like I said, so far, on all of UseNet, Bitnet, CompuServe, etc, etc,
>only three people have mentioned having an ATW.  If there were significant
>numbers, you'd think we'd have heard about a *few* more...

Considering the number of Lynxes out there, and the incredibly fast rate at
which they get sold, you'd also expect to see more than 4 or 5 people talk
about 'em on the net. But you don't... I wonder why this is? Maybe, just
maybe, the largest fraction of the world's population doesn't know about
usenet, (egads! someone doesn't know about usenet???) or isn't connected in
any way...

[An anecdote... Lynxes have multiplied like rabbits here at UM. People get
them, show 'em to their friends, and their friends slaver for more. The
College of Engineering's computer support group has been pretty thoroughly
saturated, as has MacTechnics, the local Mac user group. (They're even so
popular in the Mac group that they talked about starting a Lynx SIG within
the regular group. And Mactechnics is probably one of the largest and most
active Mac user groups around, with such die-hard Maclovers it'll make your
head spin...)]

> 
>At any rate, we're not talking about "super-cooled Crays"... it sure seems
>to me that for such a fantastic, world-shaking advancement in the art of
>computer science as Atari want us to believe the ABAQ, er.. ATW is,
>an installed base of 400 machines *worldwide* is pretty poor...

No, you're not talking Crays here, true. You're talking transputers, and
parallel processing. Despite the current hoopla over non-Von Neumann style
computer architectures, there really aren't that many people in the world
doing serious work in the area, let alone *talking* about it. It's new and
wonderful, and because it's still so relatively new, it's gonna be a long
time before you see personal-computer style distribution. Too few people in
the world actually understand how to work with a parallel-processing machine,
or how to use one effectively. A Cray is mainly a fast scalar processor.
Millions of people know how to program scalar machines. Vectorizing and
parallelizing is a lot harder, just because the techniques are still being
developed. 
> 
>BobR

Geeze, Bob, you're beginning to sound just like that Christopher Mauritz dude.
You should know by now that rabble-rousing on usenet doesn't do any good.
If you've got suggestions or constructive criticisms, you should mail 'em
to Atari. If you wanna ridicule or flame, got to alt.flame or something...
--
  -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan
  ... the glass is always greener on the side ...
