Pournelle (The decline and fall of Byte)

From: Kai Kaltenbach <kaikal_at_MICROSOFT.com>
Date: Tue May 6 16:21:03 1997

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

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

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

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

Kai

> ----------
> From: Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers[SMTP:gram_at_cnct.com]
> Reply To: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu
> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 1997 2:01 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: The decline and fall of Byte
>
> On Tue, 6 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
>
> > My own collection of Byte starts with August of 85 (Amiga 1000 is
> the
> > cover story) and ends somewhere in late 89 or early 90. The library
> at the
> > university I attended had issues starting from Jan '77 (which I read
> 8-).
> > The dates given here are approximate, looking at a Byte from 1980,
> then 1985
> > then 1990 will show almost three different magazines.
> >
> > -spc (It started sliding when Robert Tinney stopped doing magazine
> covers,
> > (~87) then it nose dived once Steve Ciarcia stopped writing
> hardware
> > articles, (~88 or 89) although there are some that think it
> started
> > way back in '77 when Pournelle started his column)
>
> Well, most of my older Byte magazines were destroyed by water several
> moves ago, and I wouldn't mind acquiring most of them again. I had
> mostly
> given up on Byte in the mid-eighties, but in recent years I've wound
> up
> with a subscription (recently finally expired) due to McGraw-Hill
> ceasing
> publication of more useful magazines. Ciarcia's articles were always
> excellent (and I know that most of them were released in book form
> awhile
> back), and his current magazine, "Circuit Cellar Ink" is pretty good,
> especially if you're a serious hardware hacker as I no longer am.
> Actually, nowadays, Pournelle's column is about the only thing I read
> in
> the magazine, and now that it's available on the web (with extra
> text), I
> really don't care to subscribe. Opinions vary concerning Jerry
> Pournelle.
> I've known him for over twenty years due to our mutual interest in
> science
> fiction and membership in the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (I'm
> still a member despite living in New Jersey -- Death Shall Not Release
> You!). Over the years we've had a lot of conversations and arguments,
> about politics (he's in favor of having a government, I'm opposed),
> about
> space development (we're both in favor) and computers (I was a
> Shacker,
> and while I was living elsewhere on the continent he had bad
> experiences
> with a very early TRS-80 and the company rather hurt themselves by
> being
> uncooperative and ignorant of the power of the press -- which is why
> after
> I showed him one of the first Model 100s, he went out and got a NEC
> equivalent). He's a man of strong opinions who's always trying to
> learn
> something new and so am I. Really, he should be a member of this
> mailing
> list -- he's experienced directly more of the history of computers
> than
> most of us who've worked and played with them. That plus having the
> clout
> to get information from the movers and shakers.
> --
> Ward Griffiths
> "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
> the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
>
>
Received on Tue May 06 1997 - 16:21:03 BST