I have been to comp.os.os2 and have seen what goes on. Mud-slinging that goes on there is unfortunate. (Are we not professionals? At least, I am.) I have been using OS/2 at home and at work for 3 years.
On the people who attack Mr. den Beste: These people are perhaps teen-agers or maybe even full adults who are considered "nerds" by their peers for their technical prowess. Apparently, such "nerds" also possess another character trait, and that is: lacking social skills (not giving fair courtesy to others in free discussion). Maybe people think it's safe to let loose their "inner-child" while posting to this and other news groups. The 'net is still yet to be tamed; "netiquette" is still a joke to some.
However, Mr. Den Beste is not without error from an unbiased standpoint. In one of his postings, he alluded to OS/2 being responsible for the mess-up at the Olympics. Since I worked at ACOG's information systems for six months, and knew from personal experience that *that* was not so, I was strongly forced to post my rebuttal. One statement that I had made was that ACOG had brought in many independent young programmers who were fresh out of college and relatively inexperienced in programming the Visual Age applications that were written for data collection at the Olympics. My job was to do Quality Assurance testing of their applications. These applications were written for Windows 3.1 and were not OS/2 native.
The programmers at ACOG would argue that some "bugs" that I and others had reported were non-existent *or* their managers (IBMers) would not give them high enough priority to get fixed (like age determination from birthdates). Obviously this was application-specific (regardless of platform) and not OS/2 specific! Remember the Irish boxer in his twenties that was reported as being ~97 years old.
BOTTOM LINE:
I really loved Steve Den Beste's article in the August issue. I thought it was insightful, as well as very funny. I wish I could have read some of his postings in c.o.o.advocacy. From Trevor's editorial, it sounds like he has some great ideas, and some great advice for OS/2 advocates. I hope to see him (or read him, rather) again in the upcoming September issue. If he hasn't gotten out of the straight jacket yet, maybe someone could get him a beta of Merlin and he can dictate his article.
Stephen, the name of the game is DEFENDER. I know it is so because I happen to have an Atari 2600 cartridge with the game on it.
BTW, Aquanaut has been out for a long time...
For those really concerned about what they are getting for their dollar, they should consider WARP 4.0. It is hard to fathom how IBM can pack as much into it as they will when it is released.
The Voice Navigation and Dictation system is based on the same 32 bit engine supporting version 3.0 for Win95 and will be an integral part of the operating system. I have been working with it for about two months now and it is very fast and accurate. They have also included version 3.0 of IBM Works which seems improved over the prior addition. When coupled with all of the connect stuff, internet tools, and Web Explorer 1.2 it will be a bargain. I am told it will retail for about the same price as WARP Connect.
VoiceType Diction 3.0 for WIN95 sales for around $600.00.
Why should one limit oneself to Win95? I'm in the progress of something similar to that reported in OS/2 e-Zine! some issues ago. (Currently DOS and OS/2 -- Win95 and SCO Unix coming up.)
I've heard somebody say that Win95 would crunch your OS/2 Boot Manager, but you made it work.
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