USR quad modems... (ontopic - really!)

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 05:52 pm, Tony Duell wrote:
> > On Monday 21 August 2006 05:50 pm, Tony Duell wrote:
> > > More usefully, I got to play with some fun toys like transputer chips,
> > > ECL logic, etc. And to use VAXen (I'll have to say, though, that I
> > > still prefer unix to VMS...)
> >
> > Why is that?  I've no real experience with "unix" per se,  though I do
> > run
>
> I was using the term 'unix' generically, to include things lik linux
>
> > linux here on multiple boxes,  and I don't know a darn thing about VMS
> > (yet).
>
> It's difficult to really explain, but things I like about unix are the
> idea of I/O redirection and pipes, the fact that you can treat a file as
> a stream of bytes (OK, unix would benefit from sturctured files too, but
> under VMS I spent a lot of time convinicing the OS to let me do things to
> the file that are trivial to do under unix), the ability to nest
> subdirectories as deep as you like, and so on.

Actually that explains it pretty well,  as there are any number of software 
packages,  both operating systems and applications,  where I've felt like I 
was fighting it more of the time than not -- which sounds like what you're 
describing here.

And I'd really rather not.  I have better things to do with my time.

> Don't get me wrong. VMS is a fine system, and for some applications it's
> superior to unix. But that doesn't mean I have to like it for what I want
> to do.

In what sorts of things might it be considered superior?

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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