Possibilities - Letter From Phil 7/92

Contact:   eSoft, Inc. (Makers of TBBS)
           15200 E. Girard Ave., Suite 3000
           Aurora, CO  80014
           (303) 699-6565      Voice
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           support@esoft.com   E-Mail

LETTER FROM PHIL 7/92
---------------------

*** From July 1992 Possibilities Newsletter ***
*** Copyright 1992 by eSoft, Inc.  All Rights Reserved ***

Letter from Phil
by Phil Becker

Springtime.  The rain falls, the grass turns green, and in the park children 
play for the first time -- never knowing anyone was there before they 
discovered it.  The cycle of the new replacing the old is played out in nature 
every year.  We are reminded that everything has a beginning, a middle, and an 
end.  With some discomfort we remember that time makes all that is new grow
old. 

However as I watch the Daytona 500 (the largest race in the major leagues of 
stock car racing) I notice that 6 out of the 40 drivers who qualified are over 
50 years old.  Harry Gant, the only consistent top driver in the first four 
races of this season, is 52 and looks headed for the championship! 

I also notice that although he is in his 40's, Nolan Ryan is still a threat to 
pitch a shutout every time he plays.  Mario Andretti looks back at 50 but is 
still a threat to win every Indy car race he runs (if his son doesn't beat 
him). 

On the news I see that young actors and actresses are banding together to 
protest that older stars are getting all the choice parts. Who would have 
thought a few years ago that women in their late thirties and forties would be 
playing romantic sexy leads in films?  On a talk show Susan Anton (looking all 
of 30) talks about how she took the job as the Muriel cigar lady away from 
Edie Adams in late 1950's! 

The ultimate arena of youth may be rock music.  So how come the only two 
groups who can reliably fill a stadium every time they play (The Rolling 
Stones and The Grateful Dead) look more like a shuffleboard team than rock 
bands? 

The recent appearance of many older people who can perform like those much 
younger is often used as an indicator of some major change in the human 
condition.  But the real reason is much simpler -- it is "installed base".  
The "baby boom" generation is the largest demographic blip in human history.  
This generation is now reaching middle age and because of its size it 
continues to dominate.  The statistically rare individuals who can transcend 
their age have always existed, its just that now their absolute numbers are 
much larger -- though they are STILL statistically rare. 

When any particular "installed base" reaches a critical size it changes the 
normal flow of things.  An incredible stability occurs that appears to defy 
the normal laws of nature.  Change can only occur within that base in small 
increments.  As a result growth begins to take the form of refinement rather 
than radical change.  But developments which could not happen without the 
large numbers also become common. 

The DOS based PC market has been in this condition for several years now.  The 
good side to it is that you can buy a new computer today that has 70 times the 
speed, more disk storage and better video displays than anything that has ever 
existed for nearly no money.  Software with man years of development behind it 
(and capability that has never been available at any price before) is now 
widely available at extremely low cost. 

The bad side to a large installed base, of course, is that radical change 
happens quite slowly and is burdened by the demands of "backward 
compatibility".  The pressure for certain types of changes build up to nearly 
explosive levels before such changes can occur. 

In the DOS market today this pressure is most widely felt in the areas of 
memory expansion, multitasking and GUI interfaces.  The rapid adoption of 
Windows and OS/2 in their current flawed condition shows the pressure for 
these changes.  The problems these products still have are largely caused by 
the requirement for complete backward compatibility with DOS applications, but 
without nearly perfect compatibility they cannot succeed (witness OS/2 1.x). 

Today we struggle with problems of PC memory types (EMS vs. XMS vs. 
Conventional, loading programs high, etc.) and memory manager conflicts with 
hardware that wasn't dreamed of when the PC was invented.  These are our 
largest support problems with TBBS installations now that TBBS has grown to 64 
lines with the resultant larger memory requirements.  All of these problems 
are the result of the need to run under DOS and have backward compatibility to 
the 8088 PC. 

With time TBBS may be able to run only on 80386 or better CPUs and make use of 
the DOS extender technology that has pushed compatibility into the larger 
memory arena (but which causes problems of its own).  For now we have to deal 
with the fact that properly configuring a computer to run TBBS, DOS, and other 
large programs you may want has become a nearly mystical process of adjusting 
the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is IBM PC compatibility.  It's reached 
the point that IBM PCs aren't "IBM compatible" in all cases any more! 

It is a chaotic system indeed, but it is also the best cost/performance 
computer structure humans have ever invented.  It has all the chaos of the 
free market that has brought it about.  It also has all of the benefits -- 
more computer power than most humans have ever had access to is now available 
for less than the price of a new car!  It can also be used by people who know 
little or nothing about how it works "under the hood" -- meaning nearly 
everyone! 

The result has been that products like TBBS from an entreprenurial company 
like eSoft can truly change the way the world works.  We take it all for 
granted most of the time, but I don't think I'll ever truly appreciate how 
miraculous such leveraging of human potential truly is. 

A lot is happening with TBBS and eSoft this spring.  The ONE BBSCON is shaping 
up to be the largest BBS event ever.  If you don't know what is happening at 
The ONE BBSCON, it will be 1000 Sysops and all major BBS and modem vendors 
gathered this August in Denver.  It will have over 100 hours of educational 
seminar presentations from just about every name in the BBS community.  If 
there is anything about BBSing you want to learn it will be there for you.  I 
would like to see as many of you there as possible.  You can see the article 
in this issue [Page 8] which has more details on the show, but be sure you 
register now if you want to go.  It is selling out rapidly and I don't want 
you to miss it because it filled up before you called! 

Progress Report...

TDBS 1.2 is entering its final beta test and will be released soon.  Next 
issue I will give you upgrade pricing, information, and full details on what 
is in this new version of TDBS.  But I can say now that it will make possible 
many new applications that you have clamored for and which just were not 
possible with TDBS 1.1. 

Development on TIMS 1.1, the QWK offline reader interface, and the InterChange 
online terminal program and scripted data switch are proceeding.  These 
products will be released later this year.  I'm not sure how many of them will 
be released by the show, but we'll be demonstrating many of them there in 
their test condition at least to show you what they will do. 

I'd also like to introduce you to our newest addition in the technical support 
department -- Karl Glasgow.  Karl comes to us with an extensive background in 
customer service and we are already seeing the benefits of his techniques in 
the eSoft technical support department.  Those of you who have already had 
contact with him know that he works very hard to get your problems solved.  
Karl's BBS experience began when he went to high school with Greg Shaeffer 
(author of GBBS for Apple computers).  Karl ran his own GBBS system for five 
years until the demands of building his life and career intervened.  Now, 
several years later, he is once again able to indulge his BBS habit and we are 
the beneficiaries. 

We should move into our new offices in July (only a couple of months late).  
It seems that building anything takes longer than you expect, but soon eSoft 
should have managed to remove the bottlenecks our rapid growth has caused (the 
words "when we get upstairs" now preface nearly every major discussion around 
here). 

I thank all of you for your patience as we grow to accommodate the fact that 
there are now over 2,000 of you for each one of us!  I can't say it isn't 
exciting! 

- END -
PS0792-1
Rev. 7/92

Copyright (C) 1994 eSoft, Inc., All Rights Reserved.  Permission granted
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interested party.  Any other use requires the written permission of
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