On Sunday, January 7th, 1996 - Terry Russell wrote:
 
 > Nope, Atari would have no grounds for a lawsuit.  That is silly.
TR>  >
TR> Of course they would and there is NOTHING silly about it. It they 
 
It is totally silly.  It's almost as silly as when John Cleese did the
"silly walk" skit on Monty Python's Flying Circus.  :-)
 
TR> make the claim that they are the ONLY real 64 bit system that is 
TR> pointing to the fact that Atari's is not a REAL 64 bit system. This 
 
Nope, sorry.  Nintendo did not specifically mention the name "Atari" in
there, so there is no actionable libel.  Check with your attorney - he
will set your straight.
 
TR> could have a damaging impact on Atari's credibility thus robbing them 
TR> of some sales. 
 
Since it would be impossible for Atari to demonstrate that this isolated 
announcement had any impact upon its sales in court, and that Nintendo
was malicious in their statement, there is no grounds for taking this to 
court.  This is purely silly.  What constitutes Nintendo's opinion of
what "64-bits" means anyway?
 
This is about as actionable as a commerical which says "Coke is the best 
tasting soft drink."  Nobody can sue over an expression of opinion.  The 
technical nature of the bit debate is virtually impossible to prove.
 
In my opinion, the 68000 is a 32-bit processor (true, if you consider
the internal register width is 32-bits).  However Motorola itself calls
it a 16-bit processor based on its external data bus width.  Who is
right or wrong is almost a matter of semantics.
 
Based on industry practice, the NU64's data path of 32-bits makes it a
32-bit system anyway.  If you're going to see a lawsuit, it will be
brought against Nintendo by its customers for false advertising or
fraud.  This is silly also because each company can just redefine what
they personally mean by "bits".  In technical terms, each byte of the
RAM in a system has 8 bits.  Add them all up and you've got hundreds and 
thousands of bits!  :-)
 
Now that Sega and Atari have fueled this "bit war", it is time to point
out that it is virtually meaningless unless you want to keep track of
large integers in a single chip register.  "Bits" is almost as
meaningless as "MIPs"!  What really counts are quantifiable data
throughput figures, and benchmarks like MFLOPS.  These will give you
true performance specs.
 
Trust me, there will be NO lawsuits on any of this silliness.  This is
just harmless advertiser mud slinging.  :-)
 
--- RiBBS v2.10        

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