FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:40 Page 1 Volume 2, Number 22 15 July 1985 +----------------------------------------------------------+ | _ | | / \ | | - FidoNews - /|oo \ | | (_| /_) | | Fido and FidoNet _`@/_ \ _ | | Users Group | | \ \\ | | Newsletter | (*) | \ )) | | ______ |__U__| / \// | | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / | | (________) (_/(_|(____/ | | (jm) | +----------------------------------------------------------+ Publisher: Fido 107/7 Chief Procrastinator: Thom Henderson Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 107/7. You are encouraged to submit articles for publication in Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 107/7. Disclaimer or don't-blame-us: The contents of the articles contained here are not our responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them; everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING received. FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:42 Page 2 ============================================================ NEWS ============================================================ Mike Ringer Fido #437 in net #117 Remeber the days when the only people we really had to worry about where the Apple pirates? Now we (the users of Fido) must be on The lookout for are own type pulling cute stunts! Starting about three issues back we had a message yelling help we've been robbed someone has taken a newly written program and put a a new name on it and called it "Public Domain". Another goodie is the idiot who wrote a program that does a "kill *.*". The only one that really makes me mad is the one that states "All Atari games such as Stargate, Robtron etc are pirated!" this made me a slight bit mad! Why? Because I got Stargate from my friend who got it from a board in Austin. Oh well It looks like we are all subjects of life. I would like to know what motivates these people that do this! Did a sysop make them mad? Did a company make them mad? I just wish they would keep their trash off of the public boards so America won't lose part of it's dream "Freedom". Starting now it's going to be alot harder to run a Fido or anything else unless you're already running a pirate board. Now on the subject of pirate boards I have called some of the local ae lines in my city and asked one pirate what he thought of Public Boards and said "I think there childish" This my friends comes from the sysop (so they call their selves) of two pirate boards and also a High school dropout. Who in this case is being childish? There is another pirate sysop in the local area whom I went to school with and he uses the public boards because he can't find a comm program he wants. He wants an Apple version of Modem7 I guess he can't find something pirated that works just as well! I don't think that public boards will ever be done away with or completely safe from computer rapscallion But the longer we stick together the better off we will be. ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:44 Page 3 ----------------------------------------------------------- PROGRAMMING HINTS For all MSDOS/PCDOS systems I have always had the complaint that you could not goto another batch file and return where you left off in the first one. Well lo and behold while poking around on someone's computer the other day I found a file called BAT_NEST that gave the following hint. From the first batch file issue the commmand COMMAND /c batchfile this will open and process the batch file indicated. When it is done processing will continue at the next line after the COMMAND line in the first file. This can continue for 7 levels of batch files. I've tried it as far as four levels and it works great. One word of caution, you remain logged on to the drive/directory where the origional batch file resides. FOR DEC RAINBOW SYSTEMS In an earlier article I described the process necessary to get COMMAND.COM to reside successfully in RAMDISk. Recently I purchased DOIT and had problems with installing it and dropping to another lever of COMMAND.COM. After removing the COMSPEC program from the AUTOEXEC.BAT everything works smoothly. Turns out DEC finally did a good deed and fixed the SET COMSPEC=?????????? command in 2.11 MSDOS. The system even seems to be a little faster in program to program switching. So anyone who has upgraded to 2.11 and uses COMMAND.COM from ramdisk I would recommend removing the COMSPEC program from the AUTOEXEC.BAT and from the system. Leave in the SET COMSPEC=?????. Mike Hamilton #102/666 and 102/370 ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:48 Page 4 From: Bob Hartman, Sysop 101/10101 This is simply a request for information. I am simply wondering how many Fido Sysops would like a utility that emulated the Fido message system. This would be a standalone program separate from Fido (and hence much smaller), that could be used to peruse the different message bases, and reply to messages in any of them. I know that a program called READMSG exists, but that is really just a simple program that you can use once you change directories to the proper place, and you know what messages you are interested in, etc. What I am proposing is a Fido emulator. Currently I am working on such a beast (I sort of needed most of it to implement my link to USENET anyway). With a little bit more massaging for the case of the FidoNet message area, it will be complete. If you are interested in this program, send me a FidoNet message, and when it is complete I will send a copy to you to test. It is written using all DOS calls only, so it should run on any machine, but who knows...I only have an IBM PC, so someone else will have to let me know what happens on a Rainbow, or other system. Now for the logical conclusion to this article... Since I have written the message base section of Fido in C (MANX Aztec C-86 version 3.20c), is anyone interested in helping write the rest of Fido in C? Bob Briggs (the sysop from 15/464) was going to help me out, but he has to sell off his PC, and will no longer be a Fido node. I know that there are apparently versions of Fido that are written in Turbo Pascal, but the version that I am working on will be in C. Since MANX makes a line of compilers that covers almost all machines and operating systems, I am using them for the development. I have been assured that if it runs under one MANX compiler, and uses no system specific calls, then it will run under another MANX compiler. If this is so, then suddenly Fido can blossom to CPM systems, as well as other types of hardware. We shall see... Bob Hartman Sysop 101/10101 ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:49 Page 5 Life and times, of a PIRATE After reading views on piracy and copy protection, I couldn't help but get my two cents worth in. Being an experienced computer user of more than 8 years, and programmer who has been fortunate enough to have his ware's marketed. I feel I've enough experience to converse on this matter. Since I have purchased alot of software, and have also pirated alot of software. First, I have to say I have paid much money for software that isn't worth the media it's saved on. All these beautiful ads! and nice write ups really grab us, and shake us until the money falls out of our pockets. "I have to have it!" we murmur, while hoping the wife didn't over hear. Two weeks later, we rush the freshly packaged disk into our machines, just to find its utter trash. True we should check out what we buy, but those of us who live in the more rural parts of the country don't have the computer stores that stock all the latest software packages. Second, MOST software is WAY over priced. as someone said in a recent newsletter, "The price of a wordstar wouldn't buy his services for a day" let alone the months is takes to write a WORDSTAR. Well we're talking about more than one sale here. And 300.00 for Wordstar is quite ridiculous! I for one would NEVER pay such a price for software of ANY kind. (At least not for anything I've seen on the market) These software companies put these way out prices on this software because the large corporations don't blink an eye at spending several thousand on a handful of wordstar, or symphony packages. But us small business, and hobbiest's types flip at the thought. This is why "I PIRATE". I've heard quotes that we pirates would still pirate even if the price was right. Not at all true! I have just about every piece of software imaginable for my machine. Which I need since I spend hours at it, and I get bored with things easily and want to move on and see what else is new. When I get tired of a package, I toss it in the box, never to boot it again. (Imagine 300.00 a shot for this habit!) The reason I say its not true, is I was given a FREE copy of Borland's TURBO PASCAL. This I learned and toyed with for about 6 months, before I found it to be a truly astounding piece of work. With the disk already in use, I ordered from Borland, an "ORIGINAL" (perish the though!). And found the 39.95 tag to be VARY FAIR! Even the 3.0 version with its 69.95 price tag. Another good example is, I had read and seen ads for the newly released "GEM" operating system by digitial research. I've pirated their stuff before, I have Concurrent PC-DOS, that I was impressed with, and ALMOST BOUGHT after seeing it demo'ed, I wanted it, but the 395.00 just couldn't be justified. (If it was 89.95 Digitial Research would have made the sale!) I finally found a freebee, played with for FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:52 Page 6 about 2 weeks, until I found its many short comings, (thank god I didn't pay it's 300.00+ price tag! ) Then tossed it too in the bone pile, and haven't booted it since. But GEM was another story! A fellow pirate called and said he just got a good chunk of the entire GEM package, which included the GEM OS, the GEM PAINT, WRITE, copies of the doc etc. I asked him to ship it out to me. Later the next day, I stopped into the computer store, and low and behold they had GEM too! I watched a brief demo, and asked the price. (ready to hear the typical $$$) But no! $49.95 the salesman said! Even though I KNEW I had it coming any day in the mail, I BOUGHT the package because it was their when i wanted it, I thought it looked like fun, and I'd rather have the more colorful, original, documentation. This fair pricing was for the OS ONLY! after seeing that the supporting PAINT, WRITE, and others were near 200.00 each, I declined on those! (again if they were 49.00 each I'd have taken one of each without hesitation) I waited and received them in the mail for free. But Digital, again, LOST THE SALE! Games too are over priced. Another example, I pirate every game I can find, since none have held my attention for over a couple hours. And I`m not about to pay 39.00 for 2 hours worth of fun. Until a store was going out of business! They offered my AtariSoft games, at 9.95 each! and I bought THREE! (the only 3 I didn't already have) Oh there was one exception. The MS flight simulator! Even though I already owned a pirated copy, I did order one mail order for 29.00. This was because it is worth the price, as is Sub Logics flight simulator called "JET" which is due out any day. I have already placed an order for, since I've seen it at a recent computer show. So If I was a software company I would do what I could to cut costs, and lower prices, and above all DUMP THE PROTECTION! It doesn't hinder piracy at all, we still copy everything we want, and crack the rest. But it would be nice to buy ZAXXON at 14.95 already in file form for hard disk storage, rather than having to break it down myself. True not all piracy would be stopped, Kids would still run around trading games, but the piracy what would continue would be software that the pirates would not purchase normally anyway! Even freeware can be over priced, I've seen requests for 50.00+ for something that's not worth a dime, although the idea is promising. But I can honestly say I have only paid for one piece of freeware... John Friels QMODEM! He's asked 10.00 (for the 1st version) which was refreshing, since I would have paid up to 79.95 for it. A good example of pricing again... I read about Borlands SIDEKICK when it was new, I was hot for it! I found it at the store, but they only had the "UNPROTECTED VERSION" which for some reason was double the price of the protected version. ( QUITE UNFAIR! even for Borland) Well I wasn't about to pay 89.00 for a program that sells for 49.00 with protection! And since the store didn't stock the protected 49.95 version (I couldn't get it to crack it) AGAIN This FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:55 Page 7 time, Borland would have made the sale!) But they had to be greedy and charge us more, just so we could use it from our hard drives. As it turned out, I got a pirated copy, played with it for a week, then tossed it in the bone pile, never to be booted again. So in closing, you can all voice your opinions on whats in the mind of a software pirate, but the above insight is coming from a pirate, which is not the thoughts of one, but of 99 percent of the software traders that I deal with. You can say what you want but... PIRACY IS DUE TO SOFTWARE OVER PRICING! Thank you for letting me set the record straight ------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:00:56 Page 8 USERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO Sparky Radio Free FIDO 123/5 Having been a sysop myself a few years ago, I can understand how a sysop may feel. Users will EXPECT that his board is up and running. They will EXPECT that they can download everything and contribute nothing, if they so wish. They EXPECT that they have the right to drop carrier in the middle of their session, or tie the board up for hours. As I said, users EXPECT. Maybe I'd better add the word SOME in front of the word "users". Infact, a great many users express a great desire to not only use the board but to help it grow. I say more power to them. Now, back to being a sysop. If I wish to dedicate my computer, phone line and personal time to run a board, then I should be able to DICTATE what is permitted on my board. After all, I'm the guy paying the bills to run this contraption. It's MY hobby! If I don't want you to post the latest patches to break Symphony's copy protection, that's my business, not yours. So it's pretty much agreed and understood that a sysop can do whatever he or she pretty damn well pleases. On their board. Anytime they want. And no explanations needed, thank you very much. However, don't users have a FEW rights too? A user doesn't have many rights on a local BBS; we've agreed he is at the mercy of the sysop. But, let's consider for a moment what would happen if a BBS was also a local host system for FIDONET. Does this sysop have the right to censor any private FIDONET messages? Let's give an example. I am a sysop of a FIDO that happens to also be the local host system for my area. All FIDOMAIL passes through my board. Now, I also have strict rules that govern my BBS. I own a computer store, and will not allow any messages to be posted that would directly compete with services my store provides. So far, so good. I'm within my rights as a sysop to censor all messages for this material. After all, I'm not going to help my competition. Now, here comes the problem (you knew there had to be a problem, Life's just a bowl of cereal). A friend of a user sends FIDOMAIL from his node in New York state telling his friend of an exceptional hard disk drive deal. 10 megabytes for $250.00 complete! So, he sends his friend FIDOMAIL and pays his money to do so. Money is deducted from his account, and all is well. That is, until that message hits my BBS. This message competes with my business. So, therefore, I will delete it. FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:03 Page 9 It will not be passed through my system, since I too sell hard disk upgrade kits. I'd be shooting myself in the foot. I delete the message, and no one knows anything. The question here is, doesn't the user expect to have the right to receive FIDOMAIL? Isn't this particular sysop imposing HIS set of rules upon the entire local FIDO community, since he is a local host system? Doesn't the first amendment operate in this case? To make a similar example; I am a Shiite working as a mailman for the Postal Service. Do I have the right to deny mail delivery to a Christian based on my religious beliefs? Of course not! But what about this sysop? Does he have the right to censor FIDOMAIL, even if it's a private message? My own thoughts say that the sysop has NO right to censor FIDOMAIL. If he has problems with any potential message being routed through his system, other than those that promote illegal activity, he shouldn't volunteer to be a host system. Let some other board handle the duties, or remain outside of FIDONET altogether. Radio Free FIDO was founded on a belief that it is the users who make the board, and it's up to us to continue to keep it's quality high. We've formed a FIDO Users Group (FUG). We're all a bunch of Fuggers. The sysop guides the board, and lends a hand when needed. We're fortunate to have such a sponsor. I can't help but feel the boiling blood of my revolutionary ancestors when the word "censor" is spoken. Thoughts? To sum up my position, I appeal to anyone who cannot allow free flow of FIDOMAIL traffic through his system to NOT consider becoming a host system. To do so would go against the grain of the FIDONET community, and prostitute the dream of Tom Jennings. LONG LIVE FIDONET. Sparky Radio Free FIDO 123/5 FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:06 Page 10 ============================================================ COLUMNS ============================================================ Thom Henderson SEAboard, Fido 107/7 Gnawing the Bone Mind if I talk a bit more about software piracy? Thank you. We have an article this week about piracy, as seen from the pirate's point of view. I appreciate his viewpoint, and I'm glad he wrote to tell us how he feels. I'd just like to say a few things about how it looks from my side of the fence. First of all, let's explode a myth. Copy protection doesn't add all that much to the cost of making software. The outfit that does our disk duplication adds copy protection for a very modest fee. Of course, you can go out and lay down a bundle for Prolok if you want, but it's your own fault if you do. Copy protection is software, just like any other. It doesn't cost anything to add a few lines of code to a program, and it doesn't cost much to add a key to a disk. So what does cost? Well, disks don't grow on trees, for one thing. And it does cost a bit for disk duplication (you can spend an afternoon making 200 copies on your PC if you want, but I won't). You also need a manual, or nobody will be able to use your product. This can get very expensive if you want professional typesetting, but let's assume that you are willing to settle for a cruder, "home-grown" look, so you'll run it off on your printer and call it "camera ready". Then of course you'll need some sort of packeging. Silk screened binders and printed boxes are expensive, so let's settle for the ubiquitous vinyl folder (now you know why it's so common). Don't forget that all this doesn't come prepackaged. What you'll get is a box of folders, a box of disks, and a stack of manuals. Be prepared to spend a couple of afternoons putting it all together. By now you've already spent a fair chunk of cash out of your own pocket. (Don't forget that, for a professional offering, you should expect to spend ten times as long on debugging, polishing things up, putting in on-line help, and so forth. Once you've sent the master disk out for duplication it is too late to fix any bugs.) Assuming you were putting together a run of a hundred, with all the software fitting on one disk and with a modest manual, you've probably spent on the order of three or four hundred bucks. You may think that your troubles are over. Hardly! FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:08 Page 11 What you've bought for your money is a stack of packages piled on your kitchen table. Now you've got to get someone to buy them. You could take out ads in a few of the trade journals, but be prepared to spend upwards of $50,000 doing it for a month. You can mail out review copies to all the magazines, but they get hundreds of packages a month and will probably never even open yours. You might get someone else to distribute it for you, but that's hard to do if you don't have a proven track record for marketable software (the old chicken-and-egg problem). You can probably find a few local software stores who are willing to carry it on consignment, but don't expect to sell more than a half dozen copies that way. So you are now in the realm of MARKETING, and that takes big bucks. So you mortgage the house, the car, the wife and kids, and spend it all on advertising in the whistful hope that your package will catch on and be a success. Or perhaps you go find some venture capital, hire a marketing consultant, and lose control over your own product. Is this dream of being a major software company overnight starting to tarnish a bit? Wait, it gets worse! So say you "over" price your product at $100. If your initial run sells out completely you will gross ten grand, which is not enough to cover your advertising costs, not to mention paying the mortgage and putting food on the table while you pursue your dream. I'm told that a "hot" product sells ten thousand copies in this business. Granted, Lotus and Borland both do better, but not much of anybody else. A more reasonable figure for a typical package is probably under a thousand, but let's think big. Ten thousand copies at a "reasonable" cost of thirty bucks a piece comes out to $300,000. Looks like a lot of money, doesn't it? Now figure you spent, oh, half that much on marketing costs. Another thirty grand goes to physical costs (disks, jackets, manuals; we'll ignore the high school kids you hired to help put it all together). Unexpected costs (there are ALWAYS unexpected costs) will take a big chunk, but let's call it twenty grand to make the numbers simpler. Your net is then $100,000. Uncle Sam will gladly help himself to half of that, leaving you with $50,000 for yourself. Now consider that this is only true if your product is a bona-fide winner. If it falls flat on its face (which it easily could, through no fault of your own), then you are out a couple of hundred grand, and get nothing. It's a gamble, no two ways about it. You put everything on the line in the slim hope that you'll come up with a winner. I've been writing and selling software for a long time now. I do this stuff for a living. I, too, have the dream of FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:10 Page 12 coming up with a winner, something that everyone will want and use. Now people are coming along and telling me that I charge too much, that I should shoot the works and gamble everything I own for peanuts. Nuts is right! Why should I take that risk if the payoff isn't worth it? FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:10 Page 13 ============================================================ FOR SALE ============================================================ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ G R A P H I C S B O A R D O P T I O N A N D G S X - 8 6 S O F T W A R E ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I have one dozen PC-1XX-BA graphics options for the DEC Rainbow available at up to +25% off. These are brand new, in unopened boxes. Pricing: DECUS MEMBERS: OPTION- $335.00 TAX (Cal only) 20.10 SHIPPED FED. EX. 15.00 ------- TOTAL $370.10 OTHERS: OPTION- $350.00 TAX (CA. only) 21.00 SHIPPED FED. EX. 15.00 ------- $386.00 Cashiers checks or Money orders may be sent to Advanced Software Applications 5258 Vickie Drive San Diego, Ca 92109 (619) 488-5258 Decus members must include your member- ship number. Orders will be taken on a first come first served basis and will be shipped the week of 29 July 85. FIDONEWS -- 15 Jul 85 00:01:12 Page 14 ============================================================ NOTICES ============================================================ The Interrupt Stack 27 Nov 1985 Halley's Comet passes closest to Earth before perihelion. 24 Jan 1986 Voyager 2 passes Uranus. 9 Feb 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perihelion. 11 Apr 1986 Halley's Comet reaches perigee. 24 Aug 1989 Voyager 2 passes Neptune. If you have something which you would like to see on this calendar, please send a message to Fido 107/7.