RUNG News Title Acorn
Published by Tarquin Mills, Circulation 25 (publishers statement).

Do not forget next weeks meeting.

RUNG Websites News


John Billings has created an archive of past issues of RUNG News at http://www.dwarven.co.uk/rung-naug/ .Jonathan Balls is in the process of updating RUNGs website, including changing the name of our group from NAUG to RUNG. An experimental version can be seen at http://www.ballsy.demon.co.uk/rung/ .An archive of this mailing list could be put on the website. As could a gallery of pictures of RUNG group members. Roy Robinson took a digital picture of everyone at the first meeting, he said at the time he would send it to Jonathan, but this does not seem to have happened. Tarquin Mills will send him his Superchip8 emulator, so that a PD Library can be started on the website. The logo of RUNG News now uses the new sites look, this has unfortunately meant that I have to use a GIF file (which is larger). Can the web browsers that you use cope with the PNG graphics format? RUNG News is sticking with its old background for clear reading of text.

Future meetings


The Christmas meeting is at 7th December, unless you complain now, in which case it will be on the 21st. The AGM will be held at the January meeting, which is the 18th. While a special guest may be giving a talk at the February meeting which on the 15th.

Piracy Out of Control part 2 - Mass(ive) Storage


Going back 20 years to the early years of Acorn, removable storage (in this case 5.25" floppy disks) only stored a few hundred KB. Now single layer single sided DVD-R can hold 4.7GB (this is enough to store over 2000 tracks) while a double layer double sided DVD can store four times this. As storage continues to grow, in the future we will get to the point where removable storage can hold every piece of music in MP3 format, and sooner a very large chunk (e.g. all classical music symphonies). An often quoted idea is storing every book ever published in the UK, because books are text and therefore use relative little storage. This could already be done many times over using a DAT jukebox, these have been available for years. This device contains hundreds or thousands of DAT tapes. A robot arm can select any tape and get into the single DAT player in about 10 seconds. The same thing can also be done (and is) with CDs and DVDs.

What will happen when ordinary people get hold of removable storage which holds these levels of data, will they swap and sell removable storage "discs" to each other containing vast collections of pirated material. If the hard disks industry prediction about increases in disc capacity are correct, by 2010 hard disks will be that big. To help find the answer we can look at the present, remember the computers indirectly mentioned at the beginning of the ARCtical, their programs were only a few KB in length. You could easily hold thousands of them on a single CD-ROM. As we know this has been happening for years, e.g. the emulator CDs. People do not even need to buy it from some dodgy person at a car boot sale, they can walk in broad day light into a number of shops to buy them for a few pounds. Ironically a chain of shops doing this is a music shop chain. In the past when the chain started doing this they were owned by one of the big five music companies, who are now so rightly angry about the pirate music websites.

How do the shops get away with it? Well as the programs are so old the commercial value is low, i.e. they no are longer sold, companies cannot be bothered going to court. They equally cannot be bothered to put the programs into the public domain, thereby encouraging piracy. Legally taking the trouble to make the software freeware puts users (who have saved some software from extinction) in a better position. Basically the copy write laws as they now are at 100 years are far to long, copywrite for software could be cut. Ignoring Babbage, computers have only been around for about 50 years, if books had an equivalent copywrite period it would be thousands of years long. Another option is that software that is no longer sold, after a few years becomes freeware automatically and the company responsible has to provide the software and its source, say on the Internet.

In the case of arcade machines of the same period they are also emulated but I have almost never seen someone selling a CD containing the machines ROMs. This is because the companies that produced the arcade games have used the law to protect their copywrite. I said almost, as usual some companies have gone bust, so leaving their games effectively unprotected. None of this stops the emulators themselves from being sold or given away.

Legal threats to commercial software?
Some free software people see a linkage between piracy and freeware seeing them as two railway lines to the same destination, no charge for software. Freeware software is a legal alternative to piracy if you are poor (no more arguments that you cannot afford software, thats why you pirate). However commercial OS software (and more so in the future, application software) is being increasingly squeezed between freeware and the monopoly software. While freeware may act as a form of quality and price control. Already people are calling for RISC OS to be made open source and similar is happening on other platforms. Wintel is not the only threat to our platform. Freeware tools for doing piracy are appearing including GPL ones, some have legitimate other purposes, but not all do. In the past RISC OS was (and still is to a large extent) protected by being given to you as part of the machine and because it comes on ROMs. Shareware seems to be built on the assumption that people will not pay and will therefore use it illegally, it makes breaking the law easy.

Commercial softwares own response to piracy can be damaging as well as helpful, e.g. software stopping working when you upgrade your motherboard, dongles, having to use the original removable storage program load time can cause several different problems, etc. While PC user have to agree to long usage agreements or return the software. Fortunately English and Welsh law says that unreasonable conditions can be ignored. It would be a bad situation for legal uses to have difficulties useing their software, thanks to copy protection, while the pirates can ignore all this. We do not want to be in a position where the freedom of freeware licences are something to envy. A Linux user returned Windows and asked for his money back, but that is another story.

I like to think that RISC OS users do less piracy than other computer users. Though honesty is not the only reason, because if you do not know any other users you cannot pirate from them. We should not allow members of the increasingly important user groups (such as RUNG) to slip into piracy. As has been shown, this is now just one form of piracy, will RISC OS users increasing follow others computer users into piracy?

In some countries over 90 percent of software are pirate copies. People from these sometimes poor countries say USA software companies are rich, and that it is fine not to pay them. However as we RISC OS users know not all software is written by these companies. It seems one act of piracy leads to another, and computer virus control is less. RISC OS companies need every pound they can get to develop their products further. Already over a third of software in the UK is illegal, so what can be done to stop piracy?

Program Corner

When I started writing Replier, it was a program that adds > to the beginning of each line of text for replying to RUNG News, which uses the output of !unhtml. Then I looked at the output of version 1.15 !unhtml, it had duplicate characters, a bug. So I wrote htmreplier which does the job of both and does it better. Version 2 (this version) can handle tables to a small extent. Run htmreplier from the same directory as the issue of RUNG News which you want to reply to. You will be asked the name of the RUNG News file, then a RISC OS text version (including ‘> ’ at the start of lines) will be created. It will be a file named reply, with filetype text. This program could form the basis of a text browser.

Events Diary

Next Physical Meeting16th November at the back room of the Billy Bluelight Pub, Hall Road, Norwich Norfolk. 7pm to 9.30pm.
First IRC Meeting To be decided, may not happen.
Other Events To be decided (probably having a stand at a local computer show will be the first event).

RUNG bank balance : £10

Classified Adverts

If you have something computer related that you want or want to sell then email RUNG NEWS and it will be put into the classified section.


New

Wanted


The complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly by Dr Ian Logan and Dr Frank O'Hara, published by Melbourne House. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.

For Sale/Giving away/Services on offer


Programmer for hire, to do programming or teaching. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.

Old (but still on offer)

Wanted


An ICL Mainframe for under £1000. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.
Miracle Systems Gold Card (or SGC if very cheap) and 3.5" HD (or better) floppy drive(s) with psu and housing. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.
A biography of Sir Clive Sinclair. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.
Amiga Active Magazine issue 6 volume 1 the Elate/Tao Issue. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.

For Sale/Giving away


40MB MFM hard disc on an ISA card. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.
Spare copy of Digital Precision's Lightning SE manual. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399, anytime.
Two electronic personnel organisers. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399.
Some old PC software on 5.25" floppies with manuals, I have a Lotus office package a Borland database and a office suite by Ashton-Tate. Plus Chris Walker has added a Lotus font pack (3.5"). I am giving them away for free. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399.
Three blank used BBC 3 hour VHS tapes. Contact Tarquin at planet14@boyznow.net or 01603-470399.



Future Issues : RUNG News gets cryptic.
Please send material for this magazine, you are almost guaranteed that it will be published. How about reviews of other RISC OS magazines and products. Advertising space is available. You can contact RUNG at planet14@boyznow.net

Acknowledgments : Diana Mills, for proof reading