Re: The continuing saga... (enough?)
How come all we ever talk about these days is copyright issues? Strictly speaking that is part of the reason for GPL! The coders want the right to share source again, man. But this isn't the thread for all that. I always thought we were developers - not lawyers. Maybe it's a new trend? Once upon a time, when I were a lad, programmers wanted strut their stuff to big softwares houses by writing demos. Now, it seems that people, these days, still want to strut their stuff to the same big-guns but under a new light: arguments over licences... But it is all so hard nowadays. If I want to show off to a software house the best I can do is to make a 3d accelerator do all its polygons at once . . . whereas the best they can do is make it do all its polygons at once! 3d accelerators (and hyped rubbish like quake) have made everything so stale now, who has the energy? Mind you - the flipside is that the way is open for a true genius to blow all the dull cobwebs away! And that person will not be known as 'Dave Perry' or his mate Zachs . . . Personally I think that a lot of the Linux components do really show off to the large software houses anyway . . . who could have predicted the sudden appearance of what idiots consider a potential MS beater from entirely unpaid labour with programs such as GIMP, Lynx and KDE? If you want to see why I personally will never 'strut my stuff' with anyone, check out my Chaos update 'Anarchy' for which I will not lower myself to promoting with a URL here. Actually, the best non-mainstream coding to have occured recently is probably the array of games for those Texas calculators once someone figured out how to break through the GUI and do some real assembly sort of stuff. -Thomas
Re: Linux vs. Win32 SimCoupe - must I fight?
Any response to this statement which in my opinion is almost as inflamatory as 'James R Curry's brilliantly researched post would probably only look quite petty anyway. Suffice to say that if we define getting a life as not commenting on any SimCoupe GPL conversation after this one then rest assured it has been done. -Thomas Oh, sarcasm! I think you really missed the point of my Brilliantly researched post. I am following this debate, actually with interest, but it just seems so futile to bother adding anything constructive (destructive?) to it. Because for every keystroke that is being wasted in arguing over licenses, we are losing a keystroke that could go into coding something of benefit to the SAM community. Now, I really don't see the harm in distributing a beta to a few SELECT people without the source, if the source is going to be made available with the official release. Yeah, the GPL requires it's release, but there's a difference between working within the spirit of the GPL and breathing so close down a programmers neck that he can't get his code TESTED without complaints. Give it time, stop arguing, and let us all get on with something worthwile. My original post was neither supporting or opposing any argument, merely a sarcastic way of expressing my distress at the way no-one in the SAM community can co-operate over anything. -- James R Curry - 6 timezones from England and still up at 2am...
RE: Linux vs. Win32 SimCoupe - must I fight?
Thomas Harte wrote: So you can see how it looks, yeah? You'll notice how 'doesn't want' is also future tense? Actually it's present tense, but that's beside the point - the point is that I didn't say it in the first place! I can understand how it might have looked, but trying to start a witch-hunt on hear-say isn't such a good idea. Si
A dumb and ill considered idea
Hello Sam users, I'm one of those people responsible for starting the recent flame war over SimCoupe, the GPL, etc. Any hoo, I was just thinking about one of the posts I read, and it gave me an idea... The biggest problem that the Sam Coupe has is the lack of new software (right?). Software developers don't want to spend time writing Sam Coupe programs, because the user base isn't big enough to net them a reasonable profit. However, there are Sam Coupe emulators for the two big hardware platforms, the Apple Macintosh and the IBM PC (right?). Now, why don't Mac and PC users buy Sam software? I can think of two good reasons -- because those platforms aren't being targeted, and because it would be a hassle for those users to install the software. Sooo... all we need is a few extensions to SimCoupe which makes it transparent to the Mac / PC user. i.e.. the Sam program is installed as per a normal Mac / PC program, and the only thing the user sees of SimCoupe is a little logo that pops up on the loading screen. Imagine this: == T'n'T A game packed with humour :-) , colour @- , sound * , and _above_all_ ACTION! Loosely based on Bomb Jack. As well as the normal one player game, T'n'T has gone one better by giving you _TWO_ player action (...) $10 -- Available for Mac / PC and Sam. == (Damn, how do you get a pound sign in this stupid ANSI character set?) The Mac / PC user sends away for the program, and receives one installation disk. They insert the disk, double click the install icon (or type install or whatever), and hey presto, one game installed. Behind the scenes, SimCoupe looks for a previous installation of itself, installs or upgrades accordingly, copies the Sam .dsk file to an appropriate directory, creates a batch file, etc., etc. Who would buy this software? Mac or PC owners who previously had a Sam; Mac or PC owners who have friends with Sams (e.g. the readers of Format PC); and, with a bit of luck, Mac or PC owners who have friends who have friends with Sams. Who would write the software? To begin with, authors don't need to write new software, they just spend a little time designing a couple of icons, then convert one or two of their existing program to a .dsk file, copy it onto a Mac disk and a PC disk (with appropriate versions of SimCoupe), test them to make sure they work, place an ad in Format PC, and wait. If this looks promising, then they can begin to invest their effort in Sam programming again. How would SimCoupe make it self transparent? Well, the batch file that runs SimCoupe contains something like simcoupe /autoboot tnt.dsk, SimCoupe loads, makes tnt.dsk the default disk, and does an automatic boot up. Then if a reset / reboot ever happens (as Sam programs sometimes do when exit is selected), SimCoupe returns to the host OS. (The most obvious technical problem I can think of with this whole idea is that not all Sam programs have this option.) Thoughts? -- James Gasson
RE: A dumb and ill considered idea
From: James Gasson [snipped idea] Thoughts? Interesting... Jut.
td0 files
How do i transfer 'tdo' files downloaded from the net unto sam disks? john adams
RE: td0 files
How do i transfer 'tdo' files downloaded from the net unto sam disks? You desire the evil Teledisk 2.12 for DOS, search for TELED212.ZIP on your favoured FTP search engine such as http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/ Be warned, it's been known to mis-behave on many, many machines. Dan. Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Shirk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] VVeb: http://www.podboy.demon.co.uk/
Re: td0 files
-Original Message- From: Dan Doore [EMAIL PROTECTED] How do i transfer 'tdo' files downloaded from the net unto sam disks? You desire the evil Teledisk 2.12 for DOS, search for TELED212.ZIP on your favoured FTP search engine such as http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/ Be warned, it's been known to mis-behave on many, many machines. This program crashes my machine totally. However, I found that if I turn off my CPU cache it'll run fine... So, if you have trouble with Teledisk try turning your CPU cache off before running it. Most PC's allow this, just go to your BIOS set-up options. Chris.
