bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) (08/04/87)
Here's something you may find of interest:
---------------------
Today, while reading the latest issue of the "Robo City News" I became very
confused. In the table of contents I was given credit for co-authoring an
article. As far as I knew, I had not written an article for that issue! Now,
I'm used to people stripping my name from things and selling them, but this
appeared to be a new twist.
I have written for RCN twice in the past, and the September issue is
scheduled to contain another article. But *not* June/July!
What appeared under my name was actually a USENET posting from a few months
back. Since I don't restrict my postings, it's quite alright for them to
take it. Unfortunately they did a really lousy job of typesetting it,
including cutting off half of a paragraph. Worse yet the writing of the
original posting was not of the "highest quality" (my fault, primarily :-).
All in all I wish that they had warned me ahead of time, at least so I
could fondle the PageSetter file a bit to look nice, correct some errors,
and remove some outdated information.
So watch out USENET posters... you may become magazine authors before you
know it!
-------------------------
And if you ever write for "AmigaWorld", watch out for the technical content
of your article! Their non-technical editors saw fit to change my file
names (in such a manner as to cause the example to fail). They also
re-wrote a paragraph to read "Since you never know exactly where your
program will reside in memory, you also need an offset that reflects the
location of your task when it is loaded. This is the purpose of the xref
[_LVOOpenLibrary].". ----==| Wrong! |==----
Thank your favorite deity for author's proofs!
Oh, well, at least it sort of resembles what I sent them. Sort of. And,
a positive point, they got the program listing correct. Looks like they
did it from disk, rather than typing it in!
---------------------
"The Transactor" was best of all... they published my article verbatim,
including the little joke I put in for the editor's amusement about "the
new Transactor Amiga disk". It didn't exist then, it had never been
announced, and I don't think it exists now.
Transactor also set type directly from disk instead of typing it in. A
minor glitch reversed } and {, but otherwise it worked fine. Gone are the
days of magazines like Compute! where you had to wait two months for the
typesetting bug fixes before using the listing!
---------------------
As for lead times, AmigaWorld has taken about 8 months, Transactor about
3-4 months. The Robo City News deadline is as late as the 20th of the
previous month (about 10 days to print!!!!). Robo City really benefits from
"Desk Top Publishing" and articles already in that format. Of course, the
captive print shop (Shores Press, ?Los Gatos?) does not hurt. (Shores Press
also offers "walk up to an Amiga" typesetting.)
|\ /| . Ack! (NAK, EOT, SOH)
{o O} .
( " ) bryce@cogsci.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!cogsci!bryce
U "When it's you against the world, back the world." page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (08/04/87)
bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) wrote: >What appeared [in RCN] under my name was actually a USENET posting ... >All in all I wish that they had warned me ahead of time, at least so I ... >So watch out USENET posters... you may become magazine authors before you >know it! And you might never know it. I got a "developer's copy" of "Workbench," the newsletter of the Amiga Atlanta newsgroup. [Actually the April '87 issue was called "Workwench," but I digress.] Although of course nothing like RCN, it seemed like a pretty nice newsletter. Imagine my surprise when I read an article by Bob Page! Yow! Other "articles" were by such luminaries as Dave Haynie, Perry Kiv*, Chuck McManis, Dale Luck and others whom Usenetters are surely familiar. Next month came another newsletter, and again I find myself an author, along with many others. I think I got three issues before they stopped sending them to me. Once there was some small print in the back thanking "The USENET crew" or some such, presumably for our cooperation in making Amiga Atlanta's newsletter so full of information. Last night at the BCS Amiga Tech Group meeting there was a nice laser-printed handout of some goodies (like Bryce's cross reference listings for assmebly hackers) originally from Usenet. I wonder how many other newsletters are doing this? It's actually funny to think of [what we consider to be] Usenet Noise as real information to others. Sheeeit, it even gets reposted to People/Link. Hi Harv -- do you edit it before you repost it? Joanne Dow of BIX keeps her ear to Usenet; I'm sure Delphi and Compu$erve do too. Information sells, friends. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (08/05/87)
In article <1587@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> page@swan.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes: > bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) wrote: > >What appeared [in RCN] under my name was actually a USENET posting > >All in all I wish that they had warned me ahead of time, at least so I > >So watch out USENET posters... you may become magazine authors before you > >know it! > > And you might never know it. > ... > Next month came another newsletter, and again I find myself an author, > along with many others. I think I got three issues before they > stopped sending them to me. Once there was some small print in the > back thanking "The USENET crew" or some such, presumably for our > cooperation in making Amiga Atlanta's newsletter so full of > information. > > I wonder how many other newsletters are doing this? It's actually > funny to think of [what we consider to be] Usenet Noise as real > information to others. Sheeeit, it even gets reposted to People/Link. > Hi Harv -- do you edit it before you repost it? Joanne Dow of BIX > keeps her ear to Usenet; I'm sure Delphi and Compu$erve do too. > > Information sells, friends. This kind of thing is fairly common among user's group newsletters and such. If they don't give any attribution, or edit the article to appear that you'e written it for them, then you can always try to get in touch with the editor and give them a hard time. On the other hand, most people post things here, hoping the be helpful or spread the information as widely as possible, rather than just replying via e-mail, so where's the beef? If you put one of those little copyright messages in your .signature file, I bet they won't reprint your stuff... One of the amusing things about posting on BIX is looking to see which of your postings show up in the back of BYTE 3 or 4 months later. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
schein@cbmvax.UUCP (Dan Schein MAGAZINES) (08/06/87)
In article <8708032106.AA14158@cogsci.berkeley.edu> bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) writes: > >Here's something you may find of interest: > >--------------------- > >"The Transactor" was best of all... they published my article verbatim, >including the little joke I put in for the editor's amusement about "the >new Transactor Amiga disk". It didn't exist then, it had never been >announced, and I don't think it exists now. The TRANSACTOR AMIGA disk is out of the vaporware stage. It does exist (I have a copy) and is public domain. YAPDS (Yet Another Public Domain Series :-) > >|\ /| . Ack! (NAK, EOT, SOH) >{o O} . >( " ) bryce@cogsci.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!cogsci!bryce > U "When it's you against the world, back the world." Dan -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Commodore Business Machines | | 1200 Wilson Drive uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!schein | | West Chester, PA 19380 arpa: cbmvax!schein@seismo.css.GOV | | (215) 431-9384 or schein@cbmvax.UUCP@{seismo|harvard} | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Quote: Those who worked the hardest Gary Ward - Oklahoma State | | are the last to surrender baseball coach | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
jyouells@pnet02.CTS.COM (John Youells) (08/08/87)
The Transactor took your advice and created a 'Transactor Disk for the
Amiga' complete with the source code for your program and all the other Amiga
programs that have appeared so far. Uedit, a 6502 cross assembler and linker
were among other goodies on that same disk...
John Youells
UUCP: {ihnp4!crash, hplabs!hp-sdd!crash}!gryphon!pnet02!jyouells
INET: jyouells@pnet02.CTS.COM