jdm@pnet02.CTS.COM (John Mesiavech) (06/19/87)
You know, it's not easy to be a person trying to get developers to cme to a
user group meeting. Calling, calling, and MORE calling, just to get them to
come for some (semi) free publicity on their products. Now on to the subject
matter of this posting....
(FLAME ON)
Aegis Inc. was invited to come to a meeting of a user's group in California
not twenty miles from their center of operations in Santa Monica, on June
11th. The agreement was done over a month in advance of said meeting, and
Aegis agreed to come and do some demoing. NOte please, OVER A MONTH BEFORE
THE MEETING WAS TO TAKE PLACE. SO. Day of meeting came, people from all
around came to the meeting (Celtics game that night notwithstanding 8^>,
(We're talking about 60 people here) anxious to see both Aegis' products and
products from another company. NEITHER COMPANY SHOWED UP. Neither left word
with ANYONE that they would NOT put in an appearance, they just plain and
simple defaulted on the agreement. Now, both companies had confirmed that
they would come (Aegis the week before, the other company 3 days prior to the
meeting). The other company has since gotten into contact with officials of
the user group, explained what happened, and have since agreed to come to the
club's July meeting. When Aegis was contacted by the officials of the group,
they were told that an official of Aegis "would return their call". Nothing
was heard from them for some days. Nothing STILL has been heard from them.
This type of behavior on the part of Aegis was not very encouraging to the
members of the user's group, nor is it to anyone, since the company didn't
even have the common courtesy to let the group officials know that they would
not come. It makes one wonder, if Aegis treats user's groups in this manner,
how do they treat their customers? I know for sure that by doing this thing,
that I personally would not buy from Aegis until they start showing signs of
honoring their commitments to persons, and I know that others in our group
feel the same way. Please note that this meeting took place a week ago, and
that Aegis has been given plenty of time to resond in some way privately to
the officials of the group. They have not chosen to do so, which is why this
message is being posted; to show that Aegis cannot always be trusted to honor
their commitments.
<FLAME OFF>
In addition, it may interest some to know that (at least according to rumor),
Aegis has bought the commercial rights to the public-domain program ROT ( a
3-D image editor/animator), and according to word, will be using this program
as the editor interface to Videoscape 3-D. As shown by the above message,
whether VideoScape will see the light of day is problematical.
John M
"Send any flames to me at the following addresses, but be warned, I wear an
asbestos suit!"
UUCP: {ihnp4!crash, hplabs!hp-sdd!crash}!gryphon!pnet02!jdm
INET: jdm@pnet02.CTS.COMkeithd@cadovax.UUCP (06/20/87)
In article <764@gryphon.CTS.COM> jdm@pnet02.CTS.COM (John Mesiavech) writes: >In addition, it may interest some to know that (at least according to rumor), >Aegis has bought the commercial rights to the public-domain program ROT ( a >3-D image editor/animator), and according to word, will be using this program >as the editor interface to Videoscape 3-D. As shown by the above message, >whether VideoScape will see the light of day is problematical. I was at a semi-private show for "those of you who couldn't make it to Comdex" yesterday (6/18) put on by the Southern Ca. Amiga reps. Aegis, Newtek, CSA, First Byte, Prism, Brown Waugh, and Micro Illusions were all there, along with unattended tables representing EA and Word Perfect. In the dealer's room, NewTek was demoing Digi-Paint, and had a machine dedicated to a continuously running demo of a HAM page-flip sequence of a girl stuttering and periodically saying "Hi, welcome to NewTek" or some such. The sound was in sync with her lips, and was pretty impressive at first, but after hearing it over and over and over and over it became a form of Chinese water torture. The package doing the work was something to be called 'Digiffects System'. When is it going to be out? *Maybe* in November but no promises (of what year?). Supposed to be the last video titler/effects package you'll ever need (hah! who are they kidding, you need 'em ALL). I only saw a small bit of DigiPaint in operation, they had put up a filled circle and were using some fill feature to shade as if 3D. A control approximately positions the 'light source'. However, there seemed to be a rim around the edge of the circle where the shade effect never went, and the more he played with it the less useful it seemed. Oh well, have to do more investigation here obviously. The NewTek table had the most interest, though it may have primarily appeared that way because they had the biggest crew of their own people hanging around. Sonix was playing some stuff that was a full band with vocals. Not sure how the vocals were done, all of the words were different, so they weren't an 'instrument' in the usual sense. Unfortunately, the choice of tunes was so much mainstream 'pop' that it just seemed like someone had a tinny little A.M. radio going in the corner. Seems like they should come up with demos that are a little more unusual so that there is enough interest that people will realize that it's being done on the Amiga. They could have taken a rock record and digitized that and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. This stuff you might have figured was the hotel's muzak. You don't need an Amiga to hear that. Still, I am kind of curious as to how they managed the voice track, didn't have time to find out. And I didn't pay much attention to Micro Illusions, can't get to excited about games since I moved from the Atari 800 to the Amiga and it's artistic applications. Especially since all I seem to ever see is various adventures and shootemups. Give me a version of Spellunker or Montezuma's Revenge any day. (or Necromancer wouldn't be bad either). A computer artist, Merydythe Dee was their with some stuff done on ink-jets, one of her own about 16x22, and a couple of larger ones 24x30 or so by Howard Ganz, a computer artist from oceanside. Abstract, modern looking stuff. I think there isn't enough of this sort of thing going on at such get-togethers. Besides the dealers room, there were 3 scheduled 'meetings' on various subjects: 1) The Commodore rep showed us a video tape of two TV commercials planned to be aired in the fall. Both of them were virtually ALL Amiga graphics, quick collages of some of the more interesting stuff, much we have all seen in one form or another. Their new slogan is "Only The Amiga Makes It Possible" (or reasonable facimilie). Looked pretty good I guess, though by the fall, there will probably be new demos that put those excerpts to shame. The rep then went on to show us the Amiga 2000, which was basically indistinguishable from the 1000 (in his presentation) as he concentrated primarily on the software (here is the workbench, this is an icon, this is a screen, here's the demos: robo-city, boing, mandrill, molly, say, couldn't you pick some *older* demos to show us? This is an example of multitasking, etc. oh, and here's the juggler. Follow with showing of MS-DOS on bridge card etc. Do a directory list, run PFS something) Q&A period, what is the upgrade policy, well, we only know there is an upgrade policy. List price $1995 (not including bridge card). Slight mention of 1.3 allowing boot directly from hard disk, some mention of WB upgrade (?) that provides a faster filesystem for both hard disk and floppy. Questions about how users will upgrade their PROMs to 1.3, but no answers. 2) Richard Lewis, production designer for the Max Headroom show was there, he also was responsible for the use of Amiga on an Amazing Stories. He showed us a video of some of the computer stuff he's been working on for TV. He complained about the problem of the TV execs having a hard time buying the fact that a $2000 box can be as or more useful than their $200K boxes (dubner, wavefronts, quantel's etc.) but they are beginning to be convinced. Showed a couple of hi-res screens in Dpaint that were used in Max Headroom. He's used the Amiga as much or more to help discuss production issues behind the scenes than actually using them on screen. Digitized a building on the back lot, used Dpaint to monkey with it to get ideas on how to modify it so when they use it TV viewers won't recongize it from the TV show that used the same building last week. Used Aegis Animator to orchestrate the action for a shoot from 'Time Bomb' where a small plane taking off from an airport runway only avoids running into a larger plane by the intervention of a van which crashes into it. Used animator and genlock to experiment with ways of doing a couple of effects before they were actually done the *expensive* way. He liked to use the genlock and DPaint to 'trace' camera images it seemed. Good idea of using color-0 shapes in Aegis Animator to 'mask' images coming in from genlock so that other non-color-0 shapes can move behind some stuff and in front of others. 3) Aegis CEO (don't remember his name, Volk wasn't even there I don't think) Gave a big "all of us Amiga owners, developers and dealers all need to band together to snowball this thing into bigger things" peptalk. Tries to play down the 'Desktop Video' concept for some reason, then proceeds to show a video which is titled 'Desktop Video on the Amiga' or similar. Showed off Videoscape 3D from the video. No talk about what the user interface is, except the example of the ROT 3D program which yes, is apparently the groundwork for their object editor. BAH! I found that thing pretty inaccurate and little more than 'cute'. I think they might as well start from scratch. Oh well, Q&A period. Does it do reflection and transparency? Yes. But after further investigation there is still some question as far as I'm concerned. It's not a ray tracer. All of the demos are reminicent of early MAGI demo reels, no reflections, single light source, all objects have the same basic 'matte' finish. It dosen't do texture mapping. The one example on the video that looked like it might be doing reflection turned out to have been done with 2 objects (the original and it's reflection). Can use DPaint images as backgrounds. Since it's not ray traced, even the most complex frame demoed took a maximum of 20 seconds to render. Animation in real time with their new compression format that only saves differences from one frame to the next. Don't need a single-framable VCR, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. I'd say it would be a useful product if the object editor was friendly and useful (which I'm beginning to have serious doubts about). Dosen't hold a candle to CAD-3D (for Atari from Antic Software) in that respect. Seemed like there was about 100 attendees, but I'm not particularly good at estimating that. Apparently it was originally by invitation only, though kinda loose. I found out about it from another developer, and just wandered in, wasn't sure exactly what the context was. My guess is, it was as dealer recruitment effort. There apparently was a 'lunch' followed by a couple of more-secret meetings before the festivities started, which looked more like 50 attendees. Perhaps these were the dealers they were courting. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd # cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170
papa@uscacsc.UUCP (Marco Papa) (06/20/87)
I don't understand. One cannot buy commercial rights to a "public domain"
program. By being public domain, EVERYBODY can have if FOR FREE! You
can copy iy, modify iy, sell it, do anything with it! What is this ROT
program? Is it on the Fish disks?
-- Marco
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Marco Papa 3175 S. Hoover St., Ste. 275 (213)669-1497
Los Angeles, CA 90007 USC: (213)743-3752
F E L S I N A
Now working for ::::::: BIX: papa
But in no way :: ::
Officially representing ::::::: ...!oberon!uscacsc!papa
S O F T W A R E papa@cse.usc.edu
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) (06/21/87)
In article <1607@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes: >I was at a semi-private show for "those of you who couldn't make it to Comdex" >yesterday (6/18) put on by the Southern Ca. Amiga reps. Aegis, Newtek, >CSA, First Byte, Prism, Brown Waugh, and Micro Illusions were all there, >along with unattended tables representing EA and Word Perfect. > >In the dealer's room, NewTek was demoing [Maxine Headroom], and was pretty >impressive at first, but after hearing it over and over and over and over >it became a form of Chinese water torture. [ ... ] >I only saw a small bit of DigiPaint in operation, they had put up a >filled circle and were using some fill feature to shade as if 3D. A control >approximately positions the 'light source'. However, there seemed to be >a rim around the edge of the circle where the shade effect never went, and >the more he played with it the less useful it seemed. [ ... ] > You'll never know until you play with it yourself. When was the last time you ever met a sales rep who was intimately familiar with the program he was supposed to be demoing? >Sonix was playing some stuff that was a full band with vocals. [ ... ] >Unfortunately, the choice of tunes was so much mainstream 'pop' that it >just seemed like someone had a tinny little A.M. radio going in the corner. >[ ... ] This stuff you might have figured was the hotel's muzak. You don't >need an Amiga to hear that. What would you prefer? Kraftwerk? Wendy Carlos? Tomita? >Still, I am kind of curious as to how they managed the voice track, >didn't have time to find out. > Mark Riley, author of Sonix, gave Gary Koffler, my boss, a copy of the tunes. About 80% of what your brain is registering is digitized loops ("Thriller" is almost entirely one loop). The remaining voices augment the loop to give it "depth". At least this is the case with "Thriller," haven't fiddled much with the others. Try turning off individual voices to see... er.. hear what's going on. >And I didn't pay much attention to Micro Illusions, can't get to excited about >games [ ... ] Give me a version of Spellunker or Montezuma's Revenge any >day. (or Necromancer wouldn't be bad either). > Give me a copy of the source; I'll see what I can do. ( 1/2 :-) ) >A computer artist, Merydythe Dee was their [sic] [and so was] Howard >Ganz, a computer artist from oceanside. [ ... ] I think there isn't >enough of this sort of thing going on at such get-togethers. > >Besides the dealers room, there were 3 scheduled 'meetings' on various >subjects: > >1) The Commodore rep showed us a video tape of two TV commercials [ ... ] >Looked pretty good I guess [ ... ] The rep then went on to show us the >Amiga 2000 [ ... ] here's the demos: robo-city, boing, mandrill, molly, say, >couldn't you pick some *older* demos to show us? [ ... ] Valid point. If someone would like to pay me a modicum of $$$, I could probably cook up something. How much $$$? Gee, I don't know; a CSA Turbo Rack would interest me... ( 1/2 :-) ) >2) Richard Lewis, production designer for the Max Headroom show was there, >[ ... ] Do not underestimate the power wielded by this individual. Whether he or anyone else realizes it, every move he makes in producing Max Headroom will be closely watched by the competition. Max Headroom was a runaway sensation; other production companies will want to duplicate the feat. The competition will analyze, and probably mimic, every move Lewis makes in the production of Max Headroom, including the decision to use the Amiga. This could easily be a major step in the "legitimization" of the Amiga. >3) Aegis CEO (don't remember his name, Volk wasn't even there I don't think) >Gave a big... peptalk. [ ... ] proceeds to show a video which is titled >'Desktop Video on the Amiga' or similar. Showed off Videoscape 3D from the >video. [ ... ] I'd say it would be a useful product if the object editor was >friendly and useful (which I'm beginning to have serious doubts about). >Dosen't hold a candle to CAD-3D (for Atari from Antic Software) in that >respect. > Creating solid modelling software is no piece of cake. You can easily invest several dozen man-years into a mere first-generation modeller. Creating one that can be understood and used by the casual consumer will probably be next to impossible. Solid modelling packages traditionally assume you have a background in fundamental computer graphics; that you will understand the effects of rotation around all three axes, translation, scaling, and all sorts of other mish-mash. I'm sure Aegis has realized that it can not invest the resources to create a solid modeller from scracth, so it has adopted one that is already written, and will try to improve on it. No doubt the Videoscape 3D manual will point to Foley/Van Dam's book. I hope Aegis releases the format of the object definition files. Someone who owns an Amiga and who also works for Pixar, Digital Effects et al, will cook up a "real" solid modeller for the rest of us. And if this mythical person follows suit, the program will be PD with source (hope, hope). General Comments On Message: Try not to get too excited, Keith :-). Seriously, were you in a bad mood that day? Or are you beginning to get a little jaded with all the current stuff? Your message seemed quite a downer, and I'm just wondering why. Personally, I'm glad to see that so many developers are still interested in the Amiga, and continue to invest in it despite all the problems Commodore has been having. Obviously, this computer has inspired people to innovate and do neato whiz-bang things no matter how hard the manufacturer tries to make it for them. These people would be doing all this work no matter what. However, making money off it is a nice side-effect. There's no real reason to be down on the Amiga or any of its developers. If Commodore were to go bankrupt tomorrow, we'd still have the machines we own. And even if they were orphaned (not necessarily), we've still learned a lot. The Amiga changed the way we look at and program computers, and has been a valuable experience to everyone involved. If you are, in fact, beginning to get jaded, fear not; many people are at work.... P.S: All above offers to write code are real. However, you'd have to talk to my employer about it. (They're great guys. Really.) _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape ihnp4!ptsfa -\ \_ -_ Bike shrunk by popular demand, dual ---> !{well,unicom}!ewhac O----^o But it's still the only way to fly. hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack") UmeCorp and I mutually disclaim the existence of each other.
keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (06/23/87)
In article <3377@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes: >>Sonix was playing some stuff that was a full band with vocals. [ ... ] >>Unfortunately, the choice of tunes was so much mainstream 'pop' that it >>just seemed like someone had a tinny little A.M. radio going in the corner. >>[ ... ] This stuff you might have figured was the hotel's muzak. You don't >>need an Amiga to hear that. > > What would you prefer? Kraftwerk? Wendy Carlos? Tomita? Well, maybe a little more along the lines of Art Of Noise. > Mark Riley, author of Sonix, gave Gary Koffler, my boss, a copy >of the tunes. About 80% of what your brain is registering is digitized >loops ("Thriller" is almost entirely one loop). The remaining voices >augment the loop to give it "depth". At least this is the case with >"Thriller," haven't fiddled much with the others. Try turning off >individual voices to see... er.. hear what's going on. That implies that Sonix can manage a variety of digitized loops. Is this true? What kind of notation/interface do they use? BTW, does anyone know if copyright problems have arisen yet from such digitized loops? If you are talking about Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' is BMI or ASCAP informed? Seems like this could be a sticky problem looming on the horizon. >General Comments On Message: > > Try not to get too excited, Keith :-). Seriously, were you in a bad >mood that day? Or are you beginning to get a little jaded with all the >current stuff? Your message seemed quite a downer, and I'm just wondering >why. Well, maybe I am getting jaded. Got so used to seeing exciting new Amiga stuff at every turn, maybe I've just hit the saturation mark. You know, when you've seen your 3,573rd 1-2-3 clone, the excitement just isn't the same as it was the first time. :-) Maybe I should go look at a PC for a couple of hours to put things back in perspective. And now that everyone's found out how easy it is to use a digitizer to produce near-photo-quality images in seconds, and to use ray tracers to generate scenes, that's about all you see. The 'fine art' promised by DPaint II seems to be giving way to quick digitizations of the cover of Playboy magazine etc. > There's no real reason to be down on the Amiga or any of its >developers. If Commodore were to go bankrupt tomorrow, we'd still have the >machines we own. And even if they were orphaned (not necessarily), we've >still learned a lot. The Amiga changed the way we look at and program >computers, and has been a valuable experience to everyone involved. I guess the only thing that bothers me is when the marketeers misrepresent what the product is and what it does. But then again, maybe that's their job, I don't know. I think I'd rather go to an Amiga 'art' show with a bunch of artists using Amiga's who don't know that much about computers. Maybe I'm just getting burned out from too much exposure to marketeers, and not enough exposure to people really using the Amiga to do innovative things for themselves. The couple of 'renegade TV' station ID's for Max Headroom that Richard Lewis did, as relatively simple as they were, were much more interesting to me than any of the 'automatically' generated art-like-product presented in the dealer's room. > If you are, in fact, beginning to get jaded, fear not; many people >are at work.... Yeah I know, in fact I'm one of them. I'm just telling myself the competition is poor to give myself a boost to keep working. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd # cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (06/23/87)
In article <3377@well.UUCP>, ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes: > In article <1607@cadovax.UUCP> keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) writes: > >I was at a semi-private show for "those of you who couldn't make it to Comdex" > >yesterday (6/18) put on by the Southern Ca. Amiga reps. Aegis, Newtek, > > > You'll never know until you play with it yourself. When was the > last time you ever met a sales rep who was intimately familiar with the > program he was supposed to be demoing? It does happen, albeit not often. I have had stuff demoed to me where the demoer knew what they were doing. Usually they started as a techie and ended up as a sales slime. Bill Volk is an example, but there arn't many examples of this for Amigas. > > >Sonix was playing some stuff that was a full band with vocals. [ ... ] > >Unfortunately, the choice of tunes was so much mainstream 'pop' that it > >just seemed like someone had a tinny little A.M. radio going in the corner. > >[ ... ] This stuff you might have figured was the hotel's muzak. You don't > >need an Amiga to hear that. > > What would you prefer? Kraftwerk? Wendy Carlos? Tomita? > You have obviously met Mister Doyle. He thinks Morton Subotnik's "Concert for potentiometer and filter" is too mainstream. I like Tomita et al. Keith can't stand 'em. "Harumph, commercial trash". Keith makes his own music. It's sort of like the soundtrack to Eraserhead. > >games [ ... ] Give me a version of Spellunker or Montezuma's Revenge any > >day. (or Necromancer wouldn't be bad either). > > > Give me a copy of the source; I'll see what I can do. ( 1/2 :-) ) I think Keith raises a good point here. Some of the older games are being ignored. I'd like to see Star Raiders and Choplifter. Yeah Star-Glider is *close* but it has a phenomenon common to other comtemporary Amiga games in that the screen is dived up into the interior of the cockpit and the 'outside' view. I don't need or want to look at the cockpit, I want full screen stars coming at me. Source? SOURCE? I thought you were a hacker, Leo, could't we just send you a choplifter cartridge ? > >A computer artist, Merydythe Dee was their [sic] [and so was] Howard > >Ganz, a computer artist from oceanside. [ ... ] I think there isn't > >enough of this sort of thing going on at such get-togethers. Hear Hear !! > > >2) Richard Lewis, production designer for the Max Headroom show was there, > >[ ... ] > > Do not underestimate the power wielded by this individual. Whether Well, I dunno, without trying to be *too* cynical, Miami vice and Amazing Stories didn't do much, but we'll see... > >'Desktop Video on the Amiga' or similar. Showed off Videoscape 3D from the > >video. [ ... ] I'd say it would be a useful product if the object editor was > >friendly and useful (which I'm beginning to have serious doubts about). > >Dosen't hold a candle to CAD-3D (for Atari from Antic Software) in that > >respect. > > > Creating solid modelling software is no piece of cake. You can > easily invest several dozen man-years into a mere first-generation modeller. > Creating one that can be understood and used by the casual consumer will > probably be next to impossible. Solid modelling packages traditionally I think Keiths point here is that they tacked on a miserable front end to an otherwise reasonable program. Cad-3D for the Atari has a WONDERFULL user interface, what more of a spec did AEGIS need ? Rumor has it, they wanted to finish the 3D program THIS WEEK so they could get on to Mac II stuff, and that all AEGIS is doing now is Mac II stuff. > > I hope Aegis releases the format of the object definition files. > Someone who owns an Amiga and who also works for Pixar, Digital Effects et > al, will cook up a "real" solid modeller for the rest of us. And if this > mythical person follows suit, the program will be PD with source (hope, > hope). > Dream, dream, dream, all I gotta do is dreaeee eee ee eem... As for object definitions, I have a hope that object will find their way into IFF hukns. Mor o nthis later... > General Comments On Message: > > Try not to get too excited, Keith :-). Seriously, were you in a bad > mood that day? Or are you beginning to get a little jaded with all the > current stuff? Your message seemed quite a downer, and I'm just wondering > why. Keith is a very excitable person :-) Especially around Amiga's. He was born in a bad mood :-) And yes, he is *very* jaded. Come see his setup some time ! > > There's no real reason to be down on the Amiga or any of its > developers. If Commodore were to go bankrupt tomorrow, we'd still have the ^^^^ Oh yeah ? How about Borland ? It looks like Aegis is starting to get wierd on us. > _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ > Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape ihnp4!ptsfa - -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {akgua, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (06/23/87)
In article <228@uscacsc.UUCP> papa@uscacsc.UUCP (Marco Papa) writes: > I don't understand. One cannot buy commercial rights to a "public domain" > program. By being public domain, EVERYBODY can have if FOR FREE! You > can copy iy, modify iy, sell it, do anything with it! What is this ROT > program? Is it on the Fish disks? On the other hand, it may be in a companies best interests to contact the author and obtain some kind of release for commercial distribution. Not only is this good form, it affords a bit of protection against the software not truly public domain. It might contain copyrighted or purloined code, or the author's employer or other third-party might have some rights to the software. Better safe(r) than sorry... -- 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)
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (06/23/87)
In article <228@uscacsc.UUCP> papa@uscacsc.UUCP (Marco Papa) writes: >I don't understand. One cannot buy commercial rights to a "public domain" >program. By being public domain, EVERYBODY can have if FOR FREE! You >can copy iy, modify iy, sell it, do anything with it! What is this ROT >program? Is it on the Fish disks? >-- Marco A) I believe that the author of ROT retained the copyright, someone may be randomly assuming free = public domain. B) Even if it is P.D. the author can be convinced :-) to never write a newer version (which is sometimes sufficient) C) What Aegis needed apparently was the User Interface, so there is not much chance that one would be able to modify the current ROT into a 3-D product like Aegis'. [Ed Note : Bill Volk claims that a 10.5 meg Amiga could do about 10 minutes of animation, so y'all send off for your 8Meg ASDG boards!] D) Yes, it is on one of the Fish library disks. [#71 to be specific] It is also a Binary only distribution. Last but not least, Ok already, my copy of Diga! has the same bugs. I was using it for vi and emacs on my workstation and it was working fine, when I run vttest I get the same results as Marco. Note also that Bill Volk has uploaded the documentation on building emulators to BIX and I assume sent a copy to Fred so it may be up to us to write a decent emulator. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter DaSilva) (06/26/87)
> >Amiga 2000 [ ... ] here's the demos: robo-city, boing, mandrill, molly, say, > >couldn't you pick some *older* demos to show us? [ ... ] > > If someone would like to pay me a modicum of $$$, I could probably cook up > something. How about: Juggler, Workbench Lander (new version in the offing), DPSlide, etc... local Federated's have better demo software than C= seems to. There are plenty of incredible demos available for the machine now, so there's no need to show the old ones any more.