mjv@iris.brown.edu (Marshall Vale) (02/10/90)
Unfortunately, the user group here in Rhode Island is a front for piracy (or it was less than a year ago, its probably still the same). This is the experience that Rob is probably coming from since we are both here in little RI. The user group slowly was turned into a piracy place by the president who brought his friends in and in some weird way took it over. He was never challenged basically because the decent people felt there was no hope. These new people were very apathetic and trying to get them to help organize things was useless. I did give a couple of presentations and tried to help out but the membership slowly died and everyone started to care more about the latest cracked game from Europe shown by the president than a nice discusion and demo on different forms of video on the ST. Most of us gave up. No pirating was done at the meeting but it was all done after the meetings at peoples houses and there was often a cover charge. I'm really, really glad that there are some good user groups out there and I wish them the best of luck. The net is my only user group. Disclamer: These are my opinions alone from experience seen and a few that I have heard about. -- mjv@iris.brown.edu