Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk
From: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A European point of view (LONG)
Keywords: Copy protection, games, breaking the OS
Message-ID: <618@cbmger.UUCP>
Date: 7 Dec 90 09:16:00 GMT
References: <1990Dec6.185453.5684@cbnewsk.att.com> <1990Dec6.201824.13502@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany
Lines: 71

In article <1990Dec6.201824.13502@Neon.Stanford.EDU> espie@ibis.Stanford.EDU (Marc Espie) writes:
>
>Third point, there is a very basic reason for the way people program
>the amiga here in Europe. they don't get the technical documentation.
>I've seen the RKMs cost something like $30 each around here ?  Well,
>DOUBLE that price for France (importation material). That begins to
>become expensive, doesn't it ? Add to that the fact that *many* people
>don't read english (impossible ? No, quite reasonnable... how many of
>you read chinese ? or indian ? so few ? Hey, you're cutting yourself
>from half the people in the WORLD !). and there is NO french
>translation of the ROM Kernel.

This IS a real problem. We tried to make up a German version of the
RKMs in cooperation with Addison-Wesley. The first attempt failed
totally. They had some programmers hired that knew a little (but only
a little) about the Amiga and nothing about German orthography. They
simply explained some functions doing the reverse thing than they
actually do. - Don't know what the actual status is, should ask them...

> Add to it that many people don't even
>know there is a RKM...  There are maybe three or four shops in France
>where you can buy it (France is a small country ? ok, but there
>60,000,000 persons here.  Crowded, according to US standards !).

Oh, that's a little different here in Germany. You already find the
RKMs and other Amiga literature in every better technically oriented
bookshop. (But what I never saw is that Bantam AmigaDOS book: Bantam
has NO German subsidiary, only a very incompetent distributor.)

>  On
>the other hands, you find bad french books... which do mostly dirty
>things, like busy-waiting and accessing the hardware directly.
>Furthermore, the amiga didn't really catch-up in France. About 3/4 of
>these books are translated from the german. Queer...

Yes, shame on us. Those are those Data Becker books (known as Abacus
in US) teaching you just the wrong way. And also all the German
Amiga magazines provide at least 50 % of their programming examples
with bad, OS unfriendly code. One of them now is making fun by adding
a disclaimer to such listings like that one found on cigarette boxes
warning you about health risks, very funny :-(. - It's a simple fact
that we are too few and have too little time to constantly bash on
them and teach them the right way, sigh. (As far as I know there is
not such a problem in the US, because their magazines don't publish
listings at all? Or did I get something wrong here :-)?)

>The situation might get better as people start upgrading to 2000 and
>3000.  but... French prices are about the DOUBLE of american prices.
>Example ?  a basic 3000 costs 30000f, which is something like MORE than
>$5000. And there is NO educational price to speak of (as far as I
>know... I left France three months ago).

Well, prices are always astonishing me: While A500 and A2000 are cheaper
here than in US, the A3000 is much more expensive. Don't know why,
either for the former or the latter.

>There is a second, most unexpensive thing to do. Add something like 10
>pages to every documentation distributed with every amiga, explaining
>what you can do if you want to be OS-friendly, and what you can't...
>(like the first pages of the RKM). SAY EVERYTHING. Be technical when
>necessary, tell people that you ARE technical. The average user won't
>read it. The would-be programmer will remember it is here, and won't
>break the OS for the sake of it.  Also, if you do it carefully, you
>might be able to change the point of view of Joe User. Make
>badly-written programs look BAD.

Good point. We should think about it.

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany  \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk