Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!msi.umn.edu!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!hhdist
From: CW%APG.PH.UCL.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: <None>
Message-ID: <11E96006E00015B8@gacvx2.gac.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 91 19:50:54 GMT
Lines: 54
Return-path: <@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU:CW@APG.PH.UCL.AC.UK>
To: HANDHELDS@gac.edu
Via:      UK.AC.UCL.PH.APG;  6 FEB 91 11:06:56 GMT

HP48sx**********


       Hello,

   I am reminded of, I think it is, Jan Brittenson's signature,

       "Engage brain before engaging mouth"

   or words to a very similar effect. Thankyou for helping with
   my star1.04 problem. It turns out I had not set binary mode
   for the initial ftp across the Atlantic. I now have a version
   of star1.04 working on my PC, and I think its very sexy!! Now I
   have to learn to use it properly and do something useful with
   it. Thanks to the people that produced and distributes it and those
   who helped with my problem.
       I wish to express my  thoughts about all this ROM copying business.
   As usual there are two sides to every coin (I've certainly never seen
   a coin with one side). The copiers generally like things to be RAM based
   and to be able to make backups, a perfectly valid point of view, and
   to anti-copiers are scared of piracy, also a very valid point of view
   (I don't think that everybody who copies a ROM wants to pirate it but#
   I certainly think that in this wonderful world of ours, there will be one or
   two somewhere who will use it in that way!), and piracy was a serious threat
   to home computing a while back. What we have to realise is that this
 calculator
   has only been around for just over a year, and I don't think a machine that
   has been capable of copying and downloading a ROM card has ever existed
   before, or at least not been owned by so many clever delving enthusiasts.
   In the home computing market (an area I worked in for a while when I was
   a teenager) I can remember software piracy being considered a very serious
   threat when it first started becoming prevelant, and a lot of different
   protection devices being deployed, NONE OF WHICH were 100% successful.
   However quite a few years on the software market is flourishing even though
   I see software piracy all over the place. I have no idea how much money
   is being lost to pirates but I know that whenever I have been supplied
   with a copy of a program it is because I did not have it and could not afford
   it and even though I wanted it I would not have bought it. I DO BUY software
   but not every peice of software that has ever been written or even that I
   have on my PC ! I am not trying to justify piracy in any way but I am
   trying to put across the point that piracy is a problem that will exist
   whather or not certain copying programs are available or not and it will
   not be stopped. It seems that the computer software manufacturers have
   learnt to cope with piracy (please correct if I'm wrong on this point) and
   have a healthy business going, and in this new area of ROM and RAM cards#
   new methods and possibly ideologies are going to have to be worked out.

    I think one of the better inventions of this whole thing is the
     hard-to-photocopy tables of numbers that come with software these days!

     Anyway I've lost my flow now, thankyou for listening



      Conrad