Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!caen!sdd.hp.com!mips!daver!ditka!zorch!amiga0!mykes From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Re: Anyone using prodigy with an AMIGA? (long) Message-ID: Date: 10 May 91 09:47:26 GMT References: <1991May02.160135.20734@convex.com> <1991May5.205134.665@bilver.uucp> <1991May7.001840.8440@bilver.uucp> <62040@masscomp.westford.ccur.com> <21407@cbmvax.commodore.com> Organization: Amiga makes it possible Lines: 59 In article <21407@cbmvax.commodore.com> bj@cbmvax.commodore.com (Brian Jackson) writes: >In article <62040@masscomp.westford.ccur.com> mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) writes: >>In articles too numerous to enumerate many paranoid people carry on about >>Prodigy's software... >>> ... > >>I have not been following this thread so I am sorry if this is old news >>but here is some info on Prodigy and the STAGE.DAT file that seems to >>indicate that the above arguments about MS-DOG being at fault are incorrect. >>Read on if you are interested. > >I think this is called "beating a dead Prodigy". The _entire_ thread >about this can be read in comp.dcom. Most of the (excessively) paranoid >messages are being posted out of context and with pertinent information >omitted. > >A. Think about this for a second. Do you *really* think that both IBM > and Sears would *really* believe that they could do such a thing and > never be found out? Do you *really* think that they would be blind to > the deadly PR value of having this 'discovered'? I think not. > >B. You can't run Prodigy on the Amiga (unless you have a BridgeBoard) > so, aside from the "urban folklore" aspect of all this, who cares? > >I expect to see this story in next weeks National Enquirer, right under >the "Alien gives birth to Elvis' baby" story. Sheesh. > >Commercial computer services like GEnie. Prodigy, Compuserve, BIX, etc. >have a LOT of $$$ invested and they all have a lot of competition. So they >can ill afford to have such horrendous PR headaches which can send users >scurrying to the competition (and Prodigy learned this first hand when >their censorship flap (combined with a coincidentally timed change/drop >in GEnie prices) caused quite a few Prodigy folks to switch to GEnie.) > >I will be most surprised if, when someone without an axe to grind actually >runs a test of this stuff, it is found that Prodigy is/was really doing >what this all suggests. > >Brian > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Brian Jackson Software Engineer, Commodore-Amiga Inc. GEnie: B.J. | > | bj@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com or ...{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!bj | > | "does logic really go hand-in-hand with computer-literacy??" | > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Something that hasn't been proposed in this thread: Maybe the alleged "snooping" information gets in your disk files because it just happened to be in memory before prodigy was used. If you run a program, like 1-2-3 or DBase, it is going to access your confidential and personal information and put it in RAM. Along comes prodigy software and inadvertently writes it to disk along with what it intended to write... -- **************************************************** * I want games that look like Shadow of the Beast * * but play like Leisure Suit Larry. * ****************************************************