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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!nbires!hao!hplabs!cae780!amdcad!sun!imagen!atari!neil
From: neil@atari.UUCP (Neil Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: CES Summary
Message-ID: <535@atari.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 14:20:28 EST
Article-I.D.: atari.535
Posted: Thu Jan 22 14:20:28 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Jan-87 20:41:35 EST
References: <870115-133608-1094@Xerox> <1514@lsuc.UUCP> <554@elmgate.UUCP>
Organization: Atari Corp/Mktg
Lines: 51

In article <554@elmgate.UUCP>, jdg@elmgate.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) writes:

> The interesting point you brought up here is when you wrote 'I was *not*
> rich'.  Either you are now, or moderators use BIX for nothing.  Although
> I've heard that BIX has the highest quality of tech info of any of the
> pay services.  Too bad that McGraw-Hill priced it right out of the range
> of some of us who could use it and contribute to it.

Yes, BIX moderators use the service for free, as do moderators and VIP's on
almost every information service.  Some services even pay them a small
royalty for their work -- and there's a LOT of work that goes into the
services.

Speaking of BIX, I agree that the connect time price is very high.
Fortunately, there are ways around the excessive charges, and the quality of
information available on BIX is enough to make it worthwhile for netlanders
to give it some further thought.

There is a BIX technique known as the "blink" which can capture a large
quantity of messages into a buffer, then transmit that buffer to you.  You
read all the messages offline.  This keeps your connect time to a minimum,
except for the first call or 2 when you set up your account to only capture
the messages you want.  The "blink" technique is totally effective on BIX
due to its structure, and is not really possible on other systems.

You see, BIX is divided into conferences (i.e. atari.st, ataricorp,
to.jerry, etc.) which are subdivided into topics (i.e. atari.st/c.language,
atari.st/news, ataricorp/announcements, etc.).  Once in a conference you can
resign from topics that you're not interested in.  Then you can program a
terminal program's macro (i.e. a Flash DO file) to log in, FILE ALL on all
your topics, dump the file to your computer, then log out.  Now you have the
best of both -- low cost access and high quality information.

> BTW. I agree that Atari's doing an OK job spreading info almost
> everywhere they can.

Thanks Jeff.

Speaking of online activities, I have 2 new ones to announce:

On GEnie, Atari Corp. is becoming the official co-manager of the Atari
roundtables there as of February 2.  To kick off our first week's
activities, there will be an online, realtime conference with Atari
president Sam Tramiel on the 4th of February, starting at 7 PM Pacific time
(10 PM Eastern).  All are welcome.

On BIX, Atari also has our own conference, called "ataricorp".  For the
month of February we are setting up a special topic for two of Atari's
graphics wizards, Dave "NEOchrome" Staugas and Jim "VDI" Eisenstein.  The
topic will tentatively be called "smoke'n'mirror" and will cover graphics
tricks and techniques on the ST.