Letters Page
Hardly anyone's been writing...even though everyone's stopped fighting...
Lets start with the traditional RISCWorld cock up corner...
Aaron,
On a first quick scan of Volume 5 Issue 3:
a. your "secret corner" has become so secret that it doesn't exist! Just an empty Directory;
and,
b. your colleague at "PD World" seems to have come out in sympathy!
Have I got a faulty disc, or is the whole RISCWorld hanging on your non-words?
Regards
David Cooper
Actually I hadn't thought of filling up the mag with empty directories, but it's an idea for future issues. Just joking. My master copy here is fine as is a genuine distribution copy of the magazine, so either you have a faulty copy or something weird is going on with your machine. I can't really comment on the latter as I don't know what machine you have, so why not try returning the CD to APDL so they can check it and send out a new version if it's found to be faulty.
P.S. It's not a secret corner, it's a safe corner.
Hi Aaron,
Nice issue. Just arrived. One thing that has obviously passed me by before is this error:
"Special Offers and Advertiser's index"
It should, of course, be "Advertisers' index" unless you only have one advertiser! More on this, of course (cheap plug), at www.gcse.com/english/possession.htm.
Best,
Andrew Harmsworth
Ah, well this is one where I can safely blame Dave Holden as he handles the adverts and adds the offers/adverts section to the end of the main index file for each issue. However I have given him a stern ticking off (along with an invoice for this issue) and hopefully we won't see the problem occurring again.
After a lot of very careful investigation it appears that it wasn't actually an apostrophe but a poorly attached comma that had fallen down from the line above and lodged between the "r" and the "s". This was overlooked and so got copied in later issues of the magazine. I discovered this problem when I noticed that some sentences ended with double (in some cases, triple) full stops. This had a similar cause; the dots were falling off the top of "i"s and rolling along to the end of the line.
We are now using a much stronger adhesive for punctuation to ensure that these mistake's cant happen. DH.
Now it's time for "bash the editor", and it's not me...
Hi Aaron,
Reading your article about RISCWorld and you mentioned 'Bitter and Twisted'. Sounds good, I'd love to taste a pint but I'm in Italy and we don't get much real ale here. I brew my own, and that's pretty good. BTW do you ever see Paul Beverley editor of Archive magazine? - The mag you can read in the toilet - If you do, make him - yes make him - drink a pint of B+T, he's a shandy drinker! The 'RISCOS community' should take these matters very seriously, after all our technology is the 'real ale' of computing.
Why don't all involved in RISCOS in some way or other get together under one umbrella - 'CAMROS' the campaign for real operating systems?
Cheers
Lol
PS no disrespect intended to PB or his mighty organ, Archive.
Bitter and Twisted is indeed a fine beer. The problem with being in Italy isn't the lack of beer, as there are some fine local lagers, but the insistence that "real" food is made from pasta and tomatoes. As a true Englishman I like my food to consist of some sort of unidentifiable meat boiled to death in gravy and surrounded by extra lardy pastry, oh and a serving of chips on the side would be fine. I did see Paul Beverley at the RISCOS Ltd AGM, but didn't get him as far as the bar, so I couldn't try to tempt him with a real pint of beer, although I did partake of one myself, just for research purposes you understand.
As for RISC OS being the real ale of computing I assume you mean it's hard to find, made by people working in a shed, great to get hold of, but leaves you with a thumping headache in the morning?
Finally here's the letter that gets my weird award of the month.
Date:18/10/2004 06:31:22 GMT Daylight Time
From:xxxx_xxxx@hotmail.com
To:editor@riscworld.co.uk
Sent from the Internet (Details)
sample magazine via letter,please
Mr Agus
85 gedungsari Ave
Semarang 50127
Indonesia
We do actually have a free copy of RISCWorld, we give it away on our website, but we don't send out free copies by post. It looks like someone has been harvesting editorial e-mail addresses in order to get their mits on some free magazines. So this looks like spam, especially as there was no response from the e-mail address when I mailed back. RISC OS based spam? Whatever next, perhaps everyone will soon be getting spam e-mails from RISCOS companies?
Aaron Timbrell