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- From: grove@zeta.org.au (Rachel Polanskis)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer.turbovision,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: C++ Turbo Vision FAQ, part3/3
- Followup-To: poster
- Date: 15 Aug 1995 01:11:19 +1000
- Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney, +61-2-837-1183 V.32bis
- Lines: 824
- Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu
- Message-ID: <40np2n$jn0@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.zeta.org.au
- Summary: This article is a compilation of information on the use of,
- and resources for, Turbo Vision for C++ (Borland's application
- framework).
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.os.msdos.programmer.turbovision:5086 comp.answers:13672 news.answers:50724
-
- Archive-name: C++-faq/turbovision/tvplus/part3
- Posting-Frequency: monthly
- Last-modified: 1995/08/14
- Version: 1.8
- URL: http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/tvhome.html
-
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Applications written with Turbo Vision
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- If you are interested in pushing software you have written using
- TV, download the ASCII text outline to help you prepare a
- catalogue entry describing your application.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- CATALOGUE PRO FORMA
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- This pro forma has been prepared to make it easy for you to present
- information about an application written with Turbo Vision C++, whether
- you were the sole author, a project leader, an interested third party,
- or the like.
-
- The sort of information we are looking for is outlined below but the
- file should be no bigger than 4K:
-
-
- Name of application
-
- What you call your program.
-
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- This is a short description of what your programme does, and the needs
- it fulfills for users. This is a good place to state briefly what makes
- it distinctive, e.g. a word processor that sounds like your grade
- teacher when you mis-spell a word.
-
-
- Distribution category
-
- Is your application freeware, shareware, in-house or commercial
- distribution. Any copyright information may be mentioned here.
-
-
- Availability
-
- Specify the distribution filename if the application is freeware or
- shareware. State whether the source code or a library is available for
- your programme.
-
- Description of application
-
- Describe what your program actually does, from a user's perspective.
-
-
- Developmental problems and response
-
- Disclose any problems you encountered in building your programme, and
- what workarounds you used to resolve them. Did you encounter any bugs or
- incompatibilities with 3rd party libraries or did you have to modify the
- source code, etc? A few thoughtful comments here may solve a problem
- someone will encounter with their use of TV.
-
-
- Contact
-
- Your name and, if you wish, the address where you may be contacted for
- further information about the programme.
-
- The time spent in presenting something about your programme will allow
- others to learn from your experience and you also get the benefit of
- wider exposure for your product.
-
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- CATALOGUE CONTENTS
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Even though not all of the applications listed in this chapter
- provide sources, they do make good examples of what can be
- achieved with Turbo Vision.
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHIC SERVICES
-
- SinoCat Wee-San Lee
-
-
- NETWORK SOFTWARE INCLUDING SL/IP AND TCP/IP
-
- DOSLynx the University of Kansas
-
-
- NEURAL NETWORKS
-
- the Welstead programmes
-
-
- PC UTILITIES
-
- HDInfo James Thorpe w/source: free
- NewsWerthy William Werth
- Upfront Rachel Polanskis
-
- PROCESS CONTROL
-
- DAQPAK and MAST Craig Schlenter
-
-
- TEXT MANAGEMENT
-
- LaTeX2hyp Roger Nelson
-
-
- VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
-
- JIIC-CAL Career Advice Package Alan Dobbie
-
-
- BORLAND INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTS
-
- the Integrated Development Environment for some versions of Borland C++
- the spreadsheet, Quattro Pro
-
- Because of the similarities in appearence with applications written
- using Turbo Vision, this seems an appropriate place to mention these two
- products.
-
- However, the BC3.1 IDE was not written with Turbo Vision. It was written
- with an in-house library that has grown over the years from the TC1.0
- version.
-
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- APPLICATIONS
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Sinocat
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- SinoCat is a library technical services tool which is the first
- cumulated edition of the Chinese National Bibliography on CD-ROM. The
- cataloging database comprises 200,000 Chinese records from the National
- Central Library, Taiwan, ROC.
-
- Distribution category
-
- SinoCat is a commercial product which is now marketed in Taiwan.
-
- Availability
-
- The source code is not available and is copyright.
-
- Description of application
-
- You use SinoCat to locate books or articles by selecting one of the
- available options such as general search (search by keyword), boolean
- search (full text searching with boolean operators), browse, etc. Once
- the reference is found, it shows a cataloging screen with title, author,
- description, ISBN, location, etc.
-
- It supports retrospective conversion effectively and downloads into the
- local system in ISO-2709 structure. The application also performs
- original cataloging, supports printed catalogue cards, processing labels
- and various kinds of reports.
-
- It also provides a lot of important information on-line
- (context-sensitive help) like Chinese MARC, cataloging rules, etc.
-
- Developmental problems
-
- Conflict with the Chinese System. Although this is not the main point,
- source code of TV 1.03 was modified to allow it to work well with the
- Chinese System.
-
- TListBox. The programmer wanted to list over 64k of items on the screen
- due to large amount of database in CD-ROM, but could not do so. Finally,
- he inherited a class from TListBox to read a certain number of items at
- a time and read others when necessary.
-
- Size of executable. SinoCat is a huge application which does a lot of
- things for librarians. Its size is over 640k and relies on the overlay
- provided by Borland. The author tried to use Blinker 3.0 which indicated
- that it could load the program to protected mode without modifying
- source code, but it failed.
-
- Size of DGROUP. Because there is a lot of data structures and variables
- in this application, the size of DATA_SEG is over 64k. Using objxref.exe
- provided by Borland, the author inspected the size of each function
- which he modified by declaring auto variables or arrays to be global,
- using modifier 'far' to force variables to be far and the like - in
- order to minimize the size of DATA_SEG.
-
- Context-sensitive help. The programmer used TVHC to make
- context-sensitive help for the application. The problem was that the
- help could not tab backward through the help screens which he overcame
- by simply defining a keyword pointing to the previous help screen.
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- First of all, this application was developed in DOS because it was the
- common platform (DOS + Chinese System) for the library in Taiwan at that
- time. This is the main reason. Secondly, TV provides context-sensitive
- help which is used widely in the application. Thirdly, TV provides a
- very impressive user interface. Last, TV is, in the opinion of Wee-San
- Lee, very similar to OWL 1.0 and should not be difficult to port
- applications from TV to OWL 1.0.
-
- The application was written using TV1.03.
-
- Contact
-
- Wee-San Lee formerly of FlySheet Information Inc. (Taiwan)
- <wlee@chaph.usc.edu>.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- DOSLynx (alpha release)
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- DosLynx is a distributed hypertext browser with some World Wide Web
- capabilities supporting DOS users.
-
- Distribution category
-
- DosLynx is copyrighted by the University of Kansas and is free for
- instructional and research educational use. Non-educational use will
- be licensed at a later date.
-
- Availability
-
- DosLynx is available in its source and binary forms by binary anonymous
- FTP from ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/ The self-extracting
- archive file name is DLX0_8A.EXE; the source file name is SCR0_8A.ZIP.
-
- Description of application
-
- DosLynx is a straightforward menu driven application. It supports the
- following URL types: file, ftp, gopher, http, news, wais.
-
- DosLynx is a MDI (multiple document interface) application, so each
- window represents an open file at any given time. The application can
- download an inline image and display inline GIFs; it has a mail
- developer and will suggest a file name when prompting the user to save a
- file.
-
- A feature of DosLynx is its blind support. The /B command line option
- was implemented to aid blind users using DosLynx with a screen reader.
-
- Developmental problems
-
- 640K barrier: Documents are, therefore, written to disk to save memory
- and then read from disk in chunks to display on the screen. On the one
- hand, the application is adversely affected but, on the other, it pays
- off in that large documents can be displayed - sometimes!
-
- CERN libwww 2.14: This code was hard to port to DOS because the code is
- not well written (it still has many remaining memory leaks) and, in many
- cases, there were no correlating system functions from unix to dos.
-
- TCP/IP driver: Integrating the WATTCP as the tcp/ip package was not so
- hard, but that left only DOS packet driver enabled machines as the
- market.
-
- Combining sources: The three code sources combined (libwww, wattcp and
- doslynx) run dangerously close to the 64K limit in DGROUP.
-
- Time: Once the original author (Garrett Arch Blythe) was put in control
- of both Lynx and DosLynx about May 1994, there was little time for
- dedicated DosLynx development. There was a hiatus in the application's
- development between August 1994 and early 1995 when Ravi Kolli is
- reported to have taken over the project at the
-
- Kansas University <doslynx@lark.cc.ukans.edu>
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- DosLynx was developed, ground up, from late November 1993 to mid May
- 1994 on a 386sx16 4M Ram 40M hard drive; around a 40 minute compile
- time.
-
- Unknown to the rest of the world, Lynx had been ported to DOS one year
- earlier by the author. This was the pre-WWW capable version of Lynx.
-
- When the second chance came around, he decided to use TV because it was
- first and foremost readily available and familiar. It cleanly cut
- DosLynx and Lynx into two seperate entities. Having taken a long time
- deciding what to call this DOS www browser, it became, in the end,
- simply DosLynx because Lynx was already associated with the Kansas
- University though the two browsers had nothing in common.
-
- Also, TV would help with the implementation of the forms interface. This
- was never done, in part, due to the lack of support in the libwww for
- forms.
-
- Contact
-
- Garrett Arch Blythe
- http://home.mcom.com/people/blythe
- blythe@netscape.com
- Netscape Communications Corporation +1 415 528 2639
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Newswerthy
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- NewsWerthy offline reader for DOS is used to read and reply to usenet
- messages in the SOUP format. These are generally generated by uqwk,
- which is freeware.
-
- Distribution category
-
- NewsWerthy is shareware.
-
- Availability
-
- The distribution file name is NWRTH1??.ZIP. It is copyright and no
- source code is available.
-
- Description of the application
-
- SOUP packets are uncompressed using pkunzip. The newsgroups are then
- organized into a listbox so that a newsgroup can be selected. The
- messages are also listed in a listbox. Each message is read in a
- TScroller window, with many options available from the status line, such
- as save to file, reply, etc.
-
- Replies are compressed using pkzip. The messages in the reply packet can
- be edited with an external editor. Messages can also be deleted. The
- list of messages can be sorted by date, from, subject or no sort.
-
- Developmental problems
-
- The library is compilied with 80286 code, which meant recompiling the
- library so that 8088 systems could run the program.
-
- There are several bugs, one of which the author corrected himself. There
- is a bug which causes monochrome systems to generate a divide by 0 error
- in any dialog boxes that use TInputLine (has to do with the cursor). The
- bug fix that resulted has been added to the rest gathered on the
- CompuServe TurboVision forum.
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- Basically, because it came with Borland C++ 3.1 and, at the time, the
- author wanted to write a DOS program.
-
- Contact
-
- William Werth (Bill) billw@eskimo.com
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Upfront
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- A file and program manager.
-
- Distribution category
-
- The academic version of Upfront is site specific and subject to a site
- licence.
-
- Upfront as shareware is not yet available but will be shortly at
- USD30.00.
-
- Availability
-
- The code is copyright and is not available.
-
- Description of the application
-
- The application is a user friendly shell for launching programmes (from
- a list of programmes nominated by the user) without having to go near
- the DOS prompt. Upfront provides a number of file and disk functions
- commonly used in MSDOS such as a file finder, disk formatter and calls
- MSDOS programmes such as backup and restore. It performs background
- printing and contains context sensitive on-line help for the novice PC
- user.
-
- Developmental problems
-
- The main problem was, for an inexperienced beginner in C++, the manuals
- and the learning curve associated with Turbo Vision. Many concepts were
- not presented clearly and the documentation provided was not aimed at a
- completely new programmer. This problem was overcome by experimentation
- and asking lots of questions.
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- Consistency with software already purchased. The application was
- developed on a 386SX16, a 486DX2/66 and a 486BL75 using BC3.1/TV1.03 for
- 8088+ and up.
-
- Contact
-
- Rachel Polanskis at grove@zeta.org.au
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Schlenter
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- The two applications under this heading are known as DAQPAK (Data
- AQuisition PAcKage) and MAST (Manual and Automatic Scheduling Tool)
- respectively.
-
- Purpose of application
-
- (a) A program to read an A/D converter connected to some strain gauges
- and plot some cute pictures of stress vs. strain as rocks are crushed -
- the code contains a cute circular buffer based interrupt routines
- (commercial).
-
- (b) A manual and automatic scheduling tool that uses a modified list
- scheduling heuristic and user interaction to schedule tasks from a block
- diagram onto a multiprocessor transputer hardware platform - the code
- produces cute postscript gantt charts (Masters project).
-
- Distribution category
-
- (a) Commercial and site specific; (b) academic and project specific.
-
- Availability
-
- The author advised that he was not sure if he is allowed to distribute
- the code of either (a) or (b) or whether he would want to since neither
- is particularly cleanly written or useful to mankind outside of the
- environment for which it was produced.
-
- Description of application
-
- See statement above.
-
- Developmental problems and response
-
- The programs were too large for DOS mode. Debug under TD and had to run
- it under Pharlap to be able to debug it. The author had a messy problem
- getting the main program to update entries in the dialog box listbox and
- communicating in the other direction.
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- The author stated that Turbo Vision was far less resource hungry than
- Windows and required less spectacular hardware to run. Also a GUI was
- not required for the applications written.
-
- Contact
-
- Craig Schlenter University of Natal <cschle@daisy.ee.und.ac.za>
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- LaTeX2hyp
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Purpose of application
-
- LaTeX2hyp is a program which converts LaTeX to ASCII text file
- documents.
-
- Distribution category
-
- Freely distributable but not public domain. Do not redistibute modified
- sources.
-
- Availability
-
- Distribution includes: sources, executable (MS-DOS or Amiga) and
- documentation. Archived: LHA (MS-DOS, Amiga) and Tar/compress (UNIX).
-
- ftp://iris1.bsyse.wsu.edu /pub/latex2hyp
- http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/coea/
- (Biological Systems Engr. item /pub/latex2hyp)
- Email: rnelson@mail.wsu.edu
- MIME encoded/please specify version.
-
- Description of application
-
- LaTeX2hyp is not just a deTeX program, but actually formats the text,
- performs character set substitutions, generates cross references, etc.
-
- Although this program is intended for LaTeX, the author has been
- informed that it often satisfactorily converts TeX documents as well. It
- can also be used to generate hypertext cross references compatible with
- the Borland Turbo Vision help compiler. This allows you to maintain a
- single document for a printed manual and Online context sensitive help,
- and WorldWideWeb documents!
-
- Developmental problems and response
-
- None specified.
-
- Reasons for choosing TV
-
- None specified.
-
- Contact
-
- Roger Nelson
- rnelson@mail.wsu.edu
- Biological Systems Engineering Department
- Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA
-
- Work: +1 509 335 1100
- Home: +1 509 332 8387
- FAX: +1 509 335 2722
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- JIIC-CAL Career Advice Package
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- This career advice package from JIIG-CAL consists of: SubjectScan,
- FormScore, Pathfinder and Explorer.
-
- Purpose of the application
-
- SubjectScan: Suggest subjects for a young client to study at school.
- FormScore: Generate an interest profile and job suggestions for a client
- via OMR read forms - large batches.
- Pathfinder: Generate an interest profile and job suggestions for a
- client; PC user interface - single clients.
- Explorer: Allows client to access a database of jobs with several
- different search tools e.g. job factors, name search, level of study
- required.
-
- Distribution category
-
- The applications that form part of this package are commercial.
-
- Availability
-
- Code is unavailable.
-
- Description of application
-
- SubjectScan: Psychometric test - young students (about say 12 or 13
- years) fill in forms in response to a set of questions - OMR scans
- forms, software processes responses and generates reports for the
- student, giving lists of subjects in groups most likely -> least
- likely to suit the student for study.
- FormScore: Psychometric tests - clients (14-18 or 18+ yrs) fill in forms
- in response to a set of questions - OMR scans forms, software
- generates reports - Interest Profile, Job Suggestions and
- information, pros and cons for any specific job.
- Pathfinder: Psychometric tests - clients (14-18 or 18+) respond to
- questions from the software, software generates Interest Profile,
- Job Suggestions and information, pros & cons for any specific job.
- Explorer: Allows client to access a database of jobs with several
- different search tools e.g. job factors, name search, level of study
- required, careers library area.
-
- Developmental problems and response
-
- Poor documentation - persevere. Many classes in TV not well coded for
- inheriting - tended to use TV's more basic classes and build up what we
- required. Trying to keep up-to-date with TV bug fixes - code around
- problems and avoid upgrading to unknowns.
-
- Reason for choosing Turbo Vision
-
- Needed standard interface, easy to use, attractive front end for
- software. The applications were developed on PC 486 33MHz, DOS 6.2, BC
- 3.1, TV 1.03 for 8086+ targets.
-
- Contact
-
- Alan Dobbie Edinburgh University Alan@srv1.jig.ed.ac.uk
-
-
- =======================================================================
- EXIT TVPLUS
- =======================================================================
-
- Thank you for using this service which, we hope, you will use again
- soon.
-
- Because this material is copyright, you may not reproduce this document
- or parts of this document by any means without the consent of Robert
- Hazeltine and Rachel Polanskis except to the limited extent essential
- for review. We would appreciate a copy of any such review.
-
- A general consent has been given to reproduce this document only under
- the terms outlined in the section Distribution rights and no other.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Acknowledgements
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- TVPlus wishes to acknowledge the assistance of:
-
- CRAIG SCHLENTER
-
- Craig Schlenter maintained the first FAQ about Turbo Vision for C++
- until December 1994 while studying at the University of Natal, Durban,
- South Africa. The information he put together on TV became the point of
- departure for the original issue of TVPlus published in January 1995.
-
- After Craig gained his BSc Eng (Electronics) and submitted his thesis
- for an MSc Eng (Electrical), he started work as a C programmer/
- electronics engineer in February 1995. His interests include software,
- digital hardware, the internet, linux and Turbo Vision.
-
- OTHER CONTRIBUTORS
-
- We would also like to thank for their overall assistance and support
-
- Eric Woodruff <mailto:72134.1150@compuserve.com> and
- Pat Reilly <mailto:71333.2764@compuserve.com>
-
- Our special appreciation to the following people for their contributions
- to TVPlus
-
- Scott Sumners <mailto:scottasumn@aol.com>
- Frank Hohmann <mailto:fhohman@rols1.oec.uni-osnabrueck.de>
- Eddie Stassen <mailto:stasseed@telkom11.telkom.co.za>
- Vincent Van Den Berghe <mailto:vvdh@knuth.bvd.be>
-
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- APPENDIX A
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- From r.polanskis@kilo.uws.EDU.AU Tue Aug 1 11:10:09 1995
- Received: from kilo.uws.EDU.AU (kilo.uws.EDU.AU [137.154.156.30])
- by godzilla.zeta.org.au (8.6.9/8.6.9) with SMTP id LAA01948 for
- <grove@zeta.org.au>; Tue, 1 Aug 1995 11:05:50 +1000
- Received: from kilo.uws.edu.au ([137.154.212.165]) by kilo.uws.EDU.AU
- with SMTP id AA10190 (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for <grove@zeta.org.au>);
- Tue, 1 Aug 1995 11:04:44 +1000
- Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 11:04:44 +1000
- Message-Id: <199508010104.AA10190@kilo.uws.EDU.AU>
- X-Sender: rachelp@kilo.uws.edu.au
- X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
- To: grove@zeta.org.au
- From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG> (by way of r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au
- (Rachel Polanskis))
- Subject: Ralph Nader on WINDOWS 95 Problems
- Status: RO
-
- ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
- TAP-INFO - An Internet newsletter available from listproc@tap.org
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
- TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
- July 31, 1995
-
- MICROSOFT WINDOWS 95
-
- - Ralph Nader and James Love send letter to Clinton
- Administration outlining criticism of two features of
- Microsoft WINDOWS 95.
-
- - Letter objects to Microsoft decision to "bundle" its new
- Microsoft Network (MSN) with WINDOWS 95, and the Microsoft
- "Registration Wizard," which provides Microsoft with
- information on files located on customer hard disk.
-
- - Nader and Love express support for Department of Justice
- (DOJ) antitrust action to address both problems, and ask
- Clinton to prevent federal agencies from buying WINDOWS 95
- until the information gathering features of the
- "Registration Wizard" are disabled or modified.
-
- jamie (love@tap.org; 202/387-8030)
-
- The letter follows.
-
-
-
- Ralph Nader
- P.O. Box 19312, Washington, DC 20036
-
- James Love
- Consumer Project on Technology
- P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
- love@tap.org; voice 202/387-8030
-
- July 26, 1995
-
- President William Clinton
- the White House
- Washington, DC
-
- Dear President Clinton,
-
- We are writing to ask you and your administration to take
- actions which address problems arising from Microsoft's near
- monopoly position in the market for personal computer operating
- systems. As you know, two features of Microsoft's WINDOWS 95
- software have been widely criticized -- the "bundling of
- Microsoft Network (MSN) and Microsoft's online "Registration
- Wizard." These issues are discussed below.
-
- 1. Microsoft Network.
-
- The "bundling" of Microsoft Network (MSN) with WINDOWS 95
- has raised alarm among Microsoft's competitors that Microsoft
- will use its dominate market position for operating system
- software to give MSN an enormous advantage over its rivals in the
- market for online service providers. In brief, Microsoft has
- written its new version of Windows with a built-in way to
- register for its new online service. According to reports by
- beta users of the product, Microsoft has given the MSN a very
- high priority, including a special icon which cannot be deleted
- by the user, and periodic queries by the operating system to the
- user, encouraging registration. Apparently no other rival online
- services vendor will have the opportunity to receive similar
- status within Windows 95. In our view, Microsoft's actions are a
- predictable attempt to exploit its dominance in the operating
- system market to benefit its penetration into other fields that
- are potentially more competitive.
-
- One analogy to this practice is in the area of airplane
- reservations. American Airlines operated the dominant online
- service for airline reservations, and arranged the available
- flights in alphabetical order, giving American Airlines what
- turned out to be a large advantage over its rivals. The
- government subsequently regulated this practice, so that the
- online reservations systems would not be used in an anti-
- competitive manner. We believe it is appropriate and justified
- for the Department of Justice to take actions that would prevent
- Microsoft from bundling MSN with WINDOWS 95 as has been done in
- their beta releases of the product.
-
- 2. Registration Wizard.
-
- Another objectionable feature of WINDOWS 95 is the Microsoft
- online "Registration Wizard." This part of the program is
- designed to scan automatically a user's hard disk, dial-up
- Microsoft, and download information to Microsoft about the files
- on the user's hard disk, including the titles and versions of
- software applications. Critics of this practice, including the
- Department of Defense, have questioned the impact of this
- practice on data security and privacy. Microsoft's rivals also
- believe that it will give Microsoft an enormous advantage in
- marketing by virtue of the fact that it gives Microsoft excellent
- intelligence on its competitors, including the names and
- addresses of their customers.
-
- Microsoft has defended the Wizard by saying that the
- information is gathered to help its product support personnel
- debug its software, and that consumers can choose not to send the
- information to Microsoft. We believe that both arguments are
- disingenuous. First of all, the registration process is separate
- from customer service, and if Microsoft really wanted to use the
- information for customer service it could devise far less
- intrusive methods of doing so, such as a program to printout
- relevant information for use during a consumer service call,
- rather than at the point of registration. Secondly, consumers
- are likely to be confused and intimidated by the registration
- process, because of concerns that this complex software might not
- function correctly if they refuse to give Microsoft the
- information it wants to collects.
-
- In our view, the Registration Wizard is an intrusive measure
- that uses technology to erode customer privacy, and we urge you
- to take steps to discourage its use. Specifically, we urge you
- to ask OMB officials Sally Katzen, Administer of the Office of
- Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and Stephen Kelman,
- Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, to issue a
- directive to all federal agencies, advising them not to purchase
- WINDOWS 95 with the Registration Wizard. This would be similar
- to the very successful actions taken by federal agencies in the
- 1980's to refuse to purchase spreadsheet and database software
- that placed "hidden" files on hard disks as part of copyright
- protection schemes, a proactive measure which moved the entire
- market away from such ill-conceived practices.
-
- We also believe it is appropriate and justified for the
- Department of Justice to take actions that would prevent
- Microsoft from sharing the information gathered from the
- Registration Wizard with its marketing personnel.
-
- Please let us know what you will do about these important
- matters.
-
- Sincerely
-
-
- Ralph Nader James Love
- Consumer Project on Technology
-
- ps: Of course, we were pleased to read press reports that
- Microsoft recently said it would make the MSN abide by the
- European Union's Directive on Data Protection, and we urge
- Microsoft's competitors in online services, such as American
- Online, Prodigy or Compuserve, to embrace these rules which
- protect customer privacy.
-
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-
- --
- Rachel Polanskis grove@zeta.org.au Robert Hazeltine
- http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
- r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-