🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <679@otto.lvsun.com> rex@otto.lvsun.com (Rex Jolliff) writes:
> [ he's discussing my previous posting ]
>After heading what Atari and Simon Poole had to say, I don't see any way
>in which Mr. Drapal could be justified doing what he is doing.  Either he
>has an illeagal copy of the ROMs (or the disk based version), or he
>breached his contract (or at least his promise) with Atari about not 
>talking publicly about bugs in the beta roms.  Either way that was not at
>all ethical.
>
OK., I'll give you a scenario (and *again* I'm not claiming that this
or anything similar actually happened).  What if Mr. Drapal *had*
tried the official channels and found them unresponsive?  Judging by
some of the comments of registered developers, that's not unthinkable.
I don't know what the law says in such cases, but I wouldn't have any
ethical problems.

>>Since I do not know the background, I will not
>>make judgements.  
>well it's a little late for that.  I'd say that you're first eight or ten
>sentences sounded pretty judgemental to me.
>
They may have, but they weren't intended to.  At least they were not
intended to convey anything beyond my feeling disturbed at the
way Atari chose to *appear* to look.  The whole purpose of the posting
was pretty much summed up by the summary line: don't fasten your
shoelaces while walking among your neighbours watermelons.

> [piece deleted, see above for response ]
>>... Yet, Atari representatives seem unwilling to do much
>>more than publish statements synonimous to ``Of course this is all
>>unfounded.''  I find this very disturbing.
>
>Atari representatives responded by stating that the bugs Mr. Drapal talked
>about will be fixed in the release version (in other words, the new roms
>will read IBM disks).
>
That unfortunately is *not* what they said (or I'd have been quite
happy).  They said the new ROMs will be able to talk to PC-DOS 3.x,
*may* be able to talk to PC-DOS 2.x (apparently that wasn't even worth
fishing up a manual, according to Atari's response, -- I assume then
-- let alone worth testing), and will certainly *not* be able to talk
to PC-DOS 1.x.  I can sure live with the last clause, but the first
two do not compatibility make, at least not in my book.

In case you are confused by the multitude of postings, please check
back and see that the issue was not so much being able to read and
write, but being able to format, and Atari wasn't guaranteeing
anything beyond being able to format so that a true-blue PC running
3.x could use it.

>>I know it is very difficult to remain calm when someone is shouting in
>>your face (and I won't claim to always, or even most of the time, be
>>able to do that), but when you are the company mouthpiece (no slur
>>intended, quite the contrary) you have to try and do that, or your
>>customers will get restless. ...
>
>I think that Atari's response to Mr. Drapal's nonsense was written in a
>sufficently calm style.
>

Read the first paragraph of my original posting.

> [ my signature deleted, identical to the one I sign this posting with ]
>Rex Jolliff  (rex@otto.UUCP, {utah-gr, psivax, ihnp4, rutgers}!otto!rex)
>The Sun Newspaper -            |Disclaimer:  The opinions and comments in
>Nevada's Largest Daily Morning | this article are my own and in no way
>Newspaper                      | reflect the opinions of my employers.
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>What happened to our superior space program?


Rob Carriere
The above are my opinions and feelings on the matter discussed, they
should not in any way be attributed to or associated with, The Ohio
State University, its College of Engineering or the Department of
Electrical Engineering.