BARUG NewsJune 2004June's meeting will be held on Wednesday 30 June at the usual time and place. The guest speaker this month is to be David Ruck of The ARM Club. David will announce his topic on the evening. Members who read the comp.sys.acorn newsgroups will no doubt have seen David posting under the handle 'druck'. David has also demonstrated the ARM Club's excellent hard drive checking program !DiskKnight on a previous visit to BARUG. We look forward to an entertaining, and possibly controversial, evening! Thanks to last month's guest speaker, David Holden of APDL. David demonstrated the latest version of the evergreen !DrawWorks program and gave us his thoughts on the state of the RISC OS market. We are grateful to him - as we are to all our guest speakers - for taking the time and trouble to visit us here in Bristol. Hot off the press today is an announcement from Castle about their relationship with RISCOS Ltd: Castle's announcement is that the license to RISCOS Ltd has been cancelled. This is a very significant issue and it has affected some third parties already. As I have no knowledge of the circumstances beyond what has appeared in public announcements, I'll refrain from comment and point readers to the report of the annoucement on the Drobe portal, from which links to the various statements can be made: http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1093.html The practical upshot is to throw buckets of uncertainty into the RISC OS market. Because of the legal issues, STD and VirtualAcorn have both ceased supplying RISC OS at the moment, and it may be that other manufacturers will have to follow suit. It appears that the only RISC OS machines one can buy this evening are those from Castle itself, which of course now owns the intellectual property for RISC OS. However, Castle's announcement does contain an assurance that it is not seeking to cease to supply RISC OS to competitors, and we may assume that once the legal difficulties are sorted and new ones put in place, sales of third party systems will re-commence. Where this announcement leaves RISCOS Ltd is unknown as of the time of writing. It must also cast considerable doubt over the future of the RISC OS Foundation and the 'Select' subscription scheme run by RISCOS Ltd. I am reminded of the old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times!" However, I'm pleased to report that my RISC OS 4.39 Adjust ROM sets finally arrived a few weeks ago, and installation was painless. I am very pleased with the result. Let us hope that the work which has gone into RISC OS version 4 is not wasted due to the licensing legal difficulties. The upheaval caused by the announcement aside, other developments continue. STD launched a new USB program called MassFS some time ago, This program is used by purchasers of USB devices from STD, and is now available as a stand-alone program, allowing USB users to write their own drivers for any USB devices that they may have purchased elsewhere. So far I have successfully written drivers for two USB memory sticks and for a 6-in-1 card reader/writer. The memory stick is one of the most useful computer devices ever produced (in my humble opinion): I wouldn't be without one in my pocket now! For further information see STD's website: http://www.stdevel.co.uk/massfs.html See you soon! Steve
|