 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Prez Said Anne Rouse |
(or What's Happening with Melb-PC?)
A lot actually. This month we've had a lively general meeting, lots of activity in the SIGs, two new special member offers, a Desktop Publishing seminar organised, a healthy response to our Administrative Services Expression-of-Interest and an intriguing phone call from PC World. Interested? Read on.
Monthly Meetings
Our August meeting was a very lively and entertaining one, thanks to our skilled presenters, who had to cope in particularly adverse conditions, because there had been a mix up in our bookings and we had to alternate between rooms. Heather Bisby, from Oxis demoed her PC-based ergonomic self-help program without the expected projector and had to cope with some pretty trying circumstances. Anne Stanley (an Office Technology consultant with ALS) was a great hit with her session on why sitting at your PC can give you aches and pains, and, probably more important, how you can avoid problems.
A special thanks to Judith Shield from the Clunies Ross Foundation, who made at least four phone calls on our behalf to save us from being thrown out on the street.
Thanks too to Ian Robinson, editor of PC Australia, who gave a short rundown on industry news and gossip at the meeting. Ian has offered to keep us up to date each month on what is happening in the PC world.
Next meeting will be another info-packed one: we will have presentations on Al and Turbo Prolog, and at the end of the meeting you can have a look at the new Modula 2 compiler from JED and an unusual analytical tool which lets you generate database code from diagrams.
If you have just got this magazine, we are talking about THIS Wednesday,
Supportive Vendors
While I'm handing out thank-yous: we have been getting quite a bit of assistance lately from companies around Melbourne who realize the worth of our group. Some of these are listed in our Acknowledgements column, but a special thank you Federal Publishing, publishers of Your Computer magazine.
After a phone call from Alan Barkauskas, Federal provided all the members of our Beginners Training Group with several free copies of Your Computer - they contained lessons and tutorial material on learning Basic.
And talking of the Beginners Training Group - this is still going strong, coordinated ably by Gordon Castle and Alan. They are finding the Compaq that Tech Rentals have loaned us is GREAT (as are the editorial team, including yours truly, who is knocking this Pres Said out in her loungeroom while the Editor toils away on her faithful Columbia).
New SIG Ventures
The AI SIG
I had a talk with Jeff Paton this week about his AI SIG, and it looks like it is definitely a goer. So far about 10 people have turned up to the two meetings, and members of the SIG are already exchanging articles, ideas and information. They've been looking at some of the PD AI products, including a PD Prolog, and a PD Expert System called ESIE.
Jeff tells me that they plan to begin some group self-help projects, where members can have a try at developing a knowledge base using AI rules in circumstances where there is no pressure and lots of assistance from fellow SIG members. Sounds very exciting. (Only today I was at a seminar run by Harvard Professor of Info Technology Warren McFarlan, who said that AI and Expert Systems will revolutionize market strategies in the US in the next 12 months. It's rather thrilling to think that we can get in at the beginning of such revolutions if we want to.
If you are at all interested in AI, you should come along to our September general meeting at which Tony Davidsik will show us the Expert System he developed, and will talk about what AI is really about.
Also at that meeting we'll have two of our Turbo User Group members (Jim Duff and Ron Lyth) talking about the new Turbo Prolog, which, due to some nifty negotiations, we can bring to members at a very low price - see below.
Desktop Publishing
There have been a core of people interested in desktop publishing in the Group, many of whom have got in contact with David Watson (our Editor) after his article on the joys of editing PC Update. As a result of this interest SCA has offered to put on a free PC Desktop Publishing seminar on 10 September. There will be a number of products demoed, and we should have at least half a dozen people there who are pioneering desktop publishing in Melbourne. If there is interest, we may have the nucleus of Desktop publishing SIG .
If you'd like to come, contact Merve Adler at SCA - details are in our Calendar.
If you're interested in Desktop publishing but can't make it, get in touch with David Watson, who can let you know if anything else is being planned.
Members Special Offers
People have been asking whether we'll be repeating our special offers on Turbo products etc. The answer is yes, once we check out the effects of the plummeting Dollar and sales tax (ERGH!!!). Our next general offer will be in the October magazine, but in the meantime we have negotiated the following special offers:
Turbo Prolog $119 with tax (or $99 ex tax)
Norton Utilities $138 with tax, $115 without.
NOTE: Shipping and Handling is another $10.
We should have ten copies of Turbo Prolog on sale at this price at the September meeting - for Members only. See our sales-at-the-door-table. (and talking of the SATD table, we will be getting much tougher from now on, sales END at 6:00 pm. Definite. Our SATD volunteers are missing out on most of the meeting - not a good thing at all. If you want to buy diskettes or get hold of PD software, you'll have to be there before 6:00 But as an alternative, "popular" PD software will now be distributed at the PD SIG meetings).
(Additional note: Have a look at the ad for Supercharger in this issue, another Special Offer available to Melb-PC members!)
A Bunch of Amateur Hackers?!!!
I mentioned that I got a call from PC World's Jonette Lofting this month. They were seeking some idea of how the sales tax on software might affect our members (pretty obviously it will not be very advantageous) and our PD "sales" (shouldn't affect them, because all we're charging for is the media and our copying fee, not actually selling the software.) What did intrigue me was that Jonette, who had recently arrived from NSW, said she had heard there that Melb PC was pretty small bickies, just a bunch of amateur hackers who spent their time copying software illegally!!
To say I was horrified is to be polite, and I sent off a swathe of magazines and a summary of some of our more recent forays into training, seminars, etc to let PC World know what we are really about.
On the topic of software piracy, Lloyd unequivocally stated our position last year. To reiterate, Melb PC's attitude to the illegal copying of software is IT IS NOT AT ALL SUPPORTED by the Group. Our attitude parallels that of most of the PC User Groups in the US, who have tended to adopt the Code of Ethics originated by the Boston Computer Society.
Melb PC goes to a lot of trouble to seek out and review Public Domain software which meets members needs and can be legitimately copied from member to member. We also spend a lot of effort negotiating Member Special Offers on affordable software products like the Norton Utilities and the Turbo Products.
We have always maintained that users will happily pay for software which is reasonably priced and delivers value for money, and the demand for our Special Offers and PD Software Packs bears this out.
Which is not to say we support Copy Protected Software, which I feel, as do most of my colleagues working in the PC field, is a scourge. I spent at least twenty hours last week trying to unravel a copy protection system which had failed, and which threatened to leave me with four unserviceable disks of a new product. What a waste of time. And the effect copy protected software has on corporate backup procedures is horrendous. Most of our members will echo my experiences, and we hope that the message from PC User Groups will eventually get through to vendors.
I suppose that eventually software vendors will come to their senses as have Microsoft and Lotus (with its unprotected site licenses).
Till then, we can only hope that vendors quickly wake up to the realities of the marketplace.
Changes at the Helm
As a result of my movement into the Pres position our VP position was made vacant. At the last meeting of the Committee, Joe de Simone was elected as Vice President pro tem. Congratulations to Joe, who, by the way, is the. person who negotiates most of our Member Special Offers for us.
And Finally, Administrative Systems and the Constitutional Review
We had a healthy response from a number of organisations wanting to offer a tender to last month's Group
Announcement. We're still finalizing our requirements document, and should have it out to people by the time
you read this.
Meanwhile the Constitutional Review team has received a few submissions, and some model constitutions. They
are proceeding on to examine ours, so if you are at all interested, you should contact Leon Cohen quickly.
The Review Team felt that October was a bit ambitious for any proposed amendments, but feel confident they
can make the November meeting. That still means things are very tight.
Enough of these ramblings, time to swap PCs with the Editor, and format this before midnight.
Reprinted from the August 1986 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
