By Robert Lock — originally published in COMPUTE!’s Gazette Issue 2, August 1983
Welcome to the second issue of COMPUTE!’s Gazette. An exciting fall is shaping up for our industry, and by the time this issue reaches you, many of the new products being introduced for the holiday season will be anxiously anticipated. Next week we’ll be visiting the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, and we’ll give you a detailed report in the September issue.
Your continuing feedback, through the use of the Editor’s Feedback card (bound elsewhere in this issue), and your letters are an important part of the growth and development of this magazine. In case you’re not familiar with our parent magazine COMPUTE!, many of our articles, tutorials, and programs are contributed by readers. Frequently, here, we’ll take an excellent program written for either the VIC-20 or Commodore 64 and create a new version for the other computer, allowing us to present both versions to better meet readers’ needs. That’s one of our major goals, and your feedback is an important part of that process. So, keep those cards and letters coming.
In a major feature, with accompanying sidebar this issue, you’ll find a great deal of information on user groups and their locations. While normal caution is necessary (occasionally you’ll encounter a user group with a bit of a commercial bent), user groups can be excellent sources of local support, sharing information and learning. Regardless of your level of experience and expertise, you’ll probably find you have things to learn there, and many things to contribute as well.
Given the evolution of the computer marketplace, and the preeminent position of the VIC and 64 among the first of the true “consumer” computers, we’d very much like to hear from you regarding family involvement with your computer. Let us know what equipment you have and how you’re using it. What members of the family use the computer on a regular basis? How frequently is the computer used? How frequently do several members use it together? Many of us recall the initial and ongoing concerns regarding the television set as an instrument of passivity and divisiveness in the home. Does your computer promote more collective time for the family? We’d like to hear from you on these and related matters, and would look forward to publishing guest commentaries and collected observations from you.
Copyrights and software: Frequently there’s confusion, especially among beginning computer users, regarding the sharing of commercially produced software. If you provide a copy of a game you purchase to a friend, you’re violating the manufacturer’s copyright. While this activity frequently seems innocent and harmless, the net result of such copying activity can be quite harmful to a software developer. Given enough such copying activity, thousands of dollars in potential revenues may be lost. These are revenues that could have been used by the company to hire more programmers, develop new and better products, even to reduce the retail cost of their existing products. If twenty thousand programs were “shared” each week, and the manufacturer lost $5 per “sharing,” a lot of potential revenues would be drained away. Think about it.
Until next time, enjoy your issue. We’ll look forward to your input on these and other matters.
Robert Lock
Editor In Chief