Re: A New Hope.

[barana <barana24@telstra.com>]

nighting...@comp2sys.net wrote:
> In these days of massive free downloading via Limewire, KaZaA, eDonkey,
> eMule, BitTorrent etc, it's hard to imagine a day when stuff was not so
> available for your favorite computer.
>
> Dr. Tom used to sector edit stuff, breaking the protection and, often,
> adding his name to the credits of software he edited, to make it look like
> he contributed to the creation of the software. Much software was released
> in this manner and, of course, legitimate programmers were outraged that
> their, and others, material was being savaged and made available in such a
> manner. It cost them future sales, and as a result, they no longer had
> the incentive to improve their product nor wish to create new products
> for the dwindling A2 market.
>
> Quantum Cat (believed by some to be Richard Bennett, although he has
> denied this) led the fight against Tom, along with Nathan Mates, another
> brilliant programmer, who left the A2 world when his frustration with Tom
> reached a head. Tom eventually moved on, as did most of the other players
> and the newsgroup became civil again.  The uneasy calm gets rattled every
> now and then, when those days are recalled.
>
> Many commercial products have since been reclassified as freeware, many
> manuals released to the internet for scanning etc. Tom did this in the
> 80s and 90s but before it was generally accepted and allowed. There are
> those who call him a pioneer; there are those who call him a pirate.
> Either way, in the timeline of the internet, it's ancient history.
>
> Before he left, Tom announced that he was leaving the group and that
> he had zipped up everything he had (over 45,000 files), and put a huge
> 594 megabyte file on his website. It remained there for a few days,
> available for download. It's possible that that file contains source codes
> for many programs, if anyone still has it today.
>
>
you make it sound like a good story line for an adventure game. - your
task is to hack all of the apple 2 freaks machines across the globe
and to piece together the lost fragments of this priceless historical
file.
> >   From: "Charlie" <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net>
> >Although I was here in those days I never really understood what the
> >fight was about...