In article <4eca8f2d2esee....@walkingingermany.invalid>,
   Russell Hafter News <see....@walkingingermany.invalid> wrote:

He can correct me if I'm wrong but I understood him to mean that he never
contacted ROL about the features he wanted - but simply 'asked around' about a
survey that was IIRC never mentioned. I took the bits that I snipped as 'fog'
and got down to the essential details.

[bits snipped - sorry]

--
        John

In article <4eca913e8fj...@cartmell.demon.co.uk>,
   John Cartmell <j...@cartmell.demon.co.uk> wrote:

I understood it completely differently.

I took it to mean that he regularly contacted ROL to find
out what was going on, and was studiously ignored by them.

In that situation I think I would have given up long before
three years of what must have appeared as good money after
bad.

/If/ my interpretation is correct, then I would regard ROL's
behavious as not only extremely rude, but appalling business
practice.

Smacks to me of saying to my customers "you can book a
holiday now for sometime in the future. I do not know when
it will happen, nor exactly where, but if you pay a £60
deposit now, and another one next year, and so on for every
year until I decide to actually run it, then I can guarantee
that you will be able to take part."

I do not need a business guru to tell me how many takers I
would have got!

I have never subscribed to select, after all, I have only
gone over to RISC OS 4.02 in the last couple of months and I
am still getting used to it.

But as I am also running a business that takes people's
money up-front, with a promise of something later, I do feel
in a position to comment.

The big difference is that in my line I am legally required
to provide financial guarantees so that people get their
money back if anything goes wrong - I never heard anything
to suggest that select subscribers were protected in the
same way. They are bit like the poor Farepack customers in
that way.

--
Russell
http://www.russell-hafter-holidays.co.uk
Russell Hafter Holidays         E-mail to enquiries at our domain
Holiday specialists for Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic

Sign the petition to press the government for more resources for rail electrification
<http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/electrify/>

In message <4eca913e8fj...@cartmell.demon.co.uk>
          John Cartmell <j...@cartmell.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Well, Jeremy obviously did ask for something (progress reports and to be
asked what he wanted from Select) and that wasn't "implemented", although it
seems to me to be something that wouldn't even have needed much developer
input.  Incidently, I recently watched a Select presentation from Wakefield
where Paul Middleton said that he didn't know where Select was going, the
developers just pleased themselves.

I don't see anything in Jeremy's postings to indicate that he didn't ask ROL
directly (at least on the Select mailing list, if there was one), so why do
you assume he just "asked around"?

Simon

--
Eiffel and RISC OS - Better alternatives.

In article <4eca973397see....@walkingingermany.invalid>, Russell Hafter News

I have snipped your comments that assume your interpretation to be correct. As
he refers to the promise of a survey that I don't remember, even though I
reported on the Select release for Acorn User and MyRISCOS. I've checked my
published words about the initial release:

'There has been much speculation but at last the contents of RISCOS Ltd's new
offering, RISC OS Select, otherwise known as RISC OS 4+, has been revealed as
more than a simple list of wishes and RISC OS Ltd have done exactly what every
successful company must do - they've listened. As one aspect of RISC OS 4+
after another was demonstrated my overwhelming thought was, "That's just what
we wanted." '

and

'ROL were still taking on board ideas offered this week and agreeing to
include features that I have been requesting ever since Risc PCs were first
sold. The RO4+ operating system is being being sold over a period of time and
early users of the OS will be able to help remove outstanding problems and
influence the product that is produced. There will be no justification for
later complaint if you don't take advantage of that offer now.'

I didn't mention a survey. I don't remember ROL mentioning a survey. From
Jeremy's comment I assumed that he didn't contact ROL with a list of his "can
you please include ..." and that he had conflated the Castle promotion of the
(later abandoned) Merlin scheme with the ROL request for feedback from beta
versions of Select software.

I'm sure Jeremy will tell me if I've got that wrong - and perhaps let us see a
copy of the request list that he sent to ROL, if indeed that was the case.

--
        John

In article <17b19aca4e.simonwillco...@home.invalid>, Simon Willcocks

Because of what he said: "If I remember correctly, one of the early
"promises" of the Select scheme was that people who contributed would get
some say in what was done. It never happened."

That appears to be taken from my Acorn User report that I've already quoted:
"early users of the OS will be able to help remove outstanding problems and
influence the product that is produced"
It did happen.

and "I was one of the people regularly asking for info about what ROL were
doing, and asking when they were going to do the survey they talked about at
first, and regularly being ignored."

which seems to me to describe newsgroup chat rather than a formal question
direct to ROL - but Jeremy can put me right if I'm wrong. As I've already said
it also seems to better describe Castle's Merlin idea than Select and I
thought that Jeremy may have conflated the two. In any case no developer would
promise that all requests would be implemented and Jeremy is wrong in assuming
that ROL have ignored all customer requests. It *would* be instructive to see
that list that Jeremy sent to ROL; perhaps some *will* surface in RO6. Jeremy?

--
        John

In message <bc3f5fca4e.Franz@fra...@fwerner.plus.com>
          Franz Werner <fr...@fwerner.co.uk> wrote:

And that is called video conferencing. I think you are confusing
terminology. What you are referring to as VOIP appears to be SIP. SIP
is mainly used for VOIP, but does allow video or text (and probably is
extensible to other things like remote control.) Skype does VOIP, MSN
does VOIP, iChat does VOIP.

No iChat is Mac only. It uses the Oscar protocol (AIM, ICQ) As far as
I can tell grapevine uses an older ICQ protocol and will not show
iChat users as online. AIM 5.9 on windows uses the same protocol and
is compatible with the video chat. (I understand the video quality is
lower than a mac to mac conference) Newer versions can also use jabber
(Google) but can only IM to anything other than iChat. iChat can
produce full screen smooth motion video conferences (usable even on a
350MHz machine). It is good enough to use for useful communication,
rather than as a gimmick that wears off.

Trillian pro is supposed to be able to videoconference with iChat too.

This sort of thing and a decent flash are pretty much all I need the
Mac for (iTunes is nice though), RISC OS doing the rest of what I
need.

--
Jess
 http://jess.itworkshop-nexus.net

In message <7772aaca4e.j...@itworkshop.invalid>
          Jess Hampshire <phantasm...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Grapevine uses Oscar but at the moment it only implements the bits
that are necessary for basic ICQ use.

Alan

--
RISC OS - you know it makes cents

In message <9de3b7ca4e.spamha...@keepyourfilthyspamtoyourself.co.uk>
          Alan Wrigley <spamha...@keepyourfilthyspamtoyourself.co.uk>
wrote:

Thanks for the clarification. Presumably the newer versions of Oscar
are supersets of the earlier version, and the missing parts are to do
with interoperability between AIM and ICQ?

I have noticed with most AIM/ICQ clients it is possible to log in with
an account from the other service, will GV be offering a generic Oscar
service (AIM/ICQ/.Mac) eventually?

Is jabber planned?

--
Jess
 http://jess.itworkshop-nexus.net

In article <4eca913e8fj...@cartmell.demon.co.uk>,
   John Cartmell <j...@cartmell.demon.co.uk> wrote:

The "fog" you ignored contained the following:

" During that time I was one of the people regularly asking for info about
what ROL were doing, and asking when they were going to do the survey they
talked about at first, and regularly being ignored. "

You need to read *all* of the content before replying to *some* of it.
Particularly if the bit you ignore/fail to read happens to be critical.

--

Steve Pampling

On 28 Mar, John Cartmell wrote in message
  <4ecaa88dd9j...@cartmell.demon.co.uk>:

IIRC, they were questions to the Select mailing list, which is the
support forum for Select users.  So, they were direct to ROL.

--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England

http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/

On 28 Mar, John Cartmell wrote in message
  <4eca913e8fj...@cartmell.demon.co.uk>:

Wrong.  He said he asked ROL for info, *and* asked them about the survey
that they had promised.  He said he was ignored.  It really can't be much
clearer than that.

I suppose I could always trawl back through the select list archives to
check what what actually happened, but I've better things