xtra lives and although I was
never a fan of crack intros (sorry) I did appreciate the cracks to fix bugs
and glitches; but really they should have been resolved before the game was issued and released for sale.

RELEVANT TO TODAY?

In a way the article is still relevant today and especially to commodore
users. We know have what's known as homebrew publishers, or bedroom publishers trying to sell new titles, of course you can find a cracked version of it somewhere online! although I think people have now realised that little money is to be made from selling a game this way and the publishers hope to just break even. I think the Commodore community as a whole respects the effort put in. (at least I hope so) so these cracks are few and far between and do seem
to be frowned on by the community as a whole! Indeed some publishers after a couple of years will offer the games as a free download anyway.

I do appreciate the testers or trial versions of the game and think this was a good way forward so people can try before they buy. I liked the Shareware
model of publishing. To be honest who really want to insist "copyright" on a game that's over 20 years old, and if you can't buy the game legally anymore
as in the case with Commodore titles from years ago what options do you have but to download a copy or pray for eBay or a car boot sale to turn one up; and hope it still loads! Of course the people selling compilations of cracked software even to this day are not the most loved of people in the world, yes they are still being sold on eBay etc. ...

How many sales were lost to pirates, who knows! (none were lost to me though)


*************************************
COMPUTERS FOR THE MASSES
NOT JUST THE CLASSES
*************************************

Recent forums have been looking into the possibilities of using the Commodore 64 as a teaching aid for children; indeed many users are saying they do now
use their old computers to teach children the basics. Many people in the computing industry today are where they are because of the home computing boom of the 80`s. Although it's fair to say that any of the 8 bit systems will have been a building block for many web designers and programmers or even hardware designers, and this text will be looking at them all as a whole! Although you have to bear in mind this is a Commodore magazine so some bias may be formed
as I am completely commodore bent (hmm that doesn't sound right does it...
well you know what I mean )

TOO MUCH INTERNET

Look at some of the children today growing up with the Tablets and mobile phones that in the 80`s many would have thought science fiction, most children have some form of computer at home and for my child using the internet seems
to be a must these days just to do homework. Personally I think we need a good mix of imaginative play, building towers, logic, computers, playing with figures (man dolls and girl dolls) and of course chasing people around in some loose sporting activity, like tag or off ground tig, and working as a team (teachers don't quote me)

THE TEACHINGS OF OLD

So how can an old 8 bit system teach children anything because; don't you need internet access and the latest processor and 8gb of memory to actually do anything worthwhile. Well no! not really, it seems kids today are more users than anything else, most have little knowledge about how a computer works or even that they need software loading. I know at work we have been told "this system is to old because it doesn't have xyz software on it and will need replacing", (of course xyz software just needs installing) but for some reason they seem to think the machines are supplied with all the software ready to run. I know many web designer who are professionals i.e. earn a living from
web design; and they don't know the first thing about html code, true you can point, click to create websites but you surely need some understanding of what is happening in the background to make you sites better ;and just to obtain general knowledge about what goes on "under the hood" or to make your page compatible with as many browsers as possible.

ENTER THEN THE 8 BIT SYSTEM

Children should be taught about memory and how to program, the very basics
like printing your name on screen, having the computer prompt for input; and then output the results, changing the screen colours and of course on the commodore Poking a value then Peeking at the result. Many would say basic is dead but I disagree with that statement, especially for primary children, more it's the logic that goes into the formation of an application than the programming language.

WONT CHILDREN GET BOARD

No!

How long did you play around with your 8 bit machine? After school in the holidays and at weekend ,and being dragged down for tea and supper then being forced off the machine to go to bed. Its endless fun seeing your name scroll down the screen; how do you make it move diagonally what about making it go left to the screen edge then go back to the right how do you make it scroll down then up! How do you make it flash in different colours or make the screen change when the text hits the screen edge?

Of course even the actual art of loading a program into memory and starting it can be a challenge to a young mind, but it does get the concepts across about memory and locations especially when the program needs to be run by a SYS command, connecting the various parts together, monitor, printer and disk
drive and making text appear on a printer and not on the screen can also be fun. I do think all this is lost with children just dumped in front of a
tablet or computer and shown how to click on things; they don't seem to know where to look when things don't work.

I remember playing games as a child that were little more than commodore graphics cobbled together with BASIC; the thing is this doesn't matter; and a good idea or concept can overcome crude graphics and sounds, children also don't seem to be bothered about "realistic graphics" but more the excitement
of the game, remember at Christmas when your child spent more time playing
with the box`s than the actual presents, heck a box can be anything; a secret lab, a space ship, an office block, a bank or even a cardboard box!

WORK

What I do find interesting is the number of people we have had at work for "work experience" who actually haven't heard of MS-DOS or DOS and have only seen GUI or graphical user interfaces; some are aware of Linux and Unix but this isn't the general knowledge of the students we have received.

I even spoke to one teacher of Information Technology (although he didn't call it that) who said they were told to drop dos from the curriculum because it's not relevant to today's society and needs. Well I work for a large manufacturing company and we have a number of Dos machines that are needed for the business to run, sometimes it's actually quicker to drop to a dos box on a windows system and issue commands via the command line interface (dos) or run
a created Batch file than to hunt for icons and click on things.

We have even had potential web developers on work experience that didn't know that Html is a programming language! and that without the editor they used at school couldn't even create a basic webpage! One thing about programming on an 8bit system is Memory and resources; as they are fixed you need to be more efficient and creative in your programming, not just suggest more memory and a faster processor, programming for 8 bit systems is a real art form, some of
the demos and games that were and are still created are amazing, and of course this teaches you about being proficient and to utilise resources to the full.

BACK TO TODAY

So is learning on an 8bit system relevant today,

Yes of course as this will teach children the basics of computing in a world where people use computer programs I think we are losing potential talent; as we don't teach the basics anymore. Linux
--- CrashWrite 2.0
* Origin: --:)-- Dragon's Lair BBS --(:- (39:901/281)