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Damn you Honest Harry, for drawing the heat on me, and making me work from a smaller office!

Here's another source of recent (and less recent) prods for the ZX Spectrum. This one is more specifically oriented towards demoscene and technical feats.

(The link mentionned in the article seems to be slashdotted, btw.)

The Russians have done it.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.p hp?t=15756

I started with a ZX81 and its 1kb of RAM, little flush keys and built-in BASIC. Moved up (or should I say 'was moved' - I was five years old) - to a ZX Spectrum when that came out. Ahh, the white-knuckle action of Arcadia! The blistering platform mayhem of Horace and the Spiders (by Psion no less)! I spent many a late night (sometimes not retiring until 8pm) hammering away at the rubber keys, navigating some hideous pixellated sprite.

Damn I can still hear the staticky 'eeeeeee-ktsch' of the tape drive now.

Modern computing seems so flat, routine and devoid of character by comparison. What happened?

Me too. Seeing this thread made me feel really happy and pretty old at the same time.

A 48K Spectrum was my second computer after a ZX81. I don't think I ever got so much pleasure out of any other possession I had as a child (and I didn't even have Sam Fox Strip Poker [props to those who actually remember her, and double to those who remember the game]).

The Spectrum just went to show how limited hardware resources would force game developers to write creative, original and addictive games. Knight Lore, RedHawk, Manic Miner, Heavy on the Magick, Spellbound, Knight Tyme, Skooldaze, Sweevo's World and above all Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge were among the best games I have played on any platform. Shame on game developers for the formulaic crap they spew these days.

Does anyone else remember CRASH magazine? Whatever happened to those guys? It was almost worth being a spectrum owner just for that mag. Best and funniest game reviews ever, and Oliver Frey's covers were fantastic. For years I wanted to meet a girl like the one on this cover he did.

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazin es/Crash/Issue18/CRCover18.jpg

Here's me and a million other Brits aged 25-35 saying 'thank you' for the Spectrum. If it wasn't for this little rubber wonder I doubt I'd be sat at this desk today, working in IT as a career. I'll be botting up the emulator" tonight to celebrate!

It's also worth noting Amstrad's healthy attitude to the retro scene (they bought Sinclair Research in 1986, and many of those million Brits will think of Spectra every time they watch The Apprentice...). Anyway, the Spectrum ROM was cracked & emulated before permission was sought. When someone decided to approach Amstrad to seek permission, one Cliff Wilson stepped forward with a simple reply: "Yes, do what you like with the Spectrum ROM, just don't charge money for it and don't remove our copyright message." Such an open attitude towards the scene in 1999 means that it's still thriving today.

actually it's kind of nice, most people using gadugadu and tlen are Polish Speakers.

Wouldn't you prefer to find a messaging network and client where everybody speaks your language, maybe aim or msn or yahoo or icq or perhaps paltalk. Personally I like both tlen and gg since they both give me a chance to practice Polish. Tlen and GaduGadu both cache messages so when you sign in you get any messages you have missed and free Email which seems to be relatively spam and scam free.

tleenx2 is a client for tlen on ubuntu and gaim does a good job with gadu gadu.

Tlen also has a form of messaging a lot like plain text email where you can post a reply along with the preceeding conversation (without the delay of email) and also sms messaging to mobile phones within poland. I think you can link your gadu gadu account with your tlen account.

but at the end of the day what does it matter to you if gaim has some functionality that you will never use someone thought it was of value and sat down and coded it (probably a Pole).
  gaim does a good job of bringing together the various messaging clients and that is one of its most useful features.

I would be surprised if there were not a lot more national/language based instant messaging programs with thier own user base.

As a final thought gaim is a cross platform cross protocol messaging client, should Polish Linux users be forced to boot windows so they can talk with thier windows and gadugadu using friends?

Polands produced some world class programmers anyone old enough to remember "shock" from 1992 http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0 007726
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=You rSinclair/Issue82/Pages/YourSinclair8200040.jpg
absolutely awesome for an 8bit machine with 48k of ram (128k swopping in 16k banks on later models)

actually it's kind of nice, most people using gadugadu and tlen are Polish Speakers.

Wouldn't you prefer to find a messaging network and client where everybody speaks your language, maybe aim or msn or yahoo or icq or perhaps paltalk. Personally I like both tlen and gg since they both give me a chance to practice Polish. Tlen and GaduGadu both cache messages so when you sign in you get any messages you have missed and free Email which seems to be relatively spam and scam free.

tleenx2 is a client for tlen on ubuntu and gaim does a good job with gadu gadu.

Tlen also has a form of messaging a lot like plain text email where you can post a reply along with the preceeding conversation (without the delay of email) and also sms messaging to mobile phones within poland. I think you can link your gadu gadu account with your tlen account.

but at the end of the day what does it matter to you if gaim has some functionality that you will never use someone thought it was of value and sat down and coded it (probably a Pole).
  gaim does a good job of bringing together the various messaging clients and that is one of its most useful features.

I would be surprised if there were not a lot more national/language based instant messaging programs with thier own user base.

As a final thought gaim is a cross platform cross protocol messaging client, should Polish Linux users be forced to boot windows so they can talk with thier windows and gadugadu using friends?

Polands produced some world class programmers anyone old enough to remember "shock" from 1992 http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0 007726
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=You rSinclair/Issue82/Pages/YourSinclair8200040.jpg
absolutely awesome for an 8bit machine with 48k of ram (128k swopping in 16k banks on later models)

Well, there was always Shanghai Karate which did what Way of the Exploding Fist, Way of the Tiger, etc. had done, just much, much worse.

Worst game I can remember playing though was Grid Iron. The thing that isn't even mentioned in that review is how buggy the whole thing was (presumably they didn't play it long enough to notice). You'd start off playing as the Chicago Bears and 10 games down the line you were coaching the Chicano Berts. Oh, and since it can be difficult to remember what were good or bad graphics, Super Hang On was reviewed that same issue. Compare and contrast...

Well, there was always Shanghai Karate which did what Way of the Exploding Fist, Way of the Tiger, etc. had done, just much, much worse.

Worst game I can remember playing though was Grid Iron. The thing that isn't even mentioned in that review is how buggy the whole thing was (presumably they didn't play it long enough to notice). You'd start off playing as the Chicago Bears and 10 games down the line you were coaching the Chicano Berts. Oh, and since it can be difficult to remember what were good or bad graphics, Super Hang On was reviewed that same issue. Compare and contrast...

Happy gaming! I didn't found out if the save function works (was there any), so every time you have to play from level 1, which is a bit tiresome with its 80 levels or so :D

It's still the best game around, easy to play, you have to puzzle a bit at each new level, great great fun.

I love:
1. Warcraft (2, 3 and 3x) -- the story and continuity are fantastic
2. Age of Empires -- for the ancient history aspects and because it's strategy
3. Transport Tycoon -- it has good chillout music as well!
4. Star Wars Pod Racer -- nothing more calming than speed :D
5. ZX Spectrum games (see http://www.worldofspectrum.org/, for instance) which I play via an emulator for the sake of the good old times ;)

best game ever. Click the java icon to play it in your browser. And dammit, it's still as addictive as 20 years ago.

Why do game companies spend so much time and effort designing very complex game scenarios that are only used for 2 minutes of gameplay? IMHO the focus should change from ultra-complex money sucking graphics to exploring new ways of gameplay and more interactivity with the envirnment. Just check some of the old ZX Spectrum games and how much fun can be pulled out of so little computing power - http://www.worldofspectrum.org/. Keep the graphics, but don't forget it should be entertaing even without them.

Pimania! By mel croucher, 1982.

My Xbox can play more NES, SNES, TG16, Master System, Genesis, Game Boy, and N64 games than the Wii will ever be able to play. I find it funny that Nintendo fanboys are literally creaming themselves over a feature that Xbox had years ago.

No it can't. It's not the same thing at all.

You're using a clumsy hack to download illegal ROMs from unknown sources.

That's not what I'm excited about at all. I could do this for the past 10 years or more on my PC.

I'm excited that I can obtain legal copies of games that compensate the people who brought the game to me, and that I know it's from people who know how both the origional was programed, and how to emulate it on the new hardware. Without guesswork or clumsy hacks.

I log on, select a game, buy it legally, and play it. Simple. "Just works".

This is the same reason I don't purchase used games if I Can help it. New game sales tells the publisher that people like their game. I'm more likley to see more games like them in the future. This is a way for me to continue to tell publishers and developers that I liked their classic titles. This is what I've been waiting for for a long time.

Before you answer that you can legally rip any ROMs you own the carts for, it's not so. It's a common fallacy in the emmulation world. In most piracy circles, people get "legal advice" where they find some "loop hole" they like, and they are convinced it's valid. Whether it's based in reality or not (24 hour rule, for instance.) The common myth in the US stems from USC 117 Section 17. It allows for owners of software to make a single backup copy. The purpose of this dates back to the 70s or 80s when software was distributed mostly on volatile magnetic storage mediums. People like to pretend that it extends to ROMs too, but in fact, not only is it not true, but case law (See Atari vs JS&A or google it) contradicts it.

Obviously this will vary from country to country, but the most vocal "advocated" of this kind of thing come from the U.S.

Long story short, what the x-box has nothing like this at all. There's a series of hacks that try to aproximate it, but give almost none of the benefit I'm looking for, and none of the legality. Not the elegance or ease of use. It's like comparing building a car yourself to buying one off the lot. Good luck with that.

Replying to myself is bad, but you can retrieve the dodgy Crash cover art from ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazin es/Crash/Issue18/CRCover18.jpg

3.4. What was the first game with an on-screen counter while loading?

Technician Ted (Hewson) had a counter that went around on the screen while the game loaded. I think this was the first. The first game to play a game while loading a game was Joe Blade 2 (Players), which had a simple pac-man type game.

The ZX Spectrum hosts a tresure trove of games that are mostly unknown outside of Speccy strongholds. Ultimate (which later became RARE) released a whole slew of games during the eighties which were innovative, fun and often offered types of play which have never been recreated on modern platforms. Attic Attack, Knight Lore, Jetpack, all classics and worth looking up. Plus games like School Daze ( set in a school, Take Two's Bully sounds suspiciously like a remake of this), Fat Worm Blows a Sparky, Knight Tyme, Lords of Midnight, Target Renegade, How To Be a Complete Bastard, too many to name.

The Snes had tons of really great RPG's many of which have only become playable to no japanese speakers thanks to fan Translaton patches. Titles like Bhamut Lagoon, Seiken Densetsu 3 ( the real sequal to secret of manna), some weird ones like Wedding Peach (bloody nuts but oddly fun) and Sailor Mood, plus some stuff that had wester releases but never took off like the Adventures of Spike McFang and Terranigma.

Atari classic I,Robot has got to be worth mentioning, the first true 3d game, released in 1983 in the arcades, sank without trace, but was at least a decade ahead of it's time, Starfox seemed to borrow a lot from this game.

To me however, the most underrated game of all time has got to be Gunpey. Appearing on the Bandai Wonderswan, both game and console were developed by the legendary Gunpei Yakoi, the man responisble for the Game and Watch and The Gameboy. A stupidly simple puzzler, its really worth looking for. You can get both console and game for next to nothing on Ebay, why this never got a western release I'll never know but it's a lot of fun.

There are a lot of ex-z80 users around in the UK as the ZX Spectrum was insanely popular.

I'm just pleased I chose z80 to start with instead of the alternatives such as 6502. As the z80 and x86 instruction sets are very similar it continued to be useful to me as I moved onto PCs from the microcomputers in the 80s. (I think Zilog was helped by an influx of ex-Intel developers, it might be the other way round though!)

Even now I can still remember the opcodes and mappings (e.g. 195 = jmp, 201 = ret) from patching games without the benefit of an assembler or disassembler!

Ever heard of Skool Daze? The premise of the game is not as important as how the game plays. Why would anyone play an ex-convict working for the mafia? Because GTA games are fun and well made, that's why. Bizarre indeed...

Ditto Spectrums. ZX BASIC was anything but standard (max 52 variables, no left$/mid$ business - just the strange TO keyword, compulsory LET keywords etc etc), and it certainly wasn't MS (IIRC). It may well have been inspired by MS-BASIC, but I don't think that Sinclair/Amstrad purchased anything from MS. See:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/sinclairbasic/histo ry.html
(I know that slashcode will stick a space in that URL, but I can't remember how to post URLs)

However, back in 1983 on my 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum there was a single key game that she was able to play quite well - Ground Force Zero.

Written in BASIC and just requiring the use of the 'B' key.

The screen was filled with a range of different sized skyscrapers and you started off at the top in your plane. Every time your plane reached the other side of the screen it would descend one row of characters.

Your single key dropped a bomb which would hopefully land on one of the skyscrapers and demolish a few floors. You could only drop one bomb at a time, so you had to make sure you removed the higher ones first. The game ended either when you crashed into a skyscraper or demolished all of the skyscrapers. On landing your aircraft successfully, the pilot got out and did somersaults...well at least i think that was happening as the chap was a mono 8x8 graphic!

Also Rescate Atlantida, by Dynamic, would let you play MasterMind during the loading phases (this was a multi-load game). Released in 1988.

Is this a different Ubisoft from the purveyors of "Pro-Tennis Tour" that graced the Spectrum, Amiga, Atari and PC around 1990?

And, more importantly, will they be including a purse in this one?

I think this guy likes the sound of his own voice and that he doesn't know much relevent history (and that he hasn't been bothered to use Google either).

As I get a bit sick of explaning to muppets like him who are arrogant enough to think they have uncovered some crucial legal precident or frame work that no-one else has noticed (including teams of lawyers working for firms like Sony), the issue of emulation has been delt with in court in the US many times, even specifically in the area of emulating video games consoles.

A good example is the Connectix vs. Sony case. Connectix of course were responsible for the the leading quality PlayStation emulator 'Virtual Game Station' for Windows and Macintosh.

Sony tried multiple legal angles to stop distribution of this program (and similar emulators), including 11 claims of patent violation. They lost, and in the end just bought the technology from Connectix to keep it from being avalible.

The same issue had already come up years ago in case involving Sony and Accolade (and it had bearing on the Connectix vs. Sony case). That 'Emulation is illegal' was a bogus assertion then, a bogus assertion in the Connectix vs. Sony case, and a bogus assertion now.

In the Connectix vs. Sony case, the court ruled that it was perfectly legal for developers to make dumps of the firmware for the purposes of building an emulator (even if it's a commercial competing product). You may not, however, distribute them or include patent code in your code (no surpise there).

There is quite a good summary here.

Of course this still doesn't mean it's okay to obtain ROM's from the internet (obviously) but some people inextricably link "emulation" with "OMGWTFBQQ free gamez0rs 11!!11" and get confused when you try to treat the issue of emulation as a seperate topic from software piracy.

Amstrad developed an email telephone a few years ago that allow you to download and play Spectrum games. Unfortunately you can only download games from their (extremely limited) catalogue and you have to play them on the built-in screen.

It's a pity these machines do not have a small solid state drive. It would be great to transfer a few tape images to a TV console and start to play them as they were meant to be played. There are thousands of freely distributable games for the Spectrum and new games are being written.

You can have the ZX Spectrum through the emulator. My preferred choice is the the spectaculator.

Have you looked at the page ZX81 ROM's. There's a mention of the Forth ROM by David Husband. (Google search: ZX81 "Forth Rom")

Riiiiight.... but aren't they supposed to actively enforce these patents, or is that copyright?

Java is just an emulator for a processor that never actually existed....

Thus ALL emulators violate this patent - and depending on how you read it, all software that calls other software, including shell scripts, binaries, operating systems which call the BIOS, any BIOS that calls the BIOS on another board - eg SCSI controller, about the only things that don't infringe are self-contained firmware that can't have third party add-ons.

But back to emulators - when was the first emulator released? surely a long time back - I remember something called "executor" that emulated a Mac on a PC back about '96 or so... and there must have been well established game console emulators around at the time.

A bit of googling reveals emulators for things like Z80 processors and CP/M that were last developed in the late '80s - meaning there is an easily established prior art against a patent filed in 1993

According to This Page. (scroll down to 1962/1965) IBM are fools for licensing emulation from anybody...

By 1986, everybody was emulating all sorts of things.

Emulation was well documented since before I was born, and yet Sun thinks a 1993 patent by Kodak is valid to the tune of 90+ million? Something STINKS!

Other concepts in the patent date back to the 1960s! (from This article)

Other interesting points:
Java applets don't ask for help - they simply are there - it is the web browser or operating system that figures out that help is required, and loads up Java to help it. As such, a java applet is a document, in the same way a Shockwave/Flash file is a document, and so are most other file formats. One wonders where this leaves Micro$oft's patent on embedding code in a document.

Skool Daze

and its sequel here

Back To Skool

Skool Daze

and its sequel here

Back To Skool

I'm doing a remake of the crap-classic Camelot Warriors, but I am incompetent when it comes to art as this prototype for the knight shows (I gave up when I got as far as the arms). If anybody can draw, please help.

The ultimate question is regarding distribution.

This evening while looking for something completely unrelated I found an interesting page providing some case law regarding emulation at: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/EmuFAQ2000/Appendix B.htm

Quoting from it:

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. George Frena. 839 F.Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla., 1993).
George Frena, the sysop of the Techs Warehouse BBS, had 170 digitized images from both Playboy and Playgirl magazine posted to his computerized bulletin board system. The two magazines were commercial adult publications protected under copyright law. Playboy Enterprises, owner and publisher of both magazines, sued Frena for copyright infringement. The Federal District Court acknowledged Frena's claims that the uploading had been done by his users without his approval; however, it still found him liable for intellectual property violation. It ruled that Frena's users had illegaly copied the pictures by digitizing them; furthermore, Frena had infringed on exclusive vendor distribution rights by making the pictures available for download by his users. It also found Frena in violation of trademark law, since the infringing material contained registered trademarks belonging to Playboy Enterprises (the Playboy and Playgirl logos).

This case established two things. First, courts can find against a defendant in an intellectual property dispute whether or not the defendant is aware of such activity. Second, intellectual property protection extends to all copies of a given work regardless of how they are made or the media on which they are presented.

It would not be hard for a plaintiff to argue that in bypassing a DRM system, the resulting file could very easily end up being copied by potentially thousands and thousands of users, with or with out the knowledge of the original copier of the file give how most P2P apps work.

There does exist the principal of "substantial non infringing use", however when a system exists to prevent rampant copying and is bypassed, it is not unheard of (and some would say not unreasonable) for a content owner/licensee owner (ie Apple) to fear unauthorized distribution and sue preemptively.

(And yes, being a suspicious puppy, I did look at the network traffic while it was starting up just in case it was downloading on the fly...)

But 64K? Pah! There were more fun games in 16K - I mean, who can forget 3D Monster Maze and JetPac?

I remember back in 1984, cramming the tasty breakfast cereal "Weetabix" down my throat in large amounts so i could cash the tokens in for the "Weetabix Vs The Titchies" Game.

Basically a crummy space invaders clone using animated versions of the cereal to shoot down "titchies" (i think they were lesser cereals)

Quite a disappointing game really, but lo and behold... I still have it, sat in the box with my 48k rubbber keyed Sinclair ZX

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/hardware/feata.html

"What many home computer users really need is something that is many times faster than a cassettes but much cheaper than a disk. Such devices exist and are known as 'floppy tapes' or 'stringy floppies'. Originally developed in America for Tandy's TRS-80 Model 1 system by Exactron, the first stringly-floppy used a continuous loop of tape in a cartridge housing; the idea was borrowed from the eight track audio tape system that was fashionable some years ago. The principle of operation is simple; the tape loop circulates constantly, so the various programs can be found much more quickly. A catalogue of all the programs and files stored on tape is also kept (just like the directory on a disk), so a list of the contents is always available."

Here's a Creative Computing article about the wonders of Stringy Floppies. I really loved that magazine. David Ahl's da man! (Note to kids about the article: Kate Bush is not the president's daughter.)

"Whether or not the wafertape has any real future in the microcomputer industry is for Exatron to decide. If it takes the time to finish its product, that certainly will be a start."

-Don

Our Sinclair Spectrums could only manage eight colors - and we loved it

I'm suprised at the direction of the change..

I grew up with computers, my first being a ZX Spectrum, then graduating through bigger machines until I landed in PC-land.

I fought for a job with a local company a few years back and managed to become a java programmer despite minimal knowledge. Since then I've worked for about four years as a Java/C++ programmer - utilising other skills such as perl, x86 assembly, etc.

After that much time though I realised I actually hated programming for other people - it took most of the fun out of it. (This is a simplification of course).

Luckily I found myself in a position to do 'part time' sysadmining when a colleauge left the job.

Now I'm full-time sole sysadmin for a larger company and I couldn't be happier.

Sure I still write code .. bash scripts, perl code, and other utilities to help myself and my minions - but now I do it for fun.

There's no way that I'd ever go back to being a developer. I like the variety, the challenges, the sheer unpredictability of my current role - becoming a developer would remove so much of that.

Football Manager can be found here - downloadable for zx spectrum emulators or can be played via a java applet

World Of Spectrum

For a good windows-based emulator try: Spectaculator

but the World of Spectrum has 10,677 titles just for one computer - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Is this really how they are doing it? If so, can anyone post the list of file names that they are looking for?

In all honesty, don't know. However, they certainly didn't appear to do much more than that. Getting as far as WoS's database entry for Soldier of Fortune (one click away from the game listings) clearly shows that it's not the modern game.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, that's the most clear-cut case; some of them (eg 007) I don't believe the IDSA are representing the copyright holders to the versions on WoS, even if we don't have permission to distribute them. Others (Mario, Frogger, etc) the IDSA may be representing the copyright holders, at least for some of the versions. If the IDSA responds to Martijn's reply, then action may be taken with respect to those games.

from here

From: dmca@idsa.com.no.junk.mail To:abuse@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Berne Convention - Demand for Immediate Take Down - Notice of
Infringing Activity - Reference#: 922932 Date: 14 February, 2003 5:23 PM
Interactive Digital Software Association 1211 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 USA Attention: Piracy Enforcement - DMCA Officer
Telephone: 202-223-2400 Fax: 202-223-2401 E-mail: dmca@idsa.com Friday, February 14, 2003

Dear abuse@xxxxxxxxxx,

I am an authorized representative of the Interactive Digital Software Association ("IDSA"), which represents the intellectual property interests of almost thirty companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet.

IDSA is providing this letter of notification to make xxxxxxxxxx aware of material available via its network or system that infringes the exclusive copyright and trademark rights of one or more IDSA members. This notice is addressed to you as an agent of xxxxxxxxxx for purposes of receiving notifications of claimed infringement. We hereby affirm that the IDSA is authorized to act on behalf of the IDSA members whose exclusive copyright rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

Based on the information obtained by IDSA that is provided in this e-mail's attachments, IDSA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members by offering for download one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products protected by copyright, including, but not limited to: 007 Barbarian Donkey Kong Frogger Mario Pac Man Soldier Of Fortune

Through the Berne Convention and other international treaties covering intellectual property rights, we believe that our members' rights in such games are entitled to the full protection of the intellectual property laws of your country. The unauthorized copies of such game product[s] appearing on, or made available through, such site are listed and/or identified on such Internet site by their titles, variations thereof or depictions of associated artwork (any such game titles, copies, listings and/or other depictions of, or references to, any contents of such game product, are hereinafter referred to as "Infringing Material"). Based on the information at its disposal on 2/7/2003 6:49:39 PM GMT, IDSA believes that the statements herein accurately describe the infringing nature and status of the Infringing Material.

Accordingly, IDSA hereby requests xxxxxxxxxx to immediately remove or disable access to the Infringing Material at the URL address identified above.

Should you have questions, please contact the IDSA at the above listed mailing address or by replying to this email. Please also include the above noted Reference Number in the subject line of all email correspondence. We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is appreciated.
Regards,
Robert L. Hunter, IV

Interactive Digital Software Association
Note: The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.

From: Martijn van der Heide
To: dmca@idsa.com.no.junk.mail
Subject: Your reference #922932
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:54:02 +0100 (CET)
Your reference: #922932

Dear Mr Hunter,

Thank you for your email dated 14th February 2003, 5:23PM CET. The World of Spectrum archive site at is a software preservation site, archiving software for the classic microcomputer, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

We strive to gain permission for redistribution for all software in the archive from the original publisher, and if the publisher no longer exists, from the original author. We publish all such permits on our site, and where such permission has been rescinded by either the publisher and/or author, we comply and remove the affected titles from the archive. Our copyrights policy is available in a dedicated section of the site, the Copyrights section, at .

To this end, we take all allegations that we are carrying software to which we do not have permission very seriously, however, the list of titles provided to us by yourselves is unfortunately somewhat vague, and we believe there may in fact be 'false positives', with titles in our archive of old software originally made during a period between 1982 to 1992 matching currently available software. An example is the title 'Soldiers of Fortune', for which we have explicit formal permission from the publisher Firebird Software Ltd (a label from British Telecom). If there is indeed clear and present proof that the titles you specifically list are present in our archive, we will be happy to remove those titles to endeavour to retain the goodwill we have in the industry and our position as being responsive to creators requests. To this end, could you please provide further information on the titles you have listed, such as publisher (or relevant IDSA member), release date, platform and so on, so that we can properly investigate and expedite this request.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Yours sincerely,
Martijn van der Heide
--
Martijn van der Heide
Owner of the official world archive for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
The World of Spectrum, http://www.worldofspectrum.org/

-------------

So, if you actually look at the gif associated with Donkey Kong, you'll see that the girl appears to be humping the monkeys leg furiously, while he sweats profusely and fights Mario off. And who can blame him?!?

They have *every* Spectrum game I hold copyright on up there. No-one has ever asked for permission to distribute and I've not given it.

Please accept the apologies of the WoS team for that; we have made good faith efforts to contact copyright holders of all Spectrum programs we know about, as can been seen from the lists available.

If you do wish your games to be removed from WoS, mail mia (at) worldofspectrum.org and they will be removed ASAP. However, I would like to take this opportunity to ask for your permission to distribute your programs from WoS. Contact me or WoS if you would like any further details.

Already been thought of :-) See the Spectrum emulator for the Nokio 9210.

Reading that link you realize that essentially they are PRO-IDSA.....

These users is the reason to why Apple has been able to survive the late 80s and early 90s when the x86 ran away from then performance wise.

It is fun to notice all these little fanatic communities for all old computers: Atari, Amiga, ABC80, Spectrum, C64...

It is nice to see that some of us aren't here just for performance and the latest games!

I totally agree! My first computer (a ZX Spectrum 48. For those who don't remember them, they pretty much owned the UK games market throughout the 1980's and early 90's) could manage a total of seven colors on screen at one time, and only two colors per character space.

Back then, the only thing they had was gameplay and originality. Something that is sorely missed in most of todays games.

Agreed, some pages have pretty horrifically unoptimal html. I've seen HTML files that are 40% or more just *redundant whitespace* (e.g. from heavy indentation, spaces, not tabs, that sort of thing).

I suspect a fair amount of bw could also be saved if webpage developers replaced all their non-animated GIFs with 8-bit PNGs. I replaced all the GIFs on my web page (probably about 50 or so) with PNGs, and it reduced the average size of the images by about 30-35%. In some cases files were almost 50% smaller. Not once was the PNG larger than the GIF.

Of the tools I've tried, the ImageMagick (which comes with RedHat and is available on Windows too) "convert" utility seems to consistently produce the smallest PNG files (Photoshop's are always slightly larger because they add "Adobe" and some other crap to the header comments).

Its easy to convert large numbers of files using tools like ImageMagick, so there really is no excuse for web page developers not to use it. Photoshop also has a batch-converter, AFAIK.

"Web browsers don't support" is not an excuse anymore, unless you have alpha (specifically multiple levels of transparency), which some of the older browsers didn't handle so well.

Many web pages have simple, no-transparency, no-animation GIFs. These could all be PNGs. The site http://www.worldofspectrum.org/, as an example, has an archive which includes screenshots of thousands of ZX spectrum loading screens etc.