In the news letter it states that AMS 2.04 has a 32K asm program limit when it's 24K.

Yeah, in "Ask ticalc.org." I e-mailed Eric about it.

There are too few choices, especially for the 82-86.

Well, it might be because there aren't that many programs being made for the 82-86. Most 83 programs I've seen in the new files are in BASIC, and most people tend to look down on BASIC (assembly programmers, at least...).

Bah, that newsletter needs serious work.

-corey

The TIGCM one of course :)

-Corey

have you guys seen the new TIGCM newsletter? I've never seen a more horrible piece of crap in my life! They're bastardizing the TIGCM name:

* Texas Instruments is FAR from a monopoly. While they own a large portion of the high school market, it's certainly not a monopoly (and the author of the article paints >50% to be the monopoly mark, which is completely false). Whatever happened to HP and Casio? HP calcs are comparable in functionality, so the monopoly is consumer-driven. And then we have older markets, where HP is making a killing. Finally, don't forget that having a monopoly is PERFECTLY LEGAL - it's _abusing_ such a monopoly that is illegal, and TI has not done so.

* The guy put his birthday in the news, and Ti-Galaxy's 1-year aniversary, but not ticalc's?

* I don't know about you, but in _my_ school people steal calcs just for the "fun" of doing so, even passworded ones. A permanent PIN couldn't be added because someone could be locked out of their own calc, and TI can't replace them under warranty every time that happens. If you have a problem, do what I do and keep it in your pocket or a locker at all times.


* Then there's some crazy guy bitching about programmers copying good ideas. Windows copying Macs is the given example - so, following in that line of logic, let me pose a rhetorical question: would you rather still be running DOS? Copying is _good_ when it yields superior products all around. Are you going to tell me that, say, Epic was wrong to publish Unreal Tournament because it "copies" the first person shooter idea from id's games?

* The raw interview with Nick is very entertaining, even to those of us who hear his ranting all the time - but to put up a raw interview is very, very unprofessional.

* An article on saving space in BASIC programs which recommends splitting up disp's into multiple lines? That kills space! An extra one/five bytes depending on the calc - the comma byte is matched by the carriage return/line break (that's char #13, btw), followed by the amount of space required for "Disp " (with that space) on the calc, which would be 1 byte for 82/83(+), and 5 on the higher calcs.

* Somebody bitching about a lack of games - if you don't like it, go write them yourself. We don't program these things as a service to others, and the constant bitching and moaning - especially notably amongst 83+ owners - only has people less interested in doing so. IIRC, Bill Nagel was planning on some projects such as Mario 83 before he got sick of it and left. And the specific complaint here is even more repugnant - if you want to buy all the programmers two calculators and hire some real beta testers, maybe then you can see some link games. But don't count on it.

* Somebody talking about the "TI Community." This comes up in #tcpa often - there is no damn "community." On the one hand, there's a group of good programmers, some who converse and work together, and some who work alone, which might qualify as a community were it not so small. Then there are lamers who hang around and write things like this newsletter, trying to call themselves a community and complaining primarily about a lack of games for themselves, among other things.

* A poll with only 57 people voting - such a small sample space doesn't make for very interesting statistics.

* An empty section for entertainment - the best part of the "magazine."

* A disclaimer about these not being the opinions of Twilight-TI - thank god, cause I imagine they wouldn't want to be affiliated with this garbage. But where the hell _did_ that come from? The only mention of the site is a link to the graphical version of the magazine, so it's kinda hard to make that association.

* And finally, the line "The TIGCM is sent to you individually and not as a group to ensure that you receive this properly." I think we can receive group emails just fine, since there is absolutely no reason that specifying multiple recipients should cause a problem, especially if you make sure you don't reveal the addresses of the recipients (BCC).

And since it even asks to email the editor with complaints, I think I shall go do so now with this nice, long rant. . .

Amen brutha. Praise da law'd!

=P

Never thought "The Real Slim Shady" would say that... :-D (I'm referring to the reference Nick made a while back)

Now, now, honey, just cus he sed I's shady don't mean a t'ing! I' very much da sunny disp'sishun, as ya'll kin plainly see:
º¿º
`---'

Heh, that exactly what I meant with my smaller one line version. Although, I think I need the mention the cause of a good portion of displeasure....lack of depth on those topics. It was less than a slashdot or ticalc.org comment post. Ok ok, so I didn't email you anything...you didn't say what you wanted. Editors should work on shaping it better. If you don't have enough...work on it, then release.

-Corey

One more thing about the space optimizing article - you can't just omit quotes and parentheses in TI-BASIC on the 68k calculators. You get an error. He should either have mentioned that, or made the article universal to all the calculators.

That, plus the part about putting a commonly used expression as a string will cause the program to run a bit slower. That section was complete and utter bs.

In addition, whoever programmed the page did it terribly; they used forced line breaks instead of paragraph tags, and this makes a lot of two or three word lines on a 640x480 resolution in addition to providing empty space at the end of lines on bigger resolutions. Some sections were also extremely small and thus redundant and should not be considered features. This 'magazine' seriously needs their editor to actually edit the page instead of just putting the sections together. It had far too many grammatical and punctuation errors to look professional. Also, as far the interview, it simply should have been edited and not posted raw. If it was to be posted raw, however, the people in it should have used correct punctuation and grammar right off; this might make the idea a little more acceptable.

It sort of started out as punctuated, but then the interview turned into the stuff about the brother's car and brushing teeth, and who wants to punctuate that stuff? ;-P

Yeah, not only will it be slower, though, but it will also take up more space on the calculator. The reason I like the 68k calculators' TI-BASIC is that you can include lines like:

Local a,b

Which make it so that if you break the program in the middle by pressing [ON], the variables are deleted. If you just did:

0->a
1->b
(c)Rest of Program
Delvar a,b

If you broke the program in the middle, the variables would still be there. That's why on the Z80 calculators (which I'm assuming are what the author wrote for), I don't like programs which excessively use variables (excessively used to the sense where they're not needed to fulfil the purpose of the program).

And I still don't get why Disp a:Disp b is supposed to be better than Disp a,b.

It isn't, that statement that the article said is false.

I think what he meant is that it's good practice. I just started learning C, and in one of my C books it said this:

"The code for this is:

if(something)
{
something;
}

Note: You can also do it like so, since this is only 1 line in the if statement:

if(something) something;

But we'll do it with the { and } because it's good practice to know how to use that later."

Then again, it still was pretty stupid. I always put Disp's on one line :)

- Jeff

The statement about why putting it in two lines would be better, that is to say.

>>* A disclaimer about these not being the opinions of Twilight-TI - thank god, cause I imagine they wouldn't want to be affiliated with this garbage. But where the hell _did_ that come from? The only mention of the site is a link to the graphical version of the magazine, so it's kinda hard to make that association.

On a whole, I agree with your post. That magazine looked entirely unprofessional and had several pieces of falsified information. About this excerpt, though, it's a simple disclaimer about the people writing features versus the organization on a whole. Ticalc's newsletter had one of these and so do many newspapers with their individual columns. It might seem implied that it is from the organization, as the articles will usually reflect its views, except those are just in case the articles do not.

For the first time in a while, I completely agree with you, Scott. This newsletter was not news, it was crap. Those articles made me want to puke. I would rather play with downed power lines than read the next issue.

-harper

Are these downed power lines you speak of live or dead?

--BlueCalx

Unfortunately, from how much he dislikes this issue of the magazine, I would have to say live. ;-P

I like this. All the comments above me are pretty much flaming the Newsletter (with good reason), but none of the writers has come to flame back!

But yes, the Newsletter sux bad.

- Jeff

By the way, anyone who wants to show their like/dislike about the newsletter should probably go to Twilight-TI and vote on the poll about the newsletter...

"They're bastardizing the TIGCM name"

Actually, I've seen some of the old ones and those weren't much better than this. They were however done in a time period when more stuff was going on. This wasn't a great news letter, but I don't see the point in flaming everything on it.

TO SCOTT NOVECK

Hi, I wrote some of the editorials for the last issue and I admit they weren't up to par. Jason said he needed material for the news letter so I wrote up 16 editorials real fast. He only put a few in the news letter, so there should be plenty more, some better, some worse.

And I used the term "TI-Community" because I didn't want to say "TI-Users that program Asm games and TI-Users that wait for games to come out".

And about the link games, I made a mistake about saying there needs to be more. However, you said this: "if you want to buy all the programmers two calculators and hire some real beta testers" You own 3 calculators by the way, plus they can just borrow some ones. VTI might be able to connect with calcs but I don't think so. And beta testers are easy to find at school.

I did not write the article about about saving space in Basic. But when the guy said use many Disp statements cause it saves memory on 83+ and lower, you said it takes up more, but it actually takes up the exact same(becasue you do not use the final quotes). However, it looks nicer when you don't have 7 Disps lined up so you are correct on this one.

I didn't really now much about the monopoly thing I wrote. I do know that TI has most of the market.

You were right when you said coping is good if it yeilds a better product. However, the original thinkers(as long as they didn't write total trash) are more honorable than the copiers.

Scott Noveck, you have contributed quite a lot and you certainly have room to flame. Most of your flames were good ones. I have already admitted my(Douglas O'Brien) articles weren't great. Why don't you come up with 10 topics(you don't have to write about them and I won't use them) but just come up with 10 interesting topics.

And I know it is possible to get a list of games by a certain author, so how do you do that?