Gus' Rantings 21

By Gus Donnachaidh

Originally published in EUG #34

The opener is yet another example of Dominic Ford's imagination.

There are some games on the Games Menu of this EUG from the Silly Games disk from BBC PD. If you've seen these already then I'm sorry but they looked like fun and they are in a good cause. Although to play them, you do need PAGE lower than &1D00.

When I first started editing EUG, I said that I didn't want to publish software that had been previously published elsewhere. This was partly to avoid problems with copyright but also to avoid making EUG a recycling medium for things many of us have seen before.

There is, however, a lot of good software out there in PD land. Some of it was published over thirteen years ago. Perhaps some of it could now be put into future EUGs. If anyone has any objections to this, then please do write in.

You'll notice we have a slideshow this issue. It comes from the creative talents of Dave Edwards and contains freehand drawings of his latest student film, Glenn Gets Hacked. The images are meant to be like those black and white photographs you often see on the "Playing Tonight" board at cinemas.

The observant will have noticed that I have changed the name of this file to Gus' Rantings.

I had a comment that some of the things I have written are political.

I talked this over with my wife and she suggested that perhaps calling this file "Gus' Editorial" indicated that it was in some way a statement of policy which regular readers might feel that were assumed to subscribe to, in much the same way as the editorials in some daily newspapers do.

Now I'm not really sure if this is true. Certainly I have never been aware of indicating support for any particular political group. I have, and will continue, however, to strongly support the right to say and publish anything. Principally because if we condone stifling ideas, no matter how abhorrent we may personally find them, we stifle thought generally, we restrict intellect and we encourage the very stupid ideas which we tried to restrict in the first place.

The sort of people who join a group like EUG tend to be of above average intelligence. I find it difficult to accept that above-average intelligence people are likely to be indoctrinated into any way of thinking, and certainly not by anything that I could say.

The way to indoctrinate anyone is by restricting information not by containing ideas.

Gus Donnachaidh, EUG #34