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Readers Write
Edited by Bill Ritchie: 
writchie@bigfoot.com
E-Mail from Bob Harris:
Can anyone help me get the Screen Peace screen saver to run on Windows 95? I've got the 1990 version which runs well on Windows 3.1.
Contact Bob Harris on bob.harris@cwcom.net
E-Mail from John Bickerstaff:
Small comment to the letter from Bill Wood which you published (don't know why it was not published in the hard copy Journal, only the Editor can advise the answer).
Quote
"The use of an electronic journal only ICPUG might have saved resources but would have prevented at least 80% of our members from receiving a journal - only 20% of our 1998 members had email access. In any case the rules of the Co-operate required us to provide a journal to all members of ICPUG".
Unquote
The Editor comments:
We must remember that 20% represents the number who, on their membership form at the beginning of 1998, put an e-mail address. The real number with Internet access is likely to be higher because (a) the Internet explosion of 1998 means that far more people are now online and (b) people have access through work, but do not have an e-mail address.
The important point made above, of which I was unaware or had forgotten, was that the rules of the co-operative stated we had to provide a journal to all members. It certainly seems a reasonable rule for the time when the co-operative came into existence, in the early 1980s. However, times change and providing a journal on paper is now not such a foregone conclusion. I am surprised that it was not possible to alter the co-operative rules, provided the membership agreed. It sounds a bit like joining EMU. Once you are in you cannot get out! Perhaps it was possible to change the rules, but there was no motivation to do it because the process was complicated and involved administrative tasks. Who knows.
Some have taken the past comments of Bill and me to mean they had not done enough personally for ICPUG members. This is absolutely not true. I know from experience that everybody on the committee worked hard, for little reward except praise occasionally and the rare brickbat. My only criticism has always been that the ICPUG closure announcement was done suddenly with little time to arrange an alternative. Those sort of decisions should be made at the AGM, and if that had happened we would have had more than twice the time to prepare.
Well, it is all water under the bridge now. We got an e-journal out in the time available and although we still have some work to do to make this site a permanent feature John and the ICPUGSE committee are making an excellent effort to help secure the infrastructure side of things.
