Computist

Article summary

Computist was a computer magazine devoted to the Apple II that was published by Charles R. Haight under the SoftKey Publishing name, between 1981 and 1993, for a total of 89 issues. The magazine was based in Tacoma, Washington. Originally launched as Hardcore Computing, the 'hardcore' part was formally dropped from the title with the 27th issue. Only three volumes of Core were published: "All About Graphics", "Utilities" and "Home Computer Games". Originally, the "Games" topic was scheduled for Issue 4, but that issue was scrapped and "Games" became the theme for Issue 3. The "Databases" topic originally planned for Issue 3 later appeared as a feature article in Hardcore Computist #6. Core itself became a regular featured column in Hardcore Computist. While it was billed as a magazine "for the serious user of Apple computers", in fact much of the content in Computist was devoted to the removal of copy protection from Apple software. At the time, it was commonplace for software publishers to prevent users from making copies of software by distributing the programs on floppy disks that had been written with a modified version of Apple DOS. Each issue of Computist included several "SoftKeys", short code snippets and instructions designed to circumvent software copy protection routines.…

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1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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