About Drobe

Put simply, we're a news website for users of RISC OS. Drobe publishes news and feature articles on hardware and software available for the platform while having some fun along the way. Once upon a time the website was updated daily with new articles, sarcastic quips and readers' comments, but sadly those days are gone and hence the current sombre page design. We still aim to be the most regularly updated news source for RISC OS users.

Our writers and contributors over the years have included, in no particular order: Ian Jeffray, Peter Naulls, Mark Stephens, Ian Chamberlain, Theo Markettos, Antony Sidwell, dgs, Paul Beverley, John-Mark Bell, Jon Wright, Martin Hansen, Graham Shaw, Ian Hawkins, Alex Macfarlane Smith, Andrew Hill, Eddie Lord, Paul Stewart, Peter Howkins, Stewart Brookes, Michael Gerbracht, Robert Greenfield, Dave Higton, Peter Noble, Liam Proven, David Llewellyn-Jones, Chris Johnson, Reginald Whitlock, Josh Eilken, Gavin Wraith, Charles Duckworth, Rob Kendrick, Peter Scheele, David Llewellyn-Jones, Chris Wraight, Kees Meijer, Martin Bazley, Michael Reed, Nick Brown, Mike Carter, Garry Taylor, Andrew Weston and Jon Robinson.

The site was founded in 1999 by Peter Price, who handed over the reins to Chris Williams (www) in 2001. Hosting and webmaster work is taken care of by Ian Hawkins (www, work, celebrity spy, wooot). Drobe.co.uk is powered by the original Just4You web publishing software with various tweaks and rewrites over the years, all running on Linux on dustpuppy. The Drobe rocket logo was drawn by Article7.

Drobe strives to adhere to the PCC Code of Practice.

Privacy Policy

We know that you trust us to ensure your privacy when visiting drobe.co.uk and we go to great lengths to achieve this. If you do not agree with our privacy policy, please email us your comments and consider simply not using the site.

Logging visitors

When you visit the site, we record and log which pages you visit, your IP address, your referer URL and the 'user agent' string your web browser sends. We use this information purely for monitoring traffic to the site and it will never be disclosed to any third party. The drobe.co.uk Editors and webmaster have access to this traffic information. Please note that we do publish traffic statistic summaries on the site. These generalised statistics will not reveal the activities of individual visitors. Our traffic logs are stored securely on a web server, located in a remote secure hosting facility.

Cookies

We use cookies to provide user account facilities. When you log into drobe.co.uk using your user account details, we send your web browser a 'cookie'. The cookie uniquely identifies you, as a registered drobe.co.uk user, so that when you visit the site, you have have access to features provided only for registered users. It also allows us to identify you so that we can serve drobe.co.uk pages in the format you have personally customised from your account profile settings. The cookie is persistent, in that, when you close your web browser, the cookie will stay stored on your computer so that when you next visit drobe.co.uk, you are automatically logged back in. To delete the cookie from your computer, click on the 'log out' link, which can be found at the top of each drobe.co.uk article and front page. Additionally, when you visit drobe.co.uk, we send a cookie to your web browser which uniquely identifies you to us. You will get this cookie if you log in or not. This cookie merely allows us to ensure that people cannot abuse the voting system on the front page. You can chose to block this cookie if you wish, but this will prevent you from using the voting system. Also, the cookie expires after a few weeks. It is not used to track individual visitors' browsing habits.

Personal information

Registered users must declare a full name, a username, a password and an email address. We will never disclose your password to anyone but the owner of the email account of the email address registered when you created your account. When you post a comment on the site, you willingly disclose your username in the comment text. Your username can be used to look up your submitted full name, your registered email address, your biography, your homepage URL, your instant messaging client handles, your user account 'face' and also the comment moderation system's evaluation of your commenting and moderation history. You may choose to disclose any of these details from your account profile settings page, except your full name, user account 'face' and moderation system evaluation, which are always made public. Your private account details, that is, the ones you have not made public, will never be passed onto a third party. Your drobe.co.uk browsing activities will never be passed onto a third party. Your account details are stored securely on a database server, located in a remote secure hosting facility.

User content

Unless permission has been specifically granted by the site owners, commercial content such as for example: using the photo gallery for product or advert banners, 'anti os' images are forbidden and any such content shall be removed by the editors.

Email

Registered users can, from their profile settings page, opt in to receive emails sent from us about the site. Users can also opt in to receive emails when their comments are replied to. We will otherwise never mass mail our users. We reserve the right to contact via email an individual user if we are concerned with their user account, a comment posted by them or any other reasonable matter regarding the running of the site or what may concern public interest.

Website hosting facilities

Registered users can also host their own website from drobe.co.uk provided they accept and abide by the above terms and following extra restrictions:

• You do not upload illegal, libelous or otherwise questionable content on your site {username}.drobe.co.uk.
• The site has at least something to do with RISC OS.
• You do not upload binary files with the intention of directly linking to those files from another site (ie: bandwidth theft).
• This resource is intended for non-commercial use only, however users wishing to have commercial content hosted are welcome to email us.
• The content of your drobe.co.uk hosted website is yours, not ours. We won't necessarily endorse it, agree with it or defend it. It should not be passed off as official drobe.co.uk editorial content.

Creative Commons

We use a Creative Commons licence for text and images on drobe.co.uk ("The Content"). You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform The Content and make derivative works provided you give the original author credit, the work is not used for for commercial purposes and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under conditions identical to theses. Contact us if you wish to commercially reuse any of our work or click here for the full licence.

Getting in touch

If you want to write an article for drobe.co.uk, feel free to get in touch and tell us what you have in mind. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know. If you wish to send us news, we welcome all and any statements, press releases, tip-offs, links and announcements. Please note that all correspondence is for publication and we reserve the right to reproduce any material sent to a drobe.co.uk email address - especially if you're trying to threaten us or we're liking what we're reading. However we will also protect our sources' identities if asked to.

• Editor: Chris Williams
• Newsdesk: news@drobe.co.uk
• Complaints, praise or website problems: comments@drobe.co.uk

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This week's poll

Recent developments have left me feeling... Assured ROS will appear on new hardware 55% Pleased OS desktop features are being developed 10% ROL and ROOL will eventually kiss and make up 5% App developments are critical 10% Dave Holden sleeps easy at night 19% Discuss this | Archives

Featured articles

Wakefield 2009 wrap-up, photos and video
The weekend's RISC OS event has been and gone and we've got the rest of our lives to look forward to. Here's a round-up of extra news and Drobe's show-related coverage and some photos taken from Wakefield 2009 - plus a video from the show floor.
 16 comments, latest by AW on 29/4/09 7:41PM. Published: 27 Apr 2009

RISC OS 5 pictured running on ARM Cortex-A8 kit
Picture exclusive - This grainy photograph shows a port of RISC OS 5, sourced from the RISC OS Open project, running on a Beagleboard - a device powered by a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with a built-in graphics chip. The port, developed by Jeffrey Lee with help from Uwe Kall and ROOL staff, is seen as a major breakthrough for the shared-source project as it proves the OS can be ported to new hardware without the need for a large team of engineers.
 75 comments, latest by rjek on 30/4/09 3:15PM. Published: 25 Apr 2009

Open documents from Windows-using pals with handy online tool
It can be a pain when someone sends you a file that can only be opened on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux - but with the help of a free-to-use website and NetSurf, Paul Stewart reveals how these documents can be viewed on RISC OS.
 6 comments, latest by AW on 8/5/09 12:12AM. Published: 19 Apr 2009

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