Question about TOTALe

Talonp · Post by **Talonp** » Mon May 19, 2008 1:21 pm

Ok I am trying to figure out who TOTALe is, I am lost on this company because I read they took over Galacticomm in 1999 but that is when Galacticomm closed there doors. Here is the Post where I found the info...can anyone answer this question for me please

Thanks,

Talonp

Found at: http://archives.thebbs.org/bbsnews/bbsnews13.html

Dated: May 3rd, 1999

Galacticom Technologies, the former developer of MajorBBS and Worldgroup BBS, was sold on April 29th to TOTALe Incorporated. TOTALe purchased all of Galaticoms assets, including software and the Galacticomm name.

Galaticom Technologies had been in major financial trouble during the past two years, due to a major decline in sales of their software products.

Peter Berg, former CEO of Galacticomm Technologies said, "The acquisition will allow Galacticomm to bring its vision of the future of online computing to a realization. With TOTALe resources and Galacticomm Technology, we hope to change the Online Community as we see it today." Peter Berg will no longer be part of the new Galaticomm, and plans to become an independent consultant working with educational institutions and providing solutions using TOTALe's/Galacticomm's resources.
http://www.gcomm.com/

Questman · Post by **Questman** » Wed May 21, 2008 11:50 pm

It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.

Stoneslinger76 · Post by **Stoneslinger76** » Thu May 22, 2008 12:19 am

Questman wrote:It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.

This would be Mr. Van Arnem's claim to galacticomm's assets I take it., but if he and named corperation never had rightfull ownership why does he/they continue claims of ownership and why does the rightfull owner not take some legal or other action? I reliaze that is complex question.
Some more info on the "history" would be great. It would help me make sure my hard earned dollars go to the correct pocket and not some _____ _____ ______.

Talonp · Post by **Talonp** » Thu May 22, 2008 3:30 am

Thank you questman for the info, because I have been digging around on this issue and could not find anything to support this sale other then Peter Berg's statement in the link that I found.

I have talked with several people that were around back in 1999 during all of this and they said the same thing that you did concerning the sale of Galacticomm and the assets, it never happened and couldn't have happened due to the company and all assets having liens attached and finally the company facing foreclosure.

Also I contacted the state of Florida concerning TOTALe and requested copies of the corporate papers that were filed for the company and they informed me there is no listing for TOTALe at all.

From what I can tell so far from the research I have done Mr. Van Arnem owns nothing as far as Galacticomm or any of its assets. Now as to why he/they claim ownership? That is simple there was no one left back in 1999/2000 to dispute what they said or at less anyone who cared at that time.

Now as for why doesn't the rightful owner not take legal or other action? Again this is simple, why spend money to fight them at this time...these people would fight the legal battle and tie it up in court for years and nothing would ever happen and a lot of money would be spent on it causing the death of what little is still there. It is by far better to work on the products, future products and build the community so that there is some sort of financial base to build from and then deal with the legal issues at a later time. Besides Mr. Van Arnem and the others are not going to take legal action against the rightful owners because they would open their self up for several lawsuits due to the product ownership and filing wrongful lawsuits against the rightful owner. And the rightful owner would only have to come to court with the documentation showing where he purchased the assets of Galacticomm and it would be case closed.

Please in no way am I trying to offend anyone and these are my views and nothing more. I am just trying to dig into the history of Galacticomm and document the facts as much as I can, if we are going to document the history we must get the facts and we must take the good with the bad thats all.

Questman you are the greatest and as always thank you for the information and your honesty, I see a bright future for this product and I always have. I look forward to helping build our community, working on the products and the overall future of it all.

Talonp

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sat May 24, 2008 3:55 am

Stoneslinger76 wrote:
Questman wrote:It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.
This would be Mr. Van Arnem's claim to galacticomm's assets I take it., but if he and named corperation never had rightfull ownership why does he/they continue claims of ownership and why does the rightfull owner not take some legal or other action? I reliaze that is complex question.
Some more info on the "history" would be great. It would help me make sure my hard earned dollars go to the correct pocket and not some _____ _____ ______.

yeah but who is to say money didnt exchange hands? i dont care what anyone says, as someone that grew up in the banking business (grandmother was vice-president of crestar, grandfather co-founder of bank of america) i have told them this story 100 times and all 100 times i get the same responses, whenever a company as large as GCOMM suddenly is small and about to fail and the bank is comong all of em try to save face.
im sure Peter Berg, Yannik Tessier, all have told their side and Harold VanArnem has a side too, but lets face it netvillage has been selling worldgroup software since 1999, so if the sale didnt take place the bank would have knocked on their doors too.

something took place there and we will never know the true story, bottom line is this, he continued to sell WG software, and gcomm went broke and harold van arnem is still going strong in business.

dont get me wrong business is all about who has the most money, look at what ebay and paypal get away with? microsoft? in this case Harold Van Arnem.

gcomm.com's whois info says created 1992 .. and who is in control of it? netvillage LLC.

theres more to this story than we will ever know, EVER know.

think ENRON came out the doors telling us the truth?

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sat May 24, 2008 3:57 am

Questman wrote:It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.

yeah but even in the proccess of foreclosure you can still use the said product as a form of collaterall to get out of foreclosure unless a said agreement is signed between bank and ALL involved in the ownership rights.
that didnt do away until Pres Bush signed that bankrupcy protection law post-9/11 when people were attacking the airlines.
that way lien after lien and judgement after judgement couldnt be stacked.

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sat May 24, 2008 4:07 am

Talonp wrote:Thank you questman for the info, because I have been digging around on this issue and could not find anything to support this sale other then Peter Berg's statement in the link that I found.

I have talked with several people that were around back in 1999 during all of this and they said the same thing that you did concerning the sale of Galacticomm and the assets, it never happened and couldn't have happened due to the company and all assets having liens attached and finally the company facing foreclosure.

Also I contacted the state of Florida concerning TOTALe and requested copies of the corporate papers that were filed for the company and they informed me there is no listing for TOTALe at all.

From what I can tell so far from the research I have done Mr. Van Arnem owns nothing as far as Galacticomm or any of its assets. Now as to why he/they claim ownership? That is simple there was no one left back in 1999/2000 to dispute what they said or at less anyone who cared at that time.

Now as for why doesn't the rightful owner not take legal or other action? Again this is simple, why spend money to fight them at this time...these people would fight the legal battle and tie it up in court for years and nothing would ever happen and a lot of money would be spent on it causing the death of what little is still there. It is by far better to work on the products, future products and build the community so that there is some sort of financial base to build from and then deal with the legal issues at a later time. Besides Mr. Van Arnem and the others are not going to take legal action against the rightful owners because they would open their self up for several lawsuits due to the product ownership and filing wrongful lawsuits against the rightful owner. And the rightful owner would only have to come to court with the documentation showing where he purchased the assets of Galacticomm and it would be case closed.

Please in no way am I trying to offend anyone and these are my views and nothing more. I am just trying to dig into the history of Galacticomm and document the facts as much as I can, if we are going to document the history we must get the facts and we must take the good with the bad thats all.

Questman you are the greatest and as always thank you for the information and your honesty, I see a bright future for this product and I always have. I look forward to helping build our community, working on the products and the overall future of it all.

Talonp

actually NV just signed contracts with the USAF worth 8 figures, has a contract with trigon insurance company based on the HIPAA WG client, and a ton of others, i did a little research of my own, seems when NV took off with their venture they aimed at a higher crowd, www.filewire.net
look at that worldgroup software, and i have the current price list on that monster.
Version 3.30 256 channel : $49,999 .. total units sold: 12
thats just the 256!

i say everyone can co-exist.......

our community here is more hobbyist based.

like Talonp, in no way am i taking sides im just saying lawsuits would get
nowhere and ya need ALOT of money to take down a huge company.
i know im currently assisting a class-action against Ebay INC for hiding behind the auction-house california law yet they give people tools to auto-bid that dont run until auction close, that falls under RETAIL clauses so its a mess when dealing with corporate law

i see a triangle here

NV
/\
ELW -- WGW

my biggest problem is supporting issues. i have people coming to me
to purchase addons and i cant verify their systems, Rick dont have it, Don does, but whats legit anymore?
people are spending alot of money on these 'non-legit' systems and its not fair, like most everyone they will goto gcomm.com same site thats been online for 16years to buy it only to find out its not legal.

Questman · Post by **Questman** » Sat May 24, 2008 3:26 pm

dspain wrote:
Questman wrote:It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.
yeah but even in the proccess of foreclosure you can still use the said product as a form of collaterall to get out of foreclosure unless a said agreement is signed between bank and ALL involved in the ownership rights.
that didnt do away until Pres Bush signed that bankrupcy protection law post-9/11 when people were attacking the airlines.
that way lien after lien and judgement after judgement couldnt be stacked.

If you look up the history in the Florida courts you'll see that all general intangibles were included -- Stryker put the ENTIRE company up as collateral. The company was under lien.

In 1998, when the sh*t was hitting the fan, Tessier/Berg sold off a ton of entertainment-oriented add-ons to Metropolis Gameport. But in order to do that, they had to get the list of products to be sold released by the bank - there's a document available to anyone showing that the bank allowed them to sell those add-ons (and it listed them!) to Metropolis and the bank released the lien on those products only.

There was no such filing for Worldgroup or for the company as a whole. There would have to have been!

Also, they took the assets across state lines where the Florida courts and the Broward Sheriff couldn't touch them. The bank was interested in the big money - the amounts personally owed by Tessier and Berg (6 figures each) and the chose of judgements in the lawsuits won by Galacticomm over their securities firms from the botched IPO.

NetVillage signs contracts, yes, but nobody there does any due diligence. The US Air Force is buying pirate software. FileWire is illegal software as it is stealing intellectual property from WG.

Money did change hands - Van Arnem invested in Galacticomm late in the game. But it was a minority investment and it didn't give him rights to squat should the house come down. No money changed hands at the end, and if it did, it was definitely NOT on the "up and up". The bank was just a bank. They didn't, and in 1999-2000 probably couldn't be expected to, understand what Galacticomm did. And, since when they went to get the assets, they were all GONE - they couldn't investigate. Nobody would talk to them, and if they discovered HVA/NetVillage, they would've had to spend a ton of money to sue him and all -- it didn't make fiscal sense.

Although the lawyer I worked with to buy the assets did say - he hoped I followed through, because if I did not, I would have to tell him where the assets are, and he'd have to go after them. That, in 2005.

gcomm.com's whois is irrelevant. When they took the servers they took the domain. It's easy enough to do.

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sat May 24, 2008 10:45 pm

Questman wrote:
dspain wrote:
Questman wrote:It's a company owned by a minority investor in Berg/Tessier era Galacticomm named Harold Van Arnem. He's the owner of NetVillage.

However, no sale took place, nor could there be, as the company was under lien and in the process of foreclosure.
yeah but even in the proccess of foreclosure you can still use the said product as a form of collaterall to get out of foreclosure unless a said agreement is signed between bank and ALL involved in the ownership rights.
that didnt do away until Pres Bush signed that bankrupcy protection law post-9/11 when people were attacking the airlines.
that way lien after lien and judgement after judgement couldnt be stacked.
If you look up the history in the Florida courts you'll see that all general intangibles were included -- Stryker put the ENTIRE company up as collateral. The company was under lien.

In 1998, when the sh*t was hitting the fan, Tessier/Berg sold off a ton of entertainment-oriented add-ons to Metropolis Gameport. But in order to do that, they had to get the list of products to be sold released by the bank - there's a document available to anyone showing that the bank allowed them to sell those add-ons (and it listed them!) to Metropolis and the bank released the lien on those products only.

There was no such filing for Worldgroup or for the company as a whole. There would have to have been!

Also, they took the assets across state lines where the Florida courts and the Broward Sheriff couldn't touch them. The bank was interested in the big money - the amounts personally owed by Tessier and Berg (6 figures each) and the chose of judgements in the lawsuits won by Galacticomm over their securities firms from the botched IPO.

NetVillage signs contracts, yes, but nobody there does any due diligence. The US Air Force is buying pirate software. FileWire is illegal software as it is stealing intellectual property from WG.

Money did change hands - Van Arnem invested in Galacticomm late in the game. But it was a minority investment and it didn't give him rights to squat should the house come down. No money changed hands at the end, and if it did, it was definitely NOT on the "up and up". The bank was just a bank. They didn't, and in 1999-2000 probably couldn't be expected to, understand what Galacticomm did. And, since when they went to get the assets, they were all GONE - they couldn't investigate. Nobody would talk to them, and if they discovered HVA/NetVillage, they would've had to spend a ton of money to sue him and all -- it didn't make fiscal sense.

Although the lawyer I worked with to buy the assets did say - he hoped I followed through, because if I did not, I would have to tell him where the assets are, and he'd have to go after them. That, in 2005.

gcomm.com's whois is irrelevant. When they took the servers they took the domain. It's easy enough to do.

yeah makes sense bank was already owed a ton why spend more to chase someone to maryland

i wasnt doubting ya i mean who would spend the money you spent if you couldnt secure ownership, its a mess, so Rick ever thought of writing a book?
call it "Galacticomm, Where and Why?"

<<smiles>>

Questman · Post by **Questman** » Sun May 25, 2008 4:59 am

Hehe.. I think Bill Posner is considering doing just that!

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sun May 25, 2008 5:05 am

Questman wrote:Hehe.. I think Bill Posner is considering doing just that!

all BS aside i think it would sell, maybe not best-seller list but damn sure sell pretty good.
the BBS documentary sold good, why wouldnt a book

on the off-topic ever considered opening up the WL source as an addon so people could make private WL networks? or at minimum putting up a WL server that will stay online.

ccs · Post by **ccs** » Sun May 25, 2008 9:59 am

dspain wrote:
Questman wrote:Hehe.. I think Bill Posner is considering doing just that!
all BS aside i think it would sell, maybe not best-seller list but damn sure sell pretty good.
the BBS documentary sold good, why wouldnt a book

on the off-topic ever considered opening up the WL source as an addon so people could make private WL networks? or at minimum putting up a WL server that will stay online.

Yes! Lets get worldlink back up. I think it would give MBBS/WG a leg up on the rest of the BBS Software arround.

Joe

dspain · Post by **dspain** » Sun May 25, 2008 11:04 am

ccs wrote:
dspain wrote:
Questman wrote:Hehe.. I think Bill Posner is considering doing just that!
all BS aside i think it would sell, maybe not best-seller list but damn sure sell pretty good.
the BBS documentary sold good, why wouldnt a book

on the off-topic ever considered opening up the WL source as an addon so people could make private WL networks? or at minimum putting up a WL server that will stay online.
Yes! Lets get worldlink back up. I think it would give MBBS/WG a leg up on the rest of the BBS Software arround.

Joe

indeed! worldgroupware WL server is so unstable and besides they shouldnt be running the bastard anyway

Stoneslinger76 · Post by **Stoneslinger76** » Sun May 25, 2008 12:29 pm

dspain wrote: i see a triangle here

NV
/\
ELW -- WGW

my biggest problem is supporting issues. i have people coming to me
to purchase addons and i cant verify their systems, Rick dont have it, Don does, but whats legit anymore?
people are spending alot of money on these 'non-legit' systems and its not fair, like most everyone they will goto gcomm.com same site thats been online for 16years to buy it only to find out its not legal.

I am still curious who to purchase WG software from.
For example the Worldgroup 3.3 or the html update Powerpack, 6 packs, etc.

Before I spend I would like to make sure I am not paying for non legit software and thier wont be problems with isv's knowing I am the rightful owner.

If thier is no correct hand what would be 2nd best?

please pmail if your answer is not for public eyes.

Questman · Post by **Questman** » Sun May 25, 2008 2:49 pm

The only legitimate person who can sell it is me. There will be an announcement soon about the software being widely available again.

Stoneslinger76 · Post by **Stoneslinger76** » Mon May 26, 2008 3:09 pm

Questman wrote:The only legitimate person who can sell it is me. There will be an announcement soon about the software being widely available again.

Thank YOU! you have just saved me a possible major mistake. I will be looking forward to the annoncement. any hints?

Talonp · Post by **Talonp** » Mon May 26, 2008 6:36 pm

Sorry didn't mean to cause any issues on the forums guys, just trying to get the facts because I get asked a lot of questions concerning all of this BS from sysops, friends and clients.

I just like knowing what is what and being able to answer questions to the best of my ability when I am asked thats all. And I have put a lot of money into the world of Galacticomm as have many others and we all know Questman has put alot into all of it and I want it to live on and move to the next level.

And yes we are mostly a hobby community but there still is a very large commercial community out there I have 22 clients that are using the MajorBBS or Worldgroup in some size shape or form still and will be into the future so I see a market on both sides in the future. Besides I just love this damn product and this community and always will

Again sorry didn't mean to cause problems with anyone, I think that all of you are great and I am thank full for this community and this forum.

Toyduck · Post by **Toyduck** » Mon May 26, 2008 8:17 pm

Talonp wrote:Sorry didn't mean to cause any issues on the forums guys, just trying to get the facts because I get asked a lot of questions concerning all of this BS from sysops, friends and clients.

I just like knowing what is what and being able to answer questions to the best of my ability when I am asked thats all. And I have put a lot of money into the world of Galacticomm as have many others and we all know Questman has put alot into all of it and I want it to live on and move to the next level.

And yes we are mostly a hobby community but there still is a very large commercial community out there I have 22 clients that are using the MajorBBS or Worldgroup in some size shape or form still and will be into the future so I see a market on both sides in the future. Besides I just love this damn product and this community and always will

Again sorry didn't mean to cause problems with anyone, I think that all of you are great and I am thank full for this community and this forum.

No proglems and no issues Talonp, after all if no one ever asked any questions we'd be in pretty deep sh*t by now...

Talonp · Post by **Talonp** » Mon May 26, 2008 8:40 pm

Thanks Toyduck I just wanted to document the history as best as I can

The Storm · Post by **The Storm** » Tue May 27, 2008 2:24 am

Talonp wrote:Thanks Toyduck I just wanted to document the history as best as I can

You have nothing to be sorry about. You asked a couple of questions and opened the opportunity for more from others. I think it's great that someone is asking the tough questions and getting the answers.

Be sure to let us know when you're done documenting the history as I know many of us want to see the final results of your work.

Stoneslinger76 · Post by **Stoneslinger76** » Tue May 27, 2008 11:55 am

Talonp wrote:Sorry didn't mean to cause any issues on the forums guys, just trying to get the facts because I get asked a lot of questions concerning all of this BS from sysops, friends and clients.

Besides I just love this damn product and this community and always will

Again sorry didn't mean to cause problems with anyone, I think that all of you are great and I am thank full for this community and this forum.

I am glad you did ask, I have been wondering about the facts as have a few of my users. I am looking forward to any more information or history available now or in the future. You shouldn't feel like your causeing problems, the only ones who have a problem will be people who are illigitamatly profiting from the uninformed.