| BENTSEN GROVE RESORT COMPUTER
CLUB
BULLETIN Week of January 9, 2006 |
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MEETINGS
MONDAY
ROOM 3 & 3R GENERAL |
SPECIAL
INTEREST GROUPS:
Our bulletin is also available on line by visiting http://www.bgrcc.com/ and clicking on bulletin. You may also select bulletins by its subject. |
NEED
SOME HELP TRY http://www.bgrcc.com/ Click on HELP EMERGENCY RESPONSE
TEAM
John Abbott……424-0537Harold Buechly...581-3180 Corinne Higbee...585-5664 |
| UPCOMING
EVENTS: Please
wear your badge! Monday January 9th 2006, 9:30, Beginners Meeting By Corinne Higbee 10:30, General Meeting By John Abbott Internet phone demo, 1 cent per minute calls to anywhere on the planet. Monday January 16th 2006, Noon Pizza SIG By Corinne Higbee at Mr. Gatti's Monday January 23rd 2006, 10:30, General Meeting By Bill Wiese, "What works for me in photography" Monday February 6th, Tentative date for the return of Matt Hester, Microsoft |
| Monday January 9th 2006, 10:30,
General Meeting By John Abbott John will demonstrate Gizmo, Skype and other internet phone systems. " I'll demo at least three methods that are reasonable to use. Make calls from computer to computer, computer to a telephone, and a telephone to a computer." |
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Collected by Pim Borman, SW Indiana PC Users Group, Inc. swipcug@sigecom.net Vista… “A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening, as between rows of buildings or trees.” (Dictionary.com) It is also the name of the long-awaited next version of Microsoft Windows, not available until at least the second half of 2006 but already widely previewed and discussed in the PC magazines. What do we glimpse in the distance? Should we fight or switch? The most significant improvement in Vista might well be security, stated to be a primary goal. Only time will tell – we’ll still be facing continuing patches, updates and periodic Service Packs, I expect. “The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created.” “The machines, which will run a version of the Linux operating system, will also include other applications, some developed by MIT researchers, as well as country-specific software. ‘Software has gotten too fat and unreliable, so we started with Linux.’” (http://snipurl.com/mitlap) These two quotes from recent MIT press releases point at new directions in the Computer Revolution. First of all, there is the realization that computers are here to stay as a basic necessity in a civilized society. To the three Rs of basic education we need to add a fourth Requirement, computer liteRacy. The cost of general purpose computers has to come down further to make them available to every school child, even in this country, let alone in the developing nations. That clearly includes the need to eliminate the high cost of the MS Windows operating system and commercial productivity programs written for MS Windows. Essentially free Linux is the obvious alternative. Here is another quote, from desktop.linux.com (http://snipurl.com/INaccess): “A number of Indiana high school students returning for the fall semester will find brand-new Linux desktops in their classrooms. Under the Indiana Access Program, which uses desktop Linux systems and standard hardware configurations to keep costs low, Wintergreen Systems Inc. and Linspire Inc. are providing computers for classrooms. The arrangement could result in as many as 300,000 Linux machines being deployed during coming years, the companies said in a statement.” And Indiana is arguably not a third-world nation. When a new generation of students gets weaned on Linux, they are likely to continue using that operating system in the future, creating the critical mass that it takes to become generally accepted as an alternate desktop tool. Some of the students will inevitably be interested in hacking the system, resulting in new and improved programs, as well as some new Linux viruses, I fear. Their efforts will be facilitated by the availability of all the underlying code, in contrast with MS Windows programs that jealously hide the source code. Besides the effort to introduce Linux in school computers, several large cities as well as developing nations, notably China, have made it a priority to deploy Linux-based desktop computers. In the near future most of the growth of Linux will probably take place in developing areas of the world. Acceptance in the USA and other Western countries will be slowed by the difficulty or reluctance to transfer databases from MS Windows-based programs to comparable Linux programs. It may take another generation, but after maturing overseas Linux is likely to return in force to the Western world. There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you. |