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2002 Meeting Schedule
2002 Monthly Meeting Notes are here Meeting Minutes and NotesDecember 2002 Meeting: Christmas Party!The Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, December 17th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. This meeting was the traditional Christmas party. As such, President Frank Palazolo dispensed with the usual meeting format so that we could get down to some serious partying! Although there was no formal Treasurer’s Report, the bank balance as of 29 November stood at $1,161.57, an increase of $0.18 over the previous balance due to interest on our account. The food and goodies was graciously furnished by FrontDesk, Inc, and its principals, Lee Lasson and Mike Molloy. The best catering elf in Estes Park, Sandy Lasson, stood her usual duty post and dispensed the largesse. It was great and we surely do appreciate Sandy, Lee, and Mike (with excellent assistance from Tony Lasson) for getting the party off to a good start. Here are some pix of the ravenous horde while they enjoyed the goodies. Notice that we even had Santa drop by to enjoy the goodies! After everyone pronounced themselves stuffed, we moved on to the fun part of the party, the contest to determine the best/funniest web sites that our members could find on the Internet. As usual, there were a lot of amazing sites. The thought that many of our members reflected upon was, "There are a LOT of people out there with a LOT of time on their hands!" After everyone had a chance to show off their favorites, Lee and Mike rigged up a high-tech applause meter to a computer and then we "voted" on our favorites. This year, the winner was a site that did a parody song entitled "White Trash Christmas." As usual, we’ll (lovingly?) record this winner in our all-time hall of fame along with our previous perennial favorites such as "Exploding Whale," "Flight 405," and many others. Here is a list of the URLs submitted this year: After the contest, we passed out prizes purchased out of the club’s treasury for distribution at the party. Santa helped us out by drawing the winners out of a hat. We had lots of good prizes to distribute, including:
When Santa drew the last winning ticket, we all agreed it was a great party. We even managed to clean up the colossal party debris and get out of the Library on time! A good time was had by all (and to all, a good night). Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer
November 2002 Meeting: GadgetFest!The Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, November 19th, at 7:00pm in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library (335 East Elkhorn). This was a fun meeting! We encouraged everyone to bring along their favorite "gadget" and show it off. We had lots of interesting high-tech gadgets as well as other amusing things. Lee Lasson showed off a Linksys BEFVP41 Router, Firewall, 4 Port Switch, and VPN End Point. The Linksys is the swiss army knife of home and small business networking. Lee explained what is new about this Linksys is that wit will handle 70 Virtual Private Network Endpoints. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a secure tunnel through the public Internet from one local private network to a remote private network. It is ideal for remote offices and telecomuting. Our meeting notes are not yet available since our secretary has a broken wing and can only type with one hand in lower case letters! October 2002 Meeting: Viruses, Spam, and other Bad ThingsThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, October 15th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo officially opened the meeting at 6:59pm. Because Lee Lasson had another engagement at 8:00, we postponed the usual business meeting until later and went right into Lee’s presentation. Lee’s presentation focused on the role of hackers, firewalls, and virus checkers. Lee pointed out that hackers were constantly trying to get into your computer and steal your important personal data or, worse, they were trying to damage your files and data on your computer. It’s no longer true that dial-up lines are immune to hackers since the automated "sniffers" can detect online users so fast that you stand a noticeable chance of being hacked by a malicious hacker even on a dial-up line. Of course, "always on" lines such as the cable TV connection are even more vulnerable. Lee recommended that everyone should either have a hardware firewall such as the popular Linksys firewall/router/switch ($79, check out http://www.linksys.com) or you should get a software firewall. There are several software products available, including some free ones. Lee recommends using the ZoneAlarm product (free) but other products are also available for purchase such as the Symantec product (http://www.symantec.com) and others. Viruses continue to increase their sophistication and ability to damage your computer. Lee suggests that EVERY computer should have a working virus checker installed. Since new viruses appear all the time, it is VITAL that you discipline yourself to update your virus checker on a frequent and regular basis. At a minimum, you should update your virus definitions at least weekly and more often if you’re as paranoid as Don Widrig! Updating your virus definitions is easy and largely automatic through the web sites of the virus checker vendors. Lee also reported that another "prescription" in keeping your machine healthy is to regularly make sure your operating system and major applications are updated with the latest manufacturer’s updates and patches. Lee demonstrated how easy it is to go to the Microsoft web site and have your Microsoft web site checked by the web site to make sure you have the latest system updates. (Unfortunately, Lee discovered that his system needed quite a few updates!) In addition, Lee visited the Microsoft Office web site and had his Office components reviewed as well. Once again, Lee’s current version of Office was in need of a few updates but the web site makes updating easy. And it costs nothing but a download! Lee then moved to a short discussion of spam, the dreaded unwanted email that we all receive by the ton every day. Lee set the stage for Dan’s presentation to follow by showing off some "spam killers" that help to reduce but not eliminate spam. Then, it was time for Lee to go. Thanks, Lee for a fine update and review of firewalls and viruses. Click here to review Lee’s presentation. At 7:45, we switched back to a short business meeting. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 30 September, stood at $1,137.15. The Treasurer reported that we gained two new members in September. Don Widrig then did a quick recap of where we stand with our testing of the Microsoft SharePoint product. In general, the members liked the idea of the collaboration technology but there were some residual concerns regarding group privacy. For example, President Frank reported that he had received an email (quasi-spam) from someone who had obviously gotten his email address from the Members list on the SharePoint site. Don promised to tighten up access to the site immediately after the meeting. The jury is still out on whether or not the group will adopt this technology for the regular EPICUG "virtual clubhouse." Al Howard then gave a quick demonstration of a new toy, the wireless GyroMouse. This is a neat way for a presenter to be able to break the need for standing next to their computer during a presentation. Al, better bring the mouse to GadgetFest next month! Al also reported that the Library was deep into developing a high-tech meeting room in the new expansion area on the 2nd floor of the Library. He hopes to have the room up and running in time for a grand opening of the room in mid-December. We’ll have lots of toys to play with then! At 7:55, we completed the business meeting and switched back to Dan Fitzpatrick’s presentation on Spam. Dan started by giving us a short course on how spam works and why we even have spam in the first place. He pointed out that using your Outlook/Outlook Express email reader with the Preview window open was a sure-fire way to unknowingly confirm your email address to spammers who have sent you spam. The lesson: don’t use your Preview window to peek at your email. Dan then ran through a variety of spam-killing approaches, some based on a client machine and some based on a server machine. The advantage of a server-based spam-killer is that the spam never even reaches your mailbox so you don’t have to resort to various eradication techniques on your own computer. Of course, you need to be connected to a server/ISP that installs and uses such software. Right now, there are a lot of different spam-killing technologies that are being tried. There are two main approaches: 1) letting users collaborate on deciding which emails are spam {the approach used by SpamNet} and 2) content analysis based on a priori rules to decide whether an email is spam or not. Dan touched on a growing trend of legislation and litigation against spammers. This was viewed as good news since it might help to control the proliferation of spam. Dan also showed that the simple act of going to Google and entering "spam" as the search word will result in lots of anti-spam information from hundreds of web sites. Obviously, this would be a good place to visit if you want to learn more about spam. Dan ended his presentation with a peek into a possible future of spam killers. This approach is based on a mathematical probability analysis called Bayesian statistics and has some promise because it examines the content of your emails and bases its decisions on a continually adjusting set of weights based on your personal assessment of spam coming into your mailbox. You should click here to review Dan’s presentation. Interesting stuff, Dan! Dan ended his presentation at 8:45 pm and we actually managed to get out of the Library on time! Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer Web sites visited during the meeting:
September 2002 Meeting: SharePointThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, September 17th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo officially opened the meeting at 7:00pm. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 30 August, stood at $1,112.91. This represents an increase of $0.23 over last month’s balance due to the accumulated interest. Note that, just a few months ago, we were only getting about $0.21 per month in interest so the current interest amount is increasing! Woo-hoo! Lee Lasson then began the program with a dual-projector extravaganza that showed the results of his experiments with SharePoint. SharePoint is a team collaboration technology developed by Microsoft and is intended as a "lite" version of their heavy-duty Portal Server. In brief, SharePoint (SP) allows a collaborating group to establish a web-based area in which they can share and work on projects together. It’s all done by clever manipulation of web pages. Within SP, the users can create/edit/delete announcements, event calendars, documents, discussion groups, endless lists such as membership lists, polling surveys, and subscriptions. Lee walked us through creation and manipulation of the SP data elements. We also looked at how this mass of information could be controlled via passwords and permissions. In the beginning, we looked to see whether SP was a replacement for the existing EPICUG web site. As the evening progressed, it became apparent that SP was more of an augmentation to build new features into EPICUG than were presently found on our web site. In the end, the members decided that SP was a technology worth experimenting with. Accordingly, the Secretary was tasked with creating user accounts for all existing EPICUG members. Once the accounts were set up, the members could login and play with a toy model of a potential EPICUG web site based on the SP technology. The idea here was to allow the members to get a better idea of SP’s potential to assist in building a "virtual clubhouse" for EPICUG. We expect that the next regular EPICUG meeting (October 15) will include a short business session to discuss the member’s findings and recommendations. The group clearly saw potential in the SP demonstration that Lee oversaw. Thanks, Lee, for a fine show and we look forward to the member input next month. After Lee’s presentation, Dan Fitzpatrick discussed potential future programs with the group. Not surprisingly, a big concern of the members was the on-going issue of viruses and spam. Dan agreed to set up a program to discuss this important issue. Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer Other than the SharePoint EPICUG site, no other sites were visited during the meeting. August 2002 Meeting: Club Assembly - Estes Park Education SupportThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, August 20th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo was unable to attend, so the Vice-president, Yvonne Cocchi, did the honors tonight. She proved to be a stern leader. For example, she officially opened the meeting at 6:57pm, three minutes early! The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 31 July, stood at $1,112.68. This represents an increase of $0.25 over last month’s balance due to the accumulated interest! Woo-hoo! Since this meeting was to be a discussion format, we did not have our usual computer/projector setup. Instead we just sat in a circle and talked the whole evening. Several members had noticeable tremors because they weren’t able to work the keyboard but we were all brave and pulled through! Yvonne kicked off the meeting by having our usual round of introductions. Later in the meeting, it became apparent that a more-detailed round of introductions would be helpful so we went around again and spelled out our backgrounds and interests in this meeting topic more clearly. Mike Molloy then introduced our featured guest, Mark Pallissard. Mark is the IT director for the Estes Valley district school system. As such, he is responsible for the care and feeding of some 800 computers, 15 servers, and 1600 computer users in the system. In addition to general users, there are about 30 other users who do the school administration tasks. Mark was joined in our meeting by Elizabeth Repola, a teacher who is responsible for the K-5 levels of computer and technology instruction in the system. Prior to beginning the discussions that followed, Mark and Elizabeth made it very clear that the views expressed were not necessarily the official views of the school policy. All of their remarks were to be interpreted as personal remarks and not school policy so these minutes should be interpreted similarly. Mark outlined the current computer setups at the school. In general, there are 3-4 computer stations in each classroom throughout the K-12 system. These machines are accessible to all students. In addition, there are a variety of computer labs which have a larger complement of machines and are generally used by the students for homework, projects, etc. The computers in the district are interconnected by a complex fiber/copper networking system that ultimately goes outside of the district via a single T1 telecommunication line. Another group based in Northern Colorado, BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services), ties into this network and allows the Estes district to share in activities such as distance learning outside the Estes Valley. Thus, if some students need access to facilities or services that are not available in Estes, there is a real possibility that these opportunities can be obtained through BOCES from other districts such as Fort Collins, Greeley, etc. This sharing works the other way also, with the other BOCES members being able to use the Estes setup to their advantage. The focus on the meeting was expressed by Lee Lasson. Lee was looking for ways in which the group could assist the school system by applying the club’s diverse interests and backgrounds to the matter of improving the computer and technology expertise at the school level. Simply put, the question was, "How can we help?" Elizabeth reported that she was starting a technology club within the school that will meet on Mondays at 8:00 am, location TBD. She wondered if it might be possible to have EPICUG members come and support the club as guest speakers, mentors, etc. The members liked that idea a lot. When the members addressed the question of how this could be set up, a free-roaming melee ensued that occupied a goodly portion of the rest of the meeting. The essential question eventually centered around how the school system could reach out and obtain EPICUG’s help for various activities, projects, etc. Of course, since EPICUG members are used to broadcasting questions and ideas via email, that model seemed like a good idea. However, the school system does NOT use that model. Instead, all questions and requests must be initiated by filling out a form and obtaining the principal’s signature. The form then goes to Mark for resolution. This model didn’t set well with the members but life is real and the members just had to accept the current procedures. So then the question became one of determining how Mark could pass these requests on to the EPICUG members and coordinate our response in a manner compatible with the current school procedures. Fitting into the current system became a matter of some concern and it became apparent that more direct planning with Mark and Elizabeth would be required. This issue will need a lot more follow-up and whatever plan that results will definitely need school board approval. After the members settled down, Mark went on to state that his biggest need was a desire to extend the hours of the computer labs so that the students could have more time working on projects, etc. Mark wondered it we could get a collection of volunteers that would act as "lab monitors" either before or after school hours so that the labs could stay open longer. In addition to monitoring the labs, it seemed likely that our members could also help out with various questions and problems that might arise from the students. The issue with providing lab monitors was one of scheduling. Right now, EPICUG has no good idea as to how such an effort might be coordinated and scheduled. Naturally, we looked to technology for assistance. It was agreed that Lee and Don Widrig would explore the SharePoint technology in next month’s meeting to see if that technology could help us out with school requests and scheduling. We’ve talked briefly about the SharePoint technology in earlier meetings and it seems like this would be a good time to explore the matter further. Thus, the entire September meeting will explore that option. It was an interesting meeting. It seems clear that Mark has the computer technology well in hand in the school system but there is always a need for some additional help that the EPICUG members could provide. We look forward to this project. In a show of punctuality, Yvonne drew the meeting to a close and adjourned us at 8:45. Another record! Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer There was no computer at this meeting so no web sites were visited.
July 2002 Meeting: MP3 and the Digital JukeboxThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, July 16th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo officially opened the meeting at 7:00pm. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 28 June, stood at $1,112.43. This represents an increase of $0.21 over last month’s balance due to the accumulated interest! Woo-hoo! Lee Lasson then expounded a bit on the idea of the club members offering some kind of assistance program to the Estes Park school system. For example, we might be able to help some of the teachers learn more about computers, etc. In addition, we could possibly serve as technical advisors to work with the huge collection of computers (about 500!) that the school now manages. After some discussion, it was agreed that Mike Molloy would contact key technical people in the school system and invite them to our August EPICUG meeting to discuss the matter further. The group’s consensus was that we should devote the entire August meeting to discussing this matter. Assuming that Mike can round up some interested educators, that’s the way we’ll do it. Watch for the meeting announcement. Along the way, Lee and several other folks will test Lee’s Team Sharepoint setup with a view to somehow incorporating this into the August discussions. Should be an interesting meeting as we explore how our club can put its experience to good use in an important part of the community, our schools. We then got down to the evening presentation given by Terry Patterson. Terry kicked off a discussion of digital music by first using PowerPoint to define terms and concepts used in the field of digital music. Click here to review Terry’s presentation. In keeping with the theme, Terry’s introductory slides included several digitized snippets of tunes. Sly devil! Terry outlined the most popular types of files used in the digital music field. Most files tend to be of the MP3 format because it is usually the best compromise between compression and sound quality. There are a host of other formats but they tend to be minor players. Terry then outlined a bunch of software applications that can interpret and play back these music files. Before getting into the mechanics of capturing and saving your own music files, Terry also demonstrated a related area known as "Internet Radio." Internet Radio stations are web sites that actually "broadcast" on the Internet via digital mechanisms. Terry focused primarily on Internet radio stations that primarily broadcast music but it was clear that there a huge numbers of global "stations" that are broadcasting anything and everything on the Internet. One of Terry’s favorites was a station in Holland that primarily specializes in Mexican salsa music! Talk about a global community… Terry and Dan Fitzpatrick then did a two-man show to demonstrate a popular Macintosh music application called "iTunes." With this application, you can capture music from your own CDs as well as music from the Internet (more on this later). Since a regular CD music disk, particularly older ones, don’t have anything except music on the disc, the question arises as to how to capture information about the artist, album, etc. Fortunately, there are web sites that can examine digital music files and report on such information about the files. Dan demonstrated the process of capturing and identifying music with "iTunes." It’s absolutely incredible how easily this technology works. However, the 800 pound gorilla in the digital music adventure is the notion of users swapping their digitized music files with other users. This first became popular with Napster but has since moved on to a slew of other programs that work in a similar manner. Terry demonstrated what is known as peer-to-peer swapping and showed how he can tap into a mind-boggling network of music lovers and swap music files with them. At the time of the Terry’s presentation, there were almost 2 MILLION users who were actually on-line and swapping files. As Terry was demonstrating how to get files from another user, someone actually tapped into his computer and copied out one of Terry’s files. Terry also demonstrated how easy it is to collect a series of your favorite tunes and burn them into your own CD. The process consists of:
As a popular alternative, you don’t necessarily need to put the files on a CD. You can also simply play the files on your own computer. There are other ways of enjoying the music as well. Mike Molloy demonstrated how simple it is to transfer the music files to an HP pocket computer and then play them through the pocket computer. Terry demonstrated a music player (called Nomad) that looks like an overgrown Walkman and can accept music files from your computer warehouse of tunes. Once downloaded, the player can then entertain you as you take it with you during the day. These players have a staggering capacity for music files and it is easy to set the players up to play 8 hours of tunes or even more. Portable players range in price all over the map but most players are in the $200-$300 range. The key element that came through in Terry’s presentation is that the whole area is a MUSIC issue and not a technology issue. In other words, people get into this area because they like to listen to music and have control over how and when they listen to their tunes. Yet, there is an awesome array of technology that has been developed to facilitate their interest. Terry really opened our eyes to the possibilities of the Internet Music world. Thanks, Terry, Dan, and Mike, for a very informative program. The meeting adjourned at 9:04pm. Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer Due to technical difficulties, a variety of the planned web sites could not be visited during the presentation. The presenters have compiled a list of the URLs that are relevant to the presentation and they are included below. All of these sites have interesting features that bear on the matter of digital music and are worth visiting. June 2002 Meeting: Advanced Internet SearchingThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, June 18th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo officially opened the meeting at 7:00pm. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 31 May, stood at $1,112.22 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $1.12 for the year to date. We’re in the big bucks now! Due to various birthday and birth conflicts (Dan Fitzpatrick has a new baby!), the regularly scheduled program was not offered. It will be rescheduled at a later time this year. Instead, Mike Molloy offered an interesting program on Advanced Search Techniques. You can review the outline of his program by clicking here. Mike started the program by defining just exactly what a search engine is and what it can do for you on the Internet. A near-cousin is the idea of a Web Directory that attempts to collect all sorts of items into an organized and indexed table of contents that allows you to look up a staggering number of topics. Finally, Mike defined the concept of a meta-search engine. This is a search engine that calls up many other search engines and then compiles their results into one set of search results for you. Mike surfed to an interesting search site that contains the Open Directory Project. This is a freeware search engine development project that combines many of the features of a search engine, a Web Directory, and a meta-search engine. There are other mini-search engines as well. Mike showed a site called Atomica that allows the user to highlight a word or phrase on a web page and then discover all sorts of things about the highlighted item. For example, you can highlight a word and receive a dictionary definition of that word as well as many other things about the word or phrase. Mike spent the bulk of the program in demonstration of the various features of the premier search engine today, Google. Google has a huge number of features that allow you to use it to find names, phone numbers, addresses, images, web sites, and much, much more. Everyone learned a lot from these demonstrations. It also became very clear that Mike spends a LOT of time experimenting with Google and other search engines. Thanks, Mike, for a very informative program. The meeting adjourned at 9:00pm. Respectfully submitted, Don Widrig, EPICUG Secretary/Treasurer Because of the free-roaming nature of the demonstration searches, Mike visited a huge number of sites during the presentation. Web sites visited during the evening:
May 2002 Meeting: Tour of the Estes Park Public Library Web SiteThe Estes Park Internet Computer Users Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, May 21st, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. Before the meeting opened, the members wanted to talk about a few new web sites so we surfed a bit. The first web site was found at www.mail2web.com. Al Howard presented the site and noted that this site allows you to connect to the Internet anywhere in the world and reach into your own personal mail server and retrieve/create/manipulate your own email. This is kind of neat since it means that you can maintain your own mail site on your own ISP but still retrieve your mail from wherever you might find yourself. All road warriors better check this one out. Al then presented the Colorado No-call site. At this site, you can register your phone number to be placed on the newly-created list of phone numbers that telemarketers are not supposed to call. Over three hundred THOUSAND numbers have already been registered in anticipation of this site taking effect this summer. It will be interesting to see how this works out. You can check the site at www.coloradonocall.com. President Frank then presented an anti-spyware site at www.lavasoftusa.com. From this site, you can download a package that will rummage through your machine and root out any spyware that has been secreted on your machine. You get spyware by simply having various ads pop up on your browser so it’s a good idea to check for spyware from time to time. President Frank Palazolo then officially opened the meeting at 7:06pm. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 30 April, stood at $1,111.98 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $0.88 for the year to date. We’re in the big bucks now! Don Widrig then led a group discussion centered on the advisability of posting member email addresses on the public EPICUG web site. The group agreed that this practice opens up the possibility of search bots discovering our email addresses by roaming the web and then adding these addresses to various spam lists. A bad thing! To remedy this potential problem, Lee Lasson offered a new software package he has been experimenting with. This package, entitled the Microsoft Sharepoint Team Services application seems to allow a group to participate in private interactions such as emailing, address lists, discussion groups, etc, all with controlled and protected web visibility. The group felt this might be the answer to our privacy concerns and was worth an experiment. The group agreed to the following:
So let it be written, so let it be done! The group wanted to recognize all of Lee’s generous contributions of time and host space so it was unanimously approved that Lee be given complimentary membership in EPICUG as a small token of their appreciation for all his efforts. The Secretary will take care of the membership immediately. The meeting then got down to the evening’s presentation. Al Howard gave a really interesting talk on the Estes Park Public Library’s "virtual library" web site. Prior to touring the site, Al started with a short PowerPoint lead-in presentation in which he "showed off" with magical sounds, music, and special effects in the presentation. Click here to review Al’s presentation. The bulk of the evening was spent on touring the Library’s web site. Al is the webmaster for the site and clearly has spent a HUGE number of hours creating and improving the site. Among its many features (which are WAY too numerous to enumerate here), Al showed the seamless integration between the Library’s (Al’s) own web site and the web site provided by The Library Corporation (TLC). TLC is the vendor that supplies the actual Library cataloging and operational system. It’s full of user-friendly features such as book searches, checking of a patron’s book status, book reservations, etc. Also, TLC offers a similar set of features on a kid-oriented web site that allows essentially the same functions but they are presented in a more kid-friendly manner. Click here to visit the Library’s web site. The thing that struck the group during this presentation was the extraordinary amount of work that went into creating the many web pages (and there are a BUNCH) and the enormous amount of maintenance that is required to keep the site current and on-going. Nice work, Al! For no particular reason, Al finished his presentation and then gave a short talk on the Navy ship pictured in his desktop wallpaper, the Catawba. This was the ship Al served on with John Paul Jones (or somebody). Anchors aweigh! After Al’s presentation, we had time for a little Stump the Group and then the meeting disbanded at 8:45pm. Boy, was the Library staff stunned to see us leaving before closing time! Respectfully submitted, Web sites visited during the evening:
April 2002 Meeting: LinuxThe Estes Park Internet Computer User Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, April 16th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo opened the meeting at 7:04pm. We did our usual round of introductions around the room and were gratified to note some new faces in the audience. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 29 March, stood at $1,099.74 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $0.64 for the year to date. Woo-hoo! The meeting then got down to the evening’s presentation. Dan Fitzpatrick gave a nice presentation on the evolution and current status of Linux, one of the few non-Microsoft operating systems left in the world. Click here for a look at Dan’s presentation. Linux (pronounced linn´-ucks) was developed by a Finn named Linus Torvalds and was publicly released in 1994. It is based on the UNIX operating system that was developed in 1974 so Linux has a lot of history behind it. Linux was intended to be an "open software" product that was to be distributed freely and permitted access to the source code for the system itself. Linux is "controlled" by Linus Torvalds himself who acts as the final judge and jury on what is allowed into the operating system. Linux is now a very popular operating system that runs on everything from a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) up to a large mainframe. Many large Internet companies and other organizations (e.g., Google, Yahoo, White House, and many others) use Linux as the base for their operations. It’s reliable, easy to modify, fast, and doesn’t cost anything for licenses. Not a bad deal. In and of itself, Linux would not catch on in a big way due to its UNIX command line interface and the remarkable obscurity of its commands. So, various companies popped up to write shells that sit on top of Linux and offer the user a nice graphical interface similar to Mac and Windows interfaces. Dan demonstrated several of these interfaces. The issue with any of these non-Microsoft offerings is file compatibility with the rest of the Microsoft world. That is, can someone use Linux to write a document and then transport it to a Microsoft environment? Dan addressed that question by demonstrating a variety of office application packages. In general, the files created by Linux are compatible with the equivalent Microsoft applications. That is, Linux applications can create a word processing document, a spreadsheet, etc, and expect to have at least some measure of compatibility with Microsoft’s suite of office applications. The compatibility isn’t perfect so caution is advised here. In addition, Dan pointed out that there are even some problems with inter-application compatibility inside the Linux framework. For example, Dan said that there are cases where a cut and paste operation between two Linux applications will not work correctly. During the course of Dan’s presentation, he demonstrated many features and capabilities of both the user interfaces and Linux itself. Dan also opted to perform the death-defying feat of doing an installation of Linux on a computer. As usual, there were a few tense moments but the installation finally succeeded and everyone was impressed. The Linux installation demo ran way over our allotted time and the meeting didn’t end until about 9:20, thus breaking our string of three early departures from the Library. Nevertheless, everyone agreed that the meeting was a very interesting peek at the world outside of Microsoft. Respectfully submitted, There were no web sites visited during the evening.
March 2002 Meeting: gobeProductive and VNCThe Estes Park Internet Computer User Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, March 19th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo opened the meeting at 7:04pm. He would have started sooner but the geeks were engrossed in setting up a huge array of computers (3!) for the evening’s program. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 28 February, stood at $1,063.53 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $0.43 for the year to date. Mike Molloy suggested that we should consider changing our takeover plans for Microsoft and concentrate on buying out Enron instead! The Secretary very briefly visited the EPICUG web site and called attention to the Officer’s picture page for those members who hadn’t seen the new rogue’s gallery. Dan Fitzpatrick led a discussion with the group regarding the notion of EPICUG reaching out to the community more. Some folks, particularly folks who hadn’t been to the meetings, thought of the club as "super-geeks" and this perception weighed against their attendance. After much discussion, it was agreed that we need to work on community outreach programs and do good works as a way of becoming better known. This idea is to be pursued by the board and suggestions offered for the group’s consideration in future meetings. gobe Productive The meeting then got down to the evening’s presentation. Dan gave two presentations during the evening. The first presentation was a demonstration of a non-Microsoft office productivity package known as gobeProductive (pronounced go-be). This package was developed by the former Macintosh ClarisWorks team and is now being marketed as a Windows-based application. Obviously, they know where the money is! The application appears to be totally object-oriented. That is, you can edit a spreadsheet, text, pictures, or whatever without regard to which application you are using. So, for instance, you can easily insert a spreadsheet into a word processing document without ever leaving the word processor. In fact, the object orientation blurs the line as to which application you are working in and it becomes somewhat irrelevant to think of yourself as being "in the word processor" or whatever. You just create and edit whatever strikes your fancy. Pretty neat! The application has an innovative "family license" arrangement that allows full use of the package within your own home (regardless of the number of computers) and use of the application at your office computer. Clearly, the gobe folks want to get this application out into the world. The application has lots of interesting features such as object cloning, multiple layers to facilitate presentations, and a really interesting set of editing tools that work across the objects. When Dan tested the ability of the application to interoperate with Microsoft products such as Excel and Word, it didn’t come off so well. It seems clear that more development will be required. Click here to view Dan's presentation. Because of the incredible ease of operation and because of the limited interoperability of the current application, Dan proposed that the package would mainly be of use to folks who wanted to create newsletters and flyers within their own organization. Dan showed some very impressive flyers that were super easy to create with the application. Right now, gobeProductive is listed at $124.95 but comes with a rebate coupon that reduces the final cost to $74.95. This is a serious bargain when you consider the power of the application. Contact Dan for further info but you’d better hurry because the offer expires March 31, 2002. Further information on the package can be obtained at the gobe web site, www.gobe.com. Dan had an extra copy of the application on a CD-ROM that gobe had requested be given away at the meeting. So, we used the gobe package itself to select a winning number. Al Howard was the lucky recipient of the package. VNC Moving along to the second presentation, Dan once again amazed the crowd with a presentation of a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) package that is available as a free download from www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/. VNC is similar to pcAnywhere offered by Symantec (for $100+). It allows you to connect with another networked computer and bring up a window on your machine that is, in effect, the desktop of the remote machine. Once connected, the full facility of the remote machine becomes available on your machine. That is, you can mouse around, call up applications on the remote machine, move files around, etc. It’s pretty close to actually being on the remote machine. Dan fired up three different computers simultaneously (what a lot of cables and stuff!) and used VNC to move between the machines. VNC works on lots of different operating system platforms so he really amazed us by connecting a Mac and Windows computer with VNC. Mike Molly remarked that VNC also worked through Internet browsers in lieu of installing a client package on the remote computer but we didn’t have time for that demonstration. As a final magic trick, Dan connected his laptop computer (just one of the computers in the demo tonight!) to his Verizon cell phone and dialed the local ISP on his cell phone. He connected at between 14-20Kbps (which is in the same range as what Carriage Hills gets here in Estes Park!). He then used VNC between the computers to web surf directly through his cell phone connection. A little slow due to the connection but an awesome tour de force anyway! By then, the audience was totally astounded and Dan disappeared in a puff of smoke! No, really it was a terrific evening. We had just a few minutes left and Dorothy Gibbs showed off a new web site, www.giveaminute.org, that allows you to contribute to a hospital relief fund in Mexico at no charge to you. Dorothy and George had just recently returned from this very hospital and she was most enthusiastic about the work being done in this economically depressed area of Mexico. Better check this site out and help the hospital out. Once again, the club astounded the Library staff by ending the meeting at 8:40pm, well BEFORE the 9:00 deadline. We’ve now done the hat trick, three in a row! Respectfully submitted, Website visited during the evening:
February 2002 Meeting: A Brief History of the InternetThe Estes Park Internet Computer User Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, February 19th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. President Frank Palazolo opened the meeting at 7:07pm. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 31 January, stood at $1,069.30 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $0.23 for the year to date. At this rate, our hostile takeover of Microsoft may have to be postponed a little while! The Secretary apologized for the confusion he created when switching over to the membership lists for 2002. The confusion in the email lists has been corrected and we’re now on an even keel. The Secretary very briefly visited the EPICUG web site and called attention to the Officer’s picture page. In order to maintain a balance of facial hair, a new officer, Fuzz E. Nerd, was posted to the Officer’s picture page (check it out!) The meeting then got down to the evening’s presentation. Don Widrig gave an interesting and informative PowerPoint presentation on the History of the Internet. Contrary to news reports, Don showed that Al Gore did NOT invent the Internet in 1999. Don began his talk with the creation of the Advanced Projects Research Agency (ARPA) by President Eisenhower in 1958. Don then traced the evolution of the ARPAnet from its humble beginnings as a 4-node network to the Internet as we know it today. Along the way, Don augmented the Internet timeline with several interesting developments such as the introduction of the PC and key developments that make the Internet the system we know today. Don closed the presentation by showing recent estimates of the scope of the Internet. As of the end of 2001, there were an estimated 36 MILLION web sites and total Internet traffic as of the end of January 2002 was estimated to be approximately 55 MILLION GIGABYTES. Wow! Click here to view Don’s presentation. Once again, the club astounded the Library staff by ending the meeting at 8:45pm, well BEFORE the 9:00 deadline. Two in a row! Respectfully submitted, Because of the nature of the presentation and meeting, there were no websites visited (other than the EPICUG site).
January 2002 Meeting: DirecTV Presentation + Election of OfficersThe Estes Park Internet Computer User Group (EPICUG) met Tuesday, January 15th, in the Hondius Room in the Estes Park Public Library. Mike Molloy opened the meeting at 7:04pm. We had a fair number of visitors so Mike did our usual round of introductions of the officers and attendees. The Treasurer reported that the club’s treasury, as of 31 December, stood at $1,042.07 and that includes the princely accumulated interest sum of $15.94 for the year to date (2001). At this rate, our hostile takeover of Microsoft may have to be postponed a little while! The meeting then got down to the evening’s presentation. Anne Dixon, owner of Dixon TV & Video here in town, brought along some representatives to discuss the various Internet-related product offerings of Hughes Electronics through their subsidiaries DirecPC and DirecTV. Russ Beaudry, Hughes Network Division, and Bob Hermann, RS&I (home satellite marketing), discussed the two main Internet-via-satellite connection products. Click here to review their presentation. The first offering is known as DirecPC and is characterized by a high-speed transmission (400 Kbps) from the satellite to your home receiving station. Transmissions the other way (i.e., from your home to the Internet) are still accomplished via a standard telephone line with a max speed of around 50 Kbps. The second offering (known as the "two-way" option) allows the user to eliminate the telephone connection completely and enjoy the afore-mentioned high-speed downlink (400 Kbps) and use a reverse transmission path from the home receiver to the satellite. The reverse path generally operates around 100 Kbps. In either option, the user may elect to also receive the usual satellite TV programs along with the Internet connection. Either option requires that an antenna be installed that is somewhat larger than the usual "pizza" antenna. The presenters pointed out that Federal law requires that all group housing arrangements such as condominium associations, etc, must permit installation of the larger antennas. In general, this has not been a problem in Estes Park. Anne discussed the pricing policies for the various services and options. The short form of a very complicated discussion is that the one-way (+ telephone line) option will cost about $300 for the equipment and installation with a monthly fee of $29 - $49 thereafter. The two-way option will cost about $600 for the equipment and a typical installation with a $60 monthly fee thereafter. The pricing is way too complicated to grasp and Anne suggested that people interested in the product options should contact Anne at her store to discuss the details. This would be a good time to visit Anne’s store since there is an outstanding offer, good for a short time only (Jan 13-26), that gives various rebates on some of the prices mentioned. Anne can be reached at:
The satellite presentation drew to a close at about 8:30pm. The group then moved on to the "business" section, election of club officers for 2002. After nominations were opened, the following slate of candidates was proposed:
Eric Blackhurst moved that the slate be accepted by acclamation. Seconded and approved. Welcome to the new officers! As his final act as President, Mike thanked the outgoing officers for their service and especially thanked the club members for their enthusiastic participation. It made Mike’s tenure exceedingly enjoyable, Mike said. The new President, Frank Palazolo, gave a nice (and short) speech to set the tone for the new administration. After the election, Ray Cushing brought a problem forward for the Stump the Group session. Wonder of wonders, the group seemed to know how to resolve the problem and gave Ray some things to try. Good luck, Ray! For the first act of the new administration, the meeting was then adjourned at 8:45pm, a new record that astonished the Library staff that had become used to our club meetings always running overtime! Respectfully submitted, Because of the nature of the presentation and meeting, there were no websites visited.
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