News Letters

For

1997

9701

The traditional on-line service companies (AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe (AP&C)) are scrambling to reinvent themselves in the new year. With all the competition from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the raw Internet, no one can figure out what role AP&C should play. The late comer, Microsoft Network (MSN), has no real need to make money, but is just as lost as the others.

CompuServe has discontinued their low end WOW service as of the first of the year. They plan to refocus on their technical user base. Prodigy and AOL have had to offer unlimited usage for $19.99 per month to keep up with the ISPs. All are having financial problems.

In an upbeat note, I really like the new AOL commercials featuring the theme music from the Jetsons cartoon.

I don’t see much hope for AP&C in the new year. Some services they could provide, but probably won’t, are: Protecting users from junk e-mails, pre-screening SPAM from newsgroups or providing pay-per-view web content to the Internet at large. It’s not much, but it’s all I could think up. I hope they have better marketing people than I have.

Mark Pendergast

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Volume 15 of the Kokomo IBM PC Users Group newsletter will be published with MS Publisher on Windows 95. I had previously used Publisher to develop a series of newsletters for the Taylor Community Schools Strategic Planning Teams. Publisher is a simple program to use once you learn to think the way it does, but it does take a few practice runs to get past your word processing mindset.

In a word processor you put down text, then you decide how to format it. In a publisher this process is backwards. You set up your page format, then you fill in the text. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is a hurdle you must get over to make the best use of a publisher.

I began by running the ‘Newsletter Wizard’ a few times until I got a basic format I liked. Then, I tore the whole thing to shreds to see how the wizard did it. Publisher’s wizards ask you a few questions and then generate a sample document as a starting point. They are very powerful and allow a great deal of customization. I rarely use the output of a wizard directly, but rather learn how to do what I want by tinkering with the wizard’s output.

I create all the text (known in the business as copy, known in Publisher as the story) for the newsletter in the MS Works word processor. When I have all the text the way I want it, I cut and paste the text into text frames in Publisher. Although Publisher is great for formatting text, there is nothing like a simple word processor for getting ideas out of your head and onto a page.

I print the master copy of the newsletter to my laser printer. The master copy duplicated by Staples - the office superstore - as a free service for our group. I add the mailing labels and stamps and send them out via first class mail. I also deliver some to local computer businesses to distribute to the public.

I would like to see all our Group members contribute an article from time to time. It is a great way to participate in the life of the Group and you will earn valuable User Bucks as well. Just jot your thoughts down on a diskette or as hardcopy and send the whole thing to M. Pendergast at the return address of this newsletter. If possible, get it to me two weeks before the monthly meeting. Otherwise, just pass it to one of the officers of the Group at the monthly meeting. Share your experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly) with the rest of the Group. No mater what you write about, half the Group has been there and the other half is right behind you.

Mark Pendergast

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The home page has links for of all the teams in the league. It also has some league wide features like the Gatorade ‘Dunk of the Week’. I originally thought that this was a picture of the best Gatorade bath given that week. But, this is an award for the game where one team ‘slam-dunks’ another team. The people who visit the NFL site get to vote for the winner.

Each team page has the teams schedule and roster. It has pictures of the players as well as player interviews. There are even sound files of quotes being spoken by the originator.

I think this is a cool site. I logged on right after the Colts playoff loss and they already had the game summary on-line.

If you have a favorite WWW site I would like to hear about it. drop me a note and I’ll put you in the newsletter.

Happy surfin’

Mark Pendergast

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9702

The Prodigy on-line service is now offering an Internet access package. The deal gives you unlimited access to the Internet as well as unlimited access to ‘Classic’ Prodigy for $19.95 a month. I saw the offer announced on the Prodigy service and signed up. I had the option of downloading the software or getting a CD in the mail. I picked the mail option. I had to wait about two weeks for the CD to arrive.

The load for Prodigy Internet went very smoothly. The setup program loaded the software onto my hard drive. It then had me pop into the control panel to set up serial networking. It provided a step-by-step guide of all the things I needed to do. It was especially easy because the Windows95 system disks were already available on my hard drive. After networking was set up, it rebooted to get the new configuration loaded. It then popped me into the control panel again to set up the TCP/IP networking protocol. Again, I had step by step instructions available. It rebooted to have the protocol change take effect.

I logged on to their user agreement site. I had to give them my personal information and a credit card number. It also had me read a user agreement and press ‘YES’ if I agreed to follow all the requirements. The only odd things I noticed were: 1. You can only access the service from the US and Canada. 2. There is no warranty (I guess this isn’t odd for software), 3. You may not publish anything that violates Internet standards or customs (huh???), 4. By posting to a public Internet area you allow Prodigy to use anything you post as if it was in the public domain ( What if it has a copyright notice on it?).

I logged on to their normal site. The user interface is based on Netscape. There is a strange toolbar that pops up on the right of the screen. I assume this is a Prodigy thing, because I have never seen it at work when I use Netscape. The mail and news reader programs are both Netscape subsystems.

The Netscape web browser is great. I have no problems with any page I have loaded. The old Prodigy browser had a number of problems with advanced features and at some advanced sites, like the ERIC educational page, it returned nothing at all. It is very nice to see pages the way they were intended to be viewed.

The Netscape mail program is OK. It seems to have all the functionality of the old Prodigy mail package. I haven’t had much e-mail in the last week so I can’t give a detailed report.

The Netscape news reader is not a good one. It is better than the original Prodigy news reader, but is not as nice as the new BBusenet reader that Prodigy released late last year. The main problem I have had is adding newsgroups. As far as I can to tell, to add a group to your list you must type the name of the group exactly or view all newsgroups and select it. Well I don’t remember names well and it takes a loooooong time to download the name of every newsgroup in the universe. The BBusenet reader had a search for group by wildcard option that allowed you to select a subset of groups to look through. I hope that Netscape has a similar option stuck away in some deep dark corner that I haven’t found.

I am still having phone line noise problems so I can only run 9600 baud reliably. One nice feature of the new system is that I can lose the connection and reestablish it without dropping a byte. The old Prodigy system would crash and burn if the connection was lost. In fact, many times it would lock up the system and force me to reboot.

Mark Pendergast

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I have been surfing the web lately (to bask in the return to glory of the Green Bay Packers) and have begun to see JPEG files that seem to be correct, yet can not be viewed by my old browser or viewer. Does anyone know of a new version of JPEG that has been released recently? I get an unknown tag error when I try to display the image. This is not a problem with my new Prodigy Internet Netscape Browser, but is showing up more and more frequently with my old Prodigy ‘Classic’ browser. I would appreciate any information on the subject.

Mark Pendergast

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A friend of mine asked me if the Internet was real. My first thought was " Of course it’s real. Bill gates doesn’t do a 180 for nothing!". But as I thought about it I had to temper my response.

The Web is a lot like TV. I do waste a lot of time looking at it, but it is really a mixed bag of odds and ends. Email is great, but it still doesn’t get me to sit down and knock out a letter to my brother. I do save 32 cents, but it costs me $20/ month to do it.

I guess the Internet is as real as many of the other great technologies of the last few decades. There are some great things like cars or telephones mixed in with a lot of junk like MTV and Veg-o-matic.

Mark Pendergast

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9703

Everyone from novice to expert needs to be ready for the day that their hard drive decides to do the cha-cha on their data files. The two phases of protection are Preparation and Prevention.

Phase 1: You should prepare for the day your system crashes before the day arrives.

You should make an emergency boot disk to use if your hard drive fails. It should be a bootable disk that also contains some diagnostic utilities like scandisk, Microsoft Diagnostics, fdisk, format, restore, backup, etc.

You should save regular backups of your system. Use the Microsoft backup utility. Make sure you have a copy of the backup and restore utilities available on diskette. (remember backup and restore only work with the version of DOS they came with. Always keep a boot disk and a copy of backup and restore with each set of backup disks.) To minimize the pain of backup, I keep all my user files in a documents directory. This allows me to regularly do a quick backup of the documents directory to save all my hard work. I then do a full backup only when I load new software or change configuration files.

I normally make a backup copy of all my important system files before I install a new software package. I just copy them to a subdirectory called backup. These files include autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, system.ini, and reg.dat. This way I can quickly see what changed if the system doesn’t work right after an install.

Phase 2: You should try to prevent crashes by monitoring your system regularly.

Windows 3.1 has memory and resource leaks that cause the system to become unstable over time. Always reboot your system every day, or after a long work session.

Use scandisk to check your disk for errors on a regular basis. Early detection of corruption can save many of your files from further harm.

Use a good virus protection program to scan for viruses. These are rare, (unless you live on the network and download with abandon, or have friends that do) , but can be deadly. Make sure you get one that will allow for updates to the virus detection list.

Mark Pendergast

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Some of you who have access to the Internet may be allowed to create a home page for yourself on the World Wide Web (the Web). This article will be a once-over-lightly guide to home pages and the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) that is used to construct them.

A home page is sort of like your business card on the Web. It is a place to tell people who you are. A very basic home page might just give your name and address. A fantastic home page might have multiple pages with pictures of your home and family and links to all sorts of web pages that you personally recommend. Web home pages are not for the shy!

Web pages are written in a special ‘code’ called HTML. HTML is normal text with special markers called tags to indicate page formatting information. By default web browsers ignore all formatting information in text and cram everything together, end to end, on one line. If we were to enter a home page like:

Mark Pendergast’s home page.
3705 Sugar Lane
Kokomo, Indiana 46902
Email: mmpender@prodigy.net

The web browser would display it as:

Mark Pendergast’s home page. 3705 Sugar Lane Kokomo, Indiana 46902 Email: mmpender@prodigy.net

We can use our first HTML tag, <br>, to cause line breaks to be inserted after our lines.To be more grammatically correct we should add a title to our home page using the <title> tag. Most HTML tags need to have a start and end. To end the title we use the tag </title> (read as ‘end title’). This will tell the browser the name of our page. Unfortunately, the title does not show up on the page itself. If we also want the reader to see the title of the page we need to add the title in as text. To highlight this second title we can use another tag <h1> (read as ‘header 1’) and it’s terminator </h1>. Now our sample home page contains this source ‘code’:

<title>Mark Pendergast’s home page.</title>
<h1>Mark Pendergast’s home page.</h1><br>
3705 Sugar Lane<br>
Kokomo, Indiana 46902<br>
Email: mmpender@prodigy.net

Which displays as:

Mark Pendergast’s home page.
3705 Sugar Lane
Kokomo, Indiana 46902
Email: mmpender@prodigy.net

There are a number of tags that are available. These provide a number of page formatting functions including links to other web pages and adding graphic images into your page.

Mark Pendergast

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9704

Purpose:

The Adult Services Department is seeking computer-knowledgeable volunteers to assist patrons using our Electronic Access Computers (EACs). Many of our patrons have little or no experience with computers and require a basic introduction to Windows, word processing programs, the Internet, and CD-ROM products. Volunteers will assist with one-on-one instruction and guidance.

Job Description:

The volunteer will be responsible for monitoring computer use and time limits and assisting patrons in the EAC area. She or he will be required to have a variety of computer skills, including Windows, WordPerfect and Word, Internet using Netscape, and CD-ROMs.

The volunteer should be able to show patrons how to get started and how to save on a disk or print. She or he should also be able to perform basic troubleshooting and remedy non-network problems and printing problems.

The volunteer should be able to fill one or more time slots per week from 2:30-5:30 p.m. on weekdays, 11:30-2:30 on Saturdays, or 2-5 on Sundays.

The volunteer should be willing and able to circulate in the EAC area and offer assistance as needed without being intrusive. She or he will uphold library standards of public service and direct patrons to library reference staff for assistance as the situation warrants.

The volunteer will be supervised by the Head of Adult Services. Librarians on duty at the reference desk will supervise in her absence.

Qualifications: The volunteer should:

1) have an interest in computers and showing others about their uses

2) enjoy working with the public and have a patient respect for their abilities

3) have experience with Windows, WordPerfect, Word, and Netscape

4) be willing to make a commitment to a specific time slot.

Volunteers are also needed to assist with the maintenance of the library's home pages.

I enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you last evening and really appreciate your interest.

Diane Chladil
dchladil@kokomo.lib.in.us
Kokomo-Howard County Public Library
(765) 457-3242

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56K modems: These new, asymmetrically-faster modems (up to 56,000 bits per second [56K bps]from the ISP, but at most 33,600 bits per second to the ISP) are upon us. US Robotics was the first to deliver this technology (late), but Rockwell (which supplies the integrated circuits for most of the non-US Robotics modems) reportedly will release chips soon to its customers. Several warnings are in order, though: (1) 56K protocols are not standardized yet, so your modem will only talk to the other modems made by the same manufacturer, at first. (2) Most modems eventually manufactured will be software-upgradable, so that they can use the standard which is eventually adopted, but Rockwell's first chip set will not be upgradable. (3) Modems sending data at 56K bps will apparently cause the phone company circuits to exceed their limits, so they may be allowed to send data only at 50K bps or so. (4) The quality of phone lines may further drop that rate to 45K bps or less. April Fool!

Low-Priced Products: The US home PC market has been a surprising source of revenue for a lot of companies, but everyone has decided that the proportion of US homes owning a computer (now about thirty percent) won't rise much more unless they come up with new products. They seem to think price is the big problem, so they've come up with various ways to lower that barrier, including (at least) WebTV, NetPC, and CheaPC (as I call it).

WebTV: About a month ago, my friend Mike, a musician by trade, called with the news that he and his wife had bought a WebTV. They bought it at one of the Indianapolis appliance stores for $330. They took it home, hooked it up to their telephone and TV, dialed the telephone number they'd been given, followed instructions to sign up, and started surfing the Web. Mike was surprised it was so easy.

Mike has found that he indeed has full E-mail capability, and full Web access, except that he can't do the fancier things, because his WebTV's built-in browser doesn't handle memory-intensive stuff. (For example, Mike is an amateur astronomer, and wanted to watch the NASA movie which shows Neptune rotating. He couldn't do it. I had no trouble watching it on my PC [well, my Mac, actually].) And of course Mike can't print anything, or save it in any other way except on video tape. (But supposedly a printer connection will be available at added cost this summer.)

Family PC [an excellent magazine if you have kids who use your computer at home] reviewed four WebTV-like units, including the Phillips and Sony Internet Terminals (like the one my friend Mike bought). They decided that the Phillips and Sony units were the best, but suggested spending another $70 for the optional wireless keyboard. (Otherwise you have to do everything with a TV-style remote control.) The other units they mentioned were the Sega Saturn's Net Link (only $200, if you already have the Sega Saturn game machine; allows you to choose your own ISP) and the Bandai @World ($500; has a printer port; a mini-Macintosh that acts like a game machine).

NetPC: The topic of NetPCs has come up several times at club meetings. I was skeptical in the beginning, and I still am, but a number of companies continue to pour a lot of money into the idea. This isn't really aimed just at home customers. They also want to sell it to businesses. The NetPC is an IBM-compatible PC without a hard disk.

The idea probably makes more sense in a business which connects these NetPCs to a high-speed LAN. I remain skeptical of its use in a home, with no network connection except a modem.

CheaPC: Monorail, AST, Packard Bell, and Compaq have computers they're advertising for "under a thousand dollars". Walter Mossberg, who writes the Personal Technology column for the Wall Street Journal, prefers the Compaq. So does Family PC. But the Compaq really costs $1300 or $1400, by the time you add a satisfactory monitor. April Fool!

Family PC describes these computers as a bit below their minimum recommended specs - but at half to two-thirds the price. These systems are faster than 486 systems, but slower than most Pentium systems. You wouldn't want to play a snazzy 3D game, but they're just fine for productivity applications.

CD-RW: Have you been interested in buying a CD recorder, but hadn't plunked down the $400 for it yet? Well, now you have one more choice to make. Ricoh has started advertising its CD-RW drive, and last Friday I got a Tiger Software catalog in the mail which listed it for $600 (No software mentioned). If you were at my presentation on CD recorders last year, you may remember that a CD-RW drive allows you to erase and re-record a CD-RW disk. These drives can also write CD-Rs (which can be read by a standard CD or CD-ROM drive), just as a regular CD recorder can. Additional CD-RW disks are $26 each in the Tiger catalog. Presumably you won't need many of these, since they can be reused a thousand times or so. (CD-R disks, which can be written once, are as low as $5 each, plus shipping and handling, in some catalogs. They are $10 at Office Max.)

DVD: You may have seen the PC Computing cover which shouted "DVD" as loudly as it could. Yes, folks, it's finally here, sort of. In fact Walter Mossberg has reviewed a $600 DVD movie player glowingly ("a superb experience"). The major studios are releasing a lot of titles on DVD right now.

What about DVD-ROM? Stay tuned. According to Mossberg, Creative Labs (the SoundBlaster people) will "soon" introduce a $500 DVD-ROM upgrade kit, but there won't be much software until later in the year. PC Computing says there are at least two other manufacturers of upgrade kits (for $500 - $1000), and 10 of the top 11 computer manufacturers will supposedly introduce DVD models in the first half of the year.

FireWire: The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine has a cover story on FireWire, a new serial bus/cabling system designed to link together various consumer entertainment devices and computer devices. Right now, you can buy a Sony digital camcorder with FireWire interface, and a PCI-bus FireWire adapter. Perhaps someday you'll be able to buy a digital VCR, digital TV, etc., all with FireWire ports. Personally, I'd be interested in a DVD player/recorder with FireWire capability.

One of the nice things about FireWire is the ease with which you'll be able to connect things together. A typical FireWire device will have three FireWire sockets, and you can connect a cable to any or all of them. To connect another device to the network, you just connect it to any socket of any device which is already on the network, whether the devices are powered on or not. Up to 63 devices can be interconnected.

Some have advocated replacing the SCSI bus by FireWire (which is faster than SCSI), FireWire versions of various standard computer peripherals are due out "soon", but future data storage devices may use an even faster bus (FC-AL, most likely, but that's another story). Time will tell.

- Richard Smiley

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9705

O whining box of tacky beige,
Your screens delight in many ways.
But, vile is the day I fear ,
When half my files disappear.

Mark Pendergast

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Ever begin working with a document, save it away, and then when you came back to work on it the next day only to find that you had forgotten what it was called; or even what application you used to create it.

The Start Button menu has an option called Documents that holds shortcuts to all your recently accessed documents. If you recently opened a file with a Windows 95 application, the application automatically adds a shortcut to that document to the list. Documents could be anything you open. This includes modem setup files, graphical images and other odd files.

You can clean out the Documents area of the Start Menu. Click the right mouse button on the task bar to display the Taskbar popup menu. Click the left mouse button on Properties in the popup menu to display the Taskbar Properties dialog. Click the left mouse button on the Start Menu Programs index tab in the dialog to display the Start Menu Programs page. Click the left mouse button on the Clear button in the Document menus frame. This will clear all the document that were in the Start Button Document area.

Sometimes a brute force approach works fine, but other times you would like to be a little more selective about which documents you clean up. Well you are in luck. The Document area is actually a sub-directory in the Windows directory. This sub-directory is called Recent. To selectively clean your files you can use the Windows Explorer application to navigate to C:\Windows\Recent (Or wherever your Windows directory is) and look at the shortcut files that are stored there. You can then use the delete command (The big X on the toolbar) to selectively delete the shortcuts you don’t want to see.

I usually use this feature when I have been messing around with some weird new application and have created a number of worthless files. At the same time I may have a number of important projects underway that I want to keep track of. In this case I clean out the junk files and leave the good ones.

As more of us move to Windows 95, I will try to get more good Windows 95 tips and tricks. I have published a large number of Windows 3.1 tips and tricks in the past. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to rerun some of these articles. Let me know at the next meeting.

Mark Pendergast

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I just got done reading the book ‘JAVA for Dummies’. I guess that means I am a JAVA guru or a dummy, I don’t know which. I have heard the buzzwords and wondered what all the excitement was about. The book, like most of the dummies and idiots books, was a great overview of concepts and vocabulary with a very frustrating lack of technical detail. In other words, just what I expected.

JAVA is a computer language. It has its roots in many other computer languages. Like Basic or Pascal, JAVA is interpreted. Much like the old Pascal systems used p-code and a p-machine to interpret it, JAVA is compiled into bytecode and interpreted in a bytecode interpreter that is built into your World Wide Web browser. JAVA is an object oriented language much like C++, although JAVA is dynamically liked at runtime, whereas C++ is statically liked at compile time.

JAVA allows users to add action and interactivity to Web pages. Users can make choices and have the page react without going back to the server.

A simpler version of JAVA, known as JAVAScript, is available as a scripting language for web browsers. JAVAScript is not compiled in advance, but is interpreted directly by the web browser. This makes it simpler to create, but does not allow the full power and control of JAVA.

JAVA began life at SUN Microsystems as a language for set-top boxes for TV and other small appliances called OAK. Due to prior claims to the OAK name, OAK was renamed to JAVA. The set-top box business was not won, but JAVA limped along at SUN. At the same time the World Wide Web was developing and the researchers at SUN decided that JAVA was perfect for the Web. They developed the Hot JAVA browser to run JAVA over the web and then partnered with Netscape to develop it further. The rest is history.

Mark Pendergast

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9706

On January 1, 2000, the world's computers will either shut down or go haywire. So will everything dependent on them: banks, Social Security, Medicare, and (if you don't take action soon) your retirement plans.

There will also be another major victim: the communications network of the U.S. Defense system and NATO.

"That just isn't possible!" That's the first reaction of everyone who hears this story for the first time. But when people hear me out, they change their minds. Always. I'm not saying that everyone believes that things will get as bad as I think they will. I am saying that everyone at least says, "Maybe Maybe it's bigger than I had thought."

"Maybe" is the first step to your survival. And I don't mean just financial survival.

(Throughout this report, I quote directly from U.S. government and industry sources which document in detail everything I say here.

Here is my prediction: over the next 36 months, investors will have an opportunity to make the greatest profits or greatest losses since 1929-32. Some people will make fortunes, only to be wiped out --trapped-- when governments impose economic controls. Timing will be crucial.

Let me explain, briefly. Over 40 years ago, a tiny group of incredibly skilled technicians made a fateful decision. They took a calculated risk. They saw that they could save their employers a little time per task and a lot of money overall. To achieve this, they would necessarily place most of the Western civilization at risk in the year 2000--maybe the greatest risk in the West's history. They went ahead and did it. You and I will soon become victims of their decision. Our lives will never be the same because of them.

Who were these people? Computer programmers--back in the days when there weren't many of them. As technicians, they wanted to save money with the most efficient technical solution. But as social forecasters, they were fools; the greatest group of fools in the last 1900 years, as you and I are about to find out. Here's what programmers did. In order to save two digits on punch cards and to save hard disk space on computers--back when hard disk space was very expensive--they dropped two digits: 1 and 9. Specifically, they dropped the first two digits of the year, so that 1953 became 53, 1967 became 67, and so forth. All will go well until 2000 becomes 00. At that point, they will either shut down or start computing on the basis of a 100-year .error: chaos.

The world's mainframe computer systems will then begin to crash. (So will millions of desktop computers.) Their internal calendars will either shut them down or, worse, start spewing out incorrect information. The year 2000 is a leap year; 1900 wasn't. This will throw the calculations off by a day after February 28. The days of the week are different in the year 2000 from 1900. Meanwhile the Federal Aviation Administration's ancient software is programmed in terms of traffic and congestion patterns based on the day of the week. Think of annuity calculations in the insurance industry, interest rate payments by government treasuries, and on and on.. Chaos!

Can't these older computers be fixed? Some can; some can't. In the time remaining before the year 2000, most can't. It's not just a problem with the computers. It's also a problem with the programs that tell them that to do. These are very complex programs, highly specialized to particular industries. They cannot be replaced with new programs in the brief time remaining.

Existing programs sometimes have 10 million lines of code, or 20 million , or in the case of the Defense Department, 358 million. This code is incredibly complicated: zeroes, ones, peculiar words, and instructions that today's programmers can't understand. Any line of code may contain an error. Worse; if you fix one line of code, your "fix" may corrupt any other lines. This is why 40% of the "fix' must be devoted to testing. But few (if any) organizations have enough unused mainframe capacity to run the required six-month parallel test! So, the mandatory testing will not be completed in 1999. No one can know for certain if a computer system is Year 2000-compliant until the year 2000, when the computers go on-line in the real world, then internal clocks say January 1, 2000. it's all or nothing!

About 85% of large-scale mainframe software projects are completed late. But the year 2000 is fixed. (Some fiscal year-based systems will start failing as early as mid-1998.)

How much does it cost today to correct a line of code? It depends. The usual estimate today is $1 a line, but in some applications, such as military applications, it can be almost $9 a line. Then add testing. As the year 2000 approaches, demand for computer programmers will rise, all over the world. I know one "headhunter" who recruits mainframe programmers for companies. He estimates that in 1999, their hourly wage will be $300 to 400. Multiply this by ten or twenty programmers. (Allstate Insurance today employs 100.) Pay them for a year. How many companies will survive this kind of capital drain? But those that can't will die in the Year 2000: computer breakdown, law suits, etc.

To update all of the world's mainframe computers, it will cost between $300 billion and $600 billion, the Gartner Group has estimated. But this overly optimistic forecast assumes that there are enough programmers available who can read and understand the 400 different mainframe computer languages, most of them unknown to today's younger programmers. (COBOL is the main one .)

This also assumes that there will be a pre-repair agreement among all of these isolated programmers: a single standard that all computers will recognize after they are repaired. This coordination is impossible to achieve.

If the repairs are not coordinated by a standardized approach--and none exists--then one of two horribly destructive things will happen; (1) uncorrected computers will send their corrupt data into the corrected computers, making them noncompliant, or (2) corrected computers will "lock out" all data from uncorrected computers. In the first case, the reliability of all computer in the date-transfer system will be ruined. In the second case, the overall system will disintegrate because the uncorrected computers are locked out. There will be no more "system". There is no third option except compliance of all computers in the unregulated system, which is in managerially impossible to achieve.

All of us are now going to pay for the programmers' mistake: the worst peacetime mistake in the 20th century . . . . and maybe in the last 1900 years. Some of us are going to pay a lot more than others. That's what this early warning report is all about: keeping you from having to pay more than is absolutely necessary. I call this Yellow Alert, Stage one. What I describe in this report will not happen all at once. The cost of taking effective action to defend yourself and your capital will keep rising, but for now, it's not astronomical.

Given by Richard W. Coop Sr.

With full permission from Gary North Ph.D. From part of His Paper THE ALZHEIMER"S ECONOMY. This is part one. Look for the rest of the story in future IBM Club Newsletter.

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(Many of our Group members are engineers, know engineers, or have to put up with them at the User Group meetings. Steve Lee found this handy guide on the Internet - Ed)

......at Christmas, it goes without saying that you will find the burnt-out bulb in the string of lights

......you window shop at Radio Shack

......your ideal evening consists of fast-forwarding through the latest sci-fi movie looking for technical inaccuracies

......you introduce your wife as "mylady@home.wife

......your spouse sends you e-mail instead of calling you to dinner

......you want a 10X CD-ROM for Christmas

......Dilbert is your hero

......you can name 6 Star Trek episodes

......the only jokes you receive are through e-mail

......your wrist watch has more computing power than a 486DX-50

......you look forward to Christmas only to put together the kids' toys

......you use a CAD program to design your son's Pine Wood Derby car

......you carry on a one-hour debate over the expected results of a test that actually takes five minutes to run

......you are convinced you can build a phazer out of your garage door opener and your camera's flash

......you don't even know where the cover to your personal computer is

......you have modified your can-opener to be microprocessor driven

......you own "Official Star Trek" anything

......you have ever taken the back off your TV just to see what's inside

......you have never backed up your hard drive

Downloaded from the Internet by Steve Lee .

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9707

First Aid for Windows 95 makes the bold claim that it "Fixes Windows Problems Automatically!". In my experience so far, that claim is perhaps a little overstated.

I purchased First Aid due to some lockup problems I have been experiencing with Prodigy Internet. I have seen everything from weird colors to full system lock-ups.

Loading First Aid was simple. Just plug in the CD and follow the instructions. It also loaded a package called Oil Change for Windows that can update First Aid on the fly. It offered to load some Internet connection software, but I declined the offer.

First Aid consists of two main parts. A monitor program, called Windows Guardian, that watches your system in operation and reports any problems as they happen, and a utility program that can check the setup of your system and report problems and conflicts.

The first thing I did was run the utility program and asked it to do a full check-up on my system. The report had about a dozen errors. The main offender seemed to be a conflict of some sort with my COM ports. Aha, my modem problems might be fixed at last.

When I called Gateway Computers hotline they told me that this was a known incompatibility between Windows 95 and their hardware. "Just ignore it." So much for automatic problem resolution.

The rest of the problems were trivial setup problems like CD ROM resident software that had shortcuts that didn’t point to anything because the CD ROM was not loaded. There were also some missing files that were called out by the registry, but I was afraid to delete them because I didn’t know what they were. I suspect that they were things loaded at the Gateway factory for testing and then removed before they shipped the system.

On the whole the First Aid utility program has not told me anything useful. One could argue that this in itself is useful information, but I had expected more that that.

The utility program has some other features that I did not get a chance to try. It has an advisor program that offers help in troubleshooting various parts of your system hardware and peripherals. It asks twenty questions until it gets close to what the problem is and then offers advice on how to fix it. The utility program also has an emergency backup utility that will make a copy of the most important Windows 95 files so you can restore your sytem if it crashes.

The monitor program is another story. It has detected crashes a few times. The culprit is always Netscape. It has recommended that I download a newer version and offered to do it for me a few times. The one time I let it try to download the new program the system was so unstable that it never completed the download. I also worry that the new Netscape may be incompatible with the Prodigy Internet system in some way. (Prodigy does automatic updates of it’s software on the fly. What will it do if it sees a newer version of Netscape. I guess I’ll need to call Prodigy and ask them, but again, this is far from automatically fixing all my Windows problems.)

On the whole I have not seen much value in First Aid. It has acted as a security blanket and allowed me to pursue other problems, without having to worry about the more fundamental issues. Because my system was setup by the Gateway factory and has not changed much since then, I have not seen the major errors in configuration that other people may have.

Taking all this into consideration, as well as the purchase price of $40, I have to say it is probably cheap insurance. If it had found a major problem that I had overlooked it would have been worth its weight in gold. If you have problems with your system, I would recommend that you go out and try First Aid, if not you probably don’t need it.

If you have used some new hardware or software on your computer, I would like to hear about it. Please write up your experiences and send it on a diskette to any of the IBM Users Group officers. It will be a great help to other Group members and you will receive User Bucks that are more valuable than gold (some restrictions apply).

Mark Pendergast

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Think of one word: banking. What if your local bank’s computer is fixed, but it can’t communicate with 10,000 other noncompliant banks, or 20,000, around the world—the lock-out scenario? How will your bank cash checks and clear credit cards issued by uncorrected banks? How will other banks cash your checks and credit card purchases? All banks are at risk if most of them aren’t Year 2000-compliant by December 31, 1999. The banking system is far more complex and vulnerable than one bank’s computer.

Maybe all of the world’s major banks will be compliant by late 1998. Maybe your local bank will be. Maybe most depositors will believe this in 19999, even though no one can really be sure that any computer is compliant until Jan. 1, 2000. But what about such presently noncompliant sectors as insurance, railroads, government retirement programs, government health care programs, government treasury departments, and national defense?

We are about to enter a new phase of the economy. I call it the Alzheimer’s economy, when the world’s mainframe computers lose their memories. No one with any political power is talking about this in public. No national political leader wants to talk about it before every other leader is talking about it. A national leader who sounds the alarm too early risks career suicide. I am not a political leader. I’m willing to sound the alarm. A few of you will believe me: (The Remnant.)

There’s bad news—incredibly bad news---and good news. I begin with the bad news. Until you understand the extent of the threat, you won’t recognize the opportunity. Here is my personal recommendation: When your ship comes in, you had better not be down at the bus terminal. You had better start thinking about this problem now, before the rush. It will become very costly to deal with it once the world’s stock markets start down. It may be more costly. It may be impossible. You do not want to be in a totally vulnerable situation, saying to yourself, over and over: "You fool! You knew years in advance!"

The problem I’ve described here is called the Year 2000 Problem. It’s also called the Millennium Bug. You’ve probably heard a little about it, but you don’t know the details. It’s sort of like Muzak: it’s there in the background, but nobody pays much attention to it. They will. When the Dow Jones falls below 5,000, they will. When it then falls below 2,000, they will be hearing about little else. Then things will get really serious.

When this stock market crash begins, a handful of people who can see what’s coming will double, triple, or quadruple their money by using a little-known mutual fund that was set up to hedge against just such a meltdown. I discuss it later in this report. By using its services, it will be ridiculously easy for informed investors to make a great deal of money.

But the big problem won’t be making money. The big problem will know when to abandon whatever it is that most people call money today, prior to the year 2000.

Your problem will be this: timing your sale of today’s bank credit money for tomorrow’s money—the money of the next millennium. Money in America after January 1, 2000 is unlikely to be pieces of green paper with President’s pictures on them.

The stock market’s pre-2000 meltdown isn’t the really bad news. It will merely be a late warning of the far more serious events to come after 2000. The public will not believe this story until after the market crashes. It will then be way too late for the average investor to profit from what I’m going to tell you in this report.

Let me make myself perfectly clear, As President Nixon used to say. Because you are reading this report, you have been given a distant early warning. You are already way ahead of several billion future victims. Their lack of knowledge and then their unwillingness to take evasive action Have given you a head start.

Just don’t forget this crucial fact: the finish line in this desperate race is absolutely fixed, It’s January 1, 2000. Don’t waste the head start that you now enjoy. If you sit there, nod your head in agreement, and then do nothing, you’re in worse shape than your competitors. You’ll be more responsible. The Bible warns:

Given by Richard W. Coop Sr.

With authorization by Gary North, PH.D

Look for part three in the next IBM Club newsletter

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9708

My family and I have discovered SIM-Mania. We purchased the ‘Classic’ edition SIM-city. It is by far the simplest of the SIM games and we love it..

You are given an empty field in a far corner of the world and must plan and build a city on it. You put down industrial, commercial and residential areas. You build roads, railroads, police, and fire departments and power plants. When your city gets bigger you build airports and seaports.

A city that is well planned grows and prospers. The poorly planned city decays and the citizens threaten to lynch you. Each year you collect taxes based on the value of your city. This allows you to build some more.

The game is very addictive. You love to see your approval rating climb. You feel bad when things go wrong. The game even includes natural disasters like earthquakes, fires or even Godzilla. (Sorry no King Kong). These disasters can be switched off if you like a more tranquil environment.

We have also acquired SIM-Farm, SIM-Ant and SIM-Earth. These games seem to take more knowledge to get started than SIM-City. I had to read the manual to my son before he could get started. SIM-Farm is a farming simulation. You can grow crops or livestock. You must learn to match crops to your land condition. SIM-Ant is an ant colony simulation. You must wipe out the red ants to take over the back yard and then move into the house and chase the humans away. SIM-Earth allows you to create your own world. You can start with just a ball of rock, or in the stone age or even in today's high tech world. Our whole family loves these games. Even my four year old daughter can smash together a SIM-City.

I would like to hear about other Group members’ adventures with new software. All you have to do is write up your experiences and give them to me on a floppy disk at the next meeting. I will publish them in the newsletter and you will get a user buck for each half page you submit. Cool!

Mark Pendergast

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I’m not talking here about a worldwide stock market panic. That’s a minor event. I’m talking about the worldwide panic (except in Red China) that will follow the stock market panic. You may be thinking: "what kinds of things are you talking about?" Here’s a real-world example. If all of your credit cards are rejected as "expired" at the check-out stand, and your local bank’s ATM cash machine won’t give you any cash, and your checks start bouncing because your account says "closed because of no recent activity," will you grab your passbooks go to your bank, and empty all of your accounts for cash? Of course you will. . . if you still can. (By the year 2000, it may be out of business.)

If the same thing has been happening to 90% of the bank accounts and credit cards on earth, do you think the entire banking system might get into trouble? Like maybe bankruptcy [ bank + rupture]?

Do you think there will be a long line in front of every bank still in business ( and not many will be)? If so, you’re beginning to get the picture.

Here’s another example. Your city is supplied daily by a railroad that brings in bulk items that can’t be hauled by trucks. Millions of tank cars, grain cars, and coal cars keep America’s economy running. They keep our cities alive. They keep you alive. You probably don’t think much about freight trains. You don’t even notice them. Why? Because the trains run on time. And why shouldn’t they? They’re computerized! But what if these computers go down? Is this example merely hypothetical? I don’t think so. In Datamation (January 1, 1996,David Baum reported that back in 1995, the Union Pacific railroad started running into problems with its five-year scheduling, budgeting, and forecasting operations. The year 2000 did not compute. "Why not"? Someone asked. (This, by the way, is how Social Security also found out in 1998: a ten-year forecasting exercise that revealed the anomaly.)

Union Pacific officials began researching its problem. Its grim discovery: over 82% of its programs are sensitive to date-related fields. It has 7,000 programs totaling 12 million lines of code. Estimated cost of conversion:200,000 man-hours or 100 staff years. The company in late 1995 had not yet decided which conversion tools it would use. I assume that it has by now. The problem is, Union Pacific is not America’s only railroad. Will all of the others be compliant in 2000? More to the point: Will the North American freight transport system as a whole be compliant?

Consider this. Railroad cars are owned by investors. The railroads lease them. A car may be transferred from company to company as it is directed to shipping points. Mainframe computers integrate this system. They ship cars hither and yon. If this privately owned, unregulated computer network loses its collective memory, the railroad companies will lose track of the cars. In January. Now think: New York, Boston, Detroit.

The Government will have to nationalize the railroads. But if the banks go down, how will the government—any government—collect taxes? Or what if the IRS computer goes down? Or what if taxpayers think that the IRS computer has gone down? There will be a massive tax revolt. How will the Federal government pay its employees?

You may be thinking, "things like this could never happen!" As recently as October, 1996, that’s what I thought, too, But things like this are going to happen unless something very much like a miracle takes place. I’m not counting on miracles.

Meanwhile, I hope you’re not thinking this: "if this really were about to happen. President Clinton would surely warn us." Anyone who thinks that any national politician with enough authority to be taken seriously will sound the alarm and risk triggering a banking panic is not much more reliable than a mainframe computer will be in the year 2000. Here is my predication:

This will Be the Biggest Crisis of My Life (And Yours)

I’m a historian by training. If what I think is about to happen really does happen, history textbooks will include at least a page about it in a thousand years, the same way they include a paragraph on the bubonic plague 0f 1348-50. (That grim event killed one-third of the population of Europe, from Italy to Iceland.)

I’m a financial commentator by profession. If what I think is about to happen really does happen, investors will be talking about it in 60 years, the same way we talk about the 1929 crash, the Great Depression, and World War II, all rolled into one.

This could be the biggest single event in the history of the West. Am I exaggerating? Not deliberately. But I hope I’m wrong. Ridiculously wrong. Dead wrong. What I’m about to tell you I didn’t believe as recently as last October. I would have said, "It really couldn’t be this bad." But what I have learned since then has changed my mind.

I first read about the Millennium Bug back in 1992. Robert X. Cringely (a pseudonym) wrote about it in his book on the recent history of the microcomputer industry, Accidental Empires. Warning: Don’t do what I did in 1992. Don’t read it and say, "So what?" I did not understand the implications of his prophecy back then. It took over four years for the realization to hit me. When it did, my life’s plans changed overnight. I hope it doesn’t take you four years. Here’s what he wrote.

We can predict the date by which the old IBM—IBM the mainframe computing giant—will be dead. We can predict the very day that the mainframe computer era will end. . . . . . . . On December 31, 1999, right at midnight, when the big ball drops and people are Kissing in New York Times Square, the era of mainframe computing will be over.

I know, I know: so what? We can all live without IBM, can’t we? NO. I mean this literally: "No , all of us can’t live without IBM." It would be like trying to remain productive with three-quarters of your memory gone. You couldn’t do it. Your family would put you in as convalescent home to "convalesce." (" To convalesce" in this setting means "to stop breathing.") We are about to enter the Alzheimer’s economy.

Given by Richard W. Coop Sr.
With full authorization from
Gary North, Ph.D.
Look for part 4 in the next newsletter

(Editors Note: The publication of the ‘Yellow Alert’ Series in this newsletter does not represent any endorsement of these opinions by the Kokomo IBM PC Users Group.)

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9709

Our family has been using this Winnie the Pooh software for a few months. My 4 year old daughter loves to play with it. The story follows the video fairly closely. The animation and sound are good.

You can choose to have the story read to you or have the story read with pauses to play around in the scene. Many of the objects in the scene react when you click on them. The cursor is in the shape of a bee, and when you hover over something that is active the bee’s wings fold up. Many of the pages have a button that invokes a session where you can hear songs from the video.

The CD also includes some games to test your skills. There are match the pattern, catch the butterfly and find the honey pot games.

The only limitation we have found is that some of the navigation between the various screens is circular, so you can’t back up after you have gone past some pages. You have to exit to the start and then move forward to the place you want to be.

In all, our family really enjoys this CD. It is great for 3-5 year olds. It is a must have for serious Winnie the Pooh fans.

Mark Pendergast

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The official web site of the National Football League is hot! This web site was great last year, but is even better this year.

The web site has information on all the NFL teams. There are pictures of your favorite players and sound clips of quotes from the game.

Each team has its own web page under the main page. It has the schedule of games and their wins and losses. It also has their standing in the division. Each week new feature articles are posted. Last year they had a personal diary of one of the Green Bay Packers as he made the long trek to the Super Bowl.

The game information is updated as the games are played. I looked at the results of the Packers - Giants preseason game, and was disappointed that they lost the game. I found out the next day that I had only looked at the box scores early in the fourth quarter and the Packers came back to win in the end. When I checked back at the site it had been updated to the final score. The information is not in ‘real time’ due to broadcast contract issues, but is updated often enough for most people.

The game summaries are very detailed and almost as complete as watching the game. You feel like you were there.

The web pages also have interesting links to other places and other related stuff.

Mark Pendergast

PS> They have a Colts page too!

The available software is divided into a number of categories. There are service packs (bug fixes) for number of products. Driver updates, beta test software, free add-ons to many Microsoft products and some freeware that is just available, but not supported.

I have already described the power toys freeware in a previous article. There were tons of freebies for Microsoft Office users. There were a large number of Windows 95 patches as well as the original service pack that was available last year.

Mark Pendergast

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Mark Pendergast

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Business decision-makers in Fortune 1000-size firms throughout the world—the companies listed on the world’s stock exchanges—use data stored on mainframe computers to make their decisions. Something in the range of 75% to 80% of this decision-relevant information is stored on mainframe computers, mainly IBM computers. The smooth operation of the free market is totally dependent on a continuing flow of accurate information. If the world’s mainframe computers go down or start spewing out inaccurate information, the world’s economy will be like a person who is struck down by Alzheimer’s disease. Struck down overnight!

The world’s economy today is not completely dependent on mainframe computers. Red China isn’t. India isn’t. Bangladesh isn’t. But the West’s economy is so dependent that any break in the information system or the payments system will create massive unemployment. The enormous specialization of jobs in the modern economy places us at risk if the means of payment goes down---banks—or public utilities become unpredictable.

But don’t businesses have lots of desktop computers? Yes, but this fact will save the West’s economy only in the long, post-2000 recovery phase, after trillions of dollars worth of capital---including jobs—have been lost. First, most desktops and software are not Year 2000-compliant. Second, a desktop computer has a lot of power—vastly more power than older mainframes have. The problem is not computer power. The problem is the incredibly complex, highly specialized computer programs that run only on mainframe computers. These are old programs, and they cannot be rewritten for desktops in the short time we have remaining. What I am saying is this: all systems can’t be repaired in time. But if all of them aren’t compliant, the information system fails.

Most of the computers in a system must be compliant for the system itself to survive. But most mainframes will not be compliant in the year 2000. After 2000, how will decision-makers in governments, big businesses, and the financial markets make accurate decisions? How will the free market link together supply and demand? Keep in mind the computer user’s phrase: garbage in, garbage out. What if decision-makers can access only garbage?

Year 2000-noncompliant mainframe computers belong in the equivalent of retirement homes or convalescent homes, yet they are running the world’s governments and its largest businesses. It is now too late to get rid of these mainframes, since they run the day-to-day operations. Social Security sends out 50 million checks a month.(SSA’S Kathleen Adams, Consortium Quarterly, Oct. 1996, p. 10). All governments in the West do the same.Bureaucrats can't shut down these mainframes without shutting down the governments. (Candidate Bill Clinton promised in 1992 to "end welfare as we know it." He didn’t do it, of course. Neither did Congress. But the Millennium Bug will.)

Consider another problem. AllState Insurance is America’s second-largest insurance company. It relies on a mainframe computer system that has 40,000 programs operating as one complex system. This system has 40 million lines of code! In 1995, Allstate figured out that it had a problem with its system. It hired a hundred programmers to fix the code. The company has budgeted $40 million for this project.

The programmers are not scheduled to complete the "fix" until late 1998. But all experts in this field say that at least 40% of a repair project must be devoted to testing. It takes months of testing to get a reliable assessment . The new program must be run side by side with the old one to see if it crashes the system. If the "fixed" program crashes the system five months into (say) a six-month test, the entire program must be examined, repaired, and completely tested again.

Do you really believe that a team of 100 programmers will go through 40 million lines of code and not make a single mistake the first time through? A mistake in one line of code can affect any of the other 40 million lines of code. This could shut down the whole system. Here is what one of the programmers told a Wall Street Journal reporter:

When I started here, I thought I would come in, write a thousand lines of code, and change the world.. Now, I am afraid to change even a single byte. Everything is just so complicated. (December 11, 1996, second front page.)

What if the team misses the deadline? What if Allstate is threatened with bankruptcy in 1999? Will another insurance company buy its assets? What insurance company? I am aware of no major insurance company anywhere on earth that is Year 2000-compliant today.

Next problem: What if people holding cash value life insurance polices start demanding their money at the contractual rate of 7% or 8%? If they think their insurance companies could go bankrupt, won’t they cash-out those policies? Meanwhile, other policy-holders will stop sending in premiums. Would you send in premiums to a company that you think could go bankrupt in a year? What will the companies do?

Here is my prediction: (1) they will go to Congress and ask to have all such cash value contracts suspended because of a national emergency (and there will indeed be a national emergency in 1999); (2) failing to receive such government intervention, they will start selling off their assets. What assets? Mainly these: Mortgages, bonds, and stock.

Interest rates will skyrocket. As rates climb, other cash value policy holders will exercise their right to get cash. The downward spiral in the capital markets will continue. What little is left of the stock market will fall again. The present market will collapse. Sellers will not be able to sell real estate except by carrying back paper (debt) , in the midst of rising interest rates and a falling mortgage market, when nobody will want to issue long-term credit and everyone will want cash.

I ask you: Is my scenario too exaggerated? Too extreme? Too apocalyptic? Fine. Tell me: Where am I wrong? If you tell me that this isn’t really that big a problem, answer me this: Why is Allstate spending $40 million trying to fix it.? Why isn’t Allstate Year 2000-compliant today, after two years of expensive repairs? Finally, do you think all large noncompliant companies are as flush with money as Allstate is? Where will they get the money or the programmers? They won’t. They’ll die.

Without liquidity, there is no mobility. There is a market for urban estate today, and places to buy in safer, smaller locations, only because hardly anyone has seen what the Millennium Bug could do. When they see what will happen, it will be very difficult to buy and sell estate for cash. "He who hesitates is lost," the old saying goes. This time, I believe it. Do you.

Given by Richard W. Coop Sr.

With full authorization from Gary North, Ph.D,

(Editors Note: The publication of the ‘Yellow Alert’ Series in this newsletter does not represent any endorsement of these opinions by the Kokomo IBM PC Users Group.)

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9710

Have you ever had a need to connect two computers together in order to transfer files? Perhaps, to transfer files from your old computer to your new computer. There is an easy way to do this and it is called Direct Cable Connection.

Hardware:

There are essentially two ways to make a connection between computer A and computer B. You can use a serial cable called a null modem cable (sometimes called a RS-232 cable) or you can use a special parallel cable (special internal wire connections, not a straight through connection) which attaches to the computers printer ports. Usually these computers can be purchased for between $10 and $20 from a computer store such as Radio Shack or other electronics store. Also, Windows help recommends, Parallel Technologies Direct Parallel Cables at 800-789-4784, as a place to buy cables. Via e-mail: SALES@LPT.COM (Internet) 71612,3466 (CompuServe). It may be necessary to buy some type of adapter, computer A might have a 25 pin serial port and computer B might have a 9 pin serial port.

Software:

Both computers must have Windows-95 installed. Both computers must have all of the following software installed.

Software Installation:

The software that you will use comes with Windows-95 and only needs to be setup and activated. First, you will need a program called Direct Cable Connection on both computers. Check the windows Accessories folder (Start ( Programs ( Accessories) to see if the program Direct Cable Connection is installed on both computers. If it is not installed then do the following by left mouse pressing; Start ( Settings ( Control Panel ( Add/Remove Programs ( Windows Setup ( Communications ( Details ( check the box Direct Cable Connection. This will install the program on you computer. Second, install Client for Microsoft Networks by left mouse clicking; Start ( Settings ( Control Panel ( Network (Configuration Tab) ( Add Client ( Microsoft ( Client for Microsoft Networks. Third, while in Network (Configuration Tab) ( Add Service (Microsoft, File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks). Fourth, while in Network (Configuration Tab) ( Add Protocol, (Microsoft, IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol.

If you have removed the "Network Neighborhood" ICON from your desktop then it must be replaced. It can be replaced by a little program called "Tweak UI (user interface)." It can be obtained on the Internet from Microsoft.

Setup:

While in Network: Left mouse click the identification tab, enter a unique Computer name in the space provided, this must be done for each computer. One computer will be the host (where files will be removed from) and the second computer will be the guest (where files will be sent to).

Left mouse click the "Primary Network Login:" (Located in Network Configuration) pull down window and set it to "Client for Microsoft Networks"

Click on the "File and Print Sharing…" button and then click on the check box "I want to be able to give others access to my files." This must be done on both computers and will allow you to share files between the two computers. Single click TCP/IP to select it and then go to properties, select the Bindings tab and then click on the box "File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks" to put a little check mark in it to show that it has been selected. To share information go to the Windows explorer on the host computer, select drive "c" by left clicking it, go to file ( properties ( sharing ( "shared as" , share name "Drive_C" , Access Type "Full". This will then will give you full access to all of the files on drive "C".

To make shortcuts to the program, Direct Cable Connection:

Left mouse click Start ( Programs ( Windows Explorer ( + C-Drive ( Windows . Find the program called Directcc (Application) and do a copy shortcut to the workbench. When you want to run the program just double click the shortcut to Directcc.

Running the Program:

Host Computer: Double click the Directcc button on the host computer. Do the setup procedure by following the directions presented. Set computer as host, set the port which represents your connection, and finish the setup. Repeat for the guest computer. When you are done with this setup the two computers should be communicating. Follow the directions on the guest computer, enter the unique name of the host computer, when this is done a small window will appear which shows the shared resources, Disk_C for example. Double click on Disk_C to open it further. Folders and files can be transferred by dragging and dropping onto the areas which you choose in the guest windows explorer.

Problems:

I encountered one problem with my use of Direct Cable Connection. I forgot to install Client for Microsoft Networks.

Further Information:

Windows help has some excellent information on using Direct Cable Connection. Go to start ( help ( Index and type in Direct to get further information.

Rodney Malkoff

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Do you want to write your own audio CDs, or your own CD-ROMs? I've discussed before the reasons to buy a CD-R drive (record your own audio CDs, back up your files, archive your family tree or other information, etc.). One of the disadvantages of CD-R has been that you could only write to a CD-R once, and those disks weren't cheap.

Various things are reducing that disadvantage. There are better ways of writing incrementally to a CD-R, so you can use a CD-R several times, if you don't fill it the first time. There are now drives which allow you to erase and reuse a CD-sized disk (CD-RW -- not the same as CD-R) or -- with the same drive -- write a CD-R.

But the most impressive change has been the price of CD-R disks. Indeed, Best Buy had a 10-pack of Plasmon CD-Rs for $25 plus tax, with a $25 rebate coupon bringing the price down to "free". ($1.25, really, but who's counting?) Mail order prices (exclusive of shipping and handling) recently have ranged from $1.50 (after rebate) each in packs of 5 to $4.40 each for unlimited quantities.

Here's some information about my experiences with these disks, and a little gathered from the June, 1996 issue of CD-ROM Professional:

As of a year and a half ago, there were only six manufacturers of CD-R disks: Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals, Eastman Kodak, Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh, TDK Electronics, and Verbatim. Three other manufacturers had announced plans to enter the business: Pioneer, Denon, and KAO.

I have now bought several different brands of CD-R disks, and used all but two of these brands:

TDK TDK 3 3

? Memorex 2 1 (session)

TDK Fuji 5 1 (audio)

? Maxell 15 1

Verbatim Verbatim 5 0

"S & F" here means Smart and Friendly, the manufacturer of my CD-R drive. The Fuji disk was written as a relatively short audio CD. A 31-minute session has been written to the Memorex disk. (I'll write more later.) All other disks used have been written as complete, fairly full Mac CD-ROMs.

The disks were written on two different Macs, using the same Smart and Friendly 2X write, 4X read CD-R drive. (So far, I haven't been able to get the CD-R drive working on my IBM compatibles long enough to write a disk. I think that's just a matter of various problems with my hardware.) The software used to run the CD-R drive was Toast 3.0. All recordings were made at the "2X" speed.

I have not had any problems writing or reading these disks, except that the computer hung when finishing the audio CD. (I have no reason to think that this was a disk-related problem, and the audio CD plays just fine in audio players, as well as in CD-ROM drives.)

Many CD-R disks use a gold reflective layer and blue photosensitive substance (cyanine). This gives the write side of the disk a greenish appearance. Most of my disks have this composition. However,

(1) I haven't opened the S&F disk,

(2) the Maxell disks use an almost colorless photosensitive substance (phthalocyanine), and

(3) the Verbatim "Datalife" disks use a silvery reflective layer (silver alloy, supposedly), and a blue photosensitive substance ("metallized azo").

It has been suggested -- and disputed -- that the phthalocyanine disks are more stable than the cyanine. The manufacturers who use cyanine generally give their disks a "10+" year expected lifetime. (But at least one says "100+".) The manufacturers using the newer phthalocyanine or metallized azo generally rate their disks at "100+" years. Kodak (which uses phthalocyanine) rates theirs even longer. These estimates are presumably based on accelerated lifetime studies, tradition, and marketing considerations. CD-Rs have been around for less than eight years, after all.

Pressed CDs may last as long as a couple of centuries. (Again, we're talking about accelerated lifetime studies, since these CDs have been around less than twice as long as CD-Rs.) Some (including Kodak, apparently) would argue that CD-Rs made with gold will last longer than CDs made with aluminum. Since gold is less chemically reactive than silver, I'd expect the gold disks to have a longer life than the silver -- other things being equal. None of the gold disks I've examined (TDK, Memorex, and Maxell) are opaque. (They do come fairly close.) The Verbatim disk is opaque. I don't know whether that's significant.

The bottom line on this is that both CD-R and CD-ROM are likely to outlast the equipment which is capable of reading them. Anyone who still has CD-Rs or CD-ROMs twenty-five years from now should seriously consider transferring them to some other medium.

The Maxell disks are the least obtrusively labeled. Indeed, the "Maxell" is barely visible, and almost the whole surface is printable by CD printers, apparently.

All in all, I'm inclined to prefer the Maxell disks. I'm also inclined to save my Verbatims for audio CDs. Small errors, which might be the first signs of deterioration, would be less important on audio disks than on CD-ROMs.

Richard Smiley

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Q: Why was the PC feeling down in the dumps?

A: Because all IBM PCs are blue.

Q: How many CPUs does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None, they gave up on vacuum tubes years ago.

Q: Why is Windows 95 like a swamp?

A: Both look good from a distance, take a lot of work to get through, and are full of bugs.

Q: How can you tell when a Microsoft PR man is lying?

A: His lips move.

Q: If 16 bits is a word, and 8 bits is a byte, and 4 bits is a nibble, what is 2 bits?

A: Twenty five cents.

Q: How do you tell a Macintosh computer from an Etch-a-sketch?

A: Looks like you can’t tell them apart either.

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9711

Beware! This could be serious.

If you receive an e-mail with a subject line of "Badtimes," delete it immediately WITHOUT reading it. This is the most dangerous E-mail virus yet.

It will completely re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer.

It also demagnetizes the strips on all your credit cards, reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to play.

It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend your new phone number.

This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your soda and leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will hide your car keys when you are late for work and interfere with your car radio so that you hear only static while stuck in traffic.

When executed "Badtimes" will also give you nightmares about circus midgets.

"Badtimes" will give you Dutch Elm disease and brown patch.

If the "Badtimes" mail message is opened in a Windows 95 environment it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk.

It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold.

It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

By Chet Hanna

For a few months I was seeing very unstable Internet connections with my Prodigy Internet setup. I have been having problems with my phone lines that cause me to run at 9600, but now I was crashing every five minutes, even at 9600.

I was looking around at all my networking setup parameters when I noticed that my networking had Netbui and IPX/SPX turned on on my modem port, as well as the TCP/IP I use for the Internet.

I thought back and remembered playing around with the Microsoft Internet setup about the time I had the problem. I didn’t recall changing anything, but must have hit OK.

I went ahead and disabled the the two unused protocols, rebooted, and all my new problems went away.

I read about networking in the book Windows95 Unleashed. Microsoft uses Netbui and IPX/SPX as the default protocol for networking. Somehow when I setup the Microsoft Internet it enabled these protocols. As best as I can figure it out, these extra protocols required so much time to figure out who was supposed to answer each packet coming in that it was causing crashes in my Internet connection.

If you have seen some performance problems on the Internet, you may want to check if these protocols are enabled. I do not believe that they are needed unless you are running a local area network in your home.

The book Windows95 Unleashed was very good. It is also very technical. It is not for the faint at heart. I needed some light reading so I checked it out from the Kokomo / Howard County Public Library downtown. They have a good selection of computer books there.

Mark Pendergast

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9712

The Gateway 2000 computer company has a way of reinventing itself every now and then. Following its success with television advertising, Gateway has begun to open up showrooms all over the country. I read about the showrooms in their quarterly newsletter.

I had a chance to visit the Gateway Country Store in Indianapolis last week. I own two Gateways already and am looking for another one soon. I thought it would be fun to see one before I bought it.

The Gateway store is very open. It has a high tech feel, with country touches like the corrugated galvanized steel construction of the demo booths. They have a number of systems configured to different tastes set up so you can see them and play around on them. There is an area set up for children where your kids can play computer games while you shop.

My wife's favorite attraction was a media room where they were showing off their Destination system, a combination computer and big screen TV system. The Destination had a 36 inch screen and surround sound speakers. The keyboard and mouse are cordless so you can plop them in your lap and blast away. The system had a feature where you could browse the program listing on the screen and click on a program to have it appear in the TV. The TV could be full screen or displayed in a window.

There is a little area off to one side where you can buy cow spotted t-shirts and coffee mugs. They have a large assortment of other cow spotted merchandise as well.

The showroom is exactly that. When I asked if I could buy a system and take it home, they told me they had no hardware, but that they could help me fill out my order form and order the system to be shipped from the factory. For me this was a turn off, I will probably configure my own system on the World Wide Web and order it over the phone. But for people less familiar with Gateway’s ‘system’ this could be very helpful.

The Gateway representative was very knowledgeable about the systems. I even asked him some off-the-wall questions (would I do that ?) and he seemed to know what he was talking about.

I learned that their Pentium II systems are only available in tower cases and also found out what was in all the software bundles. This was useful information that was not obvious from their web page. (www.gw2k.com)

The Gateway store offers technical training and service as well. I picked up a training schedule for the winter semester. The classes seemed to be about $65 a class. They had a volume discount for multiple classes. I don’t have a list of the classes handy, but I would look around for it if anyone was interested.

The Gateway Country Store is located in a strip mall on the south side of 86th street just East of Highway 431. You can’t miss it.

If you have a favorite place to shop for computer goodies I would love to hear from you. Just jot down your thoughts in any handy word processor. (Notepad would be fine) and send it to the return address of this newsletter, or just give it to any of the Group officers at one of our monthly meetings. It is a great way to get involved in the life of the Group and you can win valuable user bucks for your effort. Hope to hear from you soon.

Mark Pendergast