![[Bytes Link logo]](../../../cgif/bytelnk2.gif)
General Meeting
by by Eric Saca - April 17, 2001 at 17:58:48:
Our April meeting marked the 25th Anniversary of the North Orange County Computer Club. At this meeting, we had a brilliant and hilarious presentation by John C. Dvorak.President Terry Warren opened the meeting marking the 25th Anniversary of NOCCC. We are perhaps, the oldest continuously operating computer club in the United States—which also means, in the world. Terry used membership numbers to emphasize the longevity of the club. He asked members with numbers in certain ranges to stand up. One at a time, he asked for member numbers in lower and lower ranges. The lower the range, the earlier the members had joined NOCCC. When he reached the under 50 range, only two members were standing. Althought their member- ship number was “under 50,” they were clearly OVER 50. They got a rousing round of applause from the “full house” crowd.
During Random Access, Roland White, one of our younger/older members and former OS2 leader, announced his new software product to block junk e-mail—Junk Spy. Four years in the making, he said that Junk Spy will be available by the end of the month. He will be our presenter at the May 6th meeting The website is www. junkspy.com.
Jim Karsjens, the Bytes publisher, made a plea to everyone for new Bytes articles. He mentioned that he’s had to rely on material from other clubs and magazines to fill up recent Bytes issues. New articles should be submitted to editor@noccc.org.
Membership Chairman Alan Pearlman, announced that a new style of badge had recently been created. He asked everyone to come and see if they have a new badge. He also announced that elections were in June and anyone interested in volunteering for a Board position was encouraged to contact Terry Warren or himself.
A member asked Terry Warren about the recent limit of forty hours per month imposed on the NetZero (www. netzero.com) service. (Terry is in charge of Research & Development for NetZero.) He said that research showed the company that only a small minority of users was using the service over forty hours. This small minority was driving up the connection costs significantly. The limitation of forty hours will only affect this minority who will be charged $9.95 per month. to provide unlimited access. Also, any user who wants the service for more than forty hours on a given month can pay the fee for just that month to get unlimited hours.
Our guest of honor John C. Dvorak—Vice President George Margolin, in his usual comical mode, introduced John C. Dvorak, whom he considers one of the major players in the computer press, and one of the most influential and interesting. His articles regularly appear in Forbes, PC Magazine and many other world wide publications. He is also host of a regular television series, Silicon Spin on Tech TV, related to computers and is a popular speaker before groups and organizations around the world. So we felt honored that he volunteered to join us and help us celebrate our 25th Anniversary celebration. Being one of the movers and shakers, John was able to bring the fascinating history of the computer field to our eyes without a need for videos or slides. His mind pictures were clear enough. In a story filled with anecdotes, he told us about his very first computer in the mid-1970s and went through to the present.
After his speech, John opened the floor to questions. These are the types of questions members asked and the types of answers he gave:
• What’s the biggest wrong predic-tion you made?—The success of the 2.5” disk drives. I had thought they would really take off.
• Any preference between Windows and Deskview?—I could never warm up to Deskview.
• Any hope of diversity/invigoration of the market away from Microsoft?—Not really. I have mixed feelings on the possibilities of the open source operating systems. But I doubt they’ll really take off if they haven’t done so by now.
• Do you see any way out of our current software stagnation?—Well, advances in hardware seem to drive revolutions in software. There have been no major hardware advances lately, besides speed. So this software stag-nation has been happening for the last 2 to 3 years. I don’t know—we’ll see if anything happens on the hardware end…
• Do you think satellite commun-ications will take off for the Internet?— Not really. People can’t deal with the latency getting connected. After you’re connected, speeds are wonderful, but there is always delay in the initial connection.
• With Windows 2000, the menus are constantly changing now. There are no more standard menus. What do you think about that? I have never known Windows to claim a standard interface like the Macintosh.
• Any good prototype user interfaces lately to improve on Windows?—Nope. I’m still waiting.
• What do you think about voice recognition? It will be quite a while before it takes off. Right now, it works best with mid-range voices. My voice is in the low and very high ranges so I’ve never been able to get it to work.
• What’s the most outrageous true prediction you’ve ever made?—Good question! I’ll have to research that….
• What’s your reaction to all the spyware out there?—I’ve learned to listen to Steve Gibson on that subject. Whatever he says goes…. (ed – Steve Gibson was also a recent speaker at NOCCC)
• What radio stations carry your program?—You can find them on www.realcomputing.com.
• What kind of keyboards do you like best?—The kind with the trackball mouse, which allow you to put up your feet and use the keyboard on your lap.
• Can you give us some of your recent articles that you really like?—Go to www.forbes.com and do a search for Reinventing the Wheel and Bill Joy vs. The Robots.
John got a well deserved standing ovation after his talk.
John Dvorak's writeup in PC Magazine can be seen at http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/opinions/0%2C7802%2C2705288%2C00.html
Next Meeting—May 6th 2001 we’re going to have a treat. Member Roland White and former OS2 leader, will be showing us his brand new software package called “Junk Spy” which zaps spam. We expect to be the first group anywhere to get to see it. Let’s all give Roland’s new software release a big sendoff.
![[------STRIPE-----]](../../../cgif/str1.gif){kind=small}
Site Disclaimer Suggestions? E-Mail to webmaster@noccc.org