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It's official and if you attended the VOICE Speakup on March 20th you were there
when it was first announced (well except for Stan's boo-boo on the Warpstock list
In March/April VOICE sponsored a couple of other great Speakup sessions that
were actively attended. If you missed any, you can catch up by reading the transcripts
at http://www.os2voice.org/transcripts.html.
As always, if there are any special guests you would be interested in hearing from
please drop us a line - editor@os2voice.org.
We welcomed back Peter Nielsen,on March 29th, and there was a lively discussion
on his upcoming 2.0 release of PMView. Finally on April 5th, we had a Speakup session
scheduled with our good friends at Sundial Systems on one of their new OS/2 native
applications Rover Pack -a new desktop navigation and enhancement product. Please
be sure to check out the updated VOICE Future events Calendar
in this newsletter or on the VOICE website at http://www.os2voice.org/calendar.html
for more details on VOICE events.
Speaking of IRC, the folks at SCOUG are now charging full force onto Internet
chat with a weekly scheduled meetings and help sessions. Check it out on Mondays
and Tuesdays at 10PM EDT (7PM PDT) in the #scoug channel on WEBBnet. For more information
see the web page at http://users.deltanet.com/users/dwatson/irc/overview.html.
Tell them VOICE sent ya. :-)
The microsoft anti-trust trial is drawing to a close and the legal outcome is
pretty much a given ("duh, a monopoly? us? let me show you a video that disproves
we control 90% of the pc market through coercion, lies and extortion. It's our quality
code and concern for the enduser that drives our software sales."). I hate
to sound like the typical anti-microsoft OS/2 user, but anything short of a guilty
verdict would be a complete travesty. I may be biased, but that doesn't make me
any less correct. It is now time to focus on the penalty phase. I myself doubt
that the US judiciary has the guts to do what needs to be done, but you never know.
Please be sure to read Don Eitner's letter to the US DOJ voicing his opinion on
how microsoft's strangle hold on the computing world should be broken in our Letters section.
I haven't bothered with posting the contact address for the USDOJ for a few months
so if anyone is interested in making their feeling's known here it is:
Joel I. Klein
Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
601 D Street, NW
Washington, DC 20530
The email address is antitrust@justice.usdoj.gov,
however I believe a written communication has more effect then electronic. My own
belief is that they should just prohibit any and all exclusive pre-load contracts
with large pc manufacturers. It's the pre-loads that have made microsoft king of
the pc world. IBM's PC division lost almost a billion dollars last year. Want to
bet that microsoft made a large profit off of all those pc's IBM sold, where no
buyer had any choice as to what they wanted installed on their new purchase? Give
a volume discount, but don't forbid a manufacturer from loading a competing operating
system. In addition micro$oft should be heavily fined for all their past transgressions
(I'm talking billions, not a few million which is just pocket change for bill gates).
Otherwise leave micro$oft alone to wallow in it's own decay, but allow those of
us who detest mediocrity to have a choice when we purchase new hardware. Yes, the
overwhelming majority of pc users will continue to demand their windoze, and that
is their right. I just don't want to have to pay the micro$oft tax anymore. There
is a definite shift in the winds now that I see that Dell is offering Linux pre-loads
and actually lists an OS/2 pre-load (though Warp 3 for some bizarre reason) on their
new online site. Of course I don't run Linux, but it's a start in the right direction.
In this issue of the VOICE Newsletter we begin with an article by Brad Barclay
on his success with installing X-10 home automation with House/2
. Peter Lazenby gives us his thought's on the state of OS/2 Accountingware,
or All Bark, No Bite. Then Tom Nadeau finishes up his with "Y2K
and the Search for Scapegoats -- Part 3", Adrian gives a helpful article
on How to install SSH and SSHD for OS/2, and I take a look at a new offering from
Sundial Systems - Rover Pack 2.7. Wrapping things
up in the VIEW from the End(User), Don Eitner adds
some more info in his article "PMView 2.0 - Addendum".
Mark Dodel
Editor, VOICE Newsletter
editor@os2voice.org