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"The VOICE Community"

It is with true sadness that I have to notify the VOICE Community that J Stephan Lugert died March 21, 2000. Stephan was not just a member of VOICE, but was very active in the Virtual OS/2 Community on the TeamOS/2 List as well as the FreeOS project. Perhaps more places as well, but I got to know him through those avenues. He was somewhat reclusive in our online world, never using his name. You may know him as wwwwwh or just ".".

I never had the opportunity to meet Stephan, or for that matter most of the people I meet online in IRC, Usenet or Mail Lists. But I did get to know a little about him.

He organized a group buy of RSJ on the TeamOS/2 Mail List last year. I remember thinking, should I trust this guy who doesn't even give out his name, but is asking for credit card numbers? So I checked his website - http://www.openetwork.com and discovered his real name was J. Stephan Lugert and he was the "VP Emerging Technology, Neural Networks, & Hardware Support" at the Software Development/Consultancy firm OPENetwork in New York. So I did join in the RSJ group buy, and have been very satisfied with my purchase. Eventually I even did a review of RSJ for the Newsletter.

''May we never be so afraid of doing something wrong that we do not do enough things right.''

Though somewhat stunned by the above news it also inspired an idea. We should try to get to know one-another a little better. It would be great if we could all meet at events like Warpstock, Warp Expo and WarpTech, but it's just not always possible. We should try though, so here are a couple ideas.

1. Start a VOICE Community page at the VOICE website. Here members can send in pictures of themselves if they choose, or maybe just their Warped machine(s). They can write a short bio on themselves perhaps, so other's can see more then just a Sig when we read their mail or talk on IRC.

2. Schedule a session at Warpstock for a VOICE members meeting. Many of us don't live in an area that has a real live OS/2 user group. That is why we spend so much time online. This would give us the opportunity to have a real live meeting of the minds. We could get to know one-another in person. Perhaps some other online entities such as the TeamOS/2 List, The OS/2 General Discussion List, the OS2User List or others may want to do the same.

If you have some spare time to help the OS/2 community, how about giving a hand with the Warp Doctor site. Warp Doctor is being designed to become the place to go to answer questions on OS/2 support. An updated version of the now ancient Warp Pharmacy. We need assistance with web design, suggestions for content, the content itself and soon we will need help with entry of the data. For more on Warp Doctor please see The Doctor Is In. by Phil D. Butler.

If you can help, we sponsor Warp Doctor development sessions on IRC in the #voice channel every Wednesday at 9PM EST(02:00GMT) http://www.warpdoctor.org/irc.html. Please come to some of these and assist in creating the best OS/2 support site on the internet. As to content we are in need of assistance with OS/2 Install/optimization and Networking install/configuration pages. If you have an existing page with this type of information, or you can help with writing new pages, plase contact dcasey3@home.com or better yet join the Warp Doctor mail list - http://mailer.falcon-net.net:8080/guest/RemoteListSummary/warpdoctor

If you haven't done so yet, but are ready to do so now, joining VOICE has been made a bit easier if you are outside the US. Mensys has added the VOICE memberships to their online store - http://shop.mensys.nl/cgi-bin/db2www/mns_art2.d2w/report?artname=VOICESUB&username=&i1=&o=&x=86904.73096. As before you can also join VOICE online via our BMT Secure order form at https://secure.falcon-net.net/BMT/order0308.html. Please consider joining VOICE now. Every membership helps make us stronger in our support of the OS/2 community.

This month, we have a General VOICE meeting on Monday, April 17th at 8PM EDT(00:00GMT). We have tentatively re-scheduled the Sundial Speakup from April 3rd for the 24th, so please update your calendars as Sundial Speakups are always of great interest. Anticipated topic is Mesa 2, the OS/2 spreadsheet and as always all are invited. In May there are General Meetings scheduled for the 1st and 15th at 8PM EDT(00:00GMT). No Speakup events scheduled at the moment for May but several are in the works. If you would like to hear from someone in particular or have an idea for a Speakup event, please submit it to liaison@os2voice.org, and we will try to schedule something. As always, 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 future VOICE events.

This month Dan Casey begins a series of articles on how to Put your Home LAN on the Internet with a review of the Linksys Cable/DSL Router. In addition to Dan's article on the router, we also have an article by David Eckard on installing and running ADSL on OS/2.

I've been trying to get Buddy Donnelly to submit an article for a long time since I've always enjoyed his posts in the comp.os.os2.* newsgroups on Usenet. Buddy finally came through with his article on Bit-hacking WebOrg. If you are looking for something beyond Communicator's BOOKMARK.HTM file, be sure to read this.

This month we have an interview with the folks at KRFTech, discussing their new WinDriver for OS/2 Beta. Belying it's name, WinDriver is a multi-platform device driver development package which is now being developed for OS/2. This article takes a look at what we can expect from this product when it is released.

Please see theLetters, Addendum, Errata section for a bunch of errors I made in my review of GSView/GhostScript in last month's newsletter. Course if more folks who knew what they were talking about would write articles, then I wouldn't have to. :-)

Finally this month Don Eitner tells us of his experience with the new OS/2 Warp Client 4.5 beta, err, I mean Fixpack 13, in his article on "The Operating System/2 Version is 4.50" .

For a couple of other takes on Fixpack 13 and the now announced OS/2 Convenience Pack, see The Register's article OS/2 lives! IBM turns life support back on http://www.theregister.co.uk/000414-000003.html and the article in ZD's Smart Reseller - It's Not Dead Yet! IBM breathes life into OS/2 Warp client. http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/news/0,4538,2531549,00.html which appeared right after Smart Reseller ran an opinion piece http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/column/0,4712,2524115,00.html stating that "IBM flat-out doesn't support it." and "Without support from the top, OS/2 as a product line, has been suffering a long, lingering death." Well I can't argue about the fact that OS/2 use has been in a downward spiral ever since microsoft decided to attack it with FUD and to coerce IBM into abandoning it, but IBM still supports OS/2, and OS/2 is still the best operating system for the PC. Too bad IBM is too busy raking in money supporting their competitor's products, to promote their own. Maybe it's time the US DOJ further investigated the deals between IBM and Microsoft. As I have been saying for a couple years now "Something is rotten in Armonk". So see the note below about registering a complaint with the US DOJ. It ain't over yet folks. 1

Just a reminder that we now have a full Newsletter Master Index page. All the feature sections of the current and previous issues can now be found on this one page. Additionally, we have added a Java based search function to this master index page. It will allow you to search all past issues for a specific word or phrase. So try it out and let us know what you think. If you have any ideas for improvements let me know at editor@os2voice.org.

That's it for this month. We are always interested in your thoughts and views on subjects related to OS/2, and would like to see opinion/editorial pieces as well as hardware/software reviews. To that end, and because of several recent requests, we have added a Guidelines for Article Submissions to the VOICE Newsletter.

Mark Dodel
Editor, VOICE Newsletter
editor@os2voice.org

If you want to express your feelings on the way IBM has abandoned OS/2 users in it's quest to appease bill gates, please write a letter to the US DOJ and tell them how you feel.

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.