VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org

June 2004 Newsletter Index < Previous Page | Next Page > Feature Index editor@os2voice.org

Wouldn't it be great

An editorial view from Mark Dodel, Founding Editor of the VOICE Newsletter.

Right now in the United States, Cisco Systems has a television ad where a bunch of corporate CEO types are sitting around a restaurant table bemoaning how their networks are all down because of viruses. Then one of them smirks how his systems are never down because they use Cisco routers. As to the veracity of that, I have my doubts, but wouldn't it be great if IBM did a commercial where all systems in a business were completely hosed by the latest Windows virus except for the OS/2 Warp server sitting in a closet, that hasn't been rebooted in years. "Can't afford to sit around twiddling your thumbs while 13 year olds take down your Microsoft based systems? Switch to the operating system that banks use because it's unbreakable."

Of course, the bean counters in Armonk would never do anything to promote their own product and risk ticking off Bill Gates and his minions. But it would be great to see someone slip up like the Australian marketing representative who gave permission to put Warp 4 on a magazine give-away CD. Oh well, despite IBM's attempts to kill OS/2 with neglect and outright hostility over the years, we are still able to use our platform of choice. It's great that with just a little help of the Open Source community, OS/2 is still so usable today. (As I type this article in OpenOffice.org. :-) )

Speaking of Open Source, there was a bit of a shock recently when Mike Kaply posted on the Mozilla OS/2 news group that his group was no longer going to be focusing on the OS/2 port of the Mozilla web browser. Mike is looking for people to help take on more of the responsibility, including the coding, testing, and documentation. If you can help please contact Mike, either on the Mozilla news group netscape.public.mozilla.os2 or directly by email at mkaplyDESPAM@us.ibm.com - removing the DESPAM first of course. As noted you don't have to be a programmer to be helpful, you just need the desire to do something useful. Wouldn't it be great if so many people volunteered to help Mike that the OS/2 version of Mozilla became one of the primary platform versions?

So you want to learn some programming to help Mike out? Maybe we can run a class on using the GCC compiler, how to use a CVS, or just how to support an Open Source project like Mozilla at this year's Warpstock in Denver, Colorado or at Warpstock Europe in Arnhem in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, we don't have either of those sessions scheduled yet.

Wouldn't it be great if all the people who could give useful presentations at the Warpstock events could be scheduled early on, so all the people who say they are waiting to see the schedule would be happy and would gladly register early for Warpstock? If you are considering doing a presentation at Warpstock in Denver this year, please contact the Warpstock event Speaker Coordinator, Paul Curtis at speakers@warpstock.org. For Warpstock Europe send an email to the Sessions Coordinator Christian Langanke at cla@clanganke.de. For more information and some ideas for Warpstock presentations please see the Warpstock web site at http://www.warpstock.org/event_info/2004/wish_list.html or the Warpstock Europe web site at http://www.warpstock.net/program.html.

Finally, it would be fantastic to meet as many of you as I can in Denver this year, so if you can make it, please do. There is nothing greater then being in a room full of fellow OS/2 users.

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 and HowTo articles. If you have an idea for an article, why not write one. It's one of the best ways, short of programming native OS/2 applications, that you can help the OS/2 Community. And anyone can do it. Few of our writers are professionals. They are just OS/2 users trying to help other OS/2 users. Please send me your ideas or, better yet, a draft of an article to editor@os2voice.org. Please note our guidelines for submissions to the VOICE Newsletter. There you will find suggestions for topics, hints on content, structure and formatting, as well as the legal stuff.

VOICE Online Update: This month the general member meetings are scheduled on Saturdays June 5 and 12 at 3PM EDT (20:00 GMT). Everyone interested in OS/2 or eComStation is invited to attend either or both of these sessions in #VOICE on the Webbnet IRC network. For more information on attending online VOICE IRC meetings please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.

If you 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 Thomas Klein returns with part thirteen of his series How I learned to stop worrying and love REXX. This month's article deals with global code, global variables, and DrDialog's event handling.

We continue with our article series about using MySQL. Wolfgang Draxler shows that it doesn't always have to be PHP, and that REXX gets along with this database quite well. Read more in In close collaboration: MySQL and OS/2. Part four deals with the UPDATE and DELETE commands.

Tired of getting a pain in the wrist when working with standard mouses for a long time? Don't like the way your laptop's touchpad behaves? Mark Dodel found a solution for himself. Read more in The Logitech Trackman Wheel.

Finally, we have our OS/2 Tips and Letters, Addenda, Errata pages. If you have any OS/2 or eCS tips you've uncovered, please send them to tips@os2voice.org. If you have any comments or suggestions about the newsletter or articles in it, please send them to editor@os2voice.org.

Upcoming articles include more in the series on DrDialog by Thomas Klein, and on MySQL and OS/2 by Wolfgang Draxler.

That's it for this month.

Christian Hennecke, Mark Dodel, Marckus Kraft and Jason R. Stefanovich
VOICE Newsletter editors

Feature Index
editor@os2voice.org
< Previous Page | Newsletter Index | Next Page >
VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org