Personal computer turns 20
By Bob Wallace
This was the story heard on local radio recently, yet very little seems
to have come from the local media beyond that teaser, or was it a real
headline? Given
the neighborhood named Silicon Valley being as close as it is, one would
think the San Francisco Chronicle would have had a large feature story on
this, but your editor can not recall seeing anything on it in the
intervening weeks, and it's been only a few since hearing that story.
So, go digging around on the Internet, searching for "PC
History" and see what comes up from that search on Dogpile
(www.dogpile.com). Quite a bit, in fact, including mention that Gary
Kildall wrote his CP/M operating system way back in 1973, then rewrote it
in 1974 to take advantage of Intel's 8080-based CPU, meaning that the
beginnings of CP/M were getting put in place before most of those computer
systems were ready to go out the door.
Searching a bit further, one can find that the good old Kaypro
computers most of the membership of this club originally began with came
out in March of 1982, less than five years after Radio Shack came out with
their bare-bones TRS-80 Z80-based system that needed a tape cassette to
store one's work. Kaypro's maker, Non-Linear Systems, got their act
together very well, provided one didn't mind toting a 26-pound
"luggable" computer from one place to another, with its 2.5-MHz
Z80 processor, twin 5.25-inch diskette drives (a whopping 193KB of disk
storage!), 64 KB of RAM, CP/M 2.2, and the Perfect Software family in its
first incarnation. Shortly after this writer purchased his Kaypro II, most
of the original membership in the then-named Kay+Fun Computer Club ended
up with the Wordstar program.
Gary Kildall went on to start Digital Research, dropped CP/M and came
up with DR-DOS later on, and spent some number of months on the local
tele-vision program Computer Chronicles. Kildall's alleged nemesis, Bill
Gates, in the meantime, found an obscure oper-ating system in the Seattle
area named as Quick and Dirty Operating System, or QDOS, renamed it to
Micro-Soft and started a company under that name, eventually removing the
hyphen from the official name. The rest, as some are wont to say, is
history. Digital Research and Microsoft supposedly went head to head to
become the official writer of the operating system for IBM's PC, with one
story having it that Kildall stood up the folks from Big Blue on the day
they stopped by his office, thereby giving Microsoft the opened door to
write what would become PC-DOS for some number of years, closely related
to MS-DOS, and competing with DR-DOS for the PC market's operating system.
One reason for going over some of this history is to serve as a
reminder of where we've been as a club, where the computer industry has
been at one point in its history, and where we may be going in the future,
as Microsoft is about to release its next Windows-based upgrade, Windows
XP, near the end of October. At the moment, that debut may hinge on what
the U.S. Justice Department does about what's left of the Microsoft
Anti-Trust Case, and/or what one U.S. Senator, Arlen Spector of
Pennsylvania, chooses to do within the Judicial Committee of the Senate
over Microsoft's apparent attempt to keep as many "outsiders"
from tagging along with this next version of their Windows platform as
Microsoft is able to manage.
As of this past week, Microsoft was given some reprieve from the
Justice Department case, but only to the degree that the original judge
has been removed for spending time with news reporters while he was trying
the case, making statements to those reporters about how Bill Gates needed
at least a modest slap on the wrist to get him and his company back in
compliance with the Anti-Trust statutes, and not going out of his way to
crush any and all comers with similar ideas of an OS for Personal
Computers. There has not been any change in the decision handed down by
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, only his removal from the case and handed
over to another Federal Judge, with instructions from Justice to take yet
another look at the overall case to see if Jackson's ruling will stand up
or not. Additional instructions to the new judge on the job include
getting the review done as quickly as possible, given Microsoft's debut
deadline late in October.
Depending on what the Senator from Pennsylvania chooses to do about
this next version of Windows may make some difference in whether Microsoft
is able to get out the door on time or not. If Senator Spector waits for
the Justice Department review to finish before making his move, Microsoft
could easily be delayed in releasing the Windows XP that has been getting
some degree of bum rap from some analysts until very recently, in part
based on how one may go about getting the new version from Microsoft.
Based on an e-mail message of just a few weeks ago describing how that
procedure would take place, this may be one of the most brazen moves by
Microsoft yet. Computer users may be required to phone Microsoft on their
own dime to get a registration number first, then make another call to
down-load the software, using the registration number during installation
to upgrade from whatever version you have now to Windows XP. This message
went on to detail that a user would have only two attempts to install
before that download and its registration number would not function again,
meaning going through that process all over, from the tele-phone call to
get a new registration number, to getting the software again and going
through the entire process once again.
Should this be the way Microsoft gets the new OS to users will prove
quite costly for those users still using dialup modems to gain access to
the Internet, while those with the high speed cable connections will get
them reasonably quickly. How many computer users will even choose to go
through all this is still open to question on this second Sunday in
September, as is the question about reviewers changing their minds about
how good a product this new version of Windows may be between now and
"opening day" at the end of October, if Microsoft is able to
stick to that date. Several issues need to be resolved between now and the
end of next month, any one of which, or several of them acting on their
own, could easily derail Microsoft's efforts to get this next version in
stores around the country, and do it on time. We'll have a clearer picture
of all this by the next newsletter early in November. At least, that's the
best guess, depending on the several variables still to be dealt with
between here and there.
Is your computer a sitting duck?
By Judy Oliphant
As more and more computer users converge onto the net on a daily
basis and soup-up Internet Access as the ranks of the technically unsavvy
grow more and more are making themselves a sitting duck for
malicious hacking around the globe.
Ah! you say, but it can't happen to me, I'm not downloading from the
net, I'm not shopping at any of the online store fronts.. But Mr. &
Mrs. computer user, you are just as much a sitting duck as the man
in his home across the street from you.. In fact the man down the
street from you could be staring at your computer files. This is an issue
that is being discussed widely by all ISPs (Internet Service Providers) --
how do we protect the unsavvy computer user from being hacked.
When you sign up for your new ISP you are flooded with information how
to set up this new account, you are given a CD-ROM disk, and you are
given all the proper guidelines, but does it say "By the way,
you can be hacked"?
Highspeed connections last year doubled the amount of users with about
9 million households subscribing, making break-ins that much easier
for the hacker. A hacker just found the 9 million "welcome mats"
(households) just sitting there waiting for him. It was made easier for
the hacker because computers are connected to the Internet around
the clock via tv cable and phone lines, widening the Internet use.
While both sides try to outwit each other while users like us say
well the broadband providers should do something for us.. Well
should they or should you? Who is the owner of the computer after
all? Isn't it you that owns the computer, so shouldn't it be you
that protects yourself?
Just like your car and your home.
Computer users in general put out a welcome mat and say hey, come on
in, Hacker, the welcome mat is out by using the file-sharing
commands of Windows operating system designed to allow users to trade
documents with others on a private network. Many users fail to realize
that file sharing also enables the entire Internet to browse through your
computer, leaving you buck naked in the woods to attacks. You're out there
naked to the entire universe to see what you have on your
computer..This also leaves you bare to scanners or viruses or probing
drives.
It's totally up to you how you protect your own computer. Here are some
of the ways that may help you do this. When a new computer comes out of
the box the file-sharing command in Windows is turned off by default but
people by nature are wanting to tinker around with this
command and this command is often turned back on.
One of the ways to protect your self here is to leave this command
turned off. Another way to protect yourself is to install what is called a
Firewall.. One of the easiest ones that I have installed here is
called Zone Alarm, from www.zonealarm.com in San Francisco. Very
good firewall. Easy to configure and is a local company made good. There
are many of them out there
Norton has one, McAfee has one as well.
Here are several other ways you can protect yourself.
1. Check to see if file sharing is turned on. If it is, turn it
off.
2. Log on to www.grc.com and use their free program, ShieldsUp,
to check your computer's risk for invasion. And download GRC's LeakTest
program to run on your computer for a local test..
3. If you do not have a local area network (LAN) at home, turn
off file sharing.
4. Get one of the firewall programs and install it. (Zone
Labs has their ZoneAlarm Pro for enterprise systems, but also has a free
version for home PC users near the bottom of their home page at
www.zonealarm.com. File is named zonalm26.exe.)
Final bytes
By Bob Wallace
As any sports fan knows, this second weekend of September is opening
day (or should I say Opening Day) of the 2001 National Football League.
With replacement officials on the field, it is highly important and highly
serious that as many eyes as are possible be on the field of play to
ensure that calls are being made by officiating crews in the correct
manner. In the second half of the Oakland Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs
game, the Raiders have already been burned at least twice by this
replacement crew of officials, and other games are likely suffering
similar fates. All this goes in the direction of explain-ing to you why it
is this issue of the newsletter is somewhat shorter than is normal, only
four pages. On almost any other newsletter day, this would easily get to
eight pages, including the mailer page on the back. (And don't
forget that when football gets under way, it's only a few more weeks until
hockey!)
Coming up for monthly meetings are the following: PrintRoom on Thursday
evening of this month, September, and a discussion of Firewall protection
on your personal computer in October.
PrintRoom is the web site that allows you to post your digital pictures
on the Internet (up to 200 MB of storage space at no cost; additional
space is available for a one-time minimum fee), a site on which your
editor and his wife have already set up several "albums" of
pictures related to one another.
Putting a firewall on your personal computer to protect against
unwanted invasion of your computer while tied to the Internet is one of
the easier things to do, regardless of your level of exper-tise when it
comes to computing. Log on to the Zone Labs web site noted at the bottom
of Judy's piece, download their free version for home use, then click on
"Start" and "Run," followed by supplying the
subdirectory and file name to get ZoneAlarms installed to provide
protection for your system. The latest version (zonalm26.exe) includes
protection for Internet use (going out the phone line or over the cable to
gain access to the Internet), and a second "door" that allows
for setting up your own Intranet (two computers hooked up in one manner or
another that will allow for file sharing between each without the need for
copying to diskette to move a given file from one computer to the other)
that is handled separately by ZoneAlarm.
Since visiting Canada in July in search of information on my
grandfather's grandfather, born and raised in Scot-land, trained there as
a stone mason, then emigrating to Townsend Town-ship in Ontario where he
and another Scotsman built some number of stone houses in the 1850s and
1860s, each Sunday has been tied to logging on to the Genealogy forum page
for Wallace to find what might have popped up over the previous week in
the way of messages, and checking on my mother's side (Delamarter) to see
if anything has shown up there. This has quickly become one of the most
intriguing uses of the Internet I've found yet! Logging on to a web site
in your former hometown only to find what may be your great
grandfather's obituary listed there is something to write home about!
Other uses for the Internet, now that the bulletin board systems have
finally gone the way of the dinosaur, include getting news (Drudge
probably has the best selection of wire services and newspapers from
around the country), checking on genealogy information, and visiting
Scotland via one of some number of web camera operations, this one
camvista.com with links to several Scottish locations.
Our thanks to Judy Oliphant for her piece on Network Security. As has
been the case for some time now, this issue is put together on the OS/2
Warp 4-based computer using WordPerfect for Windows in OS/2's emulation of
Windows 3.x, printed on HP's 693C.
Schedule
September 13: PrintRoom
October 11: Firewalls
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