in this issue Views From the Top From The Inkwell Upcoming PCCC General Meeting topics Special Interest Group (SIG) July 2003 Board Minutes Do You Know SCO? Web Potpourri

So bring your can opener and your favorite SPAM recipe.

Views From the Top

Richard Kinkel, President

We have good news and bad news. First the bad news: Our president Mitch and one of our most dedicated members resigned from the board. The board accepted his resignation and we all wish him well.

Now for the goods news: We added two long time club members to the board who will be in charge of our new Internet SIG (Paul Reiss), and our newly created Forum Director (Virginia Host). Virginia will be in charge of developing an ongoing forum. More details will follow. Additionally, Bill Barnes is starting a new SIG about MS Office Products. Plus we have quality programs lined up for the remainder of the year. They are: Aug 14 Paul Reiss-The Internet, Sept 11 Bill Barnes-Introducing his MS Office Products SIG, Oct 9 Jack LaPointe-PC Security, Nov 13 Richard Kinkel-Future of Photography (We will probably have an outside speaker), Dec 11-Our Christmas Party. Just think all this plus the newsletter all for $5 bucks. So if you haven't sent in your money, please do so now, and thanks. Or just bring the money to the next meeting.

Now the part I should have mentioned first, as club VP I became the club's president. And I won't let you down. My goals for the club are: Quality members instead of Quantity, and to get more people involved and have every task delegated so if I have to leave the club I won't be missed. And we are on our way. So, I am asking our past members to come back and get involved, and besides you'll be with your computer buddies who are nice to be with. See you at the next meeting.

Go to the PC Club's Website

	From The Inkwell
Keith Wales, Sr. Welcome to Edition 5 of Volume 1 of eBytes & Bits. Well this has been a very interesting month to say the least. Before I go very far I want to apologize for the brevity of this newsletter. We had a lightning strike not far from the house and it did a few bad things to the computers around here in spite of everyone being on a surge protector, you can't stop Mother Nature. Mine which had some unpublished articles on it, is in the shop. I don't when it is coming back or whether they can fix it without wiping the hard drive. Technology is so much fun. Now that I have told you my story, if you sent me an article and you don't see it in this issue please re-send it and I will make sure it gets into the next newsletter.     Membership Levels »

	Upcoming PCCC General Meeting topics
August Paul Reiss on Spam September Bill Barnes introducing a Microsoft Office SIG October Jack LaPointe will introduce a speaker. November Richard Kinkel will introduce a speaker on Digital Photography

	Special Interest Group (SIG)
Special Interest Group Next week will be our SIG week and we will have several during that week. The schedule is as follows: Database/Graphics SIG -- aka PIG SIG Will meet at a new time Our regular General Meeting Night August 14, 2003 at 5:30pm At Ole Smokehouse, 1513 Montford Dr. Digital Camera SIG Tuesday, August 19, 2003, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485 PDA SIG (Formerly the Handheld SIG) Wednesday, August 20, 2003, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485 Internet SIG Thursday, August 21, 2003, 7:00pm CompUSA, South Boulevard and I-485     SIG Calendar »

	July 2003 Board Minutes
July 2003 Board Minutes The PCCC Board met July 21 at Tryon House - Woodlawn. Not attending were Eric Katowitz, SIG Director and Galen Bolin and Ted Hessberg, senior advisors. Also not attending were the following officers: President, Secretary, and Publicity. If you would like to fill any of these positions, please contact the Board. The Board accepted the resignation of Mitch Katowitz as president. Richard Kinkel will continue as acting president. We need a volunteer to fall in as acting vice president to help moderate meetings when Richard is unavailable. Virginia Host gave a report on the planning for the December Holiday Party. Although the catering will be the same, we are considering a different format. Recently we have spent significant club funds to purchase some of the gifts we've given out. The discussion is to greatly reduce the club's financial contribution in light of our greatly lowered dues. The one thing we will not reduce is the good camaraderie and food. If you have any input or would like to assist in the planning, contact Virginia at host@pc3.org. Much of the discussion was how we could improve pc3.org and ensure it's always current. One opportunity is for volunteers to maintain a single page or section of the website. This helps spread the burden {er -- fun} of keeping things up-to-date and lets club members learn a little about working on the web. We really would like to have a forum, but are unsure by which of the many options to manage it. It needs to be local and relevant, which are difficult with our typically low rate of participation. Jack LaPointe and Virginia Host offered to moderate the forum to keep it on-topic and find expert response. We also are looking for commercial sponsors to help defray the costs of running the club. Any content that supports another organization will be clearly identified as a paid or in-kind sponsorship. If you have any input on any of these issues, please contact Dewey Williams at webmaster@pc3.org. Paul Reiss had a pleasant chat with our contact at CompUSA on South Blvd. We will be looking into opportunities to mutually support each other. The August general meeting will be a presentation by our new Internet SIG director, Paul Reiss, on SPAM. The entire Board encourages all members to join them to discuss some timely business at the Pig SIG before the General Meeting at the Ole Smokehouse, 1513 Montford Dr., 5:30 pm August 14. The next Board Meeting will be August 25 at the Ole Smokehouse. Remember that only Paid Subscribers may attend SIG meetings, the Holiday Party or partake in other enhanced values of the club. Subscription is only $5 and you can pay at any meeting or mail it to PCCC Treasurer, Pam Wales, 15214 Millview Trace Lane, Mint Hill, NC 28277, treasurer@pc3.org.   Submitted by Bill Barnes July Treasurers Report Beginning Balance..............$2725.11 Income (From Membership).....115.22 Expenses (Newletter)..............45.00 Current Balance.................$2795.33 Submitted By Pam Wales Pay your DUES »

	Do You Know SCO?
NEWS & COMMENT  Do You Know SCO? by Bill Barnes & Dewey Williams, PCCC SCO Group, Inc. of Lindon, Utah has spent more time lately in the courtroom than coding which has likewise catapulted them to the popular news pages. Do you know who they are and why they're important to the average PC user? SCO started out in 1979 as Unix developer Santa Cruz Operation and was one of the early marketers of that operating system for personal-priced computers. Over the course of the years, their corporate family has included or been associated with Caldera Systems, a Linux distributor that once represented a real threat to NC's own Red Hat. A major investor in Caldera is Ray Noorda of Novell fame. They recently acquired most of the rights to the original Unix and have pulled back from their support of Linux. Lately, SCO's primary product has been legal briefs, charging Linux distributors and users with illegally appropriating Unix code. The biggest piece of news was suing IBM for $3 billion in damages. They are also offering Linux users appropriate licenses for $700 per CPU ($1400 after October 15). Last week, Red Hat and IBM counter sued SCO, essentially asking them to elaborate on their claims specifying the offending code and proving it's not legal under Linux' open software license. But you certainly don't use Unix and are only casually interested in Linux. How does all this sturm und drang affect you? In fact, you are a heavy user of Unix and Linux which power a significant amount of the internet and many corporate systems too, such as banks and airlines. In addition, a couple of the organizations that have settled with SCO are Microsoft Corporation and Sun Microsystems. You've heard of them. They're the nemeses of Linux. They're also battling it out to be the biggest global monopolists since JD Rockefeller. They'll certainly deny it, but surely they've considered that by putting a couple billion dollars into little ole SCO, maybe they can eliminate an up-and-coming competitor for their servers. In fact, this whole issue seems ideally suited to have been cooked up by the market leaders to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) into users and force them straight into the hands of Microsoft or Sun. Once there, inertia and efficiency will encourage businesses to just become a monolithic Microsoft operation. Meanwhile, independent developers have less and less opportunity to break into the market and cede all creativity to Redmond. Here my tirade gets longer and longer, but let's just say; even if all we use is Microsoft products, it's nice there's someone out there nipping at their heels. Please read the last article in the links below for a suggestion on one way to make this go away.       Read more about it »

	Web Potpourri
Because I am having computer problems Web Potpourri is on hiatus this month. See you next month, promise.     Send me your favorite sites and you too could be in the spotlight next month.

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