President's Message

August 2006

Wow… Summer is flying by. I hope everyone had a safe and joyous Fourth…

Random Thoughts
1) Congratulations to Fairfield native and 2006 Buick Championship winner J.J. Henry.

2) Phil Mickleson’s “collapse” at the U.S. Open. There’s been a whole lot of ink and electrons wasted on discussions about whether Phil should have hit a 4 wood off the 18th tee in the final round. Personally, I don’t think his mistake was hitting driver off the tee; I’m not sure, given the conditions at the time, that he could have reached the corner of the dog leg with a 4 wood. Personally, I think Phil’s mistake was trying to reach the green with his second shot. He would have, in my opinion at least, been better off laying up out of the rough and then going for the green from the fairway with his third… A par would have won him the U.S. Open; a boggy would have guaranteed him a piece of a playoff.

3) Give it a rest already. I’m getting a little annoyed with the media microscope that been focused on Michelle Wie. Folks she’s the real deal… Michelle can flat out play the game of golf; it’s only a matter of time before she wins her first professional tournament. Once she breaks through you can bet she will a bunch of them. That said personally I think she would have been better off playing more amateur tournaments and collegiate golf before turning pro. Most of the mistakes I’ve seen her make are the result of youth and inexperience rather than a lack of ability. As it is, she’s a 16-year-old girl growing up and learning how to win a golf tournament under media microscope that questions and analyses every decision and/or mistake she makes. Give her a break, guys. She’s going to make more than a few mistakes on the way to her first professional tournament win.

4) I picked up a Western Digital Passport Pocket Drive the other day… It’s my favorite new gadget. I have a couple of USB flash drives and they’re a great convenience—the problem is, they both have rather limited capacities. I had planned on buying a 4GB flash drive, but when I compared the prices of 4GB flash drives to that of the 6GB pocket drive It seemed like a no brainer to me… The prices for a 4GB flash drive run from about $80 at the low end to about $150 at the high end. The pocket drive sells for $99 and it has an extra two gigabytes of storage space. It’s a little bigger than a USB flash drive, but it still fits in my pocket, and I don’t have to worry about running out of room when I’m copying large files.

5) A few members have asked me about my position on Net Neutrality… Honestly I’m on the fence, on the surface it seems like a good idea, but I have a few concerns about what the law would and would not allow.
For example, would a net neutrality law allow an ISP to throttle connections to Google and then offer customers a premium service that would give their traffic to Google a higher priority than someone else’s? Would old line telecos be allowed to throttle a competitor’s VOIP traffic traveling over their networks? In my opinion, a law that would allow either of those to happen is completely unacceptable.
Personally, I think the entire issue of net neutrality is a deeply troubled area that would have been best left alone.

Upcoming Events
• “Patch Tuesday” – August 8th. Don’t forget to visit the Microsoft update site - http://update.microsoft.com.
• Apple World Wide Developer Conference – August 7th – 1th, Moscone Center West, San Francisco, CA - http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/.
• Interop New York – September 18th – 22nd, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center - http://www.interop.com.
Do you know of any upcoming technology conferences? Please send me the details… I’ll include them in my next column.

Newsletter Transition
Our long-suffering newsletter editor, Allan Ostergren, has decided to retire in December… The January 2007 edition to dacs.doc will be Allan’s last. I’m sorry to see him go, I’ve greatly enjoyed working with Allan over the years, he’s a top notch editor… It’s been Allan’s thankless task to edit my columns—with their atrocious spelling, terrible grammar and occasional incoherent ramblings—into a semi-readable tome each month… Thanks, Allan.
Needless to say, we need to find a replacement for Allan soon… The newsletter editor’s responsibilities are twofold:

1) Edit submissions to the newsletter.
2) Work with production editor, Marc Cohen, to layout the newsletter in Adobe PageMaker.
If you’re interested in the job, let me know… Ideally we’d like someone who can work with Allan and Marc over the next few months to ensure a smooth transition.

BETA Testers Wanted
Last month, I mention that we’re in the process of developing a new and improved version of the DACS web site. We need a few members who can help us test the site and make suggestions on ways to improve it. In particular, we need members who are using the Mac OS and Linux to help us test the site and identify problem areas.
If you’d like to help out, send me an e-mail with your Computer type (PC or Mac), processor type and RAM, what operating system and version you’re using and what web browser or browsers you’re using, and I’ll send you a link to the test web site.

End Notes
I finished The Saboteurs by W.E.B Griffin a few days ago; it’s a good read until the last chapter… For some reason Griffin chose to jump directly to the ending without ever filling in the details of how the characters got from A to B—a terrible way to finish what was an otherwise entertaining novel. Hopefully I’ll have better luck with The Traitor by Stephen Coonts.

That’s pretty much it for this month. You can e-mail me with your comments, questions, criticisms or book recommendations at jasetaro@mags.net or jasetaro@yahoo.com.
Cheers;

—Jeff Setaro