Mountain View Computer Users Group

Watch the Back Door!

Many an afternoon I see a school bus stopping in the neighborhood to unload students toting enormous bags of expensive text books on their backs. It always irks me because it seems so unnecessary. The heavy backpacks put an unhealthy strain on the students' spines, and the expensive books put a severe strain on family budgets, especially if there are several children of school age. (Public school students must pay for their text books in Indiana, in case you're not from around here.)

It would be so much easier if the students used inexpensive, functional notebook computers with the textbooks stored on CDs. Ideally, classrooms should be equipped with permanent, networked units for common use so that the students can leave their own computers at home to minimize damage and loss during transport. After all, most colleges already require that students have a computer, so why not start in high school, or even earlier?

Cost shouldn't be a problem. A fully functional computer running free Linux and Open Source software can cost less than a year's worth of textbooks. Acceptance will be harder to come by, with expected resistance from book publishers about to lose a highly profitable and captive market. Microsoft may not be happy either. Teachers may have to be retrained, and administrators, having been weaned on MS Windows, may oppose the use of what many still regard as a second-best operating environment.

Often necessity is the father of invention. Third World countries, only now entering the world of computing, are the most likely to introduce revolutionary progress in low-cost personal computer productivity. My own computer, equipped with all the latest bells and whistles, sits idle for more than 99% of the time. In a Third World classroom, or maybe a small office, it could easily support a dozen or more terminals and monitors if provided with the right, free software. History would repeat itself, since time sharing of computers was first introduced in the 1960's when mainframe computers were also unaffordable for individuals. Students will only need inexpensive dumb terminals and bare-bones monitors. In England an organization calling itself Ndiyo (Swahili for "yes") is working on this approach. It makes full-fledged computing available to many at low cost.

An alternate approach called "One Laptop Per Child", initiated by academics at MIT, aims to provide specially designed laptop computers at a cost of less than $100 per unit to millions of children in poor countries. The computing experience is less advanced than with the time sharing approach, but having your own computer, no matter how primitive, has a strong psychological advantage. I can testify to that. My first introduction to computers was via a Telex terminal connected to a time-sharing mainframe that I used for scientific modeling work. It was useful and interesting, but not nearly as captivating as running my own simple programs in Sinclair Basic on my own first ($100) Timex-Sinclair computer.

An essential part of introducing computers to Third Worlders (and not only school children) is the availability of free software in the form of Linux and the OpenSource programs to do just about anything productive that computers are capable of. This in turn will grow and mature the Linux/OpenSource technology to the point where it may well return to the West through the back door as an attractive, low-cost alternative to expensive and bloated Microsoft Windows and Office programs. (Based in part on an article in The Economist, 9/23/2006, thanks to Louis Ritz)

A South-African dotcom millionaire, Mark Shuttleworth, is financing the development of a totally free distribution of desktop Linux and all the necessary software. Called Ubuntu ("Humanity to Others"), it is already preferred by many Linux users. It is totally free. Even the CDs on which it is distributed are mailed to you free for the asking (www.ubuntu.com).Although possibly intended for use in Third World countries, Ubuntu is also rapidly gaining followers in the US. What did I just write about the back door?

What Is Web2.0?

Usually when major computer-related improvements are forthcoming, they are hyped long before they actually become available. Have you heard about Vista? I thought so.

Surprisingly, a major improvement in the Internet Web protocol, Web2.0, seems to have sneaked in through the back door. And yet, Web2.0 is to the old Web what the telephone was to the telegraph. With the traditional Web, you send a message, such as a request for a street map, to a Web address (www.mapquest.com) that gets translated into a numerical Internet Protocol address by a Domain Name Server. The addressed site responds to your message and the connection is broken. To send a follow-up message ("zoom in") the whole process must be repeated. Slow-slow-slow.

With Web2.0 the connection, once established, remains open until you close your browser window. This allows an immediate back-and-forth communication as if the distant Web site were located on your own computer. It allows you to go to Google Earth and seamlessly scroll and zoom the maps to your heart's content (provided your Internet connection is fast enough). It also makes it possible to provide application programs, such as an Office Suite similar to Microsoft Office, on a Web server to be made available via a Web2.0 connection. Several providers are moving in that direction, including Google and Microsoft. News sites can provide live hyperlinks whereby when your pointer hovers over a headline a summary of the news pops up on the screen. The possibilities are endless.

Happily, the user doesn't need to do anything to benefit from this new technology. The Internet servers provide all the programming that any major Web browser can understand. Enjoy!

How Broad Is Your Broadband Connection?

Not nearly as fast as you would like it to be, right? If you have a cable connection and the kid next door is online playing Doom, or Bully, or whatever, you're sharing online access and your connection probably crawls. Not much you can do about that. But you can minimize some other delays.

One of these is the time it takes your browser to connect to the site you want to address. If you type an Internet address such as swipcug.apcug.org/index.htm, a Domain Name Server (DNS) provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) translates it to the corresponding numerical Internet Protocol (IP) address. Unless the entry has been cached after having been used before, the lookup procedure may take some time.

OpenDNS is a new, independent, and free Domain Name Server that claims to be faster than many ISP servers, mostly by using a very large cache. In addition, it keeps track of known phishing sites and blocks them with a warning message. It will also try to correct misspellings and still provide the intended Web site, or suggest possible sites you might be looking for. When I intentionally typed swipcug.apcug.NET (instead of the correct .ORG domain) I got a choice of four possible sites with the correct one first on the list. Simple instructions for replacing the default DNS addresses of your ISP with the OpenDNS addresses can be found at http://welcome.opendns.com/ ( read Steve Bass in PCWorld, November 2006)

If you want to check the download and upload speeds of your broadband connection you can use SpeakEasy at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. As I am writing this, on Friday at 10:45 pm, my connection speed with Sigecom to Chicago is: Download Speed: 3866 kbps (483.3 KB/sec transfer rate), Upload Speed: 347 kbps (43.4 KB/sec transfer rate), about as good as it gets in my experience. Speeds to Seattle are similar.

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