EDITOR's NOTE: Although I couldn't personally attend Warpstock Europe last month, Derrick Price of the U.K., a long time contributor to these pages, was able to make the trip and offers the following report:
Herewith are my recollections of Warpstock Europe: I hope I have not made too many misunderstandings or mistakes. I have tried not to re-cover ground which has already been reported elsewhere, e.g. in VOICE.
The event was held at a modern college and the presentation facilities were excellent. In the first event on the first morning I counted 20 attendees in my session (one of four) so I estimate the initial attendance to be around 80. This grew to over 200 on the following day (Saturday) and the college cafeteria was packed (with additional girlfriends and wives) for the Saturday evening event.
In the IBM presentations, a few additional items of information came out:
"Speculation" about what IBM might do next year:
Having said all this, there was no sign of either SS1.7 or new Adaptec drivers and Bob St. John of Serenity Systems International commented that he was not expecting his master disk until December for SmartSuite v1.7. So, I suppose the stuff may be available internally in IBM but we, the great unwashed, have to wait a little longer!
Two applications caught my attention:
Virtual PC was described as a migration aid from OS/2 to Windows but, equally, if IBM had any gumption it is an ideal vehicle to pick up the low-hanging NT fruit and go the other way. It demonstrated well and the pre-release copies at $50 a pop were selling like hot cakes, with Mensys continually cutting additional CDs on-site. The authors also commented that they had a Flash 5 plugin ready for release but the commercials were still being resolved.
Maul v2.0, a desktop publishing package, was announced but due to some organizational oversight, the author only got presentation slots after the start of the event and the slots clashed with other things I wanted to see so I did not see the pitch. I am not a whiz on desktop publishing but it demonstrated well and the author had no problem in disposing of his free, time trial bounded, pre-release CDs. Outside his presentation slots he appeared to be constantly demonstrating the package; he told me on the Sunday morning he was absolutely exhausted. All the Warpstock signs were apparently prepared with this package. Final v2.0 release was promised for shipment by end November at $99 a licence and I have attached images of the front and back of the author's sales blurb.
That's it for my recollections, as I said, over and above what has already been reported elsewhere.
FIGHTING THE MS SETTLEMENT
If you have been following the U.S. Government's case against Microsoft you probably know that the proposed settlement has been somewhat watered down. The only thing stalling the settlement, fortunately, is nine states refusing to sign-off on the settlement. What you may not know is that there is a well rehearsed campaign going on behind the scenes to coerce the attorney generals from these states to accept the settlement. Groups like the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) and the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), both of Washington, DC, are urging the attorney generals to settle. The CAGW has even gone so far as to develop a web page to encourage people to automatically send e-mails to the attorney generals encouraging them to settle.
CAGW and ACT's rationale for settling is that the case has simply gone on too long and that it has been too costly; further, the remedy proposed by the federal government is sufficient. I may agree that the case has dragged on a long time and at considerable cost to the taxpayer, but I see this as a weakness of our judicial system and not the fault of the litigants. More importantly, I see the government's proposal as nothing more than a slap on the wrist and am outraged by it.
Frankly, I was taken aback by this lobbying tactic, particularly when I realized that Microsoft was a sponsor of the ACT (and probably the CAGW). To this end, I have decided to "fight fire with fire" and have developed a separate e-mail campaign to encourage the attorney generals NOT to accept the settlement. Below are the names of the various "hold-out" attorney generals, along with a sample letter for you to use:
State | Attorney General | Send them an e-mail |
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California | Bill Lockyer |
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Connecticut | Richard Blumenthal |
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Florida | Robert (Bob) A. Butterworth |
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Iowa | Tom Miller |
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Kansas | Carla J. Stovall |
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Massachusetts | Tom Reilly |
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Minnesota | Mike Hatch |
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Utah | Mark Shurtleff |
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West Virginia | Darrell V. McGraw, Jr. |
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ALL | Oh Heck, send it to all of them! |
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AND FINALLY...
A couple of notes for you. First, the December 10th issue of BusinessWeek magazine has an interesting article entitled, "Big Blue's Big Bet on Free Software." The article claims that "This year, Big Blue will spend $1 billion, or 20% of its research-and-development budget, to rejigger existing programs or set up new projects around Linux." $12 billion?? I wish IBM had shown the same aggressive style in marketing OS/2 as they now do for Linux. Note to IBM: Throw OS/2 a bone.
One last bit of news directly related to OS/2: I recently learned of a testkit IBM offers for checking the compatibility of PC hardware with OS/2. I'm sure it has been around for awhile, but it may be of interest to many of you concerned with purchasing new hardware. You can find the IBM OS/2 PCM Compatibility Testkit by clicking HERE.
Season's Greetings and Keep the Faith!
Copyright © 2002 M&JB