Williamsport Area Computer Club

Newsletter & Meeting Minutes

May 2000

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 13, 2000, at 7 PM, in the JVB Library Technology Branch, 123 East 4th Street, Williamsport.

There is no program scheduled as of this time. Please feel free to bring any computer problems or other topics for general discussion.

Our last meeting was held on May 9, 2000. Attendance was improved over recent months.

The minutes of April's meeting were approved.

It was reported that the treasury stood at $561.77 in March. $48 in dues was taken in, and it was noted that very few people have paid in full for the year.

Committee Reports:

Advertising / Awareness / Public Relations / Home Page:

Muriel suggested that people might not want to read HTML messages in light of the recent virus problems, and we would be better off sending the minutes as plain text and posting a link to the web site. Jim agreed with the idea in principle but would need access to the web server to keep it current. Dan said that he could house the minutes on the Community Net site until or unless Kathy got the club site moved to a different server as discussed previously. Kathy was not in attendance and we will consider this further at the next meeting.

Computer Recycling (finding charitable uses for old computers):

Muriel had had something suggested to her which unfortunately hinged on being a registered nonprofit organization, which we are not.

Computer Show:

Having more or less decided not to hold a computer show this year due to lack of manpower, we considered the possibility of setting up a table at the mall as a promotional event. It is unknown at this time whether we would require insurance, which would kill the idea. (The issue was raised because Jim's astronomy club had an unpleasant experience with the Susquehanna Valley Mall, which requires insurance for groups to hold public events there but neglected to mention it until the last minute.)

Computer Help:

Jim read a message from the manager of a local company who needed an MS Access database job done in a hurry and wanted to know if any of the club members were interested. The qualified individuals declined due to their own workload.

Program:

Geoff gave a quick demonstration of his Oracle database project that he is working on for the Defense Logistics Agency through BBN. He has it running under Linux on a laptop, a large savings in cost and portability over the server system he is replacing. He went on to entertain the group with anecdotes from work and tales of the legendary Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. (Penn College has shown an interest in bringing RMS here for a public presentation, but it is entirely hypothetical at this point.)