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Tampa Bay Computer
Society Bulletin

11/30/2003

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Contents

1) Club Happenings

2) TBCS Classes

3) SIG Stuff

4) In The News
     Labels "Master" & "Slave" on Electronics Equipment Called Offensive
      Using the Internet to carry Telephone Calls

Maps to our Resource Center & General Meeting:
http://tampa-bay.org/maps.htm

1) Club Happenings

Tomorrow we start the last month left in this year.  Where has the time gone?  December is a special month for TBCS.  Three things will be different this month than they normally are:

1. Our Board of Directors meeting will take place this Wednesday night instead of the 2nd Wednesday of the month
2. Our monthly meeting will take place NEXT Tuesday instead of the 3rd Tuesday (I'll be reminding you of this again in next week's Bulletin)
3. We elect new directors and officers at the December monthly meeting (since we have the same number of candidates as slots to fill, this shouldn't hardly impact the night's guest speaker at all)

Sooo, my friends, remember that December is a little different.  Come on out to our Board meeting this week if you want to see what's going on in our club.  Our Board meetings have always been open to our members.

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The December Bits & Bytes is online.  This month's issue has articles on PC Annoyances, Windows Update, wireless networking, as well as the final President's Message from Jim Boynton.  Since Christmas is here, I expect that an article about digital cameras and another about digital camera accessories will be especially timely.

I've only skimmed the surface.  Take a look at all that our monthly online magazine has to offer.

Top of Page

2) TBCS Classes

Top of Page

3) SIG Stuff

Top of Page

Labels "Master" & "Slave" on Electronics
Equipment Called Offensive

In Los Angeles last May, a black employee noticed the words "master" and "slave" on a videotape deck, and filed a discrimination complaint with the county.  With disk drives and videotape bays, the terms are used to describe that one device is capable of controlling another.

At the time, the issue was resolved by taping over the equipment with labels that said "primary" and "secondary".  Last week an L. A. county official sent emails asking equipment vendors to consider eliminating these terms from their equipment because they are considered offensive by some.

Arrrgh!  Another case of political correctness gone berserk?  Should we go ahead and ask plumbers and electricians to drop the use of the terms "male" and "female" when referring to pipefittings and electrical connections before they are deemed sexist?

Read the whole story at: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp

Using the Internet to carry Telephone Calls

The Federal Communications Commission will start hearings tomorrow (Monday) regarding the routing of telephone calls over the Internet.  Billions of dollars are at stake over this issue.

From a technical standpoint, your voice would be broken up into a series of small messages that would be transmitted across the Internet and reassembled at the other end.  If this is done fast enough and reliably enough, both you and the person at the other end would converse exactly like you would across a normal phone line.

If phone companies start using this technology, they are hoping to bypass billions of dollars in state regulatory fees while eliminating their voice networks as they migrate their phone traffic over to their data networks instead.

A more detailed explanation is available at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20032-2003Nov28.html

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See you at the Resource Center,

Doc (Dave Dockery)
Director of Education for TBCS

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