(C) Mon Apr 3 09:00:23 EDT 2000 Venturing Crew 369
Our Principals
1) Honor before all else.
2) The difference between a winner and a loser is that the winner
tried one more time.
3) K.I.S.M.I.F.
4) Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A.
Our Web Page:
http://www.venturingbsa.com
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Our Creed
Exploring: Enthusiasm, Energy, & Excellence
Venturing Crew 369
Venturing Crew 369 was chartered on December 31, 1994 to the
Reformation Luthern Church.
Venturing Crew 369 specializes in UNIX for Programmers while
emphasizing a deep theme of Engineering Computer
Information & Science;
Membership in Venturing Crew 369 is open to young men and women
between the ages of 14 [and in high school] and not yet 20.
Annual Membership fees are $25.00.
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3/4/00 Maple Sugar Festival
3/7/00 Bring a 6' section of Natural Rope
3/14/00 Perl Classes Begin
3/52/00 Articles are due for The Adventure
3/28/00 Bring two 6' sections of Natural Rope
5/13-14/00 Flower Planing at Muirfield
5/20-21/00 Flower Planting at Muirfield
6/24/00 Wyandotte Lake, Scout Family Fun Day
6/9/00 Sleepover
6/10/00 Garage Sale
6/24/00 Wyandot Lake
7/2-8/00 Summer Camp
7/4/00 No Meeting
9/19/00 Open House [First Nighter]
10/13-15/00 Book Binding Campout [Exchange Lodge]
10/31/00 Pizza Party
12/15/00 Silver Beaver Apps Due
12/19/00 Christmas Party
12/26/00 No Meeting
12/28/00 Leave for New Zealand
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James D. Corder
On behalf of Venturing Crew 369 I would like to thank Heather A. Ward for donating an American Flag to the unit.
This is to certify that the accompanying flag was flown over the United States Capitol on March 8, 2000, at the request of the Honorable Deborah Pryce, Member of Congress for Venturing Crew 369.
I don't know how to put into words how special this act was for me. Her thoughtful gift will be seen by generations of Scouts that follow.
Thank you!
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James D. Corder
The festival was a huge success. Venturing Crew 369 once again was in charge of the staff kitchen. We cooked nonstop from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for approximately 350 staff members. This year 369 cooked for both weekends.
369's choral group serenade the staff. It was interesting to watch other members of 369 become willing to join the choral group after they saw the overwhelming acceptance and appreciation the staff members gave us. Aaron Croyle, youth choir master, did a great job in leading the youth and adult team. 369 has discussed starting a Gang Show, Vaudeville Act.
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James D. Corder
New members will be taken in the third week in September. Those on the waiting list will get first chance at the opening seats.
I hold in my hands, The power to change my life. I hold in my heart, The power to change yours.
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Neil Coplin
Once a year, the crew takes time to recognize the achievements of the youth during that year. This Court of Honor is also a time to thank those that make our program possible. Too often, the efforts and work done by those running the program go un-noticed by the members. Too often, we take for granted how fortunate we are to have the people we have around us. Too often, we forget to say thank you. This is our reminder for all of the things that go un-noticed, that we take for granted, and that we forget to say.
Several different types of awards were presented: Quality Unit Award to the entire crew, year pins, honor cords, and a few special awards just to say thank you. The vast amount and array of recognition that was passed out helps to illustrate exactly the quality of the unit we have and helps us to remember not to take it for granted. It also helped to show the amazing growth that the crew has had this year. There were many members sticking around and receiving their year pin. There were many current members who were advancing to red after a year in the crew. There were even more new members receiving their first white cord.
I would like to touch on a few of the special awards that were passed out during the Court of Honor that I feel deserve special attention. First is that of the years of service of Andy Drake (10 years), James Corder (30 years/20 years as adult), Ralph Maurer (29 years as adult) and Herb Docken (33 years as adult). Through the efforts of these people and many others, the crew is what it is today. To make anything work, no matter what it is, it takes a constant effort, never ending. These people have shown that they are one to give this constant effort and to help so many lives along the way. I know they have helped mine.
Next I would like to touch on saying thank you to Ralph Maurer and Herb Docken. With these two serving as Committee Chairman and our Institutional Representative, respectively, they have helped to guide our program over the years. Without their efforts, there might not have been a program today that I am now a proud member of. Too little do we say thank you and go on with our lives in the crew without taking a look at all the work going on to keep it running. I would like to take this time to say thank you to both of these men for all of the work that you have done for us.
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Heather Ward
On March 7, the crew set out in car-loads to gather the results from voting earlier that day. This was a new concept to me personally because I didn't know that groups provided this service, or that it was a fund-raising event. Our driver had the map and necessary forms for our three locations, so we felt secure in our task and left around 7:00. Finding our first location was easy, and our data was reported by 8:00. By 9:00, we had stopped at two gas stations and still had not found our second location, supposedly on Medway Ave. By this time, we had driven through Pickerington and parts of New Albany.
At 9:30, we found the road we had been driving towards--Meadway Rd. The four of us in the car were near the end of our patience. My personal low was realizing by the white fences on the road that we were in New Albany, and not Bexley. The rest of the crew was calling our phone by this point in time, as they had all finished their locations. Some of us were more frustrated than others, but it had been a long night for all of us. At 10:00, the group finally pulled together, starting working as a team, and we finished the last two locations within an hour. We were still calling in the results as the car rolled into the Donato's Pizza parking lot, and the rest of the crew gave us a round of applause for our efforts.
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Jack Trout
Television today is becoming a place of new technologies. The FCC has mandated that all television stations must covert to HDTv. HDTv also known as High Definition Television. This new technology will be able to bring 4 channels of TV data over one station. The digital encoding of the channel give the station the same broadcast area while making the reception clearer and at a higher resolution. The problems currently with HDTv mainly sits with decisions of the television stations. currently conversion costs for a station are 4-10 million dollars and there are Several choices in transmission types. The have Higher and lower Bandwidth transmission rates and Interlaced and progressive scan transmissions. We will have to look to the future to see which wins out and what televisions we will be buying in the future, or will we be buying televisions or just tuner cards for out High Definition monitors.
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Bob's Kingdom By:
Daniel Morris
March 28, 2000
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Scouting The Web Award Committee
We would like to congratulate the Erith and Crayford District Scouts of Crayford, Kent for their excellent website and the honor of achieving the Bronze Scouting The Web Award. You can view their web site at:
http://www.ecscoutnet.co.uk
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Suhas Aswath
Nationally, March has been celebrated as Womens History Month. During this month women in our history are recognized for their hard work or achievements. This article is about notable women in computing and technology; those women of the past and those of the future. Looking at all these examples it is important to remember that it is not possible to achieve either solely by women or solely by men. Men and women have to work together to accomplish great changes. These are just a few examples where women have been recognized for their hard work and persistence.
Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli: after she graduated from Chestnut Hill College with a degree in mathematics during the 1940s, she was hired as a computer by the University of Pennsylvanians Moore School of Engineering to make calculations for tables of firing and bombing trajectories as part of the war effort. The type of work she did lead to the development of the ENIAC, the worlds first electronic digital computer.
Edith Clarke: graduated from Vassar College with a degree in mathematics and astronomy. She later worked as a computer assistant (skilled mathematician) at AT&T. In 1918 she enrolled in the EE program at MIT earning her masters degree and became the first woman ever to be awarded with a masters degree by that department. She traveled the nation and taught engineering at many countries including University of Texas, Austin, and became the first woman to teach engineering there.
Adele Goldstine: wife of Dr. Herman Goldstine. She assisted in the creation of the ENIAC at UPenn in the 1940s. Adele Goldstine authored the Manual for the ENIAC in 1946. This original technical description of the ENIAC detailed the machine right down to its resistors.
Evelyn Boyd Granville: earned her doctorate in Mathematics in 1949 from Yale University, was one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. During her career, she developed computer programs that were used for trajectory analysis in the Mercury Project (the first U.S. manned mission in space) and in the Apollo Project (which sent U.S. astronauts to the moon).
Erna Schneider Hoover: earned a B.A. with honors in medieval history from Wellesley College and later a Ph.D. in philosophy and foundations of mathematics from Yale University. She started working at Bell Laboratories in the research department. While she was there she invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic to replace existing hardwired mechanical switching equipment. For this ground-breaking achievement- the principles of which are still in use today- she was awarded one of the first software patents ever issued. (Patent #3,623,007, Nov. 23, 1971). At Bell Labs, she became the first female supervisor of a technical department.
Grace Murray Hopper: after graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1928 from Vassar College, she worked at Yale. Then she joined the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) in 1943. She joined the newly formed builders of the ENIAC in 1949. Her best-known contribution to computing in 1953 was the invention of the compiler. The compiler is the intermediate program that translates English language instructions into the language of the target computer. Her work on compilers and on making machines understand ordinary language instructions led ultimately to the development of the business language COBOL. Hoppers work also foreshadowed or embodied enormous numbers of developments that are still the very bones of digital computing: subroutines, formula translation, relative addressing, the linking loader, code optimization, and symbolic manipulation.
Currently, there are many groups that have formed to advance womens involvement in the computer and technology industries. Here is a list of groups that offer assistance to women who are interested in computing and technology.
Association for Women in Computing (AWC): a national organization of women and men aiming to promote women in computing. They exist to encourage the advancement of women in technology. Webpage address: http://www.scn.org/ip/awc/awc.html
Australian Computer Society (ACS)- Women in Technology (WIT)- society for information technology professionals in Australia. This society also houses a branch of the WIT. Webpage address: http://www.acs.org.au/boards/cab/wittr.html
Institute of Women and Technology: a school created so that women can participate fully in the definition and creation of new technologies. Webpage address: http://www.iwt.org/
Women in Multimedia: a non-profit organization concerned with the social implications of emerging technologies. Webpage address: http://wwww.wim.org/
Womens Wire: Plugged In: a computer magazine run by women for women dealing with using technology for real life. Webpage address: http://www.womenswire.com/plug/
This years Womens History Month was celebrated Statuary Hall in Washington, DC on Wednesday, March 22. In honor of this celebration, Margaret Loftin Whiting created a poster that includes a backdrop of the names of many movers and shakers during the past 100 years. For more information, you can visit this site: http://www.nwhp.org/month.html.
In conclusion, it is important to remember that women or men cannot work by themselves to accomplish great deeds. In the future it will be very important to work together as partners to bring advance our knowledge in computers and technology.
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Neil Coplin
The incentive; the passion; the driving force behind anything we do; the why. Behind everything everyone does, there is a reason for them to do it. If there is no reason to do something, it often does not get done. To be an accountable person, get the job done. To get the job done, have that why.
A few months ago, I was at an interview. I was asked, "Where do you picture yourself in five years?" I hadn't planned that far. I hadn't given myself anything that I wanted to achieve in those next five years. I have now. Even if that achievement that you want is to get a new coffee maker (though that probably wouldn't hold up for a five year plan...), have something that you want. If you don't have anything that you want, you won't go anywhere. No ambition equals no personal advancement. What you want can also help set yourself aside from others. If two people apply for a job, the one with more ambition will win (assuming equal skills).
What is your why? It isn't money. Nobody really wants money; they want what money brings. The more specific you get with your why, the more you will want it. Sit down and make a list of things that you want to get and things you want to do. Make these your whys. The more you have, the more ambition you'll have, and the more self advancement you'll achieve.
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S. Potter
The differences between paging and swapping are often confusing. Paging refers to the process of taking unneeded areas of memory -- pages -- and transferring them from main memory to secondary memory -- disk. Swapping refers to the process of transferring an entire program's memory image from main memory to disk.
An analogy might help to make sense of this. Imagine the virtual memory system to be like your office. Virtual memory is composed of two main parts -- the main memory subsystem, where the actual work takes place, and secondary memory, a temporary storage area. Think of main memory like your desk and secondary memory like a book shelf. When you start a process it gets swapped into main memory; when you start to read a book, you place it on your desk. As the process finished with an area of memory, it pages it out; as you finish reading a page, you turn it over so it is face down. If you need to reference a section you've already read, you flip it back over, or page it in. If you need an entirely different program, another book, you swap out the book you are currently using, putting it back on the shelf, and swap in the new book.
If your office is anything like mine, this analogy breaks down quickly. My desk has several books open on it, some stacked on top of each other, some falling off the edge. Or, is the analogy actually good for a more complex system, and I just don't have a good memory manager?
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Jason Cunnyngham
In world where everything seems to be computerized, it is increasingly important to safe guard data; not only from outside intruders, but from the computer itself.
There are many things that can go wrong with a computer system that require no outside intervention. The first is the breakdown of components, hard-drives are some of the only physically moving parts that a system constantly uses; so they tend to be the first thing to fail. Another common problem that requires the same solution is data lose or corruption, when the random aspect of the computer damages your data. People have been protected against this by mirroring their hard drives so that if something goes wrong the next hard drive will be activated instantly. The takeover takes place so fast that a user downloading off that computer might only notice a small delay, if that.
The second thing that could happen is a vital component might loose stability, such as a motherboard, or SCSI card. This could bring all your operations to a halt. The only truly effective way to protect against this is to back up the entire computer with another computer that is exactly identical and will take over in much the same way that a mirrored hard drive would. Although this is a costly option, it can be absolutely required when something like your companies ability to operate is on the line. Another method, that is much less effective, is the back-up. In this
case the hard-drive that the computer uses is backed-up onto a secondary storage device such as CD-ROM, tape drive or sometimes another hard-drive (but that usually falls into the category of mirroring). This method can be wonderful if the data you are backing up will stay mostly the same and is not time bound, but this is usually not the case. For example if you back-up your hard-drive onto a a tape drive every month, then if it crashes on the 29th you have lost almost entire months worth of work. That, to me is unacceptable. So each of these methods is effective in its own right depending on what you are guarding against, how important the data is and the most vital component how much money you have.
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Aaron Croyle &
Ian C.
I know that many of us in the computer field have an idea about Java, but how many of us really know the story behind Java? That's what I am trying to uncover here. Things to be reveled within include the difference between Java Applets, Java Applications, and JavaScript. First off we'll start with what the Java language as a whole is meant to be.
Java is meant to be a Cross-Platform language. This was achieved by having interpreted on a "Virtual Machine" written for the OS you are running. This fact alone makes Java a theoretically wonderful language for the Internet, which has no single operating system. Here is another good thing to clear up: `Java' is two things, a language and a platform. As a language, it is used to write programs in source code and compile that source into Java bytecodes. This is where the Java platform takes over, the platform contains the VM, or virtual machine, and the API, or application programming interface (this supplies ready made software components that have been grouped in packages) (2). Java's uniqueness is in being a software only platform, this is what allows its applications and applets to be easily and almost perfectly executed on any hardware platform. Here is the simple answer to the difference between Java and JavaScript: "Although the names are almost the same, Java is not the same as JavaScript! Java is an object-oriented programming language. JavaScript is a scripting language, implemented as an extension of HTML" (1).
But what do they have in common? Besides the fact that the both make you think of coffee and are often misunderstood, not much. They were both releasedwith Netscape Navigator 2.0, and share a similar syntax, and they'll both work on all platforms. The truth is, Java and JavaScript were developed separately by Sun and Netscape respectively. The story goes that when Netscape saw how popular Java was becoming they changed the name of LiveScript to JavaScript. They also changed the syntax to look similar. Even though most people only see Java on the Internet, it, unlike JavaScript, is not limited to the net. Java has an entire OS and processor in development at Sun. The architecture is called MAJC.
JavaScript on the other hand is interpreted by your browser and is used sometimes in conjunction with CGI scripts for dynamic page creation. It can also be used to make an entire page interactive. JavaScript since it is entirely interpreted code runes very slowly and is really on good for processes that only have to happen once or not that often. Here it is, the big difference between applets, and applications: Applets must run with an interpreter, such as a Java capable browser. Applications, on the other hand, can run just on the platform its self. There are two other lesser know Java program types, these being servers and servlets. A servers "serves and supports clients on a network" (ex. Web server, Mail server, Print servers, etc...)(2). "Servlets are similar to applets in that they are runtime extensions of applications. Instead of working in a browser, though, servlets run within Java servers, configuring or tailoring the server"(3).
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Ho-Sheng Hsiao
Somewhere in the hills of France, you can visit caves painted some tens of thousands of years ago by humans. The subspecies we know today as "homo sapient sapient" displaced or absorbed our evolutionary cousins. The theory goes, that since we have the culture, art, and language, we had a huge advantage.
More pratically scale, these cave-dwelling people made their homes at the peak of a hill, giving them a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. It is also arguable that the site was deliberately chosen, the pratical advantages having been preserved through visual and oral traditions.
Culture, art, language -- human communication -- plays a vital role in the past and today. However, it is about the future, that I will focus on.
There's a game or an expression, "six degrees of Kevin Bacon." Never mind who Kevin Bacon is; I only know he has something to do with being an actor in Hollywood. You can trace the relationships inside the Hollywood community to Kevin Bacon. You might go on a trip and run into Kevin Bacon, and find out that your landlord's hairdresser's cousin-in-law has a banker, who has a sister that goes to the same exercise gym as Kevin Bacon.
Mathematically, you can describe this as a directed graph. The nodes would be the person. The links would be the relationship. It is in such a way that our society has operated.
Take the market economy. In the pre-industrial age, the traders have a network of traders; when an item goes onto the market, it's value filters through grapevine. Today, a retail store has a supply-chain, but usually through multiple suppliers.
Socially, you are invited by such a person to such a party to talk to the other people who has been invited by one person or another. This is our social network.
Scientifically, a research paper gains credibility roughly by how many other papers cite it. You can walk to your local research university and find a database that allows you to do such a search.
The major reason that the Internet works is that it closely follows the way people works. We know people that know people. In the same way, the hyperlinks inside web pages links to other pages that links to other pages. In high school, we passed notes; now, we use email and ICQ. In the past, shady dealers open their car trunks to sell cheap Rolex knockoffs; today we have IRC bots distributing illicit copies of software and MP3s and Napster bringing small college networks to its knees.
The Internet enables and enhances the human tendancy to make friends.
This was why the idea of a "community" was such a big deal a year ago. The buzzword and fad has died down somewhat. The hype might have fizzled, but the advantages are very real.
Some of you might have seen all the excitement with the Linux IPOs. The kernel and the development principles the software is based on, works just like the social network I've described above. The founder of the kernel, for example, wrote peices of it first. The people who contribute more, become increasingly responsible for writing major functions of the kernel. Today, there is an inner circle of developers for the kernel; in order to have a chance at putting your name there, your contribution would be passed to a few people, who has more credibility. If the code passes muster, it is passed on to the next person, and the next, until it reaches that inner circle of developers. The inner circle might not know you, or trust your code, but it could trust some of the people one layer outside that circle, who in turn could trust some of the people one layer outside. The code is based on merit in that ultimate acid-test of engineering: does it work? If the contribution does not fit the overall style of the kernel, if the contribution does not work, someone in that network would reject the code. There comes about a duplication of effort and style, a consistancy you will find in the Linux kernel as a result of this network. This works to a much more significant degree in the other free UNIXes, such as FreeBSD.
If you look at the "network of trust" of PGP users, you would find the same thing. A PGP public key's level of authenticity comes from how many people have signed off on the key.
The Google search engine brings up search results that are often eerily exactly what you are looking for. The engine looks at how many pages link to the site, and how many degrees of Keven Bacon the page is from an important site, such as Yahoo. While the engine does not always work, it is far more resistant to abuse than results delivered from Altavista or Infoseek. Why? The search engine works just like how we establish credibility for a person.
As you can see, the major strength of the Internet comes from the ability to help people make friends. It works like we work. This goes against the grain of thought during the past century. Advertising and broadcast media has created an illusion for the content controllers. The Orwellian vision of shoving information down everyone's throat, and expecting couch potatoes to passively take in the information has always been a facade.
Who knows? Maybe we can get rid of banner ads when marketing college graduates find out it does not work.
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James D. Corder
The 2000 flower sale was canceled due to a lack of adult participation.
James D. Corder
Mr. Drake & Mr. Potter have agreed to be the coordinators for the Saturday June 10, 2000 garage sale. Please begin saving your stuff/junk for the sale.
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James D. Corder
Due to scheduling conflicts, Venturing Crew 369 would not be able to attend Summer Camp with Troop 369 the week of July 2 - 8, 2000.
Venturing Crew 369 is trying to move Camp to the previous week. Currently there is one adult and 6 youth that can make it. We must have at least 8 youth, 2 adult males, and 2 adult females to operate a viable summer camp. Since we will not be able to attend with the other 300+ youth, this move will drop the cost from $175.00 to $95.00 for the week. However, we will need to perform "ALL" functions of both the campers and the staff. It has been almost 20 years since I last served on Camp staff, but it will come back!
If we can find the numbers to go we will have a blast! Venturing Crew 369 has been offered the entire facilities of Camp Lazarus for their program. WOW what an opportunity.
It is now in God's hands!
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Footnotes
- (1)
- http://www.webspresso.com/java.htm
- (2)
- http://www.javasoft.com/docs/books/tutorial/getStarted/intro/definition.html
- (3)
- http://www.javasoft.com/docs/books/tutorial/getStarted/intro/cando.html
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