Table of Contents

Our Principals:
Our Creed:
Explorer Post 369:
Our E-Mail Addresses

ExpNews
Calendar of Events:
Koalas
December Service Project
Surplus Equipment
The 1st Engineering Rover Post in Australia
Apple and NeXT merge
Thoughts from the East: A Journey back to Russia 5 of 5
Sun MicroSystems is in Trouble
Mega10 Venture
Renewal Time
Quote of the Month
Up-an-Coming Post Expenses
Up-an-Coming Member Expenses
Post Finances

Calendar of Events:

February  Award Nominations Deadline

February 1 & 2  Scout Sunday

March 17  EOA Elections

April 5  Scout Show

May 1  Recognition Dinner

May 19  EOA Meeting

July 28-Aug5 1997  BSA Jamboree

January 1998  Australian Jamboree

Koalas

Phascolarctos cinereus

Koalas are a unique Australian marsupial. Their Aboriginal name means "no drink" and a koala's diet consists entirely of limited types of gum leaves.A young joey emerges from the pouch after 6 months and is carried on the mother's back. Koalas become independent after 12 months, and will live to about 12 years of age.Related to wombats, koalas are solitary souls, sleeping for up to 19 hours a day wedged in a tree fork, becoming active to feed after dark. Koalas are relatively safe from predators in the tree tops. The main threat continues to be the clearing of its natural habitat, eucalypt forest.

December Service Project

Explorer Post & Troop 369's annual Service Project, for St. Stephens, was a huge success. I understand that we collected, sorted, & bagged enough groceries to feed over 3,000 families for the week of Christmas.

369 also helped sort almost 4,000 bags of toys for the "One New Toy" program. Through ONT children throughout the Columbus area receive toys on Christmas day that they would not be able to have because of their families financial situation.

Surplus Equipment

Exp369 will be selling off some of its surplus equipment in order to raise the necessary funds to build our classroom.

Since Exp369 is a "UNIX" mentor program we can not utilize the DecMicro VAX running VMS. Sure, we could load Ultrix on it. However, we do not have enough power in the building to operate this system. Therefore, we are going to post the VMS equipment on the Net in hopes of obtaining some needed capital!

The 1st Engineering Rover Post in Australia

Ben "Gazza" Cornish of Queensland Australia is going to start an Engineering Computer Information Science "UNIX" Rover Group. This will be the first Career Awareness oriented Rover Group in Australia.

Moreover, Explorer Post 369 & the Queensland Rover Group will become "brother" units. Together we will share unit programs and activities. It is kind-of a nice feeling to see our program have such a long reaching effect.

Apple and NeXT merge

As many of you may have read, Apple Computer recently purchased NeXT Software, Inc., in a 400 million dollar deal. This event is the culmination of Apple's five-year-long quest for a new operating system to replace the venerable MacOS 7. Initially Apple attempted to develop the new software in-house, code-naming the project Copland, but after five years of development, the Copland project was abandoned. Apple then discussed purchasing Jean Louis Gassee's Be, Inc., a five year old company which recently ported its new OS to the Macintosh platform. The deal fell apart over the purchase price of Be.

After the deal with Be fell through, Apple turned to Steve Jobs, one of the co-founders of Apple, and his 10 year old company, NeXT. NeXT's operating system, initially known as NeXTstep, and more recently dubbed OpenStep, was first released in 1988 with it's NeXT Computer. NeXT's hardware business collapsed in 1993, but NeXT has continued to market their operating system as well as Web and database development tools, and enterprise-wide distributed objects. The strength of all of NeXT's software is that it is all object-oriented, and NeXT's award-winning and much mimicked visual development environment cuts software development time nearly in half.

What Apple gets from the bargain is a new operating system based on BSD UNIX, which is object-oriented from the ground up and tested by 8 years of heavy use. They also get NeXT's development environment, and all of NeXT's object technologies. Perhaps the most key issue at stake here, however, is that NeXT had already completed most of the work for what will become Apple's new operating system. Before shutting down its hardware business in 1993, NeXT had built prototypes for a dual PowerPC 601 based workstation. NeXTstep had been ported, and was nearly ready for release on the new platform. Therefore, most of the porting work has already been done for Apple. NeXT has also proven that their software is extremely portable, since it is now available on Intel, SPARC, Motorola 68k, and was also available on HP PA-RISC. OpenStep, an object layer lifted from NeXTstep, also runs on top of SunSoft's Solaris, and Miscrosoft's Windows NT and Windows 95. This means that Apple inherits an operating system capable of running on PC desktops, as well as Motorola platforms.

Few things have been guaranteed about Apple's new operating system, except that it will be based on NeXTstep/OpenStep, and will initially be available in Fall of 1997. The first release will support no MacOS System 7 software, but compatibility will be built in by mid-1998. During this time Apple will continue to release updates for the MacOS 7. Apple has stated that the new OS will support multi-processor machines, and will run on all Apple PowerMac machines. Some questions remain, however. Will Apple use NeXT's Motorola 68k code to support `040 based Macs? Will Apple change the NeXTstep user interface in favor of their own? What will become of the NT and Windows 95 ports of OpenStep? Will Apple attempt to support all of NeXT's current products? We must wait to find out.

Some things are certain, however. The purchase of NeXT offers new hope to Apple, whose market share has decreased from nearly 15% to about 8%. Along with a new operating system, NeXT brings new sales and support force to Apple, and a broad InterNet strategy, something the Cupertino based company has been lacking. Will Jobs and NeXT save Apple? 1997 will tell us the answer to that question.

Thoughts from the East: A Journey back to Russia 5 of 5

All in all the trip was more than I expected, and easily worth several times its weight in gold, if for nothing else than to visit with people I hadn't seen in a while. Throw in a little shopping, some serious city exploring, a little bit of culture, not to mention a whole lot of fun, and I had a whale of a good time, completely disproving any doubts that I might have had before I left. My one determination is to return more often than once every three years, as the change over time was enormous. Now, if I can just figure out a way to get a bigger suitcase, there's that bust of Lenin that would look really good as planter in my back yard.... Part One, Two, Three, Four

Renewal Time

Well, it is that time of year again: Renewal Time. So if you have been receiving the ExpNews for more than a year now send us a note and let us know that you want to keep getting it or we will drop you. Sorry to our International Readers, but all of you have to renew. Hay it cost about $1.75 an issue to mail out both US and International: So, send your request to:

exp369@www.venturingbsa.com
ExpNews
c/o P.O. Box 307218,
Gahanna, Ohio 43230

Sun MicroSystems is in Trouble

For the first time in the history of the ExpNews, I have to say that Sun has some competition. SGI's O2 has come out with a price/performance equation that will definitely put Suns Sparc5 and maybe even their Ultra1 on the run.

While in Australia I got a chance to play with SGI's new O2 box. I must admit that I was extremely impressed with its performance over the Indy. Where we where going to take 5 hours to produce 5 minutes of mpeg, with the O2 5 minutes took 5 minutes. WOW.

The O2 comes standard with video/audio in & out with on-board mpeg hardware for under $6,000.00US. If SGI gives the same 40% discount as Sun that would bring the price down to $3,600.00: In my opinion the O2 is a bit more bang for your buck than the Sparc5 but not yet an Ultra1.

Sun's only saving grace is that SGI doesn't know how to market desk tops. If Sun can find a way to bundle the video card with the Ultra1 at the price of the O2 the will still beat SGI out of the market. However, Sun better hurry!

Mega10 Venture

My trip down under was three fold: A little bit of pleasure, a little bit of business, and a whole bunch of FUN!!!

I was asked to come down under to assist with the Mega10 Venture InterNet activities. Of course I said yes. This year's event would be one for the history books.

Sure the Cyber Space Scout Jamboree was big. But big isn't big enough to explain the broadcast of the entire opening ceremonies world wide, live!!! Yep, live video broadcast. Ok, I know that "free" video conferencing over the InterNet [and the M-Bone] have been going on since the late 80s. However, this one was said to be the longest live broadcast in Australia and maybe event he world.

Technically it was kind of fun.

The event was shot with a standard 8mm video recorder. Both the video and audio RCA jacks where plugged into a SGI Indigo. The Indy was two slow to do the mpeg compression so we also copied it onto video tape for later conversion. We only had half an ISDN line [64K] So, we sent one feed to a "reflector". It used up 95% of the band width. That site then was connected to a T1. Some other 70 sites where simultaneously connected to the central hub. In that way the entire world could watch the opening ceremonies.

I wish we had more band width. Ok, I would like to have a T1 so we could have made the image a tad larger.

It was enjoyable playing with the feed before the opening ceremony. It was 1:00am in Australia and about 9:00am the day before in Columbus, Ohio. I got to do a broadcast of the event room to the world. Some of my friends back in the States was able to pick up the feed.

Mr. Alden [OSU] was talking with one of the ladies at the event. Unbeknownst to her, David could see her. She could not see him. It was a strange "UNIX-talk" when he informed her that he liked her hat. Of course she had no idea how he knew what she was wearing when he was some 12,000 miles away. Isn't technology grand?

The Venture was, of course, more than just the InterNet. It was thousands of youth coming together to enjoy Scouting: Horse Back Ridding, Sailing, Doon Buggies, Rock Climbing, and just plain old fun.

Of course I made some new friends and got to travel the country side. Where else in the world could you hug a koala, pet a kangaroo, and feed a wallaby?

Quote of the Month

He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.

Up-an-Coming Post Expenses

Up-an-Coming Member Expenses

Post Finances

Post           $    0.00

Computer Fund  $    0.00

ExpNews       -$  743.00

Floor Fund     $  200.00

Room Fund      $    0.00

Financial Needs

ExpNews/Month  $  175.00

Floor Fund     $1,200.00

Room Fund      $3,800.00