After our club's elections we will have a short discussion on the merits of the three providers of television available to us in the village.  Those are Direct/Dish/Charter.

 

***We will also have 4 great door prizes. We will give away three subscriptions to SmartComputing Magazine and one surge arrestor. 

We are now accepting dues for 2009. The Board of Directors has set the dues once again at $15.00.

The Membership Committee would like to ask a favor of you. Rather than paying at the reception table before each monthly general meeting, we would greatly appreciate it if you would send a check made out to TVCUC to Bob Kutschera, 203 Ootsima Way, Loudon, TN 37774.
How will this help us?

 
      -- First it will greatly reduce the crush of people paying during the few minutes that folks arrive at the general meeting. If cash is used, then we have to make out a receipt whereas a check would serve as the receipt. Also, if there are people wishing to join, we ask them to complete an application to be submitted with the dues payment.

      -- Second, the check will serve as a receipt that can be referred to in the event a member isn't sure if their annual dues had been paid.

     -- Third, a document is submitted to the Treasurer each month listing the names of new and renewed members along with the method of payment - cash or check (number of check posted to the document). This document is used to certify that the money submitted is accurate and balanced to the number of new and renewed members paying that month.

We greatly appreciate your participation and support of TVCUC and your assistance as requested for payment of next year's dues would also be greatly appreciate.
 
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 We continued to grow!  In October by adding three new memberships.  Please look for these people and make them welcome. They are:
 
 Gary and Kathy Davis
 Pam Ingram
 Wayne Tinder 

by Warren Sanders 

 

 

 

In addition to those names given here, if you have any name or names to offer from the floor for these positions there will be an opportunity to do so.

 

 
SIGs meetings generally last for about an hour and half.  We have two active SIG's at this time.
 
   Digital Photography-second Thursday at 3:00 PM at Chota Rec Center
                                     (contact Jim Noonan at 458-9940)

   Computer Hardware-This SIG is not meeting regularly, but if you are interested,
                                     (contact Vince Alline at 824-3380).

 

by Warren Sanders 

 

You should also know that we have now been asked by the Loudon County Schools to consider expanding the impact of our club's assistance by entering into a "mentoring" program.  What they have asked us to consider is supplying mentors who would help one or more children build a computer from scratch.  You can imagine the benefits such a program could have on motivating children to learn a hobby and perhaps a vocation.  We are giving their request serious consideration and would appreciate your comments and support.

 

 

There was considerable interest in our July program by Robert Whitten of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Here is an article taken from the NewsHerald and sent in by Bob Kutschera which expands upon what is happening there.

 

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"OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is setting new marks in supercomputing even while its scientists are busy building even faster machines.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that of 10 breakthroughs identified in U.S. computational science during the past year, six involved the high-performance machines at the Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge.
 
The work included a new understanding of the way stars explode and a first-of-its-kind simulation of combustion processes that may help improve engine designs.
Those accomplishments came with a computer capable of running 263 trillion calculations per second.
 
Yet Oak Ridge scientists already are installing a computer that could be four times faster.
"We want to do the most productive supercomputing in the world to basically advance scientific discovery. Breakthrough science - that's what it's all about," said Thomas Zacharia, the lab's scientific computing leader.  Zacharia said the lab's National Center for Computational Sciences already is the most powerful scientific computing complex in the world.

That's with a Cray XT4 supercomputer, soon to be replaced by a four-times-faster, 150-cabinet Cray XT5 machine - both dubbed "Jaguar" - and an earlier Cray named "Phoenix" that's being scrapped entirely save for a cabinet door bearing the signatures of President Bush and former Vice President Al Gore.
 
The new Cray XT5 is expected to operate with a capability of 1,000 trillion mathematical calculations per second, or 1 petaflop. Only one computer in the world has achieved that level, an IBM machine devoted to classified research on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
 
A second petaflops machine, known as "Kraken," will be built at Oak Ridge following closely on Jaguar's heels, thanks to a $65 million grant from the National Science Foundation that the University of Tennessee won last year in partnership with ORNL and other institutions.
 
"The likelihood is when Kraken comes online, the University of Tennessee will have the most powerful academic supercomputer in the world. How cool is that?" Zacharia said.
Kraken will be broadly available to academic users from universities around the country, while Jaguar will be set up for limited users on high-priority science challenges, such as running models to better evaluate global climate change."

 

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*** You will also be interested to know there are plans in the making for a visit by bus to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  We hope to be able to do this next Spring.
 

Editors Note.  Many people have complained to me over the past months that they have issues with viewing pictures forwarded to them by friends.  In a recent discussion with Howard on these issues he informed me many of these problems are caused by people forwarding pictures and documents created by the sender in a program the receiving party's computer does not have.  He also told me many of these issues involve Microsoft programs and Microsoft offers a free viewer (allows the receiving person to view the document while not having to own the program) version of these programs.  I thought this fact would be of interest to many of our club members and asked Howard to write an article on the subject.  The article is given below.  I should also mention if you have a need for adding these viewers to your computer and feel you need help, most of you know that Victor De groote and Jim Peterson also offer this type service.

 

Frank Fritchman

 

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