Page 12      Diablo Blue      August, 2000

(Continued from page 11)

A flurry of messages about a new e-mail tax flooded my Inbox recently, and maybe yours, too. They claim that Bill 602P would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to collect a 5-cent charge for every e-mail message. Like similar "information:"  that cropped up periodically during the past few years, this one is tatally bogus! If you receive such a message with a "Please forward toeveryone you know" request, trash it. 
Tipoff that the report was phoney jumped out at me when I saw the title of the purported bill. Neither the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives use a "P" designation in any of their bills. Also. I heard earlier about a bill of the same nature rumored to be pending in the Canadian Parliament. That also was false.
The original message indicated that the e-mail fee would be charged to assist the United States Postal Service (USPS) or the Canadian Post Office with recovery of any losses they may have experienced due to the proliferation of e-mail. The USPS has posted an emphatic denial to the report at: www.usps.gov/news/press/99/99045new.htm
My personal opinion is that these false reports are circulated by the same people who worry about black helicopters in the night and invasions of privacy (which is happening, but banks, insurance companies and other large corporations have far more information about us that any governmental organization).

In California, red means stop, green means go, and yellow means go faster. In that vein, here's a very yellow tip specifically for those of us with cable and DSL modems. You can reserve memory (RAM) for any given IRQ; by increasing the default value for your network card, you may be increasing its throughput and performance. Right-click on 'My Computer' and select its Properties. On the Device Manager tab, press the Properties button (if/when 'Computer' is selected). Note which IRQ your network card is using. Next, open up SYSEDIT.EXE (using the Run command in your Start Menu) and edit the SYSTEM.INI file. Under the [386enh] section, add: IrqX=4096 (where 'X' is your network card's IRQ). Save, reboot, and enjoy! Now, I'm not one for benchmarking, but system speed (overall) hasn't decreased since applying this tweak. Of course, I also have 256 MB RAM.

We've had a large number of knowledgeable members sign up to be Mentors to allow DVPC members to take advantage of this storehouse of knowledge. We'll be adding a Mentor page to our web site maybe not so "Real Soon Now" (apologies to Jerry Pournelle). This page will limit access to DVPC members by requiring the same monthly login ID and password sent to members for access to the current on-line edition of Diablo Blue. You'll be able to look up the mentors for a particular software package or hardware product, and contact them by email to pose your question.
Now the Mentor page has been even further delayed because your editor moved, and now is on a project that takes him to San Francisco Monday through Saturday.
So check the DVPC web site regularly and, hopefully (with fingers crossed over a bed of four-leaf clovers that have been blessed by a Leprechaun who was on his way to a pot of gold), the Mentor page may be up and running "Real Soon Now!"