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About This Month's Authors

Husain Al-Mohssen

Husain is a Mechanical Engineer working in Saudi Arabia who is badly addicted to computers. When he is not trying to build his own distribution he can be found reading up on Quantum Mechanics or experimenting with Mathematica. He can be reached on [email protected] (all flames happily collected in ~/nsmail/Funny).

Jim Dennis

Jim is the proprietor of Starshine Technical Services and is now working for LinuxCare. His professional experience includes work in the technical support, quality assurance, and information services (MIS) departments of software companies like Quarterdeck, Symantec/Peter Norton Group and McAfee Associates -- as well as positions (field service rep) with smaller VAR's. He's been using Linux since version 0.99p10 and is an active participant on an ever-changing list of mailing lists and newsgroups. He's just started collaborating on the 2nd Edition for a book on Unix systems administration. Jim is an avid science fiction fan -- and was married at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim.

David Fauthoux

David Fauthoux (22 ans) est un �tudiant fran�ais en DEA d'intelligence artificielle (Bac+5), sp�cialis� en logique par actions. Il a quatre passions : la logique en IA, la programmation "out-of-algorithm", les jeux de r�le avec les enfants et lire (et relire) les dessins de Quino.

David Fauthoux (22 year old) is a French student in DEA of Artificial Intelligence (5 years after Baccalaur�at), specializing in Action Modal Logic. He has four passions : AI logic, "out-of-algorithm" programming, role playing games with kids, and reading (and reading again) the Quino's drawings.

Jay Fink

Jay is a UNIX/Linux systems administrator for "Ipsos-Asi The Advertising Research Company". He contributes to a variety of webzines and sites, and is the Editor of the UNIX & LINUX Computing Journal, which he hosts on his site www.diverge.org. His hobbies include delving into the Linux kernel internels, surfing (as in ocean surfing, not web surfing), and hiking (mainly to get away from computers every now and then).

Michael J. Hammel

A Computer Science graduate of Texas Tech University, Michael J. Hammel, [email protected], is an software developer specializing in X/Motif living in Dallas, Texas (but calls Boulder, CO home for some reason). His background includes everything from data communications to GUI development to Interactive Cable systems, all based in Unix. He has worked for companies such as Nortel, Dell Computer, and Xi Graphics.

Brian Marshall

Brian has been a software developer in Calgary's oil and gas industry since 1981. He is deeply into C++ and object-oriented design. His career began vowing never to learn Cobol; it progressed to never learning VB and now involves never learning MFC. Brian first got into unix in 1991 but he has only been using Linux for a few months.

Bill Mote

Bill is the Technical Support Services manager for a multi-billion dollar publishing company and is responsible for providing 1st and 2nd level support services to their 500+ roadwarrior sales force as well as their 3,500 workstation and laptop users. He was introduced to Linux by a good friend in 1996 and thought Slackware was the end-all-be-all of the OS world ... until he found Mandrake in early 1999. Since then he's used his documentation skills to help those new to Linux find their way.

Mark Nielsen

Mark founded The Computer Underground, Inc. in June of 1998. Since then, he has been working on Linux solutions for his customers ranging from custom computer hardware sales to programming and networking. Mark specializes in Perl, SQL, and HTML programming along with Beowulf clusters. Mark believes in the concept of contributing back to the Linux community which helped to start his company. Mark and his employees are always looking for exciting projects to do.

nod

nod - (no capital "n") is a real name due to being born a love child of the seventies. nod, did study physics and French to degree level but wanted to become a windsurfing instructor, so became a freelance photographer. This proves that nod also moves in mysterious ways. He enjoys playing with computers and seeing what happens if you "click that" or "unscrew that".

Mike Orr

Mike is the Editor of the Linux Gazette. You can read what he has to say in the Back Page column in this issue. He has been a Linux enthusiast since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995. He is SSC's Webmaster. He also enjoys the Python programming language. Non-computer interests include ska/oi! music and the international language Esperanto.

JC Pollman

I have been playing with linux since kernel 1.0.59. I spend way too much time at the keyboard and even let my day job - the military - interfere once in a while. My biggest concern about linux is the lack of documentation for the intermediate user. There is already too much beginner's stuff, and the professional material is often beyond the new enthusiast.

Carlos Serr�o

The author is a professor at ISCTE, a Portuguese public University specilized in Management and Computer Science, teaching subjects like IT Management and E-Commerce. The author is also IT Research and Development Consultant at ADETTI, a Portuguese R&D institution, where he is specialized in information security, colaborating in several European Community IT projects: OKAPI, OCTALIS and OCCAM.

Martin Skjöldebrand

Martin is a former archaeologist who now does system administration for a 3rd world aid organisation. He also does web design and has been playing with computers since 1982 and Linux since 1997.

Dan York

Dan recently joined the staff of LinuxCare, to work full-time on developing the Linux Professional Institute certification program. He has been working with the Internet and UNIX systems for 13 years and PCs since the early Apple computers in 1977 . While his passion is with Linux, he has also spent the past three years working with Windows NT. Dan has written numerous articles for technical magazines, and has also spoken at various conferences within the training industry. He is now a member of the Certification committee of the Systems Administrators Guild (SAGE - a division of USENIX).

Not Linux

[ Penguin reading the Linux Gazette ]

And now for the inaguration of the Linux Gazette Spam Count . This month, the Gazette received 284 letters. Of these, 79 were spam. October's SPAM COUNT is thus 28%.

Aside from the usual get-rich-quick schemes, thigh creams, Viagra stuff, hardware/peripheral ads in Spanish and Japanese [note: the characters all turn into $##$% symbols in Latin-1], and investment opportunities "accidentally" sent to the wrong person, the most hilarious piece was:

We offer Web Hosting for the following server platform: NT 4.0 Running IIS4 as low as $9.95/month, paid quarterly or annually, plus a $19.95 set-up fee.

Did they think this was the NT Gazette?

Doesn't the fact that we already have a web page show that we don't need web hosting services?

P.S. They do offer "FrontPage 2000 extensions FREE!!!" (Yawn.)

Linux Gazette Issue 46, October 1999, http://www.linuxgazette.net
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, [email protected]