2004.06_Addiction.pdf

Welcome

COMMENT

Addiction

We pride ourselves on the origins

of our publication, which come

from the early days of the Linux

revolution.

Our sister publication in Germany,

founded in 1994, was the first

Linux magazine in Europe. Since

then, our network and expertise

has grown and expanded with the

Linux community around the

world.

As a reader of Linux Magazine,

you are joining an information

network that is dedicated to

distributing knowledge and

technical expertise. We’re not

simply reporting on the Linux

and Open Source movement,

we’re part of it.

Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

My name is John

and I am an

addict. I am

addicted to being

connected, on-

line, part of the

digital world.

Last week there

was a fire about twenty miles away. No

one was hurt. Just the fiber cabling for

130,000 telephone lines. Of course this

happened at four in the morning.

Being an insomniac, and unaware of

the fire, I naturally assumed it was some-

thing I had caused. Down came the

routers, down came my machines. Noth-

ing obviously wrong, but at that time of

the morning I had nothing better to do. I

reinstalled a machine. Still nothing

would work. In desperation I turned to

my notes. These are little jottings that I

end up occasionally making to ensure I

can follow the instructions step by step

and know everything will work. Another

install later and still nothing.

Dawn arrived and the chance to phone

other like minded insomniacs. As the

telephone worked and the data is also

carried by that line I could see no reason

for a problem. Another fellow non-

sleeper was also having problems. Time

pasted and frustration grew. Being

unable to check web status pages was an

annoyance. The rest of the local world

slowly woke up. A quick call to my ISP

found that I was connected as far as the

local exchange. With a promise to chase

up the problem, it was partially out of

my hands for an hour.

Breakfast and a read of the morning

papers. No web cartoons as my dai-

lystrips script would not fetch the

images. Still plenty to do without the

web. I could live without it for an hour.

A slow hour passed. I had a list of

searches I wanted to complete, a couple

of programs to download and email to be

sent out. A second hour crawled by.

More emails pending, but at least I had

tidied up some files and deleted old

weblinks. Early lunch.

By accident, I switched on the televi-

sion in time to catch the news. As soon

as they announced the fire, the phone

rang. The ISP asked if I had seen the

news and explained that data was split at

the local exchange, and routed via the

fire-damaged lines. As all the emergency

services in the area were down, any

excess routing capacity would be

switched to them, and data cables would

be repaired whenever they could be.

This at least explained why I was offline.

A week without access could be a

vacation, a chance to do all those things

that I put off until I have more time. This

could be fun. Well, that feeling lasted a

couple of minutes, until I remembered

my email slowly building up on a server

somewhere. The rest of the day passed

without incident. I learnt a couple of

new key combinations for some graphics

packages and found out just how much I

disliked some radio stations.

The following day I uncovered some

old hardware and spent a happy couple

of hours replacing chips until it worked.

The slot car racing game was eventually

switched off after using up another set of

batteries. Jigsaws were completed, pic-

tures hung, rooms cleaned – that is,

computers were stacked in neater piles. I

even attempted some DIY.

Unfortunately, as each hour passed, I

missed my email. I also missed the abil-

ity to just browse for an answer. After

two days I could not stand the with-

drawal any longer, and was reduced to

driving thirty miles to borrow a friend’s

fast link. This was similar to going back

in time. I had to plan what I wanted to

do beforehand. I found that I looked for-

ward with passion to these uplink times.

Eventually the dataline was restored,

and I am happy again, working through

a backlog of email. I never completed all

those things I had saved to do on a rainy

day. Although I am determined to spend

a part of each evening not online. I am

sure I will still assume next time that it is

something I have done wrong rather

than someone else. I love my connec-

tion, but I think I need to start to plan to

live without it, just in case.

Monthly UserFriendly

Linux Magazine is delighted to

announce that from this month

onwards we will be publishing a

UserFriendly cartoon in the magazine.

Since a few days after it was

launched in November 1997, we have

sought our daily laugh from the car-

toon. More often than not, we have

shed tears of joy at the cutting, topical

humor based around the employees of

Columbia Internet.

You will find this month’ User-

Friendly cartoon on page 95 – enjoy!

Trust all is well,

John Southern

Editor

www.linux-magazine.com

June 2004

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