Hewie's Views and Reviews 20030119
By Hewie Poplock

Welcome to this issue of Hewie's Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/ . Hewie's Quick Thoughts appear almost daily at http://www.hewie.net/weblog/ .

In this issue
++++ Home Automation
++++ Banished Words 2003
++++ Past Newsletters are now on line
++++ COMDEX problems
++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

February 2003

++++ Home Automation

There is a demonstration of home automation that gives us an example of what is currently possible. Most of us won't go to this extreme, but this guy lets you turn his lights on and off and view different rooms of his house from his web page. It's worth a look at http://www.drivemeinsane.com/ .

++++ Banished Words 2003

It's that time of year again when Lake Superior State University releases its annual list of words in English which should be banned forever. Word-watchers pull nominations throughout the year from everyday speech, as well as from the news, fields of education, technology, advertising, politics, and more. A committee gathers the entries and chooses the best. You can find this year's list at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current/default.html

One of the choices was submitted by Miguel McCormick, Orlando, Florida. Miguel is a long time member and a past president of my computer user group. His winner is "PEEL-AND-EAT SHRIMP" -- "Do they think that, if the name did not contain instructions, we would peel-and-throw-on-floor?"

++++ Past Newsletters are now on line

Are you a recent reader of this newsletter? If so, you can now view my archive of past issues on line. There are many interesting and helpful items (if I must say so myself) in each issue. To conserve space and to avoid many broken links, I have eliminated the "New Additions" section in each of the archived issues. You can find the archives at http://www.hewie.net/views/archive.html . The pages are sorted by the year published. The Listbot messages were sent by that defunct service. The current newsletter can be found at http://www.hewie.net/views/current.html with all of the links active. If you receive this newsletter without active links, go to the online version.

++++ COMDEX Problems

One of my favorite activities has been to attend the COMDEX annual computer trade show, which is held in Las Vegas each November. The last COMDEX I attended was in 2000 and had 220,000 attendees and 2,500 vendors. I have been unable to attend the last 2 shows. The 2002 event drew a mere 70,000 to 100,000 and about 1,000 vendors. Maybe they missed me! Key3Media is the COMDEX organizer and now financial problems have forced them to sell and the future of the event is in doubt. We will have to watch and see what happens.

++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

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