Tips on technology

By Bill Michling

Welcome to the weekly technology column of the Saipan Tribune. Let me introduce myself, as this is the first one. My name is Bill Michling, I have been involved in technology in one form or another since I was 6 years old. Of later times, I started in computers in 1966, yes I am dating myself somewhat. I became very interested in programming what were called “main frames”. These computers could fill an entire room and required forced air cooling! They did not have a display as we see them today, but instead uses lights displaying in an “octal” or base 8 numbering scheme. It also used a “drum” for so called high speed storage and retrieval. It also created punch paper tape for output as well as printing on a “chain” printer that printed 1000 lines per minute, this would be about 16 pages a minute! It was very very noisy. Input was mostly from “punched cards”. Well enough about the real old days, lets move on.

In 1969 after being Honorably discharged from the Navy I began working at a company called then “National Cash Register”, where I became the youngest senior engineer. After a while I was asked to start an office in Guam, so in 1979 we packed up and moved from Hawaii to Guam. In 1983 I resigned from “NCR”, which it was then called and started at Marianas Electronics as the “Systems analyst”. Traveling back and forth from Guam to Saipan began to get tiresome so we decided to open an office in Saipan to provide local support for our customers. So we packed up again and moved to Saipan in 1986. We opened Marianas ElectronicsSaipan on May 22nd, 1986, and have been providing technology solutions, and support to the good people of the CNMI ever since.

We hope to provide in this column technology information and tips that you can use in your every day life. Some of the subjects will be, computers in general and Macintosh computers in specific, energy saving lights, getting power from the sun, alternate fuel for transportation, two way radios for the rest of us that need no licensing, using “Brown’s gas”, as well as any other technology tidbits that come along. technology is one of the fastest growing areas and will effect most everyone’s life in one or another.

Lets start with a short intro about the “internet”. Did you know the internet was originally called the Arpanet and was designed for the military? It became so popular that colleges began to use it as a way to communicate. In fact if you checked you would find out that there are very many locations on the internet that end in .edu, which is the designation for education.

This way of communication became so popular that hubbyists and then the general population wanted to join in on the fun of being able to communicate all around the world using one’s own computer, the internet and the world wide web were born and rest is history.

Have you ever wondered what the ending of internet locations mean? What I am talking about is those two and three letter suffixes of internet locations. Like, .com, .edu, .gov, .net, .org, .to, .cc and the list goes on. Lets just define these, although there are many others.
.com (This is what is called a top level domain and is usually used for commercial entities) In your browser location bar you can type for example, http://www.mespn.com, or because this is a top level domain you can just type “mespn” without the quotes, press enter and off you go. Another example could be, http://www.cnn.com, or just “cnn” of course with out the quotes.
.edu (This is used to designate a college, University, or school)
.gov (You probably have guessed already that this is the US Government, example hffp //www.fbi.gov, takes you to the Federal Bureau of Investigation homepage)
.net (This is usually one of the larger internet connections, like “http://www.gtepacifica.net” without the quotes, they connect you to the internet)
.org (This usually means an organization like “http //www.rotary.org” again without the quotes)
.to (These two letters usually indicate a country other than the United States, an example “http://www.tongatapu.net.to”, this would take you to a Kingdom of Tonga information site)
.cc (This is one of the new designators that are cropping up, an example, “http://www.kazue.cc” you will probably see more as you “surf” the internet)

That’s all for this column, next week we will talk about some computer technology. Have you “SuperDisk”? If you would like to con other technology tidbits that come along. Technology is send email to: mespn@gtepacifica.net one of the fastest growing areas and will affect most everyone’s life in one way or another.

You can also visit our homepage at: www.mespn.com

I’ll see you here next week and on the web…