From the Editor Written by Larry Salomon, Jr.

Administrivia I hate months like this one. It's bad enough that the weather can't make up its mind whether to be warm or cold, but my schedule can't make up its mind in the morning whether I should have any free time that evening. New Beginnings After the fiasco surrounding my dismissal by my last employer, I managed to quickly find new employment with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow Jones, Telerate. The job is quite interesting, and it promises to teach me much about communications and device driver development, two areas in which I am sorely lacking in the amount of experience I have. Additionally, being an employee, even indirectly, of Dow Jones has its perks; there are always free copies of the Wall Street Journal in the lobby when I come in to work in the morning. The only bad thing about this job is that its location is in New Jersey, which makes for a 1 hour and 15 minute commute each way. Obviously, there are many other things I'd rather be doing with the three hours I spend on the trains... Use (tm) Your (tm) Words (tm) Warily (tm) Like trying to find words that aren't listed as trademarks of major corporations. Microsoft apparently wasn't daunted by the removal of its trademark on the word "windows"; they are now threatening litigation against a small shop in upstate New York for violating their trademark on the word "bookshelf". You read that right. The moral here is that you had better do some thorough investigation into trademarks that might be a part of any product you release commercially. EDM/2 probably violates a couple of hundred trademarks of this type. <grin> My guess is that, in a year or two, someone is going to trademark individual letters of the alphabet and will suddenly find themselves a multi- trillionaire due to the sudden income from royalties they'll be receiving. In Tune With Wall Street Now that the New York Stock Exchange has finally broken the 4000 mark, I'm expecting it to crash any day. Gordon's hard drive, however, could wait, and it decided to crash last month in anticipation; his column will be notably absent this month. As if that weren't enough, Carsten has too many projects and mid-term exams to worry about for school, so his column will not appear this month either. He does manage to make a brief cameo appearance, though. I didn't want to be a non-conformist and since I can use the time, my column will not appear this month. However, part 6 of the VIOWIN series does appear. Columns Are For The Weak Magazines But who needs columns anyway? <grin> This month, there is the new "Letters" section, where your email might appear. Also, we have some great articles, and who knows what else might turn up? Regarding the "Letters" section, it should be noted that email messages chosen for publication are subject to editing changes. Speaking of not knowing what will turn up, I still haven't heard from my contact at the Media Relations group regarding donations to EDM/2 for the winners of the Reader's Choice Awards. That is quite disappointing, but next time I will be more cautious in whom I approach regarding this topic. That doesn't alleviate my current problem, though; if the winners will have some patience, and if I ever get enough time to investigate other avenues, they will get their well- earned stocking-stuffer even if it is too late for Christmas 1994. Speaking of things turning up and then not turning up after all, a few of you might have noticed how the article on the KEYBOARD.DCP layout was pulled out last month after the issue had gone out. I had to re-release the issue because I forgot some "legal speak" that was required in addition to the OS/2 Accredited logo (but will not be forgotten again). The article was pulled because Martin Lafaix indicated that it was a draft only; the final version of the article is in this issue.