the outer e newsletter of the channel islands pc users group d · 2004-11-16 · october 200 4 the...

October 2004 The Outer Edge

Consignment table at general meetings At last month’s board meeting, it was agreed that since we will no

longer have our annual garage sale we would have a consignment table at each meeting. This will allow members to bring in software and hardware to sell at the meetings, with the club receiving 10 percent of the sales price. The table will be set up at our October meeting, and we invite you to participate with any items you choose to display.

The following are the rules. 1. The consignment table is for members only. Only current members

can place items for sale, but non-members are welcome to purchase items from the table.

2. The consignment table operates on a 90/10 percent basis — with the owner getting 90 percent, and the Club treasury 10 percent. 3. A tag must be filled out and placed on each item (available at the table) It must contain seller’s name, CIPCUG membership number, item name, a short de-scription and selling price. 4. The consignment sheet must also be filled out with the seller’s name, a description of each item and the selling price.

5. The buyer fills in his name and phone number and settles with seller.

6. The seller must turn in the tag with the 10 percent after the sale is complete.

7. Sold items MUST be picked up at the end of the day’s meeting. 8. Any items not picked up will become the property of CIPCUG and

will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion. 9. CIPCUG is NOT RESPONSIBLE any way for items bought and/

or sold at the Consignment Table. Each item is placed and sold on an AS-IS BASIS unless otherwise

(Continued on page 3)

October 2004 Vol. 18, No. 4

To Contact CIPCUG The Outer Edge...........(805) 485-7121

General Information.. . . . . . . (805) 604-7538 Mailing Address...P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

Inside

Help for the digital home Dave Whittle, above, discussed

all aspects of the digital home at the September meeting.

Page 8

Attendance at the September general meeting 80 members and 4 guests

We welcome 2 new member

COMMAND.COMCOMMAND.COM By David Harris, President

E d g e

Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Whole No. 211 ISSN 1055-4399

The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org

The Outer

HARRIS

The Outer Edge October 2004

Root Directory

Channel Islands PC Users Group

CIPCUG mailing address: P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

Executive Board (Elected officials)

President……………….……David Harris …………….………[email protected] Vice President/Program Chairman ………………...Craig Ladd...….482-4344 ………………[email protected] Secretary……………..Martha Churchyard ……………………[email protected] Treasurer…………….……....…Art Lewis ………………….…[email protected] Past President……………...…..Andy Toth ……...………[email protected]

Ex-officio members of Executive Committee

(Appointed Officials) Chief Protocol Officer……...George Lakes CIPCUG ISP Signups………...Helen Long Computer Show Coordinator.Dick Otterson .......………….………[email protected] Go-fer Extraodinaire……….Dick Otterson Legal Adviser..……………..John Stanton Librarian……………......………….Vacant Marketing Director………...Ron Pinkerton Membership Chairman.……...Ken Church ....………………[email protected] Newsletter Editor…………....John Weigle Program Chairman…………….Craig Ladd Publicity Chairman………..…David Harris SIG Coordinator…………Lois de Violini …………………………[email protected] Tech Support…………………..Toby Scott Web Page Editor……………..Helen Long …………………[email protected]

Past Presidents Walt Yates .............................1987/1989 Lois Evans de Violini............1989/1991 Terry Lee................................1991/1993 Jerry McLoud........................1993/1995 Robert Provart.......................1995/1997 Toby Scott.............................1997/1999 George Lakes………………1999/2001 Andy Toth.........................….2001/2003 (With the exception of the immediate past president, past presidents are not members of the board.) Life members Frank Segesman Toby Scott Lois Evans de Violini

CIPCUG is a member of APCUG, The Association of PC Users Groups

The Outer Edge

Editor……………………..John Weigle P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006

485-7121………[email protected] The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel Islands PC Users Group, an independent, nonprofit corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright 2001 by Channel Islands PC Users Group. Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is granted to other computer user groups for internal non-profit use provided credit is given to The Outer Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All other reproduction is prohibited without prior written consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group. Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers or membership as a whole. The information provided is believed to be correct and useful, however, no warranty, express or implied, is made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers, editorial staff or contributors. This disclaimer extends to all losses, incidental or consequential, resulting from the use or application of the information provided. Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse or recommend any specific hardware or software products, dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All trademarked or registered trademarked names are acknowledged to be the property of their respective owners, and are used for editorial purposes only.

Advertising in The Outer Edge

Advertising is accepted for computer-related materials, businesses and services only. Rates are for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and white masters). Typesetting and graphics are available at an additional fee. SIZE Cost/Issue FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)...... ..........$50.00 HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W) or (9½”H x 3½”W )....…........$30.00 THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00 BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00 Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12 months) Ad copy deadline is the 10th of the month of publication. Make all checks payable to CIPCUG.

CIPCUG NEWS Benefits 19

Coming CIPCUG events 3

Command.com 1

F1: Your help key 17

Map, schedule 20

Membership report 16

Program: Dave Whittle and the digital home

8

Q&A, business meeting 4

Steering Committee 4

TOE contributors (2004) 18

Treasurer’s report 18

Web page news 12

Windows and Hardware SIG

11

GENERAL

Penguin’s Lair: How to test Linux without changing your computer

9

Radio shows update 14

Rick’s rants: Here comes computerpsychic.net

15

Tips from Smart Computing

13

ADVERTISEMENTS

Copy Court 15

Market Pro 14

Ventura County Computers

13

Editor’s corner 18


Programs This month’s program will feature

a presentation on Vivitar Corp. prod-ucts. The meeting will be on Saturday, Oct. 23 at the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (northeast corner of Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo (see map on page 20).

The doors open at 8:30 a.m., and the Windows and Hardware and Inter-net SIGs start at 8:45 a.m. VIVITAR CAMERAS

Vivitar Corp. has a complete line of photographic products, including digi-tal cameras, 35 mm zoom cameras, point and shoot cameras, autofocus cameras, 35 mm SLR cameras, manual and automatic lenses, flashes, tripods, binoculars, underwater cameras, night vision products, slide projectors, digital projectors, camera accessories, and several specialty cameras.

Vivitar has an extensive line of affordable digital cameras ranging from entry-level VGA cameras to five-megapixel digital cameras with zoom optics. The Vivicam series of digital cameras is one of the broadest product lines of digital cameras on the market today, spanning the spectrum of inter-est from novice through serious-amateur digital photographer.

Tom Piehn visited the club last year and gave a very interesting program, so come by again and see what they have to offer this year. There may be door prizes.

Other coming programs: Nov. 20 (3rd Saturday): To be

announced. Dec. 18 (3rd Saturday): Bel-

kin.com. Whether you have one com-puter or four, an “entertainment center” or a TV-VCR; Belkin helps you get the most from your valuable home elec-tronics.

Upgrade your computer and acces-sories, share the Internet, protect your equipment, share computers and de-vices, all with the assistance of Bel-kin.com.

Come to the meeting and let Ed Dugan and Patricia Shaw show you what they have to offer in “toys” for your computer. Special Interest Groups

Unless otherwise noted, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) meet at Ventura County Computers, 2175 Goodyear Ave., Unit 117, Ventura; phone 805-289-3960. From the 101 Freeway, exit at Telephone, take Telephone south to McGrath, turn left and go one block. Turn right on Goodyear and then right again into the second driveway. Unit 117 is the back, right corner of the industrial building. Unless otherwise noted, SIGs run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are sponsored by CIPCUG and led by vol-unteer club members. There is no charge for members to attend the SIGS, just a willingness to learn and share.

Here is the schedule for the balance of September and all of October:

Thursday, Sept. 23: Linux. New-bies Delight or the Kitty's Corner, moderator: Andy Toth: Between now and January 2004 Andy plans to con-tinue bringing up a Linux system from scratch. Covered so far, burning CD’s and Linux recognition of (USB) flash,

pen, secure, and windows drives. OK, Linux may not be ready for prime time, but it is close enough to be practical and useable. This meeting will cover the Linux File System, Uncompressing tar and gzipped files, and setting up Evolution for e-mail retrieval.

October Oct. 4 (first Monday): Michael

Shalkey, topic TBA. Oct. 6 (first Wednesday): Toby

Scott on HTML. Toby will show us the subtle art of “breadcrumbing,” col-lapsible menus and horizontal lists. Come and be dazzled.

Oct. 21 (third Thursday): Open for whatever topic members ask for.

Oct. 28 (fourth Thursday): Linux, moderator TBA.

Society news: Programs and SIGs

Vivitar Corp. to return for October meeting August door prizes The club door prizes for Spetember

are: Microsoft Plus for Windows Microsoft Plus Media Edition for

Windows Norton AntiSpam 2004 Power Center with Fax Modem

Protection Microsoft Internet Keyboard Estimated retail value: $150 We have two types of raffle tickets:

one for any prizes offered by the presenter and one for club-provided prizes. The tickets for the presenter’s prizes are free and limited to one per member.

The tickets for the club-provided prizes are $1 each, $5 for six tickets, $10 for 13 tickets and $20 for 26 tickets and are available to anyone.

Support CIPCUG Support CIPCUG —— Agree to lead a SIG

Volunteer at a computer show Help set up the meeting room

Write an article, review or tip for The Outer Edge

stated. This is a great place to get some

money for your surplus computer items, and help your club at the same time. We look forward to successful sales monthly.

(Continued from page 1)

More on Command.com


By Helen Long, acting secretary

Society news: Business meeting, Q&A What do you want in SIGs? We need to know By Martha Churchyard

[email protected]

Business meeting David Harris presided and read the

Treasurer’s report for the absent Art Lewis, who was traveling.

David introduced Lois de Violini, a past president, who is taking over as SIG coordinator. She urged members to contact her to let her know what type of SIGs they want to see presented.

Craig Ladd reported on programs. John Weigle reminded members

that the TOE will have an early dead-line for the November and December meetings, and it may require juggling some of the content or sending the newsletter a little late. He asked for a round of applause for the dedicated TOE folding and mailing crew, who get the newsletter ready to mail every month.

Q&A session Unless otherwise noted, questions

are answered by Toby Scott, a partner in Ventura County Computers and our technical adviser. Michael Shalkey handles the demonstrations projected on the screen.

Spyware and XP Service Pack 2

Toby Scott: First of all, we were talking about spyware at the Internet SIG, and I wanted to let everyone know about a problem that has cropped up with Windows XP Service Pack 2. If you have spyware on your computer, and you install Service Pack 2, you will incorporate the spyware as part of the operating system. The only way to get rid of the spyware is to uninstall Ser-vice Pack 2, get rid of the spyware, and reinstall Service Pack 2 — and pray nothing breaks. So before you install Service Pack 2, make sure you run AdAware and Spybot and get a clean

bill of health. If you don’t get a clean bill of health, don’t install.

If I’ve already installed SP2, is there a way to tell if I have spyware?

Q: If you have already installed Service Pack 2, is there a way to tell if you have incorporated spyware into your operating system?

A: The easiest way to tell is to start removing spyware. If you are able to get rid of it all, then it is not part of the operating system. If you run AdAware and Spybot and it gives you a clean bill of health after a couple of tries, then it is not part of the operating system.

The anti-spyware programs won’t remove them after SP2?

Q: So those programs will not re-move it if it is part of the operating system?

A: Correct. They cannot remove it


September Steering Committee meeting

The CIPCUG Steering Committee meeting was held on Sept. 27 , 2004, at 7 p.m. at the home of George and Ar-line Lakes.

Present: George and Arline Lakes, Ken Church, Craig Ladd, David Harris, Lois de Violini, and Helen Long. Art Lewis and Martha Churchyard were not at the meeting, but were traveling and having a great time on the opposite sides of the world..

Ken gave the membership report, and Lois gave the status on the SIGs for October. Craig announced the Ocot-ber Vivitar and December Belkin pro-grams, and as yet we don’t have any-thing for November.

Helen was busy taking notes and gave no report.

David suggested establishing a monthly consignment table to be manned by anyone with any hardware or software available for sale. We will provide tickets to place on the item

with pertinent details. The club is to receive 10 percent of whatever is sold. David will outline more of this else-where in the newsletter. It was voted on and approved by the board for a trial period to see if it floats. Please feel free to participate.

We still are having microphone/amplifier problems, and David will check on the “missing cord.”

Our SIGs have been dwindling in both volunteers, and attendance. The moderators go to a great deal of trouble and preparation to have only two or three people show up. Please talk to your board and make your wishes known so that we can make more of an effort in 2005. We obviously are not pleasing you, so please let us know what you need help in.

Dick Otterson has agreed to take over the club’s participation in the Computer Show, and we thank you very much, Dick. The volunteers will

be hearing from Dick on this in the future. Anyone interested in “pulling a two-hour shift” and attending the com-puter show, please contact Dick Otter-son <[email protected]>.

We thank Andy for coming to the meeting without having his dinner to make a quorum.

Andy is being transferred by his company and will probably miss some meetings in the future. Since he is one of the five board members, we will have to have three of the four remain-ing officers as a quorum in order to hold a meeting. It was suggested that we include in the bylaws, something like “in the absence of a quorum at a board meeting, one past president may fill in to complete the quorum.” This will allow Toby, George, Robert Provart or Lois to fill in and make the quorum.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:15 p.m.


More on Q&A: Large e-mail attachments until you uninstall Service Pack 2. You can’t do a manual registry hack and uninstall. As far as Microsoft knows, it cannot be removed without an uninstall of Service Pack 2. And uninstalling Service Pack 2 is not a trivial task — and not without risk.

Office Depot has SP2 disks for free

Q: Speaking of Service Pack 2, as advertised in our newsletter, Office Depot is giving away the Service Pack 2 disk.

A: Oh, good, and I’m selling Ser-vice Pack 2 for a dollar.

E-mail attachments too large to open with AOL

Q: A friend has been complaining that he cannot open attachments that have been forwarded to him in e-mail we receive from other friends. He says, “I don’t know what is wrong with your messages, but every one of them says ‘Too large to open with AOL.’ ” But he can open encyclopedias with no problem.

A: He is not using AOL to open the encyclopedia.

I think the post office limit with AOL is 2 MB, but at any rate, there is a size limit that AOL will accept, and anything over that size is bounced back. CIPCUG e-mail accounts have an unlimited size. You all know what I think of AOL.

Many programs will split big files into smaller ones

Q: There are numerous programs you can find to split your big files into little ones.

I use a free one called JS Split, and it will split it into any size you want, if you want to put a big program onto little floppies, or send them. So you could split your 5 MB file into five 1 MB files. And it also creates a little batch file to put them back together.

A: WinZip will do that, too. But when you are sending out to the family, and one person has AOL and everyone else has a real e-mail account, it is a nuisance to break it up just for one recipient.

Viruses in e -mail Q: I received an e-mail message

from a friend with an attachment that had the Beagle virus in it. It was auto-matically deleted by Norton. I was con-cerned that my friend had the virus, and would be forwarding it to others.

A: Let me talk a little bit about how viruses work. What happens is that you usually receive the virus from some-body you know, but the return address may or may not be someone you know. The reason for that is that when the virus infects your computer — suppose you installed the Netsky virus — what it does is go through and harvest every e-mail address it can find on your com-puter — in the Web browser cache, your address book, every one it can find. Then it selects one address out of that list — let’s say there are a thou-sand, for argument’s sake — it selects one address that it does not mail itself out to. It mails itself out to the other 999 addresses, using the selected ad-dress as the return address for all 999. What that means is, when you get the message and you say, “Oh, my good friend Joe sent me a virus” and call him up, Joe checks his computer and says, “No, I don’t have a virus, I’m clean.” And he is right, because Joe didn’t send you the message. It was a spoofed e-mail message. It came from some-body else, perhaps a mutual friend.

The person who really has it does-n’t know he has it. The virus is trying to hide its location from everyone else, so you don’t call up the person who really has it and alert him to get rid of it. It wants to keep on spreading itself. Now, if you happen to be that one per-son selected, and you get someone who has a lot of e-mail addresses on their computer, inevitably a lot of them will be dead e-mail accounts. So guess what happens if you are the one that the vi-rus selected to be the spoofed sender: You get all of the postmaster messages, “Failed E-mail,” etc.

Should we install SP 2 yet?

Q: You talk about Service Pack 2 — are you recommending that we in-stall it now? You were saying to wait until it had been checked out.

A: Yes, I am now recommending that.

Send to as attachment has disappeared from Word menu

Q: In Word 2003, when I try to send a document using File, Send To, on the menu, the menu item As Attach-ment has disappeared as one of the choices, and I don’t know how to get it back. I’ve even uninstalled and rein-stalled Office. I’m using Windows XP Service Pack 1.

A: I don’t know.

How do I disable automatic update in Windows?

Q: I don’t know if my computer is set up for automatic update. How can I tell if it is or not? I want to disable it.

A: Are you trying to block Service Pack 2? If your goal is to not install Service Pack 2, you can go to the Ser-vice Pack 2 Microsoft Web page, and they have a little tool that will block the download until after the first of the year. That is the correct way to do it if you just want to block the installation of Service Pack 2.

The automatic update is another question (demonstrating). Go to the Windows Update page, click on Set-tings, and then Pick A Time To Install Updates, then More Options, and Turn Off Automatic Updates. Or you can do “Download Updates but let me choose when to install them” also. But it’s not recommended unless you are very careful about doing them manually. There are some security problems, par-ticularly related to buffer overflow, etc., that once they are discovered are quickly exploited by the hackers. If you don’t install the security patches, you can badly mess up your computer. So I would not turn updates off. You need to do updates if you do anything online.

Would the add/remove programs repair function help in Word?

(From audience) For that Word 2003 problem, couldn’t he go to Add/Remove Programs and within the op-tion to change or remove, it has a re-




pair option that might help. A: That is a good thought. For

those of you that don’t know it, there is a Repair Office option in Add/Remove Programs, and sometimes it will help.

Can you discuss the issue of getting a virus in a JPEG file?

Q: In Michael Shalkey’s SIG, he mentioned the possibility of JPEG files containing malware.

A: That won’t be a problem if you stay up with the latest security patches. That was one of the things I was refer-ring to when I recommended that you stay up with the security patches.

Q: You might also mention that they are warning that there is a patch for Office 2003 that you definitely need to get, because it is apparently very susceptible to this.

How do I fix a ‘print spooler service not running’ problem?

Q: I was attempting to install a printer in Windows XP and I got the message “Print spooler service not run-ning.” How do I address that?

A: Go to Control Panel, Adminis-trative Tools, then Services. The print spooler is one of the listed services. If you right-click on that, and select Prop-erties, you see a box for “Startup Type.” It is probably on Manual now, and you can change that to Automatic and then start your spooler. If some-thing happens to it — it is stuck, for example — you can turn it off and turn it on again.

Canon says it’s a known problem with SP 2 and can’t be fixed

Q: I have Service Pack 2. I called Canon, and they recommended what you just described, but the spooler does not start. They say it is a known prob-lem with no solution other than back-ing off of Service Pack 2.

A: That can’t be 100 percent accu-rate, because I have Service Pack 2, and my HP and Lexmark printers are working. They are using the same print spooler service. It is a Windows ser-vice and starts just fine with Service

Pack 2. The only thing that could hap-pen is that Canon has a problem con-necting to the print spooler service. They have had access to Service Pack 2 betas for a year, and they are just slow getting their patches out.

Same problem in Windows 98

Q: We have the same spooler prob-lem with Windows 98, not 98 SE. If you finish printing something, the spooler hangs, and you can’t print any-thing else.

A: Go into the printer properties. Somewhere in the properties dialog box there is a print spooler. Delete the print spooler, reboot the computer, and re-insert or restart the spooler.

Q: Rebooting usually solves it any-way.

A: Yes, but something about the spooler is messed up, and sometimes you can fix it by deleting and then re-initializing it.

Wireless mouse, keyboard randomly stop working

Q: I have a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard for my laptop, and for the last three or four months it has randomly stopped working. The only way to get it working is to go into hibernation, and then it works fine again. The regular keyboard works just fine; it’s only the wireless one which quits working. I have tried replacing the batteries, and the latest drivers from Logitech.

A: Try using the computer in a dif-ferent room for a while. See if it hap-pens somewhere else. One of the possi-bilities could be some kind of interfer-ence. If it’s not some kind of environ-

mental thing, I would try contacting Logitech Tech Support. I don’t know. Has anyone else seen this?

A question asking if I want to download Flash keeps popping up

Q: I have a problem with Macrome-dia. A dialog keeps coming up asking me if I want to download Macromedia Flash, and when I say ‘No’ it just keeps coming back.

A: Go to a different Web page. It is coming from a Web page that will dis-play only if you have Macromedia Flash installed. If you don’t have Flash installed, the Web page will keep on prompting for the download. The Mac-romedia Flash player is fairly light-weight, quite secure, and works pretty well. I wouldn’t be afraid to download it. It is a very good citizen as attach-ments go.

What about Java Virtual Machine?

Q: That brings up another question. I also get messages saying the page can only be displayed if you download Java Virtual Machine. Is that safe?

A: I would be less happy about installing Java Virtual Machine for a Web site. I would have to know which web site it is, to know whether I can trust them or not, whether in my judg-ment they are good citizens or not. If it were Intel, for example, I wouldn’t worry at all. If it were some marketing company, I would run like hell.

My AOL Instant Messenger freezes up with video and sound

Q: I have a question on AOL In-stant Messaging. I’m trying to use it with a friend who runs a Mac, and we get video pictures and sound across very successfully for a minute or so, and then my picture freezes up on his end.

A: Change to Yahoo Eyeball Chat, and see if it works better. To try to isolate whether the problem is at the sending or the receiving end, or the server that is the intermediary, go to a different service. My teenage daughter says that Yahoo is by far the best, and



More on Q&A: Viruses in JPEGs, printer issues

“ … Something about the spooler is messed up, and sometimes you can fix it by deleting and then re-initializing it.”


More Q&A: Safe Mode, wireless routers

she ought to know.

My defrag program doesn’t finish Q: I’m using Windows 98 SE and

Norton 2004 scans and finds no vi-ruses. Both AdAware and Spybot say the system is clean. Starting last week when I tried to run ‘Optimize’ it ran all night and still didn’t finish. Disk Doc-tor tries and says that something is running in the background that will not let it complete. How can I find out what that new thing is that is interfer-ing?

A: Let’s break the problem down. First go into Safe Mode and try run-ning it. Hit the F8 key when you re-boot.

I can’t get to Safe Mode

Q: I can’t get it to come up. A: You are probably not doing it

soon enough in the boot process. Start as soon as the reboot begins, and do it once a second or so. It’s there. If Safe Mode won’t come up, Windows won’t come up. Try running Norton in Safe Mode. Unfortunately, there’s no good diagnostic tool for running processes in Windows 98. The other thing you can do is go into Msconfig and turn every-thing off, everything. See if it will run then. If it still gives you the same mes-sage then, there is something there that ought not to be there. If it works, you can selectively turn things on again.

Do I need a wireless router on a DSL line?

Q: Should I install a wireless router on my DSL line at home? Are there security issues?

A: It is kind of fun. We have a lap-top with a wireless card, and if I sit out in my back yard I have the choice of two networks, neither one secured. At the office, we have a choice of two. One is really fuzzy, but the other one gives me an excellent connection. Normally, we try to be a good citizen and plug the laptop into our network, but then first we have to turn the wire-less off first because it detects it first, so if we’re in a hurry I use their con-

nection.

If you have a wireless network and you don’t want to be a public service for the community, particularly the hackers in your neighborhood who might be interested in what’s on your computer, you do want to protect it.

There are several different methods of protecting it. The easiest is so-called WEP key and it is the most common. This allows you to specify a key of so many digits in your wireless unit. You put the same key in your laptop, and it authenticates you. In technical circles, they tell you it is real easy to hack, because the possibilities are limited.

If you are in an office with some-thing attractive to hackers, don’t use WEP key. But at home it should be fine. There are so many unprotected networks out there, who is going to spend the time breaking into a pro-tected one?

If you really want to be secure, there are identification cards that can be used to authenticate, with a very long encryption key.

There is another wireless protocol that is more secure than the WEP key, WPA. It is considerably more difficult to set up, and it is more secure, but not hugely so. But if you have a business, it might be worth your time to do. There is an article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base that explains how to do it. Authentication by MAC ad-

dresses also works well.

How do I connect if we stop broadcasting the SSID?

Q: I’m trying to set up my son’s wireless, and we have the choice to stop broadcasting the SSID. When I do that, I can’t figure out how to connect to it.

A: What you do is connect to it in an insecure manner, save all of the settings, and then tell it not to broad-cast. You should be able to connect then even though it isn’t broadcasting. But people driving by won’t be noti-fied that there is a node there.

Using the MAC address is pretty good. That should work. But it is pos-sible to spoof MAC addresses, if some-one eavesdrops on your transmission and finds the MAC address.

What’s a good Mac browser?

Q: What is a good browser for a Mac system?

A: Firefox is the best for Linux, Mac, or Windows, and it will run on all of them. That is all I use now. I used to have to keep Internet Explorer for the Windows Update, but Firefox 1.0 preview can even handle the ActiveX used by Windows Update pages.

Firefox is the best browser going and is the only one being recom-mended now. It has all the energy be-hind it. Several Fortune 500 companies have standardized on it.

For those of you who don’t know the genesis of this, Firefox is essen-tially the latest version of Netscape. AOL retains the rights to the Netscape name, but they turned over all the source code to the Mozilla Foundation, which is a non-profit, open source community.

Initially they came out with the Mozilla browser, but they decided it was too bloated when it included both browser and e-mail client. Many peo-ple only want one or the other anyway, so they decided to split it into a stand-alone browser called Firefox, and an e-mail program called Thunderbird. Both are excellent.


If you have a wireless

network and you don’t want

to be a public service for the

community, particularly the

hackers in your

neighborhood who might be

interested in what’s on your

computer, you do want to

protect it.


By John Weigle

[email protected] Even if you don’t think so, you

probably already live in a digital home — and there are lots of products around to make it easier, Dave Whittle, our September speaker said.

With digital music, digital video, digital photography, a computer, a PDA, a microwave, and maybe more, the digital world is already upon us, he said. But it’s a time of transition be-cause we’re not entirely wireless.

Whittle was prepared to demon-strate a batch of products — 3D-Album Picture Pro DVD Suite by MRI; muvee autoProducer by muvee Technologies; PhotoVista Panorama 3.0 and PhotoVista Virtual tour 3.0, both by iSeeMedia; activePDF Sym-phony by activePDF; Alpha Five Home Edition by Alpha Software; MGI Cinematic by MGI; Zip-Linq hardware; and Intel Centrino technol-ogy — but didn’t have time for the full presentation.

Digital photography, music

Noting that digital photography has grown tremendously in the past several years, he said that digital video is on the verge of similar growth.

Digital music is making similar strides, Whittle said. He experimented with an iPod, he said, and “it’s like carrying around a jukebox.” You can find your music (some 5,000 songs) by title, artist, album or playlist and listen to it through headphones, your car ra-dio or home stereo.

“It just kind of changes the way you deal with music,” he said. You’ll be able to add music to slide shows and videos “in a way that they’ll be saying, ‘Wow, what professional did you have do that for you?’ ”

Zip-Linq

Zip-Linq produces what it calls “the ‘reel’ solution to cable clutter.”

Its products include a road warrior kit with a flexible USB light, an optical

mouse, a USB extension cable, a phone/modem cable, and an Ethernet LAN Category 5 cable; cell phone and PDA charging kits, also with retract-able cables; audio and hands-free ear-phones for a PC, CD or MP3 player; and other network and phone, USB and IEEE 1394 (Firewire) cables.

Batteries

Although he doesn’t sell their prod-ucts, Whittle recommended Rayovac Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batter-ies, which can be recharged in 15 min-utes with the company’s special charg-ers. “That’s almost unheard of,” he said.

Whittle added that the batteries last longer than other brands, take less time to recharge and are the best batteries he’s found for digital cameras.

Intel’s Centrino technology

Intel, which is the premiere low-cost manufacturer of silicon chips, is “branching out into some new areas,” he said. It and Microsoft are working on plans to have all digital devices contact other digital devices and share content.

“Usually, if Microsoft and Intel

work together on something, it’s pretty much a done deal,” he added.

Under the plan, for example, a ste-reo would seek out devices to connect to and communicate with. The goal is to eliminate wires wherever possible and make it as easy as possible to read content you have and get new content.

File formats

Before discussing programs, Whit-tle discussed some common image, video and audio file types and view-able page formats.

Common image file types are JPG, TIF, BMP and GIF, with JPG being the most common and desirable for com-puter most computer uses.

Video can be stored in several for-mats, with MPEG2, MPEG, and AVI the most common. MPEG2 combines the best quality and size features, he said.

Audio file formats include WAV and MP3, with MP3 being the best choice because it can be used on many types of machines.

The best viewable page format is PDF. “Anything you can print to a


Society news: Program

Making your life in the digital home easier

Photo by Jerry Crocker

Dave Whittle, our Septem-ber speaker,

discusses some of the products he

represents while showing

a slide of the companies’

logos. The products in-clude hard-

ware and soft-ware and all help solve is-

sues in “digital homes.”


The Penguin’s Lair

You can try Linux without changing a thing By Bill Wayson

[email protected] If you read this column you un-

doubtedly are interested in Linux, even if you’re not actually using it. Many people are interested in Linux, having heard about it here and there. But many are reluctant to try it for reasons such as they don’t really know much about it, where to get it, how to get through problems, and others. This column has attempted to address some of these issues to help overcome them. But one reason for this reluctance that might remain is they do not want to mess with their existing computer setup, and this is understandable. After all, their computer is a known quantity. They

know how it works, and quite possibly it does everything they want their com-puter to do. In fact, they may be quite happy with it and don’t want to mess it up. Well, if you are one of these peo-ple, this month’s Lair is for you. We are going to talk about Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.com/), a full-featured, well-maintained, modern distribution of Linux and Open Source Software that you can try on your PC without making a single change to it.

Knoppix is a bootable CD featuring a full installation of Linux; a large col-lection of GNU/Linux software; auto-matic hardware detection; support for a wide range of hardware, including graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It

uses on-the-fly decompression to cram up to 2 GB of executable software onto the CD. That is a lot of programs.

Knoppix is the simplest way I know of to check out Linux and Open Source Software in a serious way — it gives you the latest Linux kernel just chock full of useful, full-featured software. The fact that it writes absolutely noth-ing to your PC’s drives (unless you want it to) will give a high comfort level to those not quite ready to dive into a new operating system on a work-ing PC.

Right now I am writing this column under the latest (as of 10/2/2004) pub-lic release of Knoppix: Knoppix 3.6. Knoppix builds on the community-


More on Whittle: Hardware and software

printer, you can print to a PDF file,” which can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader. No other format is as easily readable as PDF, he said.

Intel Centrino Mobile Technology

The laptop technology allows longer battery life and has built-in wireless capability.

Using the club’s wireless setup, Whittle showed how he could connect to his home computer in Utah through his laptop. The remote desktop is a function of Windows. (Toby Scott noted that you need XP Pro on the home computer but can have XP Home on the laptop to use the feature.)

Intel used “every trick that they could to get more work out of every clock cycle” with the laptops, so the rated speeds don’t reflect the real-life experience, he said.

For desktop machines, the HT Technology can be compared to a truck-unloading operation, Whittle said. With the old technology, you’d have two trucks, one conveyor belt and one worker. The worker can unload

only one truck at a time, leaving lots of space on the belt that isn’t used.

But with HT Technology, the scene changes: Another worker is added to the mix, and with one worker on each truck, the job goes faster, even though there’s still only one conveyor belt.

“Things run more smoothly, and they’re more reliable,” with HT, he said.

Software

• 3D-Album Picture Pro provides an easy way to manage digital photos, including organizing, editing and print-ing. It provides a variety of styles for slide shows and can add titles, sound and transition effects. The styles can be mixed in a single show.

The shows can be copied to a CD, which can be played on any machine put together in the past three or four years, he said, calling the program “the most flexible, the most powerfully slide presentation program I’ve found.”

The program allows batch process-ing and editing, with many of the same features as the old MGI PhotoSuite.

• The muvee autoProducer 3 pro-

vides a way to create high-quality home and professional movies or mu-sic videos. It also has many styles.

• PhotoVista Panorama, as the name suggests, can stitch a series of photos into a 360-degree, seamless, interactive photo that you can print, share, send as an e-mail or publish to a Web site.

All you have to do is take pictures with some overlap, and the program can adjust for differences in camera height and other factors. And if you don’t like the results, you can adjust the individual segments, although, Whittle said, that’s seldom necessary.

• Active PDF makes PDF docu-ments from any document on a com-puter, but Whittle ran out of time be-fore being able to show any of it.

Contact: Whittle can be reached by mail at

Webworking Services, 653 North 600 East, Suite B, Springville, UT 84663; by fax at 801-489-0609; by phone at 801-48l9-0605; or by e-mail at [email protected].



More on Penguin’s lair …

developed Debian distribution of Linux. Knoppix booted right up on my production Pentium 866 PC, giving me a KDE (K Desktop Environment, ver-sion 3.2.3) graphical desktop running on the latest 2.4.27 Linux kernel. (There is a boot option that allows you to boot up under the more recent 2.6.7 kernel.) It recognized my two SCSI drives, my tape drive and floppy drives (3.5" and 5.25"), my video card, my IBM ScrollPoint mouse, and all my other hardware.

An introduction to Knoppix popped right up in the default KDE web browser, Konquerer. Not only was the system ready to experiment with, but it was also ready to use.

The Knoppix desktop is very at-tractive and modern — even cool. It created desktop icons for all my Linux and OS/2 partitions. Clicking any of these icons mounted the drive and dis-played the contents. At the bottom is the desktop tool bar, called a panel, that sports icons for a programs menu (similar to the Windows Start >| Pro-grams menu); a configuration menu (you do have the option of fully con-figuring Knoppix and saving the con-figuration on something like a USB flash drive (Knoppix will use this con-figuration when it boots); a windows list; and program icons for instantly showing the desktop, your personal files, a command line window, the Konquerer web browser, the Mozilla web browser, and the latest 1.1.2 ver-sion of the OpenOffice.org office soft-ware suite.

There is a four pane desktop switcher, allowing you to run different programs separately on four different desktops and switch easily between them (this is very handy if you tend to run a lot of programs at once). Next is your Task bar, the area where buttons appear for all of your running pro-grams. Further to the right is the KDE equivalent of Microsoft Windows’ System Tray, showing icons for chang-ing your language (Knoppix is multi-lingual), your screen size and resolu-

tion, and your audio settings. A clock displays the date and time. Lastly, ar-row buttons at the left and right allow you to hide and unhide the panel with a mouse click. Hovering your mouse cursor over any of these icons will bring up a short, explanatory tool tip. And all of this can be easily configured to your taste.

Underneath the “K” menu are doz-ens and dozens of programs that really do make Knoppix usable by most any-one. The KDE menus are slightly translucent, allowing you to see what is underneath them and giving a break from the monotony of flat-colored menus. They are really a nice visual touch.

Your frequently used programs have icons dynamically added to an area at the top of the K-menu, making them quickly selectable. Underneath these menus are more than enough programs to keep any computer affici-anado awake into the wee hours of many mornings. You will find pro-gramming and development tools; text editors from the simple to the ultra-configurable; edutainment programs (learn while you play), including KStars, a very nice planetarium pro-gram; many games; graphics programs galore, including the 2.0 version of the Gimp (check out the Gimp before you put down your money on Photoshop) and scanning programs; online help; Internet programs from instant messag-

ing, network sniffing, video conferenc-ing; GPS programs, file transfer pro-grams, web browsers, mail clients, and lots more (need a 3270 terminal emu-later? It’s there!); multimedia software like audio mixers, CD and video play-ers, CD and DVD burners, PDF file viewers, and more; office software (spreadsheet, graphics drawing, pres-entation — think Powerpoint — mathematical formula editing (OK, maybe not your average office pro-gram), word processing, and Web page editing), address books, contact man-ager, and desktop publishing; utilities that include a File Finder, Palm Pilot tools, calculators, and fax programs; and numerous utilities that allow you to customize almost every aspect of Knoppix. The Wine icon you see at the bottom will let you run many programs designed for Microsoft Windows di-rectly under Knoppix (reportedly this includes Microsoft Office). There truly is a large number of programs avail-able under the K menu. Almost all programs are in English, but a few popped up for me in German.

This short discussion barely begins to describe the depth of what is avail-able with Knoppix — there is just so much. If you are interested in seeing what Linux and Open Source Software can do for you, and in actually trying it, I encourage you to head over to www.knoppix.com and order or download a copy. A warning, though. The downloadable Knoppix is a single ISO image of the CD. You will need software capable of writing the image to a CD, and you will need a fast Inter-net connection or a lot of patience (maybe both). The image is 700 MB big. Using a good 56K modem connec-tion this will take about 27 hours to download (if you have software that will calculate md5 signatures, be sure to make use of it to ensure you download an uncorrupted file). But do get your hands on a copy somehow. As I begin to talk about specific OSS programs, you’ll be able to follow along on your own PC. Until next month, happy computing.


We are going to talk about Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.com/), a full-featured, well-maintained, modern distribution of Linux and Open Source Software that you can try on your PC without making a single change to it.


(Notes for Michael Shalkey’s SIGS are available on the Web. Go to http://www.cipcug.org, click on Education in the menu and then on Shalkey’s SIGs. — Editor)

JPEG VIRUS: Although it hasn’t happened yet, security experts are say-ing that a weakness in several Micro-soft products could allow a computer to be infected with a virus through a JPEG file, which is a popular format for pictures.

You’re not in danger if you’ve kept up with all the security updates, includ-ing those for Microsoft Office 2003, but if you haven’t, you could be in danger. The Microsoft Web page has a link to a program that will scan your computer to determine if you need any updates.

According to the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/200409_jpeg.mspx, you’re safe if you’ve installed Win-dows XP Service Pack 2 and updates for the following products:

Windows XP Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows Server 2003 Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Office XP SP3 (Note: Office XP

SP3 includes Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, PowerPoint 2002, FrontPage 2002, and Publisher 2002)

Office 2003 (Note: Office 2003 includes Word 2003, Excel 2003, Out-look 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Front-Page 2003, Publisher 2003, InfoPath 2003, and OneNote 2003)

Digital Image Pro 7.0 Digital Image Pro 9 Digital Image Suite 9 Greetings 2002 Picture It! 2002 (all versions) Picture It! 7.0 (all versions) Picture It! 9 (all versions, including

Picture It! Library) Producer for PowerPoint (all ver-

sions) Project 2002 SP1 (all versions) Project 2003 (all versions) Visio 2002 SP2 (all versions) Visio 2003 (all versions)

Visual Studio .NET 2002 (Note: Visual Stu-dio .NET 2002 includes Visual Basic .NET Stan-dard 2002, Visual C# .NET Standard 2002, and Visual C++ .NET Standard 2002) Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Note: Visual Stu-

dio .NET 2003 includes Visual Ba-sic .NET Standard 2003, Visual C# .NET Standard 2003, Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003, and Visual J# .NET Standard 2003)

.NET Framework 1.0 SP2

.NET Framework 1.0 SDK SP2

.NET Framework 1.1 Platform SDK Redistributable:

GDI+ QUICK LAUNCH: Quick Launch

is a handy part of the toolbar where you can store shortcuts to open pro-grams with a single click. It’s at the right end of the tool bar just to the right of the Start menu (if you use a vertical toolbar, it will be below the Start menu).

To put a shortcut on the Quick Launch bar, drag it from wherever it is — the desk top, Start menu or else-where. If you can’t do that, you might have to enable Quick Launch by right clicking on an empty spot in the tool-bar, open the Toolbars menu and click on Quick Launch. Other possible tool-bars are Address, Links, Language Bar, Desktop and New Toolbar.

You can also make your toolbar larger by grabbing the top of the tool-bar and pulling it up. Of course, the bigger the toolbar, the more space you lose on your desktop.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS: If your mouse freezes, you can still do enough things with the keyboard to restart Windows or possibly get things started again.

For instance, press the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys all at once. Before XP, that would have rebooted the computer. Now, it brings up Windows Task Manager, where you can see what applications

and processes are running (and stop those you don’t want to run), check out the performance and networking of your machine, and determine what users are signed on (and log them off).

Alt-Tab will move you from open program to open program, and you can close them as you go (save your work, if any). This might bring the mouse back.

If your mouse starts to act strange — i.e., jumping around the screen or doing other such things — take it apart and clean it. The ball can be cleaned by rubbing it on your pants or shirt or a clean towel. The rollers should be the same color on all parts. Clean them with Q-Tips and alcohol if they’re not.

FINDING HELP: Start with Win-dows Help. Go to Start > Help and Support and type in your question. You might have to try several searches as you try to figure out what words the Help writers used to name the problem.

OPENING A FILE THAT WIN-DOWS DOESN’T RECOGNIZE: If you click on a file, and it doesn’t open, it might be that you don’t have the right program or that you haven’t told Windows what program to use with the particular file type. Right click on the file you want to open, go to Open with and choose the program (if you don’t know what kind of file the extension represents you might have to do a Web search or go to FIL.EXT, The File Ex-tension Source, at http://filext.com/, which has a database of almost 17,200 extensions as of Oct. 5. If you want to the make the program the default for the file type, click on Always use after selecting the program.

IrfanView is an excellent, free pro-gram for graphics files and will also play MP3 files.

PRINTER TIPS: Don’t use paper punched for a 3-hole binder in your printer. The punching leaves a residue that can jam the printer. Also, don’t use paper that’s already been through a color printer already in a color laser printer because the color ink can melt


SHALKEY

Society news: Windows and Hardware SIG

New virus threat, using Quick Launch, mice


The collage effort was a real bust. My version of Paint Shop Pro is a very ancient one, and I thought I could do it in Print Shop Deluxe because there is a tool there that allows you to skew the pictures, and I was sure I could do it, but it doesn't work there either. PSD only lets you skew the images it in-

cludes with the pro-gram, not your own images. So I just don’t have the smarts to do it with. Guess I will give up and move on. The ISP is nearly back to normal now.

Some people have reported the neces-sity to dial in a couple of times to get a connection, but I think that is evening out.

Toby has his spam blockers doing their thing. I still get some, but it is nice being able to remove them from the server before I download them. People who travel are enjoying using the Web Mail to check messages.

The TOE newsletter is posted online just as soon after I get the disk from John at the folding party.

If any of you receive the newsletter late, you might check your computer.

Don’t forget, that the current issue is password protected, and if you have-n’t accessed it before, please send me an e-mail with your membership num-ber, and I will forward the necessary info to you. Once you have put the user name and password in, you won’t have to remember it again.

Since this is supposed to be Web Page News, if any of you have any favorite Web sites, let me know, and I can post some of everyone’s favorites.

I get a kick out of webshots.com. It has gorgeous scenic pictures and some really great animal shots to use for desktop pictures.

Wanted: Advertising Manager We need someone to talk to computer-related businesses about advertising in The Outer Edge.

The editor’s job doesn’t allow him to sell advertising for a competitor, even one as small as TOE. Anyone interested should contact Dave Harris or John Weigle at any meeting.

LONG

Society news: Web page Collage won’t work, so it’s on to other things

and ruin the printer. ORGANIZING BROWSWER

FAVORITES IN WINDOWS Me: They can be alphabetized in XP by right clicking in the favorites menu and choosing Sort by name, but Michael wasn’t sure if that worked in Windows Me. Computers sort by spaces, num-bers and letters in that order, so that can help you move items to the top of a menu and keep them there.

WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2: Before installing it — or making any other major change — it’s

a good idea to back up your data, in-cluding the address book and similar items, and create a restore point.

CAN I USE TWO BROWSERS: One member wanted to know if he could use two browsers, specifically Firefox and Internet Explorer, and switch between them. The answer is yes. Most browsers check when they start to see if they are the default browser and, if not, ask you if you want to make them the default. You can answer yes or no. If your Internet Explorer doesn’t ask that question, you can make it do so by going to Tools >

Internet Options > Programs and check “Internet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser.” Other browsers have similar com-mands.

SAVING MEMORY IF YOU DON’T USE THE CD REGU-LARLY: Michael found this tip on a Web site but suggested caution in using it. If you want to save some memory resources and don’t use the CD much, you can right click on My Computer and go Properties > Performance > File System > CD-ROM and adjust the cache memory to 244.


More on Hardware and Windows SIG …


Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing. Visit http://www.smartcomputing.com/groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group.

Add an incoming e-mail sender

as a new contact (Outlook 2003): To make a new contact entry from an in-coming e-mail message, open the mes-sage or preview it in the Reading Pane. Right-click the name or e-mail address of the sender in that pane to get a drop-down menu. Select Add To Outlook Contacts. The name and e-mail address will now be filled in; feel free to ex-pand on the entry appropriately. Click Save and Close when you’re finished.

You can also drag an e-mail mes-sage from the message list to the Cal-endar button on the Navigation Pane; this will have the same effect but will add the body of the e-mail message to the comments section of the contact

entry. The price is right: If you’re not a

bargain hunter, chances are it’s be-cause you like the bargains more than you like the hunting part. Still, every-one likes to grab a good deal, espe-cially when the grabbing is easy. Enter P r i c e G r a b b e r . c o m ( h t t p : / /www.pricegrabber.com). Search for products in a number of categories from Books, Movies, and Music to Computers, Software, and Consumer Electronics; you’ll even find Jewelry and Office Products.

Even if you have a preferred shop you’d like to buy from, it’s worth your while to look up your prospective pur-chase here, check for super saver prices, and read the customer reviews. It beats driving from store to store looking at price tags.

Build your music library: You have a bunch of audio CDs and a CD player, but if you have good speakers

hooked up to your computer, you can actually have more fun listening to that music through your PC. With Win-dows Media Player (WMP) you can call up any song instantly, create play-lists, and make custom mixes on re-cordable CDs.

First you need to transfer those tunes from your CDs to your hard drive. Click Tools, select Options, and click the Copy Music tab. Use the op-tions to set up how you would like WMP to copy your discs. Select the Copy CD When Inserted checkbox under Copy Settings and click OK.

Next time you insert a music CD in your CD drive, WMP will automati-cally begin to transfer your music to your computer.

What’s even better is that WMP can figure out the album name, artist, and song track titles on its own as long as you have your computer connected to the Internet.

Tips from Smart Computing magazine


Computer-related radio programs By Jim Thornton

([email protected]) Several changes have occurred since the last time we

published this listing — “Komputer Klinic” on KTMS (Santa Barbara) has moved from Saturday mornings to eve-nings and added an extra hour and has changed its time on KVTA; the home page address of “The Computer and Tech-nology Show” on KABC has changed; the website of Jeff Levy has been totally revised; and the “a.computer.show” on KVTA has moved from Saturdays to Sunday afternoons — one hour later.

SATURDAY “Komputer Klinic” with Kim Komando 7-10 a.m. — no local radio stations air this live program Telephone: (888) 825-5254 (Phoenix) — toll-free Listen Live address: none Home page: http://www.Komando.com E-mail: [email protected] Remarks: Has a weekly column in USA Today newspa-

per and a monthly article in Popular Mechanics magazine, has written several books, and has produced video learning tape series; provides a free (but slow) help service via e-mail; and free daily tips, daily Cool Sites and weekly e-mail newsletters.

“The Computer and Technology Show” with Marc

Cohen and Mark Oleesky 9-11 a.m. 790 AM on KABC (Los Angeles) Telephone: (800) 222-5222 (Los Angeles) — toll-free Listen Live address: http://www.kabc.com/listenlive.asp Home page: http://www.kabc.com/showdj.asp?

DJID=3668 E-mail: [email protected] Remarks: If the caller’s question is too technical, they

will request the caller to e-mail the question and they will e-mail back the solution.

“Computer News with Jeff Levy” with Jeff Levy 12-3 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM (Los Angeles) Telephone: (866) 569-1070 (Los Angeles) — toll-free Listen Live address: none — under development Home page: http://www.jefflevy.com E-mail: [email protected] Remarks: If the caller’s question is too technical, he will

call the caller after the broadcast and provide the solution; provides a weekly computer lesson available from his web site, and publishes a monthly for-a-fee newsletter.

Jeff may be heard on weekdays at 6:25 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM KNX (Los Angeles), Tuesdays at 1 p.m. on the Internet (www.wsradio.com), and on the Adelphia cable system (not locally).

“Tech Guy on KFI” with Leo Laporte 12-3 p.m. on KFI 640 AM (Los Angeles) Telephone: (800) 520-1534 (Los Angeles) — toll-free Listen Live Address: http://www.kfi640.com/interactive/

streaming.html Home page: http://www.leoville.com E-mail: [email protected] Remarks: Leo is a popular host on TV network

G4techTV Canada with his “Call for Help” programs on weekdays, and on several radio stations — Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. on KGO 810 AM (San Francisco), Fridays at 8:40 a.m. on KFI 640 AM (Los Angeles), and Saturdays at 7:40 a.m. on CFRB 1010 AM (Toronto); and has written several books on computers.

“Komputer Klinic” with Kim Komando 4-7 p.m. KVTA 1520 AM (Ventura) Listen Live address: http://www.kvtaam1520.com/

listenlive.asp This program is a replay of the earlier live program —

see 7 a.m. for details. The program is frequently pre-empted by sport events.



Rick's rants

Coming soon: www.ComputerPsychic.net

By Rick Smith

[email protected] www.ComputerPsychic.net Well, it finally happened! And I have you CIPCUG

members to thank for it. But for the life of me I cannot re-member which one of you should get the credit so I’m going to give it to all of you.

I was sitting in my office waiting for the phone to ring, which it did! You were on the line asking me why the infernal machine just did what it did. Whoa, I said, let’s start from the beginning. Well, we bought the computer from All-City ... not that far back Sheeesh! When did the prob-lem first occur? Oh, when I was running a virus scan, defragging the hard drive, burning a CD and checking my e-mail. RIGHT … What hap-pened next? Oh, it gave me an error message, and the mouse froze. Pause … OK, what was

the error message? Oh, I can’t remember. Did you write it down? The pen in your hand, did that freeze too? Uh, no. Do you remember anything in the message? Uh, yes. I remem-ber that I didn’t understand what it said. Right … OK,

maybe I should call back when it happens again. Good Idea … OK, bye for now.

That’s when it hit me. An epiphany of intellectual clarity, the apple dropping on Isaac Newton’s head, the idea light bulb going off in my head, the ringing in my ears … COM-PUTER PSYCHIC HOTLINE! Even as this article is going to print Toby Scott is building a Web site, an extra phone line is going in to the office and preparations are being made for our big rollout. Ads will appear in all the local papers as well as a billboard on Oxnard Boulevard (right next to Video Liquidators). 1-900-COM-PSIC Now everyone will be able to call in, and we will have all the answers to your questions, regardless of how much (or little) information you give us, because we will no longer depend on scientific analysis and personal experience to troubleshoot and solve the various problems that plague the computing public. No, we will be using our crystal ball and Tarot cards to determine the cause of your affliction. Yes, think of it! Where the spiritual and digital worlds join together to solve even the most perplex-ing issues, all the while your phone will be billed $2.99 per minute. We will have someone available 24 hours a day to take your calls and personally delve into those mysterious

SMITH

“Komputer Klinic” with Kim Komando 6-9 p.m. on KTMS 990 AM (Santa Barbara) Listen Live address: (none) This program is a replay of the earlier live program —

see 7 a.m. for details. SUNDAY “Computer News with Jeff Levy” with Jeff Levy 12-3 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM (Los Angeles). See Satur-

day at 12 p.m. for details. “Tech Guy on KFI” with Leo Laporte 12-3 p.m. on KFI 640 AM (Los Angeles). See Saturday

at 12 p.m. for details. “a.computer.show” with G. J. Goldwyn 3-4 p.m. on KVTA 1520 AM (Ventura) Telephone: (805) 289-1520 (Ventura) Listen Live address: http://www.kvtaam1520.com/

listenlive.asp Home page: http://www.acomputerpro.com E-mail: [email protected] Remarks: Has some weekly prizes. The program is fre-

quently pre-empted by sport events.


areas of knowledge where only a registered computer psychic can take you. And, yes, all our staff will have to pass rigid certification exams not unlike a Microsoft MSCE online exam. Except they will not have the opportunity to study the subject matter. To qualify to be a VCC Computer Psychic they will have to figure themselves out of the stickiest situa-tions without the help of the Internet or even a lowly technical manual. Yes, sir, when you call, you will receive the best psy-chic analysis of your computer question that can be obtained anywhere. We are so confident in our abilities and feel so strongly in what we offer that we will absolutely guarantee that you will not be able to get better PC psychic help any-where or your money back. How’s about that for an ironclad offer? If you find another psychic who gives you a better an-swer to your question with the same information presented, we will rebate 100 percent of the charges back to you. All you have to do is mail in one of our rebate certificates with proof


More on radio shows...


Membership Report: Is it time to renew? By Ken Church Email address:[email protected] Welcome to the following new members: Mike Berwick & Bernice Taggesell Attendance at the Sept. 2004 General meeting 80 Members 4 Guests Total membership 329 RENEWAL INFORMATION The renewal/New Mbr dues are $25/35 for single membership, $30/$50 for two or more family membership. Please send your renewal payment to: CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP P. O. BOX 51354 OXNARD, CA 93031-1354 Or bring your payment to the Oct. Meeting at the Boys and Girls Club of Camarillo. August 2004 renewals

September 2004 renewals

September 2004 renewals: ( Continued)

October 2004 renewals:

See you all at the October meeting and bring a friend!

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date

0488 Bressler Steve 200408

0971 Elster Brian 200408

0028 Fiedler Art 200408

0982 Grimes Jean 200408

0981 Grimes Robert 200408

0806 Hurme Seppo 200408

0723 Smith Bernadine 200408

0722 Smith Gary 200408

9244 Zilm Charles 200408


0227 Caminer Jerry 200409

0894A Duchacek Jane 200409

0894 Cuchacek Ralph 200409

0972 Farley Ulysses 200409

0249 Greenway Frank 200409

0373 Houle Robert 200409


0236 Kelly Charles 200409

1123A Lancet Lenny 200409

1123 Lancet Robert 200409

0145 Lee Bill 200409

0989 Shobe Ivan 200409

1036 Howard Smith 200409

0909 Sorrels John 200409

0938 Stroud John 200409

0802 Taylor Audrey 200409

Mbr# Last Name FirstName Pd to Date

1128 Brown Dee Dee 200410

0734 Buchanan John 200410

0034 Campbell Gordon 200410

1107 Carlson Gordy 200410

0941 Clark Reagan 200410

1039 Davison, Jr. Curtis 200410

0385 Forder John 200410

1127 Gross Bob 200410

1038 Harris Tom 200410

0037T Hosford Victor 200410

0990 Mehr Steve 200410

0942 Mickey Barbara A. 200410

0901 Shelton Charles 200410

0492 Skinner Donald 200410

0733 Wall Sinclair 200410

0994 Zaas Robert 200410


F1—Your Help Key (Revised May 2, 2004)

COMMUNICATIONS/INTERNET (GENERAL) Compuserve DM Note Tab Pro TS World Wide Web DM, TS

DATABASES Access BR DOS RP

EDUCATIONAL / CHILDREN TZ

E-MAIL Eudora JT Lotus:CCMail. DM Outlook TS, AT, MS Outlook Express TS, AT, BR Poco Email MS

HARDWARE, UPGRADING JM

HTML TS, AT

NETWORKS TS

OFFICE SUITES MS Office AT Open Office AT Star Office AT GRAHICS PROGRAMS IrfanView MS, JT Print Shop BR

SPREADSHEETS Microsoft Excel DM, AT Quattro Pro DM

UTILITY PROGRAMS Norton Utilities DM, JT (and Anti-Virus) PCAnywhere DM

WORD PROCESSING Microsoft Word BW, DM WordPerfect. DM WINDOWS Windows 98, 95 DM, JM, AT (98), MS (98) Windows Me JT, AT Windows 2000 TS, AT Windows NT TS

Initials Name (805) AT Andy Toth 604-7538 (e) BR Bill Robinson 389-2997 (b) <[email protected]> BW Bart Wood 482-4993 (e) DM David Minkin 469-6970 (cell) (5-11 p.m. weekends); [email protected] JM Jerry McLoud (818) 889-6176 (e) JT Jim Thornton 987-1748 (d) <[email protected]> MS Michael Shalkey 483-9921 ext 142 (d) [email protected] RP Robert Provart 498-8477 (b) TS Toby Scott 289-3960 (d) [email protected] TZ Trish Zakas 985-8519 (b) Phone: (d) = days; (e) = evenings; (b) = both If you would like to volunteer to help others, please send your contact information and programs you’re willing to help on to <[email protected]>. Also, if you have a favorite help site on the Web, please forward that, too, so we can make a separate sec-tion for Web-based help.

Practice safe computing: Back up

Back up Back up

(And then test the backup to be sure it worked)


Ordinarily, I wouldn’t use this column to criticize a product unless it had completely trashed my computer, but I want to share an experience I had recently when my hard drive crashed. Toby installed the Norton Utilities and Anti-

Virus 2004 on what was the secondary drive of the computer. (It was smaller than the primary drive, so I hadn’t made an image of the pri-mary drive on it.) As I started to reinstall some of the pro-grams on the smaller drive, I began to run in to more and more problems with the System Works programs I had installed. They kept saying certain related files could not be loaded

(symlcsvc.exe was a prime offender). Finally, after this happened several times, Norton AntiVirus would-n’t load either. Because I had to connect to the Internet for e-mail and TOE submissions, I used the Add/Remove pro-grams to try to remove SystemWorks. It started on a Mon-day night, ran all day Tuesday while I was at work and was still running when I got home from work — a total of almost 22 hours. I shut down and went to Symantec for manual uninstall procedures, which fill five pages. That seemed to get rid of most of the program and its folders so I could at least install a new antivirus program. I finally got the computer running OK and a few weeks ago when SystemWorks 2005 came out, I decided to give it another chance. I’d like to say everything went well — but it didn’t. When the installation was supposedly complete, a message came up that it had failed. Every time I used Add/Remove Programs to try to delete the 2005 version, the computer crashed. Back to manual uninstall, which is pri-marily dumping every folder that says Symantec or Norton. I’m now using Fix,-It Utilities 5 by V-Com.

— John Weigle, Editor

Society news

Treasurer’s report

By Art Lewis

<[email protected]> August 2004

Category Description 8-1 through 8-31, 2004 INFLOWS Coffee Income $ 72.00 Donation 109.00 ISP Income 435.00 New Members 70.00 Raffle 159.04 Renewals 572.00 TOTAL INFLOWS 1,417.04 OUTFLOWS Corporate expense 62.00 ISP Expense 478.00 Raffle prizes 107.25 Storage 50.00 TOE 385.65 TOTAL OUTFLOWS 1,082.93 OVERALL TOTAL 334.11 Unrestricted Funds 8,208.47 Restricted Funds 2,000.00 Bank Balance 8-31-04 10,208.47 Year to Date Income 2,649.49 Year to Date Expense -2,127.05

Your name can appear here, too. Share your knowl-edge with other members by sending an article, letter or computer tip to [email protected].

Carl Bailey Ken Church Martha Churchyard Jerry Crocker Bob de Violini

David Harris Art Lewis Helen Long The SANS Institute Smart Computing maga-

zine Rick Smith Jim Thornton Andy Toth Bill Wayson John Weigle

2004 contributors to TOE More on Rick’s rants ...

of purchase (just like at CompUSA; you’ve all done that one haven’t you?).

I hope all of you are just as excited about this news as we are. Finally, a place just for you, where we’ll be waiting for your call. Now I’ve got to go. I’m getting my satellite phone setup so I can answer your questions from wherever I happen to vacationing that week. Ciau, baby.

P.S. Toby will still be doing technical support the old fashioned way, 9 to 5 M-F at (805) 289-3930, but you better have your T’s crossed and your I’s dotted before you call.


Editor’s corner:

What’s going on with Symantec?

WEIGLE


Every month, members of the Channel Islands PC Users Group have access to:

♦ The Outer Edge newsletter, which includes a list of members willing to help other members

♦ The general meeting, featuring a question-and-answer session and program on new software or hardware

♦ Special Interest Groups — special meetings held several times a month on a variety of topics

♦ Door prizes at the regular meeting.

♦ The CIPCUG library of books and videos.

Other benefits include: ♦ Special user group discounts

on books and software ♦ An Internet Service Provider

at a large discount (see below).

♦ A chance to make friends with people who have similar interests

♦ The ability to put your knowledge to good use by helping other members. The whole concept of user groups is members helping members.

CIPCUG members are eligible to sign up for the group’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) at the low price of only $15 per month plus a $15 processing fee.

To sign up, contact one of the club’s techies (see below). Call one of them you may know or one in your area and they will be glad to provide

you with the details necessary for signing up. Checks should be made payable to CIPCUG and forwarded to Treasurer, c/o CIPCUG, P. O. Box 51354, Oxnard CA 93031. Don’t forget to include the $15 set-up fee in your first sign-up check. You may make payments in three-month, six-month or annual increments. We also give a 12-month subscription if pre-paid in advance at the 11-month price of $165. Many of our club members are electing to do this to keep Helen from nagging them for money. Renewals can also be mailed to Treasurer; just be sure to mention the dates that your check is to cover.

There is no program to install; you will use programs that are already on your computer. It’s simple to talk you through the set-up, but if you’re the least bit timid about setting up your computer, a club member will come to your house and make the necessary arrangements. Our agreement will also give you a 5 MB Web page allowance.

_________________________

CIPCUG INTERNET SERVICE TECH TEAM

Jerry Crocker, 486-0308, 6-10 p.m. [email protected], Roland Fleig, 983-8707, mornings [email protected], George & Arline Lakes, 983-2969, 2-10 p.m. [email protected], Helen Long, 642-6521 [email protected] David D. Minkin, 469-6970, 5-12 p.m., weekends [email protected] ______________________________ Please clip last column and send with payment to CIPCUG-Membership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA 93031-1354. Please make checks payable to CIPCUG

Dues for new members Individual member, $35.00 Family membership (same address), $50.00 Renewals are $25 and $30/yr. respectively

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP

APPLICATION

Amount enclosed: ____________________________ Please Print the following information: Name: _______________________________ Address: _______________________________ City: ___________________________, CA ZIP Code: _______________________________ Phone no. (Home): _______________ (Work): _______________________ E-mail address: _______________________________ User level: Novice _____; Intermediate _____; Advanced _____ Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you be interested in working on? Date ___________________ Member # ____________

Why join Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG)?


Channel Islands PC Users Group Inc. P.O.Box 51354 Oxnard, CA. 93031

DATED MATERIAL Please Do Not Delay

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE

PAID OXNARD. CA

PERMIT NO. 1785

October 2004October 2004 M Meetingeeting Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Saturday morning, Oct. 23, at

Boys & Girls Club, Ponderosa Drive and Temple

Avenue, Camarillo, Calif.

Meeting Schedule: 8:30 a.m. Doors open 8:45-9:30 Windows and Hardware SIG and Internet SIG 9:30-10:30 Business meeting, Q&A 10:30-11:00 Break — Please contribute requested amounts for coffee and doughnuts 11:00-12:00 Program (Vivitar), Drawing

DUES REMINDER If the number after your name is 0410, your membership dues are payable in October 2004.

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the outer e newsletter of the channel islands pc users group d · 2004-11-16 · october 200 4 the...

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