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January 2005 The Outer Edge

Please let me stop any confusion or rumors about the change of meet-ing weeks. We asked for a show of hands about changing the meeting date to the third Saturday of each month. The reason for this was the

confusion some members had about our fourth Satur-day meetings from January until October then chang-ing to the third Saturday for November and December to avoid the holiday weekends. This was only a quick survey. Our meetings are set for 2005 the same as last year, the fourth Saturday from January through Octo-ber, then changing to the third Saturday for November and December. The board can not and will not make any changes without bringing it up to the club mem-bers for a vote. As far as SIGs are concerned, we plan on holding

our regular SIGs during the week at Ventura County Computers as we have in the past. In addition we are going to hold additional SIGs after our monthly meetings in January and February at the Round Table Pizza in the Von’s/Long’s/K-Mart center at Arneill and Ponderosa road. In January we will be doing Google for those who want to see it again and for those who missed it. We will have an online connection so we can visit some of its unusual search sites. In February, a session on computer security will be given. “See who is looking into your computer” — you will be surprised how easy it is to enter if you are not protected.

I will be attending the APCUG conference in January representing our club. Hopefully, I can obtain some good, useful information and book some new vendors for our meetings.

Hoping all members had a good holiday season. Ask yourself what you can do for your club in 2005.

January 2005 Vol. 18, No. 7

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

Penguin’s lair KStars lets you see any night’s sky from the comfort of your computer room.

— Page 12

Attendance at the December general meeting

90 members and 2 guests

COMMAND.COMCOMMAND.COM

By David Harris, President

E d g e

Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Whole No. 214 ISSN 1055-4399

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

The Outer

HARRIS

Photo by Jerry Crocker Harley Hahn, left, our December speaker, accepts a certificate of appreciation from vice president Craig Ladd after speaking on Linux.

The Outer Edge January 2005

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 *Deceased

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: Harley Hahn 8

Nominating committee volunteers needed

7

Q&A, business meeting 4

Steering Committee 4

TOE contributors (2005) 18

Treasurer’s report 18

Web page news 12

GENERAL

Bits and bytes (news briefs)

11

Penguin’s lair: astronomy program

12

Rick’s rants: Spyware 15

ADVERTISEMENTS

Computer shows 14

Copy Court 15

Ventura County Computers

13


Programs This month’s program will feature

Orville Beach, who will discuss “What’s New within Linux?” His pres-entation should be especially interest-ing coming right after Harley Hahn’s presentation last month on the advan-tages of the open source operating sys-tem.

The meeting will be on Saturday, Jan. 22, 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.

Other coming meetings: All programs TBA Feb. 26 (fourth Saturday) March 26 (fourth Saturday) April 23 (fourth Saturday) May 28 (fourth Saturday)

Any interest in a beginners’ class?

It has been suggested that we hold beginners’ classes. This raises two questions:

First, when to hold these: at 8:45 a.m. prior to our meetings, in the eve-nings at Ventura County Computers or on an off meeting Saturday at Round Table Pizza?

Second, who will volunteer to be the teacher of the group?

Another consideration is commit-ment of students to attend regularly and finish the course. We will have a signup sheet at the next few general meet-ings to gather names of those who would like to attend and their prefer-ence of time and day.

If any member wishes to participate as a teacher, please contact David Har-ris at [email protected], and he can describe the commitment to you. It is not a big one, and your club needs

your help. Please consider helping out with a small task like this. 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 January (some of these will have happened by the time you receive TOE; they’re in-cluded for the record):

January Monday, Jan. 3: Canceled for holi-

days. Wednesday, Jan. 12: HTML /

CSS. Moderator: Toby Scott. Bring in a sketched layout of a Web page, and we will create the page in class.

Thursday, Jan. 20: Subject and moderator TBA.

Saturday, Jan. 22 (after the regu-lar meeting, at Round Table Pizza in Camarillo): David Harris will repeat his presentation on Google from the November meeting. He will be able to go online.

Thursday, Jan. 27: Linux. Mod-erator: TBA

February Saturday, Feb. 26 (after the regular

meeting, at Round Table Pizza in Camarillo): David Harris will discuss computer security.

Society news: Programs and SIGs

Speaker to discuss ‘What’s New within Linux’ Door prizes

The club door prizes for this month are:

Apacer Handy Steno USB 2.0 Flash Drive 128MG

MS IntelliMouse Explorer Mouse —optical — 5 buttons — wired — PS/2, USB — platinum — English

SMC Barricade 7004VBR 4 Port 10/100 Broadband DSL Router

Estimated retail value: $107 We have two types of raffle tickets:

one for 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.

Consignment table

A consignment table is set up at every meeting. Anyone can buy, but only members can sell. The club gets 10 per-cent of the sales price. A tag with the seller’s name, CIPCUG membership number, item name, item description and price must be placed on each item. Sold items must be picked up at the end of the day’s meeting. Any items not picked up will become the property of CIPCUG and will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion.

CIPCUG is not responsible in any way for items bought or sold at the table. Each item is sold as -is unless otherwise stated.

E-mail SIG reminders

To keep members up to date on coming SIGs, Lois Evans de Violini is sending e-mail reminders. Sign up, and she will automatically send you a reminder about two days before each SIG, indicating the topic, location, and date.

To sign up, send an e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line “subscribe.”

Now available from Art Lewis at any meeting: The Secret Guide to Computers, 29th edition, by Russ Walter — $10.


By Martha Churchyard, secretary

Society news: Business meeting, Q&A Using music CDs in computers, Net connections By Martha Churchyard [email protected]

Business meeting

Vice President Craig Ladd pre-sided.

Art Lewis, Helen Long, and Ken Church gave their reports. TOE Editor John Weigle reported and asked again for members to submit articles.

Craig reported on coming pro-grams, and Andy Toth reminded peo-ple about the consignment table, where members can sell their unwanted hard-ware and software.

Craig raised the possibility of changing the club meeting to the third Saturday of the month. He asked for a show of hands by those who were in-terested, and a number of people raised their hands. There was some discussion of pros and cons. The meeting was changed last year so vendors could give presentations to several area us-ers’ groups in one trip. This worked well for last year’s speakers but proba-bly won’t continue next year. If a change is made, it won’t be until the end of 2005 because the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club is already reserved for the balance of the year.

As an experiment, in January and February, after the Saturday general meeting, SIGs will be held at Round Table Pizza in Camarillo. It has a meet-ing room with wireless Internet access that we can reserve. If it works out,

other SIGs can be held there during the day instead of in Ventura at night.

Dick Otterson, the computer show coordinator, is looking for volunteers for two -hour time slots at the coming shows. Contact Ken Church or Dick if you are interested.

Q&A session

Unless otherwise noted, questions were answered this month by Andy Toth, past president, with assistance from Michael Shalkey.

A neighbor was told not to use good music CDs on a computer

Q: My neighbor has a computer with a CD writer, and a friend told her that she cannot use any good music CDs on her computer, like copying one for her car, because the computer de-stroys the original music CD.

A: I haven’t heard that. I haven’t actually looked into that, but I can’t see that that it would happen. I can see that a copy in your car could be damaged. It is subject to extremes of temperature, both cold and hot. The store-bought, original CDs are significantly more durable than the standard CD-RWs that you purchase.

I have to restart my computer to get off the Internet

Q: (Reading written question) “I have a dialup to access the Internet. On my old computer system with Win-dows 98, if I had been working on

word processing, and then went on the Internet, and wanted to close out the Internet and still use my computer, so as to have my telephone available again, I would receive a message that the Internet was shutting down, and if I wanted to remain on the Internet to click the question. This message ap-peared when I got Windows XP. Some time back this message stopped appear-ing. To leave the Internet and still work on my computer, I now have to do a restart. This is very frustrating. How do I get off the Internet so as to use my telephone and no longer have to do a restart?”

A: I assume you’re talking about disconnecting from the Internet. Something else is happening here, be-cause when you disconnect from your ISP, it has no effect on the other pro-grams you are running, unless you are running something that relies on Inter-net input. There is an issue there in the way your modem is set up, or some other software you have running that wants to be connected all the time. Have you checked your startup file?

(From audience) He probably had

the automatic connect set on his browser. But if he right-clicks on the modem icon on his taskbar, he can disconnect that way.

A: That is an option set in the con-nection file; you can set it to show an icon for the network in the system tray.

(Continued on page 5)

December Steering Committee meeting The CIPCUG Executive Board

meeting was held on Dec. 21, 2004, at 7 p.m. at the home of George and Ar-line Lakes. Present: Ken Church, Mar-tha Churchyard, David Harris, Toby Scott, Craig Ladd, George and Arline Lakes, Art Lewis, and Helen Long.

Art Lewis gave the October treas-urer’s report, and Helen Long, and Ken Church also gave their reports. Helen

and David agreed that the users group event at CompUSA was a complete waste of time.

Changing the meeting date to the third Saturday was discussed, but there was no consensus, and no change can be made in any case until the existing commitment runs out in December 2005.

The possibility of having a basic-

level introductory beginners’ SIG was discussed.

It was agreed we should explore the idea.

Ken Church will have a signup sheet available at the next meeting, and there will be an article in the TOE.

We also need to start publicizing nominations for president for the com-ing officer elections.


More on Q&A: Setting up another hard drive It doesn’t have to be there. But the mo-dem icon is usually there. If that does-n’t work, there is another problem that is causing your machine to lock up. Check your MSCONFIG or the Task Manager to see what is running.

How do I set up another hard drive for video work?

Q: I have a fairly new computer. I put in a second 40GB hard drive and started downloading my camcorder videos. I plan to start using Pinnacle Studio 9. I rapidly filled up that hard drive, so I got a 200GB hard drive to dedicate strictly to the videos. It came with an Ultra ATA 133 PCI card, so now I have the original hard drive, two additional hard drives, plus my DVD burner on the system. I have a two-part question: Am I better off performance-wise to have my 200GB hard drive hooked up on the motherboard, or should I have it hooked up through the PCI card? And second, generally speaking, is there a proper or more efficient order in how to hook up the hard drives and the DVD burner on the primary and secondary, master and slave?

A: I just recently acquired Studio 9, and I’m attempting to run it on an underpowered machine, so I under-stand what you are talking about. From my experience with it, if your 160GB hard drive is ATA 133, put it on the PCI card, and leave that dedi-cated as your capture device. For one thing, working with the videos, the drive that you are capturing to should be defragged, and shouldn’t have much on it, so you can download as fast as possible. Later you can copy it off and store it somewhere else.

Q: That doesn’t seem to be an is-

sue. I’ve captured about four or five hours so far and had zero dropped frames. My question is, should I have the 200GB hard drive hooked up to the PCI card that came with it, or should I hook it directly to the primary or sec-ondary on the motherboard?

A: If it’s working for you now, it shouldn’t matter what you do. But it is

a good-sized hard drive, and whatever you do, I would make it a master on either the primary or the secondary IDE on the card.

Q: And make the burner the slave?

And should they be on the same chan-nel?

A: No they should be on a different channel. I think I understand what you’re asking now. I don’t normally have that many hard drives. (Laughter) Generally on the primary IDE, I will have two hard drives, a primary and a secondary, a slave. Then on the secon-dary IDE my main burner will be the master and the secondary might be a Zip drive or another hard drive. If I have two burners, or a CD-ROM and a burner, then the CD-ROM will be the slave. The idea is that you don’t want to constantly go to RAM and back on to the same IDE channel. Depending on how you do your copies, if you go from primary to secondary IDE, you use less RAM that way, you use less time in system memory. Transitions go a lot smoother, and there is less likeli-hood of a problem.

I needed ink and it cost more than a new printer — so I bought a printer

Q: This is just a general observation about life. (Laughter) I needed ink for my printer and I priced the two con-tainers I needed at almost $65. I want across the street to Rite-Aid and bought a new printer for under $40.

I can’t open a picture I got via e-mail

Q: A friend bought a new HP all-in-one printer, scanner. He scanned in a photo successfully and tried to e-mail it to me. When I opened the attachment to the e-mail, I got an error saying the file could not be opened. Is that be-cause I don’t have any photographic software on my machine?

A: The file name of the e-mail at-tachment should have an extension. If you don’t have software on your ma-chine that would open files with that extension, I suggest Irfanview. It will open most common types of images. In fact, there are a number of programs out there that work well.

When you scan a picture in, the scanner software’s default is usually to use the extension for the application used to edit the pictures. For example, I use Paint Shop Pro, so when I scan, it comes in using the PSP extension that Paint Shop Pro uses. If I want to send the picture to someone else, I have to convert it to a JPG file type. You need to check what extension your friend is using.

How do you change the extension?

Q: Could you elaborate on that? How do you change the extension on a scan?

A: When I scan, I save it as a PSP. That is a particular format that the soft-ware uses to manipulate the image. For example, a JPG file is a four-dimensional array — it is storing the data in that format. When you create a JPG file, it will take that format and compress it to produce a compressed version of that image, still a four-dimensional file. To use a different format, you have to go in and deliber-ately choose the format when you save the file. In your scanning software you may have an Export function, or Con-vert, that will convert that image into the format you want. There will be a list of as many as 20 file types to choose from.

I was having trouble sending images from Paint

Q: I was also having trouble send-ing scanned images from Paint, for example.

A: Paint requires a BMP format. You have to save it in that format after you scan it in.

Q: So you scan it, and there is a

window that comes up that gives you a choice of extensions?

A: Generally you can find it in “Save As.” There are several formats you can use. It will come up with the default type, but underneath, if you click on the arrow in the drop-down box, usually underneath the file name, you will see a list of all the other op-tions.

(Continued from page 4)



(From audience) When his friend scans that in, if he has HTML e-mail, he could insert the scan as a picture and send it directly. That way he will get it in the message, and then he can save it.

Windows XP won’t open my CD-RW or floppy drive

Q: My Windows XP will no longer open my CD-RW, and it will no longer open my floppy drive. It recognizes the drives when I go to My Computer, but if I double click on my CD drive, it says that there is a disk in there with zero bytes on it. I noticed that after I installed Nero. But my floppy drive still worked then. Now I’ve attempted to back something up to a floppy, and it says that the drive is not available. So I go back to Windows XP My Com-puter, and it shows the floppy drive there, and when I double click on it I get the same message, that it is not available. I went through the trouble-shooter, and it suggested that I use the previous driver, or get new drivers. But Windows says I have the best driv-ers available. So does that mean both of those drivers have gone or is there some connection between them inside the computer?

A: There is an electrical connection inside. There is a cable from your motherboard to each one of those drives. I have had an issue with the floppy, that I run into when I put a new machine together, and put the floppy cable on upside-down.

Q: But if I had a connection prob-

lem, would Windows still be recogniz-ing those devices?

A: Yes, it could still do that. Q: One more thing — I used to be

able to play a music CD automatically in my CD-RW drive, and now it won’t. I can’t play it by double-clicking on the drive icon either, but if I use Windows Media Player, I can start it from there.

(From audience) I’m just getting

started with XP, so I don’t know ex-actly how to get there, but in Windows

98 what I would do is uninstall and reinstall the drive in Device Manager. Remove it, then refresh, and it will come up telling you that it has found new hardware, and you can reinstall. It sounds like it has a corrupted driver.

(Andy and others) You can find Device Manager in My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Man-ager > Floppy. (Demonstrating). Then you have to reboot.

(From audience) I had that prob-

lem, and in frustration I finally discon-nected the hardware and uninstalled it, then reinstalled it. But as long as I left it connected, it apparently kept some of the old driver.

A: Right. Windows XP is a little nicer than previous versions. In Win-dows 98, If you have a piece of hard-ware in the slot, and uninstall the driv-ers, and uninstall the hardware, if you put the hardware back in the same slot, it will reinstall the same corrupt driver. You actually have to put it in a differ-ent slot and fool it. With Windows XP, when you remove a device, it removes all devices from that slot, and removes all memory of them having been there. But give this a try.

My Outlook PST file got corrupted trying to move to a new computer

Q: I bought a new computer, and I tried to export my Outlook PST file, and it got corrupted. It was so big, al-most 2 GB. I tried repairing it, but it didn’t work.

A: If you still have the original file, the original machine, I would try ex-porting it again. I’m not real familiar with Outlook.

Q: What I really need to do first is

get rid of the corrupt PST file from my new computer. It won’t let me just de-lete it. And I can’t send or receive e-mail or anything. I have my original PST file on a CD, and I can’t copy it in to my new machine and overwrite the corrupt one.

A: Try copying that PST file to another temporary folder from the CD, and rename it. Then try to load that

PST file into your new Outlook. If that PST file is also corrupt, you’re hosed. If your old system is still running, I would try copying it over again.

Q: But I can’t transfer it to my new

system, because the whole Outlook is corrupt.

A: Then you have to uninstall Out-look and reinstall it, if Outlook itself has issues.

Nothing comes up in My Documents

Q: I’ve had my computer for quite some time and had no problems. A month or so ago, I went to the My Documents folder, and I can’t seem to get anything to come up. I had some very important documents there. The arrow gets in there, and then nothing happens.

I can’t even turn off the computer; I have to use the outside button to turn it off.

The computer itself is working fine, other than the My Documents set of files.

A: Apparently everything runs fine, except you have a corruption in the My Documents icon. The icon is a pointer to a subdirectory; in Windows XP, the actual folder is in My Computer, on the hard drive, under Documents and Set-tings, your user name, then My Docu-ments. (Demonstrating) That folder is exactly the same as you see in My Documents. The My Documents icon is just a shortcut, it doesn’t actually exist.

So you should be able to recover all your data from under the Documents and Settings folder. Then back them up by copying them somewhere else.

I’m not sure how to get the My Documents shortcut back. Try search-ing the troubleshooting database on the Microsoft Web site.

If you can’t get to it through My Computer, the hard drive, Documents and Settings, and so forth, then the odds are you had a disk crash. If so, the hard disk needs to be replaced, because more and more files will disappear as time goes on.



More Q&A: CD-RW and floppy drive don’t open


Volunteers needed of nominating committee

More on Q&A: Changing wallpaper; mail merges

Elections are coming up at the annual meeting in June, and volun-teers are needed for both the nominat-ing committee and the various offices.

The elected officers are as follows: President Vice President Secretary Treasurer All officers except the president,

whose term is two years, have one-year terms. The immediate past presi-dent is also a member of the board.

The club’s other positions — such as TOE editor, SIG coordinator and webmaster — are appointive, al-though there might be a proposal to amend the by-laws to make them elected and voting members of the board.

Any member in good standing can be a member of the nominating com-mittee or the board of directors.

If you’re interested in a position on either group, please contact Presi-dent Dave Harris at any meeting or by e-mail at [email protected]

If the practice of the past few years is followed, voting will be available electronically through the Web site.

My HP scanner and printer doesn’t work in XP

Q: My first question is, I got Win-dows XP, and I have a fairly new HP scanner and printer that works per-fectly, and I couldn’t get it to print, even when I downloaded new drivers.

A: Your equipment is about three years old, and that’s about when XP came out for the first time. At that time, a number of equipment manufac-turers, of which HP was one, decided it was a great opportunity to sell equip-ment, so they decided not to provide drivers for newer and slightly older equipment, so the users were forced to buy new ones.

Scanners and printers were some of the hardest hit during that transition phase.

The same thing happened to me.

I can’t get rid of the wallpaper on my desk

Q: My next question is, I have been trying to get rid of the wallpaper on my desktop, and I can’t seem to do it.

A: (Demonstrating) Here’s your display properties, and here’s the desk-top tab. Now, some of these require that you have an “active desktop,” which basically means that the desktop is displayed as an HTML page, and there is some software running in the background to display it.

Q: Well, it’s on my Add/Remove

Programs list, it’s called Willows. It’s oil paintings.

It says it is in use, and won’t let me

remove it. A: First, change the wallpaper in

the Display Properties; select “None.” So then the program isn’t running any-more.

I want MSN to jump to e-mail addresses as I type, but it won’t

Q: Another question: When I went to cable with Verizon, it came with MSN. MSN has its own address book. I can’t get it to jump to matching ad-dresses as I type, the way I used to. I have to scroll down all the way.

A: I’m not familiar with the MSN e-mail client at all.

Q: And is there a way I can send an

e-mail to everyone on my list at the same time, without adding them one by one?

A: Many of them are such that you

can select in the same way that you select files in Windows Explorer. Click on the first one, and then go to the last one, hold the shift key down, and click again; that will select everything in between. I don’t know if that works on MSN, but that’s fairly standard. Do I need a special program for mail merge?

Q: With the old Windows 97 I could do mail merge. Do you need a special program to do that on other address lists?

A: Your e-mail program has to have the capability to do mail merge for that to be successful. Where do I find Scandisk in Windows XP

Q: In migrating from Windows 98 to XP, I’ve noticed there’s no Scandisk in XP, or is there another function that does the same thing?

A: It’s there — in the Start menu > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter.

Or open My Computer, right click on the drive, select Properties, then the Tools tab. The first item in that win-dow is error-checking of the drive, and Disk defragmenter is the second item.

Windows XP handles that in a dif-ferent way. Open Windows Explorer. Right click the drive you want to scan and select Properties. Open the Tools tab and click the Error Checking but-ton. You may be asked to reboot, and the disk will be Error Checked during the boot sequence.


“At that time, a number of equipment manufacturers, of which HP was one, decided it was a great opportunity to sell equipment, so they decided not to provide drivers for newer and slightly older equipment, so the users were forced to buy new ones. Scanners and printers were some of the hardest hit during


By John Weigle [email protected]

The Unix operating system has numerous advantages over Windows because many people are working on open source software all the time to fix bugs and create new features, our De-cember speaker said.

Harley Hahn, who agreed at the last minute to substitute for the Bel-kin.com people when they canceled, discussed “Unix, Linux and Real Life.” Hahn is the author of several computer books, including “Harley H a h n ’ s S t u d e n t G u i d e t o Unix” (1996), and is working on an-other Uinux book.

“The smarter somebody is, the more they hate Windows,” he said. After the meeting, he commented that Linux is easier to use than Windows but is harder to learn.

To understand the differences be-tween the two programs, one must understand that no one person controls the ideas or philosophies behind Unix and Linux, and that one person, Bill Gates, controls the vision behind Win-dows.

While maybe only five CIPCUG members use Unix, he said after asking for a show of hands, everyone in the group had heard of it. Unix runs many types of servers and is “a very impor-tant operating system,” he said.

Unix — like Windows, the Macin-tosh OSX, and DOS — is an operating system, “the master control program that runs your computer,” he ex-plained. It allows the user to operate hardware, and it must manage the hardware efficiently. To the extent that one operating system manages hard-ware more efficiently than another, it’s a better operating system, Hahn said.

Generally, he said, users aren’t aware of what an operating system does unless it doesn’t do it well. An operating system can offer a graphical user interface (GUI), which can have many different looks. Linux, for in-stance, offers “a whole bunch of differ-ent graphical user interfaces you can

use,” including KDE and Gnome. “What you see is not the operating system per se. It’s just something that sort of runs on top of it,” Hahn said.

“The three things that an operating system does are that it manages the hardware, efficiently, we hope; it pro-vides an interface for the person using the computer; and it provides an envi-ronment in which programs can run,” he said. Programs call on the operating system to perform such functions as printing documents, reading the date and time, putting information on the screen and “thousands of different tasks.” People might like a flashy oper-ating system at the start, he said, but

later, he said, they’ll prefer efficient management of programs and hard-ware.

Error messages are “the type of thing that shouldn’t happen,” Hahn said, adding that he’s never seen an error message in Unix. He runs an old computer with an old Unix version as a mail server and has had to reboot it only two to four times in 15 years, he said.

Some of the things people think of when they think of Linux, Hahn said, are:

— Signal catching, which means that it understands what’s happening


Society news: Program

Harley Hahn: Smart people like Linux

Photo by Jerry Crocker Harley Hahn discusses the differences between Unix/Linux and the Windows operating systems. Linux is for smart people, he said.


More on Hahn: what makes Unix a good OS

when a program sends a signal for it to do something the program needs.

— Pipelines, which allow the out-put of one program to become the input of another, so many small tools can be combined to accomplish large tasks.

— Standard input and output, which allow the pipelines to work. Many tools are built into Unix, letting users decide what tools will solve the problem they’re facing. “This is the real thinking for smart people, problem solving,” Hahn added.

— A shell, the interface between your commands and the operating sys-tem. Windows has only one shell; Unix has many, but they’re similar enough so it’s easy for one person to help an-other person use it, even if the people are at different computers.

— The fact it’s a multi-user system. “From the very beginning, Unix was designed to be used by more than one person at a same time,” Hahn said. That resulted in a system that is “very, very, very secure,” and one user’s problem can’t crash the computer. Re-sources are organized so that what one user does can’t crash other users or the operating system — one of the reasons you don’t hear about Unix viruses, he said. “On Unix, programs can not run amok,” he said. “Windows never had to be stable, and to this day it still isn’t that stable,” he said.

— Multi-tasking abilities, meaning Unix can do more than one unique thing at the same time. The first Unix computers were slow and expensive, and there weren’t as many of them as there are personal computers today. That meant that many people had to use the same computer. User A could-n’t wait until User B had finished eve-rything planned for a session before it became available to work on User A’s project, so sharing had to happen in terms of microseconds.

— Provisions for both regular users and super users, who are so important that the loss of the super user’s pass-word can force reinstallation of the operating system.

— The ability to run more than one

shell at a time. — Portability, meaning that it can

run on different types of computers. Unix “was designed that the Unix sys-tem itself could be ported … could be made to run … on different types of software.” As soon as Unix can run on a computer, all of its tools can run, too.

— The command line. “In Unix, most of the time smart people are typ-ing stuff in at the command line.”

— Control over your environment. Windows is like Autopia in Disney-land, he said – “you can go anywhere you want, as long as you’re on the track,” adding, “Windows is more like Disneyland under the influence of a very powerful drug, where Unix is like going into a place where everything makes sense, and as you walk in you can have a choice, and you can do whatever you want that makes sense to you.” This means a user can go as deep into the program as one wants and never stop learning.

One woman who has programmed Unix for decades told Hahn, “When I use a Macintosh, I feel like I’m in jail.”

Every computer he knows of can run Unix, he said, because “it’s ported to everything under the sun.”

In fact, the newest Macintosh oper-ating system — OS X (pronounced OS Ten, not OS X) — is Unix. “All the stuff on top is just stuff that you see that the Macintosh programmers and Apple put on top of Unix,” Hahn said.

So what does all this mean to peo-ple?

“Unix gives you control. Now, not everybody wants control. … Unix gives control of the computer to a per-son who’s got to be a smart person, so

that’s everybody in this room,” Hahn said.

It’s also many tools that have been debugged and work for smart people. Users can even get into the kernel, “the innermost secret place in the operating system.”

This means a lot to programmers, but it also means that everyone can search for problems in the code and fix them, even before crackers can write viruses to exploit the problems, he said.

Any commercial operating system, he said, is “money driven, it’s image driven, it’s marketing driven, it’s power driven.”

The Linux world is driven by peo-ple who want to do it because they love it, but there’s not much money in it.

“One of them (operating systems) is done for money; the other one is done for the love of what they’re doing and literally to make the world better. And one of them is done in secret, where everything is proprietary, and the other one is done … and created and worked on and absorbed and ex-panded by people who do it all together and share everything.”

Bill Gates is only one person, but the many people who work on Unix have “a huge collective brain,” Hahn said. “Nobody, not Bill Gates, not Al-bert Einstein, not me, … not George Bush — nobody, nobody, is as smart as everybody. Computers and operating systems are tools for your mind. … Are the best tools going to be made by somebody or are the best tools going to be made by everybody? That’s the dif-ference.”

On the Net: For more information about Harley

Hahn, his books and his other projects, v is i t h is Web s i te a t h t tp: / /www.harley.com/index.shtml, where you can also subscribe to a free, peri-odic newsletter and to the premium (paid) Harley Hahn Experience, which gives you online access to three of his books, “Harley Hahn’s Internet Yellow Pages,” “Harley Hahn’s Internet Advi-sor,” and “Harley Hahn’s Internet Insecurity.”


“Unix gives control of the

computer to a person

who’s got to be a smart

person, so that’s everybody

in this room.”


(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)

This being the last meeting before Christmas, Michael discussed what to do when you get a new computer — especially how to get things you want from the old computer to the new com-puter. He has discussed some of this material before, and the notes are on

the Web at http://www.geocit ies.com/cipcugsig/. Look espe-cially at Backing up your e-mail for detailed information about Out-look Express. Michael noted that he had just gone through the process at his office,

where one of the employees got a new work computer with an operating sys-tem she didn’t like. He started from scratch by reformatting the hard drive and installing Windows XP. The instal-lation went well, he said, with the main thing needed being time for it to run.

If you have been making regular backups on your old computer, your task will be easier because you can reinstall the data from your backups. And if you haven’t been making back-ups, you should, Michael emphasized, because sometime your computer will crash. “If it hasn’t happened to you … it will,” he said. He suggested backing up to CD-RWs because they hold more than floppies. Also, he noted, some new computers don’t have floppy drives, but CD and CD-RW drives are common and DVD drives are becom-ing more common.

What to back up? If you’re using any recent version

of Windows, start with My Docu-ments. But many programs, especially e-mail, don’t save their work in My Documents. And Microsoft Access saves its databases in the program’s directory or folder. (Most programs, however, will let you change the de-fault folder for documents. You’ll have

to explore the help file for each one to find the secrets.)

The toughest program to back up is e-mail, Michael said. To determine where Outlook Express keeps its mail, go to Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder and note the full path to the folder. In Outlook, go to Files > Data Management. Eudora stores mail in its program folder by default but lets you establish a separate folder for e-mail and attachments when you install it. Before you back up your e-mail to move, Michael suggested, empty the trash and deleted items folders.

Other items that might not be in My Documents include your Web browser’s favorites/bookmarks list, programs you’ve downloaded and want to reinstall and your address book.

After the operating system is in-stalled on your new computer, install an antivirus program, AdAware and Spybot, Michael recommended (depending on where you bought the computer, it might already have some of these items installed). Set up your Internet connection and update your operating system, antivirus program, AdAware and Spybot (again, if you bought the computer with an OS in-stalled, it might already be updated).

If you have two monitors, mice and keyboards, you can work on both com-puters at the same time and, if you’re handy, should consider networking them so you can just drag and drop items from the old computer to the new one.

If you’re bringing your data in from a CD, the items will be read-only when you put them on the new computer, he noted. Once you’ve copied them, mark them all with Control-A, right click, left click on Properties and uncheck the Read Only attribute. You will then be able to open and change the files when you install the proper programs.

Some programs, such as Quicken, have their own backup or export proce-dures, but you’ll need to look at the directions for each program for details.

Install the programs you want on the new computer. You’ll need the

original media (floppy, CD, DVD, etc.) and the serial numbers.

Set up your printer. Plug it in to the computer and electrical power, turn it on and, with luck, XP will recognize it and install the proper drivers. This is another case where you might need the installation disks.

Michael noted that you can have more than one printer, and some of them can be on a network. Networked computers will have an IP address that you’ll have to tell the computer.

A member asked about synchroni-zation between his computer and the e-mail server. He had left messages on the server, and his mailbox on the server filled up. He deleted lots of items on the server, and synchroniza-tion messed up the mail on his com-puter. Michael said synchronization is usually used between desktop and lap-top computers.

Michael explained how to set up rules in Outlook Express to sort mail as it arrives. Go to Tools > Message Rules > Mail, and you’ll get a box with several options: Select the conditions for your rule; Select the Actions for your rule; Rule Description; and Name of the rule (the default names are New Mail Rule #1, etc.). Rules can be based on the From line, Subject line, body of the message, To line, CC line, whether the message has attachments, message size and so on. You can direct that a message be moved to a specific folder, copied to a specific folder, deleted, forwarded, highlighted, flagged, marked as read, marked as watched or ignored, replied to with a specific mes-sage, not be downloaded from the server or deleted from the server. For example, you could direct all e-mail from family members to a Family folder or delete all messages with the word Viagra in the body. It’s a good idea to direct messages to a trash or junk folder rather than deleting them until you’re sure the rules are working the way you want them to. And even if you’re sure, deleting mail without ever seeing it can result in unexpected ac-


SHALKEY

Society news: Windows and Hardware SIG

Setting up a new computer: What do I keep?


Bits and bytes from here and there

tions — for instance, a relative sends a general e-mail and just happens to mention that he’s started using Viagra.

Other e-mail programs also allow for rules, but, as you’ve probably guessed, you’ll have to check the help file for the directions.

The CIPCUG mail server also al-

lows rules so you don’t even have to download mail you don’t want. Web mail rules vary depending on the ISP you have.

Michael also discussed the BCC (blind carbon copy) function, which lets you hide the names of people you’re sending the message to.

This is especially useful if you send

mail to several people or have a news-letter mailing list. You don’t expose all the names on your list to everyone else on the list.

In Outlook Express, click on the CC line on the message. That will open a box giving you the choices of To:, Cc: and Bcc:. Add the names you want to send the message to in the Bcc: box.


More on Windows and hardware SIG ...

Google page rank (alternately) explained

In John Weigle’s description of the

Google presentation by David Harris that was in the December issue of the TOE, there was a sidebar that ex-plained Google’s ranking methods. However, it also has a Web site with an alternate explanation. Check out w w w . g o o g l e . c o m / t e c h n o l o g y /pigeonrank.html

My commant is: Isn’t it refreshing that a company as large and as (deservedly) respected as Google can nevertheless poke a little fun at itself?

It has a similarly humorous Web site describing its hiring efforts for its new location: www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html (HiDeHiDeHo)

— Larry Hudson [email protected]

Computer/network technician wanted

Julien Hurault, owner of CM IT Solutions, 5717 Mulberry Ridge, Camarillo, CA 93012, is seeking a computer/network technician. Payment is $25-35 per hHour plus bonuses. He describes the job this way: “If you en-joy working with people, have a strong background in IT, and would like a flexible, part-time schedule with excel-lent performance-based compensation, this could be the job for you. Technical positions are available in the Thousand Oaks-Camarillo area working with customers in their business offices, home businesses, and residences. This

is a great opportunity to combine tech-nical and interpersonal skills as part of a dynamic team dedicated to making technology accessible to and effective for individuals and businesses alike.”

For complete details, he can be contacted by telephone at 805-388-

1064, by fax at 805-504-1606, by toll-free phone at 800-710-CMIT, or by e-mail at [email protected]. The company’s Web site is http://www.cmit.biz.

E-mail should include Technician in the subject line.

Photo by Jerry Crocker The December sales table featured a new item by Bob Kelly, who is demonstrating it in the background. It’s a laptop holder called Dock-It that allows you to use your notebook/laptop as your desktop. It’s $40. Kelly can be reached at 805-390-9828 or [email protected]. All members are welcome to sell items on the consignment table.


I hope everyone survived the Holi-days and that Santa brought you better things than Snowman poop! That is an inside joke from the board of directors meeting. I lost mine, but the gist of the

matter was “someone reported that you were bad this year, so here is the scoop, you will have to clean up the snow-man’s poop.” Art Lewis tossed the cards attached to a plastic bags of mini-marshmallows and broke

up the board meeting. I kinda got tangled up in Christmas

shopping and didn’t get all the pictures up last month but hope to correct the situation this month. If I don’t get them up, I will be too embarrassed to be at the meeting in January.

Anyone signed up for the cip-cug.org E-mail/Internet should take the time to look at the ISP Support page, and it would probably be a good idea to

print it out. It has a wealth of informa-tion concerning how to set your system up. When you have problems, you might be able to do some of your own troubleshooting by verifying your set-tings. I don’t know how things get screwed up, but sometimes things go bump in the night. I blame all my prob-lems on the gremlins that I am sure reside in my computer and create all

kinds of mischief. The Web Mail site is listed, as well as how to set it up. An-other thing that is handy is the list of telephone numbers. Camarillo and Ox-nard have more than one phone number to connect to, and this could be handy information if there is a problem con-necting. You could just zap in the alter-nate phone number if you knew what it was. I am sorry that I don’t know the alternates for Fillmore and Santa Paula, but if you people would check the list maybe there is an alternate that works in your area that I don’t know about. If you find one, let me know so I can post it. If you had a copy of this page it might come in handy some day.

No one has forwarded any interest-ing Web Sites that I can pass along, so I guess we will have to wait for the February newsletter for any additions here. If you have run across a particu-larly stunning web site, please share it with the rest of us. Send it to [email protected].

LONG

Society news: Web page Here’s information to save if CIPCUG is your ISP

By Bill Wayson [email protected]

In October, I wrote about Knoppix, a feature-packed distribution of Linux that runs completely from a CD with-out changing anything on your com-puter’s hard drive (see http://www.knopper .net /knoppix/ index-en.html). Knoppix is a great way to check out Linux as well as to see the depth and breadth of the open source applications that are available for Linux. This month, I will introduce one of those programs because, frankly, I find it to be so much fun, and it is so well done. The program KStars will be enjoyed by anyone interested in astron-omy, the universe, or stargazing, espe-cially kids and the kid in everyone.

KStars is a planetarium program,

originally developed by Jason Harris, that runs under Linux. While it is writ-ten for the KDE desktop environment (it is part of the KDE Edutainment package “kdeedu” — more information about the KDE graphical desktop envi-ronment can be found at http://www.kde.org/), it will also run under Gnome (and maybe others). The KStars home page is at http://edu.kde.org/kstars/. In Knoppix, KStars can be found as the Astronomy entry under the Edutainment group of the KDE menu.

KStars gives you a planetarium on your PC, accurately showing the loca-tion of 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects (including star clusters, nebu-lae, and galaxies), the other eight plan-ets (Earth appears as green), the sun and moon, and thousands of comets

and asteroids. Now you can explore the heavens day or night, rain or shine. In fact as I write this I see in KStars that Sedna is just rising in the east between the constellations Cetus and Taurus (Sedna is a minor planet, discovered only within the past year, that is nearly as big as Pluto but three times further away from the sun). But this is no toy program: KStars demonstrates just how good open source software can be. KStars is simple to use for the casual stargazer, yet packs a tool chest of fea-tures that will interest the serious ama-teur astronomer. While KStars func-tions excellently as a standalone pro-gram, many features, particularly the more advanced ones, work better if you have a live connection to the Internet


The Penguin’s Lair

Explore the universe with a personal planetarium


More on Penguin’s lair ... while it is running. You will quickly see when you’ve done something that causes KStars to go out to the Internet, usually to download something.

KStars defaults to Greenwich, United Kingdom, as the viewing loca-tion. You can change this using the “Set Geographic Location …” item under the Settings menu. Thousands of world locations, mostly cities, are preprogrammed by name in a search-able list. You can use your mouse and a world map to select your location. Or you can directly enter a longitude and latitude, along with the local time offset from Coordinated Universal Time and the local daylight-saving time rules. Directly entered settings can be named and saved into the pick list. You quickly realize that you could set your location and observe the sky as it would appear from any location on the Earth. Want to stargaze from the South Pole? Go for it!

KStars also defaults to the current date and time. But that can be reset under the Time menu, and the avail-able ranges seem to be quite large. Want to fantasize that you are Juliette and want to know what stars framed your head as Romeo pined away at you? By setting the time and location, you can do it!

With KStars you can customize and control what is and isn’t dis-played. Push buttons in the menu bar allow you to quickly toggle on and off stars; deep sky objects; solar system objects; constellation names, lines, and boundaries; the Milky Way; the coordinate grid (the celestial equiva-lent of longitude and latitude); and the ground (to see objects that are below the horizon). Also look at and experi-ment with the items under the Settings menu to configure and toggle many, many features of KStars, from tool bars to color schemes. Underneath the Settings menu you will also find the

“Configure KStars …” item, where many settings can be customized, and a “Startup Wizard …” item. If you are running KStars from a hard disk in-stallation, run this to set your geo-graphic location and to download ex-tras that are not included with the stan-dard distribution of KStars.

Looking for things in KStars is simple and quick. The Pointing menu allows you to quickly gaze toward the cardinal points of the compass, straight up at the zenith, or toward a user-entered celestial direction. You can search for specific objects: pick one out of the extensive list, press the OK button, and the KStars screen pans around until the object is centered and highlighted in the window. You can even lock KStars on a specific object or location, and KStars will maintain its focus right there (KStars normally remains centered on a single direction in space as the celestial sky moves by




in real time). This would be very helpful for tracking objects like comets and planets that move in the sky (relative to the stars) from night to night. And if you have a mouse with scrolling, the scrolling will zoom you in and out of the night scene. Otherwise, use the View menu to zoom your view.

The Tools menu supplies more advanced methods of finding things. Here you will find numerous calculators and converters; a tool to create an “Altitude-vs.-time” plot for a specific object at a specific location and time; a “What’s up Tonight …” item that displays the astronomical event “headlines” for this evening; a quick view of the solar sys-tem showing where the planets are in their respective orbits; and a display of the orbits of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter for the 10 days surrounding the current date and time.

KStars also has advanced features for the serious as-tronomer. KStars can control devices, such as telescopes, focusers, and CCD cameras that use the “INDI” (Instrument-Neutral-Distributed-Interface) protocol. Support for additional protocols is planned for future ver-sions of KStars. Using KStars, you can even control devices remotely through the Internet. KStars has a command-line interface that (among other things) would allow you to cap-ture astronomical images via a script. KStars has its own scripting feature that will let you do things like create an automated planetarium show. Some of these scripts can be downloaded from the KStars Web site and run. (Strictly speaking, the scripting capability is provided by KDE itself and allows you to “use” KDE applications hands-off via a script.)

So far for me (there are a lot of areas of KStars I have yet to explore), one of the most interesting features of KStars is the “right-click” menu: Right click your mouse on any object, and an extensive menu opens up. Say I want to find out more about the new object Sedna I mentioned above. I move my mouse cursor, which is a double cross hair, to the dot that represents Sedna and press my right mouse button. (Sometimes the objects are very faint and hard to see. If this is the case, remember that the object will be to the left of the object’s name, if you haven’t toggled off the display of names.) Up will come a menu with several items. Details will show information on the object’s type, distance, celestial location, and local rising, transit, and set-ting times. There is a tab where Web links for the object can be added and edited. And there is a tab where you can enter and save free-form text such as observation logs and data about the object. If KStars has associated Web links for an object (such as there are for the nearby Pleiades cluster),


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More on Penguin’s lair ... they will appear in the menu. If you are connected to the Internet, selecting the link will either download and display an image of the object (many of these images are spectacu-lar Hubble Space Telescope pictures) or open up your Web browser at a Web site with more information on that object. Either way, it is definitely neat and cool and a good way to have fun while learning.

KStars is a sophisticated, extensive program which is a lot of fun to explore and a great way to learn about astron-omy and the night sky. Since it is open source software, it is available to you for free. If you have a recent distribution of Linux, you probably already have KStars. If you know of a budding astronomer with access to a computer (and maybe that’s you!), KStars alone is enough reason to get a Knoppix CD and give it to them. Humans have been exploring the heavens for millennia, so prepare to spend some time en-grossed in KStars.

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Honoring MarketPro Membership Card Holders


By Rick Smith [email protected]

As some of you may have already known, this thing called Spyware is becoming an increasing problem with those of us who like to use the Internet, which is all of us. Hello! Some of us depend on it as much as people who need a portable oxygen bottle to get around. I’ve heard people

gasping on the telephone when their Internet connection is down much the same way as when I stand on the oxygen line of someone I play cards with. Either way, they are both in dire straits. We do depend on the Internet now more than we like to admit, which makes things that in-terfere with that connection intolerable. And the top of the list, folks, is Spyware! Spyware

in itself is not a thing, but a generic term for a class of soft-ware that exploits Microsoft operating systems connected to the Internet. There are a whole host of programs out there that if given half a chance will nest in all sorts of places on your hard drive and in your registry creating all sorts of mayhem and havoc. Spyware has now passed the point of becoming more of a nuisance than viruses. (Editor’s note: This is his own opinion and if you ever had you system crashed by a virus you might disagree.)

Now, if you are thinking this sounds a lot like virus ac-tivity, well, yes, it does. Spyware can and will degrade your system performance down to a trickle if it goes unchecked — sort of like urban sprawl and freeway congestion. But if they are so similar what really is the difference? I’m glad you asked. It’s you, numbskull! You asked for it! You even went out and looked for it!

You look incredulous. You say “Not Me.” I never in-stalled anything. Righhhht. Look, I hate to break the news to you, but, yes, you did. Remember when you downloaded the Spyware check that offered to do a purity scan of your sys-tem for free? Spyware. Remember downloading that Inter-net browser helper that promised to make Internet searching easier? Spyware. Remember downloading that SpongeBob Desktop Theme for your computer in the baby’s room. Spy-ware.

Wait a minute! That was me who download the Sponge-Bob Theme. Is nothing safe anymore? Well, no. The one thing that saved me was the fact that as I was about to hap-pily install my FREE SpongeBob Desktop Theme, which download as an .exe file, I noticed that the installer asked if I wanted to install Bikini Bottom Theme, and I noticed that it said “brought to you by Ezula and Topwebrebates.” Wait a minute, I thought, I recognize these infamous names as two of the top sources of Spyware infection that I remove daily off your computers.

If you don’t believe me, go to Ezula.com and just read

SMITH

Rick's rants

Who’s looking out for, or spying on, you now?

the company vision. Scary. Well, I took the time to read the user agreement to install

my theme, and it was impressive. It asked for just about eve-rything except my first-born child. I would have pretty much given them complete permission to do whatever they thought was in my best interests to bring an unlimited source of ad-vertising and also allow (for a price) other select advertisers to install their products and services on my PC. Whew, I have seen less legalese on a mortgage agreement.

I was one of the lucky few who stopped in my tracks after reading this horrifying legal document. I cancelled the instal-lation and then proceeded to look for another Bikini Bottom theme that was a .ZIP file which took a little more work to install but was not “brought to me by EZULA and TOPWE-BREBATES.”

So as I said earlier, all of you who have had the pleasure of removing this crap off your PC at one time or another in-stalled the first one yourself. You gave them complete per-mission an agreed to their terms and conditions as stated. After you opened the door, it was just a matter of time before they invited their friends over to party on your PC.

The analogy I tell my customers is it’s a lot like leaving your home for the weekend with your teenager in charge. They invite their friends over, who invite their friends over, and pretty soon you have a house full of people you don’t know doing all sorts of terrible things to your stuff and disre-specting all you’ve worked so hard to accomplish and build


“I would have pretty much given them complete

permission to do whatever they thought was in

my best interests to bring an unlimited source of

advertising and also allow (for a price) other

select advertisers to install their products and

services on my PC.”


Membership report: Is it time to renew?

By Ken Church email address: [email protected] Attendance at the Dec. 2004 General meeting: 90 Members 2 Guest

Total membership: 313 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 Jan. Meeting at the Boys and Girls Club of Camarillo. November 2004 renewals:

December 2004 renewals:

December 2004 renewals: (continued)

January 2005 renewals:

It’s January again I hope you all made a New Year resolution to attend more CIPCUG meeting.

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0516 Cantarini Billy 200411 0944T Coon Donn 200411 0823 Gieschen Barbara 200411 0822 Gieschen Vic 200411 0934 Jensen Art 200411 0553 LaHue Philip 200411 0820 Laningham Lynn 200411 1110 Lopez David 200411 1109 Stafford Jack 200411 1076 Weeks Bob 200411

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0748 Burckhard Jake 200412 1133 Davis C.C. 200412 1045 Franco Ernesto 200412 1078 Gentile Tony 200412 1132 Hales Clifford 200412 0643 Kinoshita George 200412 0993 Ladd Craig 200412 0536 Larraburu Philippe 200412

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0750 Markussen Arne 200412 0997T Pacheco Laura 200412 0825 Pinkerton Ron 200412 1131 Richardson James 200412 0828 Rosenbloom Jean 200412 0827 Rosenbloom Richard 200412 1113 Sanford Jacklyn 200412 1048 Ulam Frederick 200412 0645T Wallace Sandra 200412 0125 Zakas Len 200412 0650 Zakas Trish 200412

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to Date 0544 Beardshear Paul 200501 0835 Brown George 200501 0956 Buford Don 200501 0654 Cayou Mylo 200501 0548 De Magri Oscoe 200501 0947 Ellis Dick 200501 0088 Gandin Dr. Morris 200501 0647T Harte Maureen 200501 0953 Hill Keith 200501 0056 Malinowski Roy 200501 0554 Muskat Vel 200501 0753 Otterson Dick 200501 0834 Oxman Howard 200501 1088 Scheer Ted 200501 1136 Senko Marianne 200501 1135 Sherbrooke Rosalie 200501 0950 Skultety Tony 200501 0910T Smitley Lee 200501 1134 Stanton John 200501 0836 Willett Dr. Nancy 200501


F1—Your Help Key (Revised Nov. 26, 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 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); 484-2974 (home); [email protected] or [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)


Those of you who want to learn more about operating systems other than Microsoft Windows should be having a field day. Last month, Harley Hahn discussed the benefits of Unix/Linux systems, and this month, we’ll have a presenta-

tion on what’s new in Linux. I’m not ready to make the jump to a new operating system yet — there are still lots of things I don’t know about Windows XP — but the limited exposure I’ve had to open source software in the form of Mozilla Firefox, which is my main Web browser, and OpenOffice.org, which I’ve played with just a little bit, shows me that it’s silly to use the argument that open source software can’t work. Obviously, it can

work quite well, especially if you’re willing to learn its se-crets. (Yes, I know the same thing holds true for most of the software we buy, or get free. Knowing how to use it can solve all kinds of problems.)

On the other hand, I’m not willing to buy the argument that only Microsoft programs have weaknesses. Most of the newsletters I read point out that security problems have been found in most operating systems. We hear more about those from Microsoft because Microsoft has a greater user base and because it’s the company many computer users love to hate. I can’t help but wonder what the computer world would be like if we had dozens of competing operating sys-tems. My gut feeling is that it wouldn’t be pretty if we had to check every program to see if it was compatible with a dozen or so operating systems.

— John Weigle, Editor

Society news: Finances

Treasurer’s report

By Art Lewis <[email protected]>

November 2004 Category Description 11-1 through 11-30, 2004 INCOME Coffee Income $ 31.60 Donation 12.00 ISP Income 405.00 Publication sales 249.00 Raffle 140.00 Renewals 310.00 TOTAL INCOME 1,147.60 EXPENSES ISP Expense 469.00 Membership 50.00 Raffle prizes 107.25 Rent Paid 140.00 Storage 50.00 TOE 411.89 TOTAL EXPENSES 1,228.14 TOTAL INCOME - EXPENSES -80.54 Unrestricted Funds 7,796.35 Restricted Funds 2,000.00 Bank Balance 11-30-04 9,796.35 Year to Date Income 5,756.15 Year to Date Expense -5,645.83

Your name can ap-pear here, too. Share your knowledge with other members by send-ing an article, letter or computer tip to [email protected].

Ken Church Martha Churchyard

Jerry Crocker David Harris Larry Hudson Art Lewis Helen Long Rick Smith Bill Wayson John Weigle

2005 contributors to TOE

More on Rick’s rants ...

WEIGLE

up. In much the same way, these people disrespect us by

messing up our PCs that we work so hard to get “just the way we like it.” And you know it does take a lot of work. They basically disrespect us by taking advantage of our in-herent trusting nature of the goodness of humanity. Unfortu-nately, people are not always so good, and the Internet can be a prime example.

As my personal icon, Bill O’Reilly, says “Who’s looking out for you?” I can definitely tell you it’s not Ezula and their friends.

The moral of the story is nobody does something for nothing, and free is not always free.

See ya next month. P.S.: Keep those cards and letters coming. So far no one

has sent any flaming hate mail to [email protected] yet!


Editor’s corner

This is our chance to learn about Linux


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 Minkin, 469-6970 (cell), 484- 2974 (home) [email protected] or [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

January 2005January 2005 M Meetingeeting Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Saturday morning, Jan. 22, 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 (Orville Beach on “What’s New within Linux”), Drawing 12:30 p.m. SIG at Round Table Pizza in Camarillo

DUES REMINDER If the number after your name is 0501, your membership dues are payable in January 2005.

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