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1. front end or interface to Usenet without the news reader However unless things have changed since I last took a look at Google Groups they don t sup port the alt binaries newsgroups therefore you won t find any files on Google Groups My favorite news reader is called XNEWS created by a fellow named Luu Tran There is a user manual posted on the internet at this link http xnews newsguy com manual html Xnews is a free download and there is no expectation for you to pay anything to the author of this utility You can get the program at this link http xnews newsguy com release xnews zip The program does not need to be in stalled you can just unzip it to a directory somewhere on your computer and run xnews exe Setting up Xnews is prob ably more easily accomplished in a work shop setting than a newsletter Mike Moore is Newsletter Editor Bowling Green Area Microcomputer Users Group Kentucky www bgamug org ml moore insightbb com This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups FLOODGATES Cont from Page 11 Do the DACS General Meetings leave you thirsting for more Find all that plus food for thought at the meeting after the meeting at the DACS PIG SIG DACS PIG SIG DACS PIG SIG DACS PIG SIG DACS PIG SIG http www dacs org 14 May 2008 Version 5 9 Circuit Writer by Jim Scheef Network Neutrality is Still an Issue I
2. 12 CIRCUIT WRITER 14 ASK DACS 15 IN THIS ISSUE President s File M ay is officially here Mid April ushered in some favorable weather so I hope that it continues It s time to break out the lawn and gardening tools open up swimming pools and clean out the garage Summer is just around the corner Keep It Clean Keep It Clean Keep It Clean Keep It Clean Keep It Clean Jeff Setaro gave us great tips and in formation on keeping our machines run ning junk ware free Along with the soft ware we also need to give attention to the hardware routinely If you haven t done so already this is a great time to clean out the cobwebs in your computer s before summer hits full swing Proactive maintenance is better than reactive Lately I favor using a small Shop vac detailing brush and an air compressor The compressor obliterates whatever the Shop vac misses No Noise is the No Noise is the No Noise is the No Noise is the No Noise is the Best Noise Best Noise Best Noise Best Noise Best Noise While the case is open listen for ex cessive noise Grinding sounds from fans or hard drives is cause for concern Usu ally a dust buildup on fans is the culprit and is easily remedied If dust removal Patrick Libert APCUG Liaison plibert dacs org doesn t dirt the trick then replace if necessary Note that some processor fans may require changing the entire heat sink assembly Some video cards h
3. Committees NEWSLETTER Patrick Libert dacseditor dacs org 860 567 9586 PROGRAM Flo Ferrara VPprograms dacs org WEB MASTERS Richard Corzo rcorzo dacs org 203 797 1518 Annette van Ommeren annagraphics earthlink net 914 232 0149 MARKETING AND PR Sean Henderson pr dacs org APCUG LIAISON Patrick Libert plibert dacs org RESOURCE CENTER 203 748 4330 WEB SITE http www dacs org Directors Notes DIRECTORS NOTES Cont on page 4 A regular meeting of your Board of Directors was held at the Resource Center on Monday April 14 2008 at 7 00 p m Directors in attendance included Charles Bovaird Richard Corzo John Lansdale Patrick Libert Rob Limbaugh Anna van Ommeren and Jeff Setaro Presi dent Rob Limbaugh presided and Secre tary Anna van Ommeren kept the record Minutes of the last meeting held on March 10 2008 were presented and approved Treasurer Charles Bovaird reported current cash assets of 7 374 97 consist ing of total bank and postal accounts in the amount of 7 354 35 plus postage on hand of 20 62 Subtracting a liability of prepaid dues in the amount of 1 762 00 left a net equity of 5 612 97 He also re ported that the current membership is at 248 152 of which receive the mailed Dacs doc newsletter Flo Ferrara was elected Acting VP of Programs until September 2008 Her goal is to have general meeting programs estab lished up to March 2009 Sean Henderson was unanimously voted to c
4. T IS TRULY A SORRY state of affairs that network neutrality is still an is sue Back in 2005 the FCC issued some net neutrality rules that allowed carriers some exceptions for reasonable network management In a recent Senate hearing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin gave some guidance on what the agency considers appropriate broadband network manage ment practices He also told the assembled Senators that the FCC can enforce net neu trality without the help of Congress Even while the FCC investigation of Comcast continues he said that throttling specific applications like BitTorrent is not likely to be among acceptable management prac tices You can read the eWeek article at tinyurl com 6dxchx When Congress or any part of the government is involved the devil is al ways in the details These details begin with the very definition of Network Neutrality who and what is neutral and to whom Is this an issue with charging certain users extra throttling BitTorrent or applying a surcharge for selected content like video And of course the biggie who decides No matter what your opinion on the loom ing election is it over yet our Con gress people need to be reminded that net neutrality is an issue we care about Security through Obscurity Before I jump into this allow me to point out that this article comes from something called Dark Reading a website under the TechWeb techweb com umbrella which bills it s
5. for the next meeting is to progress to an opera tional RSS Feed program that we can then enhance using the new AJAX features of the VS2008 IDE The developer s educational value of this application is in the variety of application code that is implemented The appli cation emits three different web pages a Login page a NewUser page and a Default name to be changed page Each of these are challenges and instructional The Login page employs user recognition classes the NewUser page s classes collect sufficient information to accept a new user to the application and the Default page s classes perform the RSS Feed access and display Embodied in the overall appli cation are many web concepts For example the application user will cross multiple web domains to access various RSS Feed information Yet the browser is prohibited from doing this Hence the applications host server needs to intervene and perform these functions on behalf of the browser All of this technicality provides insight into the methods used to perform such activities as collecting and submitting credit card financial transactions for example So we plan to con tinue with the application and we will attempt to increase the feature value of the application in future meetings Linux In the April Linux SIG meeting we were joined by Joe Bruno of the Westchester PC Users Group due to a schedul ing conflict they had that same night We took a look at the popular
6. information across the internet daily And where do you complain if someone posts some thing objectionable You don t There s no help desk and no complaint center Usenet runs itself as there is no news server that has any special authority over any other server US courts have consis tently held that the ISP that houses this information Is no more responsible for its content than the owner of your local news stand would be responsible for the con tent of the magazines he or she sells Most of the files on Usenet are found in the alt binaries section of newsgroups and it is from these newsgroups that your news reader software see below will au tomatically process the messages into fin ished files that are ready to view listen to or execute on your computer This seems like a good time to point out that executing any file obtained from an untrusted source really has to be scanned by a good up to date viral scanner before you execute it The safest policy is to just not run these files unless you do so on a computer on which you won t lose any sleep over should it become infected However it is difficult to obtain an infec tion from a document or audiovisual file so these are probably safe to read or listen to You will find some groups on Usenet that end with d which stands for dis cussion So for example we have the alt binaries sounds midi newsgroup which contains actual MIDI files Musi cal Inst
7. that lets the author or manufacturer or some other organization or govern ment read the encrypted data For an in depth look at this issue I recommend the book crypto by Steven Levy 2001 Viking Penguin See my review in Janu ary 2002 DACS doc dacs org archive 0201 feature3 htm Read the articles and see what you think My columns are available at http circuitwriter spaces live com where there are more links and comments are welcomed There is even an RSS feed for those who cannot wait JIM SCHEEF is past president of DACS and leader of the Server and Networking SIG by your hard drives as an early warn ing system for possible impending failures In the meantime I downloaded an iMovie project that I intended to work with As I opened iMovie HD the ap plication hung It seemed to affect the whole system Along with Leopard I also have Tiger and Mac OS 9 in stalled on the PowerMac G4 To help answer one member s Mac OS 9 question I restarted the system and held down the option key to give me a list of the bootable drives I selected Mac OS 9 and after I reached the desktop I got an error message re lated to the video driver which also locked up that system The only sys tem still working at this point was my Tiger partition I booted into there but was unable to see either my Mac OS 9 or Leopard drives We adjourned the meeting and the next night I started up the PowerMac again into Tiger Again
8. 4 533 2002 Meets 3rd Monday 7 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next Meeting May 19 PC Maintenance Review of PC hardware and OpSys main tenance and use Contact Charles Bovaird 203 792 7881 aam mags net Meets on 4th Thursday 7 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next meeting May 22 Server Explores Back Office server and client applications including Win NT Servers and MS Outlook Contact Jim Scheef jscheef telemarksys com Meets 2nd Thursday 7 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next meeting May 8 Tech Projects This SIG Will work on DACS Online Community projects as well as other areas from practical application solu tions to brainstorming and to tweeking Commercial products All skill levels and backgrounds are welcome The goal is to mix match and customize technology to fit our needs Meets 1st Wednesday 7p m at the DACS resource center Contact Rob Limbaugh at 203 648 9176 relimbaugh dacs org Next meeting May 14 VB Net Visual Basic 6 Focuses on Smart Client Windows ap plication development using Visual Studio VB C and SQL Server programming tools Starts with a random accss ses sion followed by Object Oriented discussions and program ming with examples Contact Chuck Fizer 203 798 9996 cfizer snet net or Greg Austin 845 494 5095 greg austin ryebrookpba org Meets 1st Wednesday 7p m at the DACS Resource Cen ter preceeded 1 hour with a shared cost pizza snack Next Meeting May 7 Virtual
9. Computing This SIG will explore virtual computing tech nologies and how to leverage them as additional system re sources Our main focus will be on the free VMWare products but we will also look at other technologies and tools Meets 4th Tuesday 7 p m at the DACS Resource Center Contact Rob Limbaugh relimbaugh dacs org 203 648 9176 Next Meeting May 22 Web Design Applications for designing and creating Web sites Contact Anna van Ommeren avanommeren dacs org Meets 3rd Tuesday 7 9 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next Meeting May 20 Windows This SIG will discuss ways to get the most out of your system and applications how to do new things ans other options in terms of hardware and softwareto help male life easier All skill levels are welcomed and encouraged to attend Contact Rob Limbaugh relimbaugh dacs org 203 648 9176 Next Meeting May 15 http www dacs org May 2008 9 http www dacs org 10 May 2008 SIG NEWS Continued from page 8 user speed improvement and many fewer bytes of data had to be transferred between the web page server and the user s browser to achieve the displayed effect We also saw how an AJAX ZipBack technology nicely updated the HTML tables upon the completion of an order Edit cycle With the foregoing resolving many questions we then de toured back to the VS2008 agenda topic The VS2008 discus sion is a continuation of the March 2008 meeting At hand were leftover questions ab
10. GB hard drive is less than 200 But on the low end solid state is very affordable An 8 GB SD HD card costs 35 16 GB USB pen drives around 65 and a 4 GB solid state drive 300 put one in your old laptop to give it new life I ve included a spreadsheet comparing speeds Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives by John Lansdale and prices of several traditional and flash memory devices I tried to be accurate and compare apples to apples but don t trust me 100 Consider the prices and dates of the products Also the two columns you ll notice I left out are write times which are half as fast for flash ROM and expected write cycles which are finite for flash but I m not sure how they compare The size of Windows and Mac op erating systems has grown Vista Home requires a minimum of 15 GB and Leop ard 9 GB Both systems tend to bundle every possible feature there could be along with extra flashy graphics and multimedia capability Possibly they are trying to appeal to the status conscious consumer who just wants the best Linux on the other hand makes it easy for developers to create their own varia tions of operating system Distro s in cluding just what is needed The Xandros distro on the new ultra por table Asus Eee and FEDORA on the One Laptop Per Child XO are less than 2 GB Even smaller distro s are available Prices might drop more bu
11. Next Meeting May 5 Next Meeting May 5 Next Meeting May 5 Next Meeting May 5 Next Meeting May 5 Inside Inside Inside Inside Inside Wireless technology Wireless technology Wireless technology Wireless technology Wireless technology lets you pull the plug lets you pull the plug lets you pull the plug lets you pull the plug lets you pull the plug on your local net on your local net on your local net on your local net on your local net work and relocate work and relocate work and relocate work and relocate work and relocate your business to the your business to the your business to the your business to the your business to the Global Village Global Village Global Village Global Village Global Village Remote Access for Remote Access for Remote Access for Remote Access for Remote Access for your Desktop your Desktop your Desktop your Desktop your Desktop Internet Security Internet Security Internet Security Internet Security Internet Security Stereo to Line Signal Stereo to Line Signal Stereo to Line Signal Stereo to Line Signal Stereo to Line Signal Converters Converters Converters Converters Converters Computer Games for Computer Games for Computer Games for Computer Games for Computer Games for Seniors Seniors Seniors Seniors Seniors Internet Downloading Internet Downloading Internet Downloading Internet Downloading Internet Downloading Copyright issues Copyright issues Cop
12. Samsung 16GB 2 5 Inch Flash Solid State Disk Drive IDE 282 4 Speed varies Avg is around 3ms Corsair Flash Voyager GT 4GB Flash Drive 83 Hard Drive Flash RAM http www dacs org May 2008 13 Subgroups are separated by periods for example rec sports tennis and this fully formed topic name is called a newsgroup Unfortunately the process for creating new newsgroups is not over seen very well and over the years the list of newsgroups available has become truly massive and quite often inane vulgar or pointless There is also not a good stan dard convention for naming newsgroups and thus we have many more top level domains that I d really rather not see The top level newsgroups can be con sidered the backbone of Usenet and with the exception of the advertisements and some dramatic grandstanding in some of these groups they can be fairly informa tive In particular Usenet news is a good place to obtain an anecdotal history for just about any given industry profession product or technology But now comes the red headed step child of Usenet alt ALT is a top level newsgroup hierar chy that was created to dump whatever didn t fit in the other more official newsgroups The alt groups carry most of the mes sage traffic on Usenet and as the tag im plies this is where the alternative think ing comes out in the Usenet crowd The alt binaries newsgroups collectively carry thousands of gigabytes of
13. TE__________ SIZE_____ V H SINGLE 6 INSERTIONS TOTAL _________ dacs doc dacs doc THE NEWSLETTER OF THE DANBURY AREA COMPUTER SOCIETY INC GUARANTEED US MAIL 450 OTHER DISTRIBUTION 100 PDF FULL COLOR VERSION DISTRIBUTED ON WEB SITE WWW DACS ORG DEADLINE FOR COPY IS 15th OF THE MONTH NEWSLETTER NORMALLY ARRIVES IN MAIL BY 1st OF EACH MONTH ALL PAYMENTS IN ADVANCE WITH COPY TO HORZ 1 9 PG 1 Insertion 26 6 Insertions 130 V E R T V E R T HORZ 2 9 PG 1 Insertion 50 6 Insertions 250 1 3 PG 1 Insertion 72 6 Insertions 360 1 2 PG 1Insertion 100 6 Insertions 500 FULL PG 1 Insertion 170 6 Insertions 850 BUSINESS CARD Special rate 14 Per Insertion 2 1 8 3 1 8 3 1 8 3 1 8 2 1 8 6 1 4 10 2 1 8 7 1 2 7 1 8 4 7 8 7 1 2 10 2 3 1 2 6 INSERTIONS AT 5 TIMES THE SINGLE INSERTION RATE Rate Card Order Form Sketch ad in this box COMPANY ADDRESS CONTACT PHONE FAX E MAIL 4 5 8 ADS CAN BE SUBMITTED AS CAMERA READY ART OR VIA E MAIL AS A PDF JPG OR TIF FILE Editors will set up ads submitted as plain text without additional charge Comments___________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ CHARLES BOVAIRD TREASURER DANBURY AREA COMPUTER SOCIETY 4 GREGOR
14. Y STREET DANBURY CT 06810 4430 TEL 203 792 7881 E mail aam mags net anbury Area Computer Society is a non profit corporation organized under section 501 C 3 of the US Tax Code Its purpose is to promote education knowledge sharing net working and communication between users of per sonal computers DACS is an all volunteer organi zation with no employees The major source of in come is member dues Members can volunteer to become instructors lecturers DACS officers and board members committee members or SIG leaders We sponsor or participate in community sup port projects by collecting repairing and redis tributing used computer equipment and software to community service providers such as schools libraries and patient client support groups DACS members provide pickup refurbishing installation and training assistance as needed Firms or individuals with equipment to donate should leave a message on the DACS Infoline 203 748 4330 or send an email to recycling dacs org The Voice for Joanie program was created in 1992 through the initiative of DACS member Shirley Fredlund This program provides computer assisted speech for victims of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Lou Gehrig s Disease DACS members have contributed volun teer time and technical assistance since the program began Voice for Joanie and DACS have earned national computer in dustry recognition and financial assistance for this vital co
15. allows you to restore the same image to multiple computers Note that there are some limitations on how different the computers can be For instance the same image can t be used for both an IDE drive based computer and one with SCSI drives Virtual machine software may also help meet your requirements You can create one virtual machine image and then copy it to other machines where you want to run it FREE CLASSIFIEDS DACS members may pub lish noncommercial com puter related classified ads in dacs doc at no charge Ads may be sent by e mail to Charlie Bovaird at aam mags net or hard copy may be submitted at our monthly general meeting This space available This space available This space available This space available This space available Contact Charles Bovaird Phone 203 792 7881 E mail aam mags net May 5 The Remote Desktop Presented by Network Solutions June 2 Sharing Digital Photos On Line July 8 Digital Photography and Photo Editing August 5 HDTV DVD Home Theater Voice for Joanie Help give the gift of speech Call Shirley Fredlund at 203 770 6203 and become a Voice for Joanie Voice for Joanie Voice for Joanie Voice for Joanie Voice for Joanie volunteer dacs doc Danbury Area Computer Society 4 Gregory Street Danbury CT 06811 4430 Nonprofit Organization U S POSTAGE PAID Danbury CT PERMIT NO 237 SIZE 1 9 2 9V 2 9H 1 3V 1 3H HALF PAGE FULLPAGE BUSINESS CARD ISSUE DA
16. ave fans so double check your video card The fan inside a power supply is usually inaccessible so if that s bad it may be cheaper and easier to get a re placement power supply If you happen to hear any excessive noise from the hard drive then be sure to assess the situation accordingly starting with a good backup of your data If you re unsure how to tackle any issues that are uncovered just seek out some expertise opinions and recom mendations from your fellow members Or even better yet check out Charlie s PC Maintenance SIG Disappearing Act Disappearing Act Disappearing Act Disappearing Act Disappearing Act Unfortunately my schedule will pre vent me from attending the May Gen eral Meeting This happens to be a meet ing in which I am deeply interested so if anyone could record it that would be fabulous If anyone would like to test drive a Pinnacle Video Transfer http tinyurl com 3afctu to facilitate this then please let me know by May 3 The PVT allows one to capture analog video directly to H 264 digital format without the need for a separate computer Know A Leader Know A Leader Know A Leader Know A Leader Know A Leader At the beginning of this year we re kindled the Windows SIG because it made sense to do so It is an important SIG in that it compliments the Mac and Linux groups I also was willing to run it for three to four months to see how it goes It s been a fairly
17. below The other ends of course went into the inputs jacks of the convertor The outputs of the convertor go to the line input of the computer figure 4 The pencil labeling on the case doesn t show up in the photo below which is why labeling appears to be absent As we see next everything is connected and working beautifully Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 http www dacs org May 2008 7 The application being used to capture the audio is Audacity http audacity sourceforge net which is the same free sound editing program Bruce used in his presentation Contrary to the word ing on the player s display the output is not LINE level on this system I did have to adjust the volume a little to find a good output level based on the recording levels I could set with the laptop Parts for project RS 270 1801 Project Enclosure 3 x 2 x 1 2 29 RS 274 346 Panel Mount RCA Phono Jack 4 pack 3 99 RS 271 1126 10K ohm 1 4 Watt Resistor 5 pack 0 99 RS 271 1321 1K ohm 1 4 Watt Resistor 5 pack 0 99 Audio cords used RS 42 2551 6 ft RCA to 1 8 shielded cable 7 99 RS 42 2351 3 ft Stereo patch cable 6 99 I N THE PAST WE VE commonly thought of computer games espe cially those played on game machine platforms as pure entertainment Times have changed and many games have be come educational as well as physical train ing devices Learning has be come fun for both kids an
18. cation shall be mailed to Danbury Area Computer Society Inc 4 Gregory Street Danbury CT 06811 4403 Attn Reprints Links to articles reprinted on the web can be sent to reprints dacs 0rg Membership Membership Membership Membership Membership Inf Inf Inf Inf Infor or or or or ma ma ma ma mation tion tion tion tion dacs doc ISSN 1084 6573 is published monthly by the Danbury Area Computer Soci ety 4 Gregory Street Danbury CT 06810 4430 Annual subscription rates 45 to regular members 30 electronic access included in dues Postmaster Postmaster Postmaster Postmaster Postmaster Send address changes to Danbury Area Com puter Society Inc 4 Gregory Street Danbury CT 06810 4430 Editorial Committee Editorial Committee Editorial Committee Editorial Committee Editorial Committee Managing Editor Patrick Libert Production Editor Marc Cohen Copy Editor Patrick Libert Contributors Contributors Contributors Contributors Contributors Charles Bovaird Richard Corzo Sean Henderson Mike Kaltschnee John Lansdale Lisa Leifels Flo Ferrara Jim Scheef Jeff Setaro Richard Ten Dyke PRESIDENT S FILE 2 DIRECTORS NOTES 3 HELP LINE 3 REVIEW SECURE COMPUTING 4 PREVIEW REMOTE DESKTOP 5 BUCKY MILAM CARTOON 5 STEREO TO LINE SIGNAL CONVERTER 6 NOT JUST ENTERTAINMENT 7 SIG NEWS amp NOTES 8 CALENDAR 9 BINARY FLOODGATES ON INTERNET 11 SOLID STATE DRIVES
19. d Don t use a com puter or device that cannot fully be trusted For example it is a bad idea to access your online banking on a computer at an Internet caf Use file encryption pro grams especially on notebook computers and mobile devices Broadband users in stall and use a hardware firewall router Again I have not listed all of Jeff s ex cellent suggestions here To see the com plete listing and to access a list of resources go to Jeff s site www jasetaro com blog It is like his presentation an all inclusive compilation of information Our thanks go out to Jeff for taking the time to enlighten us on the hazards and pitfalls of computing in the Internet age and for educating us on how to navi gate these dangerous waters FLO FERRARA is Acting VP for Programs at DACS and IT director for Bridges a community s mental health support program serving coastal Connecticut Are you up to your nose with computer ques tions DACS Special Interest Groups may have the answers If not let us know and we ll try to create a new SIG that helps REVIEW Continued from page 4 http www dacs org 6 May 2008 On the Bench Article 1 1 Build A Stereo to Line Signal Convertor F OR OUR JULY 2007 General Meet ing we had the pleasure of an out standing presentation given by members Bruce Preston and his son Scott showing how to convert records to MP3 We were given a background into how recording media wo
20. d Microsoft s new beta Windows Live service called FolderShare http www f oldershare com FolderShare currently free allows you to define a Library folder which contains any desired files and is accessible from any of your Windows or Mac computers on which you install the FolderShare desktop application Another member mentioned that both David Pogue in the New York Times http www nytimes com 2 0 0 8 0 3 2 7 t e c h n o l o g y personaltech 27pogue html and Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal http ptech allthingsd com 20080403 sugarsync offers the best method yet for replicating files have written articles on SugarSync which is a paid online backup service Q I have two computers one is running the Windows XP operating system the other is running Windows NT How can I back up the applications and the data on both of these com puters to another computer with a larger hard drive and then access all the applications and the data from either computer A You can certainly use a network drive to store or back up your data but trying to use the network drive as a single location for your installed applications won t be feasible Most Windows applications use the registry as well as application data in the user s profile for example in the Documents and Settings folder on XP which are located on the separate C drives of the two computers For data you can buy network attached storage such as that f
21. d adults Here s some information that will keep you ahead of the digital gaming curve DS Handheld Games for Senior Citi zens Nintendo has a hot selling hand held video game machine called the DS for Double Screen The device opens with two visible screens one is a display screen and the other is a Touch Screen which serves as the controller interface The DS has a series of games designed with older users in mind They are Brain Age Big Brain Academy and Flash Focus All three have been recommended by AARP and Brain Age has been shown to improve mental performance in indepen dent tests Brain Age and Big Brain Acad emy have a series of games practice exer cises and tests that are designed to im prove and evaluate cognitive skills and best of all they re fun They chart and graph improvement and will keep records for several individuals Have you ever had a problem with that vi sion test on your driver s license exam Then Flash Focus was made for you It too has games and exercises but instead of improving your brain they improve your eyes Wii Want to Play The hottest new gaming console is the Wii another product from Nintendo that has games designed for the older kids real older kids The game controller is a little motion sensitive device that straps on the user s wrist Participants interact with the game by moving their arms In the Detroit area aerobic classes and m
22. e CD arrives and it s never been opened Thankfully the record is in pristine condition So I set out to capture it from our record player My new problem was that our record player a Crosley retro looking record cd tape player has external speaker outputs not the needed line level outputs What I needed was a converter On to the project A simple stereo to line level convert ing device can be made from a voltage divider circuit shown below This cir cuit will drop the speaker output level low enough to connect a computer up to digitize the audio The circuit is fairly simple to build and is a great way to practice soldering and building All of the components for the project can be obtained from your local Radio Shack for under 9 assuming one already has the audio cords This is where we insert the disclaimer Build one at your own risk It s possible to build the circuit inside an RCA plug housing but I opted to use a project box so it would be more universal The metal plate that comes with the project enclosure was not used The next photo shows the box cover component side with everything soldered in place The holes for the RCA jacks were drilled with a small pilot hole and then enlarged with a drill bit The picture is oriented so the inputs are at the top I sacrificed an RCA cable by cut ting the ends so I could connect to the wire terminals on the back of the stereo as seen
23. ecessary offered to do the presentation Melissa Seder from DAWS is happy to work with DACS for trading info for local PR outlets regarding getting attention from media Jeff mentioned possible change of web host as DACS will need additional web space with PHP functionality Patrick reported DACS can order Microsoft items from TechSoup in May Microsoft TechNet subscriptions are available at 40 however the software has to be owned by DACS Richard has requested office 2008 for Mac It was decided to remove the What s News page from the website as it is no longer being updated Anna van Ommeren mation is too voluminous to mention here if you are interested in Jeff s definitions download the presentation http www jasetaro com blog When talking about malware myths Jeff was quick to point out that MacOS and Linux systems are not immune to attack Sim ply put these operating systems are at less of a risk because they oc cupy a smaller percent age of the market share So how do the bad guys make their money anyway In simplest terms Jeff explained that malware programs change the DNS set tings on your computer to connect to their own servers These servers run advertising pages that generate revenue for the bad guys The more computers or zombies using their servers the more money they make Computers are not the only items that are besieged by malware however Jeff tells us that the iPhone c
24. ections and software to imitate regular hard drives a little like cassette tape adapters for your CD player It s not important to know exactly how flash RAM works but having a mental model of it at the highest level can help you un derstand what these new lower price solid state drives mean With random access memory RAM any one piece of information can be accessed as fast as another but without power all is lost Data persists without power on electro mechanical hard drives but non electronic find ing is much slower Flash memory is electronic like RAM and it retains data when the power is off It s a little slower reading and writing than RAM because the storage process is time dependent There s a fixed wait for some electrons to get in place See How Flash Memory Works at HowStuffWorks com Flash memory is much better than hard drives for reading small files The old way of improving perfor mance has been to in crease RAM size and processor speed Very large blocks of memory are cached Start up time is slow but access of cached memory is fast The new way is with flash No cache needed Less RAM and slower processors do the same job This is very good for laptops because less power means longer battery life Flash memory is also lighter and more durable The only problem has been its very high price It is still more expensive A 64 GB solid state drive will cost around 1000 A high speed 500
25. eet in our Resource Center in down town Danbury If you have concerns requests or suggestions re garding DACS or its programs please contact dacsprez dacs org DACS officers and board mem bers phone numbers are listed on page 3 of dacs doc The DACS Resource Center is in Ives Manor Lower Level 198 Main Street Danbury CT 06810 203 748 4330 DANBURY AREA COMPUTER SOCIETY Inc Family Membership Application Personal Information Name ___________________________________ Home Phone ___________________ Address _________________________________ Work Phone ____________________ City _____________ State________ Zip _______ Cell Phone ____________________ Company ________________________________ E Mail _____________ ___________ Basic membership with mailed newsletter 1 year 45 00 Basic membership with online newsletter access 1 year 30 00 Corporate membership is also available More information and forms online www dacs org aboutdacs joining htm Each member has access to the HelpLine volunteers newsletter online in PDF form group related news via email SIG meetings and any group only related events promotions or activities Pay by cash at the General Meeting or go to www dacs org and check or money order payable to click on JOIN DACS NOW Charles Bovaird Treasurer DACS Inc 4 Gregory Street Danbury CT 06810 4430 Tell Us About Your Interests Please take a moment to ans
26. elf as the industry s most comprehen sive security site for IT pros The ar ticles include all sides of computer and network security There are even some videos for a change of pace but this article caught my eye Proprietary Se curity Through Obscurity tinyurl com 69y2zc is a short article about pacemakers yes those things that keep some people s heart beating properly This started in a New York Times report about an article on an ob scure website about how a heart device was found to be vulnerable to hacker attacks tinyurl com 6h2mcl It seems that a team of researchers was able to reverse engineer the wireless interface for a combination pacemaker and defibrillator Using this knowledge they were able to change the programming in the device to adjust it s pace shut it down read patient data and even to give a potentially lethal jolt Certainly patients including Dick Cheney with these devices are under no imminent threat however newer devices are being developed that can connect to the Internet to allow doctors to monitor a patient remotely This could mean better more frequent monitoring with fewer trips to the doctor s office a win win except for what should be obvious Of course we you and me understand the need for security on the Internet In the type of statement we hear all too often the manu facturer of the hacked device said To our knowledge there has not be
27. en a single reported incident of such an event in more than 30 years of device telemetry use which includes millions of implants world wide Obviously if they don t know about it it doesn t exist One manufacturer said that it used proprietary techniques to protect the security of its implants and here is where we get to what I call the head in the sand approach to security or se curity through obscurity Back in the day Ma Bell used obscurity to secure its long distance trunk lines from unau thorized use John Draper aka Captain Crunch demonstrated that this is not a good approach with the 2600 Hertz tone produced by a whistle packed in break fast cereal His discovery led to a cot tage industry making blue boxes red boxes and devices of other colors to make free long distance calls Accord ing to legend Apple Computer may have been funded from such sales So which is better proprietary se curity or security based on published protocols The Open Source commu nity argues that only when the source code is published for peer review can we be reasonably assured that any pro tocol works as advertised The Internet protocols are the best example Open ness is especially required for encryp tion Proprietary or secret encryption algorithms cannot be verified by the community of experts How do you know that a proprietary encryption pro gram doesn t have a hidden key or back door
28. erver will also be explored This product enables companies to deploy high performance virtual machines rap idly and easily Managing them and their related storage and networking re sources is possible from a single man agement console We will learn about delivering and managing IT infrastructure by streaming the workload on demand to physical or virtual servers from the network with Citrix s Provisioning Server product So anyone who is interested in access ing their computers remotely or who has the challenge of pro viding virtual server environments will want to attend This will be an opportunity to get your questions answered regarding these issue as well as a look at some of Citrix s newest re mote solutions DACS meetings are held at the Danbury Hospital auditorium Activities begin at 6 30 p m with registration and casual networking The meeting starts at 7 00 p m with a dis cussion of what s new in technology What s News followed by a general question and answer period Ask DACS announcements and a short break The featured evening presentation begins at 8 00 As a reminder our General Meetings are free and open to the public so invite anyone you know who would be inter ested in this topic The Federal Reserve makes the rounds of Wall Street in a bold effort to mitigate investors losses even if they are from someone you know Don t allow your browser to automatically save your passwor
29. h 2001 and aside from being re sponsible for the marriage of at least one member we know about we amassed a collec tion of files that to taled at last count some 45 gigabytes in size which was pretty impressive when you consider that there was not one among them that was copyrighted and marked as non distributable material Unlike many boards of the day BGAMUG took spe cial pains to make sure that the material we funneled through our member s mo dems was all above board and free of dis tribution issues So called pirate BBSs where copy righted software was swapped like reci pes at a county fair were not illegal to visit but there were a few high profile cases with big fines involved and even jail time for the pirate system operators For the most part though our legal sys tem didn t seem to be effective in pros ecuting even the most flagrant cases and the most that a copyright holder could hope for seemed to be a civil rem edy by bringing suit Now the stakes have certainly been raised in terms of the volume of material swapped and the material that is swapped today seems to be music more often than the latest PC game but the copyright sys tem in this country is still not very clear on the issue of sharing binary informa tion What is evident is that it s the user s responsibility to determine whether or not a given body of information has a copy right assigned to another individual and al
30. has gotten some great reviews Ubuntu has been skyrocketed in popularity in a short time and has time and time again proven that it has earned it too Ubuntu has met so many needs that it was selected out of all of the Linux distributions to be offered installed instead of Windows on a growing number of Dell consumer desktops and laptops While it s original release date has been moved by 2 weeks Fedora 9 will be out in plenty of time to also get a chance to explore Fedora is Linux industry leader Red Hat s bleeding edge distribution which means it should be exciting to see what is included in Fedora which may or may not make it to Red Hat s official distribution That is not to say it is unstable far from it Fedora is a full community of developers and users not associated with Red Hat With these two distributions being released this is a per fect opportunity if you have been thinking about it to make the May Linux SIG meeting an install fest Macintosh In April we started the meeting with Bill Manyin demonstrating SMART Utility http www volitans software com Home html This shareware utility gathers statistics supplied SIG NOTES Cont on Page 14 http www dacs org May 2008 11 B ACK IN THE DAYS BEFORE the World Wide Web when comput ers connected directly to each other over telephone lines we had a piece of software called a Bulletin Board Sys tem or BBS BGAMUG operated a BBS from about 1989 throug
31. here to look or just exercise some very patient trial and error you can find some great reposito ries of information If you are looking for one specific file though you had better be really lucky Trolling for files on Usenet is a bit like fishing on a commercial fishing boat you re going to pull up just about everything that gets caught in your net Even though it s text based binary files images or programs for example can be uploaded and downloaded to Usenet with ease thanks to some very clever programming that allows seam less conversion from text to binary and back again The difference between text and binary is not that important just think of text as messages you can read and binary as graphics video audio or program files Messages are organized by topic into a system with the following top level names Comp computers Misc miscellany News internet news such as new groups or new policies about usenet Rec recreation Sci science Soc social and behavior religion phi losophy Talk just that talk mostly of the flap ping jaw variety FLOODGATES Cont on Page 13 http www dacs org 12 May 2008 Commentary A S USUAL THE NEWS isn t tech nology but price This time it s flash memory It s the stuff inside USB pen drives camera cards cell phones portable GPS devices and your computer BIOS Solid state drives also use it They have additional simulated conn
32. lcome John Miniello Senior Systems Engineer of the Network Support Company in Danbury to deliver the May DACS presentation on remote desktop and server virtual ization John will be joined by Fred Zering of Citrix Systems The Network Support Company LLC TNSC has been serving the small to medium size SMB business community since 1996 TNSC is a full service provider of IT Networking Desktop Voice Secu rity Cabling and Wireless data ser vices Citrix as most of you probably know is a leader and one of the most trusted names in application de livery infrastructure More than 200 000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere Citrix customers include 100 of the For tune 100 companies and 99 of the For tune Global 500 as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses Citrix has approximately 6 200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries John and Joyce will speak about the different ways to access desktop comput ers remotely Spotlighted will be how to deliver remote desktop applications in a more secure reliable and cost effective manner Their presentation will illustrate how companies large and small can help reduce the risk of data loss and aid in navi gating the management complexities of distributed PCs using Citrix XenDesktop Total cost of ownership may be lessened by as much as 40 as well Citrix s server virtualization product XenS
33. lication play as described in the original article I question if it ever did work but that doesn t matter it will work as we continue with the project But and about this time the dinner bell rang and Claude Prevots went off for the PIZZA We took a 6 7pm PIZZA break before returning to the RSS Feed application As we progressed into the evening session we looked at the conversion of the RSS Feed program written in Visual Basic converted into C using the VS2008 IDE This exercise required adapting code written in one language to code in the other while preserving all functions Here the angel was in the de tails Lines of code for each function had to be preserved and modified appropriately to compile effectively A spirited discus sion was generated as the expertise in the attendees was sparked We had engaging discussions of RSS Feeds Real Simple Syndication and placement of user authentication in cookies All the while there was added commentary on work ings of VS2008 in contrast to VS2005 Attendee conversion participants concluded at various stages of conversion We went on to look at more completed conversion work and as sess the functionality of the RSS Feed program John Lansdale produced a URI at CNN that was a legitimate RSS Feed ad dress This allowed us to access the feed and progress up to the point of saving the information where we bumped into a Profiles issue Our time was running out as we reached this point Our plan
34. lies all the drivers for running your Mac hardware under Windows Otherwise you need some virtual machine software that lets you run Windows at the same time as the Mac OS Parallels Desktop http www parallels com is a popular option but Jeff Setaro prefers VMWare Fusion http www vmware com products fusion It is more versatile in that it allows you to run 64 bit versions of Windows and he feels they are better about fixing bugs promptly In all cases you will need to buy a copy of Windows or obtain a copy of Linux Q I use three different computers a note book computer at work and a sec ond notebook computer and desk top computer at home I often work on the same files between all three computers Are there any tools avail able to help me synchronize specific files between all three computers A Windows still has the Briefcase feature http support microsoft com kb 307885 You create a briefcase in a folder and drag any desired files into the briefcase Drag the briefcase to a USB drive On the other computers start the briefcase directly from the USB drive Make any desired changes there When you return to the primary computer start Briefcase on the USB drive and select Update All or Update Selection from the menu One audience member suggested using SyncBack http www 2brightsparks com There is both a free and a paid version My own research turned up the free Allway Sync http allwaysync com an
35. llaboration Our general meetings are held on the first Tuesday of each month in the Danbury Hospital Auditorium at 7 p m These meetings are open to the public The main presentation is scheduled from 8 9 30 preceded by casual networking an nouncements and Random Access an in formal question and answer session A free product raffle is often held at the con clusion of the main presentation In addition to the general meeting DACS sponsors many special interest groups SIGs where members can learn and share information about a specific topic Each SIG plans its own meeting schedule and program topics Our newsletter dacs doc is published monthly for our members and mailed to arrive before the general meeting It features articles written by members and oth ers on timely topics including product and software re views issues and trends in personal computing and how to articles on sound video digital photography etc In addition each issues includes the calendar of meetings announcements on SIGs and other DACS events dacs doc has won numerous prizes over the years for its design and content Through its activities DACS offers numerous op portunities to network both professionals and computer hobbyists Our Special Interest Groups are an excellent way for members to both learn and share application or hardware knowledge Any DACS member can form a special interest group on any topic where there is inter est Most SIGs m
36. m Program Program Name Name Name Name Name Phone Phone Phone Phone Phone APL Charles Bovaird 203 792 7881 e ASP Net Chuck Fizer 203 798 9996 d C UNIX ObjC Kenneth Lerman 203 426 4430 d e C VB Chuck Fizer 203 798 9996 d DOS John Gallichotte 203 426 0394 d e Electronics Andrew Woodruff 203 798 2000 d e Hardware John Gallichotte 203 426 0394 d e Interface Instrumentation Andrew Woodruff 203 798 2000 d e PhotoShop Dreamweaver Annette van Ommeren 914 232 0149 e SAS Lewis Westfall 203 790 0229 e Statistics Data Analysis Charles Bovaird 203 792 7881 d e SQL Lewis Westfall 203 790 0229 e SQL Server MySQL 5 Chuck Fizer 203 798 9996 d Malware Jeff Setaro 203 748 6748 d VB Net Visual Basic Chuck Fizer 203 798 9996 d Directors dacsboard dacs org Charles Bovaird 203 792 7881 cbovaird dacs org Howard Berger 860 355 9837 hberger dacs org Richard Corzo 203 797 1518 rcorzo dacs org John Gallichotte 203 426 0394 gallichotte dacs org Sean Henderson 203 837 7068 shenderson dacs org John Lansdale 914 533 2002 lanzdale yahoo com Patrick Libert 860 567 9586 plibert dacs org Rob Limbaugh 203 648 9176 relimbaugh dacs org Jim Scheef 860 355 0034 jscheef yahoo com Jeff Setaro 203 748 6748 jasetaro yahoo com Annette van Ommeren 914 232 0149 avanommeren dacs org
37. ontinue as VP of PR He can commit to contacting media outlets and moderating the Marketing Committee_DACS forum on Y Groups and continue his previous efforts which are starting to take root Network Support Solutions will be pre senting the Citrix Remote Desktop at the General Meeting in May HDTV DVD Home Theater will be the topic for June and Digital Photography is scheduled for July Rob Suggested listing our past Gen eral Meeting topics on the website with links back to the relevant preview and or review articles on the website John asked if we could have an operating budget to pay presenters Rob relayed that Flo sug gested a 1 year membership be given to presenters as a reward for their efforts Rob made the motion to vote and it was unani mously accepted by those present Patrick brought up the revised newslet ter cover design The title will be modified to read A Computer amp Technology Newslet ter under the DACS DOC logo and the left side vertical logo will be removed Charlie will research prices for printing color pages and a discussion ensued about the location of the calendar and membership application within the publication Patrick will work to improve the cover layout to high light content with teasers and Rob is dis tributing copies to local waiting rooms http www dacs org 4 May 2008 Meeting Review DIRECTORS NOTES Cont from page 3 J EFF SETARO S PRESENTATION on secu
38. ormalize near non existent sound levels Commercial devices are available for as little as 13 S amp H but wouldn t have yielded this article Happy recording http www dacs org 8 May 2008 SIG NEWS Continued on page 10 SIG News amp Events ASP Net The original VS2008 agenda for the meeting was partially usurped by a very interesting question regarding the presentation of a web page that also contained a child page The idea for the question emerged from Access db data base application development where a student form would then spawn an enrolled in form The enrolled in form would be a child form of the student form Access provides form child form functionality in the Access IDE Integrated Development Environment To illustrate similar functionality presented in web pages we looked at an VS2003 web application that uses a similar strategy In this case it is a customer form that provides an ability to show an order listed in an order list on the customer form Selecting an order then depressing the Edit button on the customer form presents what appears as a child form In this case a web form a pseudo child form reveals details of that particular order Once the concept of the parent form and the child form was visibly seen then there were a myriad of questions regarding the application code We looked at the IDE s ASP Net web page designer C application s code behind files and the Javascript files that were e
39. ould be the next big targeted item It is widely known that digital picture frames that were manufac tured in China most likely came with malware built in These picture frames could very well compromise any computer they are plugged into So buyer beware Jeff stressed and re stressed the im portance of using a router with any broad band connection A router should provide NAT Network Address Translation as well as SPI Stateful Packet Inspection So what is the average Joe or Joanne to do What is necessary to ensure a se cure computing environment Jeff s an swer is to practice Safe Hex Some of the Hex basics include keep your system patched especially if you use Internet Explorer as your browser install anti vi rus software personal firewall and anti spyware software Use strong passwords not just ordinary words like your kid s or dog s name Make passwords at least 8 characters long and include letters and numbers and at least one special charac ter Be cautious when downloading Use care when reading email with attachments Our General Meeting Sched ule is changed for the first half of 2008 Meetings will be held on the FIRST MONDAY of January through June The FIRST TUESDAY schedule will resume July 2008 REMINDER REVIEW Continued on page 5 http www dacs org May 2008 5 Meeting Preview The Remote Desktop By Flo Ferrara Bucky Milam 2008 D ACS IS PLEASED TO we
40. out what is delivered with a VS2008 installation It appears that Microsoft is ramping up for their Windows SQL Server 2008 versions rumored to be unveiled at the April 17 kick off in Hartford As such the VS2008 instal lation now contain a mixture of 2005 and 2008 components Our VS2008 installation stumbled when we tried using the AdventureWorks database Wanting to use the most current database with our VS2008 IDE we downloaded AdVentureWorks What we received was a 2008 version The SQL Server Express db delivered with VS2008 is re ally an SQL Server Express 2005 db Hence when we tried to restore the AdventureWorks db to our machine it failed The error message was cryptic Well then we thought gee maybe we should try to download a 2005 version of AdventureWorks No again the link said 2005 AdventureWorks but the data sent was the same as the 2008 AdventureWorks Well we ll just wait on this aspect of the installation Part of the VS2008 agenda was to start a project that any one could participate in We chose to work on an RSS Feed application We have several nefarious reasons for choosing this application and one of them is the help it can provide to new developers starting work with VS2008 and web applica tion development Our application is the skeletal remains of a previous incarnation published in an aspNetPRO magazine as a Visual Basic application Our initial goal is to convert the VB source code to C and then make the app
41. ovies have been replaced by Wii in many senior citizen centers Bowling seems to be one of the most popular games I ve played it and yes it s exactly like the real thing The motion of your arm as you ap proach a virtual bowling alley allows you to curve the ball and add some spin Wii bowling leagues are springing up all over the country Nintendo is about to release an exercise program for the Wii that uses a floor pad as a controller GENE KOMAROMIA is a member of the Computer Club of Green Valley Arizona http gvcc apcug org genek6 gmail com This article was obtained from APCUG with the author s permission for publication by APCUG member groups Computer Games It s Not Just Entertainment Any More By Gene Komaromi Be Informed by E mail Members who wish to receive DACS email messages who have not received an email notice for the General Meeting should send a request to be put on the DACS email list to treasurer dacs org Figure 5 Final Thoughts The circuit worked quite well What I didn t count on though is that the record ing on the album was done such that the sound level was part of the audio experi ence For a scene where the music was supposed to be quiet the orchestra ac tually plays very quietly compared to the rest of the album Normalizing takes care of some of it but I will need to recapture some tracks because they are so quiet that the normalizing tool can t n
42. re computing at the April General Meeting was as comprehen sive as it gets The presentation touched on three main areas threats solutions and tools It is obvious that Jeff has a wealth of knowledge in this area and based on the large number of ques tions he fielded at the end of his talk it is equally obvi ous that security is a topic that is high on everyone s list Jeff began his discussion by stat ing that the cur rent plug it and go mindset needs to end Computers have become so commonplace that users no longer care how they work users just want to hop on and go This is the wrong attitude to have regular maintenance is a must Jeff outlined various trends from 2007 A review of the year showed that while slightly more than half of all malware host ing sites are in China less than a quarter of that malware is written there And it was pointed out that approximately a quarter of all spam originates in the United States Most astonishing perhaps is the fact that while it took about 21 years for incidences of malware to reach 250 000 known pro grams it only took one year 2006 2007 for that number to reach to 500 000 The largest reason for this spike in malware activity is that there is much money to be made in the malware world and so it proliferates Jeff cited greed as the driving force A user will eagerly download anything if they are promised free stuff He cautioned the audience to buy their porn no
43. rks how to connect the record or tape player to a computer and how to clean up the sound Bruce mentioned that one needs to be mindful to use the line level outputs of the source device so as to not overdrive the input on the computer For the most part I had only ever needed to digitize au dio from cassette and this was never an issue for me because the tape decks have line out Cossack Conundrum My significant other is fond of clas sic movies ranging from Casablanca to The Sons of Katie Elder and ev erything in between One of them is Taras Bulba a 1962 film based on the novel by Nikolai Gogol The movie stars Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis This movie had somehow slipped passed her and might have if it were not for the TV s built into the exercise equipment at SportsPlex of Bethel http www sportsplexbethel com She found the soundtrack quite exhilarat ing and of course needed it for her MP3 player for future work outs Of course this happens to be a rare sound track to find on CD After a couple months of searching and being unwilling to pay 40 for a used en hanced CD from Amazon I finally found a new CD on eBay and a near mint record What if the near mint means only one scratch Conversely with the rarity of the CD what if the new By Rob Limbaugh condition means still in shrink wrap which we would want to keep sealed Sure enough th
44. rom LaCie http www lacie com us products range htm id 10007 This makes a drive accessible from any computer on your network For a backup solution Acronis True Image http www acronis com homecomputing products trueimage is recommended You can set it up so that it automatically backs up your drives After an initial full backup it can do incremental backups up to a specified limit Then it will do another full backup when that limit is reached It requires at least Windows 2000 so you will need to set it up from the Windows XP machine Q I am using Excel 2003 on Windows XP and I used to be able to run a macro that exists in one spreadsheet in a different spreadsheet Does any one know why I am no longer able to do this A It s likely that an Office service pack has tightened up security on running Excel macros You should be able to go into Excel options and enable the running of unsigned macros Here s the Office Online explanation http office microsoft com en us excel HP0111957 91033 aspx Q Is there software available that will let me back up an image from one computer and then restore that im age to another computer with dif ferent hardware A Instead of Acronis True Image which is good for backing up and restoring individual computers you will need a solution like Symantec s Norton Ghost http www symantec com n o r t o n p ro d u c t s o v e r v i e w jsp pcid br amp pvid ghost14 which
45. rument Digital Interface files whereas alt binaries sounds midi d would be a group devoted to the text based dis cussion of the material found in the former newsgroup In this context the word dis cussion means posting information about a given topic as opposed to real time chat in a split screen chat room environment There is nothing real time about Usenet because each client computer can be ex pected to update its Usenet database at different times quite at random There are some groups that are mod erated where a real person is charged with the task of vetting everything that s posted before you actually see it This person or group naturally is known as a moderator and they are really the only thing close to an authority on Usenet As you might expect some moderated groups have a better track record than others in keeping out the riff raff and spam There is an interesting history of Usenet and how newsgroups came to be named at this link http en wikipedia org wiki Usenet You can receive and post Usenet ar ticles or binary files by employing a news reader which is also sometimes referred to as an NNTP reader nntp is the Net work News Transfer Protocol If you would prefer not to have to download and install a news reader you can skip the hassle of learning the ins and outs of a new program Try going to http groups google com in your browser and clicking on some of the links Google Groups is a
46. smond Nolan Consulant Advanced Business Continunity Systems Inc 203 984 0787 DesNolan OptOnline Net
47. so to figure out how much of it can be used viewed listened to stored for warded sold whatever and still fall un der the fair use doctrine Binary Floodgates on the Internet Backwaters By Mike Moore Copyright Instead of this turning into a disserta tion on copyright law I will instead offer the foregoing as simply a caution Please do not download copyright material and don t use it unless you have clear permis sion or fair use rights And please don t take any of the following as a cookbook for copyright subversion because it s not meant that way Having got that caveat out of the way let s go somewhere where the World Wide Web doesn t go USENET Pronounced YOOZ net Usenet is the bulletin board of the internet and like a real bulletin board its information is emblazoned on the internet like a ten foot high plasma billboard on Times Square in New York City Usenet was con ceived by a pair of graduate students John Ellis and Tom Truscott at Duke University in 1979 Now lurid and lawless Usenet has been given the unseemly reputation of be ing the Las Vegas of the internet because of the terabytes of binary pictures posted minute by minute in an unending stream of first amendment fodder And we can find some dandy files on Usenet Clip art genealogical records MIDI music and classical music sound libraries electronic books recipes quilt ing patterns maps GPS info high quality desk
48. steady group We ve touched on topics such as tweaking settings in XP Vista install ing Vista Ultimate tested video editing programs data encryption and using a personal computer for work As predicted my schedule is prohib iting me from giving this SIG the atten tion it deserves and it s time for another leader to fill in the gaps All a candidate needs to have is a willingness to show how to do things with Windows I d be willing to co lead if desired but I can not sustain the SIG on a monthly basis Please send any inquiries and recom mendations to me at relimbaugh dacs org Well that s all for now See you at the next SIG Rob Limbaugh http www dacs org May 2008 3 PRESIDENT Rob Limbaugh 203 648 9176 relimbaugh dacs org VICE PRESIDENTS Flo Ferrara Sean Henderson SECRETARY Annette van Ommeren TREASURER Charles Bovaird Officers HelpLine HelpLine HelpLine HelpLine HelpLine Volunteers have offered to field member questions by phone Please limit calls to the hours indicated below Days means 9 a m to 5 p m evening means 6 to 9 30 p m Please be considerate of the volunteer you are calling HelpLine is a free service If you are asked to pay for help or are solicited for sales please contact the dacs doc editor the person requesting payment will be deleted from the listing Can we add your name to the volunteer listing d day e evening Program Program Progra
49. t for now thanks to SSD little is big A couple of other things to note are Windows External Memory Devices which uses flash memory in a USB key drive to extend regular RAM There are Hybrid products both RAM Flash and Flash Hard Drive 1GB flash built in which have also been showing up The result might mean faster system boots and data retrieval even with large data bases John Lansdale MCP CDP Do you have a burning computer question but can t make it to the meeting or just never seem to get your hand up in time Email your inquiry to Jim Scheef the answer guy at askdacs dacs org and your question will be taken up at Ask DACS at the next meeting Memory Read Times RAM 7200 RPM 1 10000 RPM 2 SSD 3 Very Fast USB pen Drive 4 SD HC Class 6 Card 5 DDR2 533 133 MhZ 6 Case A Fetch an Average Document Size of block to read mb 1 Avg Access seek latency ms 10 7 5 0 0 0 0 Transfer mb sec 100 320 56 34 20 1066 Total ms to read 10 01000 7 50313 0 01786 0 02941 0 05000 0 00094 Times per second 99 9 133 3 56 000 0 34 000 0 20 000 0 1 066 000 0 CaseB Large 1 Gig file transfer Size of block to read mb 100000 Total ms to read 1010 320 1785 714286 2941 176471 5000 93 80863039 Times per second 0 99 3 13 0 56 0 34 0 20 10 66 1 HP DS702A 250GB Serial ATA Hard Disk Drive 316 2 73GB Fujitsu Ultra320 SCSI hard disk drive 10000rpm 172 3
50. t go for the freebies because they will get you ev ery time Of course it is not just porn sites that are used in this fashion Email online shopping online banking and everyday web browsing can end up in disaster if your computer is not sufficiently armed to walk these virtual streets Jeff did a great job identifying and de fining the various types of malware vi ruses Trojan horses worms spyware rootkits phishing and hoaxes This infor Secure Computing in the Internet Age By Flo Ferrara Rob mentioned he will be away for the May and August General Meeting He also brought up the upcoming APCUG conference May 16 18 in Palisades NJ The Community site is delayed due to improper loading of the Civi CRM plug in for Drupal and Rob is working to cor rect the installation The subject of membership benefits was discussed and Rob emphasized the need for someone to collect the informa tion Eventually benefits could be listed on both the web site amp newsletter APCUG offers several benefits DACS members can take advantage of however this in formation is restricted to DACS members Rob agreed to contact New Horizons to see if they offer a training discount to DACS members and Sean is looking into preferred financing for DACS members at local car dealerships The New Milford Public library has asked DACS to present a talk on Purchasing a new computer on November 13 2008 Rob mentioned DACS will accept and if n
51. the Leopard and Mac OS 9 drives were missing but this time I waited a while Apparently Tiger had taken the other drives offline while it attempted repairs because those drives finally appeared on the desk top I ran Disk Utility and then DiskWarrior for good measure and was then able to boot into the other Mac partitions In Mac OS 9 I got the same error message upon reaching the desktop but I answered the other way I believe the dialog was one of those with an OK and Cancel This time I was able to use the system with out hanging and then chose the Leop ard startup disk from Control Panel Booting into Leopard I found everything back to normal and so we should be in good shape for the next meeting SIG NOTES Cont from page 10 http www dacs org May 2008 15 W E WELCOME QUESTIONS FROM the floor at the start of our General Meet ings In addition members who are not able to attend the General meeting may submit questions to askdacs dacs org We will ask the question for you and post the reply in DACS ORG Please provide as much information as possible since we can t probe during the session April 2008 Ask DACS by Richard Corzo Q What software do you recommend using if you want to run a PC oper ating system on a Mac computer A On an Intel Mac you can use Boot Camp that comes with Leopard if you don t mind leaving the Mac OS to boot temporarily into Windows It creates a Windows partition and supp
52. top wallpaper icons and almost any thing you can think of This material is not usually found on the World Wide Web for several reasons but primarily because people that put up web sites generally want to sell you something and you can t very well sell what is found on Usenet because it is sometimes difficult to find out if it s under copyright or not You can usually find someone to charge you for a collection of postage stamp images for example on the web when in fact the sell ers of the collection most likely just down loaded it from Usenet in the first place probably in violation of a copyright or two Usenet is and always was just text messages posted on internet machines known as news servers Old timers still refer to Usenet as net news even though most of the posts have nothing to do with news News servers use a proto col known as NNTP to transmit new mes sages on to other news servers down the pipe The effect is that a new message posted to an NNTP server gets copied again and again over the course of hours or days until all of the news servers of the world have the message or file in their database This copying occurs a little like e mail except that there is no way to make a post private In fact there is no way to address a Usenet posting to anyone but ALL Usenet bears another resem blance to e mail and that is there is a LOT of spam or pointless messages ads and porn But if you know w
53. video capturing and editing application Kino While it is a pretty good open source DV editing program for Linux it has a ways to go to match Apple s iMovie or Microsoft s Movie Maker Kino did well when it came to capturing and exporting the video There were no issues with capturing the video from the Sony Handycam by way of Firewire and the application split the scenes into individual DV clips or in exporting the finished project into a variety of formats including AVI MPEG 2 and Quicktime It even includes the option of exporting a single frame as a picture file or an entire batch of frames The difficult part of video editing is adding all the glamour and while Kino made a good stab at handling it all it didn t wow us very much Setting up a transition in the beginning was a bit of pecking around and trying things and when we clipped one of the scenes it would still play the removed portion Due to not knowing where my second hard drive is with KDEnlive installed on it we looked at Pitivi instead Pitivi is a video editor application geared towards the Gnome desktop It doesn t capture from the camera or really do much other than collecting clips in order and exporting them to the ogg video format So far though they have a retty good foundation to add the slick features to Mid April the newest version of Ubuntu 8 04 LTS Long Term Service or Hardy Heron is due out Even before its official release the Beta
54. wer the following questions as they apply to you Hours a week you use computers _____ How did you learn about DACS __________ Hardware PC___ MAC___ desktop___ laptop___ palm___ other_______ OPSYS Windows___ MAC___ LINUX___ other_________ Communications Dialup___ HI Speed____ WiFi____ LAN____ other_______ Applications Office____ Financial____ other______ Digital Music___ Photo___ CAM___ TV___ other______ Business Corporate Employee___ private employee___ professional___ business owner___ Company Name______________________________________________ Office use only Paid ______________ Check ______________ Membership ____________ Traveling West on I 84 Take Exit 6 Turn right at exit ramp light at North Street Turn right on Hayestown Avenue Turn right on Tamarack Avenue Follow Tamarack Avenue uphill to traffic light Turn left at this light onto Hospital Avenue Follow Hospital Avenue to appropriate visitor parking lot on right Traveling East on I 84 Take Exit 5 After stop sign go straight ahead to intersection of Main Street and North Street Go straight through onto North Street Turn right off North Street to Maple Avenue Go on Maple Avenue to Osborne Street Turn left on Osborne Street Turn left onto Hospital Avenue Follow Hospital Avenue to appropriate visitor parking lot on right Meeting Location Danbury Hospital 24 Hospital Avenue Danbury CT Enterprise Software Development also Access Excel and Delphi De
55. xecuted on the browser to make all this happen The IDE s web page designer proved very interesting because what visually appeared as data grids actually were as HTML tables Tables were used because they provided a significant Special Interest Groups SIG NOTES May 2008 ASP Net Focuses on Web site server application develop ment using Microsoft Visual Studio C VB Javascript and SQL Server programming tools Starts with Random Access followed by a programming discussion with examples Contact Chuck Fizer cfizer snet net Meets 1st Wednesday 4 6 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next Meeting May 7 Digital Imaging Digital cameras retouching and printing Contact Ken Graff at 203 775 6667 graffic bigfoot com Meets last Wednesday 7 p m at the DACS Resource Center Next Meeting May 28 Jobs Networking and jobs search Contact Charles Bovaird 203 792 7881 aam mags net Meets by e mail Next meeting TBA Linux Provides Help in installing and maintaining the Linux operating system Also of interest to Apple owners using OS X Contact John Lansdale 914 533 2002 Meets 3rd Wednesday 7 30 pm at the DACS Resource Center Next Meeting May 21 Macintosh Focuses on all aspects of the Mac operating system Contact Richard Corzo macsig dacs org Meets 1st Thursday at DACS Resource Center at 7 p m Next Meeting May 1 Open Source Web Programming Focuses on open source tools for Windows and Linux Contact John Lansdale 91
56. yright issues Copyright issues Copyright issues Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Solid State Drives Plus Commentary and Plus Commentary and Plus Commentary and Plus Commentary and Plus Commentary and Answers to your Answers to your Answers to your Answers to your Answers to your Computing Questions Computing Questions Computing Questions Computing Questions Computing Questions http www dacs org 2 May 2008 DACS its officers and directors assume no liability for damages arising out of the publi cation or non publication of any article ad vertisement or other item in this newsletter The editors welcome submissions from DACS members Contact Patrick Libert at 860 567 9586 dacseditor dacs org Advertisers contact Charles Bovaird at 203 792 7881 aam mags net dacs doc is prepared using PageMaker 7 0 and Acrobat 7 0 Software packages used to publish dacs doc include Microsoft Windows XP Office 2003 TrueType fonts Calendar Creator 8 0 for Windows Internet access provided by Mags net TTTTTec ec ec ec echnical Suppor hnical Suppor hnical Suppor hnical Suppor hnical Supporttttt Applications amp Hardware to enhance dacs doc are welcome Nonprofit groups may request permission to reprint articles from dacs doc or http dacs org by sending e mail to reprints dacs org Re printed articles shall credit the copyright holder and a copy of the final publi

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