THE SOUNDBOARD
KEEPING PACE IN CYBERSPACE
MARCH, 2004
Heritage
Village Computer Club http://www.hvcomputerclub.org
Wednesday
APRIL 14, 2004
10:00
a.m.-11:30am
Sarah J. Cooke
Hall (formerly
Heritage Hall)
Guest Speaker:
Michelle Bouchard,
Manager, Radio Shack
Subject:
Various Radio Shack products including Nokia, digital
cameras, plus other new technology
CLICK ON
THIS LINK FOR UP-TO-DATE MEETING INFO:
http://www.hvcomputerclub.org/news.html
EVERYONE
WELCOME, BRING A FRIEND
HOAXES ON THE INTERNET
Since I often get emails from
well-meaning friends regarding Internet Worms, Bugs, Horror Stories, Viruses,
and a multitude of other warnings to be careful of my computer’s integrity, I
thought that perhaps I could stem the tide of those that are hoaxes from the
real deal. Please do NOT send these
unconfirmed stories to EVERYONE on your address list, and please do NOT ask
them to send them to EVERYONE on their address list. By now, many of these alerts & warnings should have been seen
by all of you who have been computing for at least a couple of years, because
they show up repeatedly as they go around the world. Along with a few of my friends, we try to inform when the story
is a hoax. And remember, if you have
been updating/downloading the new virus definitions to your computer every week
(or more often)
then you should be protected.
A great way to separate fact
from fiction is at this website: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
There are plenty of other
websites that list hoaxes but this one is my favorite.
Here are some other choices:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/ (this one is quite funny)
http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp
http://www.scambusters.org/legends.html (this includes Urban Legends)
http://www.truthorfiction.com/
CYBER JOURNAL
This web site has many “stories behind the stories”. At the site you will see the dates of the articles and know immediately that some are quite old and others fairly recent. The “slipups” site has stories about news articles like a recent one that claims “Dow Jones Newswires Bans Spell Check” (dated 2/19/2004) because of the changes that spell check makes to words not in its dictionary and thus does not recognize. Spell check is only as good as the first check, nothing compares to the knowledge and the ability of a person to be able to spot errors. A story on “The Washington Post Lets Domain Name Expire” (dated 2/10/2004) was interesting to me. I have my own domain name and purchase it every 2 years for a discount. I have entered the date for renewal on my Outlook calendar accompanied by an “alarm” reminder so this hopefully does not happen. http://www.cyberjournalist.net/ (this is the home page)
*****************
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyber_slipups/ (this one is about slipups on the Internet Journalistic front)
There is a headline “URL Cautionary Tales”. Clicking on that headline took me to the following link: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=9344
Although this is
an old article (Posted Nov. 13, 2002 according to the page), I
think that the premise is clear. You
should be careful when quoting Internet stories and you should know where the
story is coming from. “Few hints it might be fake:
the presence of an "@" sign, which is often used to redirect users to
another site; followed by an IP address, 209.25.154.239.”
*****************
Another area of interest is
the Great Work Gallery http://www.cyberjournalist.net/great_work_gallery/ (another good
“read”) and a headline “The Center for Public Integrity”
(dated Feb. 26, 2004). “The nonprofit
Center for Public Integrity is now one of the most prestigious investigative
reporting houses in the U.S., breaking scandal after scandal on its Web
site. As stated on their Home Page: “..keep on investigating, muckraking, prodding,
and serving as the public’s "eyes and ears" inside the Beltway and
far beyond.” http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp
FAMOUS
BIRTHDAYS
Got a birthday coming up and want to know what famous person shares it with you?
Here are some links to get your information:
http://www.famousbirthdays.com/
(Birthdays, greeting cards, mind games) don’t know how up-to-date it is because their “cool site of the day” is dated October 12, 2002.
http://www.fun4birthdays.com/birthday/
(Birthdays, jokes, fun facts, horoscopes, gift ideas, and more)
http://www.historyorb.com/today/birthdays.shtml
(Historical events, famous birthdays, famous deaths AND take a History Quiz)
CONNECTICUT HAPPENINGS
Do you want to know what’s happening around the State
of Connecticut? Here is a site that is
up-to-date and should provide you with resources for those local getaways. Scrolling down the page will show events in
no particular order and that is unfortunate.
On the day that I checked it out, February was on top, followed by
April, back to February, and then March.
But despite the listings, it appears to be a good place to find
interesting things to do. The Search
category options should narrow the events that interest you. When I searched for the CATEGORY:
CONCERTS
& SECTOR: ARTS and ENTERTAINMENT
all the listings appeared in their proper order by date.
WHY EMAIL CANNOT BE
DELIVERED
If your email "bounces" (is undelivered) to either you or your intended recipient, your Internet Service Provider's equipment may be undergoing maintenance or may have internal problems; filters may be in place to screen out longer messages (as AOL); the email box may be over quota (as in Hotmail & Yahoo); network conditions may have prevented delivery (worms traveling over the Internet-clogging traffic); the local telephone company may be having transmittal issues (if on dial-up); you have screeners that will not accept your address (as in Earthlink and AOL); or any number of other reasons. You may also get messages that an email you sent was undeliverable and some reasons can include someone attacking your address book or trying to send to an unknown address or you typed an incorrect address. Some systems will accept the text of an email but will not accept attachments. Some attachments cannot be opened by recipients because the software is incompatible, for example: sending an Excel file to someone who does not have MS Excel installed on their computer.
WHAT IS A BROWSER
HIJACKER?
A browser hijacker is a small program or registry setting that is responsible for changed IE start and search pages. If your browser starts with a different start page (one you haven't changed yourself), you most probably got hijacked. Intelligent hijackers do not only change these pages, but also add a small file that will restore the hijacked settings upon each system start. Hijackers often use ActiveX installation programs and/or security holes.
The following article is from the “Microsoft
Newsletter”. If you subscribe, you can
have these alerts sent to your email address.
“The Microsoft Office
Downloads site hosts free* updates that you can download to increase
the security, stability, and performance of your Office products. The following
new update is now available:
Office XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Office XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) provides the
latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP3 contains significant security
enhancements as well as stability and performance improvements. Some of the
fixes included with SP3 have been previously released as separate updates.
This service pack combines them into one update. SP3 applies to any level of
Office XP and does not require any previous service packs to be installed. This
update applies to the following Office applications: Microsoft Word
2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft Outlook© 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint©
2002, Microsoft Access 2002, Microsoft FrontPage© 2002, Microsoft Publisher
2002, and Microsoft Office XP Web Components.
Using the Office Update automatic
detection tool on the Office Downloads site, you can find out
if these updates are suitable for your Office products. Go to the Office
Downloads site and click Check for Updates to get the latest
Office updates for your computer.”
If any of these new updates do
not appear in the list of updates returned by the automatic detection
tool, then your computer does not need those updates.
MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD: http://www.hvcomputerclub.org/officer.html
SOUNDBOARD CONTRIBUTIONS: theweb@snet.net
CLASSES,
MEETINGS, EVENTS: http://www.supercalendar.com/view.php?a=893
HELPERS
AutoCAD.......... Ken Pelletier................. 264-2310 Digital Camera.......... Joe Franzino........... 264-2922
MS Word.......... Arnold Deutchman........ 267-7355 MS Word................ Joe Franzino........... 264-2922
MS Excel........... Diana Scott................... 264-2134 Paint Shop Pro......... Ken Pelletier........... 264-2310
Publishing........... Joe Franzino................. 264-2922 Quicken................... Ken Pelletier........... 264-2310
Scanning............. Joe Franzino................. 264-2922 WordPerfect............ Jean Van Loon 267-5397