News Letter
November, 1999
A message from the President:
For the October meeting, there were 18 members and the guest speaker was David Ramos. He talked to us about how easy it is to have your own Webpage and maintain it. It was well received and he answered several good questions.
Several members have paid dues recently and a few have promised to pay soon. Our membership stands at 54. There are 3 subscriptions that are complimentary.
We set aside $100 in ten $10 gift certificates and when Walt Farnsworth won in September, that was the end of the Door Prizes. You tell us whether that was effective or not.
A computer is similar to an enormous cave in this respect: each have many unexplored nooks, crannies, passageways and mysterious compartments yet not many learn all there is to know about either. Each can be used to store stuff. Each can be used by others. The purpose of our Users Group is to share information with each other.
Rodney Malkoff will give us a demonstration in the use of Microsoft’s Power Point for our November meeting. Power Point is part of Microsoft Office and for those of us who have it and don’t know how to use it, this promises to be a very educational meeting. I hope to see many of you there.
Check your mailing label. If it is highlighted, your dues are now due. If it says LAST ISSUE, you will be dropped from the mailing list unless we receive your dues before the next mailing.
Remember, we need someone to find speakers for us during the year 2000. If you know of people willing to give presentations, volunteer for the job and we will bestow upon you the title of VICE-PRESIDENT. We need someone to help Ed Danley in the distribution of our Newsletters and Rodney Malkoff wants out of the job of Membership Services. We have a good group of Officers and are very easy to get along with.
For those of you interested, I have completed the project of entering all the titles, artists and code numbers of my nearly 9000 recorded discs. It took 56,756 lines of data and about 1 year of typing. I’m surely a better typist, by now.
Don ‘t forget to patronize and recommend STAPLES OFFICE SUPERSTORE !
We’ll probably be in the 104 Computer Lab, but you better check for directions in the lobby of IVY TECH.
Larry L. Thompson
Group President
ARE YOU READY FOR 2000
SOME MORE Y2K ADVICE
As 1999 progresses, more individuals may be contemplating changes to their investment programs over concerns about the Y2K bug--from the preparedness of their financial service providers to the impact on the world’s securities markets.
But Carol Dow, who is leading the Y2K initiative for The Vanguard Group, cautions investors not to make any rash decisions regarding the year 2000. "A little advance preparations and common sense should serve investors well as we move toward the new millennium," says Dow of Vanguard, the nation’s second largest mutual fund firm.
Dow offers the following guidelines for investors concerned about Y2K:
Keep Good Portfolio Records. Know what you own. Maintain accurate and up-to-date
records about your investments. For your protection and peace of mind, keep your account statements from the third quarter of 1999 as well any statements you receive between October 1 and December 31.
Review Your Investment Plan Now! Make sure your plan is sensible for the short and,
especially the long term. Determine if your asset allocation is suitable for your objectives, risk tolerance and time horizon. In the event that conditions from Y2K related problems eventually come to pass, investments decisions made today in relatively placid conditions are less likely to
be clouded by your emotions.
Maintain Perspective. Resist temptation; do not feel compelled to disassemble a well-
diversified, long-term investment program. Maintaining a balanced portfolio of stocks, bonds and cash reserves is a sensible way to moderate the various risks Y2K-related or otherwise-- in the securities markets. Any problems that arise from the year 2000 changeover may very well be transitory, much like a periodic stock market correction.
Changes, if you feel any are necessary, should be made gradually over time. Before making any changes, however, consider the impact of selling your stocked bond investments and moving your assets into "safe" investments, such as certificates of deposit or money market accounts. Such relative safety comes at a price, including the transaction costs and potential taxes
associated with selling securities, as well as the opportunity cost of placing your assets in
potentially less-rewarding investments. What’s more, trying to "time the market" by selling shares to avoid declines and reinvesting to profit from advances is rarely successful.
Do Your Homework. Get information. Who are your financial service providers? Check with each about their readiness for the year 2000. What is their status? If you have questions, call the company or visit their Web site. Vanguard, for instance, dedicates a special area of its site(www.vanguard.com/) to keeping shareholders updated on the status of its Y2K preparations. Good luck on what you do.
Richard W. Coop
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SOME COOL WEB SITES
1) the trip.com track any flight and virtually see where it is on a map as well as e-mail your loved ones when the flight arrives.
2) dogpile.com. An efficient and easy way to find absolutely anything you are looking for. It uses 10 or so web browsers as well as a bunch of newspapers.
3) tunes.com. A great way to test and listen to new tunes and buy them.
Richard W. Coop
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HOTMAIL: A HOT SPOT FOR VIRUSES
Hotmail remains the breeding ground for nasty viruses, including the notorious Melissa bug. Anitvirus experts who test the trouble-plagued E-mail service found 56 viruses running around the Hotmail system-despite Microsoft’s assurances that all is well.
The bigger problem may be that most free internet providers--even Hotmail, which enjoys a piece of Microsoft’s cash pile--don’t have the funding to offer niceties such as virus scanning, internet service providers that cater to paying business users are much more likely to provide these services. A double standard? Money talks.
Richard W. Coop
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GRAPHICS AND ANIMATIONS
Some time ago I did a lot of searching for graphics and animations to use on a web page. Since this was all new me, I was really following instructions to the letter. Imagine my dismay when I opened up a just saved animation that no longer moved. A friend asked "What did you open it in?" I answered " Word Perfect." He replied "That’s your problem. You need to open it in Netscape."
Of course, I didn’t have a clue how to do this. Here was his simple instructions: Go to File. Choose Open Page. Then Choose File. Choose Look in A. Select All Files. Pick one and open it. Wow! Now it moves. Unfortunately, I had a whole floppy filled with wonderful things and wanted to see all of them in their glory. So I repeated the process over and over and over and over for each file. Knowing that a repeated process like this can be replaced by a neat shortcut.
I inquired what it was. No answer. Fortunately I did not give up but kept asking other friends.
Here is my simple answer: Go through the above process for opening a file but just before clicking open--truncate the name of the file back to a:/. Then when you hit open you have a directory of everything on the floppy. Open one. Hit back. Open another and so on. Simple if you know but frustrating if you don’t.
One other tip. I now keep a floppy close at hand for saving those wonderful graphics and animations wherever I find them. I do it then. Not later. It is really frustrating to copy an address very carefully only to find the site no longer exists. It just takes seconds so copy your just found treasures immediately.
Jerry M.Henry
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SEPARATING E-MAIL FROM WEB BROWSER
Ok. You have just installed the latest upgrade of Netscape Communicator that is designed to be a complete Internet communications package: Web browser, e-mail, group messaging, and calendars. Great. Except you really want to use Outlook Express instead of Netscape e-mail.
Here’s how to do this:
1) Open Outlook Express. Go to "Tools," then "Options," then "General." At the bottom of that window, you’ll see a section titled "Default Messaging Programs." If Outlook Express is not the default mail handler, a button should say "Make Default." Click it.
2) Open Netscape. If you have Communicator and it’s opening straight to the e-mail window, go to "Communicator," then "Preferences," then "Appearance." You should see a set of items you’re supposed to choose to launch on startup. If you don’t want e-mail, uncheck (turn off) everything except "Navigator."
3) Just to be sure, while you in "Preferences," click on "Mail & Newsgroups." That should open a submenu, from which you can click on "Mail Servers."
4) Select your mail server in the window list, and click "Edit..." One of the choices in the resulting window allows you to see the program to check mail on that server at regular intervals you specify, in minutes. If that option is checked (turned on), uncheck it.
These steps should instruct your computer that Outlook Express is your e-mail handler, and Netscape is only your Web browser.
Jerry Henry
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SHAREWARE & FREEWARE
http://www.shareware.com/ is a database of computer programs (games, utilities and the like) that the authors are willing to let you try for free, then pay to license if you like them.
http://www.download.com includes some shareware but also includes "freeware" programs that you can use without paying anything. It also includes downloadable driver files (the things that make monitors, network cards, printers and modems work right), links to full commercialsoftware and other bits of code.
Jerry Henry
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VIRUS ALERT
W97M/Suppl
W97M/Suppl is a new Internet worm, discovered 9/17/99 by AVERT's Virus Patrol software. AVERT has assigned it a MEDIUM risk assessment, and placed it on the AVERT Watch List. Like W32/Ska, it attempts to infect other computers by attaching itself (as the file SUPPL.DOC) to outgoing email messages using SMTP protocol. If you receive an email with an attachment called SUPPL.DOC, DO NOT
OPEN the attachment. Delete it immediately.
W97M/Suppl has a destructive payload: At infection, the virus replaces the existing WSOCK32.DLL file with a new version that
contains a trojan. Approximately 163 hours (6.79 days) after initially infecting the local machine, the corrupted WSOCK32.DLL will seek all files within all fixed drives with the following extensions and null them (similar to W32/ExploreZip): .doc, .xls, .txt, .rtf, .dbf, .zip, .arj, .rar, *.*
Ed Danley
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NEAT NET TRICKS
01. MAKE ROOM. They don't seem to make monitors big enough and as they enlarge them, we fill them up. You can reclaim a tiny bit of real estate when using Netscape Communicator with a CTRL+ALT+S to hide the task bar. This combination toggles so a second time restores it.
02. SEARCH BY ZIP. In the location box of Netscape, enter ZIP followed by the zip code of a desired location. If it's a major city, the news, weather, sports, entertainment, and other such information
will be displayed in your browser. Even if not a major city, a number of links will likely be returned for that locale.
03. TAKE AIM ON AIM. Some 35 issues ago we heard complaints about that insidious little AOL Instant Messenger that pops up when you didn't invite it. Back then, it was suggested simply to right click
on the AIM icon in the taskbar, choose preferences, miscellaneous tab, and uncheck the box labeled "Start AIM when Windows Starts." That works, of course, but for those purists who resent providing disk space for this uninvited guest, do a file search on your hard drive for "aim" and delete both the AIM folder and the file LAUNCH.AIM and
that gives a permanent fix. Permanent, that is, until you reinstall or upgrade Netscape.
04. UPDATE WITH UPDATE. Updates.com is a free update service at
http://www.updates.com . To use their service, you must have cookies enabled and download a 1.2 meg Netscape plug-in (caution here, make sure to close your browser before installing the plug-in.)
After the preliminaries, Updates will analyze your entire system and tell you what software should be updated, even providing the link for downloading updates. It will also analyze hardware and gives tips for
improving performance.
05. TROUBLESHOOT NETSCAPE. The next time you get one of those cryptic
error messages in Netscape, have no idea what caused it, and even lessidea how to correct it, jump over to
http://w3.one.net/~alward/netscape.html where you'll find a very handy chart (worth printing out and sticking on your wall.)
06.Cindy Zins enjoyed my recent little treatise on virus warnings, chain letters, urban myths, and the like, and she
offered one more good resource on this, at http://www.snopes.com . A very entertaining site indeed.
If you like tips like these go to this web site
and subscribe.
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Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Vice-President Ross Jordan 457-4894
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Director Paul Mays, 219-626-2689
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Ed Danley, 453-7004
Group WWW site http://www.iquest.net/kokopc
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This Month’s User Bucks
Ed Danley $1
Jerry Henry $1
R. W. Coop $1
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Newsletter editor Jerry Henry
jhenry@netusa1.net 453-4144
Keep those articles coming in Word
Perfect, plain text, or Word. Notice this month I was really desperate near the end.
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