| April 2002 | Issue 239 |
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - APR 13 th
Who's into YOUR stuff?
As the minutes show, we took the majority of the last meeting on Q&A and shortchanged the main subject a bit. However, since there is an awful lot to the subject of Internet Security, we can devote some more quality time to that area this time round. So, we'll start things off with covering any special announcements, then jump immediately to the main topic.
First, we will devote some time to clearing up any questions on installing or using the two utilities that we installed at the last meeting: "Norton Anti-Virus v5" and "Zone Alarm v2.6.362" firewall. That will include the question, "why do you need/want a firewall anyway? And, if you are using Windows XP, why get a 3rd party firewall, since it has its own?
Second, I'd like to foster some general discussion on experiences, good or bad or problems, with using security software. That would mean either of the above - or similar products from other vendors. With the bumper crop of "malicious code" going around, surely some MLCUG members have gotten bit! This should be your chance to get and/or give help; so don't be shy! Bring those questions and experiences...
Third, how about some input on better helping our new/novice companions?
This is something I got recently and feel that all users of the net should pay close attention. So, please read this, before you send out things to other people. Everyone is getting enough spam already. Don't forward it on to others. [originally posted by Don Patridge on the ClarisWorks listserv]
From: Dawn D'Angelillo
Subject: Eds Up! #207
Last week, I wrote about Internet hoaxes and chain letters in another newsletter, and it was so well received that I decided to rerun it in "Eds Up!" [cont'd.]
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WELCOME ! - to two new members for MLCUG: Frank Gannon of Haverford and Jack Ryan of Wyndmoor.
We hope they will take part in our meetings and join in the learning, and helping, we try to
do.
TRENTON COMPUTER FESTIVAL - the TCF 2002 will be held on May 4-5 at the NJ
Convention Center in Edison NJ. The full bulletin is reproduced on p.7-8. Any MLCUG member who
attends is urged to take notes, written or mental, and tell us about it at the May meeting.
Perhaps, even writeup a short summary of the key happenings for the newsletter - hint?
NEW/NOVICE USERS - your steering committee is seeking member input on how we can better help the
N/N members of MLCUG. It's not always convenient, or possible, to have the time during a
presentation to fill in ALL the knowledge gaps amongst ALL the attendees. As a result, we know
there are questions folks come away with from the meetings. How might we best approach filling
that gap? If you have any suggestion(s), please bring them up at meetings (the sooner, the
better) or get them to a committee member (see p.9 for names).
LUNCH - a half dozen or so of the regular attendees, usually tackle lunch at the Villanova Diner
after the meeting. Why not join us? It is a good time to get a little more help (or give it)
and just to have fun talking about our common interests. The food is really pretty good, too.
As I was beginning to write this newsletter, I received an e-mail warning of dire effects from a
particular virus. Since the e-mail mentioned Macs as being affected, I became particularly
nervous. The e-mail warning encouraged the reader to pass the warning on to everyone on his or
her address list. This sounded like a good idea. Shouldn't I warn people? I started to think
of the thousands of e-mail addresses I have. I would be saving so many people from a tragic
end. That's when my co-marketer, Tom, sent along a notice that the warning was false.
I'm the type of person who breaks every single chain letter I've ever received. In the "old
days," chain letters were sent by mail. It was easier to throw the letter away than to think of
ten people and their addresses, find envelopes, buy stamps, etc. But with e-mail, passing on
information takes an instant. It's almost easier to pass on the information to others than it
is to process it. You probably have received numerous hoaxes from well-meaning friends and
family and perhaps have passed them on. Perhaps you still worry about the message -- threats of
kidneys being stolen or sunscreen causing blindness or a dying child who needs help.
Tom pointed me in the direction of a site that tracks Internet/e-mail hoaxes, called the CIAC of
the DOE. Translated out of government speak, this is Computer Incident Advisory Capability of
the Department of Energy site. It's true that hoaxes don't really cause damage, but they are
still time-consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist. Hoaxes and
chain letters just add to the amount of information that we try desperately to keep up with each
day. In a sense, they overload the people who read them as well as the mail servers that send
them along.
How to Recognize a Hoax
The first sign of a hoax is a request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of
that statement. This should raise a red flag that the warning message is probably a hoax. No
real warning message from a credible source will tell you to send it to everyone you know.
Next, look at what makes a successful hoax. There are two known factors that make a successful
hoax:
Recognizing a Chain Letter
Chain letters and most hoax messages have a similar pattern. From the older printed letters to
the newer electronic kind, they all have three recognizable parts:
First, there is a hook to catch your interest and get you to read the rest of the letter. Hooks
used to be "Make Money Fast" or "Get Rich" or similar statements related to making money for
little or no work. Electronic chain letters also use the "free money" type of hooks, but have
added hooks like "Danger!" and "Virus Alert" or "A Little Girl Is Dying." These tie in to our
fear for the survival of our computers or our sympathy for some unfortunate person.
The Threat
When you are hooked, you read on to the threat. Most threats used to warn you about the
terrible things that will happen if you do not maintain the chain. However, others play on
greed or sympathy to get you to pass on the letter. The threat often contains official or
technical sounding language to get you to believe it is real.
The Request
Finally, the request. Some older chain letters ask you to mail a dollar to the top ten names on
the letter and then pass it on. The electronic ones simply admonish you to "Distribute this
letter to as many people as possible." They never mention clogging the Internet or the fact that
the message is a fake, they only want you to pass it on to others.
Only the original writer knows the intent of the hoax -- perhaps to inundate someone with e-mail
or to just see how far the letter will go. So before you join in and send along a message to
thousands, take a moment to think about the validity of the message. Imagine that you had to
find 10 envelopes, buy stamps, and address the letters to your friends ... would you still send
along the mail?
Here's a scam that sends you to a porn site:
Lions Den virus
The hoax/spam appears to come from "Dave Norton, VirusCenter@CNN.com." It claims "CNN brings
you information on the new devastating computer virus known as the 'Lions Den' virus. This
virus is reported to be costing internet providers such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Earthlink
millions of dollars due to loss of members."
The e-mail then provides a link "for more details and information on how you can protect your
computer." Anyone gullible enough to want to know more will go directly to a porn site.
The hoax/spam appears to come from CNN to make it look more legitimate. It's just the latest
attempt by an unscrupulous person to exploit the value of computer virus hysteria.
Here are some sites where you can find out more about hoaxes, chain letters, urban legends, and
e-mail scams (looking through the list, I know that I have seen almost all of them in some
format and I'll admit that I believed a lot of them!).
Are you a music buff? Do you play music CDs on your computer? Do you use the Windows Media
Player 8? If so, have you checked the "privacy policy"?
If you do, you'll likely find that the names of the songs you play and, also, the movies you
watch with WMP are being logged by Microsoft. To quote an AP release about a month ago, "the
system creates a list on each computer that could be a treasure for marketing companies, lawyers
or others." It goes on to say that "Microsoft says it has no plans to sell the data collected
by Media Player 8, which comes free with the Windows XP operating system."
Microsoft did change its privacy policy to indicate that the information is being collected.
Period. Now doesn't that make you much more comfortable?
Emil Volcheck is looking for 2-3 smaller hard drives - in the size range of 2 GB minimum to 8 GB
max, for some older PCs he's upgrading. If anyone has something to offer, please call at 610-
388-1581. Or, if you know a possible source for same.
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We had 14 attendees for March's meeting, after the stragglers made it in.
We had to report that three regulars are unable to make it due to illness or other physical
limitations: Charles Curran, Hines Mathews and Chauncey Westbrook.
After a few announcements, we started round the table and spent nearly 1.5 hours on questions
and problems (solving some of the latter, we hope). The bulk of the problems that attendees
brought up related to email and internet browsers. They covered different browsers, different
ISPs and different website behavior. We'll have to try to make some order out of it all to
figure out how to address so many problems, lots of which keep cropping up.
The main meeting topic related to on-line security - which seems to be looming as an ever-larger
problem infesting more and more users. Because of the fairly long discussion, we were barely
able to install a couple of tools; but NOT cover a lot about their use. Hopefully, we can do
that next time.
Recently, we started using the Windows 98 SE partition (instead of our long standing Win 95B) on
the club machine - as a result of this change, we had a fairly pristine OS to work with; so:
Q. Is there an upper limit to the size of the hard drive that Windows 98 or 98 SE can handle?
It seems I've seen on the back of some hard drive packages that 20 Gigs is the limit for 98 and
30 Gigs for 98SE.
A1. Charles, this support page at Western Digital should answer your questions with the
limitations of Windows 98 SE.
http://support.wdc.com/tips/index.asp?tip=69& font>amp;static=y
A2. According to this article, which was written back when 95B was just coming out, the limit
is at 2 TB, that is "Terabytes" with FAT32.
Operating System limitation
With the increase in disk drive size, there is another limitation that affects the user that
cannot be corrected by updating the BIOS. This is due to an inherent limitation within the
operating systems. The most widely used are Windows 3.x and Windows 95. Most versions of these
operating systems only support a maximum partition size of 2.1 GB. This means that drives over
2.1 GB will have to be partitioned into several logical drives, C:, D:, and so on. So, 8.4 GB
drives will require at least 4 logical drives.
Microsoft has provided an extended file system support as a solution. They have increased the
addressing bits in the File Allocation Table (FAT) from 16 bits (FAT16) to 32 bits (FAT32) which
allows for much larger logical drive sizes, up to 2.2 TB. Unfortunately, the new extended file
system is only supported in the very latest versions of Windows 95, called OSR2.x. This release
of the Windows operating system is only being offered directly through system manufacturers and
is not sold to the general public for upgrading current systems.
To check if a version of Windows 95 supports the extended file system (FAT32), select:
What's the next limitation?
The next limitation with the ATA interface should occur at 137 GB. (Some systems and operating
systems may encounter other unforeseen limitations before this.) At 137 GB, the 28 bits of
addressing on the ATA bus run out. Some possible solutions for this problem follow:
1. The ATA's Feature Register could be used to add an additional 8 bits giving 28+8=36 or 35.2
TB of addressable space.
2. The size of each sector could be increased. For example, a sector size of 4096 bytes would
increase the maximum size of the drives to 2.2 TB.
3. The industry could switch to a completely different interface. The IEEE 1394 interface
("Firewire") is the most likely candidate and may gain popularity before one of the other
options needs to be implemented.
The following article by our old friend, Reid Goldsborough, appeared in the Business Section of
The Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday, March 18, 2002. I thought it might be a good article under
the heading above.
[submitted by Martin W. Caulfield]
How to learn what every PC user needs to Know
Research has shown that those who are least comfortable with computer technology have the least
knowledge of it. Those who have undergone training or taught themselves are less stressed and
are better able to take advantage of PCs. Makes sense.
Even experts don't know all the tricks. What follows are the ways -- some common sense, some
not -- for beginners, as well as advanced users to bone up on personal computers.
Read the manual: Hardware and software manuals are better and shorter than they used to be.
Most people still don't read them. Taking a few minutes to at least browse through the manual
can save a lot of time later.
Go through the tutorial: Many programs include teaching aids that hold your hand in learning
basic procedures. Another option is to buy a third-party tutorial on video or CD-ROM. Video
tutorials are better if you're a beginner and are uncomfortable in using a computer in the first
place. CD-ROM tutorials let you interactively try out what you are learning. Top tutorial
makers include KeyStone Learning Systems (800-748-4838) and MacAcademy/Windows Academy (800-527-
1914).
Use the online help system: Some software companies offer "intelligent agents" that
automatically offer help in carrying out tasks. While useful for beginners, these help
assistants can grate over time. Fortunately, you can turn them off. Using a program's help
system manually, by browsing through the contents or launching a search, can be a great way to
get up to speed on your terms.
Check Out the Manufacturer's WEB site: You can often find answers there to your commonly asked
questions along with other tips and software downloads. Web sites are usually listed in manuals
or as part of the help system. You can also find links to thousands more computer manufacturers
at the Guide to Computer Vendors.
Explore third-party WEB sites: You'll find free advice and software updates at sites such as
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, Macintosh Watering Hole, and Internet 101.org. Yahoo
lists other popular computer help sites in its Technical Guides and Support section.
Subscribe to a computer magazine: Magazines offer lots of well-written, well-organized tips,
reviews and commentary for beginners and experts alike. Sample those that look interesting by
picking up newsstand copies. If you find one that talks to you, subscribe. Some computer
magazines are a bit too fervid, enticing you to buy the latest and the greatest, though it's not
difficult to filter this out.
Buy a computer book: If your computer came with its manual on a disk and you would like
something more tangible, or if you are dissatisfied with the quality of a manual, a computer
book can be a good solution. But browse through any book before you buy it. Some computer books
are put together hastily so they can be published when a program is released.
Take a Class: Being able to ask questions, and listening to the answers to others' questions can
aid the learning process. Classes are offered through local Y's, high school evening programs,
community colleges, universities, computer stores, and computer training organizations. The
"Computer-Training" section of your local yellow pages has particulars.
Hire a Tutor: One-on-one training is more expensive than classroom training, but the personal
attention can be worth it. Personal recommendations are best, but tutors are also listed under
"Computer- Training" in the yellow pages. You can also find a tutor by contacting the
Independent Computer Consultants Association (800-774-4222). At the group's Web site, you can
search for tutors by geographic area and expertise.
Join a COMPUTER USER GROUP! These volunteer groups abide by the principle "users helping users".
User groups typically meet once a month, and members, or sometimes guests, give presentations on
new products or how to use existing products. During the rest of the month, members often
volunteer to take questions by phone or e-mail from fellow members. You can search for a user
group near you at the WEB site of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups. Personal
computers can be amazing tools in helping you be efficient and productive. The key to making a
PC work for you is learning to best take advantage of it.
On the Web:
Meetings are in the St. Augustine Center at Villanova University. The regular monthly sessions
will be meeting in Room 110.
Enter from the ITHAN AVENUE main gate, then proceed to the 2-level parking building adjacent to
St. Augustine, on the Ithan Avenue side of the building.
NOTE: maps on our webpage - http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/
April 13 April 17
May 11 May 15
June 8 June 12 **
* = first Saturday ** = second Wednesday at Tom Johnson's home
***************************************************************************************
EDITOR: Emil J. Volcheck, Jr. 1046 General Allen Lane West Chester, PA 19382-8030
(Produced with C-128D/SCPU 128, RAMlink, HD-40/85, 1571, FD-4000, THE WRITE STUFF 128, XETEC
Super Grafix, Canon BJ-200ex, Swiftlink and Motorola 288 modem)
MLCUG BBS: 610-828-1359 ( 300 --> 33600 bps ), 24 hr/day
WWW: http://astro4.ast.vill.edu/mlcug/
PUBLICITY: Robyn Josephs 610-565-4058
DISK ORDERS: Charlie Curran 610-446-5239
VILLANOVA SPONSOR: Prof. Frank Maloney, Dept. of Astronomy
MLCUG STEERING COMMITTEE:
PRESIDENT: Emil Volcheck 610-388-1581 SECRETARY: Charles Curran 610-446-5239
TREAS/MEMBERS: Dewitt Stewart 610-623-5145 SYSOP/AMIGA SIG: John Deker 610-828-7897
INTERNET/Linux:Peter Whinnery 610-284-5234 DATABASE: Layton Fireng 610-688-2080
AT LARGE: Tom Johnson 610-525-3440 AT LARGE: John Murphy 610-935-4398
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
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INTERNET HOAXES - from p.1
For example, the hoax that I received had contact information from someone at IBM. However, in
closer examination, the contact info didn't have an area code for the phone number. Doesn't
everyone sending e-mail know that the receiver might not know the area code for the sender's
city?
The Hook
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HoaxBustersHome.html
http://www.vmyths.com/
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.breakthechain.org/
MUSIC ON YOUR PC ??
WANTED!
LAST MONTH'S PC/128/64 MEETING
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That wound up the meeting - next time we can, hopefully, spend some time on discussing folk's
experience and questions about these aspects of security. I further hope folks will bring up
MORE security-related topics to round out the subject.
SMART COMPUTING
Q&A Of The Day: March 18, 2002
-START -> SETTINGS -> CONTROL PANEL
-Double click on the SYSTEM icon
-Look under GENERAL
-If SYSTEMS PROPERTIES shows:
*4.00.950b - This version supports
the extended file system (FAT32)
*4.00.950 or 4.00.950a - version
only supports FAT16
Windows 98 should be able to support FAT32, but this is dependent on how Microsoft intends to
release it. Microsoft may choose to release a FAT32 version only to system manufacturers and
offer a FAT16 version for sale to end users as a system upgrade.
NEW & NOVICE MEMBERS
www.keystonelearning.com/
www.macacademy.com
guide.sbanetweb.com
www.winsupersite.com
mac.map.com
www.internet101.org
dir.yahoo.com/Computers
www.icca.org
database.apcug.org/database/loclist.asp
DIRECTIONS FOR ST. AUGUSTINE CENTER MEETING ROOM
64/128/PC/Amiga Meetings 2002 Steering Committee Meetings