It is amazing what a monopoly can do to -- such as Microsoft.
Recently, I went out on the Internet and had a number of companies bid to sell me a copy of Windows XP Pro. I had been told that I needed to buy at least a motherboard if I was going to get the OEM price so I looked around on that site and decided that I could purchase a $22 motherboard, make a Frisbee out of the motherboard and still be ahead. In practice, I did obtain a $90 hard drive to meet the criterion.
Evidently too may people found out of this method, and so Microsoft, on January 4, 2002, informed all of its OEM suppliers that to sell a copy of Windows XP, the vendor had to sell an entire computer.
Now, that's clout!
As an example, if you want to put a different engine into your car, the Monopolist says that is illegal because it is outside of the contract, and you have to buy a new car! That's really monopolistic CLOUT!
The lineup of Speakers for the next four months is as follows:
SPAM control options are popping up repeatedly these days. My case I consider typical and so I will describe how I keep the SPAM to one or two a week.
The first thing I do is install Norton Anti-Virus and set it up to run automatically daily to update the data and about an hour later, scan the computer -- all automatically.
Spaminator by Earthlink was activated. This catches about 40 SPAM each three-week period.
In addition, a filter within Eudora is activated and fed by the filter criteria located at the Kim Komando site.
And finally, what SPAM does trickle through is reported, without fail, to SPAMCOP.
We anticipate that Milt Kostner will have had his first Images SIG by the time you read this. Further reports will be set forth.
Present: Jim Dinkey, John Sleeman, Dick Delp, Stan Hutchings.
January and February speakers are scheduled. All future months are open. Microsoft would be good, if we could arrange it; also IBM, Intel, AMD, Linux.
We want to add "First Class" to the mailing page of the Newsletter. Is it possible to barcode them? This may get us a discount and improve deliverability.
www.ebatts.com sent the club computer battery. Other battery sources include APC, Sony, Panasonic, 1-800batteries, etc.
There will be a new SIG, the Digital Imaging SIG. Milt Kostner will host and sponsor.
Computer Recycling is still at 2971 Meade Avenue, Santa Clara. Other sources are given at www.crc.org
Club CD programs proposed to demo: Ad Aware, Zone Alarm, RegClean.
Election: Officers and other positions opened for nominations. The slate of nominees selected by the Board was announced. There were no further nominations. The nominations were closed and the nominees elected by affirmation.
Milt Kostner gave a demonstration of a device he made to convert 35-mm slides to digital JPG images. He used a Sony Mavica with a 3x lens and macro capability mounted in a frame to hold a fluorescent light, camera and slide.
The Club CD for late 2001 was announced. Regclean is one of the more useful utilities included. StartUpCop allows assigning which programs start (and which do not) at boot-up.
Bug Toaster is not on the disk. By installing their free software you will be contributing data about your computer crashes with other crashes around the world. The crash data is analyzed by software developers using revolutionary technology and rare expertise. Join computer users, software developers, and IT professionals from around the world; working together to eliminate computer crashes.
There is a holiday party scheduled for 6 PM Tuesday 11 December at the Elks Lodge.
If you get a virus, go to the Symantec site and get the virus eradicator. There are downloads for specific viruses. You may have to use another computer, if the infected one is not operational. Jim prefers Symantec antivirus.
SPAM. Earthlink uses Spaminator to prevent spam from reaching users. Other ISPs provide similar services. Komando.com referenced an add-on to use with Eudora. If you get spam, feed it to SpamCop. If you sign up for lots of "freebies" on the internet, expect spam; but if you give a "trash can" email address, the spam will go there. Use a free account at Hotmail or Netzero.
SENDMAIL can be used as an email forwarding account; it will forward mail to an address you specify. This allows you to change your email address without having to notify your correspondents that your address is changed - they continue to send it to SENDMAIL, which forwards it to you. POBOX.com provides a similar service. Either would be free alternatives to buying your own domain name.
Nancy DiBaccari of MicroCenter was the speaker. MicroCenter is located off 101 near the Great America Parkway/Bowers exit in the Mercado Shopping Center. The address is 3255 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara. microcenterorder.com is being developed as MicroCenter's web presence. For special bargains, look for "Clearance Merchandise", which is returned and repackaged goods; "Refurbished" is older, phased out goods that are still under factory warranty. "Lunch and Learn" seminars are available on many topics; they are about one hour, usually on Saturday, and are free. powerspec.com has information and specifications on their house brand computers.
Attendees: Robert Mitchell, Jim Dinkey, Dick Delp, Marvin Kraft, Bev Altman, John Buck, Kendrick Smith, Susan Mueller, John Sleeman, Mildred Kohn, Stan Hutchings.
A new Imaging SIG under the guidance of SPAUG and SVCS joined the Internet at www.svcs.org/SVCSImaging.html. Please check it out. Note that the first meeting will be Monday 21 January at 7 PM, at Milt Kostner's house, but steps are being taken to accommodate more than the 8 expected from the original SPAUG inquiry. So far, Nancy DeBiccari General Manager of MicroCenter, has indicated that facilities might be available . The SIG requires computer and projection facilities. Any help will be welcomed. The first part of the meeting will cover organization and future subjects. The SIG plans to cover subjects such as digital photography, scanning, image editing, image management and printing, including buying equipment. The membership is expected to cover from Newbies to Old Hands.
Milt Kostner
530 Meadow Ave click for map
Santa Clara, CA 95051
408-243-7726
svcs.org.hosting.pacbell.net/SVCSImaging.htm
We have received a wake-up call from Milt Kostner who is asking the question of why we are not bigger and not providing the sort of services that HAL in Texas is providing? The site www.hal-pc.org is their means of communicating. You are requested to take a look at it and let me know what you think. For instance, the financials are different with assets running about $0.7 million and a gross of about 1.1 million; about 100 times the size of ours.
SVCS is probably the most closely allied in size, but is still smaller than the Texas outfit; and we are more computing intensive here in Silicon Valley.
Are we missing the boat? Do we even care about the boat? Do we have the interest to build the boat?
Please let me know of your thoughts.
- Jim Dinkey
Two years ago, when I was a new member, I wrote a piece that was published in our October 99 newsletter: www.pa-spaug.org/News99/News9910.htm#News5 -- commenting on the matter of SPAUG's size and growth. Basically, it said we had to decide what sort of organization we wanted SPAUG to be--small and somewhat intimate (as we currently are) or large and somewhat impersonal (like HAL in Texas).
Since I wrote that piece, our website has been improved tremendously--both in appearance and in usefulness. The newsletter? Well, after a year of what I thought were improvements, I returned it to the format I inherited--with no negative comment on the change back, so I guess people like that format.
HAL isn't the only large PC club out there. One whose newsletter looked good to me is the Los Angeles Computer Society--a PDF version of their newsletter is available online. When I counted the number of contributors in that club--SIG leaders, newsletter staff, officers, etc., I counted about sixty--which is almost our whole membership! PC Clubhouse in the East Bay reports 300 members. Here's one place to learn about computer club/user groups.
-- John Buck
I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in its simplicity. I did the following simple step to my address book to protect my friends' e-mail from viruses, so now it's your turn to protect me.
As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your email address book and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friend and associates. This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert to the fact that a worm has gotten into your system.
Here's what you do:
Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the "name" !000 will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends, but when it tries to send itself to !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered (WormAlert). If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected. Here's the second great advantage of this method: if an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can take steps to get rid of it!
Kinko's offers a free CD for making basically fake [Adobe Acrobat] PDF files. If you use it and make one, their software can read it. They will use that CD to create your print job. If you take a disk in, ask them to make a PDF file from Adobe software, they will charge you about ten bucks.
In keeping with watching your wallet for you, let me tell you where we get the SPAUG newsletter printed now. Lockheed Martin & Missile in Sunnyvale, near the blue cube, has a huge print shop and they will do outside commercial jobs very cheap. If your organization is tax exempt with the IRS and you can prove it they will charge no tax. They have all sorts of paper there. They do a nice job and are very pleasant. Email me at for the contact person.
I will bring some of the Kinko's CDs to a future meeting as a convenience.
Walt Varner passed away on the morning of January 10, 2002.
Walt was our treasurer for eight years and an ardent supporter of SPAUG. During his association with us, he:
At this time I do not know more than this. Look in the local papers or other sources for further information.
For a couple of years now, I have been using Microsoft's Expedia Streets & Trips 2000 software that came with Microsoft Works Suite 2000 package. The program worked ok, but I had problems with it crashing and the routes it picked weren't always the most accurate. If an evaluation version of their new release is available, then I would want to try it out to see if it was better. Using Mapquest, I didn't have these problems. The way Mapquest picked is a variation of the route I actually use, but at least it didn't pick a way that doesn't work.
The biggest nicety is that with Mapquest, one doesn't have to buy anything except internet access and a computer to use it on. The information used in this website is always up-to-date and doesn't require constant upgrading by the user, by having either to buy new versions of the program every once in a while, or to download updates from Microsoft. Another thing I like about the Mapquest website is that it isn't tied to anything Microsoft, so you have freedom to choose. Any map that you plot driving directions for, can be then downloaded to Mapquest's Palm Application along with the data you selected to your hard drive, then load it onto your Palm Pilot via the Palm Hotsync. The download button is on top of the map display. I like this, because I am not tied to Microsoft anything and as a matter of fact this program is only available for the Palm and one has to go through extra hoops to get version to run on Pocket PC platform, by downloading software from website. Finally it is the other way around, this time.