CyberCoyote -- November 17, 2005

NEWS

We held our November business meeting today. On 10/31/05, our funds were $2,262.82. That's a lot of twos, but not that many commas. :-) We looked at what we spent last season, and the projected income and outgo for this season. We have about $1,500 identified for a new computer plus other supplies and equipment, and $1,000 for other expenditures.

No funds are committed at this time though. The highlight of the meeting was formation of the nominating committee, who will present a slate of candidates in January. We'll vote on officers in Feburary. Now's the time to start your campaign if you want a shot at a top spot. :-)

NOTES and NOTICES

Mark Haley, of MyPCTalks, will lead a discussion of the DVD, FireWire and USB technology used by experts to create DVDs. MyPCTalkshas been in business for over 15 years and has developed multimedia products for both the consumer and corporate markets. Learn from a firm that creates amazing travel DVDs how to avoid buying outdated technology.
http://www.azacc.org/Speakers/dec_speaker.htm -- announcement http://www.mypctalks.com/ -- website

TIPS and TOPICS

George Jester demonstrated what you can do with Microsoft Trips and Streets, Street Atlas, Trailer Life maps and more. It's amazing how many answers you can get for your travel questions using these resources, particularly in conjunction with GPS.
http://www.tldirectory.com/index.cfm -- Trailer Life directory
http://www.delorme.com/ -- Street Atlas and GPS
http://www.microsoft.com/streets/default.mspx -- Streets and Trips
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20051109.html -- Walt Mossburg on mapping services

SECURITY

If you play Sony (music) CDs on your computer, you'll want to check to see if Sony (BMG) has installed a "rootkit" (and remove it if necessary). "Rootkit" is the name for one kind of stealth software. It hides its presence from the computer user. Sony's is not malicious, but it makes your computer vulnerable to hidden installation of other software that would be malicious. There is a *ton* of information on the Internet about this dirty trick. (Does not effect ordinary CD players though.)
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=927 -- don't use Sony's uninstaller
http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware/archive/2005/11/12/414299.aspx -- Microsoft's fix
http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=1633 -- PC Doctor has more

INTERNET

More on Web 2.0 by one of the best PC program developers in the world (now doing Web programming as well). One of his blog entries is an example of the ongoing conversations about Web 2.0.
http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/web_201_its_a_m.html

After all these years, I may be spoiled. :-) I switched to Comcast (cable) from dial-up last summer, and my connection speed went from 28.8K to 7M (7,000K). Thats nearly 250 times as fast! A webpage loads in about a second, and a typical program downloads in a few seconds at that speed. That let me subscribe to Rhapsody (streaming music), which I'm enjoying immensly.

Basic DSL here at HT is 256K, which is not quite fast enough for Rhapsody. No problem. Since I now expect instant gratification, :-) I upgraded to Kiva's 1M (1,000K) option, which is almost 4 time Rhapsody needs. It's well worth $29.95 per month (vs $19.95) to me. It's a heck of a deal compared to cable.

DIVERSION

"Greatest Internet Moments" (Click the images in the right-hand column to see the content.)
http://www.aolwatch.org/100/

Deal with your wild mood swings. For example, feeling rushed for time?
http://cybercoyote.org/url/144.html -- feeling rushed
http://www.wildmoodswings.co.uk/ -- 140 more moods

Conflict of interest?
http://vote.comicalert.com/wizardofid/140030