Terry B chaired the lively meeting, which was attended by 30 members.
Charlie reported that the Group's finances were in the black.
Rod B reported from the recent PCUG Committee meeting that the target date
for Broadband is 1st December. A newsletter is coming out soon, and more
information will soon be on the PCUG site. Rod asked us for ideas about
what tasks needed doing in PCUG and who is able to do those tasks (for
example, services for new members). Please contact Rod on
blackrod@ozemail.com.au.
Thanks to all members who contributed to these Final Notes:
1. CD Rom software: Terry B
Terry recommended www.cdwave.com software for splitting tracks when putting
data onto CD ROMs. Another useful piece of software, www.cdrfaq.com, has a
help file which tells you everything you ever wanted to know about CD ROMs.
2. Configuring the XP firewall - what are the settings: Peter Helm
Peter writes: I was motivated to ask about configuring the XP firewall by
the
difficulty I was encountering in accessing a password protected account
on the Internet provided by my stockbroker.
Using IE6 my access to and movement around the site has been slow -
taking up to two minutes to load the login page. Sometimes there has
been no access to the site, and the browser quite often hangs while
navigating around the site. I have not been able to access the account
at all using Netscape Navigator 6 or 7.
The organization operating the site is quite sure that it is not their
problem - frankly, I doubt it.
I have been trying to work out what (if anything) on my PC might be
impeding the flow of information or causing a time-out.
In discussion of the above it was suggested that:
1 - I set the privacy settings on the browser to 'low' allowing the free
inflow of cookies.
2 - I disable the XP firewall, replacing it with ZoneAlarm, copied down
from the net.
I have made the above changes, and enjoy the greater transparency that
ZoneAlarm provides, but note the significant increase in the time it now
takes for the operating system to shut down (about three minutes more).
On first impressions the above changes have not increased the speed of
interaction with the above site, however I am getting access to it and
it hasn't hung the browser yet.
There is still a question of how the TIP proxy server handles secure
communications and why some sites have difficulty communicating through
a proxy server.
3. *.doc and security: Jeff
Jeff C. reports:
For several years now I have been sending and receiving
Word documents as attachments to e-mail, both for Australian and
overseas addresses. This has been particularly convenient as an
alternative to using snail-mail. I was a little dismayed accordingly to
find a doc attachment on an e-mail blocked with the message "OE (Outlook
Express) removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your
mail: something.doc", and that furthermore a similar blocking had been
place on all docs attached to previous e-mail in my Inbox some of which
I had read and printed months ago.
The blocking was removed simply by Options/Security and
removing the tick in the box for "Do not allow attachments to be saved
or opened that could potentially be a virus". Presumably some upgrade
had put the tick in this box. So to revert to the facility of being to
receive doc attachments to e-mail I have removed this security check and
rely on Norton Antivirus 2003 for protection.
This simple story led to a surprising amount of
discussion, some I think due to inexperience with this use of doc
attachments to e-mail or with Norton Antivirus 2003. The security
blocking of doc attachments is due to the fact that viruses can be
transmitted this way in the form of macros. But suggestions for using
alternatives to simple doc files as attachments seem obviously
inappropriate to me since this would require the re-education and
conversion of all the people who are likely to want to send me docs in
the future.
For what it is worth both recent PC User and PC World magazines
give a top rating to Norton Antivirus 2003. This new version has a new
(uniqe?) facility for Worm Blocking as well as the routine checking of
incoming and outgoing e-mail and automatic updating of virus definitions
of previous editions.
Since I usually know and trust the senders of e-mail with
doc attachments I intend to continue to simply rely in Norton and to
regard the transmission of a virus in this way as very unlikely. I can
only agree however that it would be sensible to do a virus scan of a doc
attachment if I had any doubt about the sender. To do this however
requires the unblocking of the doc attachment so there is no way I am
going to put a tick in that box.
I also noted the suggestion to use www.mailwasher.com when
in doubt about an e-mail.
As someone commented about the discussion after this
session, this is what CnC is all about. I appreciated the comments even
if I did not find all helpful and I remain an enthusiastic member.
4. Three funnies: Ken M
Ken writes: Computers are funny things, and no more funny than mine after I
have
finished fiddling with it. Not that I ever cease.
First funny. Lost the space to enter the URL in MS Internet Explorer. Had
to rollback five days to get it back. C&C advised it was my fiddling that
caused it and gave possible solutions. I've forgotten already what the
reasons and solutions are.
Second funny. My DVDROM drive would not read DVD's after reinstalling Win
XP. I have a program, PowerDVD, which when loaded would not activate until
the DVDROM drive was opened and closed. I downloaded a similar trial
program but before I installed it PowerDVD started working but still would
not read DVD's. Uninstalled PowerDVD and without it the the DVDROM drive
now reads DVD's. This is as it should be as WinXP, my operating system, is
supposed to do this without second party programs.
Third funny. Agent would load under Netspeed but would not work, having a
message at the top to say "Not responding". It was OK under WebOne. Suddenly
started to work, perhaps after I rolled back for MS IE.
5. Unlimited Internet.com ISP: Charlie
6. ACTEW-AGL contact needed: Ted T
7. "Seven Good Men" Pagemaker, Photoshop: Alan V
Alan writes: I had just got a CD with above handwritten info, and about 52
files on it
with names like "berts drawing" "jims school photo" no extension etc.
All comprised stuff an 80yo acquaintence of SO was trying to access as part
of local history research ("I think it might have been written on a
Macintosh").
I asked for ideas on how to try and read it/convert for her to read without
above products. During meeting Owen verified that IrfanView would read at
least
some of the files, which were GIF and TIF structure.
I acquired and installed Irfanview [www.irfanview.com] that
afternoon -- at time of writing, about 4 of 7 files I've looked at were
read OK (and I saved as BMP for easier viewing by other products), others
were "Can't read file header! Unknown file format!".
My guess is the readable ones are from Photoshop, the others from
Pagemaker. Guess next step is to find a copy of Pagemaker, or something
else which can read files from it.
Then the logistics - end user is in Mt Wilson! [400km away]
[And I should have installed IrfanView years ago!]
8. Sad story of using McAfee in network: Philip B
9. Apostrophe changing to cedilla in wrting O'C: Rob C.
Rob writes: Thanks to all who contributed ideas.
Upon experimenting I found that other foreign language characters were also
available.
The solution turned out to be quite simple. The input language default was
set to: "English (Australian) - US - International" and changing it to
"English (Australian) - US" fixed the problem.
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