Meeting 24 March 1998


 
Minutes of C&C Meeting 24 March 1998

Co-ordinator Alf welcomed all 40 attendees, including Mike Stack, who had
been invited to give a talk on training isolated students.

Jenny asked for confirmation about bank accounts being skimmed via the
Internet, where a credit card number can be generated although the account
holder has not given the card number over the Net.  Darrell said a program
to generate account numbers that conformed to standards for genuine card
numbers was freely available over the Net:  a number generated this way
could exist.  Even schoolchildren were using the program to generate
account numbers to join Ozemail for the seven days before that service
provider checked the account.  Ted suggested that you could establish a
low-sum dedicated account for ordering products via the Internet:  any
losses would be restricted.  He added that when paying in restaurants, your
card and signature could be photocopied; and that an enterprising Russian
hacker – now in jail, as Darrell noted – managed to steal $US23 million
from Citibank.  

Mike checks his account every day via the Net, but is not sure of the
charge for this.  Jim said that Hong Kong triads could break encryption in
24 hours; and that banks had lost very large sums through skimming.  Banks
were liable for losses after the first $50.  The Group wondered whether the
new intelligent cards would be more secure.  Alf thought it might be time
to go back to the barter system.

Mike Stack spoke about the Isolated Students' Education Program, a
volunteer network whose current objective is to raise Internet-literacy in
the outback, to ensure rural Australia does not fall behind the cities in
the use of communications technologies. 

The network, started in 1990, sends retired teachers as trainers to the
outback to deal with teaching overload within families that use the School
of the Air, and to give professional advice.  The scheme is backed by
Ballarat University and Country Music Muster, and provides $2 500 000 worth
of free teaching each year.  

The network aims to train 100 trainers over the coming year.  Volunteers
receive a 5-day course at Ballarat University (next courses:  July,
October, January) then do a six week tour of twelve properties which need
an Internet trainer.  Trainers need high-level computer skills.  Would-be
volunteers have to have a police check (cost refundable) to work with
children.

Keith, who with Marijke has been a volunteer for five years, has worked at
properties (some of them huge) in NT, NSW and Queensland.  He said
correspondence courses were slow, especially where mail is delivered once a
fortnight.  Internet-based teaching will greatly improve distance
education.  Gloria spoke of country children's enthusiasm for knowledge,
plus meeting frogs in the toilet and of the hundred-and-one different
gate-latches to be opened.  Darrell recalled helping Sarah Henderson to get
her Mac on line, and raised the question of telephone costs.  Difficulties
include having to keep calls to off-peak hours; and rationing the use of
generators.

Emil asked about equipment available.  Mike said the children tended to
have Word or Works plus Windows95.  Harvey Norman (warranty depots all over
the country) is marketing a very keenly priced hardware/software package
for the program.  

The Group expressed interest in the program, which as Darrell said,
typifies everything that's good about this country.  Contact George Murdock
at:  gmurdock@tpgi.com.au if you are interested in training to be an
Internet trainer under the scheme.

The meeting continued with Wolf reporting that the Group was $857.39 in
funds.

Mike, who at the last meeting volunteered to look into the cost of HP
cartridge refills, got a cartridge refilled for $30 at Discount Stationer's
Homeworld.  He thought this expensive.  On the Net, the BASF cartridge
costs US$215, ink is US$7.  Perhaps the Group should buy a refiller?  Ted
said that Dick Smith charges $10 for a Canon refill.  Anne's Tandy ribbon
costs $12 to be re-inked at Norman Ross.  It costs $7 to re-ink at a
Yarralumla operation.  Ken asked about the 800 HP series:  Mike has no
information.

Leigh has had occasion to try out Chess's advice about W95 maintenance
published in the tip.coffee-chat post of 18 February.  Leigh crashed his
computer after installing a three-finger mouse and software.  He removed
the mouse directory, then tried his emergency rescue disk and this worked
exceedingly well.  You need to transfer files from the rescue disk in DOS
mode.

Elizabeth wanted to know how to find out, before she deleted her Internet
cache, whether anything important might be there.  John suggested a special
program to enable her to check the cache, but Emil stressed that there was
nothing in the cache which she did not know about.  Elizabeth also offered
a Tandy printer, two years old, free to good home.

Jim's computer froze when he put back S3Verge Manager in straight DOS mode.
 Microsoft advised him to take off every program in turn to find out where
the problem was: it turned out to be S3Verge.  Microsoft then confessed
that some Verge programs won't work with Verge Manager.  Darrell said the
problem (which is one year old and reducing) is related to the S3 video
chip's incompatibility with many other programs.  The chips ($70) work well
but are a common source of conflicts.

Anne, who uses Fontshow to view all her fonts at once, asked about a
similar program for clipart.  Mike suggested Paintshop Pro, Jim Polyview.

Mike asked whether there was any program to store desktop icons' layout. 
Emil suggested EZdesk, which he also recommends for its ability to restore
previous icons when needed.  EZdesk costs $15.

Wolf raised the issue of desktop shortcuts to a group of folders, rather
than to one file.  The copies on D drive are out of date.  John suggested R
click on shortcut then target properties to see what's going on.

Wolf also asked about a spurious warning at startup, following his
installing DOS 8 over DOS 6.  Darrell suggested that somewhere in autoexec
the system is referencing DOS 6.  John agreed, and suggested stepping
through autoexec.bat one line at a time.  Emil suggested going to DOS,
typing "ver" to confirm that the version is indeed version 8.  Jim said the
source of the spurious message must be Norton Utilities v. 3.  The Group
agreed Wolf should bypass the message.

Ted has found a shortcut for pasting text files into email messages,
without leaving Eudora Pro.  This involves using the "load text file"
command from the file menu, click browse, click telex, find the file, click
select all, then copy and paste.  

Neville voiced his concern that some members of the Group may not be able
to access the minutes, posted on tip.coffee-chat.  Please advise
 if you know of any member being excluded.

Discussion was over time when Alf brought the meeting to a close.

JL 24/3/98 995

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I meant to mention this at this morning's meeting but we run out of
time.

There is a noteworthy deal for anyone who has a use or interest in
architectural, engineering, electrical or mechanical design. The cover
CDrom of a new computer magazine called "Australian PC@uthority"
(April 98) includes the fully functional copies of TurboCAD 2D/3D
version 3 absolutely free. 

These are superceded versions - the current versions are version 4.
Nonetheless, $4.95 for TurboCAD and the magazine is terrific.

The cover CDrom also includes many commercial demos and a
well-considered collection of shareware divided into 'Win95
Essentials', 'Desktop Essentials' and 'Internet Essentials'. It
includes the program mentioned by Mike Dinn this morning called
"EZDesk for Windows 95".

Emil Joseph



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