Meeting 26 Jun 2001



		Minutes of the Meeting held 7 August 2001


Rod B was "elected" chair and I was deemed to be note collator. 

32 people were in attendance and a later arrival (Alan) was there for
the first time. Herewith the list:

1. Canon 2000 cartridge holders - TonyS
I am having problems with the ink cartridge holder in a couple of
printers, in that if they are not used for a week or so, the ink
congeals in the print head and stops printing. A new holder with two
cartringes(Mandatory) costs $97 almost as much as a new printer. Tried
to soak with various fluids no go, does any one know where I can get
new holders without the cartridges. Machines are about 18 months old
and have not been run in yet.
Tony

2.a VB Course - R Gregory
2.b Booklet --- JohnA

3. Geocities - Jeff

4. Voice recognition "Astray Aliens" - Kevin
He spoke about a recent Canberra Times article. I quote from a follow
up article called Addendum published on Sat 4th August:

Addendum
by Jack Waterford
August 4 2001
I fully expect that our blooper this week with the astray aliens will
go around the globe. It's up there with the celebrated Age correction
which appeared under the headline, "We heard wrong", which confessed
that a reporter had misheard Lady Cilento's warning that consuming too
much Vitamin C could cause "loose motions", and instead wrote
"hallucinations".
Our mistake showed a new trap for young players: voice-recognition
technology, which allows a person to dictate rather than to type.
Voice-recognition technology has improved enormously over the years,
and current models can even learn the spellings of commonly used
proper names or some particular idiosyncrasies of the authors. A
problem is that it will usually have a stab rather than produce
gobbledegook when it does not understand.
In our case the writer, or dictator, was quoting the Prime Minister,
who had observed that most supporters of Pauline Hanson were average
Australians. It came out in the copy as average astray aliens, which
is what some might think of them. Indeed, given that the sentence
still scanned and that worse things have been said about Hansonites, I
could understand how even a diligent sub-editor might have missed it.
<...more>

5. 20 years on - MikeD

6. Word/DOS file on 5 1/4in floppy that will not open from Windows -
NigelW

7. Internet disconnection reminder - PaulH

8. Web access privacy - CharlieK
Charlie reported that as part of his search for a new home he had
registered with AllHomes.com and that involved providing name, address
and phone number.

From then on he received periodic e-mails from AllHomes whenever a
Real Estate agent added a home which met his criteria.   Those e-mails
contained web addresses of real estate agents and pointed to the
specific matching property.   He perused a few of these and was then
surprised to get a phone call from an Agent who said he had knew
Charlie had accessed a particular property and could he provide any
further assistance.

While there was no real issue with privacy Charlie found it surprising
that a web owner could identify that a specific individual had
accessed his site.

AllanM advised that this was usually achieved by providing a web
address (URL) within the e-mail which was unique to the individual to
which it had been mailed.  That address contained sufficient
information to allow AllHomes to identify when that person accessed
the site.

This is probably the same technique used by e-card sites such as Blue
Mountain to advise you when someone has viewed the card you sent to
them.

It's not a big issue, but one to remember whenever you provide
personal details to any site - you erode a little bit more of your
privacy.
===============

These were received by 5 pm Friday.

Thanks, Trevor


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