The original minutes have been edited to remove errrors

The first Internet SIG for the year was run by Alan Mikkelsen, a very
dedicated worker for TIP and the PCUG.

The SIG is run every second Monday, so the next one will be 1 Feb 1999.

Anyway, on to todays topics.

Viruses
During the Sydney-Hobart Yacht race, access to the Big Pond site required a
download of macromedia product, Flash. Was it safe to download this? The
answer on this occasions is YES, and the general principle is that if it is
a big and reputable firm or product, yes, if it is from
http://mystery.com/~slimejoe/ then it is suggested you think twice before
down loading.

Modems
Alan was looking for patterns to failures, there have been four changes to
TIP recently, 
The AS5300
56KFlex modems
V90 modems
An increase to 70 incoming lines.
Each change has wrought different failures. There is no pattern.

Mike Dinn bought a DU Meter which gave a visual representation of download
speeds. See http://www.hagel.threadnet.com/dumeter/download.htm  . It is a
marvelous distraction, and probably raises more questions than it answers.
One of the biggest limiting factors is the pipe outside. To get an
efficiency measure of TIP, download a big file off TIP itself, it should
take about 5.5 minutes per megabyte with a 28.8k modem. ( So what's your
maths like?)



Netiquette
Until recently, MS outlook express defaulted to sending HTML messages as
well as normal text messages. For 70% of the world that do not use the MS
internet mailer or newsreader, this is a real pain, demonstrating MS's
arrogance towards the Internet community. It CAN BE TURNED OFF.
Chess volunteered to do a "How To" to send to users of this MS bug.

Databases
Emil drew our attention to a recent CT article on medicine and the
Internet. Generally what you get on the Internet must be treated with a bit
of common sense. However, if you wish to pay for the information, there are
a number of databases of various types that you can access. Chess mentioned
that the Chiefly Library and NLA both subscribe to specialist databases the
you can access from terminals in their buildings at no cost to you.
Mike mentioned a list of medical resources that he gathered and made
available on the Net at http://www.pcug.org.au/~mdinn/bookmark.htm
(It has links to everything else. It is a massive collection)

Norton Utilities.
Either you sing their praises, or you don't, but one thing seems to be
certain, and that is not to use Norton Defragger with W98. Allow MS
defragger do the work for you. other Norton utilities are OK though with
W98.

And from www.iomega.com (although I couldn't find exactly where)there is a
freebie to turn your Zip drive into a rescue/system disk. get it now
because these freebies seem to disappear after a month or so.

So that was just a few notes from the gathering, lots of friendly talking,
questions and answers and  some new wild theories,  and after it was all
over, Chess demonstrated a number of internetty things using the Training
Room facilities.

I also wrote this down, but can't remember why
http://www.personalinvestment.com.au 

Remember, next meeting, Monday 1 Feb 99, and feel free to come along,
listen, contribute, or ask questions. Tea and coffee is available, and you
don't even have to wash up these days, there's a diswasher there !




Owen


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