The MacMAD N ew s l e t t e r

Volume XVIII, Issue V November 19, 2003 What's Happening In MacMad Jim Staal, President Did you like the NanoBits for- to see if they would stay with us ously made some income from mat? This is the postcard-sized if the issues are just online. swap meets when members newsletter that we sent out last Costs and budget are an issue donated items or shared sales month. We really did not start as we try to move forward as a with the group. Swap meets out to reduce the newsletter to Macintosh Users Group. We are have gotten very little interest this size. It happened that sev- presently in the process of lately, so this source has dried eral Board members had family acquiring a new MUG computer. up. We need another method of emergencies or similar circum- The old iMac was sold awhile gaining revenue from the items stances, so no one could produce ago, since it was just too big to that people are willing to even the one page version. store and transport. Our new donate. I still receive offers from Cammie and Spence came up computer will be an iBook. members and others, but we with this format and rescued the A p p l e ’s timing of the latest currently have no way to act on publication totally missing the upgrades was great. They these. month. bumped the iBooks to G4 just as One possibility is using e-Bay We are now back to the usual we were about to make the pur- to sell these items. If any of our routine of alternating full chase, so we will have a G4 Mac members are e-Bay sellers or MacBits and one-sheet version. I and a good bit more left in the know of someone who is we would like to know your opinion budget than if we had purchased would like to discuss this possi- of the postcard size. If enough a PowerBook. bility. It could range from simply members are willing to read The next item that we need is putting a few donated items up MacBits online, and the others our own projector. Connecting for sale to helping members sell only want a reminder of the Point has been very generous in their own items, hopefully with meetings, we could use the lending theirs, and the a portion being donated to NanoBit format. Melbourne Library does have an MacMad. The newsletter is our major older one. However, having our We can also increase our rev- routine expense. Every issue own MUG projector gives us bet- enue by selling more ads. This is mailed costs first class postage, ter availability for use in Special a good time to talk to any busi- plus printing. On the other Interest Group (SIG) meetings, nesses that you know or happen hand, it produces out advertis- training and alternate locations. to be in and see if they would be ing revenue, about our only As I mentioned before, our interested. If they are, give one income other than dues. We main sources of revenue are of the Board members a quick have not yet polled advertisers dues and advertising. We previ- call or e-mail and we will follow Continued on page 2 Inside This Issue What’s Happening In MacMAD ...... 1,2 Book Reveiw OS X 2nd Edition ...... 4 Hackers,Viruses, the Mac and OS X ...... 5,6,7 Specials,Contest,Learning More About Your Mac 2,3 Classifieds ...... 7 About Last Meeting . Member’s Helping Members,3 Meetings ...... 8 interesting program on how offer some of the titles for free. Visit MacBits on the Web! Florida Tech is using the Mac to These are usually about the basics We are now posting MacBITS develop educational presenta- of the operating systems, or one of tions. This is an outgrowth of the the applications such as on the www.macmad.org website! work that has been done over the Ap p l e W orks. Other titles range in Click on files,sign in using your name years in the Marine Biology area. price from a few dollars to around and password,click on newsletters and I’m looking forward to seeing $100 apiece. Some also offer a select the issue of choice. Use Adobe you at the meetings. Bring a car- yearly or monthly membership Acrobat Reader Plug-in with your load of Mac friends. that give you the right to down- favorite web browser to read.This is a load as many titles as you wish during the period. Almost all of the fr ee download fro m www.adobe.com Learning More companies offer at least a preview of the titles. About Your Mac Many of the training providers offer nice discounts to members of by Jim Staal a Macintosh Users Group (MUG). If the site does not list a MUG Many resources are available price, check with one of your MUG up. for learning about the Mac. officers. Do t - M a c su b s c r i b e r s Our list of upcoming programs is Whether you want to learn about have access to free courses looking great, and we continue your operating system or your about using Ap p l e - p r o v i d e d to add members. Thanks to all of applications, on-line and CD software such as iP h o t o . you for getting the word out and courses are available. The normal training method is for making MacMad better and If you are using a dial-up con- a QuickTime movie. This will usu- better. In the coming months we nection, downloading the learning ally be a demonstration of the will be looking at the develop- files take longer. Most providers techniques with narration. ments in the operating system, break their courses into small seg- Segments range from two to five celebrating the Holidays, using ments so that the download is not minutes to allow you to digest the AppleWorks and other common too long. When you want to view content. Entire courses take sever- programs, using digital cameras all of the segments of a long al hours. and iPhoto, WiFi, how various course, the CD option may be the Virtual Training Company businesses and institutions use be s t . offers a monthly membership at the Mac, and other topics that Several companies provide $25, or $20 for MUG members. you suggest. Watch for a really online training. Many of these continued on page 3 MACMAD http://www.macmad.org Macintosh Meeting And Drinking Society est. 1984 http://bbs.macmad.org President . .Jim Staal, . . . . . 953-4911, ...... [email protected] Vice Presidents . . .Jay Fleming, . . . .777-2509, ...... [email protected] & Ray Legall, ...... 768-2041, ...... [email protected] Secretary Mark Fosgate, . . . 725-0285, ...... [email protected] Membership Jim Robertson, . . 951-2965, ...... [email protected] Treasurer Bill Moroney, ...... 728-7022, ...... [email protected] Web Master Jamie Cox, . . . . . 255-5387, ...... [email protected] Vendor Interface Carl Carter, . . . .773-7390, ...... [email protected] MacBits Editor (odd-numbered months) Cher Daley, ...... 724-8981, . [email protected] Li’l Bits MacBits (even months) Cameron Donaldson, 951-2210,[email protected] Created on Macintosh computers with Quark Xpress MacMAD does not condone or support software piracy. MacBits is an independent publication not affiliated or otherwise associated with or sponsored or sanctioned by Apple Computer, Inc. The opinions, statements, positions and views stated herein are those of the author(s) or publisher and are not intended to be the opinions, statements, positions, or views of Apple Computer, Inc.

Page 2 The first thirty or so segments, Titles coming in the near future usually covering introduction and include Mail, Dot-Mac, and more basics, can be downloaded for free. on Panther. Members (h t t p : / / w w w. v t c . c o m / u s a . p h p ) (h t t p : / / w w w. t i d b i t s . c o m / t a k e c o n - Helping Members Total Tra i n i n g ’ s product are tr o l / d e f a u l t . h t m l ) Please be considerate and call at a reasonable hour. all on CD, but can be less expen- Of course, our friends at sive. Their OS X course is $49. Remember, these volunteer O'Reilly offer a comprehensive also have a private life. Some courses are as low as $10. line of books e-books on nearly all Most of their content covers the WordPerfect,…Canvas … Adobe products, and a bundle on Mac and other computer topics. Brenda Foster…724-1948 They give a 20$ MUG discount. [email protected] Adobe Web Design products costs Photoshop, CorelDraw, Illustrator, $9 9 9 . ( h t t p : / / m a c . o r e i l l y. c o m / ) Freehand, AOL, Color-It, (h t t p : / / w w w. t o t a l t r a i n i n g . c o m / h Other training and book ClarisWorks, Quark X-press om e . h t m l ) resources are available, including Cher Daley …724-8981… Ma c A c a d e m y offers CD only. some published by the software [email protected] Their operating system titles are vendors themselves. This list is Photoshop …Gayle Baker … broken into four CDs per operat- intended to give you a place to 7257632…sterlingphoto@mind- ing system subject and each of the start. Happy learning! spring.com four CDs cost $39. Some older Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator…Randy Perry… titles are discounted for clearance. About Last (561) [email protected] (h t t p : / / w w w. m a c a c a d e m y. c o m / i Meeting If you are experienced with a piece nd e x m a c . h t m l ) of software or hardware, and Me d i a S c h o o l is a subscription by Mark Fosgate wouldn’t mind a few calls for help, service costing from $14.95 for one volunteer by giving your phone month to $89 per year. For a limit- May 20, 2003 number to Cher Daley. ed time the first 30 days are free. Their courses are more Mac-ori- Jim Staal Palm software can do as well as provid- ented than some, and appear to be opened the meeting at about 7:05 p.m. ing data to the Mail application for a bit more academic. Their site discusses the option of obtaining with about 20 people in attendance. entering email addresses, and in addi- certifications by taking their pro- Jim had the guests attending intro- tion, the iSync software that works with grams. (h t t p : / / w w w. m e d i - duce themselves and discussed some many Palm enabled devices and as c h o o l . c o m /) new WiF i (wireless via airport or Bluetooth devices to synchronize data A new source of information comes from on-line Mac newslet- 80 2 . 1 1b/g standards for wireless capable between your computer and the afore- ter publisher Tid B I T S El e c t r o n i c computers and other devices) hotspots mentioned devices and .Mac accounts. Publishing. They are now offering in the area and possibly being able to use Jim Staal talked a little about the a series of very reasonably priced one of the facilities in the future to do a Now Up to Date program and how it e-books under the Take Control title. The first two of these are wireless presentation. Jim turned the compares to other PIMs (P e r s o n a l priced at $5, and cover Panther meeting over to Jamie Cox that had a Information Managers). Jim had installation and customizing. presentation on using Palm desktop 4.0 planned on talking about another pro- to handle your calendar- gram called Organizer but due to tech- ing and contact info nical difficulties could not. needs without the Several small discussions were held necessity of having a on the strengths of Microsoft Entourage Palm enabled device. as a single combined application that Jamie also does calendaring, email, to-do's, and touched on using the ev e n t s . built in tools that Ap p l e provides like iCal and The meeting adjourned at Address Book to do the 8:30 p.m. with the dinner crowd same things that the going to Bennigan's. Page 3 R ev i ew of MAC OS X 2nd Edition The Missing Manual Reveiwed by W. J. Moroney Since I was comfortable locate the item, menu, or pro- with OS 9, I hesitated switch- cedure you need help with. ing to OS X. Instead I put up with the frequent crashes and Appendix “B” contains trou- freezes in OS 9. When I did ble shooting information such take the plunge; I had to keep as; Problems that are not returning to OS 9 because I Problems. could not find the programs and applications that I was Appendix “C” and “D” fea- accustomed to. The biggest ture the “Where did it Go” as drawback with OS X there is in OS 9 vs OS X “C” for MAC no manual supplied with the version and “D” for Windows software. The purpose of this version. book, “OS X The Missing Available at Amazon.com Manual” is to serve as the All in all this book “MAC Barnes & Nobel manual that should have OS X The missing Manual” Or for a discount thru O’Reilly been provided. provides much more informa- books www.oreilly.com tion about OS X than any This manual describes Manual would, if provided what OS X 10.2 gives you and along with the OS X software. what it takes away (plus tips and work around tricks). This I would recommend every- book is a must for getting help one using MAC OS X with OS X. It has been (whether beginner or long designed to accommodate time Mac user) to have a copy readers of all skill levels of this book in his or her (beginners thru advanced library. users). It describes things to learn and unlearn. The book P.S. If other “Missing is ideal for computer sharing, Manuals” are as well written family members, or workers and detailed as OS X, I would that share the same MAC. suggest they be considered to be included in your reference This manual also provides library. work arounds for printing a window or file list and sug- W. J. Moroney gests Shareware to print without a work around. It is Hackers, viruses, the Mac, not necessary to read this and OS X book from cover to cover. It Editors Note: Thanks to Bill Moroney for his contribution to does suggest you use the table MacBits! We encourage all our members to of contents and/or Index to do the same thing. Bill, we applaud you! Page 4 Hackers, viruses, the Mac, and OS X By Dennis Sellers pose threats with their abili- Computer viruses are, of August 06, 2001 ties to view, copy or destroy course, a common security personal files; view and copy threat that affects both Mac Written for Mac World information like names, and Windows users -- though Magazine publised with per - addresses, important num- the majority of viruses attack mission. www.macworld.com bers and financial informa- Wintel systems. Viruses are tion; and plant computer programs that are designed to Hackers and viruses pose viruses and/or Trojan Horse spread themselves. They're more of a threat than ever for viruses. usually passed along through the Mac platform due to the file sharing and e-mail file Unix underpinnings of Mac "Hackers are challenged by attachments and have the OS X, according to Robert the prospect of a new operat- potential to wreak lots of Franklin, Symantec's senior ing system, and Mac OS X is havoc by destroying files, dis- product specialist. Symantec more vulnerable to attacks rupting hardware functions, is the company behind such because of Unix," Franklin re-formatting hard drives, products as Norton Anti-Virus said. "Unix is more suscepti- and implementing mass e- and Norton Utilities. ble because it's a networking mail action to all address operating system. Also, UNIX book entries. Hackers are computer has been around for a long users who try to gain unau- time, longer than Windows, so "Mac users have, to some thorized access to other com- people are very familiar with extent, been lulled into think- puters on the Internet. They it." ing they don't need to be pro-

Page 5 tected," Franklin said. "It's have in common is that they launched, the virus contained not really a case of one oper- all infect applications by mod- in the file is released ating system being more sus- ifying MDEF and MENU ceptible than another by the resources, and they can create "Most macro viruses aren't very nature of the OS. Rather, a System Extension (with an dangerous to Macs, but some it's the fact that there have invisible character at the are," Franklin said. "And been, by volume, more viruses beginning of the name so it even with the ones that written to affect Wi n d o w s loads early) or add an INIT aren't, Mac users can pass machines than Macs." resource to the System file. these onto PC users via e-mail attachments." The motivation here is that * CODE 9811: This virus virus writers want their spreads from application to People often don't know viruses to spread to as many application. When an infected that they are even spreading users as possible. Since the application is launched, it a virus, he added. Most are Windows platform has the searches for another applica- spread through e-mail attach- greatest worldwide reach, for tion to infect and copies itself ments, and often come in the both home and office comput- into that application. The con- form of a picture, or anima- er users, more viruses are tents of the original file are tion or the file name is some- written for that platform, copied to an invisible file in thing inviting like "Check this Franklin explained. the same folder whose name out." is composed of arbitrary While all of us want faster "This doesn't mean that upper case letters. The infect- Macs are free from virus con- Internet connections, ed application also attempts Franklin said that high-speed cerns, or if a Mac gets a virus to delete anti-virus software that the payload will be less connections (such as DSL and it finds in the default vol- cable) actually increase the significant," he explained. ume's root folder, or in the "There are a number of Mac danger of getting a virus or System, Control Panels or getting hacked, especially specific viruses out there, and Extensions folders. they can cause varying with the combination of high degrees of problems for Mac * MBDF: a virus that first speed and "on-all-the-time" users." appeared in 1992. The MBDF connections. When connec- A strain originated from a tions are on all the time, The top four Macintosh spe- Trojan Horse virus named hackers have a great opportu- cific viruses are: Tetracycle. A d d i t i o n a l l y, nity to locate users online and cause harm. * Mac.Simpsons@mm: an MBDF A was found to be dis- AppleScript worm that tar- tributed in versions of Some Cable and DSL con- gets the Macintosh platform. Obnoxious Tetris and Ten Tile nections use a "Static IP It may open Microsoft Puzzle. Address" which means that Outlook Express or The Simpsons virus can hackers know where to return Entourage, and send a copy of affect Mac OS X -- so can to access the same system, itself with the original mes- SevenDust, CODE 0911 and Franklin said. Even if Mac sage to everyone in your MBDF, but only in the Classic users have a Cable of DSL address book. The name of environment. connection using a "Dynamic the script is "Simpsons IP Address", where users are Episodes." Then there are macro virus- assigned new IP a d d r e s s e s es. A macro virus is a macro every time a machine is * SevenDust: There are six (list of instructions) that mas- restarted, users are still open variants of this virus, includ- querades as legitimate docu- to random hacking attacks, ing four polymorphic, ment. When a document simply by virtue of being encrypted ones. What they infected with a Macro virus is online at all. Page 6 Pineapple Ave. Eau Gallie I want to buy a SCSI adaptor for a Mac that Library Eau Gallie Blvd. fits a PCI slot, such as an Adaptec SCSI card.You may have one that came with a scanner or CD drive. Call Jamie Cox 255-5387 FlipAlbum®3 for Mac Is offering $10 U.S. 1 Off their product if you order it through m e .h t t p : / / w w w. f l i p a l b u m . c o m / p r o m o Mention code FFP1662 Reformatted Zip Disks $7 ea. Call or e-mail Cher Daley 729-1433 Hickory St. [email protected] Hospital Hibiscus Blvd. for SaleAds are FREE in MacBits to members MacMAD! E:Mail your Ad to [email protected] Melbourne Be sure to put MacMAD in the Subject Line! Fee Ave. Library Please, when sending e-mail:Be sure to put MacMAD or MacBits in the subject line. New Haven (192) This will help ensure your mail gets read.

Classified Ads A re FREE to MacMAD Members! There are two ways to protect the repelled attacker, includ- "Virus threats can come in your Mac from hackers and ing his IP address, is stored ... bunches and are often unex- viruses: personal firewall soft- Personal firewall software is pected," he explained. ware and anti-virus software. inexpensive ... and easy to "Hackers are more of a con- The cable modem industry rec- install ... we think it's an ideal stant threat that are always ommends personal firewall soft- investment if you have a cable out there." ware as it offers more steps you modem or DSL connection, or can take to protect your com- if you're a heavy dial-up Mac users should continue puter and privacy while on the modem user." to use both anti-virus and Internet. personal firewall products Of course, the best and eas- under Mac OS X in order to "The easiest is installing per- iest way to keep a Mac virus assure maximum protection sonal firewall software ... a fire- free is to use anti-virus soft- for their systems. Also, they wall is like a security system ware -- which lets you scan should make sure that the that detects and prevents and repair infected files -- and products they're using are intruders from entering your keep it up-to-date. Most anti- Mac OS X compatible. property," according to Cable- virus software is updateable modem.net, a Web site devoted via the Internet, so virus defi- You can learn more about to the latest info about high- nitions are always current. viruses at the Symantec Anti- speed Internet access. Virus Research Center. Simply "Personal firewall software With Mac OS X gaining in do a search for all viruses monitors your computer for sus- popularity, viruses and hack- related to Macs by typing picious activity while you're ers pose threats to the new "Macintosh" into the search online. Inbound intruders are operating system. Both are field in the Vi r u s stopped before they can get into threats in different ways, Encyclopedia. your computer, and a record of Franklin said. Page 7 All About Meetings Meetings MACMAD Tuesday, November 18th are from We are planning on a presentation on 7pm - Panther, OS 10.3, plus 8:30 pm AppleWorks hints for the Holidays. MacMAD is a user group devoted to helping 7:00 to 8:30 at the Melbourne Library, Fee Ave. each other explore the possibilities opened by in downtown Melbourne. the Apple Macintosh. We publish this Check our bbs for info! newsletter, operate a web site (www.mac- mad.org), and hold meetings on the first Wednesday, December 3 rd Wednesday and third Tuesday of each We are planning a Holiday Party at House of month. Our TeleFinder BBS is now avail- Joe, with WiFi connections available (check your e-mail for further details) able at bbs.macmad.org. Tuesday, December 16th After each meeting all are welcome at a local No program is set for December, and given restaurant where we indulge in a festive that it is the 16th we may want to cancel. open discussion over pitchers of cokes, beers, Any comments from you Boarders or mem and food stuffs galore. Here the true spirit of bers out there? the world of Mac is exposed, many acquain- tances are made and expertise shared openly. if We have a meeting - 7:00 to 8:30 at Thus our name, MacMAD, which stands for the Melbourne Library, Fee Ave. “Macintosh Meeting And Drinking Society.” in downtown Melbourne. Check our bbs for info! Stay posted to MacMAD web page for updates and news on meetings! www.macmad.org