Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. Dia Center Edition 2005 (Could They Get a Has Affected This Market in Several Ways
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DEC 2004 Volume 15, Issue 12 Charmed The Future of the Internet J provided. Go to the Hewlett-Packard Web President’s File site to see that this is no ordinary PC. HP calls it the z545 Digital Entertainment Cen- Membership PRESIDENTIAL ter and it’s not cheap. But when has cool Information ever been cheap? The HP version is black dacs.doc, ISSN 1084-6573, is published RAMBLINGS and is the size and shape of a stereo re- monthly by the Danbury Area Computer Soci- VERSION 2.7 ety, 4 Gregory Street, Danbury, CT 06810-4430. ceiver. When you add the x5400 Media Annual subscription rates: $25 to regular mem- FTER I FINISHED Center Extender the cool extends to another bers, $20 to students (included in dues). last month’s col- room with interesting layers of control. Postmaster A Now do you think that all this cool has a Send address changes to Danbury Area Com- umn, I discovered a criti- puter Society, Inc., 4 Gregory Street, Danbury, cal error. Even worse, I down side beyond the price? Well of course CT 06810-4430. found that the error has it does, and the down side is how Microsoft existed for months! It appears that I forgot adheres to the movie industry’s definition Editorial Committee to increment the version number, and it hap- of your digital rights. For instance, the PC Managing Editor: Allan Ostergren Associate Editor: Ted Rowland pened (or more accurately didn’t happen) Magazine review pointed out that you can- not use the Media Center Extender to watch Production Editor: Marc Cohen twice! Since I have no one but myself at whom Technical Editor: Bruce Preston to point a finger–and none of my joints are a movie DVD in another room–which would Editor-at-large Mike Kaltschnee seem to be the whole point of the Extender. really flexible enough to do that. So we’ll Contributors just have to correct the situation and move Instead, you must physically carry the DVD on. My first column as DACS president was into the room where you sit and put it in a Charles Bovaird Larry Buoy DVD player there. Now I ask you, what are Richard Corzo Jim Scheef version 0.0 in May, 2002. I started with zero Jeff Setaro Richard Ten Dyke because that’s the way computers work and they afraid of? At the end of the meeting we had some I figured it would take me a year (of “beta”) DACS, its officers and directors assume no to get a grip on this job before I got to ver- goodies from Microsoft to give away. Bob liability for damages arising out of the publica- sion 1.0. As you can see I’ve been at this for Ehrn took home Office Professional 2003; tion or non-publication of any article, adver- Bert Goff chose a copy of Microsoft One tisement, or other item in this newsletter . a little more than 2 and a half years. Time The editors welcome submissions from sure flies when you’re having fun. Note 2003 while Charlie Bovaird received DACS members. Contact Allan Ostergren at FrontPage 2003. In addition several people 860-210-0047 ([email protected]. Adver- are now wearing new Microsoft tee shirts. tisers, contact Charles Bovaird at (203) 792- Moving On… 7881 ([email protected]) The November general meeting was Competition Nonprofit groups may request permission to re- another winner and you can read what print articles from dacs.doc or http://dacs.org by Mike Kaltschnee says about it elsewhere If you think market forces in the form sending e-mail to [email protected]. Reprinted in this issue. November is becoming our of competition don’t benefit the consumer articles shall credit the copyright holder and a copy of the final publication shall be mailed to: annual “Microsoft meeting” and I enjoyed (i.e.: you) then allow me to point to the it thoroughly. The new Windows XP Me- “market place” of free email. Competition Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. dia Center Edition 2005 (could they get a has affected this market in several ways. 4 Gregory Street The most obvious of these is the space Danbury CT 06811-4403 few more syllables in that name?) is incred- Attn. Reprints ibly cool. Unfortunately it was hard to see provided for a free account. When I cre- ated my first Hotmail and Yahoo email ac- Links to articles reprinted on the web can be that coolness in Richard Katz’s presenta- sent to: [email protected] tion because of the hardware Microsoft counts, the allotted space maxed out at two megabytes on both services. If your mes- sages exceeded that, your mail started to IN THIS ISSUE bounce back with the message “mailbox Technical Support full.” Of course this forces you to go to the dacs.doc is prepared using an AMSYS Pentium PRESIDENTIAL RAMBLINGS 2 email web site frequently where they can 733 and HP LaserJet 1300 printer.Software DIRECTORS’ N OTES 3 packages used to publish dacs.doc include: show you advertising. And then along Microsoft Windows XP, Office 2003, TrueType HELP LINE 3 came Google. Right from the get-go, Google fonts, Adobe PageMaker 7.0, Calendar Creator 8.0 for Windows. Security for dacs.doc file MEDIA CENTER PC 4 provides one gigabyte of online email stor- transfer provided by AVP. Internet access REVIEW - M ICROSOFT MEDIA CENTER 4 age. The whole point of Google ‘Gmail’ is provided by Mags.net MAGIC SQUARES - 3 6 that they index it and make it easy to search. NEW MEMBERS 6 They also show you ‘relevant’ advertising Applications & Hardware to enhance dacs.doc are welcome. UNDERSTANDING USB 7 based on the content of your email (but then there is no free lunch). GPS - 3 8 Since then, both Yahoo and Hotmail MEETING PREVIEW - JOHN PATRICK 9 have increased the amount of space they SIG NEWS & NOTES 10 provide. For the last few years, I’ve paid CALENDAR 11 for additional features on Yahoo Mail. For COMPUTERS AND CREATIVITY - 4 10 $10 per year I got POP3 access (easily BOOK REVIEW - GAMING HACKS 14 download Yahoo email messages), four (or COMPUTING TRENDS 15 maybe it was six) megabytes of space and a few other features. I thought this was a Don Neary RANDOM ACCESS 16 good deal but I kept bumping up against APCUG Liaison BOARD C ANDIDATES/BALLOT 18 203-746-5538 RAMBLINGS, Continued on page 5 2 • DEC 2004 http://www.dacs.org Officers Directors’ Notes PRESIDENT: Jim Scheef (860) 355-0034 ([email protected]) VPs: Gene Minasi • Jeff Setaro SECRETARY: Larry Buoy • TREASURER: Charles Bovaird Regular Meeting of your Board of Directors A Directors was held at the Resource [email protected] Center on Monday, November 8, 2004. Present were Messrs. Berger, Bovaird, Charles Bovaird (203) 792-7881 [email protected] Cohen, Gallichotte, Keane, Scheef and Howard Berger (860) 355-9837 [email protected] Setaro. Also present was Larry Buoy. Marc Cohen (203) 775-1102 [email protected] President Jim Scheef presided and Sec- Anna Collens (203) 746-5922 [email protected] retary Larry Buoy kept the record. Minutes John Gallichotte (203) 426-0394 [email protected] of the last meeting held on Monday, Sep- Bill Keane (203) 438-8032 [email protected] tember 13, 2004, were approved. Bruce Preston (203) 438-4263 [email protected] Treasurer Charles Bovaird reported Jim Scheef (860) 355-0034 [email protected] current cash assets of $15,930.31, consist- ing of total bank and postal accounts in Jeff Setaro (203) 748-6748 [email protected] the amount of $15,826.78 plus postage on Committees hand of $103.53. Subtracting a liability of NEWSLETTER: Allan Ostergren: (860) 210-0047 ([email protected]) prepaid dues in the amount of $6,256.25 PROGRAM / WEB MASTER: Jeff Setaro (203) 748-6748 left a net of $9,674.06. He also reported cur- APCUG LIAISON: Don Neary (203) 746-5538 rent membership of 366. Further, Charlie RESOURCE CENTER: (203) 748-4330 WEB SITE: http://www.dacs.org gave a brief summary of the results of the survey conducted to determine the atti- tudes of the membership concerning the HelpLine various aspects of the club’s activities, with Volunteers have offered to field member questions by phone. Please the newsletter garnering the most approval, limit calls to the hours indicated below. Days means 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; followed by the general meetings and com- evening means 6 to 9:30 p.m. Please be considerate of the volunteer ments with respect thereto. you are calling. HelpLine is a free service. If you are asked to pay for A discussion ensued regarding the dis- help or are solicited for sales, please contact the dacs.doc editor; the appearance of the full copyright provisions that were included in the masthead of the person requesting payment will be deleted from the listing. Can we add newsletter and that same should be rein- your name to the volunteer listing? stated, as well as copyright statements fol- d = day e = evening lowing articles where appropriate. A brief reprisal of the programs for up- Program Name Phone # coming general meetings confirmed that Alpha Four Dick Gingras (203) 775-1102 (d e) John Patrick would speak at the December APL Charles Bovaird (203) 792-7881 ( e) meeting on the state of the Internet, that a representative of Verizon would speak on C/UNIX/ObjC Kenneth Lerman (203) 426-4430 (d e) Broadband access and alternative tech- Clipper Dick Gingras (203) 426-0484 ( e) nologies for cell phones in January and that Dbase/DOS Alan Boba (203) 264-1753 ( e) Mike Kaltschnee would make a presenta- tion on blogging for February’s meeting.