Presidential
RamblingsPresidential
Ramblings
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DACS Board openingsAs I mentioned last month, December is our elections month. This is when you, the members, elect the people who manage DACS throughout the year. Two directors have indicated that they do not wish to run for reelection, so we will have some vacancies to fill. Being a director involves one meeting a month on the Monday following the general meeting. At the directors’ meeting we discuss the status of programs for upcoming general meetings, the club’s financial status, how to promote and grow the club and all sorts of interesting topics. We often become embroiled in debates over some issue or another but the outcome has always been a healthy and functioning club. Over time, most directors take on additional projects that interest them and benefit the club. Thru all of this, being a director is a chance to share your skills while learning new ones. It can also be an impressive addition to your resume. If you would like to see DACS become an even better organization, send me an email at jscheef@dacs.org. New Web Design SIGLast month saw the opening meeting of the new Web Design SIG and it was a lot of fun. Anna Collens, an independent graphic designer in New Fairfield, brings the artistic side of web site “programming” to DACS – something missing for the last few years. The SIG meets on the third Tuesday each month. Anna has set up a web site with a schedule of topics at www.annagraphics. com/sigsite/. Hurray for Charter!Generally speaking, no one loves their cable company, so this is something I never thought I would say, but Charter deserves a big heap of praise for the stand they have taken on RIAA subpoenas asking for personal information about alleged music file swappers. A news article in the October 13, 2003, issue of Information Week reports that Charter Communications is the first cable company to join Verizon Communications and Pacific Bell Internet Services in refusing to answer subpoenas issued under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It is Charter’s position that these subpoenas violate the constitutional rights of their customers. Verizon was compelled to answer the subpoenas in a ruling by a US District Court in Washington, DC. Verizon has appealed. This issue is already at the appellate level in our judicial system and will undoubtedly reach the Supreme Court in the next year. Stay tuned. These are your digital rights on the line here. Of course, a repeal of the DMCA would save the lawyers all this trouble, so write your congress-people and tell them what you think. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I own stock in Charter Communications which should indicate the value of any financial advice you might read in this column. Smart ComputingFor years I ignored Smart Computing magazine as something for beginners. In the last few months I received a couple of sample issues and have changed my tune. This magazine has easy to read articles for all levels on topics not covered by other computer magazines. The cover articles in the current issue (November, 2003) is on “Spam, Scams and Spyware.” Rather than dive into a technical analysis of programs like Ad-Aware, they talk about various scams on the Internet, how to recognize them and what to do if you think you are being victimized. In the section on spyware, they give specific, easy to follow instructions on how to tighten security on your computer. The last part is on hoaxes, how to spot them and even some history. Enjoyable reading on timely topics – how can you lose? Hard Drive FailureThat most dreaded of all computing events has hit me again. One of the hard drives in my server died last Wednesday morning. Naturally, it was the one with the operating system on it so the machine is pretty dead. Ironically, a few months back I started the process to migrate off the drive that has now failed so a spare drive which was already installed. This server is the domain controller for my network (in other words it runs Active Directory), so recovery is not quite so straight forward. I suspect that this will become at least one article for dacs.doc once the server is back up and running. In the meantime, you can read about my last server failure in the series of articles Server Won’t Boot, beginning in June, 2001. Right now, I have restored the operating system (Windows 2000 Server) and Active Directory is running again but the server will not allow any other machines on the network to connect – except when using terminal services. Needless to say, I’m working with Microsoft Support on this. This server also runs Exchange Server, so a side effect of all this has disabled most of my email. If life without email is hell, then I’m in purgatory right now, with access to only web-based email like Yahoo. Ain’t ‘puters fun? |
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