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Vol. 3, No. 11
3-20-03
As of this writing the U.S.
is at war with Iraq. This
newsletter is not a forum for political discourse… well, unless it deals with
technology specifically, but I think we should all keep our friends, neighbors
and relatives who are currently serving in harm’s way at the forefront of our
thoughts and prayers. Regardless of
our individual beliefs regarding the current situation, the men and women in the
military are of us, they ARE us, and they deserve no less.
That said, I thought it wise this week to discuss some of the technology changes that may occur in the coming days and weeks. The world has changed enormously since the first Gulf War due to technology and most of that technology was created and is supported from the U.S.
GPS (Global Positioning
System) is now the standard for navigation across the globe. Civilians and military units from nearly
every country in the world use this system, with applications ranging from
OnStar in a Cadillac to targeting control in cruise
missiles.
All of the geostationary
satellites were launched from the U.S. and the Federal Government retains
control of the system. It is highly
likely that civilian and non-U.S. military frequencies used by the system will
be disrupted in case of war to limit the accuracy of any Iraqi weapons that take
advantage of it. This could mean
anything from a complete failure of personal GPS devices to function to a
greatly reduced accuracy (say accurate location within 10 yards to an accuracy
level of one mile).
This won’t be too big a deal
for most people but if you’re planning on a long car trip or a hiking excursion
in the near future and you depend on GPS you should keep this in
mind.
The Internet has also
exploded since ’91 (back then it was a text only system used mostly by
Universities and other research facilities) and has become invaluable to
businesses. Again much of this
backbone is controlled by the U.S. and to block enemy communication through
email some parts of the backbone may be shut down, especially in the Middle
East, to prevent such communications.
This could be done through either local control in host countries or
direct attacks on infrastructure by bombardment. This should have no discernable effect
on Internet access here but there could conceivably be some websites overseas
that become unreachable for a short time.
The same could be said of
cellular or wireless telephone communication. Many areas in the Middle East lack the
infrastructure for hardwired telephone systems and depend on satellite
transmission, so users in the Middle East, as well as parts of Asia and even
Europe may see some disruption.
At home we can expect to see
more surveillance cameras in public places and an increased use of Facial
Recognition Software to try to match possible terrorists with the FBI and CIA
databases. While these systems are
highly fallible and are a bane to Civil Rights and Privacy groups they are
almost certain to gain popularity in the Law Enforcement and Anti-Terrorism
sectors in the coming weeks and months.
With the increased risk of
terrorist activity associated with an attack on Iraq I understand the need for
such moves but I am deeply concerned that after the threat passes they will be
put to more nefarious uses by overzealous agencies.
Regardless, these things are
a fact of life in the U.S. and we must deal with them as best we
can.
Be
safe,
Kevin Mefford,
Editor
A few months ago former team
member Art Maley mentioned a program written by Karen Kenworthy called Computer
Profiler, which coughed up all kinds of information about your hardware and
software.
This week I want to mention
another of Karen’s programs called Replicator. It’s a nifty, and free, back up utility
that backs up any folder on your hard drive to any other folder or media
automatically.
If you have a CD-RW drive
with a formatted CD-RW disk in place, a floppy or Zip drive or a second hard
drive this is an extremely useful tool.
You simply install the program and configure it to back up things like My
Documents or My Downloads to anything available, including mapped network
drives.
Since the three most
important words for computer users are backup, backup and backup this one fits
the bill nicely. And best of all
it’s completely free.
The only drawback I see to
this program is that it doesn’t have a setting to start up automatically with
Windows when you boot. You can get
around this by right clicking on the icon for it from Start/Programs/Karen’s
Power Tools and choosing Copy, then right clicking on Start/Programs/StartUp and
choosing Paste.
You will also need to
install the Visual Basic Runtime 6 libraries before you install Replicator. You can get both VBRun 6 and Replicator
at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp.
Kevin
Mefford
When installing or upgrading to Windows XP there are a slew of options presented but one of the most vexing is FAT or NTFS for the partition.
Here’s a quick and dirty guide:
If you have sensitive data on your hard drive, your important data is backed up to a file server or removable media frequently, and you are on a corporate or business network choose NTFS.
If you are a home user with nothing more important than your Address Book and Favorites, you either don’t have a way to do frequent backups or don’t know how to do it or what to back up then choose FAT.
NTFS is more secure and efficient and will allow unlimited file sizes while FAT is easier to access from a boot disk, can be slaved to any other Windows machine for file backup in the case of OS corruption or partial drive failure and can be cloned easily if you want to purchase a larger hard drive in the future.
Q: Listening to
your show today. Was also listening a couple of weeks ago. A lady
had installed Norton Internet Security and was having a lot of problems. I
had purchased Norton Internet Security to install on my computer since I now
have DSL. After hearing this lady's problem, I took this software
back. What do you recommend for anti virus and Internet security for
protection for a DSL connection? Need to buy something now.
Thanks.
A: Despite what
the folks at Symantec (the people who make Norton's) would have you believe, all
you need to secure your broadband connection is anti-virus and firewall
software. For the anti-virus part, try AVG (www.grisoft.com). It's great, and it's
free. For a firewall, check out the free version of Zone Alarm (www.zonelabs.com). Hope this
helps and thanks for listening.
Matt
Dattilo
If you have
tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please
email them to bob@iglou.com.
Copyright 2003,
The 84 Online Team. All rights
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