Welcome to the 84 Online Newsletter

 

Brought to you each week by the 84 Online Team, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.

 

84 Online is broadcast live each Sunday from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM (EDT) on WHAS radio, 840 AM.  You may call the show directly during this time period at 502-571-8484 or toll free at 1-800-444-8484.  You may also interact with the team online by visiting www.84online.com and clicking on Chat Room.  IRC users can access the room through irc://ucanweb.com/84online.  Chat hours match the show on Sunday and generally some of the members are in nightly from 8:00 to 10:00 PM EDT. 

 

If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at http://forums.84online.net/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=53.  Team member JP Durbin mirrors the archive at

http://www.jpdurbin.net/84archive/. 

 

Looking for answers to your computer questions?  The 84Online BBS offers 24/7 tech support directly from the 84Online team.  Search for answers to frequently asked questions or post a question of your own.  Visit us at http://forums.84online.net.

 

The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region.  Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.

 

Vol. 3, No. 20               

 

It’s that time of year again folks.  Firefighters and Cub Scouts, grocery stores and restaurants, High School clubs and advocacy groups are out in force collecting money for the WHAS Crusade for Children. 

 

In case you’re new to the area the Crusade for Children is a drive to collect money for use to directly help special needs children.  100% of your donations are used for that purpose, which is possible due to overwhelming corporate support.  WHAS and WHAS-TV, as well as Allegra Print and Imaging, FastSigns, NEXTEL and UCANWeb donate nearly all services needed by the Crusade.  Other expenses and salaries of the few full time employees are paid from interest only.  The amount donated every year is spent that year or passed over to the next year.

 

Please do what you can to help out the special needs children in Kentucky and Southern Indiana this year and every year by dropping your spare change into buckets or boots when you run across them.  Mostly pocket change raised over $6.2 million last year!

 

In tech news this week Microsoft, which has been fighting tooth and nail against Open Source Linux for several years (see http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20030515S0007, http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28155.html and http://www.slashnot.com/article.php3?story_id=113) has pulled an unexpected move and offered to license the code for SCO Unix.

 

SCO is currently involved in a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-991464.html?tag=nl) claiming that AIX and Linux offerings from Big Blue violated the intellectual property of SCO, which owns the rights to Unix.  Many IT pundits saw this as a move by SCO to get IBM to buy the beleaguered company but the introduction of Microsoft into the mix has changed things radically.

 

If Microsoft jumps in with their own rights to the SCO Unix code there will be lawsuits flying against Red Hat, Knoppix, Coyote, Mandrake, Debian and every other Linux distribution known to geekdom.  Bill’s billions will prevail and the OpenSource movement will be dead. 

 

Since the Mac OS X is based in part on the Unix/Linux kernel it will be the next target and the relatively small percentage of computer users on Macs will become casualties as well.

 

Hmmm… Welcome to the Matrix?

 

In less apocalyptic but still depressing news our technologically challenged government officials have decided to add another “caucus” to their number, this one devoted to combat the threat of piracy of intellectual property.

 

Headed up by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida), it espouses the usual nonsense spoon fed to him from the RIAA (“The concerns of the thousands of Americans whose livelihoods depend on intellectual property protection are not being fully debated or addressed,”).  Please! 

 

Mr. Wexler, like most of the idiots we send to Congress, can’t let a little thing like the facts get in the way of pushing through legislation reminiscent of the dearly departed Soviet Union which would make millions of Americans criminals with the stroke of a pen.  The RIAA (my favorite target) claims billions of dollars in losses due to piracy but numerous articles, like http://www.boycott-riaa.com/analysis.php, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their claim is entirely without merit.

 

Mr. Wexler, would you kindly remove your head from the confines of your nether regions and get a clue?

 

Speaking of the eventual demise of laws limiting your fair use rights of digital media, Intuit’s decision last week to abandon its use of DRM technology spawned a great article at http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,,49577,00.html.  Yet another clue for Mr. Wexler?

 

That’s enough for this week… Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

84online@microdome.net

The Week in Tech

 

Napster may make a return---as a pay service poised to compete with Apple’s new iTunes service:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58895,00.html

 

Those of us who have cannibalized a used PC for parts know that it’s not always necessary to have the latest and greatest at your fingertips in order to get the job done.  Now, it looks like Corporate America may be waking up to that fact:

http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,49470,00.html#

 

Did the folks at Microsoft send you a virus this week?  Well, not really:

http://www.theregister.com/content/56/30751.html

 

By the time you read this, eBay will have announced its new “any points” plan, allowing you to finally use all those frequent flyer miles:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12599-2003May19.html

 

 

Download of the Week

 

For our listeners and readers who use Nero Burning Rom and InCD to burn CDs and CD-RWs, did you know that Nero posts regular updates available for free?

 

www.nero.com features the latest versions of both titles as free downloads which will update your software if you’re already a user or act as a 30 day demo if you want to try it out.

 

Nero is probably the most versatile burning software for CD-R disks and InCD makes using CD-RW disks as easy as writing to floppy.  If you already have these programs, update them.  If not, give them a test drive!

 

Email Question of the Week

 

Q:  Is there an easy way to offload Windows/XP updates and Service Packs to a CD?  If I have to do a re-install or repair of XP, then all the updates I have downloaded are lost.  I believe this is also true if a System Restore is done at a point before the update or Service Pack has been applied.

 

A:  You can get Windows XP Service Pack 1a on a CD from Microsoft's website. It's $9.95
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/pro/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/ordercd.asp.

You can download the same thing and burn it on a CD but it is 134 MB so you need a high-speed connection.

Here's the link:

 

Contact info and legal stuff

 

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 reserved.  Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.

 

Information provided in this publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.  Although the information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL systems.  Make use of any information supplied at your own risk.

 

The 84 Online Team is a group of volunteers who provide support for the 84 Online radio broadcast.  Team members are not directly affiliated with nor employed by Clear Channel Communications or WHAS.  Views and opinions voiced in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views held by Clear Channel or WHAS.

 

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