Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
You can interact with the team via chat room or BBS at www.thepcgurus.com. There are usually members present in the chat room after 8:00 PM every evening and you can post computer questions, comments, rants etc. on the bulletin board 24/7.
If you’re new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin’s website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.
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.
The Louisville Linux User Group is a resource for local Linux enthusiasts to communicate with one another via BBS and mailing list. To subscribe to the LouLUG list, visit http://www.loulug.com for more information.
6-10-04
No media news to report this
week, but Ed Engelking is hard at work on the new website and I must say it
looks GREAT! It’s still under
construction so some of the links are currently dead but soon you can expect
links to handy sites and utilities, newsletter archives, breaking news and other
goodies, all in a completely new eye candy interface that is really sweet. I can’t wait for this thing to go
completely live ;) Check it out at www.thepcgurus.com.
While we regroup the tech
world continues along at a breakneck pace, and there are some things you most
definitely be aware of going on in the Windows
environment.
Microsoft has announced yet
another gaping security hole, this time in DirectX 7.0a through the newest 9.0b,
that allows a malicious attacker to launch a Denial of Service (DoS) attack to
knock unpatched systems off a local network or the
Internet.
This glitch affects all
versions of Windows other than NT (not that anyone still uses that dinosaur) so
readers will want to get this fixed right away. You can read more about this problem and
get the appropriate patches at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-016.mspx.
On another security front,
spyware is absolutely out of control.
Literally half of the PCs that I’ve worked on over the last couple of
months are absolutely infested with the stuff, and tools like SpyBot, Ad-Aware
and CWShredder are an essential part of any comprehensive security plan. Recently I was introduced by a reader to
another handy tool, this one a filter rather than a scan and remove
utility.
While the Immunize feature
of SpyBot offers limited defense against this malware even it’s author, Patrick
Kolla, suggests adding Spyware Blaster to your arsenal and even adds a link to
it via the Immunize interface.
Currently Blaster blocks
close to 3,000 spyware components and you can get this fantastic FREE program at
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html. You can also get it from team member
Troy Overton’s website (http://troyoverton.com/downloads/). Troy also hosts all of the spyware
scanners I mentioned previously.
He’s like a one stop shop ;)
Until next
week…
Kevin
Mefford
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please email them to bob@iglou.com.
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