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.
8-12-04
Our
kids may dread the thought of going back to school, but for many parents all we
can think is thank goodness. Summer is great for family vacations and recharging
of mental batteries, but for many children the structure of class and a learning
environment is a must. Of course
within days of returning to the classroom your kids will be neck high in
homework assignments. This year, the key to getting A’s on that homework
assignment may be as close as a few simple keystrokes on the
computer.
As you may remember, for
many students the excitement of returning to school with new supplies in hand
and clothes in the closet can be quickly dulled by the growing list of homework
assignments. Let’s face it, homework can quickly become overwhelming.
Unfortunately when the kids come to us for help with one or all of their
assignments, some of us may have a little trouble remembering what we learned in
school. But don’t worry; help is easily available on the Internet. All you need
is a computer, Internet connection and a list of the places to look for the
help.
If you subscribe to America
Online, you and your kids are in luck. All you have to do is type in Homework as
a keyword and the world of homework help opens up. Much of the help is graphic, which means
plenty of pictures to keep your student from getting bored while reading and
researching. A great part of the AOL site is the “Ask a Teacher Message Board”.
It allows you to post research related questions on a variety of topics and
academic levels and then get answers from experts.
In addition to AOL the
Internet is loaded with other homework sites. Some charge a fee for the help but
quite frankly, with so many free help sites out there you don’t need to pay
anything for help.
One of my favorite homework
websites is put together by student B.J. Pinchbeck. Beege, as his friends call
him, started the website in 1996. Now at age 17, Beege’s Homework helper
website is part of the Discovery channel’s website. There is an incredible
about of information on the site, all neatly
cataloged.
I really love the Discovery
channel’s website because of its versatility. For example in addition to helping
with homework, the site also has a Brain Booster section.
Here your kids will find plenty of games and quizzes that will keep them (and
maybe even you) entertained while at the same time being educated.
One more thing about this
site, if your kids are preparing a paper for class and want to punch it up with
a couple of pictures or graphics, the Discovery site has a fabulous Clip Art Gallery (all
free of charge). With a little extra effort the research and pictures (inserted
into a document with easy copy and paste functions) should send the paper grade
through the roof and into space.
Another site worth checking
out (and also linked to by Beege’s website) is Encyclopedia Smithsonian.
The site helps answer frequently asked questions about the Smithsonian with
links to resources on subjects from Art to Zoology.
The website is very simple to use, no bells or whistles, but sometimes for a student searching for help and on a time deadline a site like this one is all that’s needed.
Finally one more site to
checkout is the Infoplease
Homework Center. In addition to the basic help there are links to an almanac, dictionary, encyclopedia and biography database. There are
also maps and what the site calls a Fact
Monster. Here your student can find information that can spice up any school
report.
When many of us were in
school doing a good job on homework or a paper meant research and pouring
through encyclopedias and textbooks. Today the books have been replaced by the
computer and almost instant access to the information through the Internet. With our list of Homework Websites your
son or daughter should be able to pull an A with their homework assignment. The
plus is that using the computer to do the assignment may actually get them to
work on it as soon as they get home from school (OK, maybe that last thought is
just wishful thinking)!
Bob
Sokoler
In a sign that "fair use"
may be on the way out of our lives 321 Studios, maker of DVD copying software,
agreed on Tuesday to close its
doors rather than continue a protracted legal
battle with the Motion
Picture Association of America:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1280815,00.html
Sony
plans to include the processor used in the Playstation 2 in the
company's new
line of flat-panel TVs, not to use in playing games but
to make picture
quality better:
http://www.forbes.com/execpicks/feeds/infoimaging/2004/08/10/infoimagingafx_2004_08_10_AEF_0019-5122-PRD.JPN.CSM.CMP..html
Many
analysts are expecting a very slow adoption of Windows XP Service
Pack 2 in
the business world because of the update's complexity:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/windows_xp_sp2/35720.html
You
may remember NASA's plans to scrap the Hubble space telescope;
now, it will
not only be repaired and upgraded but the work will be
done remotely by
robots. R2D2 could not be reached for comment:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996264
Copy
us in on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
With the increasing sophistication of virus attacks and the flood of recent reports of vulnerabilities in not only Windows but OS X and open source programs like Apache and Firefox this section may be long overdue.
From now on we’ll highlight
the most dangerous current threat and tell you how to protect yourself against
it. Usually this warning will
concern viruses but on occasion, like this week, the warning will concern
something completely different.
Email filtering firm Message
Labs reported Tuesday that the second phishing scam in as many months targeting
U.S. Bank customers had exceeded 125,000 messages in under five hours. According to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/10/phishing_vs_viruses/
that’s more than five times the number of MyDoom-O infected emails intercepted
in the same time period during the start of the recent
outbreak.
Phishing scams, which appear
to be from legitimate companies like CitiBank or MasterCard, try to manipulate
unwary customers into revealing personal information like Social Security
numbers, credit card account numbers and PINs in order to carry out identity
thefts.
http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/fraud_alerts/040714_900_usbank.htm
and http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/fraud_alerts/040809_1417_usbank.htm
give examples of the emails purporting to be from U.S. Bank, as well as tips on
how to identify fraudulent emails and avoid your own personal financial
nightmare. Every Internet user
should make them required reading…
Yet another new
section. Each week we’ll bring you
links to an interesting web page, concentrating on sites with local ties. If you run across a useful or informative
site for something in the Kentuckiana area please drop me a line at pcguru@microdome.net.
This week, Louisville
Mojo.
LouisvilleMojo.com is a community web site
where locals can create
profiles, promote their happenings and participate in
real-time chat and
forum discussions. They now boast over 13,000
members. Best of all it's
completely free, so come take a peek. www.louisvillemojo.com
Email
Question of the Week
Q: I have a small office network with 9
desktop workstations. The
desktops run on XP, the server on Server 2000. I
would like to create
a daily motivational message on the server and then have
all employee
workstations point to that file and use it as the screen saver.
To
avoid damage to the screen, it probably needs to move slightly
every
few minutes. I have gone to the screen saver tab; the
"Marquee"
function is too limited in space and the "Slide Show" feature does
not
support Word documents or HTML.
Any suggestions would be
appreciate.
A: You could use an image creation program
(Adobe Photoshop, Paint
Shop Pro, even Paint) to make that motivational
saying into an image, then use the slide show feature to do as many sayings as
you want. The other team
members may have something else to say about it, but this is what I would do
since you have worked with the Slide Show screen saver.
Thanks for
letting us help you with your computer problems!
Daniel A.
Williams
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by
visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click
on the “Email the Team” icon.
Copyright 2004, The PC
Gurus. All rights reserved.
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Information provided in this
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or implied. Although the
information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL
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information supplied at your own risk.
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