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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.
3-10-05
To hear some tell it, weblogs are becoming the new media. Weblogs, or blogs, started to become popular a few years ago as online personal diaries, journals or places to keep small groups apprised of events and gossip. Whatis.com defines a weblog thusly:
“A weblog (sometimes shortened to blog
or written as "web log" or "Weblog") is a Web
site of personal or non-commercial origin that uses a dated log format that
is updated on a daily or very frequent basis with new information about a
particular subject or range of subjects. The information can be written by the
site owner, gleaned from other Web sites or other sources, or contributed by
users.”
Blogs today have exploded, ranging from pure
news sites to strictly politics, technology, science, cooking, pets,
horticulture… you name it.
Professional journalists have blogs, as do physicians, actors, musicians,
athletes, astronomers, politicians and even movie critics. Any subject you are possibly interested
in has a blog out there and, usually, blogs with at least two different
opinions.
Before I do anything else in the morning I
browse three blogs, namely www.theregister.co.uk (my start page),
www.slashdot.org and www.fark.com. The first is a British IT/Business news
site, the second a hardcore geek site with decidedly Linux leanings and the
third just general news and silliness.
That looks like an odd collection but there’s
a reason for each. El Reg, being
British based, has people analyzing breaking news like virus outbreaks in Europe
five hours before most of us on Eastern Time even wake up. Since most major threats spread east to
west as people report for work and fire up their computers I think it’s good
prep.
SlashDot, on the other hand, is just a quick
in-and-out on things like new Linux tools (which I use a lot in my work),
movements in legal cases that have a bearing on the entire industry (like the
nonsensical SCO case against God and everybody) and whether any major changes
have happened to big providers like AOL or MSN that could have an effect on my
customers.
Fark is the real stretch but this one is
actually easy to explain. These
people never sleep and they post some pretty obscure stuff. A gas main fire in Empty, Mississippi
that destroys a fiber optic trunk that is part of the southern MCI backbone will
likely be reported here before it is on CNN. If I happen to get a chuckle out of a
non-technical headline at least I’m starting the day on a positive note
;)
While technically blogs, these aren’t
indicative of what I’m really talking about. The journals of individuals are more
what I mean. Like those of authors
Hugh Hewitt at http://www.hughhewitt.com/ and James
Wolcott at http://jameswolcott.com/. Opposite ends of the political spectrum,
well written, topical… but personal.
Those are the good ones, personal opinions on
current news, scientific breakthroughs and, of course, March Madness ;) And the
comments from readers on those are often hilarious and occasionally eye
opening. Some things to keep in
mind while cruising the “blogosphere” are that they are written by individuals
so there is no editorial control like you’d find at a newspaper or magazine,
therefore fact checking may be at a minimum. Also some blogs are written by people
who really love what they write about or have a passion for their beliefs. Others may be by people with nothing
more than a narcissistic need for their 15 minutes of fame. Lastly is language. These are unregulated sources of
information and opinion for the most part and the language and even graphics on
some can border on coarse and suddenly dive into profane. Don’t let a sudden “f-bomb” surprise
you; I did give you warning ;)
To end, several members of the PC Gurus
maintain their own blogs. These
include www.opaquelucidity.com, www.edengelking.com, www.troyoverton.com, www.supercell.us and my own feeble attempt
www.kevinmefford.com. These have nothing to do with our
activities with the PC Gurus and should not serve as a reflection on our mission
here.
Go blog hopping kids; let me know what you
think!
Kevin Mefford,
Editor
Are bloggers
journalists? While a California judge ponders that
question, everyone
with an opinion on the Web is chiming in:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/09/BUG5EBMCR41.DTL
Microsoft
is about to release Messenger 7.0 with improved video
chat
capabilities:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119947,00.asp
Kaspersky
Labs has put forth a scary theory---some virus writers may
be collaborating
with one another:
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1161786
Linus
Torvalds, the guy who got the Linux ball rolling, is now using a
(gasp!)
Mac...running Linux, of course:
http://news.com.com/Torvalds+switches+to+Apple/2100-1003_3-5606030.html?tag=nefd.top
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.opaquelucidity.com
I’ve found a couple of useful free programs recently and thought I’d share those with you.
The first is called WinGuard Pro 2005. WinGuard Pro gives you the ability to lock down any program, window, or file on your computer with a password. It also allows you to lock down the Desktop, My Computer icon, Internet Access. Block people from installing software, the Shutdown menu, Boot Keys, and even block access to the entire computer. It is fully configurable with password time delays, screen blanking and so on. It has over 50 common built in programs like Control Panel, Windows Explorer, Add or Remove Programs, Internet Explorer, Run, the list is endless and you can even add your own programs, windows and files to the list. As your security needs grow, you can then start adding more items to its list to make your PC fool proof.
Don’t download the beta version from this site unless you like to reformat hard drive. Get it here: http://www.winguardpro.com/
Next up, CoolMon. CoolMon displays system information in a small configurable window. Most of the application’s data is retrieved from the Windows performance counters; these are the values it can currently display: - Processor usage (up to four CPUs) - Number of Processes - Number of Threads - Used/Free/Total page file - Used/Free/Total RAM - Free/Total Disk space (up to eight disks) - Computer Uptime and lots more. Get it here: http://www.coolmon.org/download/.
Subscribers’ Bonus: This is just weird, http://www.liquidgeneration.com/games/celebrity_staring.asp
Art Maley
Resident game geek and Marine Robert Heite is currently stationed at New River Naval Air Station in North Carolina. Aside from being our only active member of the armed services, Robert also has the distinction of being our youngest member. And of course his dad, team member Rich Heite, is mighty proud of him, as are we all.
From http://www.thepcgurus.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1#stubs:
“Taking an interest with computers at a young age, Robert has built many of his own computers, as well as various projects at his local High School and Career Center, including network, and studying the Cisco CCNA curriculum. He is an avid gamer, a fan of the Sci-Fi, First Person Shooter, and Flight Sim genres, and enjoys the occasional Strategy game.
He graduated from Marine Corps Boot Camp at MCRD Parris Island on 14 November 03, and is currently stationed at MCAS New River where he works at Base Ops as a Flight Clearance Clerk.
He is single and available....”
Q: I installed a Belkin usb 2 card and
bayport (model number F5u261) over
a year ago. It worked fine for quite a
while. Not sure when it started
not working because I don't use that computer
very often. Last week I
bought an ex ternal dvd burner, I tried the front
ports and the back.
They only function at usb 1.1 speeds because the little
blurb comes on
the screen telling me so. I did clean my comp carefully
with a soft
brush and reinstalled XP some time ago. I did not do any updates
etc
after I reinstalled XP because I don't plan on getting back on the
web
with that computer. I rechecked my cables that go to the back
usb2
card and the front usb2bay ports. All are tight. Any help would
be
appreciated.
A: According to the documentation for the
F5U261, there are Windows drivers
that need to be installed for your Belkin
USB 2.0 PCI card in order for
the F5U261 to function and for either device to
be detected as USB 2.0.
Additionally, according to the Microsoft List of
fixes included in SP2,
there are many USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 related
fixes. You can view them at
the following URL:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5BLN%5D;811113
Just
do a search on the page for USB and you'll see what I mean.
It's
probably a good idea to install SP2 on this machine regardless if
it's
connected to the Internet or not in order to correct all of the bugs
and
other issues.
Now, since you didn't mention how many ports your
USB 2.0 card has, I'm
going to provide several links here for possible
drivers for your PCI card:
Belkin USB 2.0 2-port PCI card - F5U219
http://web.belkin.com/support/download/download.asp?download=F5U219&lang=1&mode=
Belkin
USB 2.0 2-port PCI card - Low Profile - F5U219-LP
http://web.belkin.com/support/download/download.asp?download=F5U219-LP&lang=1&mode=
Belkin
USB 2.0 5-port PCI card - F5U220
http://web.belkin.com/support/download/download.asp?download=F5U220&lang=1&mode=
You'll
need to look at your card to determine exactly which model it is
so you'll
know which driver to download.
I hope this helps.
Ed Engelking
II
ed@thepcgurus.com
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