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Vol. 6, No. 28
7-6-06
1 People’s Republic of Kentucky
2 The cubicle farm
3 iWindows, Googling congratulations, iMac for students
4 Blog guides
5 Are you a budding programmer?
6 Floppy problem
If you are an employee of the Kentucky State Government you are no longer allowed to read the GuruNews. Apparently our tips on using Windows/Linux/OS X are sufficiently political to lump us in with political blogs, adult sites and eBay.
Beginning June 21st the Fletcher administration started blocking sites deemed “unproductive” for state workers to read, first reported by http://www.bluegrassreport.org/, a left leaning blog often critical of the Fletcher administration. This block also appears to affect the email system, since no newsletter subscribers at mail.state.ky.us addresses received last week’s issue. How ripping and burning songs from personal CD collections triggered an alarm at the state level I have no idea.
Overlook the fact that we answer email questions from IT folks working for the Commonwealth. Discard the fact the we are THE help desk for many IT directors at schools, who are often forced into that job because they can hook a PC up and get the keyboards and mice plugged into the right holes.
Ignore the fact that we’ve spent years offering free technical support to any and all comers, be they citizens of Kentucky or New Zealand. We are banned, filtered, blocked into the ether by the government bureaucracy that inhabits Frankfort.
C’mon, let’s be serious. This is an amateur newsletter written by people who aren’t writers by trade (as if you couldn’t tell that). I admit I get political on occasion but that’s always been directed at national morons who can’t figure out how to use a cell phone, much less make rational policy when it comes to things like copyright protection vs. fair use rights or telecommunications policy that won’t break the Internet as we know it. Nothing I’ve ever written has mentioned local politics, but that might change in the near future.
The entire purpose of the PCGurus project is to help people with their problems as well as educate them about how computers actually work. If that’s a threat to the current Kentucky administration I must say I’m not at all comfortable with this state’s future.
I understand the purported need to block certain types of sites with obscene or illegal content but censoring informational sites and email just seems over the top. After all, shouldn’t part of the job of state employees be to understand what Kentuckians think about certain topics such as pending legislation, fiscal policy and current events in the state? Doesn’t blocking access to sites where Kentucky citizens post their thoughts on policy actually have a negative impact on employees who should “check the pulse” of the citizenry now and then?
And blocking non-political tech sites and newsletters makes even less sense. Learning more about the machines they use every day, how they actually function and what to do when they fail to perform properly would increase productivity, not diminish it, wouldn’t it?
This whole issue smacks of needless censorship, especially given the fact of the unevenness of the execution. Some Blogs are blocked, some aren’t. Some comedy/entertainment/tech/auction websites are blocked, some aren’t. Some legitimate emails are blocked, some aren’t.
If you have a genuine suggestion, beef or even congratulations on a job well done to our State Government will your email be blocked? Or your website?
My “Little Red Book” is around here somewhere. I’d better find it soon…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Microsoft Corp
is developing its own hand-held music and video player
to challenge Apple
Computer's iPod:
http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2006/07/06/afx2860810.html
Though
you may have been "googling" people for years, the verb you
were using was
technically slang until now:
http://news.com.com/Google+joins+Xerox+as+a+verb/2100-1025_3-6091289.html
Apple
Computer Inc. is ready to go back to school after it introduced
an $899 iMac
aimed at students, teachers and schools Wednesday:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/06/BUGS2JPVS71.DTL
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
So, The PCGurus website has been deemed dangerous enough to be banned from computers owned by the government of the great Commonwealth of Kentucky. I, for one, take pride in that pronouncement.
Apparently a blog site, http://www.bluegrassreport.org, may have been the impetus for this heavy-handed attempt at controlling information. When politicians attempt to shield us poor unsuspecting citizens from information, I get a bit concerned. I look at the history books and try to find other leaders that wanted to control the free flow of ideas and information and my concern deepens.
Let’s discuss blogs and some tools that may be useful in managing the superabundance of information that the World Wide Web affords us.
Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.com, defines a blog thusly; “A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a website where regular entries are made (such as in a journal or diary) and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, videos or audio. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning adding an entry to a blog. …”. I define the majority of blog sites as the narcissistic, poorly researched regurgitations of under educated ego centrists looking for some, or any, recognition.
There are millions of sites that would fall into the blog category; therefore it is helpful to have some type of application to organize the topics an individual finds interesting. Sites like www.digg.com, www.reddit.com and www.spotback.com each require registration, but then the user can pick and choose the types of topics he/she would like to follow. Spotback highlights previously read items in yellow to facilitate the process. Google offers a free to use site, http://blogsearch.google.com/, which can be customized to one’s preferences.
While this isn’t necessarily a download review, I thought it might be useful to those of you who still enjoy unfettered access to the Internet.
Art Maley
Contest of the Week
And now for something completely different… This week’s contest isn’t a sweepstakes or an online game; it’s an actual contest involving programming a new Google Desktop Gadget.
For you amateur programmers out there, this gig comes with a downloadable developer environment and features easy to use drop in UI tools and a dedicated sandbox for testing.
Hey, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had to start somewhere, right?
http://desktop.google.com/contest.html
Email Question of the Week
Q: My floppy works fine in other computers,
but on the computer I use all
the time I get this message A;/ is not
accessible..--No ID address was
found on floppy disk. Can you help
me?
A: Sometimes, disks that are created on
another machine may not read on
other machines. This is usually caused
by a head misalignment on one
or the other drives. Put a new disk in
your machine and right-click
on the drive and choose <format>. It
your machine formats the disk,
you will know it is working. If not,
most likely the drive is dead.
A replacement unit is under $20 and
installation is simple.
Good Luck,
Art
Maley
Contact info and legal
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